Buff and Blue

With the transformation of their regnant myths in a crucible of civil war, Americans of the previous century became estranged from the first two generations of our national leadership. Indeed, these temperate paragons had become, in some respects, an embarrassment, particularly in the old Puritan commonwealths of New England. And since 1865, the barrier separating most Americans from these men has done anything but diminish.

However, it is a distortion of New England’s intellectual history to forget —as the official keepers of that region’s identity have encouraged us to do—that in the years before 1860, many of its principal men drew back in horror from any rhetoric which would disturb the accommodation of the sections—the amity which had made a union of the states possible in the first place. Instead of Robert C. Winthrop, the record as revised holds up Theodore Parker for our admiration. Instead of Edward Everett, Thoreau. And who, among those who have learned to reverence Charles Sumner, will be able to account for Rufus Choate?

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M. E. Bradford

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With the transformation of their regnant myths in a crucible of civil war, Americans of the previous century became estranged from the first two generations of our national leadership. Indeed, these temperate paragons had become, in some respects, an embarrassment, particularly in the old Puritan commonwealths of New England. And since 1865, the barrier separating most Americans from these men has done anything but diminish.

However, it is a distortion of New England’s intellectual history to forget —as the official keepers of that region’s identity have encouraged us to do—that in the years before 1860, many of its principal men drew back in horror from any rhetoric which would disturb the accommodation of the sections—the amity which had made a union of the states possible in the first place. Instead of Robert C. Winthrop, the record as revised holds up Theodore Parker for our admiration. Instead of Edward Everett, Thoreau. And who, among those who have learned to reverence Charles Sumner, will be able to account for Rufus Choate?