^-■^ 
 
 S-- V 
 
 
 
THE HISTORY 
 
 OF HISTORICAL WRITING 
 
 IN AMERICA 
 
 J: FRANKLIN JAMESON, Pn. D. 
 
 rUOrtSSOU or history in BK-^v ivh. i-k ,i rv 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YOKK 
 IIOUGH'loN. MUM IN AND COMrANY 
 
 1891 
 
3'/ 
 
 Copj-riRht. 1891, 
 Br J. FRANKLIN JAMESON. 
 
 All riyhts rttervtd. 
 
 The Rir^ti'ie Press, CambHdft, Mast., t'. 5. A. 
 PrlDtod by U. 0. Uoa(hU» Jt Com fnj. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 These four Lectures upon the history 
 of historical writing in America were read 
 before public audiences in the hull of the 
 Johns Hopkins University in January and 
 February, 1887, and in that of Brown Uni- 
 versity in February and March, 1880. The 
 tliird and fourth were printed in Englische 
 Studien in 1888 and 1889, and the f.>ur, 
 after a considerable revision, appeared in 
 the New England Magazine in 1891. 
 
 BHOWN DNIVKRBITT. TROTIDKNCE 
 
 May 2, 18*JI 
 
CONTKNTS 
 
 PAOI 
 
 I. TiiK Historians of thk Skvkhtf.entii 
 
 Ckkturt 1 
 
 II. TlIK HlHTOUIANS OF THE ElGHTKKNTII Cf.N- 
 
 TfUT 42 
 
 III. From THE Revolution TO THK Civil War . HO 
 
 IV. SiNCF. TIIK Civil Wak 122 
 
THE HISTORY OF HISTORICAL 
 WRITING IN AMERICA. 
 
 I. 
 
 THK HISTORIANS OF THE SEVENTEENTH 
 CENTURY. 
 
 The history of liistorical writing; in the 
 Enj^lish colonies and in the United Stiites 
 fiills, naturally, into four periods ; and this 
 alike whether we take as the basis of our 
 classifieation its eharacteristics as historical 
 liteniture, or its characteristics as historical 
 science. In the first jH'riod, the heroic age 
 of discovery and settlement, such histor}' as 
 we liave is the work of the Argonauts them- 
 Hjlves, who, with litth* eonseiousness of au- 
 thorship, still less of membership in a liter- 
 ar)' profession, wrote down, in simplicity of 
 oiiud, accounts of things which they had 
 seen and in which they had themselves 
 borue a great part. This jKriod is roughly 
 
2 IIISTOniCAL WRITISr, 
 
 cciuivaKnt to the seventeenth century. l'jK)n 
 this followcil two or three generations of 
 what \\v nii*;lit call epigonal historiogniphy, 
 btvirii)^ cloar marks of a colonial or provin- 
 cial origin, yet often careful and scholarly, 
 and mainly devoteil to investigating and re- 
 cordin*; with pious care the achievements of 
 those who had preceded. Tlie third periml, 
 lasting from the Revolution to the Civil 
 War, was one in which history shared, in 
 common with other departments, the effectiJ 
 of the general effort toward the creation of 
 an indejwndent American literature. Dur- 
 ing this, the classical period of our histx>ri- 
 cal writing, the favorite subjectis were j»or- 
 tions of Euroj>ean history. Since then we 
 have had a marked improvement in metluHl 
 and scholarsljip ; hut the dominant impulse 
 of the fourth jwriotl has been towanl a 
 closer, and esjwcially a broader, study of 
 our own history. It is with these four peri- 
 ods that the chapters of this book are re- 
 sjKJctively to be occupied. In general, only 
 the most imjwrUint writers of each will be 
 considereil ; and no effort will be made to 
 relate at length the picturesque and inter- 
 esting details of these writers' lives, — not 
 from any such disdain of the pi(tures<pic as 
 
/AT AMERICA. 3 
 
 nuulern stiulents of history arc 8iipi>oseil to 
 iifTfct, but hcH-aiiHo tlio subject is not tlie 
 lives ami personalities of Aineriean hist«>ri- 
 ans, but the development of American liis- 
 toriojjjraphy. 
 
 In the time of the lii*st julvcnturers anil 
 settlers, some historical literature of value 
 had already been produced by the nation 
 from which they sprang, — chroniiles like 
 those of Hall and Ilolinshed, collections 
 like those of Stow, and a few more notible 
 performances. Lord Bivcon's '^ Henry VIL," 
 Knollys' '' Historic of the Turkes," Foxs 
 "Martyrs," and the great fmgment of a 
 "History of the World" which llaleigh 
 had comiH.sed during his long imprisonment 
 in the Tower. But no one of these was in 
 any way the nuKlel of our earliest historians, 
 whose puri)oses were (luite different. The 
 purjwse of one class was to awaken iinmedi- 
 aU» inU'rest in a given colony, and stimulate 
 immigration int4) it by accounts of what liad 
 been done there ; to this class belong Cap- 
 tiiin John Smith and Captain Edward John- 
 son. The mmlel i»f some of them may be 
 seen in the pages of Hakluyt, in the Re- 
 lations and Narratives of voyagers. The 
 other class, of which (Jo-... ,..„• r.r.i.lfonl and 
 
\ HISTORICAL WRITISG 
 
 Govenior Winthrop are the chief exam- 
 ples, iH^lit'vinj^ tlu'inselves to have In'oii con- 
 ceriU'd in iiu'iuorablc begin iiinjjjs, wnjte for 
 the benefit of jHwterity ])ermanent memorials, 
 wliieli tliry (li«l not intend to 1h3 publishe<l 
 till aft4r their deaths. It is to thesi* four, 
 as best deserving, among our writers of the 
 si'venteenth eentury, the name of historian, 
 that the present ehapter is to be mainly 
 given. 
 
 At the beginning at once of our colo- 
 nial history and of American historical lit- 
 erature stands the burly figure of Caj»tain 
 John Smith : and yet ho stands somewhat 
 apart from l>oth. There is no need to re- 
 count at length the stirring events of his 
 early life, — how, after wandering over 
 much of EurnjH; and the Levant, he took 
 service against the Turk, slew three Turk- 
 ish cavaliers in single combat before the 
 walls of Hegall, was caj)turcd and sold as 
 a slave, was l)efriended by a noble lady at 
 Constantinople, was sent to serve Jis a sla\^i3 
 in Crim-Tartary, and escaped with many 
 adventures ; but it is plain, from the nature 
 of tht'in, that he l)elonged in charact4'r to 
 the generation that had just passed away, 
 lie had more in common with Hawkins and 
 
jy A\fERICA. •*> 
 
 Frobishcr ami Drako, with those who rc- 
 imlsed the Arinathi, aiul souj^ht Khh)ra(h), 
 aiul braved the northern ice, and ^* singeil 
 the King of Spain's beard," with all the 
 freshness and buoyaney and adventurous- 
 ness of the Kliziibethans, than with Eliot 
 and P} ni and Selden, with the sobriety, the 
 seriousness, the prosaic strenuousness, which 
 had bej^un to overspread and to characterize 
 the England of James I. It was these traits 
 of character that made him really unsuited 
 to much of the work which now needed to 
 be done in the American settlements. He 
 was a colonial adventurer in a generation 
 of colonial founders. At the beginning, the 
 services of such a man were invaluable, and 
 the colony probably owed more to him than 
 to any other man during the thirty nu»nths 
 that he 8i)ent in it. But, the initial work 
 once done, another sort of talent was needed 
 if the colony wius to be, not abortive, as the 
 Eliz:ibethan colonial exiwriments had been, 
 but a strong and prosi)erous community, 
 fcmnded on sol)er and humdrum agriculture 
 and trade : and so the shrewd London mer- 
 chants of the Virginia Company were not 
 wrong in making no further use of Smith. 
 The same <|ualities shine conspicuous in 
 
6 HISTORICAL WRITING 
 
 the writings of Smith, and mark him off 
 from the rest as, though the precursor, yet 
 not the father of the American historical 
 writers. His writings breathe the spirit 
 that invests the pages of Hakluyt and Pur- 
 chas with so surpassing and so imperishable 
 a charm, not that which has made our colo- 
 nial history dull and our nation great. He 
 writes, by preference, of encounters, of ex- 
 plorations, of opportunities for present gain, 
 as one who is directing a band of adventur- 
 ers, not as one who is thoughtfully laying 
 foundations for the gradual growth of a 
 mighty state. He does not lack serious- 
 ness, but he is more a knight-errant than a 
 man of business. But if both his role and 
 his attitude are those of a knight-errant, 
 bearing in his veins the enthusiastic blood 
 of the sixteenth century, but set to do the 
 sober tasks of the seventeenth, he was in 
 the main a worthy knight, fearing God af- 
 ter the simple, untroubled fashion of the 
 earlier time, without overmuch sojourning 
 in Meshec and Kedar, serving faithfully and 
 energetically his king and the company, giv- 
 ing good government, ami doing with his 
 might what his hand found to do. He 
 wrote of all this with keen zest and enjoy- 
 
IN AMERICA. 7 
 
 ment, and with not too much of modesty, or 
 of mildness toward his adversaries ; but when 
 was a knight-errant ever modest or concilia- 
 tory ? 
 
 The strictly historical works of Captain 
 John Smith are but two in number. The 
 first is a brief tract of thirty or forty pages, 
 entitled " A True Relation of such occur- 
 rences and accidents of noate as hath hap- 
 ned in Virginia since the first planting of 
 that Collony, which is now resident in the 
 South part thereof, till the last returne from 
 thence." The second is the extensive book 
 entitled " The Generall Historic of Virgi- 
 nia, New-England, and the Summer Isles," 
 a brief continuation of which was printed as 
 part second of his " True Travels, Adven- 
 tures, and Observations." His other books 
 are mostly of a descriptive character : they 
 have a value as historical material ; they are 
 not themselves historical writings. The 
 " True Relation " was written in Virginia 
 about the end of May, 1608, when the colony 
 had been in existence a little more than a 
 year ; it was sent home by Captain Nelson in 
 the Phoenix, and was published at London 
 in August. It is only a pamphlet, and a 
 somewhat hastily prepared one at that. It 
 
8 HISTORICAL WRITING 
 
 is mainly occupied with tlie personal adven- 
 tures of Smith himself, the exploring ex- 
 peditions which he conducted, and his deal- 
 ings with the Indians. Not much is told us 
 of events at Jamestown. While that little 
 is valuable, in the paucity of eye-witness ac- 
 counts of the first year's doings, its value is 
 much diminished, or at least rendered doubt- 
 ful, by the fact that it is everywhere seen to 
 be colored by Smith's hostility to certain 
 fellow-members of the Council. Which was 
 right in their frequent quarrels is hard now 
 to determine ; but no one can fail to see 
 that Smith was too censorious of the ac- 
 tions of others, too vain of his own, to be a 
 historical witness of the highest degree of 
 merit. 
 
