It — the American Story — is better than what we have seen in 2020 and approaching the Electoral College proceedings in Congress. Despite the election matters, a good part of the American Story played out with the rapid development of apparently effective Covid-19 vaccines. We have to take the bad with the good as this is fundamental to humanity and to all of human history.
I write this to share a series of stories that demonstrate all that is good in the American Story and, each of which, should make us all feel better about being Americans. They will perhaps help us to better understand the nature of The American Story. There is much to learn here and I commend the entire article to you.
A favorite publication of mine is Imprimis by Hillsdale College. The guest editorials are predictably thoughtful of important topics. This is no less true of Mystic Chords of Memory: Learning From the American Story by Christopher Flannery, Host, The American Story. Christopher Flannery is a senior fellow of the Claremont Institute, contributing editor of the Claremont Review of Books, and host of The American Story podcast at theamericanstorypodcast.org. Some snippets from this very fine article follow. The author’s premise:
Every generation of Americans, from the beginning, has had to answer for itself the question: how should we live? Our answers, generation after generation, in war and in peace, in good times and bad times, in small things and in great things through the whole range of human affairs, are the essential threads of the larger American story. There is an infinite variety of these smaller American stories that shed light on the moral and political reality of American life—and we keep creating them. These fundamental experiences, known to all human beings but known to us in an American way, create the mystic chords of memory that bind us together as a people and are the necessary beginnings of any human wisdom we might hope to find.
Keller and Twain
The stories, large and small are important. Flannery observes that “[a] story may be tragic, complicated, or hilarious, but if it is a true American story, it will be impossible to read or listen to it attentively without awakening the better angels of our nature.” One such story he shares is the friendship of Helen Keller who at age 14 in 1894 met Samuel Clemons a/k/a Mark Twain. As you will recall, Keller was the first deaf and blind person in the world to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree (Radcliffe, 1904). They had a mutually fond relationship of admiration.
Their mutual fondness is told through an evening when Twain would read his short story, “Eve’s Diary.” Yes, read to a deaf and blind woman. Flannery’s description of how the reading progressed and Keller’s reaction to it is a heart-warming testament to the power of human interaction. As related by Keller,
To one hampered and circumscribed as I am it was a wonderful experience to have a friend like Mr. Clemens. I recall many talks with him about human affairs. He never made me feel that my opinions were worthless. . . . He knew that we do not think with eyes and ears, and that our capacity for thought is not measured by five senses. He kept me always in mind while he talked, and he treated me like a competent human being. That is why I loved him. . . . There was about him the air of one who had suffered greatly.
John Wayne
I never knew his true name: Marion Morrison, best known as “The Duke.” He was discovered by Director Raoul Walsh who was looking for a lead man in a western who could really “be” the part, not just act it. Walsh “… noticed the fine physique of [young Morrison], his careless strength, the grace of his movement. . . . What I needed was a feeling of honesty, of sincerity, and [he] had it.” Flannery recounts much of Wayne’s film career and concludes with,
On his 72nd birthday, May 26, 1979, as Wayne lay dying of cancer in UCLA Medical Center, the United States Congress, in a unanimous bipartisan vote, approved an order signed by President Jimmy Carter for striking a Congressional Gold Medal in his honor. Wayne would be the 85th recipient of the Medal. The first recipient was George Washington. Winston Churchill was awarded the Medal just a few years before John Wayne. As President Carter said, Wayne’s “ruggedness, the tough independence, the sense of personal conviction and courage—on and off the screen—reflected the best of our national character.”
We are all Americans — the American Story affirmed
Ely Parker was a product of the Seneca tribe of the Iroquois Confederacy in western New York. He became friends with Ulysses S. Grant at a time that Grant was an ex-Army officer. Parker tried to join the Union Army as the Civil War cam on but was rebuked, as the War as “an affair between white men.” Parker, aided by Grant, ultimately received a commission with the rank of captain and held various positions in the Army, eventually attaining the rank of Lt. Col. On the occasion of Lee’s surrender to Grant at Appomattox, meeting in the parlor of a small house, conditions of surrender were agreed to and had to be memorialized and the following transpired:
With minor revisions, Lee accepted, and Grant handed the document to his senior adjutant general, Theodore Bowers, to “put into ink.” This was a document that would effectively put an end to four years of devastating civil war. Bowers’ hands were so unsteady from nerves that he had to start over three or four times, going through several sheets of paper, in a failed effort to prepare a fair copy for the signatures of the generals.
So Grant asked Ely Parker to do it, which he did, without trouble. This gave occasion for Lee and Parker to be introduced. When Lee recognized that Parker was an American Indian, he said, “I am glad to see one real American here.”
Parker shook his hand and replied, “We are all Americans.”
I cannot summarize the point of these stories anywhere near as well as does Flannery, where he says,
The American story, still young, is already the greatest story ever written by human hands and minds. It is a story of freedom the likes of which the world has never seen. It is endlessly interesting and instructive and will continue unfolding in word and deed as long as there are Americans. The stories that I think are most important are those about what it is that makes America beautiful, what it is that makes America good and therefore worthy of love. Only in this light can we see clearly what it is that might make America better and more beautiful.
Flannery, C. (2020, November). Mystic Chords of Memory: Learning From the American Story. Imprimis, 49(11). https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/mystic-chords-memory-learning-american-story/
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