GEORGE WASHINGTON AND THE NATIONAL PARK SERVICE:
THE ROLE OF HISTORY IN CONTEMPORARY SOCIETY
Dwight T. Pitcaithley, Ph.D. (1996)

Dr. Pitcaithley, Chief Historian for the National Park Service, opens his exploration of the meaning and value of history and historic preservation with a wonderful anecdote about Walter Johnson’s 1936 effort to duplicate George Washington’s perhaps mythical throw of a silver dollar across the Potomac (or was it the Rappahannock?), one of the many Washington stories that have become ingrained in the American imagination. He notes that many historic sites, including Morristown’s Ford Mansion, were initially preserved by private individuals, families or groups, and discusses the sites managed by the National Park Service that are connected to Washington. He sums up the current debate over how to teach American history by quoting a 1922 newspaper editorial: “The controversy over school histories is largely between defenders of doctrine and defenders of free inquiry, between those who do not believe that children can be trusted with the truth and those who believe that they can.... A true American history need not rob us of the story of Paul Revere or the reverence for George Washington, but it will teach that personal anecdotes are not the life of a nation, that great men as well as mean men flourish in every generation.”

As we gather here to reflect on the memory and meaning of the man George Washington, it is interesting to recall how past generations remembered his considerable achievements. Sixty years ago this Thursday, the good people of Fredericksburg, Virginia decided to reenact (or perhaps verify) the story begun by Mason “Parson” Weems of Washington tossing a silver dollar across the Potomac. Scholars of the 1930's understood, of course, that if the tale were true, it was probably not the Potomac, but the Rappahannock across which Washington hurled the coin. The genesis for the event was a remark by New York Representative Sol Bloom who stated that Washington could not have thrown a silver dollar across the Rappahannock at Fredericksburg because of the river's great width. Taking up the challenge, the citizens of Fredericksburg enlisted the talents of Walter "Big Train" Johnson former Washington Senators pitching ace. Forty-nine years of age and retired for nine years, Johnson reportedly boasted, “If George Washington did it, I can do it.” On February 22, 1936, a crowd estimated at 10,000 gathered on the banks of the Rappahannock; untold thousands more listened to CBS Radio’s live coverage of the event. At 2:35 in the afternoon, Johnson wound up and predictably tossed a commemorative silver dollar across the 273-foot wide river. The coin cleared by 20 feet! A footnote: the coin was recovered, but in the years since has become lost to posterity.1

George Washington (whether or not he had a golden arm) is closely linked with the origins of the historic preservation movement and is well represented by preserved places throughout the East.2 The history of these sites is interesting and informative, yet time permits only a brief survey of their historic associations:

If your love of country is excited when you read the biography of our revolutionary heroes, or the history of revolutionary events, how much more will the flame of patriotism burn in our bosoms when we tread the ground where was shed the blood of our fathers, or when we move among the scenes where were conceived and consummated their noble achievements.... No traveler who touches upon the shores of Orange county will hesitate to make a pilgrimage to this beautiful spot, associated as it is with so many delightful reminiscences in our early history, and if he have an American heart in his bosom, he will feel himself a better man; his patriotism will kindle with deeper emotions; his aspirations of his country’s good will ascend from a more devout mind for having visited the “Headquarters of Washington.”3

With those words, the New York State legislature purchased the Hasbrouck House in 1850 and began the historic preservation movement in the United States. Three years later, Ann Pamela Cunningham initiated an appeal to the country to preserve Mount Vernon (1853). In 1856 she chartered the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association of the Union. which resulted in eventual purchase in 1859. One million pilgrims visit this shrine each year and consider it the ultimate Washington experience. Mount Vernon continues to be carefully managed by the Mount Vernon Ladies Association.

Mount Vernon, like Monticello and the Hermitage, is an American shrine owned and preserved by a private organization. Yet the federal government has been in the preservation business since the closing years of the 19th Century and, with the creation of the National Park Service in 1916, has become the caretaker for thirteen sites having direct and indirect connection with George Washington.

From his birth in 1732, through his Revolutionary War travels and travails, through his participation in the Constitutional Convention of 1787 and his first inauguration in New York City, the National Park Service manages places significant to George Washington's life, and, hence, to the development of this country.

Let’s visit a few of these. In 1930, anticipation of the bicentennial of the birth of Washington sparked interest in honoring the General at the site of his birth. The George Washington Memorial Association purchased the property east of Fredericksburg, Virginia, conducted extensive research, and in 1932 celebrated the bicentennial with the opening of a replica house and detached kitchen. This early reconstruction symbolized this country’s reverence for Washington even though the reconstructed birthplace was based on architectural period practice rather than direct historical evidence. The National Park Service accepted management of the house upon its completion.

