•  
  •  
 

The Midwest Quarterly: A Journal of Contemporary Thought

Contents

Articles

The Racial Legacy of the Nineteenth-Century South

Ernst Toller and the Drama of Nonviolence

Vital Center v. New Left: A. M. Schlesinger, Jr. and C. Wright Mills

The Role of Presidential Libraries

Wagons East: A Prodigal Returns

The Love Songs of John Gould Fletcher

Verse

Pidge

Lives of Puerto Rico

The Silence

Experience

Song

Theme 2

Tango for Nuclear Age Lovers: or Mottos for Underground Grottos

Poem

True Color

Firedogs

Song

Monologue to the Moon

Abstract

in this issue. . .

CURRENT EVENTS often have a disturbing way of making contemporary thought seem irrelevant, and yet the history of the past summer rather underscores the relevance of our selections for this first number of Volume VII of THE MIDWEST QUARTERLY. None of the articles here published bears directly on the death of Adlai E. Stevenson, the build-up of U.S. forces in Vietnam, blind violence in Los Angeles, passage of far-reaching legislation by Congress, or the outbreak of war between India and Pakistan. Nevertheless, on page after page of this issue our six discussions touch sensitive and immediate points, not with the limited and passing impact of journalism but, we hope, with the deeper, more permanent illumination of careful scholarship and objective observation. Origins of racial animosities, the dilemma faced by all revolutionaries, continuing debate over the true ends and means of democratic government, opportunities for scholars in presidential libraries, contrasts between the tired old East and the vigorous Midwest, and an affectionate look at an unjustly obscure Arkansas poet-each of these, we trust, has some particular value, each in its own peculiar way, to readers in a world repeatedly lashed by nature's uncurbed violence, racked by the scarcely less curbed violence of man himself.

ONE YEAR AGO we asserted that "no subject draws and requires more interest and deeper concern in the United States today than the civil rights revolution . . ."; the assertion stands, however demanding the violent course and electric challenges of world affairs. In our first article, JOHN G. CLARK, assistant professor of history at the University of Kansas, reviews and synthesizes the deeper backgrounds of American race relations and draws conclusions which will stimulate debate. Professor Clark earned his master's degree at Lawrence in 1960 and his Ph.D. at Stanford in 1963. His publications include articles on the Joint Committee of Fifteen on Reconstruction after the Civil War, the grain trade in antebellum New Orleans, and American reform literature at the close of the last century. Now working on the economic history of pre-Civil War New Orleans, he taught last summer at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge.

ANOTHER HISTORIAN, born and bred in the Midwest, explores what at first may seem to be a totally unrelated subject. And yet, what STERLING FISHMAN, assistant professor of history at the University of Wisconsin, has to say about the German revolutionary and playwright, Ernst Toller, does relate to the very current problem of non-violent efforts to make revolution. Professor Fishman received his A. B. from Washington University in his native St. Louis, his A. M. and Ph.D. degrees from Wisconsin, the latter in 1960. He has taught at Harpur College, New York, and at Rutgers University and studied a year at the University of Munich on a fellowship from the German government. His major field of concentration is German cultural history, and he has published articles in The Journal of the History of Ideas, The Review of Politics, and Wiener Library Bulletin. Now collecting material for a book on the cultural history of German educational reform, he spent last summer in research in Munich.

CONTINUING DISCUSSION is normal and essential to the democratic process, and students of American politics are blessed with inexhaustible materials from the initial Federalist-Antifederalist conflict, through the Age of Jackson and the age of excess after the Civil War, to present occasionally passionate debates about the role of presidential leadership, the nature of reform, the anatomy of power. DAVID B. GRIFFITHS, graduate teaching assistant and candidate for the Ph.D. in American history at the University of Washington, here analyzes the major arguments and positions of two contemporary observers of American politics. Mr. Griffiths' studies have centered in philosophy and the humanities, principally at the New School of Social Research in New York and at the University of Washington from which he earned the master of arts degree in history.

PRESIDENTIAL LEADERSHIP is a hardy perennial among students of American history and politics, and in the recent past their scholarly efforts have found new opportunities and materials in a series of presidential libraries, in operation or being readied for early use. William D. Aeschbacher, director of the Eisenhower Library at Abilene, Kansas, favored us with a discussion of this new research development in last January's issue. When the printed program of the annual meeting of the Mississippi Valley Historical Association (now the Organization of American Historians) arrived last spring, we were quick to notice a paper by ELIZABETH B. DREWRY, director of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, New York, since 1961. She presented this to a large group of historians in the auditorium of the Truman Library at Independence, Missouri, and graciously accepted our invitation to send us the manuscript. Miss Drewry holds A. B. and A. M. degrees from George Washington University and the Ph.D. in history from Cornell. A member of the staff of the National Archives from 1936 to 1950 she served in various positions, among them assistant to the Director of Reference Services. For several years she directed references and research in military records in the National Archives. In 1950 she joined the Office of Records Management, serving as Chief of the Records Retirement Branch and advising federal agencies on the preservation of records of research and other value and the disposal of those no longer needed. She is a member and Fellow of the Society of American Archivists and won the General Services Administration Distinguished Service Award in 1964 and the Federal Woman's Award in 1965. Officially unrecorded is the high esteem in which students of American history and politics gratefully hold her for inspiring and untiring assistance and encouragement.