 The same animosities are to be found, 
 unallayed after a period of sixteen years, 
 in the " Generall Historic," published in 
 1620, the book which forms Smith's chief 
 title to be numbered among the Ameri- 
 can historians. Or rather, it exhibits these 
 animosities widened into partisanship in a 
 more important conflict, and applied to the 
 events of a greater number of years. Com- 
 ing home in 1609, and never afterward suc- 
 ceeding in getting employment from the 
 
IN AMERICA. 9 
 
 company, Smith seems to have extended his 
 resentment againt those who had ruled the 
 colony with him to their successors, and 
 eventually to the managers of the company. 
 In the last years of James I., the Virginia 
 Company's proceedings reflected the conflict 
 going on in the country at large, the minor- 
 ity being of the court party, the managers 
 belonging to the opposition. Smith takes 
 many opportunities in the "Generall His- 
 toric " to attack them, to accuse the mis- 
 management of the colony since he left it, 
 and to lament that his advice was not rather 
 followed and his services employed. "I 
 know," he adds, " I shaU be taxed for writ- 
 ing so much of my selfe ; but I care not 
 much, because the judiciall know there are 
 few such Souldiers as [those who] have 
 writ their owne actions, nor know I who 
 will or can tell my intents better then my 
 selfe." 
 
 The book which the doughty captain had 
 prepared with so resolute a disregard of all 
 natural impulses toward self-e\ffacement was 
 proposed, as the records of the Virginia 
 Company show, as early as 1621, but pub- 
 lished in 1624, in a volume of two hundred 
 and fifty pages folio, embellished with sev- 
 
10 HISTORICAL WRITING 
 
 eral quaint and well-engraved maps. Smith 
 was, after all, the author of only about 
 seventy-five pages out of the two hundred 
 and fifty ; and of these seventy-five, nearly 
 seventy comprise mere reprints from three 
 of his descriptive books. Of all the rest 
 he was but the editor or compiler. The 
 composition of the book is in fact singular. 
 The first book, treating of the English voy- 
 ages to Virginia before 1607, is entirely a 
 compilation or patchwork of previous nar- 
 ratives. The second book is a reprinted de- 
 scription of Virginia as it was in 1607. 
 The third book is a republication, with some 
 variations, of a body of narratives by some 
 of the original planters, which had been 
 edited by one Dr. Simonds, and published 
 in 1612 ; they cover the thirty months of 
 Smith's stay in the colony, and are from 
 persons belonging to his faction. What he 
 himself has contributed to this division is 
 limited to the insertion, here and there, of 
 verses more remarkable for sententiousness 
 than for beauty, and, it must be added, the 
 addition of striking adventures not men- 
 tioned in the " True Relation," and a gen- 
 eral heightening of the picturesqueness of 
 his own career. The fourth book, giving 
 
IN AMERICA. 11 
 
 the history of Virginia from 1609 to 1624, 
 is almost wholly a compilation, or rather a 
 transcription, of the narratives of residents ; 
 the fifth, treating of the history of the Ber- 
 mudas, is wholly so. Finally, to make 
 Book VI., entitled " The Generall Historic 
 of New England," he reprints his " Descrip- 
 tion of New England," 1616, and "New 
 England's Trials," 1620, inserts Edward 
 Winslow's "Plantation in New England," 
 and, with a few interesting pages on the 
 present estate of New Plymouth, closes this 
 remarkable historical mosaic, of which it 
 I may almost be said that what is historical is 
 I not his, and what is his is not historical. 
 But herein, also, we must confess, he has 
 been the precursor of many of our histori- 
 cal writers, not all of whom have enumer- 
 ated as frankly as he the victims of their 
 scissors. 
 
 Nothing has been said, thus far, of the 
 story of the saving of Smith by Pocahontas. 
 The historical student who is not entirely 
 steeped in haughty professionalism, who 
 would himself " strictly meditate the thank- 
 less Muse," yet wishes to temper that austere 
 cult with a regard for the unscientific pre- 
 ferences of Amaryllis and Nesera, will cer- 
 
12 HISTORICAL WRITING 
 
 tainly hesitate long before assailing the most 
 famous of the few romantic legends of our 
 early colonial history. And yet it appears 
 that, in spite of a dozen novels and perhaps 
 a gross of poems that have gathered about 
 it, the legend must go. A whole chapter 
 would hardly be long enough for a full dis- 
 cussion of the arguments, but in brief the 
 case is this. Not only is there no mention 
 of such an episode in the full account of his 
 Chickahominy expedition which Smith gave, 
 a few months after he went upon it, in the 
 " True Kelation," but everything there in- 
 dicates a most friendly reception by Pow- 
 hatan ; nor do any of his companions men- 
 tion an adventure so striking. It first ap- 
 pears in print in the " Generall Historic " 
 of 1624, interpolated as one of those em- 
 bellishments of his friends' accounts, to 
 which allusion has been made. It appears 
 that Smith, in 1616, hinted at such a ser- 
 vice performed by Pocahontas, in a letter to 
 the Queen, written when Pocahontas was in 
 England. In short, the probability is that 
 he invented the episode in order to connect 
 himself in a picturesque manner with one 
 who had lately been attracting so much at- 
 tention. One need not stop to defend his- 
 
IN AMERICA. 13 
 
 torical criticism for destroying so pretty a 
 legend, for historical criticism brings to 
 light two stories of heroism that are true 
 where it removes one that is false ; but per- 
 haps we may more easily be reconciled to 
 the loss of this particular romance if we 
 remember that, pictures and poems and 
 story-books to the contrary notwithstanding, 
 the real Pocahontas was only ten years old 
 at the time of the alleged rescue. 
 
 To turn from Captain John Smith to 
 Governor William Bradford is like turning 
 from " Amadis of Gaul" to the "Pilgrim's 
 Progress." The worthy governor of Ply- 
 mouth Plantation had slain no Turks, had 
 undergone no romantic adventures, had 
 been signally befriended by no princesses 
 or noble dames, whether heathen, Moham- 
 medan, or Christian. But if fortune denied 
 him interesting adventures, — except in so 
 far as the high purposes of the Pilgrim 
 Fathers and the permanent importance of 
 their work invest all that they did with in- 
 terest, — it did not deal so with his book. 
 The story of its vicissitudes is a curious one. 
 It was well known to historical scholars that 
 Governor Bradford had left behind him a 
 manuscript history of Plymouth Plantation. 
 
14 HISTORICAL WRITING 
 
 Some extracts from it had been given in 
 print by certain historical writers of the 
 hundred years succeeding his death, the last 
 being Governor Hutchinson, in 1767. It 
 was supposed that Bradford's descendants 
 had lent it to the Eev. Thomas Prince, the 
 noted historical scholar of Boston, and that 
 Prince had deposited it in the New Eng- 
 land Library which he was forming, in the 
 tower of the Old South Church. During 
 the first year of the Revolutionary War, 
 while Boston was occupied by the British, 
 that church was, as is well known, used by 
 them as a riding-school. After that time, 
 nothing was heard of the precious manu- 
 script of Bradford's history, until, one day 
 in 1855, a local antiquary most unexpectedly 
 found a trace of it. While reading a small 
 English book by Bishop Wilberforce on the 
 history of the Protestant Episcopal Church 
 in America, he came upon certain passages 
 which were identical with some of the ex- 
 tracts from Bradford given, as already men- 
 tioned, by American writers of the last 
 century. The foot-notes of the book de- 
 scribed these passages as taken from a manu- 
 script history of the Plantation of Plymouth, 
 in the library of the Bishop of London at 
 
IN AMERICA. 15 
 
 Fulham. The discovery was communicated 
 to one of the leading members of the Mas- 
 sachusetts Historical Society, and a corre- 
 spondence was entered upon. The manu- 
 script in the bishop's library was proved to 
 be that of Governor Bradford's long-lost 
 history, and was copied, and printed in 
 1856. How it came to be in the Fulham 
 library no one knows ; nor does any one 
 know how to get it back from there. 
 
 However, we have the printed text, and 
 a most important and interesting work it is. 
 Governor Bradford's qualifications for pre- 
 paring such a history are manifest. From 
 the first year of the settlement down to the 
 time of his death — during a period, that 
 is, of thirty-six years — there had been but 
 five years in which he had not been elected 
 governor of the colony. He had been among 
 the earlier fugitives to Holland, and was, 
 therefore, personally cognizant of the his- 
 tory of the little community in the period 
 preceding its transfer to America. During 
 most of the long period of his governorship 
 he had had in mind the preparation of such 
 an account, of which it appears that he wrote 
 the beginning in 1630, and the end in 1650, 
 and had been saving and collecting letters 
 
16 HISTORICAL WRITING 
 
 and documents important to his purpose. 
 He liad, therefore, the most entire fami- 
 liarity with the history of the colony, and 
 time enough to insure deliberation and 
 care. Moreover, he had not only a thought- 
 ful mind and a high degree of intelligence, 
 but was even, like so many of the early 
 American governors, a man of some scho- 
 larship. Cotton Mather says of him : " He 
 was a person for study as well as action ; 
 and hence, notwithstanding the difficulties 
 through which he passed in his youth, he 
 attained unto a notable skill in languages ; 
 the Dutch tongue was become almost as 
 vernacular to him as the English; the 
 French tongue he could also manage ; the 
 Latin and the Greek he had mastered ; but 
 the Hebrew he most of all studied, because, 
 he said, he would see with his own eyes 
 the ancient oracles of God in their native 
 beauty. He was also well skilled in history, 
 in antiquity, and in philosophy ; and for 
 theology, he became so versed in it that he 
 i\ ^ was an irrefragable disputant against . . . 
 errors. . . . But the crown of all was his 
 holy, prayerful, watchful, and fruitful walk 
 with God, wherein he was very exemplary." 
 It may illustrate the cast of Bradford's mind 
 
IN AMEBIC A^ 17 
 
 to repeat what he himself has said in regard 
 to one of these studies. Eight manuscript 
 pages of Hebrew roots with English equiva- 
 lents, and of Hebrew exercises, have been 
 found, written in his handwriting, and pre- 
 faced with these remarks : " Though I am 
 growne aged, yet I have had a longing de- 
 sire to see, with my owne eyes, something 
 of that most ancient language, and holy 
 tongue, in which the law and oracles of God 
 were writ ; and in which God and angels 
 spake to the holy patriarchs of old time ; and 
 what names were given to things, from the 
 creation. And though I cannot attaine to 
 much herein, yet I am refreshed to have 
 seen some glimpse hereof (as Moyses saw 
 the land of Canan afarr of). My aim and 
 desire is, to see how the words and phrases 
 lye in the holy texte ; and to discerne some- 
 what of the same, for my owne contente." 
 