The year before the bicentennial, Congress established the site of Washington’s defeat at Fort Necessity on July 3, 1754, as a national battlefield site. Extensive archaeological research determined the original site and configuration of the fort, which has since been reconstructed.

Pennsylvania's Valley Forge possesses deep Washington associations and over the years has been preserved through private and state efforts, but only since 1976 has it been managed by the National Park Service.

Many of these historic sites were purchased by patriotic groups and much later transferred to the National Park Service; the Ford Mansion was one of these, purchased in 1873 by four patriotic individuals for $25,000. Ex-governor Theodore Randolph described the house this way in 1875:

This historic mansion will become a “Mecca,” toward which all patriotic Jerseymen will from time to time turn their steps, finding in time of peace a grateful repose from life’s turmoil, and in times of danger to the country’s peace or welfare obtain, as from a pure fountain, inspiration to patriotic purpose.4

The Ford Mansion eventually became part of Morristown National Historical Park administered by the NPS since 1933. Two Revolutionary War sites in Boston honor the memory of George Washington. Dorchester Heights south of Boston Harbor was fortified under Washington’s command and, from that height, forced the British evacuation of Boston. A tower and several monuments now mark the site. But for most of Washington’s stay in Boston, he lived in Cambridge at Craigie House, later owned by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

In 1913, the children of Longfellow established a trust for the preservation of Craigie House. A provision of the Trust directed the trustees, after a period of three years during which no family member chose to occupy the house, to convey the property to a corporation “to be held, preserved, maintained and managed for the benefit of the public as a specimen of the best Colonial architecture of the middle of the eighteenth century, as an historical monument of the occupation of the house by General Washington during the siege of Boston in the Revolutionary War, and as a memorial to Henry W. Longfellow...”5 Twenty years after the death of Longfellow’s grandson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Dana, the “three year” clause became a reality and with the support of the Longfellow Trust the house became the property of the United States, administered by the National Park Service.

In 1930, Congress established Colonial National Historical Park, which linked Jamestown and Yorktown and celebrated Washington's victory in 1781. And shortly after World War II, Congress created Independence National Historical Park setting aside the site of the 1787 Constitutional Congress, presided over by Washington.

Federal Hall National Memorial on Wall Street commemorates Washington’s first inaugural, although the present building dates from 1842. Washington dominates the front (Wall Street) facade of the building via a bronze statue by John Quincy Adams Ward.

The Park Service also manages memorials to Washington and these take many forms. Without question one of the most recognized landmarks in Washington and certainly the most visible is the Washington Monument designed by Robert Mills. The NPS has recently rehabilitated the lower lobby of the monument by restoring the simplicity of the original design and installing a copy of the famous Houdon statue.

Equally well known is Mount Rushmore, the colossal sculpture by Gutzon Borglum in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Far less appreciated is Piscataway Park in Maryland, a 4,000-acre preserve created to protect the viewshed across the Potomac from Mount Vernon. And finally, in 1930 Congress authorized the construction of a parkway linking Mount Vernon with Washington, D.C. Designed to commemorate the bicentennial of Washington’s birth, the parkway opened in 1932 and during the 1960’s was extended north along the Potomac palisades to near Great Falls and the Washington-inspired Patomack Canal.

Preserving places special in our collective memory is an exciting, challenging, and sometimes daunting task. And we must always bear in mind the reasons why we as a society set aside these structural artifacts and study their deeper associations.

In 1921, the historian William Roscoe Thayer wrote the following to Henry Cabot Lodge:

Our acceleration in adaptability to change, makes the new and unexpected quickly appear familiar and habitual. So we soon forget the past, an ominous fact at this time, when a thousand crazy novelties press for adoption and the steadying tradition of the past restrains nobody.6

It is important, of course, that the past not be forgotten and that the study of the past be cultivated and encouraged, so that we can have, as Michael Kammen writes, “an imaginative and meaningful relationship to the determinative aspects of American history.”7

These are wonderfully exciting times for history and historians. History is of immense popularity as Ken Burns has shown; we now have a television channel dedicated to history, The History Channel; there are successful movies about Harry Truman, Thomas Jefferson, and Gettysburg. Bookstores, even popular bookstores, are carrying many titles on history; historical re-enactors and re-enactments draw large crowds; historic sites are ever popular.

