"Lessons of the Past"
By: Paul Granda
Lessons of the Past are the Seeds of our Future.
Upon entering the Andrew Jackson’s Hermitage, home of the people’s President, as it is popularly known, a profound sense of awe, excitement, and contradictory emotions hit me simultaneously, like three separate streams of water converging together into the depths of “Old Hickory” lake. Good, Evil and the Presidency was not only the foremost thought on my mind, it also was the title of the PBS documentary that I watched in preparation for my visit. Was I about to enter the hallowed ground of an American hero? James Parton, the "father of American biography,” described Andrew Jackson as, “a patriot and a traitor, a democratic autocrat, an urban savage, an atrocious saint.” Perhaps I was about to enter enemy territory, as my own proclivities had reminded me that I was about to enter the landmark of the founder of the democratic party wrapped in the slogan of a jackass. As I wiped my feet on the doormat before entering, all partisan ideologies were swept away and left at the door. I was here not to judge, but to learn.
At the heart of the Hermitage and its mission is to preserve, educate, and inspire this conviction: knowing where we come from is essential to understanding who we are now…and how to get to where we want to go next. The Hermitage and many American historical sites and monuments must continue to be preserved regardless of our political affiliations, partisan ideologies, and whether we find these historical sites to be offensive to our own personal cultures or history. Inside the museum, the first thing I noticed were these words: Insiders, Scoundrels, and Crooks written in bold large letters. Directly beneath it was a brief description of how Andrew Jackson viewed the power in Washington. “The government abandoned the principles of the Revolution and Jackson feared the rise of an aristocratic class that served its own needs over the needs of the people.” That seems to be the cornerstone of what motivated Jackson to run for office. The Jacksonian era (1828 – 1840) was a transformational era. It was a time when the political arena was reserved only for the wealthiest and most prominent Americans. Most white men who did not own land were not allowed to vote or hold public office. Andrew Jackson, coming from poor and humble beginnings, made promises to uplift the working classes of white men who deserved equal rights and equal laws and loved liberty. Andrew Jackson was the heroic symbol of the “common man” and it was his democratic ideas that transformed American politics into the democratic ideas we have today.
In the lessons of the past are the seeds of the future. Looking back from the enormous mansion, I see the perfectly manicured ground, the plush green grass, the sound of the natural springs off in the distance. Momentarily, I glance over at the slave cabins and the serenity of this scene is assaulted with the revelation that I was enjoying a moment of peace on the grounds of a slave plantation. There is no peace in oppression no matter how well a master may have treated those to whom servitude has encroached upon their humanity, arresting their freedoms, and subjecting them to a life of bondage. It is as if this sweltering summer day in June 2019 just got hotter, as I came to terms with the fact that one of America’s hero’s enslaved and oppressed other human beings, and at the expense of their labor, he became rich enough to own a place like the Hermitage. Andrew Jackson’s contradictions of character are very indistinct within his own words spoken during his farewell address: “Humble members of society have the right to complain of injustice of their government. We can at least take a stand against any prostitution of our government to the advancement of the few at the expense of the many.”
So, let us take a look at the questions and challenges of today in-light-of the past. The key Democratic principles set forth by Andrew Jackson would be utilized many generations later by American women, Black people, and other minorities to advance their rights with the same passion and purpose that Jackson used for white men. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed by Congress included extensive measures to dismantle Jim Crow segregation and combat racial discrimination. In 2008 America elected its first Black President of the United States. Instead of looking at how far we have progressed in-view-of the past, there are movements today that have already identified a list of more than one hundred monuments, street names, school names and other landmarks that are considered offensive and they want them removed. Among the monuments and names on their list is the iconic statue of former President Andrew Jackson in the French Quarter, New Orleans. There have been many states and over one hundred cities and towns that have already renamed the Federal holiday, Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples' Day. Recently, there have been discussions about removing statues of George Washington as well. These groups are attacking the very legitimacy of America and Washington is the key symbolic figure of our nation. I was most impressed by the fact that over 80% of the actual artifacts are from when Andrew Jackson lived at the Hermitage and over 90% of the furnishings are original. What makes this site so important is the existence of artifacts creates legitimacy. Going after statues and other cultural icons is part of the Marxist playbook. Is this where we really want to go next? We should take heed from the warning by one of George Orwell’s characters in his novel “1984: “Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, and every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped.” (Orwell, 1949, p. 195).
“The only thing new in the world is the history you do not know.” – President Harry S. Truman.
Let us look at Adolf Hitler. He was a painter as young man but by the 1930’s his interest was far from being that of an art aficionado. It was more about power – art as a means of control. The theft and destruction of art and antiquities was included in Hitler’s Nero Decree. This was not just the arbitrary act of being malicious. To make people disappear both physically and symbolically is exactly what Hitler was after. Hitler learned that if you can control a culture’s past then you can rewrite their history. In a 1948 speech to the House of Commons, Winston Churchill said, “Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it.”
Why would 350 men and women from 13 different countries with the average age of 40 who were museum curators, architects, archivists, art scholars, artists and historians join the war in World War Two? The answer is described best in George Clooney’s character, Frank Stokes, based on the real person George Leslie Stout in the movie Monuments Men. “You can wipe out an entire generation; you can burn their homes to the ground and somehow, they will still find their way back. But if you destroy their history, you destroy their achievements, and it is as if they never existed. That is what Hitler wants and that is exactly what we are fighting for.”
Have we not learned from the lessons of the past? Are we condemned here in America to repeat the atrocities of the past by removing the very art, artifacts, monuments, statues, and historical sites much like the Hermitage? And in so doing, we will be creating a void that may be filled by those thirsty for power with an opportunity to rewrite our history. Could we go as far as to consider the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights to be outdated with the need to be rewritten? Is that where we really want to go next? Without places like the Hermitage, the only new in the world of future generations will be in the history that has been re-written for them. Cultural geographer Derek Alderman uses the terms “symbolic domination” and “symbolic annihilation” to explain the absence of slavery in some Southern museums, which instead portray the pre-Civil War South as a pastoral utopia. If you remove the physical objects that serve as evidence for a cultural narrative, then it becomes possible to rewrite history through omission – an act of symbolic domination (Campbell, 2014).
I would recommend visiting this site to a friend, because the most important aspect of the Hermitage is that it’s foundation and artifacts preserve our historical narratives that provide the evidence of our cultural legitimacy. Without these historical sights to remind us of America’s past struggles, triumphs, and atrocities, then the seeds of our future would be exhausted in the soils of our past.
References
Campbell, P. (2014, April 11). Why Hitler Stole Art. Medium; Medium. https://medium.com/@peterbcampbell/why-hitler-stole-art-2136f1f54e77
Orwell, G. (1949). 1984 [Review of 1984]. Secker & Warburg.