 But whatever scholarship the excellent 
 governor may have had, he does not obtrude 
 it into his book, which has nothing of the 
 pedantic manner so frequent in the seven- 
 teenth century. He writes a plain, sober, 
 and straightforward account, the evident 
 care and accuracy of which make it one of 
 the most valued sources for our colonial 
 1* 
 
18 HISTORICAL WRITING 
 
 period. His narrative covers the history of 
 the colony down to the year 1646, at which 
 point it was left unfinished. It embraces 
 the events which led, in England and Hol- 
 land, to the exodus of the Pilgrims, the now 
 familiar tale of their early sufferings and 
 achievements, the occasional controversies in 
 which they were involved, their negotiations 
 with other colonies, their troubles with the 
 London merchants, and their correspondence 
 and relations with the body whom they had 
 left behind at their departure. The phrases 
 in which that departure is described are 
 memorable : " So they lefte that goodly and 
 pleasante citie, which had been ther resting 
 place near twelve years ; but they knew 
 they were pilgrimes, and looked not much 
 on those things, but lift up their eyes to the 
 heavens, their dearest countrie, and quieted 
 their spirits." Such words as these, which 
 have been often quoted, do not stand alone 
 in the narrative ; with all its sobriety, it is 
 clothed in many passages with that exquisite 
 and singular beauty of expression which a 
 close familiarity with the English translation 
 of the Bible has so often bestowed on writers 
 of little literary art. Of such is the follow- 
 ing, written in appreciative commemoration 
 of his companions' fortitude. 
 
IN AMERICA. 19 
 
 '^ But hear," he says, " I cannot but stay 
 and make a pause, and stand half amased at 
 this poore peoples presente condition ; and 
 so I thinke will the reader, too, when he well 
 considers the same. Being thus past the 
 vast ocean, and a sea of troubles before in 
 their preparation, . . . they had now no 
 friends to welcome them nor inns to enter- 
 taine or refresh their weatherbeaten bodys, no 
 houses or much less townes to repair too, to 
 seeke for succoure. It is recorded in scrip- 
 ture as a mercie to the apostle & his ship- 
 wraked company, that the barbarians shewed 
 them no smale kindnes in refreshing them, 
 but these savage barbarians, when they 
 mette with them, . . . were readier to fill 
 their sids full of arrows then otherwise. 
 And for the season it was winter, and they 
 that know the winters of that cuntrie know 
 them to be sharp and violent, and subjecte 
 to cruell and feirce stormes, deangerous to 
 travill to known places, much more to serch 
 an unknown coast. Besids, what could they 
 see but a hidious and desolate wildernes, full 
 of wild beasts and willd men ? And what 
 multituds ther might be of them they knew 
 not. Nether could they, as it were, goe 
 up to the tope of Pisgah, to vew from this 
 
20 HISTORICAL WRITING 
 
 willdernes a more goodly cuntrie to feed 
 their hops; for which way soever they 
 turned their eys (save upward to the hea- 
 vens) they could have litle solace or content 
 in respecte of any outward objects. . . . 
 Let it also be considered what weake hopes 
 of supply and succoure they left behind 
 them, that might bear up their minds in this 
 sade condition and trialls they were under. 
 . . . What could now sustaine them but the 
 spirite of God and his grace ? May not 
 and ought not the children of these fathers 
 rightly say : Our faithers were Englishmen 
 which came over this great ocean, and were 
 ready to perish in this willdernes ; but they 
 cried unto the Lord, and he heard their 
 voyce, and looked on their adversitie, &c. 
 Let them, therefore, praise the Lord, because 
 he is good, and his mercies endure forever. 
 Yea, let them which have been redeemed of 
 the Lord, shew how he hath delivered them 
 from the hand of the oppressour. When 
 they wandered in the desert willdernes out 
 of the way, and found no citie to dwell in, 
 both hungrie and thirstie, their sowle was 
 overwhelmed in them. Let them confess 
 before the Lord his loving kindnes, and his 
 wonderful works before the sons of men." 
 
IN AMERICA. 21 
 
 It is a curious good fortune by which we 
 happen to have accounts of two of our 
 earliest colonies, those of Plymouth and of 
 Massachusetts Bay, written by the two men 
 who had most to do with managing the af- 
 fairs of each in the earliest period. More- 
 over, the two governors and historians were 
 in some degree typical of the two colonies 
 whose history they helped to make and to 
 write. The Separatist colony and the Puri- 
 tan colony were widely different. The his- 
 tory of the Pilgrim Fathers is full of suffer- 
 ing, of poverty, of humility, of patience, and 
 of mildness. It is the story of a small and 
 feeble enterprise, glorified by faith and hope 
 and charity, but necessarily and always lim- 
 ited by the slender resources of the poor 
 and humble men who originated it. The 
 founding of the Bay colony, on the other 
 hand, was less a colonial enterprise than a 
 great Puritan emigration. It was organized 
 by men of substance and standing, supported 
 by the wealth of a great and prosperous 
 body of the English nation, and consciously 
 directed toward the high end of founding 
 in America a great Puritan state. And as 
 Massachusetts was to Plymouth Plantation, 
 so, in many respects, was Governor John 
 
22 HISTORICAL WRITING 
 
 Winthrop to Governor William Bradford. 
 He was, in tlie first place, a man of much 
 more prominent position, lord of the manor 
 of Groton, one of the attorneys of the Court 
 of Wards and Liveries, a magistrate, and 
 a man of considerable wealth. But he was 
 also a man of a broader, larger, and more 
 philosophic intellect, as well as of a more 
 regular and extensive education. In short, 
 he had more thoroughly those powers and 
 acquisitions of mind which would fit one 
 to direct worthily the larger concerns of a 
 strong and important state, and to describe 
 worthily its origin and early development. 
 For beauty of character, it is hard to give the 
 preference to either governor. Long posses- 
 sion of great power in a community resolute 
 to defend its independence and suj)press 
 dissension with a high hand, strong, self- 
 reliant, and intolerant, never succeeded in 
 marring the exquisite sensitiveness of Win- 
 throp's conscience, or affecting the gen- 
 tleness and sweetness of his deportment. 
 Scrupulosity of conscience we perhaps ex- 
 pect to find in a Puritan, but the second 
 point is worth a little more attention. It is 
 worth while frequently to insist that harsh- 
 ness, and sourness, and gloom were not 
 
IN AMERICA. 23 
 
 characteristic of all periods of Puritan his- 
 tory alike. Puritanism in New England, 
 as in Old England, went through three dif- 
 ferent stages, — the period of origin and 
 growth, the period of conflict, the period of 
 decline. The Puritanism which was sat- 
 irized in " Hudibras," and which fell with 
 Richard Cromwell, was not the Puritanism 
 of the civil wars. Still less was it the 
 Puritanism of Milton's earlier years, — of 
 "Comus" and "L' Allegro " and "II Pense- 
 roso." In that earlier time, Puritanism had 
 not dissevered itself from the cheerfulness 
 and spontaneity of the Elizabethan period, 
 but had simply added to them, on the one 
 hand a greater degree of moral eai*nest- 
 ness, and on the other hand a greater zeal 
 for innovation in church and state. So it 
 was in New England. The well-known and 
 most amusing diary of Chief Justice Sewall 
 shows us Puritanism as it had come to be 
 among the men of the third generation, — 
 Puritanism gone to seed, grown narrow and 
 harsh and petty, and rapidly becoming mun- 
 dane and Philistine. But before this, and 
 before the preceding generation of conflict, 
 and before the hardships of life and the 
 wildness of nature had begun to depress 
 
24 HISTORICAL WRITING 
 
 men's minds to the level of the awful right- 
 eousness with which we are so familiar, 
 there was a Puritanism of a less unlovely 
 type ; serious and strict, but not uncheerf ul, 
 nor insensible to the delights and beauty of 
 life. Of such Puritanism John Winthrop 
 was the type and the exponent. In him 
 Puritanism is seen at its best, not only car- 
 ing (and compelling others to care) for 
 what was in its opinion true and honest and 
 just, but also observant of whatsoever things 
 are lovely and of good report. The poetic 
 imagination which "led him to prefer, of all 
 books of the Bible, the Song of Solomon, 
 the depth and beauty of his religious experi- 
 ences, the exquisite tenderness of his letters 
 to his wife, the mildness of his efficient rule 
 as governor, all show us a nature singularly 
 attractive. He was, in short, a gentleman ; 
 not in the spurious sense of one whose an- 
 cestors and connections have been highly 
 distinguished for being related to each other, 
 but in the better sense of one who combines 
 with a noble character the additional graces 
 of a perfect sweetness of temper and a per- 
 fect refinement of manner. 
 
 I have enlarged upon Winthrop's personal 
 characteristics because they were an impor- 
 
IN AMERICA. 25 
 
 tant factor in the composition of his book. 
 Of a historian of our day, writing of these 
 things, this need not be true. But in the 
 case of one who writes of the genesis of a 
 state of which he has been the foremost 
 founder, the study of his personality is a 
 matter of much consequence to the critic, 
 not only because it helps to understand his 
 book, but also because it helps to understand 
 the movement which he headed. Milton, in 
 a famous passage of the Apology for Smec- 
 tymnuus, reminds us "that he who would not 
 be frustrate of his hope to write well here- 
 after in laudable things, ought himself to be 
 a true poem, . . . not presuming to sing 
 high praises of heroic men or famous cities, 
 unless he have in himself the experience and 
 the practice of all that which is praise- 
 worthy." John Winthrop did have within 
 himself these things. They shone out plainly 
 in the acts of his public life, and they are not 
 less conspicuous in the history which he left 
 behind him. 
 
