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According to the pundits who want us to think they're in a position to know, President Clinton isn't all that concerned about whether the U.S. Senate votes to convict or acquit him of various high crimes and misdemeanors.
Instead, as he enters the second half of his second
term, we are assured that Clinton, like many of his
predecessors, is most concerned about the verdict of
history.
This makes it sound as though, every so often, eminent historians impanel themselves, conduct a hearing, examine the evidence, and announce a verdict.
Since I am a mere history buff and not a historian, I am not privy to the deliberations of the professionals as they reach these verdicts. I have never even heard of any such process, and I try to imagine how it might work.
Today, distinguished ladies and gentlemen of the
jury, we must reach a verdict on John Charles
Frémont. Was he a great explorer who opened the
West or was he just a shameless publicity hound with the
good fortune to be married to a talented
ghost-writer?
You're leaving out his filibustering in California
before and during the Mexican War. Why are we even talking
about Frémont when we should be focusing on Stephen
Watts Kearny, who was an honorable soldier, unlike
Frémont?
That's out of order. We can consider Kearny at some
other time. The issue today is Frémont. Anyone
else?
Well, we cannot deny Frémont's personal
courage. We all know about the snowbound privations that
his 1848-49 expedition suffered on Pool Table Mountain on
the west side of the San Luis Valley.
It was his own fault for hiring that inept old Bill
Williams as his guide, and especially for starting so late
in the year.
But he had to check it out in the winter, since he
was looking for a year-round rail route to the
Pacific.
Yeah, and he'd already found one, Tennessee Pass, in
1845, and he was too dense to notice it.
But Tennessee Pass isn't a rail route to anywhere
now, thanks to Roy Romer and Phil Anschutz. So that's not
really an issue any more.
Such discussions could continue for centuries without reaching anything within a day's ride of a verdict.
Another problem with the verdict of history
is
that the evidence in common circulation is often false.
For instance, in this part of the state, it's hard to enter a restaurant without being confronted by a rack of brochures, many of them proclaiming some attraction's connection to Alfred Packer.
Invariably, the literature about a prison museum or an
old courthouse will proclaim that Packer is the only man
in American history to be convicted of cannibalism,
and
it often continues with the trial judge's statement that
There was seven Democrats in Hinsdale County, and you,
you worthless man-eating son-of-a-bitch, you ate six of 'em
...
Packer was never convicted of cannibalism because it has
never been a crime in Colorado, and Judge Melville B.
Gerry's pronouncement of sentence was a model of Victorian
formality, with no hint of partisan politics. But the
verdict of history
ignores these facts.
Even when the facts are in place, the verdict of
history
wanders all over the place. I have read that
Dwight Eisenhower was a lazy and lackluster president who
let Joe McCarthy seize the national agenda during the first
part of his term, who then gave the national treasury to
Big Oil, and let the Democrats capitalize on the Sputnik
scare while he ignored this threat to our national
security.
I have also read that he was brilliant because he avoided significant military involvement in Southeast Asia, started the interstate highway system and warned about the growth of the military-industrial complex.
History has obviously failed to reach any verdict on Eisenhower, or on most other personages from the past. Thomas Jefferson swings back and forth from apostle of liberty to hypocritical slave abuser, George Armstrong Custer from courageous but out-numbered commander to headstrong glory-seeker, Woodrow Wilson from noble idealist to racist reactionary.
Granted, historians do gather on occasion to strive toward a verdict. This happens at certain events arranged by the Colorado History Group. Colorado historians -- Patty Limerick, Tom Noel, Duane Smith, among others -- have staged several mock trials in the past decade. Horace Tabor faced bigamy charges at one, and at another, Packer's alleged cannibalism was pursued.
But two things should be kept in mind. One is that the
historians involved don't reach a verdict -- they leave
that to the audience. The other is that these entertaining
spectacles are all in fun, since professional historians
know that there's no such thing as the verdict of
history.
Only journalists, desperate for some new angle on the
tiresome events in Washington, seem to think that there
even is such a thing as a verdict of history,
let
alone care about it. The rest of humanity, including
historians, seems to get along just fine without the need
to contrive such nonsense.
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