Andrew Jackson

I have undertaken to give some account of the genesis and development in American letters of certain germinal ideas that have come to be reckoned traditionally American--how they came into being here, how they were opposed, and what influence they have exerted in determining the form and scope of our characteristic ideals and institutions. In pursuing such a task, I have chosen to follow the broad path of our political, economic, and social development, rather than the narrower belletristic...

--Vernon Louis Parrington

In the spring of 1928, the literary community eagerly awaited the announcement of the Pulitzer Prizes for literature. Many were expecting playwright Eugene O'Neill to win an award for "Strange Interlude." They anticipated Thornton Wilder would win for his novel, The Bridge of San Luis Rey. They guessed, correctly, that Edward Arlington Robinson would win the poetry award.

And in the category of historical writing, most expected that Charles Beard would win for his Rise of American Civilization. So it came as a surprise that on May 8, 1928, UW English professor Vernon Louis Parrington received an official telegram from the Pulitzer Prize Committee announcing that he had won the historical writing award for his two-volume work, Main Currents in American Thought. Not only that, but he also had been awarded the largest literature prize: $2,000, or twice the amount the other winners received.

Two volumes of Main Currents had been published in 1927. The first volume, The Colonial Mind, 1620-1800, treated such figures as Cotton Mather, Jonathan Edwards, Benjamin Franklin, Tom Paine, and Thomas Jefferson. The second volume, The Romantic Revolution in America, 1800-1860, traced the "optimistic and restless mood of the country eager for land and new opportunities, epitomized by Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln." A third volume, later published posthumously and entitled The Beginnings of Critical Realism in America, covered the period from 1860 to 1920.

The volumes comprise about a hundred intellectual portraits linked by explanatory material that analyzes the evolution of ideas of the period. The portraits are noted for their flair and imagery. The work chronicles three phases of American intellectual history: Calvinistic pessimism, romantic optimism, and mechanistic pessimism. "Through these periods Parrington traces the fortunes of democratic idealism, the 'main current,' impeded but never turned back by 'reefs, barriers and barnacled craft.'"

He had come out of relative obscurity to win the prestigious Pulitzer. Leading figures in the field of American letters had "lined up to bestow enthusiastic praise and congratulations," writes David W. Levy, historian and well-known coeditor of the Letters of Louis D. Brandeis, in a foreword to the 1987 edition issued by the University of Oklahoma Press. And there was, in this case, "an unusually large gap between the prestige of the critics who welcomed these volumes and the obscurity of the author who had produced them."

Parrington was born in 1871 in Aurora, Illinois. The family settled in Kansas when he was six, where the harsh life and a never-ending series of natural disasters had hardened the prairie farmers against the capitalist establishment. Of that time, Parrington wrote: "I have never been able to escape, nor have I wished to escape. To it and to the spirit of agrarian revolt that grew out of it, I owe much of my understanding of American history and much of my political philosophy."

Those early life experiences set the tone of Parrington's entire scholarly career. "The vigor of his hostility toward the moneyed oppressors and the depth of his sympathy for the humble, hard-working farmer-democrats, who battled against them in the uneven contest, are obvious on every page of his work," notes Levy.

Parrington was a liberal who regarded the field of American letters as "a battleground between 18th century French humanism and the economics of contemporary capitalism."