Commercial interests superseded the historical accuracy of the bicentennial organization
Dabney discusses his involvement with a bicentennial organization. Some leading scholars resigned from the organization for fear that the Revolutionary War was being overly commercialized.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Virginius Dabney, July 31, 1975. Interview A-0311-2. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
- DANIEL JORDAN:
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You are also active, I believe, in a private bicentennial organization.
the U.S. Bicentennial Commission.
- VIRGINIUS DABNEY:
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That's right. I'm chairman of the trustees of that and it is a private,
non-governmental agency which is trying to produce things that are
useful and valuable to people who want to observe the
Bicentennial. Some of these things are pretty expensive, decidedly
so, collectors' items and such things as replicas of George Washington's
pistols, beautiful silver mounted pistols. Also the pistols that
Hamilton and Burr fired at each other with, both of them reproduced
exactly at great expense. There are also some bone china plates, a dozen
of them with color portraits of prominent figures in the
Revolution. They are being sold to collectors and we are getting out a
book which may not make any money at all. I've got the jacket here if
you want to see it. It cost a great deal to produce. The authors are
quite distinguished people, the editor excepted. Henry Commager has
written a magnificent 20,000 word introduction and the brief sketches of
fifty patriots of the Revolution are by the people on the back of the
jacket, Morison and Commager and Bruce Catton and Merrill Peterson,
Alistair Cooke and others.
- DANIEL JORDAN:
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And you, of course, served as editor of the book which you have entitled
The Patriots.
- VIRGINIUS DABNEY:
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That's right.
- DANIEL JORDAN:
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Now, was there a controversy with this organization which led to the
resignation of certain trustees?
- VIRGINIUS DABNEY:
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It wasn't any serious controversy at all. For example, Admiral Morrison
served for a couple of years and helped us and wrote three of the
sketches for the book and we are on very friendly terms; but when we
brought up the matter of the Hamilton-Burr pistols, for some reason he
said that he was opposed to that and then he said, "I've been
worrying about some of the other things that you have been doing and I'm
not sure that I agree that all of them belong as parts of the
Revolutionary observance." Well, that
surprised us because one of the things that we had gotten out was a
series of plates of Winslow Homer's paintings, and of course, they had
nothing to do with the Revolution; they were mid-nineteenth century or
later. We chose Homer because the National Gallery of Art in Washington
said that he was the most thoroughly American painter and we thought
that this society ought to be concerned with the origins of American
culture as well as the actual events of the Revolution. We sent Admiral
Morison a set of the plates, and he was delighted with them; they had
his name on the back with the rest of the trustees, and he wrote us a
letter of fervent thanks, and said that they were beauties and he was
glad to have them. Later on, for some reason, he decided that some of
the things we were doing didn't belong in the Revolutionary concept that
he had. So, he said that he would rather just get off. Then, Alistair
Cooke had made several statements, including a speech to Congress, that
he thought all commercialization of the Revolution was wrong, that
nobody ought to commercialize the Revolution in any way at all. His
conscience got to gnawing at him; he was one of our trustees and was
being paid a trustees fee. He said very pleasantly that he thought he
ought to get off, too, because of that utterance, particularly, that he
had made to Congress. He also wrote three of the sketches, and is
relatively happy with the whole situation, but he just thinks that he
ought not to be a trustee. Vann Woodward was on it at first; we ran an
ad in which we had his name along with Morison and the other trustees
for the plates. It was in The New Yorker and he hadn't
realized that we were going to use his name in advertisements. We had
neglected to tell him and somebody got after him about it. He told me
that somebody did, and said that it made him kind
of unhappy to be kidded by people about having his name used in a
commercial enterprise like that. So, we said that it was perfectly all
right for him to resign, so he did.
- DANIEL JORDAN:
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Has there been any criticism beyond these examples given of the fact that
this is a commercial, private, profit-oriented organization?
- VIRGINIUS DABNEY:
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I haven't heard any. I'm sure that some people perfectly sincerely think
that nobody ought to do anything commercial that is connected with this
great anniversary. That is a perfectly valid point of view if they want
to think that. I didn't put up any money for any of these things. Those
who did, put up more than $20,000 to publish the book,
"The Patriots." To get that money back, they've got to
sell a lot of books, Those color plates, twelve color portraits, along
with black and white illustrations, are quite expensive. And everybody
had to be paid to write those fifty sketches. They were paid
$300 a piece, a total of $15,000. It is entirely
possible that the book will turn out to be a philanthropic proposition on
the part of the people that put up the money. There is another
philanthropic proposition, a musical number composed by Morton Gould
specifically for the Bicentennial. The U. S. Bicentennial Society put up
$5,000. There is a stipulation that nobody except the composer,
is to get any money out of this. A New York organization also put up
$5,000. So, that is pure contribution to observance of the
Revolution.
- DANIEL JORDAN:
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I don't want to belabor anything, but did you also write a letter that
was published in the Boston paper blaming . . .
- VIRGINIUS DABNEY:
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Yes, I had forgotten about that.
- DANIEL JORDAN:
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Was that in response to an editorial or . . .
- VIRGINIUS DABNEY:
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It was to something that appeared in the Boston paper. It was a signed
piece about commercialization of the Revolution and it linked us with a
lot of people who were getting out t-shirts and red, white and blue ice
cream, things like that, just getting out a lot of trash, ash trays and
I don't know what all. We didn't like being linked with that sort of
thing. We do have a very tasteful series of things that we are doing and
we are not being blatantly commercial about it, I wouldn't say. But of
course, it is being done in general for profit. The trustees get an
annual fee and the underwriters get whatever profit there is. There
hasn't been any so far.