No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Bruce Catton, Middlebrow Culture, and the Liberal Search for Purpose in Cold War America
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 31 August 2012
Abstract
This essay provides a case study of one man's transition from the reform-oriented liberalism of the New Deal period to the burgeoning rights-focussed liberalism of the 1960s. It contends that Bruce Catton, the most popular Civil War historian of his generation, played an influential role in forging the culture of Cold War America. He did so in his capacity as a prominent “middlebrow” intellectual who sought to instil his legions of adoring fans with a sense of moral purpose at a time when political elites were fretting about ordinary Americans' ability to fight the Cold War effectively. While his finely crafted narratives of the Civil War demonstrated the courage and conviction of nineteenth-century Americans, his many public appearances in the 1950s enabled him to disseminate further his conviction that the timeless values of American democracy remained as relevant in the disturbing present as they had been in the country's divided past. Catton's characteristically middlebrow commitment to antiracism as a contribution to the Cold War struggle was by no means unfaltering but an assessment of his writings and actions during the Civil War centennial reveals his continuing determination to render American democracy sufficiently vigorous to counter the ongoing communist threat.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012
References
1 Gerald Dickler to Bruce Catton, 19 Oct. 1967, folder on “Corr. – 1967 – Aug. – Oct.,” Box 12, Bruce Catton Papers, American Heritage Center, Laramie (hereafter BCP).
2 Review quotations from unnumbered first page of Catton, Centennial History of the Civil War, Volume III, Never Call Retreat (New York: Pocket Books, 1967).
3 A. J. P. Taylor, review of This Hallowed Ground, in London Observer, unnumbered fourth page of Catton, Centennial History of the Civil War, Volume I, The Coming Fury (London: Victor Gollancz, 1972).
4 On the connections between civil rights and the Cold War see especially Von Eschen, Penny, Race against Empire: Black Americans and Anticolonialism, 1937–1957 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997)Google Scholar; Dudziak, Mary L., Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy (Princeton: Princeton Univerity Press, 2000)Google Scholar; and Borstelmann, Thomas, The Cold War and the Color Line: American Race Relations in the Global Arena (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001)Google Scholar. The transformation of American liberalism is detailed in Brinkley, Alan, The End of Reform: New Deal Liberalism in Recession and War (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995)Google Scholar.
5 Catton to Mrs. Willow Cameron, 31 July 1957, Folder 4, Box 2, BCP.
6 Catton to Sterling North, 17 Nov. 1954, Folder 1, Box 2, BCP.
7 Brinkley, 207.
8 Catton, The War Lords of Washington (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Company, 1948), 65, 93Google Scholar; Brinkley, 204.
9 Catton, War Lords, 309, original emphasis.
10 John F. Kennedy quoted in Cuordileone, K. A., Manhood and American Political Culture in the Cold War (New York: Routledge, 2005), 168Google Scholar.
11 Klein, Christina, Cold War Orientalism: Asia in the Middlebrow Imagination, 1945–1961 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
12 Ibid., 63.
13 Melvin B. Yoken to Catton, 1 Dec. 1972, folder on “Corr. – 1972 – Nov. 16–Dec.,” Box 15, BCP.
14 The Society of American Historians, Inc., “Prospectus for the History Agency,” March 1953, Folder 1, Box 72, Allan Nevins Papers, Columbia University. On the founding of the Society of American Historians see Novick, Peter, That Noble Dream: The “Objectivity Question” and the American Historical Profession (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 195–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
15 Catton to North, 17 Nov. 1954, Folder 1, Box 2, BCP.
16 Catton, American Heritage Magazine statement of purpose, encl. in ibid.
17 Catton, speech to Illinois Historical Society, 4 Oct. 1958, folder on “Speeches,” Box 1, BCP.
18 Rexroth, Kenneth, “Advertisers Anonymous: That $2.95 Magazine,” The Nation, 29 Oct. 1955, 359.Google Scholar
19 Catton, speech at Union College, 4 Dec. 1956, folder on “Speeches,” Box 1, BCP.
20 Catton, speech at Duke University, 7 Feb. 1957, ibid.
21 Ibid.
22 Catton, address at dinner given by the Fund for the Republic, 21 Dec. 1957, Congressional Record, 85 Cong., 2 sess., A1763–64. The speech was inserted in the Record by the Arizona Democrat Stewart Udall.