At the same time history is under attack on seemingly all fronts. The National History Standards are described as an evil that would destroy youngsters’ belief that this is “the greatest country on the face of the earth.” The Smithsonian Institution’s exhibits on Western Art and the Enola Gay raised fundamental concerns about the nature of museums, especially public museums. The term “Cultural Diversity” is becoming a red flag to a large portion of the public. The Library of Congress dismantled an exhibit on slavery by Professor John Vlatch even before it opened.

Important to our purposes today is the Park Service Reform Bill HR 260 which was eventually defeated by a vote of 180 to 231 (with 23 abstentions. It would have required the National Park Service to evaluate the 369 parks units and determine which ones were no longer relevant to our society. After a separately authorized commission had concurred in the process, the National Park Service would submit to Congress a list of parks recommended for de-authorization.

Broad criticism of the bill prompted Congress to exempt the 34 national parks from the bill. But while national parks were essentially taken off the table, historic parks were still on the table. History was at risk, your history was at risk. Those parks still eligible for de-authorization included Valley Forge, Morristown, and Yorktown; Fort Necessity; Independence in Philadelphia and Longfellow's Home in Cambridge; Little Big Horn; Washington's Birthplace and Chaco Canyon. Congress's message here was that natural parks were fine, but history was dispensable.

Seemingly, Congress had forgotten its sentiment on the subject of the National Park System expressed twenty-five years ago:

...that these areas, though distinct in character, are united through their inter-related purposes and resources into one national heritage; that, individually and collectively, these areas derive increased national dignity and recognition of their superb environmental quality through their inclusion jointly with each other in one national park system preserved and managed for the benefit and inspiration of all the people of the United States.8

Well, what are we to make of all this? I think we can conclude that historians have achieved tremendous success in fostering interest in the stories of history, but must admit to failure in imparting the nature of history; how historians know what they know and what the study of history is all about. The public’s perception seems to be that history is supposed to make us feel good about the past -- not make us think about the past; history is seen as a defined set of immutable truths, rather than a discussion about the past that embraces divergent and dissenting views and voices.

Leon Litwack recently observed that: “Even as historical organizations have broadened their membership base, even as historians have adopted a more varied and imaginative approach to the past, we have failed to communicate what we do to a larger audience -- to a public that has long demonstrated an avid interest in history.”9

This all leads to the segregation of history. Institutions engaged in the public expression of the past must deal with the public perception that there is “American History” that is agreed upon by all and that all find comforting; and then there are, not specialties, but other kinds of history that are “revisionist” in nature and therefore suspect: women's history, African-American history, labor history, ethnic history.

Western history is a good case in point. Our collective image of the West has been shaped largely by movies and television, by John Wayne and John Ford. That image contains wonderful and exciting stories of “daring do,” of “good guys and bad guys.” It is, with few exceptions, filled with well-known stereotypes that tend to reinforce our sense of nineteenth century westerners as rugged, individualistic, self-reliant, and predominantly Anglo. Research over the last fifteen or so years has dramatically altered that stereotype and greatly enriched our understanding of the cultural and social complexity of the trans-Mississippi West. But this new information clashes with the stereotype and therefore creates discomfort among a large portion of the American public. It is casually labeled “revisionist history” and quickly dismissed. Indeed, “Revisionist” has become a euphemism for any history that is less than progressive, upbeat, inspiring.

Arguments over history are, of course, not new. Ever since history has been included in the public school curricula, there has been public debate over what kind of history should be taught. Prior to and after the Civil War, Southerners were concerned that history texts were not sensitive enough to the South and its institutions. And because textbooks were compiled for a national system of education, Northerners, after the war, voiced the opinion that history texts “slandered the North and the cause of the Union,...depreciated the value of our troops, and represented that the South was in the right, and that the army which saved the Union was a wicked aggressor.”10

Following World War I, some textbooks favored this country’s English roots more than some thought they should. In response to textbooks that suggested that American constitutional practices had their source in English institutions one critic charged that “Such is not American history.” "Such disparagement in revised school history is not mere unintentional error, ... these and other gross alterations recently made in ten of our school histories, are a direct result of definite design and organized propaganda” conducted by “propaganda associations pussyfooting among us ... to deaden our respect for our own birthright, inoculate us with contempt for our free institutions and fit us for coercion of recolonization.”11

Within this early twentieth century debate, the New York Evening Globe offered this calming corrective:

The controversy over school histories is largely between defenders of doctrine and defenders of free inquiry, between those who do not believe that children can be trusted with the truth and those who believe that they can.... A true American history need not rob us of the story of Paul Revere or the reverence for George Washington, but it will teach that personal anecdotes are not the life of a nation, that great men as well as mean men flourish in every generation.12

That observation is no less true today than it was on Washington’s Birthday in 1922.

