American Experiment (454 page)
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Authors: James MacGregor Burns
[“
Makes the role of leadership
”]: “Some Issues of Technology,” p. 21.
[
Pendulum theory of politics
]: McElvaine, pp. 4-10 and
passim;
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.,
The Cycles of American History
(Houghton Mifflin, 1986), esp. ch. 2.
672
[“
The line it is drawn
”]: “The times they are a-changin’,” recorded by Bob Dylan, words and music by Bob Dylan, copyright 1963, Columbia Records.
Memories of the Future: A Personal Epilogue
673
[“
Memories of the Future
”]: the name of a
pulquería
I saw as a boy on the outskirts of Mexico City.
[
Williamstown and the Berkshires
]: Robert R. R. Brooks, ed.,
Williamstown: The First Two Hundred Years, 1753-1953, and Twenty Years Later, 1953-1973,
2nd ed. (Williamstown Historical Commission, 1974); Arthur Latham Perry,
Origins in Williamstown,
3rd ed. (privately printed, 1904); Bliss Perry,
Colonel Benjamin Simonds, 1726-1807
(privately printed, 1944); Theodore M. Hammett, “The Revolutionary Ideology in Its Social Context: Berkshire County, Massachusetts, 1725-1785 (doctoral dissertation: Brandeis University, 1976).
[
Thoreau in the Berkshires
]: Thoreau,
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers,
Carl F. Hovde et al., eds. (Princeton University Press, 1980), pp. 180-90, quoted at pp. 184, 188.
[“
A sort of sea-feeling
”]: letter to Evert Duyckinck, December 13, 1850, in Jay Leyda, ed.,
The Melville Log
(Harcourt, 1951), p. 401.
[
Roosevelt in Williamstown
]: Brooks, pp. 352-54, party chieftain quoted at p. 353.
[“
To evolve a new order
”]:
New York Times,
June 10, 1934, sect. 4, pp. 1, 6, quoted at p. 6.
[“
Next frontier
”]: Stevenson, “Liberalism,” address at Los Angeles, May 31, 1956, in Stevenson,
The New America,
Seymour E. Harris et al., eds. (Harper, 1957), pp. 256-61, quoted at p. 260.
[
My views of JFK, 1960
]: James MacGregor Burns,
John Kennedy: A Political Profile
(Harcourt, 1960).
[
Jacqueline Kennedy on her husband
]: letter of Jacqueline Kennedy (in Hyannisport) to the author, n.d. [late 1959]. 681 [“
Things fall apart
”]: Yeats, “The Second Coming,” in
The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats
(Macmillan, 1959), pp. 184-85.
I
N THIS FINAL VOLUME
of my trilogy in American political and intellectual history I have continued to stress the role of leadership—but of the second and third cadres of leadership, and not merely of a few notables at the top. This emphasis has centrally influenced my treatment of American presidents. I have given much attention to FDR and his four successors— Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy in his third year in office, and Lyndon Johnson during his first two years in the White House—because these men in their diverse ways markedly influenced the course of history. I have played down the influence of LBJ in his last three years and of his four successors—Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Reagan during most of his two terms—because they appear to me as far more the victims than the makers of events.
Victims of events—but those events were not impersonal happenings like an ice age but the work of other men and women. The last three decades have brought extraordinary leadership from second-cadre figures such as Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy, as well as from third-cadre rank-and-file activists who influenced them. I regret that even three substantial volumes cannot do justice to all the leaders of causes and movements who variously stimulate, sustain, challenge, and obstruct presidents. And if, on the other hand, second-cadre officials in the White House fail their president, as happened most direly in the Nixon and Reagan administrations, presidents are brought down by events for which they must take responsibility.
This volume, even more than the first two, is the product of a collective effort. Two collaborators had indispensable roles. Stewart Burns, deeply immersed in the peace and environmental struggles of recent decades, served as chief co-author with me of Part III (chapters 8-10), critiqued major portions of the manuscript, and directly influenced the coverage of ideas and events elsewhere in the work. Milton Djuric shared much of the burden of research, cast a critical eye on successive drafts of the manuscript, and made important contributions in the realms of both ideas and facts, demonstrating throughout creativity and versatility, whether in conceptualizing, in drafting, in critiquing, or in editing.
Historians Alan Brinkley and David Burner reviewed the entire manuscript and made numerous suggestions for its improvement, as did two longtime friends and colleagues at Williams, historians Russell H. Bostert and Robert C. L. Scott. Physicist David A. Park, astronomer-physicist Jay M. Pasachoff, and musician and music critic Irwin Shainman counseled me expertly in their respective spheres of scholarship. I thank these critics for the time and thought they so generously gave to the manuscript. Others at Williams who gave invaluable help were Kurt Tauber and Rosemarie Tong, and two students, Nicholas King and David F. Wagner. My friends in the Faculty Secretarial Office were as cheerfully efficient as ever.
