A Balanced and Nuanced Treatment of American Stories and Personalities
HarperCollins Publishers • 1998 • 1,088 pages • $35.00
“The creation of the United States of America is the greatest of all human adventures. No other national story has such tremendous lessons, for the American people and for the rest of mankind.” So begins Paul Johnson in his upbeat and first-rate A History of the American People.
As a British historian and non-academic, Johnson avoids the pitfalls of so many American historians. Academic historians in particular often impose a double straitjacket on U.S. history: first, that economic issues have been paramount in shaping American politics; and second, that government intervention in the American economy has been necessary and benign. Johnson disputes both of these points.
Johnson gives due attention to economic issues, but he also highlights the crucial role of religion in shaping American history. For example, he takes the Puritans seriously as men of ideas. Later, he analyzes the Great Awakening, the religious fervor of the 1740s. “The Great Awakening,” Johnson argues, “was thus the proto-revolutionary event, the formative moment in American history, preceding the political drive for independence and making it possible.” George Whitefield, its leader, “was the first ‘American’ public figure, equally well known from Georgia to New Hampshire.”
In Johnson’s history, the rise of America to world prominence is a fascinating story, full of key inventions and daring entrepreneurs. Liberty, not government, is what extended the American dream to millions of Americans, immigrants and natives alike, during the 1800s.
The 1900s might well be called the century of big government in U.S. history. “It was [President Woodrow] Wilson who first introduced America to big, benevolent government,” Johnson asserts. But Wilson “was corrupted by power, and the more he had of it the deeper the corruption bit, like acid in his soul.”
Johnson prefers Calvin Coolidge: “No one in the 20th century defined more elegantly the limitations of government and the need for individual endeavor, which necessarily involves inequalities, to advance human happiness.” Coolidge cut taxes, promoted free enterprise, and had the lowest misery index (inflation plus unemployment) of any president in this century. “Of those who came to power at the same time as Coolidge, all the most notable were dedicated to expanding the role of the state.”
When the Great Depression hit, both Hoover and Roosevelt brought bigger government to America—and much of it had negative consequences, according to Johnson. “No series of events in modern history is surrounded by more mythology than the New Deal,” Johnson writes. “There was no actual economic policy behind the program.” Democratic Presidents Kennedy and Johnson and Republican Nixon expanded government further. But, Johnson says, Ronald Reagan, a “conservative revolutionary,” challenged the Democratic hegemony. Johnson curiously ignores Nixon’s failed economic intervention, but praises him for challenging the Kennedy money and the “liberal” media.
Johnson’s history is a superlative achievement, not only for his knowledge and insights but also because he is an able writer and captivating storyteller. In a recent interview, Johnson showed impatience with historians who “niggle” at his work, but more niggling by his editors would have cleared up a variety of misspellings and minor errors. Zachary Taylor was a Whig, not a Democrat; it’s Alfred Sloan, not “Sloane,” and John W. Davis, not “Davies.” But let me niggle no more.
Critics accuse Johnson of being biased, but he is in fact balanced and nuanced in his treatment of historical events and personalities. Johnson appears biased to other historians because so many of them are accustomed to teaching from the standard “liberal” texts that dominate the market—for example, Samuel Eliot Morison’s Oxford History of the American People.
Where Johnson treats Coolidge with respect, Morison lashes out, calling him “a mean, thin-lipped little man, a respectable mediocrity . . . dour, abstemious, and unimaginative.” Where Johnson dissects the New Deal, Morison is filled with gushing praise, saying that it was “just what the term implied—a new deal of old cards, no longer stacked against the common man. . . . Probably it saved the capitalist system in the United States.”
These snippets are typical of the “history” most Americans have learned. Johnson’s excellent work often stands in opposition to the conventional wisdom. It deserves a wide readership among students as well as adults, and if so, we may yet train our next generation to appreciate American history.