This brings us to the issue of “Why we study history.” which, I think, is central to the public’s view of the past. To John Steinbeck, it was very simple: “How will we know it’s us without our past?”13

Most if not all of us in this room study history because we enjoy it! It is a great adventure; it takes us to different times and places, and gives us perspectives on the past we never considered.

But there is a larger purpose for studying history in a democratic society. “Knowledge of history is the precondition of political intelligence.” “Without history, a society shares no common memory of where it has been, what its core values are, or what decisions of the past account for present circumstances... Without historical knowledge and inquiry, we cannot achieve the informed, discriminating citizenship essential to effective participation in the democratic processes of governance and the fulfillment for all our citizens of the nation's democratic ideals.”14

We study history because it promotes that invaluable mental power called judgment. And judgment implies nothing less than wisdom, wisdom about human nature and society. In 1988, Paul Gagnon observed that to make a citizen of good judgment, “it takes a bone-deep understanding of how hard it is to preserve civilization or to better human life, and of how these have nonetheless been done repeatedly in the past. It takes a sense of paradox, so as not to be surprised when failure teaches us more than victory does or when we slip from triumph to folly. And maybe most of all it takes a practiced eye for the beauty of work well done, in daily human acts of nurture.”15

History, we must constantly remind ourselves, is not limited to a set of truths, but is comprised of many sets of truths, experiences, voices, conflicts. History illuminates our development as a culture; it provides us the tools to deal with current issues in the hope that our decisions, our judgments, will have a better chance of being right.

Thirty years ago, Robert Penn Warren observed that, “to be an American is not ... a matter of blood; it is a matter of an idea — and history is the image of that idea.”16 It might be said that historic places are where the idea and the image converge, where the intellectual and philosophical framework of our democratic way of life is preserved, studied, and remembered. Our understanding of these places, and the successes and failures that shaped them, is essential to our collective sense of ourselves. Our legacy to our children and our grandchildren will be measured in part by how well we preserve broadly and learn from these special places, how well we attend to the nurturing of historical inquiry, and how well we preserve the varying images of that grand idea.

NOTES
1. The Washington Post, February 18, 1996, C8.
2. For an assessment of Washington's role in the preservation movement in his home state, see James M. Lindgren, Preserving the Old Dominion: Historic Preservation and Virginia Traditionalism. (Charlottesville, 1993).
3. Richard Caldwell, A True History of the Acquisition of Washington's Headquarters at Newburgh by the State of New York (Salisbury Mills, New York, 1887), 8-9; as quoted in Charles B. Hosmer, Jr., Presence of the Past: A History of the Preservation Movement in the United States Before Williamsburg. (New York, 1965), 36.
4. Theodore Randolph, quoted in Edmund D. Halsey, History of the Washington Association of New Jersey (Morristown, New Jersey, 1891), 11.
5. Indenture, October 28, 1913, Middlesex Registry of Deeds, Book 3931, page 233, copy among Longfellow Papers, Longfellow National Historic Site.
6. Thayer to Lodge, January 17, 1921, Henry Cabot Lodge Papers, box 65, Massachusetts Historical Society; as quoted in Michael Kammen, Mystic Chords of Memory: The Transformation of Tradition in American Culture. (New York, 1991), 10.
7. Michael Kammen, Mystic Chords of Memory: The Transformation of Tradition in American Culture. (New York, 1991), 11.
8. National Park Service Authorities Act, (84 Stat. 825) 1970.
9. Leon Litwack, "Beyond the Boundaries of the Academy," History Matters! 8 (September 1995), 1.
10. Bessie Pierce, Public Opinion and the Teaching of History in the United States. (New York, 1926), 166.
11. Chicago Herald and Examiner, January 14, 1923; as quoted in Bessie Pierce, Public Opinion and the Teaching of History in the United States (New York, 1926), 221.
12. New York Evening Globe, February 22, 1922; as quoted in Bessie Pierce, Public Opinion and the Teaching of History in the United States. (New York, 1926), 221.
13. John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath. (New York, 1939), 120.
14. National Center for History in the Schools, National Standards for United States History: Exploring the American Experience (Grades 5-12 Expanded Edition, Los
Angeles, nd), 1.
15. Paul Gagnon, “Why Study History,” The Atlantic Monthly. (November 1988), 44.
16. Robert Penn Warren, The Legacy of the Civil War: Meditations on the Centennial (New York, 1961), 78.