M is for Men of Mettle and Missing Maids

Jill Lepore. A is for American: Letters and Other Characters in the Newly United States. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002. 241 pp. Figures, notes, and index. $25.00 (cloth); $13.00 (paper).

Jill Lepore has written an intriguing and highly entertaining "collection of character studies" of seven men who lived in America between 1758 and 1922. Her cohort is Noah Webster, William Thornton, Sequoyah, Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, Abd al-Rahman Ibrahima, Samuel F.B. Morse, and Alexander Graham Bell. As she herself asks in the closing pages of the book, "Why bring them together?" Lepore answers by suggesting a parallel with two fairly well-known paintings: Men of Progress painted by Christian Schussele in 1862, which depicted nineteen male inventors, and People of Progress painted by Edward Sorel in 1999, which caricatured twenty modern inventors and scientists, eighteen men, and two women. Each of these paintings celebrated "progress as technological innovation in the service of economic development" (p. 191). In contrast, Lepore chose to "take the likeness" of seven men who dealt with two key interrelated social problems facing the newly united states: "The need for an educated citizenry . . . and the challenge of unifying a diverse people"(p. 12). She maintains that all seven of the men believed that "languages define nations," and that they struggled with improving means and methods of communication.

Lepore also maintains that "each of their stories . . . trace the tension in the United States between nationalism, often fueled by nativist prejudices, and universalism, inspired by both evangelism and the Enlightenment"(p. 190). Although Lepore analyzes many tensions between nationalism and universalism in these seven men, her analysis actually suggests that each of them "fell" into one of the two camps. Webster, Morse, and Bell are portrayed as xenophobic American nationalists, and while Sequoyah and Abd al-Rahman Ibrahima clearly had different self-definitions and group affiliations, they too are seen to have been nationalists. Thornton and Gallaudet were universalists, though their universalism failed in many respects. What unites all seven, in Lepore's judgement, is that "all of them explored the idea that letters and other characters—alphabets, syllabaries, signs, and codes—hold nations together" (p. 11).

Lepore, who is concerned with character and characters, depicts Noah Webster (1758-1843) as a stiff, vain, and difficult man who "despised foreigners and their influence on American life" (p. 11). Webster tried to make American English into a new language, in order to distinguish Americans from all others, especially the English. He saw this as an important bulwark for American separatism. He began by trying to change American spelling to correspond with the way in which it was pronounced, much as Benjamin Franklin and others had. Webster alone, however, saw this change as serving nationalism: "'A national language is a national tie, and what country wants it more than America?'" (p. 36). Webster's crusade failed. Lepore seems to tie the failure of Webster's crusade to his character: neither he nor his writings charmed anyone. Both his supporters and his enemies saw him as pedantic, vain, and arrogant, and would have nothing to do with his spelling campaign.

While Samuel F.B. Morse (1791-1872) shared Webster's view of foreigners, Lepore emphasizes that he was a man of very different character. Morse was an artist "with a passion for novelty." When he failed to find a market for his paintings he turned to experimenting with the telegraph, invented in 1793 by the Frenchman Claude Chappe. By 1837 he had developed both a workable instrument and the Morse code. Lepore suggests that strange motives pushed Morse in this direction: he was convinced that there was a Papal plot to undermine the independence of the United States. He apparently believed that the United States was in dire need both of a secret code to protect government messages and a means to insure rapid transit of these communications. He was also pro-slavery and...