The American Story
If you want to learn something of the story of America and the people who wrote it, come to the Midwest.
If you want to understand the arc of the Civil War and the burden of race and the ethic of self-reliance, amble through Illinois, Missouri and Iowa.
Bring your 13-year old son along. He studies the map, programs the navigator and patronizes every souvenir shop. He also holds forth on everything from the fortunes of the Hannibal Cavemen to the impulses of the Ice Age.
Leave the suburbs of big-shouldered Chicago and drive down Route 66. Much has been lost, though there is a movement to restore this storied road running through the national soul.
Stop in Bloomington, Illinois, where Adlai Stevenson grew up. In the 1950s, Stevenson was a celebrated lawyer, diplomat, governor of Illinois and twice the presidential nominee of the Democratic Party. He was indecisive and inconsistent but also witty, courtly, cerebral and eloquent; Arthur Schlesinger once wept hearing him speak.
Stevenson was the icon of liberalism in the era of Dwight Eisenhower and Joe McCarthy. He saw the emergence of civil rights and showed there’s a place in politics for ideas. His heir is Barack Obama, another son of Illinois.
Now alight in Springfield, where it is Abraham Lincoln all the time. He lived here from 1837 to 1861, when he left for the White House. Here he married, had four sons, practised law and served in the state legislature. In the bicentennial of his birth, America is agog with Lincoln. Well it should be. He created modern America.
His life was full of darkness. He lost two sons to illness (a third died later) and lost two races for the Senate. His wife was jealous and feverish. He was depressed. He was ridiculed. Then he was murdered.
Two hundred years later, Lincoln’s stature grows. He teaches us fortitude and forbearance. He is the colossus of the American story — there is no other — which is why he rests here in a soaring marbled mausoleum.
Go west to the Mississippi River. Today, the Mississippi simmers in white heat. Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn are everywhere, for this was the stomping ground of Mark Twain, whose greatness was his ability, as a white man, to see beyond the narrow prejudices of his time. He became bigger than his experience. In creating a colour-blind bond between Huck and Jim, he saw an America that could reinvent itself.
The seething blacktop hugs the Mississippi before turning toward West Branch, Iowa, the boyhood home of Herbert Hoover. Distant and austere, the face of the Depression, Hoover remains in historical disfavour.
There is another side, though. An orphan at nine, he later strikes out for California, attends Stanford, learns mining engineering and becomes wealthy. His ethic is work, modesty and generosity. Twice, he is asked to feed the victims of the two world wars and organizes successful relief efforts. Fundamentally, he thinks victims of war should not be punished. Later, he embraces the rights of children.
Herbert Hoover didn’t understand the urgency of state intervention and it destroyed his presidency. But he still exemplifies public service and a deep humanitarianism.
Climb the soft hills of northwest Illinois to Galena, a beautiful river town. This is where Ulysses S. Grant lived before the Civil War; he failed in business and drank too much. It is where he retreated after the Civil War, a national hero, before his presidency.
It is said the most popular man of 19th century America wasn’t Lincoln but Grant. His leadership, after a string of feckless generals, reversed Union fortunes. A reluctant president, Grant’s campaign slogan in a broken country struggling with Reconstruction was: “Let Us Have Peace.”
In his last days, bankrupt and fighting throat cancer, he furiously scribbled his memoirs from a mountaintop cottage in upstate New York. He wanted to spare his widow poverty. His tome was a singular literary and financial success.
Grant’s greatness is his triumph over failure, his towering military genius and his magnanimity at Appomattox and beyond.
Finally to Dixon, Illinois, where Ronald Reagan grew up. No, he shouldn’t be on Mount Rushmore, but he did have stature. He looked like a president.
Reagan overcame an alcoholic father, got to Hollywood and championed a laissez-faire capitalism. His presidency was kinder to bankers than blacks, but he won the Cold War.
For six summers in his youth, he was a lifeguard on the Rock River, which runs through Dixon. The river is slow and muddy but it bends toward ambition. A plaque says, perhaps apocryphally, that he saved 77 swimmers.
On November 4, 1980, a local broadcaster paid tribute to the election of this native son, saluting him as he might have saluted all these able sons of the Midwest:
“The Rock River flows for you tonight, Mr. President.”
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