Sean Wilentz, History’s Avenging Angel

A week or so ago the Chronicle of Higher Education published a long paean to the work of Princeton historian Sean Wilentz, rightly describing him as “a man near the top of the history profession.”

Wilentz’s leading scholarly works are Chants Democratic: New York City and the Rise of the American Working Class, 1788-1850, (Oxford University Press, 1984) and The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln (W.W. Norton, 2005), for which he won a Bancroft Prize, but he is far better known for his own chants democratic, i.e., providing historical gloss in support of various Democratic Party policies, politicians, and proposals. For a view of those chants that is somewhat at odds with the praise heaped in the Chronicle article (though it did mention a few dissenters), see my old posts here, here, here, and here.

In the first of those posts, commenting on “a sclerotic attack” by Wilentz on Justice Scalia in the New York Times, I described Wilentz, rather snarkily but not inaccurately, as

the peripatetic Princeton historian who spends a great deal of time embroidering and publicizing historical pedigrees for his favorite liberal causes (here the Founding Fathers would support abortion rights, there they would oppose Clinton’s impeachment, etc.)….

In the second of those old posts (don’t worry; I’m not going to reprise all of them) I discussed a particularly revealing example of the style, grace, nuance, and humility before the dense complexity of history Wilentz typically brings to his political polemics: his testimony before the House Judiciary Committee on December 8, 1998, opposing the impeachment of President Clinton. Here’s a small sample:

I strongly believe that the weight of the evidence runs counter to impeachment. What each of you on the committee and your fellow members of the House must decide, each for him or herself, is whether the actual facts alleged against the president, the actual facts and not the sonorous formal charges, truly rise to the level of impeachable offenses.

If you believe they do rise to that level, you will vote for impeachment and take your risks at going down in history with the zealots and the fanatics.

If you understand that the charges do not rise to the level of impeachment, or if you are at all unsure, and yet you vote in favor of impeachment anyway for some other reason, history will track you down and condemn you for your cravenness.

Alternatively, you could muster the courage of your convictions. The choice is yours.

For some reason being called craven fanatical zealots failed to change the minds of those troubled by the evidence supporting the charges. One of them, Rep. William Jenkins (R, Tenn), [quoting now from my post]

observed that Wilentz had offered only opinions, that he “did not refute one fact about the allegations of perjury that are before us, about the allegations of obstruction of justice that are before us, or about the allegation of the abuse of power,” and he added: “we need to remember . . . that what we’re dealing in and what you came armed with is a bunch of opinions. And like they say back in Tennessee, everybody’s got those.”

Wilentz replied:

There’s a difference between opinion and scholarship. Anybody can have an opinion. What I reported here has to do with scholarship.

This was too much for even the New York Times, which commented editorially on the “gratuitously patronizing presentation by Sean Wilentz, a Princeton historian.” (NYT editorial, 12/9/1998)

Just the sort of nuanced, complexity-appreciating, humility-exuding historian to turn to for a critique of Justice Scalia in the New York Times, right?

Wilentz obviously sees himself, and other liberal historians, as History’s avenging angels, tracking down and condemning all the zealous fanatics and fanatical zealots, i.e., conservatives, who cravenly sin against the liberal gospel.

Say What?