Pulitzer winner connects dots and the dashes

By David Maurer

Published: September 7, 2008

A series of taps, completely undecipherable to everyone on the planet save for two men, changed the world.

On May 24, 1844, Samuel F.B. Morse sent the first telegraph message from where he sat in Washington to his associate, Alfred Vail, in Baltimore. To nearly everyone’s amazement the burst of dots and dashes traveled the 40 miles in the time it took to blink an eye.

The momentous message consisted of four words — “What hath God wrought.” It was not a question, but a statement of wonder.

The ramifications of this new invention would continue to reverberate for more than a century. So influential would the telegraph be in shaping the United States that historian Daniel Walker Howe writes about its first demonstration in the opening paragraph of his Pulitzer Prize-winning book, “What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848.”

“I think the telegraph had consequences at least as great as the Internet in our own time,” Howe said recently via telephone from his California home. “Both inventions had huge commercial applications, and they speeded up the rate at which you can do business.

“They also have big political consequences, because they facilitate the spread of information, and therefore they facilitate political cooperation among people at a distance. Many authoritarian governments find this very threatening.

“For example, the czar of Russia was reluctant to let telegraph lines be laid in his very large country. He was

worried about making the general public better informed and better able to discuss issues and form interest groups.

“It’s very similar today with the rulers of China worrying about the democratic implications of the Internet.”

Howe will be visiting James Monroe’s Ash Lawn-Highland home on Sept. 16 to discuss and sign copies of his latest book. The event is part of the continuing celebration of Monroe’s 250th birthday.

As the author illuminates in his book, the fifth president of the United States played a key role in the development of the new democracy. He not only helped to enlarge the nation and bring it nearer to the principles on which it was founded, he also established benchmark guidelines that continue to influence foreign policy decisions to this day.

“President Monroe is famous for being a nonpartisan president,” said Howe, a Rhodes professor of American history emeritus at Oxford University and professor of history emeritus at the University of California, Los Angeles. “In the period he was president [1817-25] in most of the country there was only one functioning political party, which was the Jeffersonian Republican Party.

“People welcomed the end of political divisiveness. Most political philosophers of the time had taught that political parties were bad, that it was much better to have a nonpartisan government that would look after the general welfare, not just the fortunes of some particular faction or party.

“Monroe governed that way. He was a very popular president, and he was re-elected without any real opposition, which is the only time that has ever happened.”

Howe points out that Monroe was instrumental in organizing the Missouri Compromise in 1820, which limited the spread of slavery. He also had a large role in the creation of a treaty with Spain by which the United States acquired Florida. And, of course, there’s the Monroe Doctrine, which Howe calls a foundation stone in American foreign policy.

“A lot of people think Monroe must have been some kind of genial, complacent kind of vacuous guy who just kind of smiled blandly and kept it all together,” Howe said. “But that’s not what it took.

“Monroe was a very smart man. Now, he was not an intellectual like Thomas Jefferson or James Madison, but he really understood how American politics worked. And he really understood how to get what he wanted done within a nonpartisan framework, which called for very good talents.

“And he surrounded himself with extremely capable men, including John C. Calhoun and John Quincy Adams. And, of course, as his secretary of state, John Quincy Adams was largely responsible for what we call the Monroe Doctrine.”

Howe said when the proposed Monroe Doctrine came before the Cabinet for discussion, everyone except Adams was opposed to it. Monroe heard everyone out, pondered the different arguments against it and then made his decision to institute it.

“Monroe didn’t make the easy decision,” Howe said. “He said, ‘We’re going to do what Secretary Adams wants.’

“That’s real leadership. You listen to all the ideas, but you don’t just count noses. That’s James Monroe. Several very important long-term decisions were reached in his time.”

Carolyn C. Holmes, long-time executive director of Ash Lawn-Highland, said its an honor to have such a distinguished historian as Howe come calling. The Virginia Foundation Center for the Book and the Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society are helping Ash Lawn co-host the event.

“We knew Mr. Howe was going to be in Richmond as part of a program on the Civil War,” Holmes said. “And he’ll also be lecturing in Fredericksburg at the annual Monroe Lecture.

“So I called him up out of the blue, and said I heard he was going to be in the neighborhood and would he consider coming here. He said he would be delighted.

