Letter to the OAH

The lighting of candles Friday night was a wonderful idea, for little children especially. people are trying so hard to cope with our national trauma. We, as historians, can help by integrating our country's history as never before. for the situation is grave indeed, particularly should we experience more terroristic attacks. Surely you would agree.

Scholarship as usual will not help us here. we must help this country's spirit. But, are we going to do it? For, if there is any lesson from history, this is it--every country, every society has a breaking point, just like a person. But historians had better beware of something else too. If we don't back away from the negativism in so much historical writing since the Vietnam Era and begin to offer more balanced views of America's past (in the classroom too!), there are many historians who will be looking for work. Calls for academic freedom, while valid, will not save them either.

A lesson from history on this also--do you know of any profession, including the one of history, that can survive without at least a modicum of support from the public? If some readers of this op-ed piece have the inclination to ignore my warning here, or are trying to belittle it, let me provide the evidence for a public revolt in the making against historians (both instances from the 1990s). The proposed National History Standards (admirable though they may have been in some respects) did (let's face it) unduely disparage traditional ways of viewing the American past. What was the result--a vociferous opposition to the adoption of those standards in and out of Congress.

Surely all historians remember as well what may have been an even greater uprising by the public, veterans in particular, to the proposed Enola Gay exhibit at the Smithsonian."Heads did roll on that," it could be said, at least through resignations.

Don't misunderstand me--I readily admit the United States has committed some serious wrongs (such as slavery, segregation, wholesale takeovers of Indian land, and an inferior status for women for many years). But, and this is what I am driving at--this generation of historians grew up with the Vietnam War and the unrest of those times. It is my contention, and I know at least intuitively that I am right on this, so many (too many) of those historians let their opposition to that divisive war warp their whole view of America's past. The results, so far as many books and articles are concerned, which have been published in the last 30 years, have amounted to litanies regarding one injustice after another. To my way of thinking though, many of those works come close to being nothing more than jeremiads, not sound histories.

Let me pose two more questions--is there anything wrong with accounts of success stories (achievements) in American life? Or, is there anything wrong with having heroes--people to emulate?

Let me relate one of the greatest success stories of modern times. It involves America's oil industry (which I have studied in-depth for 21 years now). That is an industry, by the way, which has led the world in the production of crude (to this day the United States retains the all-time leadership in oil production) with Russia in second place. The American oil industry, in fact, dating from the Drake well of 1859, began the Oil Age, which I might add, has transformed the world and has made the United States, as Max Lerner aptly put it, a" civilization on wheels." For a true American hero, a giant of a man, see my sketch of wildcatter Michael L. Benedum on American National Biography Online at www.anb.org (2001). Benedum and his partner of 50 years--Joseph C. Trees--found more oil worldwide than any other oil operators in history. To this day too, and beginning with the prodigious deliveries of oil from Mexico's Golden Lane in the early twentieth century, petroleum geologists from the United States have led the way in finding oil and gas around the globe.

But let me give you one very specific example of what not only this country, but other freedom-loving countries around the globe, owe to the American oil industry. The Allies in World War II used 7 billion barrels of crude, 6 billion barrels of which came from U S. oil fields. Now, make no mistake about this, without that oil from America, World War II could never have been won (for it was a highly mechanized war).

In closing, let it be said--historians (not all, of course, but many) have very comfortable livings. What makes that possible? In the main it derives from the support of the public, which includes the faith (hopefully it is justified) in higher education--namely, that young people will be enriched, not just by getting a good job upon graduation, but in mind too. Now, if historians erode this support, where do they think the money will come for their salaries, or I must add, the students for their classrooms? need I mention here as well--the public in one way or another ultimately pays the bills!