THE poem that John just read makes two striking appearances in Professor Bailyn's most important book, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution. It appears in full in the opening section and is quoted again in the final paragraph of the Postscript that he added to the twenty-fifth Anniversary Edition of 1992. Bud called this Postscript, “Fulfillment: A Commentary on the Constitution.” In it he argued that the constitutional arguments of the late 1780s had indeed “corrected the cave—enlarged its dimensions, reshaped it, modernized it.” And we also “may weave and flitter, dip and soar in perfect courses through the blackest air. In that spirit we too—in the very happiest intellection—may continue to correct the cave.”
This is a striking metaphor for the debates that Bud had examined so carefully. But it is also a strange and surprising image to insert here. He must have put it there for...