Herbert Eugene Bolton_Historian of the American Borderlands Page 27
Bolton devoted the bulk of his speech to a history of the Western Hemisphere from the age of Columbus to modern times. While recognizing the competition among European nations for colonial resources, he stressed what he regarded as broad commonalities of historical development. Spanish, English, French, and other European colonies were organized around a system of mercantilism. The British North American colonies were only the first to revolt against the mother country; Latin American colonies followed suit not long afterward. All the newly independent countries eventually established democracies that were more or less successful. Every new country experienced periods of conflict and instability. The frontier had reshaped European institutions everywhere, just as Turner had explained for Anglo-America and the United States. All people yearned for freedom and prosperity and had achieved a good deal of it. The world war had even demonstrated “emphatic Western Hemisphere solidarity,” because, “of the twenty states to the south, eight joined the Allies, five broke relations with Germany, and seven remained neutral.”44 This seemingly happy agreement among the American nations was now threatened because, Bolton said, European capital and people were moving rapidly to South America. He worried about a proposed colony of one million Germans planned for the upper Amazon Basin. These developments were potentially troublesome because “fundamental Western Hemisphere solidarity” had existed since independence. “European influence today far outweighs that of Saxon America,” as he called the united States and Canada, and “Europe is bending every effort to draw the southern continent more and more into the European circle and away from its northern neighbors.”
Bolton was not blind to conflict among the American nations. He explained “manifest destiny” as a “madness for conquest” that was “the other side of the Monroe Doctrine.” The Mexican-American War resulted in Mexico's loss of the northern half of its territory. Nevertheless, the Mexican cession and the Oregon boundary settlement with Great Britain gave the United States and Canada Pacific ports and unsettled lands that attracted European immigrants while keeping “both nations young with continued frontier experience,” prolonging “opportunity for social experimentation” and perpetuating “American and Canadian characteristics.” Saxon America's southern neighbor came under the rule of “one of the remarkable men of all time, Porfirio Díaz, half-breed Zapotec Indian, and soldier hero,” Bolton explained. Bolton saw Diaz's regime as a “Golden Age” of Mexican development; poor Mexicans saw Diaz differently and rebelled. The aims of the revolution were socialistic and nationalistic. “In so radical a program vested interests have suffered,” he said. “The Church has been involved,” Bolton observed, but he did not say how.
In his conclusion, Bolton turned to the borderlands. Bolton explained that he did not mean borderlands to be exclusively geographical regions. “Borderline studies of many kinds” would be fruitful. “Borderland zones are vital not only to the determination of international relations, but also in the development of culture. In this direction,” he continued, “one of the important modifications to the Turner thesis is to be sought,” though he did not suggest what modification might be needed.
Bolton tossed off his borderlands observations in a brief paragraph before returning to his major theme. He called for broad synthetic studies of the Western Hemisphere that would include such themes as environmental, economic, and religious history. And he rhetorically asked who had stated “the significance of the frontier in terms of the Americas?” The eighth and final footnote to the published address stated that the proposed syntheses were not “a substitute for, but…a setting in which to place, any one of our national histories.” Then Bolton took a parting shot at James Truslow Adams. “A noted historian has written for us the Epic of America,” Bolton said, but for Adams “America” meant the United States. “We need an Adams to sketch the high lights and significant developments of the Western Hemisphere as a whole.” Such a synthesis “done with similar brilliancy” would produce “the ‘Epic’ of Greater America,” he concluded.
Bolton outlined broadly shared historical patterns that transcended national boundaries but spent little time explaining exceptions to the general trend of common development that he perceived. Perhaps much should be forgiven in a speech that covered more than four centuries and an entire hemisphere. Given such lordly parameters, the address was bound to be general and short on particulars. But Bolton's willingness to ignore almost entirely the important differences among American nations is surprising. He had made his reputation by examining the minute details of Spanish exploration and colonization. In his mission essay he had noted significant differences in Anglo and Hispanic Indian policy. But in “The Epic of Greater America” religion and Indians scarcely merited a mention. Troubling details were lost in a fog of general assertions about shared experiences in a progressive hemispheric history. In time his critics would have a field day with Bolton's smooth elisions and confident generalizations.
The problems with Bolton's address became so painfully obvious that when his admiring student and biographer John Francis Bannon published Bolton's important essays, he put the “Epic” speech in a special section called “The ‘Other’ Bolton,” in which it was the only essay.45 Yet it was the same Bolton who for years had been preaching—that is the best word for it—about the Americas and hemispheric history. The AHA address was simply a convenient collection of the thoughts that had been spread in many letters and uncounted lectures before uncritical undergraduates and public audiences. He had carried his crusading message to the loftiest pinnacle in the profession, where it would enjoy the closest professional scrutiny.46
The most severe critics of the “Epic” would rise in the future, but before leaving Bolton's presidential address, it is worth returning to his very brief concluding statement about the borderlands. While Bolton approvingly mentioned frontier influences on hemispheric history, as Turner might have done, he took the opportunity to mention that a consideration of culture in borderlands regions provided a basis for the modification of Turner's frontier thesis. Once again, Bolton stopped short of carefully analyzing the ideas of his now dead mentor. Perhaps Turner was too recently in the grave for that. Whatever the reason, Bolton missed a chance to put some intellectual flesh on the borderlands bones in a setting where it would have mattered. Eighty years after the event one wonders if a thoughtful lecture about the significance of the borderlands in American history might not have been more useful and appreciated in the long run.
