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AMERICAN PATRIOTISM
and JAMES FENIMORE COOPER Remarks by Patrick Killough to Black Mountain Rotary Club Tuesday February 26, 2008 I. INTRODUCTION President Bob Keener, Rotarians, guests. Two weeks ago Dave Alexander invited me to speak on my three decades as a Foreign Service Officer of the U. S. Department of State. I agreed to talk about my career, amusing as it often was -- but not directly. I propose to talk not about me and my life as a diplomat, but rather about the object and motive of myself and others who made Foreign Service our career: old fashioned, apple pie American patriotism. That is, "service above self" to America abroad. II. NARRATIVE
President Bob opened the meeting with patriotic song: the chorus from George M. Cohan's "Johnny, Get Your Gun." Experts say that a million men enlisted to fight the Kaiser after hearing the words to "Over There." How often have we risen and sung our national anthem! Its score was by an Englishman and the original lyrics invoked the Greek poet Anacreon. This shows that our patriotism is built upon layers of history and culture. One of America's layers is Europe. Even America’s Presidential processional, "Hail to the Chief!" goes back to the European highlands of Sir Walter Scott. Rotarians sing classic patriotic songs like "God Bless America," and "America the Beautiful.” We take a classic "Pledge of Allegiance." Words and tunes lift us up, unite us as Americans. Patriotism also has its sober, serious dimension -- in stories and literary classics: including British poems and novels by Sir Walter Scott and American tales by James Fenimore Cooper. Reading books by men and women who loved their countries for good cause uplifts us. I hope to show you today that patriotism can be serious. It can be humorous. Patriotism is deep and perplexing. It is also simple and straight from the shoulder. There are also messages by famous men and humorists on the subjects of foreign policy, diplomacy and patriotism, some cynical, others amusing. Here is a sampling: -- "When
women are depressed, they eat or go shopping. Men invade another
country. It’s a whole different way of thinking." (Elayne
Boosler, comedenne)
-- "An ambassador is an honest man sent abroad to lie for his country." (This was said 200 years before James Fenimore Cooper by a British diplomatist, Henry Wotton.) -- "Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." (George Bernard Shaw) and finally --"Breathes
there the man with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said, 'This is my own, my native land!" (Sir Walter Scott, THE LAY OF THE LAST MINSTREL, Canto VI) James Fenimore Cooper and Patriotism
Why did I offer a talk linking patriotism and the writer James Fenimore Cooper? Because Cooper is on my mind. in April I will teach a four-week adult education course for Montreat College/MCCALL on five novels of Fenimore Cooper, the LEATHERSTOCKING TALES. Their fictional American hero Nathaniel "Natty" Bumppo would have lived from around 1720 until 1805. He was born on the eastern seaboard and died an octogenarian 500 miles west of the Mississippi, far south of where Lewis and Clark trudged westward. Fictional Natty's real creator, James Fenimore Cooper lived from 1789 to 1851 and wrote 32 novels. He was a naval officer. He was American consul for Lyons, France. In his writings, patriotism is a serious, recurring theme, never knee-jerk, always awe-inspiring but mysterious and a challenge to understand, Fenimore Cooper through his characters wondered: is there something absolutely new, unique and wondrously creative about the USA? Or is America just another chapter in the history of Europe, doomed to decay and disappear? Cooper laid out the diversity which would make an American Union notably difficult: ownership of black slaves, and not only in the South, pre-revolutionary dislike of British army officers for Quakers lukewarm in the defense of Pennsylvania against French and Indians, and on and on. Cooper’s second novel, THE SPY, made him world famous. It showcased General George Washington as running a human intelligence network in nearby British-occupied Manhattan. THE SPY told the story of Harvey Birch, a little man, society's nobody, a traveling peddler. Yet Birch was Washington's most trusted undercover agent. Patriotic secrecy caused Birch thoughout his long life to remain despised by patriots as a British spy. In THE SPY Cooper had created the first American historical novel. Cooper's novel THE PILOT spoke of the infant American navy and John Paul Jones. Cooper also wrote a powerful history of that Navy. He created a new genre of fiction, the sea adventure story. In the fifth and last of the five LEATHERSTOCKING TALES, THE DEERSLAYER, young Natty Bumppo, aged 18 or 20, is introduced by his teenage Indian name, Deerslayer. He then kills his first man in a fair fight. That dying Indian gives him a new name, Hawk Eye, the first of several titles earned rather than baptized into. Natty earns more names, Leatherstocking, the Pathfinder and to his admiring French foes, la longue carabine, the Long Rifle. The fame of this illiterate, talkative, honorable, fearless man, at home only on the fringes of civilized American society, spread round the world. In April 1917 when America declared war on Germany, a relieved French statesmen said, "The
spirit of Leatherstocking lives."
