University of Virginia Library

Helping The Spirit Endure

President or not. The
government says that peace is
at hand and it's not. The
President says he won't devalue
the dollar and he does. And
then there's the Watergate
scandal," Mr. Rutland
observes. "When the Founding
Fathers said that they were
going to do something they did
it, and when they said they
weren't going to do something
they didn't do it.

"We also have to be aware
of the people who would
discredit these men," Mr.
Rutland continues. "They read
about one incident and try to
discredit a man's character, like
the person who come across
the work hemp in reading
about Madison and wrote an
article saying Madison smoked
marijuana. Well, the fact is that
they were considering growing
hemp to make rope."

"We have to get back to
bedrock values," Mr. Rutland
emphatically states. "If a
president really understood the
character of these men he
couldn't help but be honest."

"The people had
confidence in their government
then." Mr. Rutland said, "We
have to remember that these
men were originators of a great
experiment to let people rule
themselves."

"The spirit of these people
was all right and they simply
had to worry about such things
as money. Today we have all
the money we need but our
spirit is in bad shape." Mr.
Rutland facetiously notes
"There wasn't a practicing
psychiatrist in Virginia then.

"Their great god wasn't
money," he seriously
concludes, "it was something
we don't understand today."

Facing the years of work
ahead, it is easy to be
impatient. Each series deals
with each man's papers in
chronological order. Although
we associate the presidency
with the Founding Fathers, the
presidential years of these
men's lives will not be
published for years.

The eighth volume of The
Papers of James Madison deals
with the period of Madison's
life when he was 34 years old.
"At that time he was involved
with the preparation for the
Annapolis Convention which
led to the Federal Convention
the next year," Mr. Rutland
notes. "It was a time of worry,
but looking back now, they
didn't have all that much to
worry about, though it didn't
seem that way at the time."

For Mr. Rutland and Mr.
Jackson, one man's life is their
career. It seems incipient to use
the cliche that "they probably
know more about the man
than he knew about himself,"
but one wonders where the line
can be drawn between the
historian and the history
maker. Like the book people
of Ray Bradbury's Farenheit
451 it seems like they have
become the book they are
writing.

It is not easy to look ahead
several hundred years or a
millenium and wonder where a
collection of the papers of a
United States President will
find its place in history, But
how many times has the
burning of Alexander's library
in Alexandria been lamented
and how many times have
records lost throughout history
been lamented?

Because of the failure to
look to the future much has
been lost in history. But Mr.
Rutland and Mr. Jackson are
future-minded in recording
historically the papers of two
of the Founding Fathers of the
United States. Where these
volumes will find their place in
history is not known, but they
will be there to lay bare the
thoughts of the men who
founded the United States of
America.