From
1971-2004, Dr. John Ferling served on the faculty of the University of West
Georgia. He has written twelve books on the era of America’s founding and Revolutionary
War, including biographies of John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson,
and George Washington. In 2007 the American Revolution Roundtable of
New York presented him with its Lifetime Achievement Award. Since his
retirement, he continues to be an active leader in the cultural and educational
sectors of West Georgia. His website is http://johnferling.com/
When I was in high school I saw a documentary film
on the rise and fall of Hitler. I had never had the slightest interest in
history previously, but the film left me filled with questions and the next
morning I went to the library for the first time in my life without having been
made to go. I began reading about Hitler. My reading gradually morphed into
books on World War II and FDR. I decided to major in history in college,
with the expectation of teaching in high school. But I hated my introductory
history courses. They were mind-numbing memorization courses and I was counting
the days until I completed them in my sophomore year and would never again have
to take a history course. Two weeks into my last required course, however, the
professor fell ill and a young, freshly-minted Ph.D. named William Painter was
sent in to teach the class. He tore up his predecessor’s syllabus and told us
to purchase a half dozen paperbacks that he specified, and he told us that he
didn’t lecture. We would read 50-75 pages in a book for the next class and we would
discuss what we had read. I suddenly found my history class to be an
electrifying experience. I was learning a lot and going to the library on my
own to read more deeply about things that we had discussed in class. Before the
semester ended I had decided that I wanted to go to grad school, teach history
in college, and write history. I told that story to my editor, who had me
relate it in the preface to my book Setting the World Ablaze. Another of Dr.
Painter’s former students, who was teaching at a college in North Carolina,
read the book and contacted Dr. Painter, who wrote me. We began a
correspondence that lasted until his death a few years later. I wish I could
remember the five or six books that he had us purchase. I do recall that one
was Alan Bullock’s Hitler: A Study in Tyranny. Although it was the best
biography available, I had not encountered it in my reading on Hitler.
2. What role does history play or has it played
in your personal life?
My wife and I have taken trips to historical sites
(Monticello, Civil War battlefields, etc) and I am currently the president of
the Penelope Melson Society, a friends of the library organization for the
Ingram Library at the University of West Georgia. We sponsor a big exhibit each
semester to bring people to the library. All have focused on some historical
subject (FDR, Anne Frank) and we are just now (October 13 – December 7) opening
a very large exhibit on World War II abroad and in Georgia. (I hope all of you
can come. It includes talks by two historians; one, on Oct 28, will deal with
how the war changed the South and a second, on Nov 11, will treat how the war
affected eating habits and food practices in general. This Friday night, Oct
17, we are having an evening of World War II era music and dancing. A 20 piece
big band will provide the music. If you think you would like to know more about
the exhibit, and perhaps attend, send me your mailing address and I will see
that you receive a mailing. ) I read a lot for pleasure – mostly mysteries and
magazines such as the New Yorker and Atlantic Monthly). I never read for
pleasure in my area of specialization (American Revolution and the Early
Republic), but I like to read about Nazi Germany, World War II, early
Christianity, and the Kennedy Assassination.
3. How
is/How was history a part of your professional life/career?
My career was as a historian. I taught history in
high school for two years before going on to grad school. Thereafter, I taught
for 38 years in college. I retired from teaching in 2004. From the moment I
completed grad school I was writing history, something I continue to do 43
years later. I found teaching to be immensely interesting and rewarding, and
always challenging, but I also found that it did not completely fulfill what I
wanted from history. While writing seminar papers in grad school, and certainly
while researching and writing my doctoral dissertation, I discovered that
research and writing deepened and broadened my understanding of history,
and it enabled me to go places in my thinking about historical events that I
could not go through reading and teaching.
4. Why
is studying/knowing history important?
It provides one with a good sense of human nature,
national behavior, and the character of a people. It gives one the prism
through which an understanding of contemporary politics can be derived. It also
gives one some facility for assessing contemporary leaders, for appreciating
their strengths and understanding their failures. Through history, one can
learn about himself or herself. If you were raised in the South as I was – I
grew up in Texas – an understanding of Southern history is crucial for coming
to grips with the culture and thinking of the world about you.
5. What
is your favorite period or aspect of history to learn about and why?
My area of specialization, which I decided to pursue
while in grad school, is the American Revolution and the Early Republic –
roughly the fifty years period beginning with the Seven Years’ War in the 1750s
and running through the Election of 1800. I was fascinated by how a revolution
could occur and the twists and turns it could take. The Revolutionary War, I
thought, was as dramatic as any great event in history. The era has a
fascinating cast of characters and it is far enough in the past that a rich
treasure trove of primary sources available. In addition, because of its
remoteness, a student of the period can treat it
dispassionately.
6. What
are the most important lessons from the colonial and revolutionary period and
who are the most important figures that we should know today?
Of course, one should be familiar with the Founders
and the writings of Thomas Paine contain treasures that enrich even today.
Students should understand that the Founders were men and not saints. They had
their agenda and they made mistakes. Some are overrated, some underrated, in my
judgment. Among the great lessons are how and why the Revolution occurred, and
what it meant to contemporaries and what it means to us today. It is important
to understand, too, how Britain through a series of wrongheaded decisions lost
its American empire. The great tragedy of the Revolution is that it failed to
bring an end to slavery. But maybe the biggest lesson to be learned is that in
the 1790s when faced with provocations, first from Great Britain and then
France, Presidents Washington and Adams resisted those chanting for war
(leftists in the case of the crisis with Britain and rightists in the case of
that with France) and maintained the peace, which was just what the infant US
needed.
7. Tell
us about your most recent book and what projects you are working on now?
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