The Fire Within

ED: This is BackStory. I’m Ed Ayers.

BRIAN: I’m Brian Balogh.

PETER: And I’m Peter Onuf. We’re talking today about all the ways fire has influenced the course of American history.

BRIAN: Peter, Ed, I know that fire was incredibly important as a tool, and as a symbol in your periods. In the 18th and 19th century. I’ll confess that when I think about the 20th century, it just seems to me that fire doesn’t play as critical a role in people’s everyday lives. So I want to know if you think it’s fair to say that fire was just a bigger part of everyday life back in ye olden days?

PETER: Well, the short answer is yes. The danger of colonial towns burning down, that’s an ongoing threat. And you can expect every generation there’s going to be a major fire. But what I think is really interesting about the ubiquity of fire and how it’s fuels and fires everything– I mean, we can’t live without fire– is that it really has positive connotations, too. And I think that opens up an interesting window on the history of American culture, and I’ll briefly lay it out.

Fire is associated with transformative events. Fire is what is associated on the one hand with the sacred fire of liberty, that that love of liberty that burns in the breast of every patriot. But it’s also associated, I think, with metallurgy, and crucibles, and changes. And it’s a perfect metaphor for a new nation.

ED: And what strikes me about the 19th century is it really is defined in some ways by playing with fire. Some things that we might not think of as fire are actually fire-based. And what am I =king about? The defining technology of the railroad. Think about this. A moving fire is what that locomotive is, right?

PETER: Causes a lot of fires, too.

BRIAN: Don’t try that at home, Ed.

ED: Or the steam boats. The amount of wood that a steamboat had to burn to create enough force to drag all those bales of cotton up and down rivers, just immense. So not only do you burn a lot of the landscape to clear it as they had back in the American Indians for time immemorial. But in the 19th century, they literally began, as the cliche goes, to harness it.

You had it burning on a wooden boat, of all things, and then a locomotive. But then you think about, what’s the defining image of new industry? It’s the fire of this iron foundry, the steel mill, right? To go from the old blacksmith’s shop to these huge industrial things with those big cauldrons pouring molten steel. So in some ways, the 19th century is about mastery of fire. But on the other hand, I only to point out to you things like the Great Chicago Fire.

PETER: Yeah, I was going to mention it, Ed. So there’s a high incidence and tolerance for fire, it’s part of progress, it marks change. And we would find those levels of fire accidents intolerable today. That’s why the insurance industry exists.

ED: Well, that’s how the insurance industry began, as you know. Our best source of information about the geography of 19th century America are fire insurance maps put up by the Sandborn company. And that’s because the greatest threat to property was fire. So Brian, if you’re saying is true, that somehow the 20th century and in our own time, fore seems kind of denatured, it certainly wasn’t in the 19th century. So when was it that things came under control? When was it that fire was suppressed?

BRIAN: Let’s talk about the transition from those steam engines and steam boats you were talking about, to the car. We all have fires in our car. We don’t think of it in those terms at all, because fire really became so tamed and so recessed, so hidden from view–

ED: It’s almost as if the combustion became internal.

BRIAN: Exactly. Very well put.

PETER: I think as far as we look at fires and think about them, they evoke nostalgia on the one hand. And then to reverse the metaphor of internalizing, we externalize them to this dangerous force in drought-ridden areas that fires can encroach on our lives, particularly if we happen to live in California.

BRIAN: But think about what word we use for that. It’s a wild fire. So we’re used to tame fire.

PETER: Out of control.

BRIAN: Yeah, that’s right. And that’s what makes it so threatening. It seems archaic. It seems like something we should have been able to–

PETER: A primitive force. that we’ve been unable to master.

If you’re just joining us, this is BackStory. And today, were spending an hour playing with fire in American history.