*Originally posted yesterday I have updated this post after a comparison of the "Note on Conspiracy" sections in both Pamphlets of the American Revolution and Ideological Origins of the American Revolution.-BFH
Over and again Professor Bailyn writes of the colonists’ “pragmatism,” their groping for solutions to fit their “reality” in the great constitutional debates with crown officials both in England and here. Curious, “peculiar,” as Bailyn also writes over and again of the colonists’ conspiratorial thought, that he would use the word “reality” for there was nothing real about their conspiratorial thought. Curious too that Bailyn would disjoin the absurd conspiratorial thought from the colonists’ truly rarefied thought which inspired the world on the constitution question, as he does in separate, and consecutive, chapters of Ideological Origins ("A Note on Conspiracy" being a sub-part of "THE LOGIC OF REBELLION" chapter.).1 The two, of course, were conjoined in “reality” in the colonists’ thought, and in their writing. I do not know why Bailyn would disjoin the two to make it seem that the one was an earlier, discarded “draft” except to obscure and to deceive and I cannot quite bring myself to think that of him.
I do come close. Ideological Origins was first published in 1967 and was a less expensive version of Pamphlets of the American Revolution which was published in 1965. The decade from 1964-1974 was an extraordinarily difficult one in America: assassination, war, hot and cold, civil unrest, presidential resignation. It was a difficult time on the Harvard University campus also. When I ordered a new copy of Ideological Origins I ordered also my first copy of the first volume of Pamphlets. The Forewords to Pamphlets (1965) and Ideological Origins (1967) are of course similar, but they are not identical. In both Professor Bailyn explains the project’s mundane genesis, a request that he compile a “bibliography,” a catalog, of colonial pamphlets. In both he explains how he, “Like all students of American history", knew about a dozen of the pamphlets; that he, like they, had concluded that the colonists’ incendiary language, “tyranny,” “slavery” ad nauseum was mere “propaganda” to score debating points, not to be taken literally (as it could not without also concluding that the colonists’ were mentally disturbed!); but that in cataloging the pamphlets he read them anew, or for the first time, and viewed the colonists’ thought anew, “with something like surprise,” with “increasing excitement,” for all of this “was different from what I had expected.”2 In the first three pages of the Foreword to Pamphlets Bailyn uses “surprise” once, “surprising” twice, “excitement” once and “peculiar” once. For Bailyn had concluded that the colonists meant what they said about being subject to tyranny and slavery.
I imagine Professor Bailyn when he had this epiphany. I feel his scholar’s “excitement,” a frisson, for he knew that he had discovered something that every other scholar had missed. Because of that Ideological Origins was a sensation when it came out in 1967; it won the Pulitzer Prize, it has been celebrated with two anniversary editions in 1992 and 2017, and has been sine qua non to understanding the revolutionary movement ever since. And I wonder if "surprise" is truly le mot juste for the emotion that Professor Bailyn felt. Shock. I would have felt shock. I can state categorically that I would have felt shock if I had been Bernard Bailyn, or even a student of his, in 1965 because shock is what I felt when I first read Ideological Origins as a student just down the street from Harvard at M.I.T. in 1978.
I also imagine what is what like for Professor Bailyn to have this epiphany in the year 1965; a realization that shook the foundation of understanding of the creation of the Republic at a time, one hundred ninety years later, when the Republic was being shaken anew. And so when I read in the concluding paragraph of the Foreword to Pamphlets that his wife Lotte “made it possible for me to continue working on the book through a difficult time” (which does not end the Foreword to Ideological Origins), I imagine Bernard Bailyn sitting in his Harvard office or at home with Lotte in his study and staring out the window. I well imagine that it was a difficult time for Bailyn, and perhaps too 1965 a difficult point in time for him to publish a work that revealed the thought of the Founding Fathers to be “peculiar;” their conspiratorial thought, which was spur to the break with Britain, thus to the creation of the American Republic, unfounded in “reality,” completely wrong, embarrassingly so, mentally disturbed, easily diagnosed as a paranoid “contagion,” and when I imagine all of those imaginings then I come close to imagining Professor Bailyn artificially disjoining the disturbed thought from the enlightened thought in order to maintain the nation's creation myth, to keep the crazy uncle locked in his room as safely out of sight as consistent with scholarly duty.
1 In Pamphlets of the American Revolution, Bernard Bailyn (1965) the Note on Conspiracy is just three full pages long, approximately 1343 words; in Ideological Origins, Bernard Bailyn (1967) Bailyn wrote a longer "Note," a little over fifteen pages, approximately 5051 words.