MOBILITY, a word with which economists and sociologists conjure, is also a long-recognized characteristic of the American people. Fifteen years ago a young man with his Ph.D. in political science at Columbia University "all done but" brought his young family out to the windy plains of central Kansas in the dead of winter to undertake the position of assistant professor of history and political science at Kansas Wesleyan University, Salina. Ten years later, chairman of Wesleyan's social science division, he contributed an article to this journal as part of our observation of the centennial of Kansas statehood: "Kansas: Reflections of a Modern Pioneer" (January, 1961). In that same year he published The Time Now Past, a history of Kansas Wesleyan. Born in New Jersey and a graduate of Drew University there, JACK WARNER VANDERHOOF crossed the Alleghanies only in the physical sense, and in 1963 he headed East to become professor of history at Russell Sage College, Troy, New York. In part at our suggestion, he has recorded some salient contrasts he has observed between the Smoky Hill and Republican River country of the high plains and his Hudson River Valley.

ONE YEAR AGO we published a poem by MARY GRAHAM LUND of Los Angeles, a practicing poet who writes articles and fiction as well. Her work has appeared in a choice number of periodicals from Commonweal and Discourse to Frontiers, Prairie Schooner, and Snowy Egret, which last March published her article "Far Trumpets" on John Gould Fletcher's use of nature in his poetry. The Sewanee Review recently accepted another of her articles, this treating Fletcher's attention to aesthetics. Her principal study has been the work of the late James Franklin Lewis on whom she wrote her master's thesis in 1952 with valuable help from Mrs. Lewis and his publisher, Alan Swallow. Here Miss Lund's interest in Fletcher developed as a direct result of her perusal of correspondence between the two poets during the period 1942-1945.

THE REVIEW of One Hundred Years of the Nation, our contribution to the centennial of that great publication, is by EUGENE H. DEGRUSON, summer replacement for REBECCA PATTERSON as associate editor for literature.

ELEVEN POETS have contributed the dozen poems which grace this autumn issue. We have previously published the work of eight of these· the other three are new to us. ARNOLD FALLEDER of New York works as editorial librarian for Rodgers and Hammerstein; his "In Brandywine" for Hart Crane appeared in THE MIDWEST QUARTERLY back in the spring of 1962. . . . EDSEL FORD of Fort Smith is Arkansas's greatest living poet; he publishes widely, wins an enviable number of poetry prizes annually, and has honored us with an occasional offering since the fall of 1962. . . . Poems by EMILIE GLEN of Greenwich Village have frequently appeared in our pages over the past four years. . . . FLORENCE JEANNE GOODMAN of Los Angeles contributed an illuminating discussion of Lincoln's sources of the Gettysburg Address to our last spring number. . . . PATRICIA LAMB of Houston wrote "Yes with a Whip" for our 1964 spring issue. . . . PAUL B. NEWMAN of Queens College, Charlotte, North Carolina, contributed an article and a poem to our summer literary number of last July. . . . Once again we publish SANFORD STERNLICHT of Oswego, New York; his "The Arizona Memorial" appeared in our summer literary number of July, 1964. . . . All the (poetry) world knows TRACY THOMPSON of San Francisco and Kyoto, Japan.

OUR TRIO of new poets includes VICTOR CONTOSKI of Madison, Wisconsin; WILLIAM WALTER DEBOLT of Trenton, Nebraska; and WALTER STEVENS of Seattle, Washington. Mr. Contoski was graduated from the University of Minnesota in 1959 with a degree in classics and two years later earned his master of arts in English from the same institution. He then taught for three years at Lodz University in Poland, the last as a Fulbright professor. After a year as assistant at Ohio State, he transferred this fall to the University of Wisconsin. His publications include poetry, short stories, and translations of modern Polish verse, and his work has appeared in Antioch Review, Chicago Review, The Goliards, North American Review, Wild Dog, and elsewhere. . . . Mr. DeBolt is a Congregational minister who has published six books of poetry and appeared in Alaska Review, The American Bard, Prairie Schooner, The Villager, and other journals. . . . Walter Stevens served in the United States Marine Corps from 1943 to 1945 and won his Ph.D. in speech from the University of Michigan in 1959. After teaching in the Ann Arbor speech department from 1953 to 1959, he taught at the University of Washington until this fall when he joined the faculty of Montana State University at Bozeman.

Download

Share

COinS
 
 

To view the content in your browser, please download Adobe Reader or, alternately,
you may Download the file to your hard drive.

NOTE: The latest versions of Adobe Reader do not support viewing PDF files within Firefox on Mac OS and if you are using a modern (Intel) Mac, there is no official plugin for viewing PDF files within the browser window.