23 Quoted in Blight, David W., American Oracle: The Civil War in the Civil Rights Era (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011), 123CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
24 Catton, A Stillness at Appomattox (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, 1954), 226–35Google Scholar.
25 Clifford Dowdey to Catton, 21 Nov. 1954, Folder 1, Box 2, BCP.
26 Congressional Record, 85 Cong., 2 sess., 1763.
27 Phineas Indritz to Catton, 22 April 1957, Folder 4, Box 2, BCP.
28 Catton to Indritz, 29 April 1957, ibid.
29 Catton to Hugh A. McCloskey, 4 Oct. 1955, Folder 2, Box 2, BCP.
30 Catton, speech at the Loomis School, CT, 13 Oct. 1956, in folder on “Speeches,” Box 1, BCP.
31 Catton, speech at Oberlin College, 11 Dec. 1956, folder on “Speeches,” Box 1, BCP.
32 John F. Kennedy to Ulysses S. Grant III, 14 March 1961, folder on “General Correspondence, 1961,” Box 184, Bell Wiley Papers, Woodruff Library, Emory University. For a detailed account of the CWCC's Charleston crisis see Cook, Robert J., Troubled Commemoration: The American Civil War Centennial of 1961–1965 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2007), 88–119Google Scholar.
33 Ibid., 120–54 and ff.
34 Catton to Sherman Adams, 5 Dec. 1957, Folder 4, Box 2, BCP.
35 Cook, 15–50.
36 Wiley to Charles O'Neill, 6 Sept. 1961, folder on “Aug. 30, 1961 Meeting of Commission and Preliminaries and Following,” Box 184, Wiley Papers.
37 Catton to Arthur L. Crookham, 20 Sept. 1961, Folder 8, Box 3, BCP.
38 Catton to James I. Robertson, 16 Dec. 1963, folder on “Catton, Bruce,” Box 131, Subject Files 1957–66, Records of the Civil War Centennial Commission, Records of the National Park Service, Record Group 79, National Archives, College Park, MD.
39 Catton, “Where the Great Change Took Place,” New York Times Magazine, 5 Feb. 1961, 11.
40 Harry Golden, ‘Integration Has Slavery Parallel,’ Schenectady Union Star, 13 March 1961.
41 Catton to Norman Lederer, 5 Nov. 1969, folder on “Correspondence – 1970 – Mar.–Apr.,” Box 13, BCP.
42 Ethel B. Pubols to Catton, 24 Jan. 1962, Folder 8, Box 3, BCP.
43 Civil War Centennial Commission, minutes of meeting, 5 May 1962, folder on “Minutes – Commission Meetings Agenda etc.,” Box 184, Wiley Papers.
44 Catton, speech at Boston College, 25 May 1963, folder on “National Assembly, 1963,” Box 184, Wiley Papers.
45 Catton, The Centennial History of the Civil War, Volume I, The Coming Fury (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1961), 81.
46 Catton, The Centennial History of the Civil War, Volume II, Terrible Swift Sword (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1963), 439.
47 Catton, The Centennial History of the Civil War, Volume III, Never Call Retreat (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1965), 107.
48 Ibid., 116.
49 Edward E. Leclair Jr., “ ‘Swift Sword’ Reminds Us of Dragging Feet,” Albany Sunday Times–Union, 2 June 1963.
50 Shari Crandall to Catton, [Oct. 1967], folder on “Correspondence – 1967 – Aug.–Oct.,” Box 12, BCP.
51 James Baldwin, “A Report from Occupied Territory,” The Nation, 11 July 1966, in idem, The Price of the Ticket: Collected Nonfiction 1948 − 1985 (London: Michael Joseph, 1985), 417.
52 Baldwin, “Everybody's Protest Novel,” Partisan Review, June 1949, in Baldwin, The Price of the Ticket, 28, 31.
53 Warren, Robert Penn, The Legacy of the Civil War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1961), 51Google Scholar.