Americans

GEORGE WASHINGTON -- Nathaniel Wright Stephenson & Waldo Hilary Dunn--Oxford (2 vols. $10).

JONATHAN EDWARDS--Ola Elizabeth Winslow--Macmillan ($3.50).

MARGARET FULLER--Mason Wade--Viking ($3.50).

GEORGE CALEB BINGHAM OF MISSOURI--Albert Christ-Janer--Dodd, Mead ($5).

Respectful or at least conscientious biographies of U. S. historical figures are less likely to be considered dull nowadays than in the late debunking era. A few recent biographies seem to justify readers in thus hearkening to their better natures.

Monument. Messrs. Stephenson & Dunn's 1,069-page biography of Washington contains little new material--two minor Washington letters. The authors, oldfashioned, admiring, cautious, feel about Washington's recent debunkers--W. E. Woodward, Rupert Hughes--as Cal Coolidge did. "Well," said he, "I see the [Washington] monument is still there." Biographers Stephenson & Dunn will have no truck with the legend that Washington was in love with Sally Fairfax, wife of his close neighbor and friend; they discreetly evade speculation on whether his feelings for Martha were no more than dutiful. Stanch alibiers for his military blunders, they uncritically dislike Washington's critics Jefferson, Lee, Gates, Sam Adams, the Conway Cabal, et al. But their biography is the most compact and exact thus far (with 130 pages of notes which, as usual in scholarly biographies, are frequently more interesting than the text). And they display real imaginativeness in portraying Washington as a great, human central figure against his remote 18th-Century background.

Awakener. After two centuries Jonathan Edwards is chiefly remembered as the Calvinist preacher whose accounts of Hell scared New Englanders silly. Biographer Winslow revives his far more important distinction as a brilliant example of the New England mind. A diehard doctrinaire, Edwards originated a revivalist mass-technique and a revolutionary, individualistic concept of religion, thus unconsciously promoted a religious movement known as the Great Awakening. The movement swept away the old theocratic Calvinist dogmas of the Mathers, precipitated the separation of Church and State, paved the way for Emerson's transcendentalism.

"Humbug." A sort of Transcendentalist Dorothy Thompson, Margaret Fuller was No. 1 feminist writer of her day. She edited the highbrow Dial, and as Horace Greeley's first columnist ranked next to Poe as literary critic. But she is not remembered for her writing. What survives is curiosity about her personality. Biographer Wade, 26-year-old publisher's editor and book reviewer, will not satisfy the curiosity of more exacting readers, but his biography is well organized and readable. To Margaret Fuller's credit is Emerson's doting praise, many another Transcendentalist's compliments to her brilliant talk, magnetism, energy. Complicating these virtues were her ugliness, aggressiveness, radicalism, sexual neurosis. Like all her biographers, Author Wade tries hard to riddle Hawthorne's characterization, subtlest and most devastating of all. "She was," said Hawthorne, "a great humbug--of course with much talent and moral reality, or else she could have never been so great a humbug."

Artist. In the middle 19th Century, George Caleb Bingham's paintings were almost as familiar to U. S. citizens as the family Bible. But critics thought them no great shucks. Lately rediscovered after 50 years' obscurity, Bingham's shrewd, honest, skillful genre paintings now rank with the best. Christ-Janer's up-to-date biography of the slight, religious, sharp-tongued cabinetmaker's apprentice is of most interest for its reproductions (many of the originals have vanished). To evoke the U. S. past as successfully as these paintings of flatboatmen, fur traders, political scenes, many a novelist would give his right arm.

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