Herbert Eugene Bolton_Historian of the American Borderlands Page 7
Herbert applied for jobs in late 1900, but to no avail.7 He had to get out of Milwaukee, but “I do not know where I'll land, I'm sure,” he wrote. “I hope I'll be a teacher of something, somewhere, sometime. Now I'm a teacher of every thing.”8 He fit in as best he could while waiting for something to break.
While Herbert chafed at Normal, events one thousand miles away conspired to take him away from Wisconsin. George Pierce Garrison, chair of the history department in the University of Texas, needed a replacement for his assistant professor, Lester Gladstone Bugbee, who was mortally ill with tuberculosis. Bugbee taught medieval history, but he and Garrison had been developing the archival basis for the history of Texas and the Southwest. Bugbee had been instrumental in the university's acquisition of the important Bexar Archives, which documented the history of Coahuila y Texas from 1717 to 1836.9 Garrison, who dreamed of making the University of Texas a great center for historical research and graduate training, needed someone to replace Bugbee in the archives as well as the classroom.
Garrison would have an important influence on Bolton's career. He was “an impressive man with a commanding presence and a cultivated, urbane manner,” according to historian Llerena Friend. He was born in Georgia in 1853, and after attending college and teaching school, he moved to Texas in 1874.10 Five years later he studied at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, where he received certificates in mathematics, natural philosophy, logic, metaphysics, rhetoric, and English. The suave southerner even won the David Masson prize for poetry while he was there. Returning to Texas in 1881, Garrison was immediately stricken with tuberculosis, but by 1884 he was well enough to join the faculty of the one-yearold University of Texas as part of a two-man department of English language, history, and literature. Four years later Garrison was teaching all of the history courses at Texas, a fact that determined him to enroll for the doctorate in history at the University of Chicago, which he completed in 1896. He put his personal stamp on all things historical at the University of Texas and insisted on teaching all of the courses in U.S. history.
Garrison and Texas were attracting favorable attention in the historical profession. In 1898 J. Franklin Jameson, editor of the American Historical Review, invited Garrison to submit an article. There was a wealth of hitherto unknown and unworked material on Texas and the Southwest, Garrison explained. He, Bugbee, and his students were all at work on it and would have something ready for publication soon. “At least some of it shall be offered to the Review,” as indeed it was.11 He sent Jameson some articles by his students about Spanish missions in Texas and the wanderings of Cabeza de Vaca.
National notice of Texas made the replacement of Bugbee all the more pressing. Garrison had obtained some help from Eugene C. Barker, who held a fresh new Texas MA, but with Bugbee gone Garrison needed a new wheelhorse. Barker was not yet the proper animal; he needed to complete doctoral work before he would be credible in the estimation of the historical profession. In search of the right man Garrison initiated a “furious correspondence,” as Barker put it.12
One of Garrison's letters fell on the desk of Jameson, who knew almost everyone in the history profession. “It is important that the man selected should not only be of high scholarship,” Garrison explained. “I am anxious especially that the man chosen should be of high character and an inspiring and effective teacher, ready to devote himself…to the general interests of the School of History and the University at large.”13 Where could Garrison find such a man? In all likelihood, though letters have not surfaced, Garrison (and perhaps Jameson) sent queries to Turner and Haskins, perhaps only the latter since Garrison wanted someone to teach European courses. In any case, Haskins recommended Bolton for the Texas job.14
Meanwhile Bolton had almost given up looking for jobs when a graduate school friend recommended him for a place at Dartmouth College. He got the offer, but it was not a permanent position as had been promised. There was a chance the position could be made permanent, but he could not justify moving his family on that uncertain basis.15 Bolton turned it down. Neither Turner nor Haskins encouraged him to go. Turner said that he would “be more ready to help me into a university if I stay than if I go out of his territory.” Turner admitted that he was selfish in recommending that Herbert stay so that he could “help build up in Wis a history centre.”16 Turner's advice was no doubt sound, but there was an edge to it. Do my bidding here for a while, Turner seemed to say, and I will help you. If you leave, I may not. In 1901 the world of American history was Turner's world. Turner knew it and so did Herbert.