Bolton's students presented a gift to him at the Toronto meeting. George Hammond and Charles Hackett had organized the production of New Spain and the Anglo American West, a festschrift consisting of two volumes of his graduate students’ essays. Volume one covered New Spain, and two the Anglo-American West. The collection was an impressive testament to Bolton's influence as a teacher of specialists in Hispanic and Anglo-American history—indeed, of his hemispheric interests. Bolton was deeply moved by the presentation, but the process of compiling the festschrift revealed that some less happy forces were at work. Initial plans called for Arizona dean Frank Lockwood to write a biographical sketch of Bolton. After corresponding about the matter with several of Bolton's students, Hackett warned Lockwood that he should avoid including too much praise of Bolton in the biography. Some of Bolton's Berkeley colleagues accused him of courting publicity, and he was “somewhat sensitive to the charge.”47 He even canceled a dinner his students had planned to honor his twentieth year at Cal, saying that “certain people” would think he “was seeking too much glory.”48
It is not difficult to imagine that some of Bolton's colleagues were jealous of him, and not only because of his election to the AHA presidency. He had great influence within the University. In the department his power was nearly absolute. He wielded authority with a smile on his face, but it was authority nonetheless. Outside the department Bolton had enemies. Chapman believed that there was a “legion of those who [were] envious of his reputation and achievement in scholarship.”49
He still sat on committees with Teggart, who had never forgiven Bolton for his part in shoving him out of the library and the history department.50 Chapman described a committee incident that probably involved Teggart, although he did not mention him by name. During a meeting “Bolton was being insulted, as usual, by a certain other member of the committee.” Bolton said that he resented the remarks and would take them up after the meeting. Later, as Chapman watched, Bolton approached the man “and offered to settle the question then and there, ‘as man to man.'” Watching Bolton's tormentor back down, Chapman “got somewhat of a thrill” out of the proceedings, although the spectacle of two sixty-something professors grappling in a committee room would have been horrifying to most observers.51 Whether the chastened bully was Teggart or some other professor, the essential point remains: not everyone on the Berkeley faculty liked or admired Bolton.
Was he a glory seeker, as some of his critics thought? Bolton's personal style was self-effacing, but he retained a news clipping service that sent items about him from papers around the country.52 He received extraordinary news coverage, especially from Bay Area papers. Who would doubt that this attention caused jealousy among some of his less noticed colleagues?
A certain amount of resentment of Bolton in the Berkeley faculty was to be expected, but the festschrift also exposed rivalry among Bolton's students. A few months before the Toronto meeting the editorial committee named William Binkley to present the volumes to Bolton in Toronto. J. Fred Rippy objected and instead proposed that all of the contributors should elect the Toronto presenter. Rippy wanted Lockwood to tally the votes.53 Aside from a zealous regard for democracy Rippy's agenda can only be surmised. It seems most likely that he considered the presentation assignment as an honor in itself. Who but Bolton's most respected student should hand him the volumes? Perhaps Rippy hoped to be designated as the presenter. Whatever the case, Lockwood refused to be drawn into the controversy, and Binkley made the presentation as planned.54
One other controversy arose among the editors. Hackett had warned Lockwood to avoid writing a sketch too eulogistic, but the publication committee decided that his essay was too laudatory. The Arizona dean had asked Bolton's graduate students to assess him as a teacher.55 Lockwood incorporated their responses in his essay, and, ironically, it may have been the unstinting praise of Bolton's students that made Lockwood's sketch into a panegyric, at least in the minds of the committee. Lockwood's biography of Bolton did not go to waste. He published it in the Catholic World?56
The early 1930s seemed a culminating period in Bolton's professional life. In 1933 the National Park Service appointed him to the National Advisory Board of the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS).57 Bolton's work with HABS was a natural outgrowth of his lengthy association with the park service, his scholarly interest in missions, and his exploration of historic trails and places.58
Bolton's increasing activity with the federal government meant that he had more power to assist his graduate students in obtaining federal employment. Academic jobs became less plentiful as the depression dragged on, but there were possibilities for temporary and permanent federal employment in the field now called public history.59 Two of his graduate students, Phillip Brooks and Vernon Tate, found important positions in the newly created National Archives. Brooks became associate director of the archives and then director of the Truman Library in the 1950s.60 Tate earned a reputation as an authority on the microfilming of records.61 Several of Bolton's students moved into the National Park Service. Vernon Aubrey Neasham became a regional historian for the Park Service in Santa Fe and went on to an important career as the state historian for California's Division of Beaches and Parks.62 After leaving the University of Texas, Eddie Dunn had a varied career dealing with Latin America in private enterprise and public service including stints with the Department of State and Department of Commerce. When Bolton was president of the AHA, Dunn was financial advisor to the government of the Dominican Republic.63 Bolton used all of these connections to find employment for his students and to forward his own work.64
