I am sad to learn from the New York Times that Forrest McDonald has passed away in Tuscaloosa. He was a leading historian of the founding era. My relationship with McDonald began, as happens so often for me, the old fashioned way -- through his books. I read We the People when I was in college and was trying to get a handle on quantitative methods in history. I'd heard that We the People was an important place to start -- and then later in a fabulous course on the American Revolution taught by Richard Beeman I read Novus Ordo Seclorum. The latter, though it was published 30 years after We the People, was a successor in that it looked at ideology of the founding generation, rather than economic interest. It really resonated with me -- and all the more so because had just read Bailyn's Ideological Origins of the American Revolution.
Though the New York Times obituary emphasizes his conservative ideas (both the obit and his wikipedia page conclude with the observation that he was a self-described paleo conservative), for me the significance of his work is not that he was conservative. It's that he communicated in crisp prose the insights about economics and ideology of the founding generation. Ideas mattered, he argued, for the framers of the Constitution and he suggested how that was the case. bI take it the pendulum is now swinging back and we're maybe not taking ideas as seriously as we once did. Maybe that will change again soon and we'll be back to focusing on ideas.
One of my great hopes when I moved to the University of Alabama was that I'd have a chance to spend some quality time with McDonald. I thought it would be a great treat to get his help on my own work on the ideology and economics of pro-slavery thought. Alas, I did not have the chance to spend much time with him; we served on a dissertation committee together and he was kind enough to ask about my work whenever we crossed paths, thought that wasn't as frequent as I would have liked.
Like you, I encountered McDonald through his work. I quite liked his bio of Hamilton, esp. the scene at the end: a contrite Monroe asking forgiveness from an angry Mrs. Hamilton. Like you, I didn't identify him with a specific brand of politics. But I recall that he was quite generous in commenting on a paper I once did on state debts during the founding period.
Posted by: Jim Pfander | January 22, 2016 at 06:11 PM
It is certainly true that the most important thing about the death of Forrest McDonald (arguably the greatest historian of the American Founding in the last 75 years; and someone who led the way of his fellow historians who could also compete for that title, in overturning the semi-Marxist consensus in favor of Charles Beard's views, which *did once* reign those 75+ years ago) is not his conservative political/policy ideas. McDonald was not a great man because he supported SDI, the Reagan tax cuts, etc., and it is silly to love his works on history *for that reason.* We should conclude this if we think, say, that SDI was reckless adventurism (which I assume, perhaps I am wrong, is a widely held opinion among those who read and write for this site), or if we think that it was deep and wise foreign policy (my opinion).
You don't read We the People because McDonald voted for the same Party you do. That's just silly.
But, anyone who totally discounts the importance of McDonald's political views (and the idea that he was a "paleoconservative" is flawed at best--the paleos today think of Hamilton as little different than Satan; McDonald was probably *the* great Hamilton-defender of the 20th-century historians of the Founding) is ignoring huge parts of reality. We can arguably call his "Recovering the Past: A Historian's Memoir" (University Press of Kansas, 2004) his final (or near-final) statement to the world, before he entered this last chapter of his life that just ended. Throughout much of the book, McDonald lets the reader full, well know that he believes that, while there are scores of excellent progressive and liberal historians in America's universities today (and on this point, he was/is obviously right), "liberal bias"--for lack of a less clunky term--is a serious problem in American historiography/historiography of the American Founding/legal history. The book makes clear that liberal bias angered him, and he felt it made America's History Departments worse than they could otherwise be. It prevents scholars from asking questions that should be asked, makes them quick to celebrate fake discoveries that confirm their biases (Michael Bellesiles is what seems to trouble McDonald the most in the pages of "Recovering the Past"), and makes everything we do as historians far more politicized than it should be (and, for what it is worth, it should be *not at all* politicized).
As a legal historian, trained by legal historians who were progressive down the line (save Bob Cottrol), who loves them to this day, but has been a National Review conservative since he was 14, I often feel exactly what McDonald is worrying about in the pages of "Recovering the Past." The profession is strong, very strong. Liberals often ask questions (of the John Yoo's and Rand Paul's of the world) that need to be asked, and conservatives will (and do) not enjoy the honest answers that then come. But, the equally needed reverse of that almost never happens. On Roe, on Lawrence, on numerous other hot-button issues, too many of the majority of legal historians (who are progressive) in America today just don't want to talk about the history "lite"/law office history originating on their side of the aisle. This comes from the same motive that made it hard for certain people to give Bellesiles the (long delayed) punishment he so richly deserved. (McDonald recounts this grievance, in particular, in the pages of "Recovering the Past"). And worst, I know from personal knowledge, that it is too damn taboo to even talk about this problem in legal history circles (even if you at first acknowledge, as I always do, that Federalist Society law office history is a *real* damn problem in this country too).
This is what creates a world where, a few years ago on this very website, "take-downs" of 2nd Amendment-as-an-individual-right scholarship were written that beat up on conservative law professors with no historical training whatsoever, and did not even mention names like "Malcolm", "Cottrol" or "Levy". Any attempt to say something about the 2nd Amendment that includes that it is *not* an individual right, that does not even mention these people’s work, but goes on and on about a Federalist Society-popular speaker, who only has training in constitutional law, and not legal history (or any historiography), is an attempt by a progressive to shot fish in a barrel. Historians like McDonald could shoot fish in a barrel, too, you know. (The name “Eskridge” on the subject of the history of sodomy laws comes to mind.) The point is, that if you want to say something, about sodomy laws or the 2nd Amendment (or anything else) that is lasting (and a true historian should want to do this) he/she engages the *best* historiography that might undermine his/her preferred conclusions, not the worst (or that which is not historiography at all).