Within a month Herbert regretted his decision to stay in Wisconsin. His raise at Normal was fifty dollars less than he had expected, and he was unlikely to be promoted over other faculty with more seniority. Nevertheless, as the fall semester approached, he seemed determined to make the best of his situation. Perhaps in an effort to make his teaching more congruent with the objects of the normal school mission, Herbert developed a proposal to team-teach an innovative history course on “the child in history—an historical child study course,” with Vande Walker, one of the women on the faculty. Herbert thought it should be “evolutionary in character,” examining the childhood experience over time and across cultures.17 He would use anthropology and psychology as well as historical sources. This unrealized idea—it never got off the drawing board—surely was a pathbreaking approach to historical study. In an age when the lives of great men and important political movements were considered to be the proper stuff of history, Herbert was thinking about the history of children, a topic that would not come into its own until the rise of social history in the 1970s. In some ways it was not surprising that Herbert would consider such a subject, for it combined his own interests with those of his brother in child psychology. Turner's interest in social scientific approaches to history also may have influenced Bolton. The history of childhood proved to be a road not taken, but it revealed an innovative streak in a developing young historian who was struggling to find himself.
Herbert's ruminations about new courses were interrupted when baby Helen suddenly fell ill with intestinal complaints all too similar to those that had almost killed her older sister in Philadelphia. Herbert hired a nurse and gave Helen all of his attention. (Gertrude was eight months pregnant at the time.) “She is a very dear child—Beautiful in temperament and feature. We can't spare her.”18
Herbert was so consumed with the welfare of his child that Garrison's letter scarcely registered. The Texas professor offered Bolton a position, which would become permanent “providing Prof Bugbee does not recover from consumption—an improbability.” The starting salary would be $1,500 with the rank of instructor the first year and the possibility of promotion through the ranks to “head of the school.” “The work will be European history. What do you think of the prospects?” he asked Fred.19 Herbert worried about the impermanent nature of the appointment, but Garrison assured him that Bugbee was unlikely to live and that prospects at Texas were bright. Garrison's words seemed unambiguous, but after his experience with Dartmouth Herbert was looking for fine print and disappearing ink. He wanted his brother's advice but could not wait for a reply. “I wired that I would accept.” Once the decision was made, Herbert found his courage. “I am going in to win and hope to succeed.”20
Herbert knew that Haskins had recommended him for the Texas job, but there is no reason to believe that he knew Jameson and Turner may have been involved. If Haskins knew about the Texas position, surely his best friend, Turner, knew. Bolton's name may have come to Garrison from University of Texas president W. L. Prather, who had a doctorate from Penn and who was also searching for a likely candidate.21 The ambitious (and sometimes jealous) Herbert complained about “pull” when it benefited others, but he had plenty of pull, even though it operated out of his sight. Bolton's offers from Wisconsin Normal and Texas show how murky the hiring process was at the turn of the twentieth century. Searches were not advertised. The selection process was opaque and connections
mattered; inside candidates often got the nod. A few prominent historians and university presidents controlled the professional destinies of aspiring academics, who often did not know that they were being considered for a professorship. Although Doctor Bolton was still a pawn in other men's games, this time he was the happy beneficiary of the secretive dealings of presidents and professors.
Herbert's decision to go to Texas settled his professional future, but important personal matters hung in the balance. Helen's health slowly improved, but Herbert was reluctant to leave until Gertrude gave birth. He lingered in Milwaukee until their third daughter, Laura, was born on October 7. “Easy labor, fine child, mother doing nicely,” he scrawled in a hasty note to Fred.22 The following day Herbert was on the train south, leaving Gertrude and the children, who would follow in December. It was the most decisive journey of his life.
