Peter Charles Hoffer

In the spring of 1805 Aaron Burr was a man without prospects. Having been dumped from the 1804 Democratic-Republican presidential ticket, he faced an indictment for murder in New Jersey and an investigation in his home state of New York resulting from his famous duel with Alexander Hamilton. In the face of these developments, Burr followed the example of thousands of Americans similarly down on their luck by going west in search of new opportunities. Once there he embarked upon a scheme designed to restore his faded fortunes, one which ended with the former vice president on trial in a Richmond courtroom for treason against the United States.

Burr’s conspiracy was the most controversial episode in a life that had no shortage of controversy. Given the circumstances and the subsequent efforts by the participants to avoid complicity, the exact details will probably never be known. Nor does Peter Charles Hoffer endeavor in this book to untangle the conflicting claims to ascertain Burr’s intentions to determine exactly what happened. Rather, his focus is on the legal aspects of the case, specifically its legacy for our definition of treason today. This was a matter of considerable importance to the revolutionary generation. As Hoffer notes, that treason was the only crime expressly defined by the Constitution reflected the experience of its authors with it, which led them to establish a higher standard of proof than had existed in English law. This standard – requiring an “overt act” and “two witnesses” – would become a deciding factor in Burr’s trial.

This was in part because of the circumspect way in which Burr carried out his plans. Their nebulous nature allows for a wide range of interpretations, and Hoffer’s argument that the scheme was merely an attempt to defraud investors rather than a serious effort to seize the Kentucky territory reflects his generous view of Burr as a gentleman whose greatest flaw was that he was too clever by half. One consequence of this is that it makes Thomas Jefferson appear practically Javert-esque in his attempts to gain a conviction of Burr – arguably unnecessarily so given the numerous examples Hoffer documents of the president’s efforts to influence the outcome of the trial. And if Jefferson is the villain of Hoffer’s book it is John Marshall who emerges as its hero, as his decisions as the judge in both Burr’s trial and the related proceedings against Erick Bollman that preceded it proved important milestones in confirming the higher standard for treason that exists to this day.

Hoffer’s expertise as a legal historian is on full display in this book. In it he provides an extremely useful account of the evolution of treason in American law, as well as a damming autopsy of the proceedings against Burr and his associates. While his interpretation of Burr’s activities might be excessively generous, this does not detract from the book’s value as an account of the legal proceedings against Burr and their legacy in the American legal system. In these respects, the consequences of Burr’s dramatic activities are still with us today.… (mehr)

I moved this book higher on my reading list because of the flap over Ginnie Jones' s extensive lifting of material from others and her sloppy attempts at paraphrase on Goodreads. It's an excellent resource on the genesis and practice of plagarism from the perspective of the professional historian.

I have to admit I like popular history, i.e., Tuchman, Nevins, Catton, Goodwin, anything with a narrative not too full of data and graphs although they certainly have a place.(Hoffer would call this consensus history.)

Hoffer, who was on the American Historical Association's Professional Division, examines the difference between "popular history" (dare I suspect some envy on the part of "non-popular" historians whose books don't sell as well?) and what he worries is the new sloppiness of history writing. Not to mention frauds (Ellis' faking having served in Vietnam -- something I would argue has nothing to do with his books -- and Bellesiles' faking of data in his book [.book:Arming America The Origins of a National Gun Culture|2216931]

Hoffer's antipathy reveals itself almost immediately as he describes
[b:Founding Brothers The Revolutionary Generation|7493|Founding Brothers The Revolutionary Generation|Joseph J. Ellis|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165625855s/7493.jpg|1290896] as "slickly written and imaginatively framed." He argues that Goodwin, Ellis, Ambrose, and Bellesile brought disrespect on the profession by their actions and destroyed confidence in them by the public. Hoffer examines the four cases in some detail.

The first half or so of the book is a very interesting review of the changes in historiography, from adulatory, i.e. consensus history that relied in part on plagiaristic practices of repeating what had been said before; "consensus history was winners' history written and read by the winners." For this reason consensus history's fabrications, falsehoods, and plagiarism -- plagiarism was quite common among 19th century historians. Parkman, in particular, never cited his sources and borrowed liberally. In light of our recent Ginnie debacle, I find that interesting.) actually immunized it from criticism in elite and learned circles." Authors practicing consensus history were such giants as Francis Parkman, George Bancroft and, surprisingly, Theodore Roosevelt. More recently, Nevins, Commager (the two, one right, the other left, wrote a popular history textbook in the fifties) and Daniel Boorstin.

Some of this information is unsettling as well -- for me at least, and I suppose I should have been aware of such things, ignorant as I am. Boorstin's Americans trilogy has also been one of my favorites, yet Hoffer reveals it to be consensus history of the most blatant kind, ignoring the role of slaves, Indians and woman. He attributes some of this perhaps to Boorstin's over-reaction to his fellow-traveling in the 30's. He continued to assuage his guilt by ratting on fellow academics before HUAC (despicable) and even went so far as to suggest that no Communist should be allowed to teach college. Hoffer suggests his trilogy was another way to compensate by promoting a national and consensus view of American history.

The "new history", was one that celebrated diversity of viewpoints, statistical analysis, and disputation among its adherents. So the professionalization and changes in the nature of historical analysis left the way open for self-criticism and the embarrassment of the four disgraced historians who's transgressions he reviews in some depth. Historians, after the battle over the Enola Gay Smithsonian exhibition, had lost a lot of credibility. "Were they losing their most important readership and forfeiting their authority by writing more and more about less and less." David Hoolinger didn't think so, "Don't forget that the larger community of readers we call 'the public' is less able than our trained, learned colleagues to evaluation [sic:] the truth of what we write." Correct perhaps; injudicious certainly.