 The " History of New England " has the 
 form of annals, or even, at first, of a journal, 
 begun by the governor on board the Arbella 
 on the day when he set sail from England in 
 1630. It is continued to the winter of 1648, 
 
26 HISTORICAL WRITING 
 
 a few months before his death. Naturally, 
 many matters of small moment are treated 
 in it, — minor doings of the governing body 
 and the churches, moving accidents, remark- 
 able providences, and so forth. But the 
 narrative is never undignified and never gos- 
 siping. And when events of greater impor- 
 tance to the colony, or deliberations and dis- 
 cussions involving the essential principles of 
 its policy, fall to be described, we could 
 hardly desire a guide more impartial, more 
 informing, or more thoughtful. Together 
 with the actions of the rulers their reasons 
 are set before us, and set before us with 
 a high-minded confidence and a philosophic 
 breadth of view that leave nothing to be 
 desired. Once in a while occur really admi- 
 rable reasonings and statements in matters 
 of political philosophy ; while the absence of 
 passion and intolerance and pettiness is very 
 marked. The early years of the colony were 
 a time of strong party feeling and of bitter 
 dissensions; yet Winthrop never takes the 
 opportunity of private writing and posthu- 
 mous publication to set down aught in mal- 
 ice against any of his opponents. Of the 
 chief among them, Sir Harry Vane, he says 
 that at all times " he showed himself a true 
 
IN AMERICA. 27 
 
 friend to New England, and a man of a 
 noble and generous mind." The severest 
 thing that he says of any of them, so far as 
 I know, is found in some words of grave 
 and temperate disapprobation which he uses 
 with regard to Governor Bellingham, and 
 even here he does, not fail to suggest what 
 excuse he can for Bellingham's factious ill- 
 temper. Speaking in one passage of some 
 of these disagreements, he says : " Indeed, it 
 occasioned much grief to all the elders, and 
 gave great offence through the country; and 
 such as were acquainted with other states in 
 the world, and had not well known the per- 
 sons, would have concluded such a faction 
 here as hath been usual in the council of 
 England and other states, who walk by poli- 
 tic principles only. But these gentlemen 
 were such as feared God, and endeavored to 
 walk by the rules of liis word in all their 
 proceedings, so as it might be conceived in 
 charity that they walked according to their 
 judgments and conscience, and where they 
 went aside it was merely for want of light, 
 or their eyes were held through some temp- 
 tation for a time, that they could not make 
 use of the light they had ; for in all these 
 differences and agitations about them, they 
 
28 HISTORICAL WRITING 
 
 continued in brotherly love, and in tlie exer- 
 cise of all friendly offices each to other, as 
 occasion required." And the story of the 
 governor's own reconciliation with Dudley 
 shows that, so far as he himself was con- 
 cerned, he has not overstated the case. 
 
 Winthrop's narrative, like Bradford's, was 
 left in manuscript at his death, and came to 
 be a part of the New England Library in 
 the Old South Church. Its subsequent vi- 
 cissitudes were curious, though not so remark- 
 able as those of the " History of Plymouth 
 Plantation." After the Revolution, two of 
 the three volumes of the manuscript were 
 found in the possession of the elder branch 
 of the Winthrops in Connecticut, edited, 
 very superficially it must be said, by the re- 
 doubtable lexicographer, Noah Webster, and 
 published in 1790. In 1816, the third vol- 
 ume was discovered in the dormitory of the 
 Old South Church. The Massachusetts His- 
 torical Society entrusted the preparation of 
 a new edition of the whole to James Savage. 
 Before he had accomplished the collation of 
 the second volume of the manuscript, that 
 volume was destroyed by a fire which broke 
 out in his office. The first and the third 
 volumes are now in the library of the soci- 
 
IN AMERICA. 29 
 
 ety ; for the second, our text is that of Web- 
 ster's edition. 
 
 He who is seeking a characteristic pro- 
 duction of the traditional Puritan should 
 without doubt resort to that of the fourth 
 and last writer upon our list. Its very title 
 is characteristically Puritan. It was an age 
 of quaint title-pages ; but nowhere were they 
 quainter than in the books of the New Eng- 
 land Puritans. "New England's Teares for 
 Old England's Feares," "New England's 
 Salamander Discovered," "New England's 
 Jonas cast up at London," "The Heart of 
 New England rent at the Blasphemies of 
 the Present Generation," and, for a longer 
 example, that of John Cotton's famous pam- 
 plilet, "Milk for Babes, drawn out of the 
 Breasts of both Testaments, chiefly for the 
 Spiritual Nourishment of Boston Babes, but 
 may be of like use to other Children," — 
 such are the names of some of the early his- 
 torical and controversial tracts of New Eng- 
 land. Among them all, few have a quainter 
 title than that which the author of the his- 
 torical book before us bestowed upon it, — 
 " The Wonder-Working Providence of Sion's 
 Saviour in New England." The London 
 publisher saw fit to alter this upon the title- 
 
30 HISTORICAL WRITING 
 
 page to " The History of New England ; " but 
 in the head-lines of the pages the title chosen 
 by the author is followed throughout. A 
 history of New England the book is not, but 
 rather a history of Massachusetts down to 
 the year 1651. Among the New England 
 histories it has the distinction of having been 
 the first to appear in print, for it was printed 
 in London in 1653 (dated 1654). It was 
 printed anonymously, but its author is known 
 to have been Captain Edward Johnson, se- 
 lectman and town clerk of the town of Wo- 
 burn in Massachusetts. In Governor Win- 
 throp, as I have declared, we may see 
 Puritanism at its very best. But the elite 
 of humanity are nowhere in a majority. A 
 better representative of the average Puritan 
 of the middle class is doubtless Captain 
 Johnson. He was a Kentish farmer, and 
 probably also a shipwright, who came out in 
 the same fleet with Winthrop in 1630. A 
 dozen years later, he was, in company with 
 half a dozen others, one of the founders of 
 the new town of Woburn. It is interesting 
 to note that, of his dozen companions in this 
 undertaking, one, John Sedgwick, afterward 
 became one of Cromwell's major-generals, 
 while another rose in the naval service of 
 
IN AMERICA. 31 
 
 England to be Rear-Admiral Thomas Graves. 
 But the stout Kentishman, having put his 
 hand to the plough, chose to remain in the 
 town he had helped to plant. He had 
 always an important part in the affairs of 
 the town, was chosen selectman nearly every 
 year, was again and again elected to repre- 
 sent the town in the general court or legis- 
 lature of the colony, acted as town clerk, 
 and was captain of the train-band. He was, 
 therefore, more or less concerned in the pub- 
 lic affairs in the colony, but never had a 
 leading part in tliem. Though he was a 
 more prominent, a wealthier, and perhaps a 
 more intelligent man than most of his fellow- 
 citizens, we may well enough take him as in 
 most respects a type of the rank and file of 
 the original settlers. This is in the main 
 what gives its value to this first printed his- 
 tory of Massachusetts. 
 
 Captain Edward Johnson was far inferior 
 to Governor Winthrop in breadth, in culture, 
 and in fineness of spirit. The hot zeal, the 
 narrow partisanship, the confident dogma- 
 tism, which characterized so much of Puri- 
 tanism, have in him a striking example. No 
 one could be more remote from the cool, 
 skeptical, examining temper of the modern 
 
32 HISTORICAL WRITING 
 
 historian, who hears, and smiles, and deducts, 
 and balances. All Johnson's opinions are 
 self-evident to him. He sees no good in the 
 lords bishops. He will not listen to the 
 servants of the chief priests ; rather, his first 
 impulse is to draw a sword and cut off 
 Malchus' ear. He is full of that narrow 
 Hebraism which, when it prayed, kept open 
 its windows toward Jerusalem, but closed 
 every other avenue to the soul. To hew 
 A gag in pieces before the Lord is to his 
 mind not the least attractive of religious 
 duties. With him the church militant is 
 more than a metaphor. The life of the col- 
 ony appears to him most frequently in the 
 guise of an armed conflict; he hears in its 
 story the noise of battle, the thunder of the 
 captains and the shouting, and in vehement 
 canticles summons the Israel of New Eng- 
 land to the help of the Lord against the 
 mighty. Old Testament phrases are his 
 delight ; he speaks, throughout, the dialect 
 which the French wittily call the patois de 
 Canaan. To the Puritan zeal he adds the 
 Puritan superstition. Everywhere the hand 
 of the Lord is seen protecting his saints; 
 his wonder-working Providence appears not 
 only in the general movement of the events 
 
IN AMERICA. 33 
 
 narrated, but in every detail of the fortunes 
 and misfortunes of individuals, so that his 
 pages bristle with special providences. His 
 account of one of these may be quoted : — 
 
 "To end this yeare 1639, the Lord, was 
 pleased to send a very sharp winter, and 
 more especially in strong storms of weekly 
 snows, with very bitter blasts; And here the 
 Reader may take notice of the sad hand 
 of the Lord against two persons, who were 
 taken in a storme of snow, as they were 
 passing from Boston to Roxbury, it being 
 much about a mile distant, and a very plaine 
 way. One of Roxbury sending to Boston 
 his servant maid for a Barber-Chirurgion to 
 draw his tooth, they lost their way in their 
 passage between, and were not found till 
 many dayes after, and then the maid was 
 found in one place, and the man in another, 
 both of them frozen to death ; in which sad 
 accident, this was taken into consideration 
 by divers people, that this barber was more 
 than ordinary laborious to draw men to those 
 sinfull Errors, that were formerly so fre- 
 quent, and now newly overthrowne by the 
 blessing of the Lord, .... he having a fit 
 opportunity, by reason of his trade, so soone 
 as they were set downe in his chaire, he 
 
 2* 
 
34 HISTORICAL WRITING 
 
 would commonly be cutting of their haire 
 and the truth together ; notwithstanding 
 some report better of the man, the example 
 is for the living, the dead is judged of the 
 Lord alone." 
 
 This last is a redeeming touch. It cannot 
 be said that it is not in some degree charac- 
 teristic. With all the illiberality and harsh- 
 ness of his theological zeal, the man was not 
 unkindly. Something of the spirit of Win- 
 throp appeared in even the less enlightened 
 of those who followed him ; Johnson's Puri- 
 tanism was not all unlovely, and at any rate 
 it was far from ignoble. Let us be just to 
 the Puritans. Doubtless they would not be 
 agreeable neighbors. Doubtless they would 
 have hanged or burned a considerable num- 
 ber of us, and banished all the rest ; for in 
 these degenerate days hardly any one is 
 orthodox according to their standards. Yet 
 let us remember that they did possess, in 
 an eminent degree, those virtues that spring 
 from confidence in a high purpose and a 
 mission felt to be momentous and sacred, 
 from belief in character, from belief in en- 
 thusiasm, from belief in strenuous effort. If 
 the bit of quaint superstition which has been 
 quoted is characteristic of Johnson and his 
 
IN AMERICA. 85 
 
 companions, not less characteristic is the fol- 
 lowing passage, in which is exhibited in an 
 instructive manner the attitude of the strug- 
 gling colony toward its cherished college. 
 Describino- the eaeer desire of the colonists 
 that learning should be adequately main- 
 tained among them, he says: "And verily 
 had not the Lord been pleased to furnish N. 
 E. with means for the attainment of learning, 
 the work would have been carried on very 
 heavily, and the hearts of godly parents 
 would have vanish'd away with heaviness 
 for their poor children, whom they must 
 have left in a desolate wilderness, destitute 
 of the meanes of grace." After picturesquely 
 setting forth their sense of the magnitude of 
 such an enterprise as the foundation of a 
 college in comparison with their feeble re- 
 sources, he goes on to say : — 
 
 "Hereupon all those who had tasted the 
 sweet wine of Wisdom's drawing, and fed 
 on the dainties of knowledg, began to set 
 their wits a work. . . . Means they know 
 there are, many thousands uneyed of mortal 
 man, which every dales Providence brings 
 forth; upon these resolutions, to work they 
 go, and with thankful acknowledgement, 
 readily take up all lawful means as they 
 