As Bugbee convalesced in El Paso, a letter arrived from his admiring friend and former student, Eugene C. Barker. Texas had hired the new man from Wisconsin, Barker wrote. “He is rather good looking, a blond, about six feet tall; and I believe he will prove a pretty good teacher.” Barker, peeved with Garrison for having given Bugbee's summer courses to Bolton instead of him, “exploded.”23 Explosions in front of Garrison were not wise. He expected professional behavior at all times, and the men who worked under him soon understood that there was an iron hand in Garrison's velvet glove.
Garrison and the university made a fine first impression on Bolton. “Prof. Garrison is a royal good man, well-trained, 48 years old.” Garrison's age (seventeen years older than Bolton), meant that Bolton might eventually head the history department (or “school” as it was then called), even if Garrison remained in harness into his sixties. “Barker is a young fellow, perhaps 26, rather ‘green’ looking, but pleasant,” Bolton wrote. Bolton's teaching load was relatively light: two European history courses in three sections that each met thrice weekly. His university accommodations included a “beautiful recitation room, with good maps and a private office,” in Old Main, which in Bolton's time was still comparatively new.
Garrison had some “odds and ends” for Bolton in addition to teaching. Founding editor of the Texas State Historical Association Quarterly, Garrison gave Bolton editorial assignments. The new instructor did not complain. Garrison was “building up a centre for southwestern history for which Texas has unsurpassed opportunities,” Bolton thought. He quickly intuited that Garrison would encourage him to work in this new field, southwestern history. “I shall get up Spanish at once, which they say is easy.” All in all, Bolton thought he had “fallen into good quarters” where he thought he could rise to the top.24 For the first time Bolton believed that he was well positioned to succeed in his chosen profession.
Bolton liked Austin. The October weather was “perfect.” The city was “a big village in type and appearance, the good and bad all mixed.” The capitol impressed him. He lodged in “a ‘swell’ residence” where Garrison had put him “to avoid making a social error before I get started.” He noticed that almost everyone rode single footers (horses with an unusually quick and comfortable gait almost as fast as a trot). They were “common as niggers,” he wrote, an unfortunate choice of terms that signaled Bolton's quick assimilation of white southern sensibilities and values.25 “I like the southern people extremely well,” he told his brother. He found them to be “kind, courteous, hospitable,” and the students “much more courteous than in the north.”26 He did not mention that the university was racially segregated.
Moving to Texas to teach European history for a fifty-dollar raise had been a gamble. Once he surveyed the situation in Austin, Bolton knew that he had won his bet. Now he could specialize in history instead of teaching everything under the sun. Noticing that he was a more demanding teacher than either Garrison or Barker, he decided to modify his own teaching so that he would have more time for research. Even the administration stars seemed to be aligned in Bolton's favor. President Prather's association with Penn probably helped Bolton, who judged Prather to be an “honest, warmhearted, provincial man” who would “give one free scope.” The Board of Regents had treated Bolton “liberally,” paying him from September 1, rather than docking his pay for the days he had missed while waiting for his daughter's birth.27 Texas was going to be a good thing for Bolton, and Bolton intended to be a good thing for Texas.