The irony of Hoffer's condemnation is that the four aforementioned had all been academic historians, and his broad brush tends to taint non-academic historians who have not been accused of any misdeeds: David McCullough, James McPherson, Rick Atkinson, Barbara Tuchman, and many many others, several who came out of the ranks of journalism remain unsullied so perhaps the fault lies more in the world of academia with their reliance on graduate assistants than with the popularization of history that he decries. And yet -- and I suspect this comment might engender quite a bit of comment -- the four cases Hoffer cites, with perhaps the exception of Bellesile, are not grievous errors of falsification. Plagiarism sucks, to put it bluntly, but I guess one could argue it's also a form of flattery. Ambrose really liked Childers' writing (see my reviews of Ambrose and Childers' books). He just took it as his own. Goodwin settled out of court and explained her plagiarism was inadvertent and sloppy attribution but still admitted it was wrong, and Ellis' sin was to lie about his lack of service in Vietnam. But none of these even hinted that their historical work was factually or interpretations were flawed. So, I would argue, the authors may be flawed personally but not professionally.

The chapters on Ambrose and Goodwin I found especially dispiriting. I have nothing against narrative and consensus history- I enjoy it, in fact, but their wholesale lifting of passages from secondary sources -- well documented in Ambrose's case all the way back to his first books -- was distasteful. Goodwin rationalized her failure in not adding quotation marks to the hundreds of purloined passages by saying they "would have ruined the narrative flow." Her comments should be taken as disingenuous given that Simon and Schuster paid a monetary settlement in secret to the offended author several years before the Ambrose debacle. Citations to the pilfered works there were; but no indication that passages were lifted verbatim making it look like Ambrose and Goodwin had been working from the primary sources rather than the secondary. Had they added the quotation marks it would have been more apparent they were doing a "cut-and-paste" job.

The last few chapters are less successful than the beginning. He tries too hard to make a case the distinction between using "facts" to write history and biography that are commonly known and attributing based on whether they were obtained through secondary or primary sources. The he goes on about attributing to specific historians films and other non-print works that have been used developing background for the works.

This book could be read in conjunction with [b:History Wars The Enola Gay and Other Battles for the American Past|178302|History Wars The Enola Gay and Other Battles for the American Past|Tom Engelhardt|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172460968s/178302.jpg|172243]
… (mehr)

This is a primer for a philosophy of history. Clearly history has bias and omissions and every author has his or her own viewpoint to impart to the "facts." But really, fact is on some level inaccessible as well, because the primary sources obviously have their own bias and only certain "types" of people (usually the dominant social groups) get to write lasting histories. This book addresses those difficulties plus outlines all of the different fallacies that historians can fall into. It was an okay book; I wish that the author had spent less time defining really simple concepts (puns, really?) and focused more on solving the actual "paradox" of the title.… (mehr)

A decent book, though it is sort of lopsided against the old school. As if there is no merit in the works of Bancroft, Parkman, or Prescott (or, for that matter, someone like Shelby Foote). Hoffer is of the modern, and, yes, liberal, stance of historians that believes there is no such thing as heroes, and narrative is to be shunned as "popular." The vitriol of my professors that is thrown at Niall Ferguson or H. W. Brands is as hilarious as it is sickening. Though he recognizes some of the faults of the "New History," it is the old "Consensus History" that is ultimately racist, capitalist, and materialistic. That, and Hoffer does not spend adequate time attacking Michael Bellesiles, focusing primarily on the phantom probate records and not the invented California records and his other out and out lies. It seems that Hoffer gives Bellesiles a pass because, well, his heart was in the right place, trying to prove that Americans weren't "gun crazy" until after the Civil War, and there was no individual right to keep and bear arms. Really? At least he was trying to topple King Consensus (read: Conservative Values) and his only sin was doing it wrong. Striking because the chapter on Bellesiles is only 16 pages long, whereas the harangue on Stephen Ambrose is 14 pages long itself. Ambrose wrote for the public and espoused, well, militaristic, individualistic, conservative values. Don't believe me? The plagiarism of Doris Kearns Goodwin, darling of the left and the press and President Obama today for her supine and misguided Team of Rivals is only given six, just six, pages. And telling is that though the plagiarism of Ambrose and Goodwin was first revealed in the pages of a conservative journal, The Weekly Standard, Hoffer claims that Goodwin's was seemingly done by "conservative critics" with "delight" (p. 198). And that of Ambrose was done by whom? Stone-faced, a-political automatons with reserved shame and disappointment? Then the verbs. Supporters of Ellis, for instance, "explain" and "state" and "say" while Ann Coulter "snarls." Really?

The point is that the old histories of Prescott and Parkman weren't wrong, they were just incomplete. And the historians of today often go wrong trying to be complete. Their headlong rush into relativism is sad, as is their apparent glee to not be relativistic when it comes to dead white men, who they greedily pull off their pedestals and smack their shoes on. Historians, both old and new, build their "truth" on the same "facts," though their building styles may be radically different. The difference is that modern historians sometimes put too much emphasis on the current, hip, trendy "truth" at the expense of putting a good foundation of facts beneath it. And too they will forget that mankind is drawn to stories and heroes, no matter how much they denigrate the concept of heroism as outdated and reactionary.

Which is why the public still likes John Wayne, no matter how much the "Brights" snicker at him. It is why those in "Blue" states look down on those in the "Red" states.

But, I digress.… (mehr)