Pulitzer Prize winning historian Michael Kammen yesterday explained how national monuments and heroic figures in American history have contributed to the creation of a specifically American culture and the development of a collective American memory.
In a speech to roughly 60 people, mostly history honors majors, Kammen described the four phases in the development of the American collective past.
Kammen, who is a professor at Cornell University and the current president of the Organization of American Historians, delivered this year's Robert S. Allabough 1934 Memorial Lecture.
Columbus Day was a fitting occasion for Kammen's talk, which followed the creation of uniquely American traditions through the nation's history.
According to Kammen, the first phase in the acquisition of an American sense of "shared past," is the period in American history before 1870. Kammen said Thomas Jefferson, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Daniel Webster, Class of 1801, were important historical figures during this time.
There was an "emphasis on being Nature's nation" during this time period, Kammen said.
Americans ignored European criticism of their culture and pointed to natural landmarks such as Niagara Falls as evidence of their collective past.
"Geology became ... a surrogate for history," Kammen said, showing slides of paintings in the Hudson River Valley style.
After the Civil War, Kammen said, memory began to take a more important role in Americans' collective past as the country mourned the losses of loved ones on both sides of the battle.
Kammen said Americans realized the need to have a collective American memory during this era, but were unsure whose memories and traditions they should cherish. Many Americans felt strongly that European traditions should form the American collective past.
The preservation of Mount Vernon that occurred during this time marked the "beginning of historical preservation in the United States," Kammen added. Objects connected to heroic historical figures were highly valued and collected and a "cult of George Washington" developed.
After the first World War, the establishment of period rooms at the Metropolitan Museum of Art marked the "sudden emergence of an American aesthetic," Kammen said.
This emergence was complemented by an emphasis on the importance of American objects.
Kammen identified the restoration of colonial Williamsburg, Va., and the creation of Mount Rushmore in the 1920s as examples "of the need for national memories."
Citing "celebrations of the Western movement" and the "affectionate rediscovery of American myths," Kammen said Americans transformed the way they thought about the past.
Following World War II, "the democratization of memory and tradition" caused another shift, as "peripheral figures and groups" gained better treatment, Kammen said.
At this point, historians also began to "call attention to the work done by ordinary artisans," Kammen said.
Kammen called the bicentennial of the American Revolution an "impetus to historical preservation," which illustrated Americans' growing collective past.
Kammen ended his lecture by quoting Carl Sandburg, whose life straddled the third and fourth phases that Kammen identified.
"When a society ... perishes, one condition can always be found. They forgot where they came from," Kammen said, quoting Sandburg.