*That* is what Forrest McDonald did in We the People. *That* is what made him a great man. And, of course, the ethic of that rule is neither conservative nor progressive, Republican nor Democrat.
If everyone will be completely honest with everyone else on this site, while the general thrust of our commemorations of this great man's life is certainly true, the fact is, McDonald would have thought that trying to discredit *2nd Amendment scholarship in general* without even *mentioning* those names I listed above, was unprofessional behavior, at best. And "Recovering the Past" (again, the book he wrote and left to the world, as he entered old-age and began to face that death was coming sooner-rather-than-later; his *near-last comment* to us all) is "exhibit A" for that proposition.
So yes, in that sense, it certainly does matter that Forrest McDonald was a conservative, or, at least, it matters that he was particularly interested in fairness to the conservative-leaning answers historians should be coming up with, just as much as we are fair to the progressive-leaning answers we should also all be coming up with.
Posted by: Bradford William Short | January 24, 2016 at 07:27 AM
It is certainly true that the most important thing about the death of Forrest McDonald (arguably the greatest historian of the American Founding in the last 75 years; and someone who led the way of his fellow historians who could also compete for that title, in overturning the semi-Marxist consensus in favor of Charles Beard's views, which *did once* reign those 75+ years ago) is not his conservative political/policy ideas. McDonald was not a great man because he supported SDI, the Reagan tax cuts, etc., and it is silly to love his works on history *for that reason.* We should conclude this if we think, say, that SDI was reckless adventurism (which I assume, perhaps I am wrong, is a widely held opinion among those who read and write for this site), or if we think that it was deep and wise foreign policy (my opinion).
You don't read We the People because McDonald voted for the same Party you do. That's just silly.
But, anyone who totally discounts the importance of McDonald's political views (and the idea that he was a "paleoconservative" is flawed at best--the paleos today think of Hamilton as little different than Satan; McDonald was probably *the* great Hamilton-defender of the 20th-century historians of the Founding) is ignoring huge parts of reality. We can arguably call his "Recovering the Past: A Historian's Memoir" (University Press of Kansas, 2004) his final (or near-final) statement to the world, before he entered this last chapter of his life that just ended. Throughout much of the book, McDonald lets the reader full, well know that he believes that, while there are scores of excellent progressive and liberal historians in America's universities today (and on this point, he was/is obviously right), "liberal bias"--for lack of a less clunky term--is a serious problem in American historiography/historiography of the American Founding/legal history. The book makes clear that liberal bias angered him, and he felt it made America's History Departments worse than they could otherwise be. It prevents scholars from asking questions that should be asked, makes them quick to celebrate fake discoveries that confirm their biases (Michael Bellesiles is what seems to trouble McDonald the most in the pages of "Recovering the Past"), and makes everything we do as historians far more politicized than it should be (and, for what it is worth, it should be *not at all*politicized).
As a legal historian, trained by legal historians who were progressive down the line (save Bob Cottrol), who loves them to this day, but has been a National Review conservative since he was 14, I often feel exactly what McDonald is worrying about in the pages of "Recovering the Past." The profession is strong, very strong. Liberals often ask questions (of the John Yoo's and Rand Paul's of the world) that need to be asked, and conservatives will (and do) not enjoy the honest answers that then come. But, the equally needed reverse of that almost never happens. On Roe, on Lawrence, on numerous other hot-button issues, too many of the majority of legal historians (who are progressive) in America today just don't want to talk about the history "lite"/law office history originating on their side of the aisle. This comes from the same motive that made it hard for certain people to give Bellesiles the (long delayed) punishment he so richly deserved. (McDonald recounts this grievance, in particular, in the pages of "Recovering the Past"). And worst, I know from personal knowledge, that it is too damn taboo to even talk about this problem in legal history circles (even if you at first acknowledge, as I always do, that Federalist Society law office history is a *real* damn problem in this country too).
This is what creates a world where, a few years ago on this very website, "take-downs" of 2nd Amendment-as-an-individual-right scholarship were written that beat up on conservative law professors with no historical training whatsoever, and did not even mention names like "Malcolm", "Cottrol" or "Levy". Any attempt to say something about the 2nd Amendment that includes that it is *not* an individual right, that does not even mention these people’s work, but goes on and on about a Federalist Society-popular speaker, who only has training in constitutional law, and not legal history (or any historiography), is an attempt by a progressive to shoot fish in a barrel. Historians like McDonald could shoot fish in a barrel, too, you know. (The name “Eskridge” on the subject of the history of sodomy laws comes to mind.) The point is, that if you want to say something, about sodomy laws or the 2nd Amendment (or anything else) that is lasting (and a true historian should want to do this) he/she engages the *best* historiography that might undermine his/her preferred conclusions, not the worst (or that which is not historiography at all).
*That* is what Forrest McDonald did in We the People. *That* is what made him a great man. And, of course, the ethic of that rule is neither conservative nor progressive, Republican nor Democrat.
If everyone will be completely honest with everyone else on this site, while the general thrust of our commemorations of this great man's life is certainly true, the fact is, McDonald would have thought that trying to discredit *2nd Amendment scholarship in general* without even *mentioning* those names I listed above, was unprofessional behavior, at best. And "Recovering the Past" (again, the book he wrote and left to the world, as he entered old-age and began to face that death was coming sooner-rather-than-later; his *near-last comment* to us all) is "exhibit A" for that proposition.
So yes, in that sense, it certainly does matter that Forrest McDonald was a conservative, or, at least, it matters that he was particularly interested in fairness to the conservative-leaning answers historians should be coming up with, just as much as we are fair to the progressive-leaning answers we should also all be coming up with.
Posted by: Bradford William Short | January 24, 2016 at 02:22 PM