“The question-and-answer portion of the event should be fascinating.”

Holmes noted that Monroe was interested in technology, farming and transportation. These are three of the major focuses of Howe’s book, which won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for history.

The 855-page tome has been heralded as a masterpiece and trumpeted by Jonathan Yardley in the Washington Post Book World as “exemplary” and “a fit prelude and companion” to James McPherson’s “Battle Cry of Freedom.”

Both books are centerpieces in the ambitious Oxford History of the United States series, which has taken on the challenge of telling the story of the United States from pre-Columbian times to the present. Howe’s offering is history told in an inclusive manner where the common man ranks as highly as top-echelon policy brokers.

“I wanted to write a book for the general, literate, curious public,” said Howe, whose three previous books were aimed at the academic community. “At the same time, I also wanted it to be useful to my colleagues.

“Another goal was to combine traditional history with the newer kinds of history. By traditional history, I mean history of political, military and diplomatic events. That’s what history has been about for centuries.

“But in the last few decades, historians have gotten interested in writing other kinds of histories, mainly social, cultural and economic. I wanted to bring that into the story, too.”

Howe said historians rarely synthesize both kinds of history. He feels channeling oneself into a narrow canyon is a big mistake, because history is better told when it’s not confined by preconceived borders.

“If you study politics, military events and things like that, you’re studying how history gets made from the top down,” Howe said. “You’re studying the history of kings, politicians and generals.

“But you can also study the common people, history from the bottom up, because they’re making history, as well. If you synthesize those two approaches you can get both kinds of history, and you get what I consider to be a more complete story.”

What Howe presents in his book is the narrative story of a nation coming of age. It’s an era of seminal changes so profound as to free humanity from shackles that had held firm throughout recorded history.

For the first time, information and people start moving faster than the fastest horse. Steam power is applied to machines, ships and railroads and then the telegraph comes along to empower the poorest dirt farmer with valuable marketing information.

Howe gives the reader front row seats to little known pivotal events, such as Jane Hunt’s tea party in 1848, which served as the big bang for the women’s rights movement. With documented facts gleaned during decades of research, he removes the muffling effect myth has on the ring of truth.

One example is the Battle of New Orleans, where fanciful fables long have been substituted for truth. Although reality is far less glorious than tall tales, the resounding tone of truth holds its own unique beauty.

“I’m not the first historian to credit the artillery for the victory at New Orleans,” Howe said. “But they’re not books widely read by the general public.

“So the generally accepted view has persisted, in spite of what’s been discovered, and that happens because the accepted view is so attractive. It seems so neat to think that these sharp-eyed frontiersmen were winning the battle by picking off these Redcoats who were foolishly marching up in neat rows.

“That really captures the imagination. But if you turn it around, you can make a whole new useful kind of historical tradition here. And that is the U.S. wages high-tech war, and we do so well because our soldiers manage military technology so well.”

The period Howe writes about is a time when America is changing from a third-world country into a modern developed economy. Although it stands proudly as a beacon of hope for the world, it also commits grievous sins against humanity, such as slavery and the genocide of the American Indian.

But ultimately what Howe’s book teaches is that the most important change did not happen in bursts of dots and dashes or in the boiling belly of a steam-driven locomotive. It occurred in the human heart.

“I had not really realized until I was almost done with the book a very important general principle,” Howe said. “I had never put it together before, but I learned it writing this book.

“And that is that material progress helps moral progress. In a third-world society like we were, or any third-world society today, there tends to be a lot of violence and injustice. But as the economy diversifies and develops, the standard of living rises.

“Surprisingly enough, this is conducive to more respect for the rule of law, improvements in the status of women and an increase in literacy. This linkage between material progress and what I call moral progress is the most important discovery I made in the course of writing the book.”

There will be a reception with Howe at 6:15 p.m. Sept. 16 at Ash Lawn-Highland. Tickets are $45 and includes wine and hors d’oeuvres. At 7:30 p.m. Howe will give a presentation, where he will discuss his book, sign copies. Copies of the book will be available at a 20 percent discount. Admission is $10, and tickets can be purchased at the door. It’s preferred for tickets to be purchased in advance by calling 293-9539.