Kudos to the "character actors"

My friend Bookworm has a thoughtful essay up defending the "great men" view of history. She reminds us of the virtues of that once-traditional outlook by contrasting them with the Marxist view that seeks to flatten our collective patrimony by misreading it as little more than the clash of economic forces.

By way of building on Bookworm's thesis (we play well together), I want to add only that the lieutenants or the "character actors" who play second fiddle to history's headliners also matter. I think she would agree, not least because that addition dovetails with her assertion that "people don't have to be powerful to change history." To me that means that among great and small alike, there is an element (dare I say a providential element?) of "the right man at the right time" that cannot be discounted, so let me stipulate that as an appetizer and proceed to the main course.

For good or for ill, influential men and women have made their presence felt, and yet we remember them not simply for their virtues or depravities, but because these pivotal characters found positive or negative reinforcement in the lesser-known people around them. "No man is an island," as the poet once put it, and his axiom applies as much to the famous as to the obscure. I do not mean to write some breezy enconium to the so-called Law of Attraction, but as J.R.R. Tolkien well knew, there is no Don Quixote without Sancho Panza, and Frodo can't destroy the Ring of Power without Sam.

Bookworm's essay includes a succinct look at the roots of the English Reformation, where King Henry VIII, Queen Catherine of Aragon, and Anne Boleyn all loom as large as you would expect. What I would add is only that Henry's consolidation of religious and political power would not have had the historical resonance it did or does had it not been marked by his order to execute that able lieutenant, Sir (Saint) Thomas More, the man whose principled adherence to scruple shamed Henry for the hound he was and put paid to early notions of that particular monarch as a "Defender of the (Catholic) faith."

It is well-known that forceful, evenly-matched personalities spur each other to greatness, but history likewise brims with examples of "character actors" without whom great men and women would not have been quite so great. To pull one example from among a multitude, religious historian Rodney Stark lauds Leonardo Fibonacci as an under-appreciated hero of early capitalism, noting that when his "Book of the Abacus" appeared in 1202, "it made Hindu-Arabic numerals and the concept of zero available for the first time outside the circle of professional mathematicians," and was "siezed upon eagerly all across northern Italy as it provided new, efficient techniques for multiplication and division."

Many "second-tier" people shine in times of war. David McCollough's 1776 makes a case for John Glover as one such person. Glover and the "Marblehead Men" under his command, all expert sailors, were instrumental in helping George Washington and the ragtag Continental Army cross the Delaware River to attack Hessians encamped at Trenton, New Jersey over Christmas of 1776. Bookseller-turned-artillery-captain Henry Knox, and drillmaster Baron von Steuben are other supporting players without whom the indisputably great George Washington might well have lost the Revolutionary War.

Four generations later, Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain's unforeseen ability to hold the Union line with troops from Maine's 20th regiment at the Battle of Gettysburg also fits my addendum to Bookworm's defense. On any list of "great men" of the time, President Abraham Lincoln certainly has an entry, and General Ulysses S. Grant may have an entry (Confederate sympathizers smitten with Robert E. Lee tend to denigrate Grant unfairly). Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain can't often be found on "great man" lists, not because his character was deficient, but because his influence over time was. Yet you could make the argument that without Chamberlain, U.S. Grant would not later have had the chance to accept Lee's surrender at Appomatox Court House, and that's precisely the argument I'm making.

At least the name "Chamberlain" still burns brightly among Civil War buffs. The same cannot be said for William Dawes, who rode farther than Paul Revere with the same message on the same night, or for the trio of Polish cryptologists (Rejewski, Rozycki, and Zygalski) who made it possible for Britain to break Nazi Germany's top-secret "Enigma" code in World War Two.

May I end by switching gears in a flying attempt to buttress the original point? Those of us inclined to raise a glass to Eric Clapton ought also remember that Lee Dickson has been his guitar technician for more than 25 years.