M is for Men of Mettle and Missing Maids

Abstract

Jill Lepore has written an intriguing and highly entertaining "collection of character studies" of seven men who lived in America between 1758 and 1922. Her cohort is Noah Webster, William Thornton, Sequoyah, Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, Abd al-Rahman Ibrahima, Samuel F.B. Morse, and Alexander Graham Bell. As she herself asks in the closing pages of the book, "Why bring them together?" Lepore answers by suggesting a parallel with two fairly well-known paintings: Men of Progress painted by Christian Schussele in 1862, which depicted nineteen male inventors, and People of Progress painted by Edward Sorel in 1999, which caricatured twenty modern inventors and scientists, eighteen men, and two women. Each of these paintings celebrated "progress as technological innovation in the service of economic development" (p. 191). In contrast, Lepore chose to "take the likeness" of seven men who dealt with two key interrelated social problems facing the newly united states: "The need for an educated citizenry . . . and the challenge of unifying a diverse people"(p. 12). She maintains that all seven of the men believed that "languages define nations," and that they struggled with improving means and methods of communication.