SPRINGVILLE — Since it is rare for a newly minted scholar to get a teaching job in his home state, Matthew Mason wasn't expecting it to happen to him for some time.
The 38-year-old Utah-grown historian did his graduate work at the University of Maryland and taught his first year at Eastern Michigan University. He describes being hired by Brigham Young University the second year this way: "It was a nice surprise."
Of course, it didn't hurt that his doctoral dissertation was honored by the Southern Historical Association before it was revised and published as a book, "Slavery and Politics in the Early American Republic."
Sometimes, history professors are lucky enough to publish an exceptional book the first time out. The eminent Arthur Schlesinger Jr., for example, published "The Age of Jackson" in 1945 when he was 28, and it was so well-received that he never needed a doctorate.
Since Mason's book has received praise from several established scholars, he may be following a similar route to eminence.
For his part, Mason is quite humble about his own work. He said he is glad that some scholars think his book "could be the new interpretation of this period of history," he said during an interview in his Springville home. "I'm certainly hopeful that it will be."
He added that while his fellow scholars represent one audience he hopes to reach, "I want to reach a general audience, too.
"I'm not under the illusion that I'll be in Oprah's Book Club. The person I aim for is my wife, Stacie, who is not a history major or an academic. But she's a smart, general reader. She pushed me to clarify things I thought were self-evident. She was really helpful."
In fact, Mason's book should be classified as reader-friendly — an interesting historical study of slavery that could be appreciated by both the scholar of history and the general reader who enjoys history that is well-written. "I was very excited about writing this book from the beginning. I felt I was studying something very few scholars had studied, and I wanted to make a sweeping interpretation if I could. For a lot of scholars, their first book is their calling card."
Slavery was not the headline issue of the 19th century, Mason said. "But if you read the debates on other issues, slavery is everywhere. I didn't have a method to my madness. I just started reading the newspapers, like the Niles Weekly Register out of Baltimore — as close as you get to a Time or a Newsweek for the period."
He learned that, "Between the American Revolution and the Civil War, slavery never really went away. But instead of fighting with other historians on every other page, I wanted to tell my story in a narrative style.
"It's hard to make your writing accessible. You go through draft after draft — but it's worth the work. Historians more and more are feeling this way. Academics used to just write for fellow scholars. Then we would sit back and lament the fact that no one knows anything about history. Well, you can't have it both ways.
"I hope readers will see that the social aspects of slavery are as important as the political aspects. When slaves escaped and when slavery expanded, it echoed in American politics. The events on the ground and the events in the halls of Congress were more entwined than we thought."
Mason also sees a modern corollary with the difficulty of understanding the civil-rights movement of the 20th century. Just as slavery's existence cut through every issue of the 19th century, so did the modern civil-rights movement that so many people thought was resolved in the 1960s.
Often, in Mason's opinion, signs of racism pop up in today's society. "If I can find a modern event to connect to a historical event, I'll do it in the classroom. A student once said of my teaching, 'I like the way he connects historical events to real events.' That's funny, but you know what he meant."
Many Americans, said Mason, complain that history is over. "Why do we keep dredging it up? Well, it's because it never goes away. To be an American is to wrestle with race. It's part of our historical legacy. Yet we also now have to combat a myth of a color-blind society."
E-mail: dennis@desnews.com