36 HISTORICAL WRITING 
 
 come to hand, for place tliey fix their eye 
 upon New Town, which to tell their Poster- 
 ity whence they came, is now named Cam- 
 bridg, and withal to make the whole world 
 understand, that spiritual learning was the 
 thing they chiefly desired, to sanctifie the 
 other, and make the whole lump holy, and 
 that learning being set uj^on its right object, 
 might not contend for error instead of truth ; 
 they chose this place, being then under the 
 Orthodox, and soul-flourishing Ministry of 
 Mr. Thomas Shepheard. . . . The scitua- 
 tion of this colleg is very pleasant, at the end 
 of a spacious plain, more like a bowling- 
 green, then a wilderness, neer a fair navi- 
 gable river, environed with many Neigh- 
 boring Towns of note, . . . the building 
 thought by some to be too gorgeous for a 
 wilderness, and yet too mean in others appre- 
 hensions for a colleg, it is at present inlar- 
 ging by purchase of the neighbour houses, it 
 hath the conveniences of a fair Hall, com- 
 fortable Studies, and a good Library, given 
 by the liberal hand of some Magistrates 
 and Ministers with others. The chief gift 
 towards the founding of this Colledg, was by 
 Mr. John Harvard, a reverend Minister ; the 
 country being very weak in their publike 
 
IN AMERICA. 37 
 
 Treasury, expended about 500. £ toward it, 
 and for the maintenance thereof, gave the 
 yearly revenue of a Ferry passage between 
 Boston and Charlestown, the which amounts 
 to about 40. or 50. <£ per annum. . . . 
 This CoUedg hath brought forth, and nurst 
 up very hopeful plants, to the supplying 
 some churches here, as the gracious and 
 godly Mr. Wilson, son to the grave and 
 zealous servant of Christ, Mr. John Wilson, 
 [and others]. . . . Mr. Henry Dunster is 
 now president of [itj, fitted from the Lord 
 for the work, and by those that have skill 
 that way reported to be an able Proficient, 
 in both Hebrew, Greek, and Latine lan- 
 guages, an Orthodox preacher of the truths 
 of Christ, very powerful through his bless- 
 ing to move the affection; and besides he 
 having a good inspection into the well-or- 
 dering of things for the Students' mainte- 
 nance (whose commons hath been very short 
 hitherto) by his frugal providence hath con- 
 tinued them longer at their studies than 
 otherwise they could have done ; and, verily, 
 it's great pity such ripe heads as many of 
 of them be, should want means to further 
 them in learning." 
 
 One curious feature of Johnson's style of 
 
38 HISTORICAL WRITING 
 
 historical composition remains to be noted. 
 This is his habit of inserting in his narrative 
 bits of original verse. The earliest colonial 
 writers were somewhat addicted to this habit. 
 Roger Williams closes each short chapter of 
 his Indian grammar, or " Key into the Lan- 
 guage of America," with a stanza or so of 
 verses as bad as any that one often encoun- 
 ters ; John Smith, we have seen, developed 
 in later life something of this habit. But 
 few among them all had it in a more aggra- 
 vated form than the author of the " Wonder- 
 Working Providence." His book contains 
 no less than sixty-eight poems. The present 
 writer has read them all, with the pious care 
 of a lineal descendant, and can confidently 
 state that they are all very bad. One of 
 them, on the Massachusetts Company, runs in 
 this unconsciously brisk and jaunty manner : 
 
 "For richest Jems and gainfull things most Merchants 
 
 wisely venter; 
 Deride not then New England men, this Corporation 
 
 enter; 
 Christ calls for Trade shall never fade, come Craddock 
 
 factors send ; 
 Let Mayhew go and other more, spare not thy coyne to 
 
 spend ; 
 Such Trades advance did never chance, in all thy Trading 
 
 yet, 
 Though some deride thy losse, abide, her 's gaine beyond 
 
 man's wit." 
 
IN AMERICA. 39 
 
 Most of them, however, are in honor or 
 commemoration of individual persons pro- 
 minently concerned in the foundation of the 
 colony, or godly ministers of its churches. 
 The author, after mentioning the person, 
 inserts some modest introductory phrase, 
 such as, " of whom the author is bold to say 
 as followeth," or " in remembrance of whom 
 mind this meeter," and theii, to use a phrase 
 now become classic, "drops into poetry." 
 One of the most characteristic is that which 
 ensues after the mention of Governor John 
 Endicott. "And now," he says, "let no 
 man be offended at the author's rude verse, 
 penned of purpose to keepe in memory the 
 names of such worthies as Christ made 
 strong for himselfe, in this unwonted worke 
 of his." 
 
 " Strong valiant John wilt thou march on, and take up 
 
 station first, 
 Christ cal'd hath thee, his soldier be, and faile not of thy 
 
 trust ; 
 Wilderness wants Christ's grace supplants, then plant 
 
 his Churches pure, 
 With Tongues gifted, and graces led, help thou to his 
 
 procure ; 
 Undaunted thou wilt not allow. Malignant men to wast : 
 Christs Vineyard heere, whose grace should cheere, his 
 
 well-beloved's tast. 
 Then honoured be, thy Christ hath thee their Generall 
 
 promoted : 
 
40 HISTORICAL WRITING 
 
 To show their love, in place above, his people have thee 
 
 voted. 
 Yet must thou fall, to grave with all the Nobles of the 
 
 Earth, 
 Thou rotting worme, to dust must turn, and worse but 
 
 for new birth." 
 
 But in truth the service of Clio can hardly 
 be profitably mixed with the meditation of 
 other muses, and Johnson's book, in spite of 
 his " meeters " and his excellent intentions, 
 is not a historical source of the first quality. 
 For while he gives much valuable informa- 
 tion, especially as to the successive planting 
 of new towns and churches in Massachusetts, 
 he is not seldom inaccurate. 
 
 Such were the four historians, and such 
 was the historiography of our first colonial 
 period. Of other writers, whose works were 
 not of purely historical import, or who at- 
 tained not unto the first four, it is not my 
 purpose to speak. Yet one of these works, 
 Hubbard's "Narrative of the Indian War," a 
 book marked by much vividness of narration, 
 was in its own time esteemed of such impor- 
 tance that, for the perusing and approving 
 it, we are told, " three honorable Magistrates 
 were deputed by the Governor and Council 
 of the Massachusetts Colony (one of whom 
 was a Major-General, and the other two were 
 
IN AMERICA. 41 
 
 afterwards Governors)." The whirligig of 
 time brings its revenges. In our day, major- 
 generals and governors, and even presidential 
 candidates, have taken to the writing of his- 
 tory, and the historical scholar has the op- 
 portunity of reviewing them. 
 
42 HISTORICAL WRITING 
 
 II. 
 
 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 According to the arrangements of chro- 
 nology, the seventeenth century ended' with 
 the year 1700. According to the real facts 
 of history, the period that we always think 
 of as the seventeenth century ended at least 
 a dozen years earlier, and the real eigh- 
 teenth century then began. In other words, 
 though there was no violent break, yet with 
 the fall of the House of Stuart and the for- 
 mation of the Grand Alliance a new page in 
 the history of western Europe was turned. 
 The age of Richelieu, of Strafford, of Crom- 
 well, and of Milton had ended; the age of 
 Walpole, of Dubois and Fleury, of Pope and 
 Voltaire, had already begun. A century of 
 prose, of criticism, of wit, and of finish set 
 in. The very wars that have been alluded 
 to are typical of the change. The conflicts 
 in which the preceding generations had been 
 engaged — the Thirty Years' War, the civil 
 wars in England and in France — were con- 
 
TN AMERICA. 43 
 
 flicts for great religious or constitutional 
 principles. The war wliicli opened with the 
 formation of the Grand Alliance and the 
 expulsion of James II. was more like the 
 wars of the succeeding period, — wars not 
 wholly dynastic, indeed, but of a dryly 
 political character, and waged rather with 
 gallantry than with lofty enthusiasm. Poli- 
 tics, at any rate in England, where alone 
 politics was a popular concern, subsided into 
 a condition unenthusiastic, inanimate, and 
 humdrum. Material prosperity was rapidly 
 increasing, and the world, tired of the age 
 of conflict, became devoted to the pursuit of 
 wealth. Society settled down into that pro- 
 saic and secular temper, that engrossment 
 with the material elements of life, that ab- 
 sence of high ideals, to which of late we 
 have been giving the name Philistinism. 
 Political life consisted of little but selfish 
 personal conflicts, between statesmen who 
 laughed good-naturedly at the mention of 
 patriotism or public virtue. The church 
 was lifeless. The world was its own god, 
 and Sir Kobert Walpole was its prophet. 
 
 The independence of Europe which Amer- 
 ica has enjoyed since the War of 1812, and 
 has more distinctly felt since the close of 
 
44 HISTORICAL WRITING 
 
 the Civil War, inclines us sometimes to 
 speak and tliink of our earlier history as if 
 an equal degree of independence prevailed 
 in those times. The history of America is 
 written as a separate story, as the story of 
 something quite isolated. In reality, the 
 same waves of thought and feeling generally 
 agitated both, though they sometimes reached 
 the American shores a little later. Fashions 
 in these matters were as naturally followed 
 in the colonies as fashions in dress or in 
 social usages are followed in colonies every- 
 where. So it happened that the age of 
 Walpole was marked by much the same 
 phenomena on this side of the water as in 
 England. No period in our history was so 
 dull. Political enthusiasm, whether it were 
 enthusiasm for liberty or enthusiasm for loy- 
 alty, declined, and gave place to an unheroic 
 apathy. Religious zeal declined not less. 
 Even controversial life in the church was 
 concerned with matters less vital than here- 
 tofore ; while as to controversies in matters 
 of state, they centred almost universally 
 about interests of a petty and personal and 
 selfish sort, so that history finds little better 
 to record than the quarrels of the royal gov- 
 ernors with the colonial assemblies. The 
 
IN AMERICA. 45 
 
 country was growing rich and prosperous, 
 and as it sought wealth and prosperity more 
 and more, the intensity which had marked 
 the preceding period rapidly relaxed. The 
 generation grew broader and more tolerant, 
 indeed, but it at the same time grew more 
 worldly and more commonplace in its aims 
 and thoughts. 
 
