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      T W O · A Gathering at Lake Mendota

      The University of Wisconsin was less than fifty years old when Herbert Bolton arrived in 1893. The student body of nearly three thousand was small by today's standards, but it had grown rapidly from only five hundred in 1887. Located on College Hill along the shores of Lake Mendota, the university's environs were nothing if not scenic, but its political geography was as important as its physical location. Madison is the state capital, and the state house is within walking distance. Politicos had only to cast their eyes westward to see the fruits of the state's investment in higher education. Most Wisconsinites judged the university approvingly; some thought otherwise.¹

      The University of Wisconsin was poised to become a great institution of higher learning. Funding from the sale of public lands under the federal Morrill Act had enabled the expansion of faculty, student body, and curriculum. By the 1890s Wisconsin was recognized as one of the emerging progressive centers of higher education.² Thousands of working-class urbanites, villagers, and farm boys like the Boltons were among the beneficiaries of this magnificent public donation.

      Two young professors in the history department when Bolton arrived in 1893 would influence his development as a historian: Frederick Jackson Turner and Charles Homer Haskins. Turner, at age thirty-one, was a rising star. The Wisconsin native had received his undergraduate and early graduate training at the state university, where he was influenced by William F. Allen. Turner had studied for the doctorate under Herbert Baxter Adams at Johns Hopkins University before returning to the University of Wisconsin faculty. In July 1893 he read his influential essay “The Significance of the Frontier in American History” at the AHA meeting in Chicago. Frontier conditions and the settlement of the West, he argued, had made the United States what it was. This was a distinctive departure from the prevailing historical idea which held that the beginnings of American institutions and character were to be found in European antecedents. “It seems exceedingly valuable and important,” Haskins wrote of Turner's essay, “but I feel so ‘westernized’ that I cannot appreciate how it would appeal to an eastern man.”³ Turner's essay eventually established him as one of the leading American historians of his day, even among easterners. Needless to say, westerners (including Wisconsinites) were glad to learn that they were on the cutting edge of history rather than mere primitives who lived on the margins of American civilization.⁴

      Haskins had also earned his doctorate at Johns Hopkins, where he became Turner's friend. He wrote his dissertation on the Yazoo land frauds but eventually became America's leading medieval historian, with interests in Norman institutions and the development of medieval science. Something of a child prodigy, he completed his undergraduate degree at Johns Hopkins at the age of sixteen, then studied in Paris and Berlin before returning to Hopkins for his doctorate. Professor Haskins was only twenty-three, the same age as the undergraduate Bolton. By the time Bolton met him, Haskins was known as a meticulous researcher who had mastered several languages. Haskins impressed Bolton because of his thoroughness and because he worked his students very hard, which appealed to Bolton's dogged work habits. One of Haskins's friends, F. M. Powicke, likened his approach to teaching and writing to that of a builder. First, he amassed sufficient research material with which to build his edifice; then, he deliberately laid its foundation, “each sentence…like a block of hewn stone, laid in its place by a skilful mason.” Haskins's construction “was directed by a clear and powerful mind, but every stone…was left to make its own impression, without the aid of external graces.” Anything “wild and extravagant” from Haskins “was unthinkable,” Powicke recalled. Yet, when listening to Haskins lecture, Powicke found himself “hoping, and I knew I hoped in vain, for a touch of mischief or something just a trifle hazardous.” The resulting intellectual structure, however, spoke “of purpose and achievement; its austere lines reveal unexpected lights and shadows.”⁵

      Turner's teaching methods also impressed Bolton. His undergraduate lecturing style must have seemed offhand, perhaps even ill-prepared to the casual undergraduate, but Herbert was anything but a casual student. In a time when most professors delivered carefully prepared lectures from detailed notes, or perhaps written essays that were read word for word, Turner would walk into the hall with a stack of note cards often based on primary source material. Turner spoke to the students from the cards, which he would sometimes fumble while he looked for some particular datum; so the effect was informal, almost casual, except for his voice, which had a melodic, almost hypnotic quality. Bolton's friend, historian Carl Becker, wrote that Turner's “voice was everything: a voice not deep but full, rich, vibrant, and musically cadenced; such a voice as you would never grow weary of, so warm and intimate and human it was.”⁶ Turner's lectures were analytical and full of ideas, rather than strictly narrative. He amply illustrated

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