The Press: History Pays Off

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U.S. history, as good historians know, can be as lively as current news—especially when it is handed out in small doses. On the premise that Americans would welcome their history on the installment plan, a new magazine was launched a year ago. Its name: American Heritage. When it started, bimonthly American Heritage had a modest goal: 55,000 copies of every issue, the break-even point. Last week, as Heritage celebrated its first year, the print order was up to 115,500 and the magazine was running well in the black.

To its readers American Heritage offers a rich blend of good storytelling, vivid historical fact, and fine color pictures. Heritage articles have included an account of the illegitimate birth and wretched boyhood of Alexander Hamilton, Robert Todd Lincoln's agonized testimony in court that his mother was insane, a suppressed account of the death of John Brown, and a medical study of George Washington (who turned out a 4-F by modern standards).

Two-Day Binge. Highlight of its latest issue is Civil War Correspondent (Chicago Times) Sylvanus Cadwallader's hitherto unpublished account of a two-day binge of General Grant. During the siege of Vicksburg, Cadwallader encountered Grant staggering through the barroom of a Mississippi steamboat. Wrote Cadwallader: "I . . . enticed him into his stateroom, locked myself in the room with him . . . and commenced throwing bottles of whisky . . . into the river. Grant soon ordered me out of the room, but I refused to go . . . I said to him that I was the best friend he had in the Army of the Tennessee . . ." Grant continued to get whisky, went ashore and set off on a wild, drunken gallop on his horse. Cadwallader caught him, smuggled him to headquarters in an ambulance. "On the way he confessed that I had been right . . . to consider myself a staff officer." Thereafter Cadwallader became Grant's close confidant.

Merger of Ideas. Heritage was started by Publisher James Parton, 42, onetime TIME, Inc. and New York Herald Tribune staffer, in collaboration with the Society of American Historians and the American Association for State and Local History. Both the groups had consulted Parton, a publishing consultant, about a history periodical. He persuaded them to pool their learning and capital, helped them raise $68.000 to get started. They decided to accept no advertising, sell single copies only through bookstores, put their product in hard covers.

To run American Heritage they picked Pulitzer Prizewinner Bruce (A Stillness at Appomattox) Catton, 56. Pay to contributors is low (usually $200 for an article). Most contributors write for it as a labor of love. The magazine's success is proof of the Catton credo that "history need not be approached on tiptoe with hat in hand. It can be the most fascinating subject in the world."