That Mr. Schlesinger is unrepentant, Montgomery was in a position to prove . For although he had
written to his publisher to correc t
a number of the inaccuracies in th e
WM. F. BUCKLEY, JR . original version, he had not inserte d
any reference to the central per version : the omission of any mention
Has History Tenure ?
of the artillery found on Sacco an d
Vanzetti at the moment they wer e
Mr . Robert H. Montgomery of Bosto n guard's heart . Vanzetti was carrying apprehended . ("My book," Schlethinks Arthur Schlesinger Jr . ' s obses- a .38-caliber revolver, fully loaded . singer had written Montgomer y
sive partisanship has disqualified hi m He had four 12-gauge shotgun shell s defensively, "is entitled The Age of
as a historian . Mr . Schlesinger, say s in a pocket. This evidence, and posi- Roosevelt, not The Age of Sacco and
Mr . Montgomery, an alumnus of tive identification, led to Vanzetti' s Vanzetti." )
Harvard and an attorney, has pu t being convicted of an earlier, unsucMr . Pusey conceded that Mr .
history at the disposal of ideology . cessful Bridgewater payroll holdup, Montgomery's specific charge on th e
Under the circumstances, he feels , in which a 12-gauge shotgun ha d treatment of the Sacco-Vanzetti cas e
Harvard's tenure appointment of Mr .
been used . "
was "well documented," but adde d
Schlesinger is, so to speak, Reversibl e
Rather a lot to leave out if th e that there was no proof whateve r
Error .
readers of Mr . Schlesinger, historian , that Schlesinger had done anythin g
To illustrate his point, Mr. Mont- are supposed to have some idea o f so "flagrant" as to provoke the Corpogomery cites Schlesinger's account , the facts on the basis of which one ration to review his qualifications .
(in the first volume of his Age of decides whether Sacco and Vanzett i If a professor's academic performanc e
Roosevelt) of the Sacco-Vanzetti case , were executed because they wer e becomes slipshod, said Mr . Pusey, h e
which so indelibly marked the Amer- tried at "a time of hysteria," or be - will be punished, don 't you worry :
ican psyche. Shortly after the book cause they had killed a man, an d the fellow members of the facult y
was published, the New Bedford then exploited their anarchism to at - will lose their respect for him—" a
(Mass .) Standard-Times charged Mr. tract the sympathy (which they surepotent form of discipline . "
Schlesinger with "deliberate distor- ly did in the seven ensuing years) o f
Potent, hell, Montgomery sho t
tion or, even worse, deliberate falsithe intellectual class of six continents . back. Who at Harvard thinks the les s
fication . "
Certainly Mr. Schlesinger did not of Schlesinger for domesticating hisThe editorial, which Mr . Mont- intimate that there were two issue s tory to the service of the Liberal
gomery quoted in a letter of protes t involved, one whether S-V were fair- Establishment? Pusey himself would
to President Pusey of Harvard, re - ly tried, the other whether they were not bother, Montgomery predicted, t o
produced Schlesinger's breezy an d guilty of the crime . At any rate, if refer the complaint to Schlesinger' s
tendentious treatment of the cas e posthumous victories mean anything , Department . Nor would he, Mont(" . . . police picked up two Italian s Sacco and Vanzetti can take comfor t gomery, take the trouble to pass
in an automobile filled with the in- in having joined the ranks of th e the word, "knowing how futile it
nocent and febrile literature o f world's most famous martyrs . "Th e would be to expect that little mutua l
anarchistic propaganda . . . Thes e momentum of the established order admiration society to do anything bu t
were the days of the red scare . . . required the execution of Sacco and screech about academic freedom an d
they stood little chance as confessed Vanzetti, " Schlesinger quotes the pub- rude intrusion from the outside." If
radicals, aliens and draft-dodgers i n lisher of the Boston Herald, "an d pressure is ever brought to bear on
a time of hysteria . " ) The editorial never in your life or mine, has tha t Mr. Schlesinger, it will be from the
detailed the facts Mr . Schlesinger had momentum acquired such tremendou s outside . But "while the slow proces s
got wrong in his jaunty chronicle ; force. "
of bringing Schlesinger into disrepute
but more important than the facts
goes on, his undergraduate student s
twisted were the facts he had lef t
Mr . Montgomery attempted to ge t will continue to be taught falsehood s
out altogether, which turned out t o from President Pusey, and from and his graduate students will b y
be those that were most incriminat- Harvard's Dean, Mr. McGeorge precept and example be taught dising. When Sacco and Vanzetti wer e Bundy, satisfaction on the followin g honest methods of scholarship ."
