David Hackett Fischer's Liberty and Freedom in Historiographical Perspective

16 Historically Speaking September/October 2005 Liberty & Freedom: A Forum ONE OF THE MORE AMBITIOUS PROJECTS UNDERWAY BY A single historian is DavidHackett Fischer 'sprojectedfour-volume cultural history ofAmerica. The first installment, Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America (1989), received both lavish praise as a bold new synthesis andsharp criticismfor attempting to compress too much history into too narrow aframework. It remains one ofthe most important works ofearly American historyproduced in the last twenty -fiveyears. Fischer s second volume, Liberty and Freedom: AVisual History ofAmerica's Founding Ideas, appeared late in 2004 and continues his examination of folkways, specifically popular political beliefs, deeply embedded in American culture. In April 2005, the New England Political Science Association hosted one of the first public forums to evaluate Liberty & Freedom at its annual meeting in Portland, Maine. Four scholars, threepolitical scientists and one historian —James Morone, Brian Glenn, Rogan Kersh, and Donald Yerxa—offered their assessments ofthe book, andFischer responded. Wepublish here edited versions ofthesepapers along with an expanded version ofFischer s rejoinder. David Hackett Fischer's Liberty and Freedom in HisTORiOGRAPHicAL Perspective Donald A. Yerxa»avid Hackett Fischer has done it again! He's written another major— indeed, magisterial—work of primary synthesis to stand alongside his Albion s Seed. His first installment ofa projected fourvolume cultural history ofAmerica appeared in 1989 and created quite a stir. Although many prominent historians showeredAlbion s Seed with praise, others took potshots, most notably in a spirited exchange that appeared in the pages the William & Mary Quarterly in 1991. And now we gather a few months after Oxford University Press has published Liberty & Freedom—but well before it has been reviewed in professional journals—to offer up some commentary at the early stages of what should be a very extended and fruitful conversation. Fischer has a distinctive approach to historical inquiry. He writes what he calls "braided narratives" that combine superb storytelling with analytical argument buttressed by substantial empirical evidence (essentially ethnographic in Albion's Seed and iconographie in Liberty & Freedom). In this way, he is attempting to combine the best narrative elements ofthe older, traditional political history (with its emphasis on key people, events, and turning points) and the analytical rigor of the newer social and cultural history. Setting aside the question of whether analysis is in fact another form of narrative,1 the results in Albion's Seed and Liberty & Freedom are bold primary syntheses that are breathtaking in their scope, detail, and interpretation and provocative in their ability catalyze scholarly conversation along with some controversy. But before scholars begin their inevitable critique , we should acknowledge what Fischer is doing here. It is one thing to offer up works of synthesis, but it is extraordinary to do so using such bold interpretive schemes, anchored in such extensive primary research, and written so engagingly. I dare say there are but a handful of historians capable of such a daunting task, and none better suited to pull it off than Fischer. Fischer joins the noble company of martyrs —people like Frederick Jackson Turner, Louis Hartz, David Potter, Arthur Schlesinger Jr., Michael Kämmen, et al.—who have attempted to capture theAmerican experience by advancing overarching explanatory schemes. His stab at this places liberty and freedom at the center ofAmerican history— liberty and freedom rightly understood in Tocquevillian terms as folkways or "habits of the heart" rather than as timeless abstractions or as subjects of intellectual history. A few quotes from his conclusion suggest the scope of Fischer's thesis: • The "many differences over the meaning of liberty and freedom have been drivers of change in American history" (721). • "The central theme ofAmerican history is about the growth ofliberty and freedom" (721). • ". . . the history of liberty and freedom clearly fits a Whig model of American history. . . . Through the span of four centuries, every American generation without exception has become more free and has enlarged the meaning of liberty and freedom in one way or another" (722). Such sweeping claims are not often heard in today's academy, where even mid-level generalizations are frequently avoided lest one be charged with trafficking in essentialist notions that blur the rich complexity we find in more narrowly conceived...