2 Pamphlets, Bailyn (1965) Foreward, vii.
Over and again Professor Bailyn writes of the colonists’ “pragmatism,” their groping for solutions to fit their “reality” in the great constitutional debates with crown officials both in England and here. Curious, “peculiar,” as Bailyn also writes over and again of the colonists’ conspiratorial thought, that he would use the word “reality” for there was nothing real about their conspiratorial thought. Curious too that Bailyn would disjoin the absurd conspiratorial thought from the colonists’ truly rarefied thought which inspired the world on the constitution question, as he does in separate, and consecutive, chapters of Ideological Origins ("A Note on Conspiracy" being a sub-part of "THE LOGIC OF REBELLION" chapter.).1 The two, of course, were conjoined in “reality” in the colonists’ thought, and in their writing. I do not know why Bailyn would disjoin the two to make it seem that the one was an earlier, discarded “draft” except to obscure and to deceive and I cannot quite bring myself to think that of him.
I do come close. Ideological Origins was first published in 1967 and was a less expensive version of Pamphlets of the American Revolution which was published in 1965. The decade from 1964-1974 was an extraordinarily difficult one in America: assassination, war, hot and cold, civil unrest, presidential resignation. It was a difficult time on the Harvard University campus also. When I ordered a new copy of Ideological Origins I ordered also my first copy of the first volume of Pamphlets. The Forewords to Pamphlets (1965) and Ideological Origins (1967) are of course similar, but they are not identical. In both Professor Bailyn explains the project’s mundane genesis, a request that he compile a “bibliography,” a catalog, of colonial pamphlets. In both he explains how he, “Like all students of American history", knew about a dozen of the pamphlets; that he, like they, had concluded that the colonists’ incendiary language, “tyranny,” “slavery” ad nauseum was mere “propaganda” to score debating points, not to be taken literally (as it could not without also concluding that the colonists’ were mentally disturbed!); but that in cataloging the pamphlets he read them anew, or for the first time, and viewed the colonists’ thought anew, “with something like surprise,” with “increasing excitement,” for all of this “was different from what I had expected.”2 In the first three pages of the Foreword to Pamphlets Bailyn uses “surprise” once, “surprising” twice, “excitement” once and “peculiar” once. For Bailyn had concluded that the colonists meant what they said about being subject to tyranny and slavery.
I imagine Professor Bailyn when he had this epiphany. I feel his scholar’s “excitement,” a frisson, for he knew that he had discovered something that every other scholar had missed. Because of that Ideological Origins was a sensation when it came out in 1967; it won the Pulitzer Prize, it has been celebrated with two anniversary editions in 1992 and 2017, and has been sine qua non to understanding the revolutionary movement ever since. And I wonder if "surprise" is truly le mot juste for the emotion that Professor Bailyn felt. Shock. I would have felt shock. I can state categorically that I would have felt shock if I had been Bernard Bailyn, or even a student of his, in 1965 because shock is what I felt when I first read Ideological Origins as a student just down the street from Harvard at M.I.T. in 1978.
I also imagine what is what like for Professor Bailyn to have this epiphany in the year 1965; a realization that shook the foundation of understanding of the creation of the Republic at a time, one hundred ninety years later, when the Republic was being shaken anew. And so when I read in the concluding paragraph of the Foreword to Pamphlets that his wife Lotte “made it possible for me to continue working on the book through a difficult time” (which does not end the Foreword to Ideological Origins), I imagine Bernard Bailyn sitting in his Harvard office or at home with Lotte in his study and staring out the window. I well imagine that it was a difficult time for Bailyn, and perhaps too 1965 a difficult point in time for him to publish a work that revealed the thought of the Founding Fathers to be “peculiar;” their conspiratorial thought, which was spur to the break with Britain, thus to the creation of the American Republic, unfounded in “reality,” completely wrong, embarrassingly so, mentally disturbed, easily diagnosed as a paranoid “contagion,” and when I imagine all of those imaginings then I come close to imagining Professor Bailyn artificially disjoining the disturbed thought from the enlightened thought in order to maintain the nation's creation myth, to keep the crazy uncle locked in his room as safely out of sight as consistent with scholarly duty.
1 In Pamphlets of the American Revolution, Bernard Bailyn (1965) the Note on Conspiracy is just three full pages long, approximately 1343 words; in Ideological Origins, Bernard Bailyn (1967) Bailyn wrote a longer "Note," a little over fifteen pages, approximately 5051 words.
2 Pamphlets, Bailyn (1965) Foreward, vii.