As Bolton's professional influence expanded, his family life was evolving. His children grew and left home. By 1932 four of his daughters (Frances, Helen, Laura, and Eugenie) were married, Bolton told Eddie Dunn, but “they all still talk of Dunn and Hackie [Hackett].” Daughters Jane and Gertrude were in the teaching profession. Herbert Junior was “six feet high and a sophomore in the University.” Mrs. Bolton's health was “not good,” but she was “wiry and plucky.” His wife was “just as efficient as she always was…but I wish that her health might improve,” he added.65 Gertrude suffered from Parkinson's disease. Mild tremors plagued her but she carried on her household routines.66
The Bolton household was shrinking, but Bolton picked this moment to move into a large new home that emblematized his status as one of the most famous historians of his day. He hired the bay Area architect Edwin Lewis Snyder to design a home at 2655 Buena Vista Way, about eight blocks north of campus.67 Everything about the Boltons’ new home (even the name of the street it sat on) was appropriate to Bolton's interests and station in life. It was large. He wanted enough bedrooms so that all of his children could come and visit. The home incorporated architectural elements of the Spanish colonial revival style. The first floor of the two-story structure is built of painted white brick, while the second story is board and batten with a roof of terra cotta tile. In a manner suggestive of some Mexican California adobes a projecting second-floor balcony makes a covered porch for the ground-floor entry. Jutting westward from the main building was a large one-story living room that terminated in a bay window with a view of the Golden Gate. The living room interior with its rough beams and cathedral ceiling could have been modeled after a mission chapel. Stained-wood floor, smooth plaster walls, a heavy wooden lintel, southwestern art, and colorful curtains suggestive of Mexican serapes made the place look exactly like what it was: the fitting home of Herbert E. Bolton, the Spanish borderlands historian, or rather, the Spanish borderlands historian.
Everything about Bolton's life bespoke a man who was a great success. He had risen to the top of his field, and he possessed all of the things that symbolized his arrival: many publications, hundreds of graduate students, excellent salary, titles, authority, national and international acclaim, respect, a fine family, and a beautiful residence. If some of his colleagues were jealous, there is no need to try to puzzle out the reasons. They were all on display at the University and at his home.
In the early 1930s a few clouds marred this otherwise serene vista. For decades the Native Sons of the Golden West had funded graduate studies in history at Cal, but in 1933 “advocates of rigid economy” slashed the fellowship budget from $3,000 to $1,000. For the rest of the decade the Sons would not give more than that amount per year.68 Monetary deflation made the cuts less severe than they appeared, but the reduction showed that Bolton's influence among the Sons was on the wane.
In the mid-1930s Bolton's substantial professional reputation was intact. Thus when Carl Becker's school text came under attack, the beleaguered author turned to Bolton for help.69 “I have been charged…with being a communist and with advocating the Russian soviet system,” he telegraphed. “If so disposed please wire your opinion whether I am a communist writer and whether my books advocate communism.”70 Bolton forcefully defended Becker. He found “no basis for the charge” of communism and declared that Becker was “one of our most brilliant and soundest historians” who was “truly patriotic to our American institutions.” “The charge against you is, of course, absurd,” he told Becker. Nevertheless, he added, “I fear that it is indicative of some of the troubles in which historians may find themselves in this country.”71
Bolton did not elaborate on his belief that historians might face trouble from red-baiters. Perhaps he sensed that in the midst of the New Deal, conservative forces were slowly gathering strength. In the future such forces would eventually emerge within the Native Sons organization
, much to Bolton's dismay. In the meantime, Bolton continued to use his palliative tactics with the Sons and California Anglophiles, but his urge to please local patriots would soon embroil him in controversy.
T W E L V E · Bury My Heart
at Corte Madera
Bolton took great pride in discovering long-lost historical sites and documents, but high-profile announcements of newly revealed historical treasures entailed an element of risk. An error could damage Bolton's hard-won reputation. There was little chance of his making a mistake with Spanish colonial writings. He knew the geography, environment, and mission architecture of the Southwest as well as anyone in the world, so it was unlikely that he would go wrong there. But Bolton was willing to make pronouncements about matters that were on the margins of his well-established, internationally recognized scholarly competence.
In the mid-1930s Bolton's part in the mistaken identification of supposed Spanish mission ruins in Georgia became an embarrassment. In 1925 he had collaborated with Mary Ross in the publication of two books about Spain in Georgia.1 Ross had written a master's thesis at berkeley on Anglo-Spanish conflict in North America.2 Bolton's cooperation with Ross was in keeping with his long-established practice of working with women graduate students, usually as translators. In this case, Ross took an important role as amanuensis and investigator.3