 The incoming of this age of prose had, I 
 am persuaded, more unhappy results in New 
 England than in Virginia, or in the Southern 
 and Middle colonies generally. Its easier 
 tone was better suited to the life and man- 
 ners that had grown up in those milder and 
 softer climates. The alteration from the sev- 
 enteenth century was less marked and less 
 demoralizing. But in Massachusetts the 
 candid inquirer is forced to admit a deterio- 
 ration for which the gain in liberality was 
 hardly a compensation. Few things in our 
 history are more pathetic than the grief of 
 the uncompromising elders when the Mas- 
 sachusetts charter was taken away and the 
 Puritan theocracy fell. But the succeeding 
 generation grew accustomed to the change, 
 and submitted themselves willingly unto Cae- 
 sar. The great experiment, the object of 
 so much prayer and solicitude and ceaseless 
 
46 HISTORICAL WRITING 
 
 effort, had failed. The strenuousness which 
 had arisen from high aims and devotion to a 
 great and religious task in part gave way, in 
 part became diverted into pettier channels. 
 The elder Puritans had shown harshness and 
 austerity, but mixed with these were elements 
 of grandeur. In the eighteenth century there 
 is much of the same harshness and rigor, but 
 the diary of Judge Sewall, the New England 
 Pepys, shows us minds painfully exercised 
 about small things, — about periwigs and sur- 
 plices and the observance of Christmas. 
 
 Sewall does not properly fall within the 
 scope of these papers. In his solemn yet 
 amusing way, he furnishes us with valuable 
 historical material, indeed, but not with a 
 professed historical composition. But much 
 the same character is borne by the most 
 prominent historian of the age, that redoubt- 
 able New England Boanerges, the Reverend 
 Doctor Cotton Mather, the "literary behe- 
 moth " of our colonial era, as Professor Tyler 
 has called him ; author of no less than four 
 hundred and fifty-two published writings, 
 and especially of the " Magnalia Christi 
 Americana ; or. The Ecclesiastical History 
 of New England, from Its First Planting in 
 the Year 1620, unto the Year of our Lord, 
 
IN AMERICA. 47 
 
 1698." This miracle of learning and piety 
 and factious ambition and pedantry and con- 
 ceit was born to every advantage which 
 could attend a New England historian of 
 the colonial period. He was the grandson 
 of two of the chief lights of the pulpit in 
 the days of the settlement, the Kev. John 
 Cotton and the Rev. Richard Mather. His 
 father, Dr. Increase Mather, was minister 
 of a large parish in Boston, president of 
 Harvard College, himself author of ninety- 
 two writings, and for many years the most 
 influential as well as the most learned man 
 in New England. Great things were ex- 
 pected of one who began life under such 
 auspices, — non sine dis animosus infans. 
 Cotton Mather early began to satisfy these 
 expectations. He was graduated from Har- 
 vard College at an age younger than that of 
 any bachelors save two in its whole history, 
 and three years later took the master's de- 
 gree, sustaining in public disputation the 
 thesis that the Hebrew points are of divine 
 origin. His early piety was not less con- 
 spicuous. " When he began to speak al- 
 most," says his son and biographer, "he 
 began to ^^r^^/^ ^'^^^ practiced this Duty con- 
 stantly while he was a School-Boy ; and. 
 
48 HISTORICAL WRITING 
 
 altho' he used no Forms in Secret, he com- 
 posed some for his School-Fellows & obliged 
 them to pray. Before he could write notes 
 of Sermons in j^uhlic Assemblies, he com- 
 monly wrote what he remembred when he 
 came home. He read the Scriptures with 
 so much Ardor and Assiduity, that ffteen 
 Chapters a Day divided into three Exer- 
 cises, and nothing less, would suffice him. 
 He would moreover reprove his Play-mates 
 for their wicked Words and Practices." At 
 fourteen he began the practice of frequent 
 fasting. 
 
 Not many years after his graduation, this 
 pink of youthful priggery was called to be 
 assistant in his father's church, of which he 
 remained a pastor for nearly half a century, 
 for much of that time directing the affairs 
 of the province, like a pope, from the pulpit 
 of the Old North Church. His rich and 
 fruitful activity in public affairs during that 
 period cannot here be described, although 
 important illustrations of his character may 
 be derived from his course in the witchcraft 
 troubles, in which he was extraordinarily 
 active ; urging on the courts to more and 
 more prosecutions, stimulating the popular 
 excitement, and making the most violent 
 
IN AMERICA, 49 
 
 efforts to prevent the natural reaction. It 
 is with his literary activities and mental 
 characteristics that we are concerned. His 
 son, relating his death-bed conversation, says: 
 "I asked him toliat Sentence or Word, ichat 
 IlvKvov 'Ettos, He luould have me th'inh on 
 constantly, for I ever desired to have him 
 before me and hear him speaking to me? 
 He said, ' Remember only that one word 
 Fructuosus.^ " The advice was highly char- 
 acteristic. Never was there a mortal of more 
 prodigious industry. In one year he pre- 
 pared and published fourteen books, preached 
 more than seventy-two public sermons and 
 nearly half as many private ones, kept sixty 
 fasts and twenty-two vigils, besides attend- 
 ing to his other varied duties, for he was 
 most assiduous in pastoral labors. The 
 amount of his work in the study was enor- 
 mous ; that of his work among men was 
 scarcely less so. The 361st of his works, as 
 catalogued by Mr. Sibley, is entitled " Ho- 
 nesta Parsimonia ; or. Time Spent as it should 
 be. Proposals, ... To prevent that Great 
 Folly and Mischief, The Loss of Time." 
 Herein, at least, the learned and painful 
 doctor practiced what he preached. The 
 record of the various ingenious means which 
 
50 HISTORICAL WRITING 
 
 he employed in order not to waste any time 
 is an amusing and interesting one. Even 
 his prayers and meditations and thoughts 
 were carefully systematized. The topic and 
 method of his meditations while dressing 
 were prescribed for each morning in the 
 week. There was method observed even in 
 the occasional thoughts with which he strove 
 to have odd moments profitably occupied. 
 
 " When the Doctor waked in the Nighty'' 
 says his son, " he would impose it as a Law 
 upon Himself ever before he fell asleep 
 again to bring some Glory of Ms Saviour 
 into his Meditations, and have some agree- 
 able Desire of his Soul upon it. . . . When 
 he loashed his Hands, he must think of the 
 clean Hands, as well as pure Heart, which 
 belong to the Citizens of Zion. And when 
 he did so mean an Action as paring his 
 Nails, he tho't how he might lay aside all 
 Superfluity of Naughtiness. . . . He was 
 very constant in Ejaculatory Prayers and 
 Praises, . . . While he walked the Streets, 
 or sat in a Room with his Mind otherwise 
 unemployed, he would not lose the Time, but 
 use his Wit as well as Grace in contriving 
 some suitable Blessing for such and such as 
 were before him : and then he would form 
 
IN AMERICA. 51 
 
 it into an Ejaculation for them. . . . When 
 he walked the Streets^ he still blessed many 
 Persons who never knew it, with secret 
 Wishes after this manner for them ; Upon 
 the sight of a tall man, ''Lord., Give that 
 Man high attainments in Ch7nstianity .^ 
 A lame Man, ' Lord., Help that Man on 
 moral Accounts to walk uprightly,'' A 
 Negro, ' Lord., Wash that poor Soul ; make 
 him white hy the Washing of thy Spirit J' 
 A Man going by without observing him, 
 ' Lord., L pray Thee., Help that Man to 
 take a due Notice of Christ.'' " The pun- 
 ning habit which is here noticeable crops 
 out in all his writings, and indeed a gen- 
 eral habit of verbal jingles and ingenuities 
 which might justify one in applying to 
 himself what he in the " Magnalia " says in 
 praise of Rev. John Wilson, and commend- 
 ing 
 
 " Plis care to guide his flock and feed his lambs, 
 By words, works, prayers, }>salms, alms and anagrams." 
 
 Enough has been cited to show thoroughly 
 the character of this extraordinary man, — 
 a man of extraordinary piety, no doubt, but 
 also of extraordinary self-consciousness, ris- 
 ing at times into the most amusing vanity. 
 His tireless energy and industry in study 
 
52 HISTORICAL WRITING 
 
 went far towards fittiiiof him to be a histo- 
 rian of New England. His family connec- 
 tions and his prominent position gave him 
 additional facilities for such a task. Already, 
 among his multitudinous publications, he 
 had issued a few minor ones of historical 
 content, such as " The Bostonian Ebenezer," 
 " Decennium Luctuosum," " Arma Virosque 
 Cano," and " A Pillar of Gratitude." But 
 about 1693 he formed the design of writing 
 a general church history of New England, a 
 design which the neighboring ministers much 
 encouraged. It was finished in 1697. On 
 January 12, 1698, he records in his diary : 
 " I set apart this day for the exercise of a 
 secret fast before the Lord. One special 
 design of my supplications was to obtain 
 the direction of Heaven about my ' Church 
 History,' the time and way of my sending it 
 into Europe, and the methods of its publica- 
 tion. I think I am assured that my suppli- 
 cations are heard in this matter." After long 
 delays, an opportunity occurred to send it to 
 London ; but still further delays intervened. 
 The book was large, the publishers were 
 cold ; but at length one was found who, not 
 with any expectation of gain, but for the 
 glory of God, undertook its publication. It 
 
IN AMERICA. 53 
 
 may be interesting to note tlie mode in which 
 the historian manifested his concern for his 
 precious work, — a mode perhaps not often 
 observed by the historians of our day. In 
 his diary, under date of April 4, 1702, oc- 
 curs the following entry : — 
 
 " I was in much distress upon my spirit 
 concerning my ' Church History,' and some 
 other elaborate composures, that I have sent 
 into London ; about the progress towards 
 the publication whereof the Lord still keeps 
 me in the dark. To have those composures, 
 with all my labors and all my prayers about 
 them, lost, would be a terrible trial to me. 
 But I thought it my duty to prepare for such 
 a trial. Wherefore I set apart a vigil this 
 night peculiarly for that service. Accord- 
 ingly, in the dead of the night, I first sang 
 some agreeable psalms ; and then, casting 
 myself prostrate in the dust, on my study- 
 floor, before the Lord, I confessed unto him 
 the sins for which he might justly reject me 
 and all my services ; and I promised unto 
 him, that if He would reject those particular 
 services, which I have been laboring to do 
 for His name, in my ' Church History,' and 
 some of the composures now in England, 
 though my calamity therein would be very 
 
54 HISTORICAL WRITING 
 
 sensible, yet I would with His help submit 
 patiently unto His holy will therein ; and I 
 would not be discouraged thereby at all from 
 further endeavors to serve my Lord Jesus 
 Christ, but I would love him still, and seek 
 him still, and serve him still, and never be 
 weary of doing so, but essay to serve him in 
 other ways, if he would not accept of these. 
 Thus did I resign unto the Lord ; who there- 
 upon answered me, that He was my Father, 
 and that He took delight in me, and that 
 He would smile upon my endeavors to serve 
 Him, and that my ' Church History ' should 
 be accepted and prospered." 
 