arrested for murder, said the edi- point: If in fact Mr. Schlesinger write s
Dean Bundy dismissed Monttorial, " they were not carrying ' liter- not history, but a perversion of it tha t gomery by stating that Lawrenc e
ature.' They were carrying guns .
suits his purpose, is he entitled t o Lowell, who was president of Harvar d
Sacco had a .32-caliber pistol cona Harvard chair? "Mr. Schlesinger' s at the time of the trial and side d
taining nine bullets . He had 23 addi- political and social views and opinion s with the court against Sacco an d
tional bullets in his pockets . Th e are not in issue . The issue is whethe r Vanzetti, a) was Bundy's great-uncle ,
bullets were of such a rare type a s a man who flagrantly and without re- and b) would not himself, howeve r
to be unique ; no duplicate could b e pentance has again and again viomuch he disagreed with him, have
found by prosecution or defense fo r lated the rules and ethics of scholar - taken disciplinary action agains t
ballistic test purposes. They matche d ship is qualified to be a professor o f Schlesinger : "President Lowell woul d
the type of bullet found in the dead history and a teacher of youth ."
(Continued on p . 334)
THE IVORY TOWER
THE IVORY TOWER
(Continued from p. 328)
have found absurd the notion that a
Harvard professor should be fired for
what he did not write about the
Sacco-Vanzetti Case ." (Remember
this one . If God's in his heaven, it
will find a place in logic textbooks . )
And so the Administration o f
Harvard, by its own admission, has
taken no action whatever. Perhaps
McGeorge Bundy, dialing the number himself on his private line, calle d
Schlesinger up . I can imagine a conversation about as follows : "Arthur ?
Mac Bundy . "
"Yeah, hi Mac . "
"Okay . I've been going over all
this Montgomery correspondence, an d
there's a trustee meeting coming up ,
and Montgomery sent them all copies.
Tell me, Arthur, what about th e
goddam guns they found on Sacc o
and Vanzetti? "
"Oh—well, that's a complicate d
story, Mac, and I don't really hav e
time to go into it . "
Bundy to Montgomery (Decembe r
19, 1957) : " . . . the evidence on guns
and bullets . . . is more complex tha n
your summary of it" (the rest of
the letter was about Dean Bundy's
great-uncle) .
I happen to have a high regar d
for Arthur Schlesinger Jr . Let m e
hasten to amplify that statement be fore my friends slit my throat, an d
Schlesinger slits his . I admire th e
man who can do as many things as
Schlesinger does, and do them so well .
I admire a man of demonstrate d
scholarly talent who, out of a livel y
sense of engagement in the affairs
of his country, contributes actively—
in Schlesinger's case formatively—
to the nation's political evolution .
(The fact that Mr . Schlesinger is
doing his best to make Americ a
uninhabitable is outside the point . )
I go so far as to say that Schlesinge r
is too intelligent to treat Montgomery's criticism so frivolously .
Something else weighs on him. H e
just can ' t bear to put it into hi s
book, about the revolver and th e
corresponding bullets. I suspect it i s
because to do so would force
Schlesinger himself to go back, an d
think through the case of Sacco an d
Vanzetti.
And all it means .