Bernard Bailyn Memorial Remarks October 25, 2020

Abstract

T poem that John just read makes two striking appearances in Professor Bailyn’s most important book, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution. It appears in full in the opening section and is quoted again in the final paragraph of the Postscript that he added to the twenty-fifth Anniversary Edition of 1992. Bud called this Postscript, “Fulfillment: A Commentary on the Constitution.” In it he argued that the constitutional arguments of the late 1780s had indeed “corrected the cave—enlarged its dimensions, reshaped it, modernized it.” And we also “may weave and flitter, dip and soar in perfect courses through the blackest air. In that spirit we too—in the very happiest intellection—may continue to correct the cave.” This is a striking metaphor for the debates that Bud had examined so carefully. But it is also a strange and surprising image to insert here. He must have put it there for some other purpose. When Bud alludes to “the very happiest intellection” in that final sentence, he was illuminating his own remarkable creativity as a historian just as much as he was describing the events of the Revolution. I want to use my few minutes here this afternoon to muse about the creativity that made Professor Bailyn the most brilliant, influential, and intellectually cosmopolitan American historian of the past century, and also our field’s greatest narrative artist. My starting point for this discussion was his research seminar, which was a transformative experience for so many of