Nearly 80 years ago, a short volume by a 22-year-old graduate student showed the potential of one of the 20th century’s greatest historians.

Schlesinger at the New York Public Library. Source: The New York Public Library

Note: this is the first entry in First Books, an occasional series reviewing the first book of a noteworthy historian or intellectual.

Rarely has a first book by a historian had as interesting of a back story as Orestes A. Brownson: A Pilgrim’s Progress by Arthur Schlesinger Jr. In most cases beginning in the late 19th century, the first book comes as a published dissertation, crafted over several years and only resulting from the rigorous process of the Ph.D. program. But Schlesinger’s first book came together outside of the Ph.D. process and much sooner than many of his contemporaries. At the age of 22, Schlesinger was able to craft a striking biography at the level of his older peers, and show numerous hints of the historian-activist he would later become.

Schlesinger’s first book was an outgrowth of his senior honors thesis. He had undertaken an intellectual biography for his initial work like many of his peers, and his subject was one which his adviser had a close familiarity. Perry Miller, the giant of 20th-century intellectual history in general and New England studies in particular, had written on the 19th century Transcendentalists mainly in passing. He and his cohorts had mostly ignored Orestes Brownson, choosing to focus on more eminent writers and politicians. But Miller taught Schlesinger the ins and outs of intellectual history, including the balance between analyzing philosophical systems and the impact those systems had on society at large. In essence, Miller taught Schlesinger how to analyze Brownson as Miller had analyzed Increase Mather.

Orestes Brownson is, like the first books of many of his contemporaries, a penetrating biography about a complex man. Schlesinger uses the frame of John Bunyan’s A Pilgrim’s Progress to narrate many of the key events in Brownson’s life. The historian traces Brownson’s early life and career with the Transcendentalists, to his time as a political radical and agitator for the Workingmen’s Party, up through his turn to theology and his eventual conversion to conservatism and Catholicism. Brownson took all of these positions with a nearly superhuman vigor, no matter how he ended up in the view of the public. According to Schlesinger, Brownson was “a proud and lonely man, dedicated to his search and filled with a passionate honesty that never let him rest short of final satisfaction.” (p. 276)

Schlesinger’s frame of A Pilgrim’s Progress is helpful, since it situates and explains the chaotic changes in Brownson’s career. The idea of a pilgrimage keeps Brownson from appearing as the flighty eccentric that he did to his antebellum peers. Instead, Brownson comes across as a capable, passionate intellectual, one who applies as much zeal to the radical phase of his career as he does to the conservative Catholic phase. Schlesinger wrote, “Brownson had no compunctions about rushing from certainty, and always he believed each new direction to be the right one.” (p. 277)

Brownson shows a unique period in Schlesinger’s career that opens up a window into his later fame. At this point, Schlesinger was ensconced in the life of the academy. He wrote scholarly books and reviews instead of magazine articles and campaign booklets. His career matched closer to his father than that of prominent contemporary intellectuals like Walter Lippmann or Reinhold Niebuhr. But even in this work, one can start to see Schlesinger’s future as a prominent liberal in the way that he describes Brownson’s career. Schlesinger heaped particular praise on Brownson for his activities as a radical, especially as one who helped further the political cause of the Workingmen’s Party. His writings on the Catholic Church and his support of the Whigs are presented dispassionately and glossed over. Overall, Schlesinger’s analysis shows his future leanings towards the principles of liberalism and his affinity for the ability of intellectuals to influence politicians.

In many ways, Schlesinger’s first book is clearly an amateurish output. Its analysis of the slavery question is muddled, with the reader never learning what exactly Brownson thought about slavery or why those thoughts mattered. Schlesinger also exaggerates the significance of his subject, remarking at one point that Brownson was a forgotten, confused thinker before also crediting him with one of the most cogent and detailed analyses of political economy in the 19th century. But at the same time, Schlesinger’s first work accomplishes its intended goal: showing the importance and significance of a man who may have otherwise been lost in the historical record.