Lincoln

This story begins in 2012, when Lincoln was in the theaters. I went on my own one afternoon and came out of the theater bewildered by what I just saw. I knew I saw a story about Lincoln that had all kinds of intense moments, but that was about as far as I got. Any notion I may have had of understanding US history was gone by the time I walked out of the theater.

I went home and clicked around on wikipedia, trying to understand what I was reading, and I felt the weight of discovering some new way in which I am ignorant. I didn’t know anything about history!

I knew Lincoln fought a crazy war and freed the slaves, but the movie showed us what he was like as a person, away from the battlefields.

The Historianization of Jms Dnns

As I read about what Lincoln did outside the war, I started to wonder if I could properly understand the Civil War without knowing all the history that lead up to it.

This was an important moment for me. I had reached a huge question about how to spend my time. I could feel that this might be the start of a new hobby. My previous hobbies were things that stuck with me for years, like skateboarding, playing guitar, or computers. I resist answering the huge questions right away. Instead, I’ll dip my toes in the water and see how it feels. It might become a hobby if I enjoy reading it, or maybe it wont.

Ben Franklin was the oldest so it made sense to me to start with a bio about him. I read the Walter Isaacson biography. This book was more or less what I thought reading a thick biography would be like. It was cool, but not too exciting.

I then read Chernow’s book on Alexander Hamilton and I couldn’t believe what I was reading. I went through this book so fast. One of the best things I’ve ever read. He lived an epic life and the US is lucky to have had him during the crucial early years.

Chernow’s book makes Thomas Jefferson out to be such an asshole! Enough so that I thought I would balance my impression of these two by reading a book on Jefferson. I read Meacham’s book on Jefferson, The Art Of Power.

This analogy might make historians wince, but I finished that book with the impression that Jefferson is like a Steve Jobs for Revolutionary period. I laughed the first time I pictured Jefferson in a black turtleneck doing a presentation to the colonists, urging them to think differently about monarchy and about King George III.

More seriously, I couldn’t believe what I had read. I wondered if Hamilton vs Jefferson might be like Bill Gates vs Steve Jobs in the 90’s. Jefferson was such a scoundrel, yet he’s the one that wrote “all men are created equal”. Hamilton was one of the most epic people I had ever heard of yet, his life ended too soon because he could also be an epic dummy. The drama between these two could fill a theater for years and years.

And Franklin… as far as I could tell, he was the father of modern socialism, even putting some in the Constitution with the Postal Clause. He was relentlessly curious, generally civic minded, and yet also a total bullshitter.

I just couldn’t believe what I was reading about US history and I wanted to read everything else right away. History was going to be my next hobby.

A Long March

It wasn’t clear to me how I should learn history. There are an overwhelming amount of history books out there. It occurred to me that I could read at least one biography of every President. That would take me in the right direction through all the layers. I figured those biographies would teach me enough that I could find other relevant books for deeper explorations of anything interesting.

I started my new direction, at the beginning of the list of US Presidents, with Ron Chernow’s book, Washington: A Life. I wanted another page turner, like Hamilton, but Washington just wasn’t that kind of person. He was flawed, as are all of the founders, but he genuinely gave all of himself in service to his country. Never strayed from duty. And when the time came, he became the first US President to peacefully hand power over to their successor. We take that for granted now, but it must have been magnificent back then.

I first internalized the story of Washington from the context of the USGov today and found it hard to believe someone like that actually existed at right time and right place. History has a way of completely blowing our minds when some sequence of events actually works out the way we want them to. We don’t usually expect good outcomes from history. Perhaps that’s why we can’t stop coercing the definition of the word itself to mean the history of politics and warfare.

I have read a lot of history since 2012. I understand the US as a country that came into existence at a time when the whole process could be documented right from the start. We can actually know what people felt, what they thought, and what they said as everything took place. The context is rich with fascinating people asking huge questions about how to live on this planet without killing each other all time.

One thing I have learned, is that both the Revolution and the Civil War have so much detail that I have spent many years of my years reading history focused on just them. I have only recently come out of the Civil War, putting me in the context for Reconstruction. I don’t expect to leave this context for many years, and then I’ll have the wild early 1900’s before me, & then WW1, & on, & on.

History indeed rhymes, as they say. I have come to understand this in profound ways. It gives me a sense of calm when I view the world today. I know that the chaos of the early 2020’s isn’t the craziest thing the world has faced. It gets very bad, to be clear. But, is it as bad as when the country descended into Civil War? I don’t believe it is.

Over the years I have found I enjoy trying to use my historical knowledge to predict how events unfold in modern life. We’d like to think we’ve advanced, relative to people 200 years ago, but we’re the same in so many ways too. I find that both humbling and fascinating.