Deborah Burns, author, editor, and illustrator, provided the admirable endpapers for this volume as she did for the first two. My longtime friend and editor Ashbel Green supplied the solid and consistent counsel necessary for such a long-term writing project, while Melvin Rosenthal, also at Knopf, provided his special kind of meticulous editing. Jeffrey Trout thoroughly critiqued the manuscript on the basis of both his historical and his legal knowledge. Wendy Severinghaus reviewed the early chapters. Maurice Greenbaum continued to contribute in significant ways. My fellow author Joan Simpson Burns offered useful advice and criticism. Gisela Knight compiled the painstakingly comprehensive index.
I wish to thank the archivists and librarians at institutions where I conducted research: Baker Library of the Graduate School of Business Administration at Harvard; the Columbia University Oral History Program; Franklin D. Roosevelt Library; Jimmy Carter Library; John Fitzgerald Kennedy Library; House of Lords Records Office, London; Language Laboratory of the University of California at Berkeley; Library of Congress, Manuscripts Division; Louisiana State University Library; Lyndon Baines Johnson Library; the Martin Luther King, Jr., Library and Archives; the New York Historical Society; the New York Public Library; Research Library, University of California at Los Angeles; the Stanford University libraries; University of Kentucky Library; University of Oklahoma Western History Collections; and the Williams College Library, whose staff was invariably helpful and resourceful.
I conducted research and writing also at Bellagio under the Rockefeller Foundation; the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace; and the University of California at Los Angeles. I should state here, as I have done in a number of places in this work, that I have borrowed from earlier writings of mine in an effort to make some of my imperishable prose still more imperishable.
Any errors or deficiencies are solely my responsibility, and I would appreciate being informed of them at Williams College, Williamstown, MA 01267. I wish to thank those who sent in corrections for the second volume,
The Workshop of Democracy.
Those corrections are: (p. 189) the number of Populist newspapers was nearer several hundred than 100; (p. 218) General George Custer chased Crazy Horse’s warriors for about six weeks, not six months; (p. 231) Tom Watson’s position at the 1896 Populist convention should be identified as anti-fusionist; (p. 234) Dingell should be Dingley; (ch. 5) the Colored Farmers’ National Alliance should be mentioned as an important black organization that was parallel in its work and activities to the National Farmers’ Alliance, which in the South refused to admit black farmers to membership.
J.M.B.
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Aaron, Daniel,
145
Abbott, Grace,
103
Abernathy, Ralph,
349
,
351
,
356
,
362-3
,
367
,
369
,
382
abortion issue,
439
,
440
,
447-9
,
452
,
458
,
628
,
654
Abrams, Gen. Creighton,
475
Abstract Expressionism,
621
,
622
Acconci, Vito,
623
Acheson, Dean,
28
,
37
,
80
,
229
,
276
,
285
,
334-412
,
593
as Secretary of State,
240
,
243-4
,
252
,
253
,
289
,
342
,
402
,
468
Adam, Margie,
451
affirmative action,
651
poverty in,
303
see also
North Africa
Agent Orange,
406
Agnew, Spiro T.,
460
,
474
,
488
,
505
,
558
Agreement on the Prevention of Nuclear War (1973),
485-6
Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA),
25
,
30
,
34
,
42
,
49
,
64-6
,
77
,
122
Supreme Court invalidation of,
72
,
82
,
91
Aiken, Conrad,
140
Aiken, George,
484
aircraft industry,
183
,
188
,
189
,
268
air pollution,
574
Alabama:
black voter registration in,
382-4
condition of blacks in, 1950s,
313-14
,
322
see also
Birmingham
Albert, Carl,
389
Aldrich, Winthrop,
71
Aldridge, John W.,
616
Aldrin, Edwin,
581-2
Alexander, Charles,
138
alienation, in age of technology,
275
Allen, Pamela,
443
Allende, Salvador,
524
Alliance for Progress,
328
,
331
,
336
Allies, World War II,
182
,
199-202
,
210-11
,
223-4
conferences,
195-9
,
205-9
,
224-226
Council of foreign Ministers,
226
,
229
munitions edge over Axis,
183
,
199
,
200
second front discussions,
177-8
,
180-1
,
196-201
,
207
,
221-2
suspicions and differences,
197
,
206-8
,
210-11
,
218
,
220-2
Altgeld, John Peter,
249
Amalgamated Clothing Workers,
46
,
55
“America Firsters,”
154
American Civil Liberties Union,
50
,
310
,
667
American Conservative Union,
637
American Dilemma, An
(Myrdal),
359
American Enterprise Institute,
624-5
,
658
American Farm Bureau Federation,
49
,
65
American Federation of Labor (AFL),
33
,
45-6
,
53
,
54-6
,
79
,
97
,
107-8
,
157
,
205
,
603
see also
AFL-CIO
American Guide Series, FWP,
139-40
American Independent party (1968),
415-16
American Labor party,
111
American League Against War and Fascism,
53
American Legion,
41
American Liberty League,
42-3
,
45
,
50
,
63
,
77
,
81
,
96
American Medical Association,
389
American Mercury, The
(magazine),
252
American Political Science Association,
457
American Progress
(monthly),
62
Americans for Democratic Action (ADA),
236
,
293
,
310
,
324
,
326
,
408
,
607