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Herbert Eugene Bolton. Albert L. Hurtado
Читать онлайн.Название Herbert Eugene Bolton
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9780520952515
Автор произведения Albert L. Hurtado
Издательство Ingram
Bolton shared the common racial, ethnic, and religious prejudices of his time. As he put it many years later, his outlook in college was “typically ‘American,’ that is to say, provincial, nationalistic. My unquestioned historical beliefs included the following: Democrats were born to be damned; Catholics, Mormons, and Jews were to be looked upon askance.”24 It is impossible to fathom how deeply these bigotries ran in the young Bolton's psyche, but in 1894 he was a conformist who sought the approval of the dominant society.
Bolton, Becker, and Ford accepted the institutionalized prejudice of their fraternity, but later in life each of them would interrogate deeply held intellectual and cultural assumptions. Becker is well known for questioning the purposes and explanatory power of history. He was deeply intellectual, philosophical, and skeptical about the historian's ability to re-create an objective account of the past through an uncolored reading of historical documents as the so-called scientific historians claimed to do. For Becker, written history (as opposed to the past itself) was transitory, to be rewritten by each succeeding generation in ways that would best serve that generation.25 Ford eventually settled on German history as his field. In the 1930s he became an outspoken critic of Nazi Germany with its “hideous intolerance.”26 By then, it would seem, Ford had left his anti-Semitic fraternity days far behind.
If by comparison with his fraternity brothers Bolton did not have quite the intellectual acuity and literary panache of a Becker, or the political courage of a Ford, he should not be condemned as intellectually lightweight or permanently prejudiced against Jews and other groups. Bolton had a good and sensitive mind.27 Even though he was deeply marked by Turner's incisive brilliance and Haskins's rigorous scholarship, Bolton had an indelible strain of romanticism that would influence his historical writing throughout his life. As a mature historian he would cast the history of the Spanish Borderlands in that romantic light. And he would abandon his youthful prejudice against Catholics and Jews.
Hard work, not introspection about social problems, occupied Bolton's time in Madison as the year 1893—94 wore on. Medieval history under Haskins and American history with Turner were claiming more of his attention. He won a top grade from Turner. Law was becoming less attractive to Bolton.28 History, or perhaps Haskins and Turner, had won him over.
By the end of the school year in June 1894, Bolton was again looking for summer work. Gertrude had decided to return to teaching in Minnesota in the fall of 1894 so that she could save money for their impending marriage. Bolton feared that she had exhausted herself to get good marks at the university.29 Herbert spent part of his summer teaching school in Neillsville, Wisconsin, but hated it. “I hope I may be ‘hanged by the neck until dead’ if I ever agree to teach another arithmetic class,” he wrote Fred.30
During the summer a crisis arose at the University of Wisconsin. While Herbert had no direct part in the affair, it demonstrated the vulnerability of faculty and the university to the manipulations of a striving politician. Oliver Wells, the superintendent of public instruction whom the Boltons despised, was ex officio member of the Board of Regents. He published a letter in The Nation accusing Professor Ely of advocating “utopian, impractical and pernicious doctrines,” including the right to unionize, boycott, and strike against employers.31 This was a very serious matter that threatened Ely's career and the university. The Board of Regents named a committee to investigate the charges. Some faculty feared that if substantiated, the accusations would lead to a witch hunt for other professors with politically unpopular views. Turner wrote a lengthy report that rebutted Wells's charges against Ely. In the end the regents exonerated Ely, and Wells was discredited. The regents also approved a declaration that the university “should ever encourage that continual and fearless sifting and winnowing by which alone the truth can be found.”32
There is no mention of this episode in the Boltons’ letters, but they no doubt knew about it. Certainly they knew all of the principals involved. While one might conclude that all was well that ended well, the incident offered other lessons for an aspiring professor of history. The conflict was resolved satisfactorily (from the standpoint of the faculty), but only because of the hard work of Turner and the wisdom of the Board of Regents. Moreover, Ely's defense was that he was innocent of the charges. What if he had advocated unions, strikes, and socialistic ideas in his classes? What might have happened under the hands of a more popular and skillful politician than Wells? The regents’ resounding and inspiring defense of academic freedom was good only for as long as they continued to support it. New regents with new ideas could put aside the resolution of the old board. And, of course, the statement applied only to the University of Wisconsin.
While the Wells-Ely controversy percolated in Wisconsin, one of Ely's former students, Edward W. Bemis of the University of Chicago, made the mistake of criticizing the railroads during the Pullman Strike. William Rainey Harper, president of the University of Chicago, quickly informed Bemis that his speech had caused Harper a great deal of annoyance. “It is hardly safe for me to venture into any of the Chicago clubs,” Harper complained. “During the remainder of your connection with the University…exercise very great care in public utterance about questions that are agitating the minds of the people.”33 At the end of the academic year Bemis was dropped from the faculty without further explanation. If Bolton learned anything from the Ely and Bemis controversies, it was to avoid them.
When Herbert returned to the university in the fall of 1894, his younger brother Roy accompanied him. Roy had just finished high school, and his immediate enrollment in the university seemed to vindicate Bolton family sacrifices for higher education. Fred had worked for five years before attending college, and graduated at age twenty-six. Herbert worked intermittently before earning his baccalaureate at twenty-four. Roy enrolled in the university when he was seventeen and graduated in four years. Eventually he became a physician. For Herbert and for Roy the path to higher education was shorter than it had been for his older brother. Nor were the Bolton women left out of this educational parade of upward mobility. Each of the sisters attended college and some became schoolteachers. That the Boltons continued to attend college in the midst of the economic depression of the 1890s was a testament to their conviction that education would improve their lot.
Herbert's life in his final undergraduate year assumed the familiar routine of study, work, and planning for the future. His determination to study history was now fixed, largely because of the influence of Turner and Haskins, who were “ahead of all the others I have been under,” he told Fred.34 He was taking courses in U.S. constitutional history, social and economic history, and medieval history. By March Herbert was strategizing a campaign for employment after graduation. As usual, no stone was left unturned.35 Fred, who had been subsidizing Herbert for two years, planned to enter graduate school in Madison in the fall while anticipating additional study in the future at one of the great German universities. In the meantime, Herbert arranged for Fred to teach two “easy classes” in Madison to help meet expenses.36
In June 1895 Herbert graduated from the university. Now he had letters behind his name and all the rights and privileges that they conferred. He went off to Neillsville for the summer to teach with Fred. He was slated to replace Fred as principal of Kaukauna High School, so he and Gertrude could set a date: August 20, at the Janeses’ home in Tunnel City. The Bolton wedding was quite an affair. Herbert and Gertie took their vows before one hundred witnesses, including some of his fraternity brothers, who sang college songs. The festivities lasted until evening when “amid showers of congratulations and rice and attended by the Theta Delta Chi yell,” the couple departed on a train. “We compassed our journey in due time,” Herbert wrote, “and very pleasantly.”37
Married life in Kaukauna was good, but the newlyweds knew that it was only a temporary home before returning to Madison for Herbert's graduate studies.38 He