Review by Mack Hassler
“ We know what we are but know not what we may be”
William Shakespeare, daily quote in the news sheet of my retirement home on the birthday of Shakespeare, 23 April 2025.
We know that Lawton Hemans did not live to see his masterpiece in its first edition because his wife opens the book with a Preface about his death while completing the work in the small town of Mason, Michigan a few miles southeast of Lansing although the young Governor Mason had done most of his work in Detroit and, in fact, had died very young himself (age 31 in the summer of 1843) leaving much work to be done. Usually I review new books, and I love the modern great non-fiction masters of American history such as Bruce Catton on our Civil War, who grew up near Traverse City (almost a Yooper) and Robert Caro in his huge 4-volume biography on US President Lyndon Johnson. I love to review non-fiction history and biography nearly as much as I love literature. Shakespeare who produced a large number of history plays seems to have felt the same. So when Victor Volkman, our editor here, agreed that I could write on these very old titles of non-fiction by Hemans I was delighted.
I was poking into Caro’s long biography of Robert Moses, who essentially rebuilt New York City in our time (1974), when the current issue of Michigan History introduced me to the work of Lawton Hemans. Compared to our modern professionslism of Catton on the Civil War and of Caro in his massive work, both of the volumes by Hemans are actually from the past and have the crinkled and dusty smell and feel of their own historical nature. And both in the style of the narration and in old-fashioned book making they are a part of what their topics are. The biography of Mason is his longer and more complete masterpiece that he was working on at the time of his death in the little town named for Mason in Ingham County that at the time of his governorship had not even been surveyed or platted. Young Mason would spend much of his time in far off New York City where there was legal work to be done in the new nation. In fact, young Stevens Mason died in New York of what was called an inflannatory disorder in the hot summer of 1843. The father of our Nation and first President, though a generation older than Mason, had died similarly and unexpectantly of what we might call now “a cold” on his Potomac estate. Nature often does not seem overly forgiving, at times, of men and women doing important work ln order to allow them to complete the work.
We may not have had as much analysis then in the early days of our history to understand our own morality But we did seem to be able to print more and more elegant detail in our published accounts. Hemans with his character of his very young Governor continually works to emphasize how mannerly and cultured Mason is; he is by no means an “unwashed” rough pioneer from the frontier. Further, the large number and coverage of the old photos in the large biography represent a treasure in themselves. As new States were admitted to the Union and as the “haunt” of slavery as well as large changes in thinking were filtering across the Atlantic such as socialism and Darwinian thought, even feminism and Freud a bit later, the historian had to show that we were up to the task of working with the ideas. Even the great hero and savior of our Nation, rough Abe Lincoln, had to travel from the frontier to New York City in order to prove himself and to do his work politically. So what I find valuable and fascinating in these dusty old books may help us as we “forge” our new Yooper literature and history.
Life and Times of Stevens Thomson Mason: The Boy Governor of Michigan, by Lawton T. Hemans (Michigan Historical Commission, Lansing, originally published 1920. Bought used as 1930 reprint). 528 pages hardcover from ABE books, $15.95.
History of Michigan, by Lawton T, Hemans (The Hammond Publishing Company, Lansing, 1916, seventh edition). 281 pages hardcover from ABE books, $10.
