Robert V. Remini, professor emeritus of history and the humanities at the University of Illinois at Chicago, is a respected political historian and the author of 20 books, including biographies of Andrew Jackson, Daniel Webster and Henry Clay. In a new biography, Remini took on a different sort of subject: Mormon Church founder Joseph Smith (see review on facing page). Remini recently chatted with Tribune literary editor Elizabeth Taylor about this turn in his career and the current fashions in writing history:
Q. How did you become interested in writing about Joseph Smith?
A. I never intended to write about Joseph Smith. I’m a political historian, and Joseph Smith was a religious figure. I thought, you know, I’ve taught in my courses on the Jacksonian era, I would talk about Joseph Smith as the great religious reformer, innovator. . . .
One day . . . I got a phone call from Penguin–I had done two books for them–and they said, “Would you consider doing [a biography of] Joseph Smith?” . . . They’ve done Buddha. They’ve done St. Augustine. They’ve done Pope John XXIII.
And they went to Amazon.com–any book that people had bought dealing with Joseph Smith. They then looked at that little sidebar [listing related books people had bought]. And “Remini” kept coming up. So they said, “How about it?” And I said, “But I’m not a Mormon.” Well, they said, “All the better.”
Q. In a certain way, Joseph Smith and the Mormons share some themes with other events about which you’ve written, like the Trail of Tears and American Indians. Are you fascinated by the powerless interacting with the power structure?
A. It’s the power politics that I’m fascinated by, and then maybe also the victims of the power play. Why were Mormons hated so? Why were they driven out? Why were they persecuted, like the Indians were driven out? What is it about the American character that can do these things?
And all of that in the Jacksonian period, where you have a concentration of it. There are race riots, even in Washington, at that time. And of course there is religious bigotry, not only against the Mormons but Catholics as well–and, of course, the Trail of Tears.
Q. It’s astonishing how little-known the Trail of Tears is.
A. We need to know about those things, because we do them again and again. We expelled the Indians, and look at during World War II, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was president. Japanese-Americans by the thousands were removed. In Europe it was happening with the Arabs.
Q. I understand that you’re switching gears from Joseph Smith and the Mormons and writing a history of the House of Representatives.
A. I just returned from Washington where I spent the week with the new congressmen who were going through orientation. Then the last day the Republicans had their conference in which they chose their leaders: the speaker, the majority leader, etc. And then the Democrats held their caucus and did the same. And they allowed me to attend both of them. I understand those have always been kept secret, and the very fact that they allowed me to come showed how interested they are in having this history written.
Q. Can you explain your approach to this vast history and whether you have discerned a theme?
A. One theme is the expansion and contraction of authority and influence by the House over a period of time depending on who was speaker. When you get a very strong, active, aggressive speaker, like Henry Clay, and you get a president who is weak, say James Madison–he was a great statesman, but he wasn’t a very powerful president–then the role of the House expands. And then of course it can contract under the influence of a very strong president who tries to direct it. Andrew Jackson, of course. Thomas Jefferson. . . .
The House was a democracy. It was meant to be the democratic branch of the government. Yet as somebody said, “Democracy is messy,” and it is. . . .
Almost from the beginning in the House, they opened the galleries to the public, because the public really wanted to know what was going on in their government, while the Senate was a secret meeting and it took a while before that changed. Henry Clay, who served in both the House and the Senate, said he much preferred the House. It was much more exciting. There was a give and take. It’s really extraordinary to watch the House in operation today. I mean, there are 435 of them. How can you maintain any kind of order?
Q. I understand that you have described yourself as a quick writer.
A. Well, I’m a steady writer. I disciplined myself early on. When I went to graduate school–I went to Fordham–I tended to write what I call Ciceronian sentences. I mean, they were enormous. They were so long. And Dumas Malone, a great Jefferson biographer, my mentor at Columbia, said to me, “Mr. Remini, you are prolix.” I knew what the word meant and I tried to analyze it and I realized, you see, that it took me forever to say anything.
So I started to work on my writing, and I devoted a lot of time to developing a style that would be comfortable. You know, that would sound like me. I hope people, when they read it, who know me, can hear my voice.
My father used to love to read what I wrote. And he told me once you can never start a sentence with a conjunction, but now I start paragraphs with a conjunction!
Q. So why didn’t you listen to your father?
A. I think those stilted attempts at a rhetorical style weren’t natural. I had to find my own voice. Over time, I do a lot of polishing and rewriting. I write fast in that I get it down so that there is structure and sense and interpretation and color. Then I go over it and polish it again so I can’t bore myself. If I bore myself, I’ll bore readers.
Q. How do you write for a popular audience but maintain your professional integrity?
A. We in the profession have a responsibility to convey what we learn, what we discover in our research to the general public, not just to other historians. The general public isn’t going to read it, you see, unless you make it as interesting and as colorful and as exciting and as dramatic as history always is. In the profession, those who had been popular and successful, like the late Stephen Ambrose, are sometimes sneered at. You know: “It’s popular stuff. It isn’t serious. It isn’t respectable. It isn’t scholarly.” And that isn’t true.
Q. If a college student asked you, “What can I learn from Jacksonian democracy?” how would you reply?
A. For one thing, and this is not being totally serious, about a third of our Ph.D students do their work in 20th Century history, and there are only jobs for about 3 percent. We’re loading the profession with all these 20th Century historians and nobody wants them or needs them.
The Jacksonian period is, to me, the most exciting, the most innovative. If you want to know what the American character is like, study the Jacksonian period because that’s when the American emerged. Prior to that time–just take a look at George Washington or any of those founders, they’re British, they’re colonials. They’re Europeans, with their powdered wigs and their ruffled sleeves and such. But look at Andrew Jackson, with his trousers! He looks American. I even think–I don’t really know this, but I do believe it–that we lost our British accent in the Jacksonian period.
But also, it’s a period where we emerged from the so-called Age of Reason into a romantic age that produced the best literature this country has ever had. It’s a golden age when you think of Whitman and Ralph Waldo Emerson, Herman Melville. Even lesser figures like Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Poe invented the detective story. Nathaniel Hawthorne. Margaret Fuller. The reforms that they began, from women’s rights to everything, I think, that’s good and interesting and dynamic and unique about America is then. . . .
There were the religious reforms. Not only the Mormons, but you have the Shakers. You had the Baptists and Methodists who became very, very popular at times. You got everything.
Q. Are there historians or other writers about whom you think, “Ah! I wish I’d written like that!”
A. Arthur Schlesinger. If I could write like Arthur Schlesinger, I’d give the world for that. And the other that I wish I could write like is Richard Hofstadter. He died at a very young age.
Q. What do you see ahead for the study of history?
A. We have gone too far into social history. Although I think social history is very, very important, I think we have neglected political narrative history. I am a narrative historian. I think historians have gotten too far away from telling a story.
Q. How is that at odds with social history?
A. I think with social history you can get into trivial subjects. I wouldn’t deny any scholar the right to research whatever he or she wishes to–that’s up to them to decide. But for a whole profession to sort of abandon what the public really wants to read. They want to know how their country evolved. Who are the people who made the difference?
