Toy soldiers from the Hildene Archive
I am old enough to remember, with remarkable sensory clarity, America’s Bicentennial: the bright brass of trumpets in my hometown parade answered by the basso rumble of tubas; the sulfur scent of fireworks drifting across a gentle July breeze; red, white, and blue everywhere—on banners, shirts, cupcakes, bicycles, and faces.
It was a child’s vision of America: exuberant, uncomplicated, and joyous.
Though I still harbor a deep affection for the rites and sacraments of the Fourth of July, the holiday has also come to remind me of all that I do not understand, despite—or perhaps because of—the better part of five decades spent contemplating history, politics, faith, reason, nature, and human nature.
That uncertainty has manifested itself in an endless cascade of questions. Two return again and again:
Why is it so difficult to understand history deeply?
And how are we to demystify it all—the nation and ourselves, the U.S. and the us?
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On the challenge of understanding history, John F. Kennedy once observed that history “has no present, only the past rushing into the future. To try to hold fast is to be swept aside.”
The past rushes forward, yet clarity often recedes and, again, begets questions: Are our powers of understanding perpetually outpaced by the accumulation of new events atop old ones? Is there simply too much to contemplate and too little time in which to contemplate it? Or is life itself accelerating beyond our capacity to make sense of it?
As for what is required to engage history meaningfully, Henry David Thoreau offers a clue. Standing atop Maine’s Mount Katahdin in September 1846, he wrote:
“Talk of mysteries! Think of our life in nature ... rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks! The solid earth! The actual world! The common sense! Contact! Contact! Who are we? Where are we?”
Here’s where I have a clear answer: I have come to believe that Thoreau’s literal cry for “contact” offers a way not to escape history, nor to resist its currents, but to remain grounded within them.
I learned this firsthand at Hildene.
Indeed, I believe Hildene’s particular genius lies in its ability to restore contact: with history, with place, with ideas, and ultimately with ourselves.
And it accomplishes this through contact with the specific.
A grand Georgian Revival home, standing in dialogue with the modest brick footprint of an earlier frontier dwelling, invites reflection on both the promise and the peril of the American Dream.
An exhibit devoted to Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address reminds us that fewer than seven hundred words, rightly spoken, helped bind a wounded nation.
A gleaming Pullman car embodies both the luxury of the Gilded Age and the human costs that accompanied American progress in the decades following the Fourteenth Amendment.
The Battenkill Valley—a working agricultural landscape that long predates the American Revolution—invites reflection on what George Washington called “the most healthful, most useful, and most noble employment of man,” even as most Americans now live far removed from both the sources of their food and the rhythms of the natural world.
Through serial visits to such particulars—not abstractions—America has finally become more intelligible to me, for contact with history grounds me.
It helps me better understand my country, my own life, and the path before me.
As President of Hildene, I invite you to come here, whether young or old. Slow down. Encounter the actual world. Make contact. Ground yourself.
Come stand in a place where the American story over the last 250 years can be explored not as an ideology or a slogan or cacophony, but as a human inheritance: complicated, imperfect, inspiring, Socratic, and endlessly unfinished.
The particulars of Hildene are, in fact, provocation. They form a landscape of ideas, with America threading through it with agency. It is a place that invites conversation not only about what happened in America, but about what matters.
Whether you come from around the corner or around the globe, I invite you to experience America here.
Come for the beauty.
Come for the history.
Come for the questions.
Come for the contact.
And as our nation marks its 250th year, may we continue the work of understanding who we are, where we have come from, and what we might yet become.
Happy 250th Birthday, America.
The fascinating history of toy soldiers can be traced to 3150 B.C. Throughout the ages, they have been used to guard pharaohs in tombs, teach strategy to knights in armor, and provided hours of enchantment for children and adults alike.
Toy soldiers are made from all types of material, but the most common mass-produced varieties are metal and plastic. Our toy soldiers are metal, (metals of the time would be pewter, tin, or lead) with a hand painted finish. Imagine for a moment, Lincoln children playing with this soldier set. Might Robert have shared any stories with them from his service in the Civil War? Although we don’t know exactly which children used these toy soldiers, they serve as a good reminder of what life was like for a grandchild growing up at Hildene.