But the University of Texas was not quite as calm as it seemed in Bolton's first appraisal. The university had been embroiled in political controversies concerning funding, its relationship with Texas Agricultural and Mechanical College, and whether the university should serve the immediate, practical needs of the state's farmers or less concrete but loftier scholarly goals. Funding of the university by munificent land grants and oil revenues would eventually secure its future, but this inchoate treasury was also a source of political conflict.28
The university was vulnerable to powerful political figures in Austin. In 1897 a state representative asserted that some university professors “not in sympathy with the traditions of the South” were teaching “political heresies in place of the system of political economy” cherished by Texans. A house committee investigated the charges. They questioned professor of political science David F. Houston, and Garrison. Both men assured the legislators that nothing was being taught that reflected poorly “on Southern institutions or that would be unacceptable to Southern people.” The committee closely questioned Houston (a South Carolinian) about his Harvard University Press book on nullification in South Carolina, which the committee believed to be “unacceptable from a Southern standpoint,” and “contrary to Southern teachings.”29 Houston explained that he had written the book before coming to Texas and that he did not assign it or refer to it in his classes. The committee learned that the regents hired faculty on the basis of fitness rather than which region they haled from. Nevertheless, “other things being equal,” the regents hired “Texas men first and Southern men next.” The committee was satisfied that nothing was taught at the university that was “objectionable to Southern people,” but called for an annual investigation of the university by the state legislature to make certain that this happy circumstance was not disturbed. The regents appended a statement to the report that no political or religious tests were used in the selection of faculty, who were expected to be “in sympathy with the people whom they teach,” and that while the university “was in no sense partisan, sectarian, or sectional,” it was “in sympathy with the life, character, and civilization of the Southern people.”30
At about the time Bolton arrived in Austin, controversies had arisen concerning certain professors’ interpretations of historical events and other educational matters. Representatives from church-supported colleges complained that some University of Texas professors held unorthodox religious views that “inculcated infidel ideas in the minds of the students,” as one observer put it.31 Other critics had complained that a professor of political science had said uncomplimentary things about the free coinage of silver, a key plank in the 1896 platform of the Democratic and Populist Parties, one that had strong support in Texas and the West. To eliminate the possibility of professors expressing such unpopular opinions, some newspapers advocated the elimination of the university's political science chair. Happily, the regents decided against that drastic measure. However, a member of the Board of Regents grilled the errant professor, and he agreed not to mention the topic of silver again.
Another Texas professor, speaking at a teachers’ meeting in Denver, made the flabbergasting mistake of saying that it was a good thing that the South had lost the Civil War. “The great question in the South is the lifting up of the colored man to citizenship,” the professor argued. “And it is being done,” he added. He spoke in defense of southern states (including Texas) restricting the political rights of African Americans, but this did not mollify Texans with diehard Confederate sympathies. Race relations were a touchy subject in turn-of-the-century Texas, a former slave state wher
e racially motivated lynching was common.32 The Board of Regents excused the incident by claiming that it had been an impromptu address on the subject of “southern patriotism” given on short notice. If the gentleman had had more time to reflect before speaking, the regents implied, he would not have uttered such inflammatory statements. All of these incidents led J. J. Lane, a University of Texas professor, to write in his 1903 History of Education in Texas that he disapproved of student and (in some cases) faculty participation in politics. Such activities could only harm the university.33
As in many other public institutions at the turn of the previous century, the University of Texas faculty were judged by bedrock cultural assumptions, shifting political currents, and the whims of crafty politicians. According to Garrison, political controversy involving President Prather's predecessor George T. Winston had caused “such a storm” that “two years of [Prather's] wise and sympathetic administration have hardly enabled us to orient ourselves.”34 Garrison had been personally involved in those controversies and in helping to right the ship after Prather's arrival in 1899. He must have worried about how the Yankee Bolton would fit in. Surely he would never allow Bolton to teach anything about his doctoral specialty, free blacks in the South. The astute Bolton must have soon realized that his dissertation was a dead letter in Austin. If he objected to abandoning the field he had pioneered, he never mentioned it.
In the fall of 1901 Bolton simply put his head down and went to work in the classroom and on the Quarterly.35 Meanwhile Garrison wrote a report on the status of historical studies on the southwestern United States for the annual meeting of the American Historical Association. He sketched the regional situation in broad terms but concentrated on research activities in Texas, especially the acquisition of the important Bexar Archives. Garrison thought there was still more to be discovered in Mexico, which he had scouted in the summer of 1900.36 “No man living,” he averred, “could estimate it accurately or indicate, except in a general way, the nature of the documents.”37 The repositories in Mexico City were virtually unexplored. Mexico's provincial archives doubtless held additional treasures for the curious researcher. The archival investigations that Garrison outlined would become Bolton's lifework. Garrison had no doubt hoped when he hired him that Bolton would work the Mexican archives, but in late 1901 he could not have guessed how completely Bolton would embrace that project.