Editorial

Abstract

The Quarterly produced this issue in recognition of Bernard Bailyn's gifts to his students, other scholars, and the profession. Edited by Richard D. Brown, Virginia DeJohn Anderson, and Mark Peterson, the issue contains Jack Rakove's eulogy at Professor Bailyn's memorial and features essays by former students, Fred Anderson, Virginia DeJohn Anderson, Robert Allison, Sally Hadden, Eric Hinderaker, and Peter Mancall on Bailyn's scholarship, teaching and writing while John Demos adds an extended review of his last book, Illuminating History: A Retrospective of Seven Decades. With the kind assistance of Lotte Lazarsfeld Bailyn, we are also privileged to have a window into how he wrote and the link to the first Millennium lecture given at the invitation of President Bill Clinton.Bernard Bailyn was a mentor to all scholars of early American history because he dedicated his considerable gifts to understanding and capturing the past and shared them in our common intellectual enterprise. As Fred Anderson points out, Bailyn was a master at seeking accuracy in evidence while constructing narratives of literary art. These are the qualities he sought to impart to his students and by extension to all of us engaged in learning about the past. In 2018, the New England Quarterly published a special issue that looked at The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution from the perspective of the fiftieth anniversary of its publication. Upon re-reading his own work, Bailyn reflected that when he wrote the last sentence in Ideological Origins in 1967, he thought that he had gotten it just right. Re-reading the book in 2018, he saw the need for revision, that he, perhaps, had underestimated the colonists’ preoccupation with power. In this humble and enduring desire by a master historian to get the past just right is a model of intellection to which we should all aspire.The Quarterly dedicates this issue to Professor Bernard Bailyn in deep appreciation for his gifts to us all.