 Mather's solicitude for his books, it ought 
 to be said, should not be regarded as arising 
 solely from vanity. The desire to do good 
 by them seems to have been ever present 
 with him. From both motives, he used the 
 utmost care and ingenuity and diligence in 
 disseminating copies of them in all directions, 
 more especially throughout New England, as 
 soon as he received them from the press oi 
 Boston or of London. The arrival of the 
 first copy of the " Magnalia " is thus chroni- 
 cled by him, October 30, 1702 : — 
 
 " Yesterday I first saw my ' Church His- 
 tory ' since the publication of it. A gentle- 
 
IN AMERICA. 55 
 
 man arrived here from Newcastle in Eng- 
 land, that had bought it there. Wherefore 
 I set apart this day for solemn thanksgiving 
 unto God for his watchful and gracious 
 providence over that work, and for the har- 
 vest of so many prayers and cares and tears 
 and resignations as I had employed upon it. 
 My religious friend, Mr. Bromfield, who 
 had been singularly helpful to the publica- 
 tion of that great book (of twenty shillings 
 price at London), came to me at the close 
 of the day, to join with me in some of my 
 praises to God." 
 
 The offspring of all these " prayers and 
 cares and tears and resignations " is indeed a 
 large book, distended by abundant divagations 
 and moralizings and quotations, and even 
 the insertion, in extended reprint, of essays 
 already published. There is little consis- 
 tency or method in the mode of presenta- 
 tion. It is the outpouring of a full mind 
 working at great speed. The general scheme 
 is plain enough, but it is such as to involve 
 much repetition and looseness of arrange- 
 ment. The first of the seven books of which 
 the " Magnalia " consists gives a somewhat 
 desultory history, not only ecclesiastical but 
 civil, of the colonies of New England. As an 
 
56 HISTORICAL WRITING 
 
 appendix to this book is reprinted " The 
 Bostonian Ebenezer." The second book is 
 entitled " Ecclesiaruni Clypei," and contains 
 the lives of the governors that were as shields 
 unto the churches of New England. To 
 each of the more important ones is conse- 
 crated a separate chapter, under some such 
 quaint title as " Nehemias Americanus, the 
 Life of John Winthrop, Esq., Governour of 
 the Massachuset Colony." The third book 
 gives, in forty-three chapters, the lives of 
 the principal New England divines. The 
 first part, entitled " Johannes in Eremo " 
 (John in the wilderness), commemorates four 
 of the most prominent, grouped together, 
 for no other reason, apparently, than that 
 they all bore the name John, — John Cot- 
 ton, John Norton, John Wilson, and John 
 Davenport. In the second part (quaintly 
 entitled " Sepher Jereim, i. e. Liber Deum 
 Timentium ; or. Dead Abels yet speaking 
 and spoken of"), in the third part, and in 
 the fourth, other clerical worthies are com- 
 memorated who were of less consequence, or 
 who did not have the name of John. The 
 fourth book is devoted to the history of 
 Harvard College, and the biographies of its 
 more eminent graduates ; the fifth, to the 
 
IN AMERICA. 57 
 
 acts and monuments of the New England 
 church. The sixth book, perhaps the most 
 curious of all, is called '' Thaumaturgus, . . . 
 i. e. Liber Memorabilium, . . . wherein 
 very many illustrious discoveries and demon- 
 strations of Divine Providence in remark- 
 able Mercies and Judgments on many par- 
 ticular persons among the people of New 
 England, are observed, collected and re- 
 lated." One chapter, headed *' Christus 
 super Aquas," is given to remarkable de- 
 liverances by sea ; another, " Ceraunius or 
 Brontologia Sacra," to providences con- 
 nected with thunder and lightning. Still 
 another has as an appendix a history of crim- 
 inals executed for capital crimes, with their 
 dying speeches. But the most remarkable 
 of all is that bearing the formidable title 
 " Thaumatographia Pneumatica," and " re- 
 lating the wonders of the invisible world in 
 preternatural occurrences." " There has 
 been," he says, " too much cause to observe, 
 that the christians who were driven into the 
 American Desart^ which is now call'd New 
 England, have to their sorrow seen Azazel 
 [Satan] dwelling and raging there in very 
 tragical instances. The devils have doubt- 
 less felt a more than ordinary vexation, from 
 
58 HISTORICAL WRITING 
 
 the arrival of those christians with their 
 sacred exercises of Christianity in this wil- 
 derness : But the sovereignty of heaven has 
 permitted them still to remain in the wilder- 
 ness, for our vexation, as well as their own." 
 And so he proceeds to a detailed narration 
 of fourteen selected cases of witchcraft, 
 forming a chapter of most curious reading, 
 and a monument of his own ingenuity and 
 credulity. Finally, the " Magnalia " closes 
 with a book called " Ecclesiarum Proelia, 
 or, A Book of the Wars of the Lord." It 
 is, however, mainly concerned with the con- 
 flicts of the colonial authorities against her- 
 etics ; but at the end it includes a reprint 
 of the two small books, " Arma Virosque 
 Cano " and " Decennium Luctuosum," giv- 
 ing an account of the Indian wars. 
 
 Such was the composition of this famous 
 work. Its style was not less peculiar. 
 Prince, indeed, in his funeral sermon upon 
 Mather, confesses that " in his Style indeed 
 He was something singular, and not so 
 agreable to the Gust of the Age." He was 
 probably the most learned man, and cer- 
 tainly had the largest library, in colonial 
 America. The treasures of these intellectual 
 resources were lavished upon his work, until 
 
IN AMERICA. 59 
 
 its tissue was heavy and stiff with the jewels 
 of pedantic quotation. It is a very easy 
 matter to appear erudite, and doubtless 
 Mather knew the imj^osing trick of jauntily 
 alluding to recondite authors, and ignor- 
 ing their unfamiliarity to writer as well as 
 reader. But with all deductions, he was 
 really very learned. The jewels were gen- 
 uine enough ; the fault was that the fabric 
 was overloaded with them. Some indeed 
 have breathed a suspicion that they were 
 out of all proportion to the value of the 
 ground-stuff. An eminent but crotchety 
 historical scholar of the last generation used 
 systematically to refuse to believe any un- 
 supported statement of Mather. This, how- 
 ever, is unjust. He is often inaccurate, but 
 he has conveyed to us a great amount of 
 information not elsewhere attainable. The 
 criticisms upon his historical style may best 
 be explained by showing a bit of it. With 
 some difficulty, I select a passage not cum- 
 bered with Greek and Latin quotations. 
 It is the beginning of the chapter called 
 " Venisti tandem ? or discoveries of Amer- 
 ica:"— 
 
 "It is the opinion of some, though 'tis 
 hut an opinion^ and hut of some learned 
 
60 HISTORICAL WRITING 
 
 men, that when the saerecl oracles of heaven 
 assure us, the things under the earth are 
 some of those, whose knees are to how in the 
 name of Jesus, by those things are meant 
 the inhabitants of America, who are Anti- 
 podes to those of the other hemisphere. I 
 would not quote any words of Lactantius, 
 though there are some to countenance this 
 interpretation, because of their being so un- 
 geographical. ... I can contentedly allow 
 that Ameinca (which as the learned Nicolas 
 Fuller observes, might more justly be called 
 Columhina) was altogether unknown to the 
 penmen of the Ploly Scriptures, and in the 
 ages when the scriptures were penned. I 
 can allow, that those parts of the earth, 
 which do not include America, are in the 
 inspired writings of Luke, and of Paul, 
 stiled, all the world. I can allow, that the 
 opinion of Torniellus, and of Pagius, about 
 the apostles preaching the gospel in Amer- 
 ica, has been sufficiently refuted by Basna- 
 gius. But I am out of the reach of Pope 
 Zachary' s excommunication. I can assert 
 the existence of the American Antipodes ; 
 and I can report unto the European 
 churches great occurrences among these 
 Americans. ^^ 
 
IN AMERICA. 61 
 
 Even if the Americans were antipodes of 
 Europeans in a geographical sense, which 
 is hardly literally true, they were far from 
 being so in respect to mental develo23ment. 
 One of the most interesting facts about 
 Mather as a literary phenomenon is that he 
 is our chief American example of a remark- 
 able historical school then dominant in every 
 part of Europe, and shows America partici- 
 pating in the life and evolution of European 
 thought. The sixteenth century and the 
 early seventeenth had been an age of great 
 historians who were also great men. Promi- 
 nent statesmen and soldiers wrote brilliant 
 accounts of events in which they had borne 
 an active part. Something of this charac- 
 teristic belongs, as we have seen in the pre- 
 vious chapter, to the American historical 
 writers of that time. The period from 1650 
 to 1750, on the other hand, was in Europe 
 distinctively an age of erudition. Excel- 
 lence in historical narrative declined, but 
 enormous labors of investigation, criticism, 
 and publication were carried through. It 
 was the age of Bollandists and Benedictines, 
 of Mabillon and Muratori and Rymer. In 
 every country giants of erudition arose, and 
 vast additions were made to the sum of his- 
 
 6 
 
62 HISTORICAL WRITING 
 
 torical knowledge. Obviously, Cotton Ma- 
 ther was nowise the equal of these Anakim. 
 But he is their American analogue, and he, 
 and Thomas Prince, and the Kev. William 
 Stith, of Virginia, show us that already the 
 Enolish colonies so far shared the life of 
 
 o 
 
 the world that even the movements of Euro- 
 pean scholarship found their counterpart on 
 these shores. 
 