Natty had been orphaned young, taught for a while by Moravian missionaries, but then lived with Delaware Indians as a teen. He was proud to be a white man, with white gifts and responsibilities, to have had white European ancestors named Bumppo “bumping” along through time. They must have been handy with rifles, he thought. But his two greatest friends were red men, Chingachgook, the Great Serpent, and his Achilles-like son Uncas, the last of the Mohicans. This began a long American literary tradition of white-red male friendship, including the Lone Ranger and Tonto. Cooper asked himself what any patriot asks: what is this country I am loyal to? What kind of people is it made up of? Is my country uplifting the brutish? Can it assure law and order? Can it pass along the past while remaining open to undreamed of futures? For Colonials to secede in 13 independent American republics, many subjects would have to become disloyal to their king. How would disloyalty impact the post-revolutionary USA? How did America look to the Pathfinder? It had two distinct frontiers. There was the land and there were the waters. The land was heavily forested when Natty was born around 1720. In New York, Europeans lived along the Hudson, the Mohawk and the openings to the Atlantic. America’s second frontier was the North Atlantic. When Nathaniel Bumppo was born, Lake Otsego (Glimmerglass to the Indians) had not yet felt a white foot. Nearly seven decades later James’ father, Judge William Cooper, would found on its banks Cooperstown. Styled Templeton, this settlement provided the locale for Fenimore's novel THE PIONEERS set in 1793. It introduced Natty Bumppo, already quite an old man, and an even older Chingachgook reduced to a drunken, embittered Christian, John Mohegan Indian John. The fictitious Templeton reminds of Wallingford, Vermont, where the First Rotarian, Paul Harris grew up a hundred years after Fenimore Cooper. To create Rotary, Harris transplanted Wallingford to Chicago. He might as easily have transplanted Cooperstown/Templeton as they were in 1793. North America, claimed and occupied by French, British and Spanish, still had more Indians than whites in its populations. Its land frontiers moved out in waves: first of explorers, then of migrant squatters, then of settlers in the first communities with their law courts, forts, shops and churches. Cooper described them all. America always had its eccentric libertarians, marginal men like Natty who flourished only in wildernesses. Once, in THE DEERSLAYER, a woman proposed marriage to Natty. Once, in THE PATHFINDER, Natty proposed marriage to a woman. But conscience reminded that aloofness and celibacy were central to his vocation. God also required Natty to be a loyal army scout, never to absent himself from duty and roll calls. For America to become one English-speaking nation, people had to stop being subjects of a King three thousand miles across the Atlantic. Americans had to become citizens, not subjects. They had to change allegiance. And that was wrenching for many Americans, including Leatherstocking. His creator, James Fenimore Cooper, had himself married into a prominent loyalist family. Readers regret that Cooper did not write of Hawkeye's adventures during the Revolution. That would not have been easy. Why not? Because Natty Bumppo fought loyally for the British! When and how and why this quintessential American patriot changed sides is never made clear. Always true to himself and to his God, Nathaniel Bumppo in THE PRAIRIE, died in an Indian camp in 1805. At Natty's side was a young American army officer, Captain Duncan Uncas Middleton, grandson of British Major Duncan Heyward and beautiful blonde Alice Munro of THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS. Out in Nebraska, surrounded by mourning Pawnee Indians, worn out old Leatherstocking, now known simply as The Trapper, drew his last breath. Summoning one final burst of strength, he who was once Deerslayer struggled to his feet, stood at attention, faced the clouds and responded firmly to a Voice only he heard. It was his last military roll call. His long rifle Killdeer in hand, and standing ramrod straight, Nathaniel Bumppo, Pathfinder, Hawkeye, loudly proclaimed, "Here!" and expired. III. CONCLUSION
Let me wrap up. James Fenimore Cooper, through his five LEATHERSTOCKING novels of Natty Bumppo showed us that patriotism has its layers and is complicated, not always easy to explain. But patriotism has other dimensions, too. It can be funny. But it can also be emotional and instantly effective. Take the case of "song and dance man" George M. Cohan. In 1936, FDR presented George M. Cohan with The Congressional Gold Medal of Honor for contributions to World War I morale, in particular the songs "You're A Grand Old Flag" and "Over There." Think of the 1942 film for which James Cagney won his only academy award. Cagney played songwriter George M. Cohan in YANKEE DOODLE DANDY. The Japanese Empire had struck Pearl Harbor. Hitler ruled much of Europe. Midway through YANKEE DOODLE DANDY come these lines: "It seems it always happens. Whenever we
get too high-hat and too sophisticated for flag-waving, some thug
nation decides we're a push-over all ready to be blackjacked. And it
isn't long before we're looking up, mighty anxiously, to be sure the
flag's still waving over us."
Suppose in weeks to come President Bob once again invites us to be upstanding and sing a song by George M. Cohan, maybe, "You're a grand old flag?" Is it too much to imagine the dying Trapper, Natty Bumppo, joining us, ramrod straight and saying, "Here!" Thank you. -OOO- =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-=-=-=--=--=-=---=--=--=- Over there, over there,
Send the word, send the word over there - That the Yanks are coming, The Yanks are coming, The drums rum-tumming Ev'rywhere. So prepare, say a pray'r, Send the word, send the word to beware. We'll be over, we're coming over, And we won't come back till it's over Over there. GEORGE M. COHAN ==-=-=-=-=-=-=-=--==- http://external.oneonta.edu/cooper/articles/suny/2005 suny-harthorn.html>http://external.oneonta.edu/cooper/articles/suny/2005suny-harthorn.html on the evidence that Cooper planned a sixth LEATHERSTOCKING tale set in the American Revolution. Fascinating detective work by Harthorn. Black Mountain Sunday 02/28/2008 http://www.patrickkillough.com/books/cooper_patriotism.html |