 But there was, at any rate, one American 
 historian who was not thus mentally annexed 
 to Europe, but retained an original spirit, 
 racy of the Virginian soil. It has already 
 been remarked that the incoming of the age 
 of Walpole had less undesirable effects in 
 Virginia than in New England. Something 
 must be attributed to the happier influence 
 of the climate ; something, to origin from 
 Englishmen whose traditions were not Puri- 
 tan. But whatever were the causes, the tone 
 of Virginia life and thought in the earlier 
 part of the eighteenth century was an ex- 
 ceedingly attractive one. The tone of Vir- 
 ginia life, I ought perhaps rather to say ; for 
 of its thought we really know little. But 
 its life, at any rate, was marked by an open- 
 ness, a freshness, a geniality, strikingly con- 
 trasting with the narrow strenuousness which 
 
IN AMERICA. 63 
 
 the decline of Puritan fervor had left behind 
 it in contemporary Massachusetts. The 
 Virginian planters were not less worldly 
 and unheroic, not less the children of the 
 eighteenth century. But their engrossment 
 with the world took the turn of a hearty 
 delight in it, so fresh and spontaneous and 
 agreeable as half redeemed its Philistinism. 
 Of this life, easy-going and commonplace 
 and sterile of intellectual achievement, yet 
 pleasing and natural, we fortunately have 
 an admirable exponent in Robert Beverley. 
 Perhaps it is rather as such an exponent than 
 as a historian that Beverley is valuable to us ; 
 for, excellent as his historical narration is, it 
 occupies but little more than a third of the 
 not very large book which, in 1705, he pub- 
 lished under the title " The History of Vir- 
 ginia." The rest is descriptive of the natural 
 productions of the country, of the Indians 
 and their civilization, and of the present 
 state of the colony and the nature of its 
 government. It is this last portion, appar- 
 ently, out of which the volume grew. In 
 his youth, Beverley's father was clerk of the 
 House of Burgesses ; he thus became famil- 
 iar with the public records and public busi- 
 ness of the colony, and for his own infor- 
 
64 HISTORICAL WRITING 
 
 mation gathered many notes regarding its 
 administration. These notes lay unused until 
 the year 1703, when, after the fashion of the 
 wealthy planters of that day, he went to 
 London upon business. Soon after his arri- 
 val, his bookseller told him that a general 
 account of all Her Majesty's plantations in 
 America was being prepared for printing, 
 and requested him to look over that part of 
 it relating to Virginia and Carolina. The 
 book was Oldmixon's " British Empire in 
 America." Half a dozen sheets of the 
 manuscript of it were brought to Mr. Bever- 
 ley. What followed may as well be related 
 in the colonial proprietor's own words as in 
 any paraphrase of them : — 
 
 " I very innocently (when I began to read) 
 placed Pen and Paper by me, and made my 
 Observations upon the first Page, but found 
 it in the Sequel so very faulty, and an 
 Abridgment only of some Accounts that had 
 been printed 60 or 70 years ago ; in which 
 also he had chosen the most strange and un- 
 true Parts, and left out the more sincere 
 and faithful, so that I laid aside all Thoughts 
 of farther Observations, and gave it only a 
 Reading; and my Bookseller for Answer, 
 that the Account was too faulty and too im- 
 
IN AMERICA. 65 
 
 perfect to be mended : Withal telling liim, 
 that seeing I had in my junior Days taken 
 some Notes of the Government, which I then 
 had with me in England, I would make him 
 an Account of my own Country, if I could 
 find Time, while I staid in London. And 
 this I should rather undertake in Justice 
 to so fine a Country ; because it has been 
 so misrepresented to the common People of 
 England, as to make them believe, that the 
 Servants in Virginia are made to draw in 
 Cart and Plow, as Horses and Oxen do in 
 England, and that the Country turns all 
 People black, who go to live there, with 
 other such prodigious Phantasms. Accord- 
 ingly before I left London, I gave him a 
 short History of the Country, from the first 
 Settlement, with an Account of its then 
 State ; but I would not let him mingle it 
 with Oldmixon's other Account of the Plan- 
 tations, because I took them to be all of a 
 Piece with those I had seen of Virginia and 
 Carolina, but desired mine to be printed by 
 itself." 
 
 It is no wonder that Beverley took this 
 course, in view of some of the errors he 
 signalizes in that book. For instance, in 
 one passage Oldmixon said, " When Indians 
 
QQ HISTORICAL WRITING 
 
 at the Head of the Bay [i. e. Chesapeake 
 Bay] travelled to New York, they past, go- 
 ing and coming, by the frontiers of Virginia 
 and traded with the Virginians," etc. Here 
 we have, early exemplified, that originality of 
 view respecting American geography on the 
 part of Englishmen which was until recent 
 times the source of so much vexation to 
 American bosoms, and which, now that we 
 have become less sensitive, proves so peren- 
 nially amusing. 
 
 The paragraph which I have quoted to 
 show the genesis of Beverley's book will also 
 serve to exhibit the merits of his style. It 
 is simple, clear, and direct, far removed from 
 the curious involution and cumbersome pe- 
 dantry of Cotton Mather's ; it never smacks 
 of the lamp. The author was a plain Vir- 
 ginia gentleman, who had read some books, 
 not too many, perhaps, but did not think it 
 necessary to mention them all, nor to quote 
 them with a frequency inversely propor- 
 tioned to the familiarity of the language in 
 which they were written. A French trav- 
 eler of the period has left us an interesting 
 picture of the home and the simple rural life 
 of Beverley, whom he happened to visit upon 
 business. It is too long to be here quoted ; 
 
/N AMERICA. 67 
 
 but the characteristics which it brings to 
 liglit are most attractive and Arcadian. 
 Again and again in Beverley's book his 
 strong love of nature crops out, and some 
 of his descriptions are truly delightful. 
 This, however, is in the second, third, and 
 fourth parts of the book. As to the first or 
 historical portion, it is too brief to convey to 
 us a very great body of information on Vir- 
 ginian history ; but the sprightliness and 
 ease of the style prevent its ever seeming 
 dry. For the latter years of the seventeenth 
 century, the years just before it was writ- 
 ten, its volume becomes greater, and it gives 
 some interesting information on details of 
 public affairs, such as might easily come to 
 the writer not only from his own experience, 
 but from his family connections, for he was 
 brother-in-law at once to President John 
 Robinson and to Colonel Byrd of Westover. 
 Leaving aside such plain and business-like 
 accounts as that of Beverley, the histories 
 hitherto written in America had mostly been 
 written either for the glory of God, or for 
 the glory of the writer, as in the case of 
 Captain John Smith, or for the glory of 
 both in curious mixture, as in the case of 
 Cotton Mather. It remained for some one 
 
68 HISTORICAL WRITING 
 
 to prepare the soil for the growth of Ameri- 
 can historical scholarship by beginning to 
 write history without didactic or personal 
 tendency, and in a truly scientific spirit. It 
 may fairly be said that the wealth and lei- 
 sure of the torpid and money-getting age 
 which has been described were necessary 
 prerequisites. The traditional view is that 
 scholarship and poverty are twin sisters. In 
 reality, however it may be of scholarship 
 generally, the thorough pursuit of history 
 requires so much laborious research, and 
 therefore so much leisure on the part of 
 some one, that for its successful conduct it 
 has generally been necessary that, if not the 
 individual, at any rate the age, should be 
 rich. At all events, with the increase of 
 wealth a hundred and fifty years ago, there 
 did appear our first historical scholars, one 
 in Virginia, one in Massachusetts. There 
 was a curious parallelism, not only in their 
 purposes and methods, but also in the unfor- 
 tunate immediate fate of their books. 
 
 The two scholars alluded to are the Kev. 
 Thomas Prince, minister of the Old South 
 Church in Boston, and the Rev. William 
 Stith, president of William and Mary Col- 
 lege in Virginia. The elder of the two was 
 
IN AMERICA. 69 
 
 the Boston clergyman, a man of high and 
 amiable character, who from his boyhood 
 had possessed an eager interest in whatever 
 bore upon the history of New England. 
 Appreciating more highly than those who 
 had preceded him the need of scholarly 
 thoroughness and the value of original au- 
 thorities, he spent years in making a search, 
 as exhaustive as he could, for printed and 
 manuscript materials. Thus he formed that 
 invaluable New England Library which has 
 been already more than once referred to, and 
 of which a considerable portion, surviving 
 to our times, forms the priceless Prince Col- 
 lection in the Boston Public Library. Of 
 books, pamphlets, and printed papers he had 
 accumulated, he tells us, about a thousand ; 
 he had also gathered together a multitude of 
 manuscripts left by the early settlers, doc- 
 uments, copies, and letters, to the number of 
 several hundred. 
 
 With these copious materials. Prince at 
 length, though with diffidence, began the 
 composition of a Chronological History of 
 New England. His modest aim did not ex- 
 tend to the preparation of a historical com- 
 position in the fullest sense ; he proposed 
 merely to write a chronology, but with every 
 
70 HISTORICAL WRITING 
 
 sort of care to secure the most minute ac- 
 curacy. He proposed to include " remark- 
 able providences," the deaths of prominent 
 men, brief notices of transactions of the gov- 
 ernment, elections, grants and settlement of 
 towns, the formation of churches, the ordi- 
 nation and removal of ministers, the erec- 
 tion of important buildings, remarkable laws, 
 executions, wars, battles, — in short, all the 
 events of the earlier history of those colo- 
 nies in which his contemporaries might feel 
 an interest. In the long introductory por- 
 tion he notes down, in true annalistic fash- 
 ion, the principal events in the history of the 
 world from its creation down to the settle- 
 ment of New England. This, he confesses, 
 gave him a vast amount of trouble ; and 
 we must regret that he spent so much time 
 in perfecting it, for the result was that the 
 New England Chronology never got beyond 
 the year 1633. Indeed, the first volume, 
 published in 1736, carried the narrative no 
 farther than to the autumn of 1630. Here 
 the publication rested until eighteen or nine- 
 teen years later, when the author, then an 
 old man, began the publishing of volume 
 second by the issue of sixpenny numbers, 
 of thirty-two pages each. Only three such 
 
IN AMERICA. 71 
 
 numbers, it is supposed, were ever issued ; 
 aud of these three no one now possesses a 
 perfect set. The truth seems to be, that 
 there was not at that tinie an adequate pub- 
 lic demand for a history so minute as Prince 
 provided. 
 
 It will be evident from the plan of his 
 work that it does not lend itself readily to 
 interesting quotation. But it is the first of 
 our histories, not itself an original source, 
 which is of value as a contribution to histor- 
 ical science rather than to historical litera- 
 ture ; and it is to this that it owes its great 
 importance. Prince and his Virginian con- 
 temporary are the progenitors of modern 
 American historiography. The wide sweep 
 of the search after materials, the patience 
 and industry in investigation, the minute 
 accuracy and fidelity which characterize the 
 best of the moderns, are all to be found 
 in Prince, and to be found in a high degree. 
 " It is Exactness I aim at," he says, " and 
 would not have the least mistake, if possible, 
 pass to the world. If I have unhappily fallen 
 into any, it is through inadvertency only." 
 The sj^irit of the work, it will be seen, was 
 that of the Benedictines of St. Maur ; and 
 the execution seems to have been as scholarly 
 as the intention. 
 
72 HISTORICAL WRITING 
 
 Among the points of resemblance between 
 Prince and Stith, their ill-success in publica- 
 tion is one of the most remarkable, and in 
 truth not at all creditable to our forefathers. 
 There is something highly amusing in the 
 tone of annoyance with which Stith remarks 
 the indifference of his contemporaries to his 
 labors. After speaking of his intention to 
 have included many more interesting docu- 
 ments, he says : " But I perceive, to my no 
 small Surprise and Mortification, that some 
 of my Countrymen (and those too. Persons 
 of high Fortune and Distinction) seemed to 
 be much alarmed, and to grudge, that a com- 
 plete History of their own Country would 
 run to more than one Volume, and cost 
 them above half a Pistole. I was, there- 
 fore, obliged to restrain my Hand, . . . for 
 fear of enhancing the Price, to the immense 
 Charge and irreparable Damage of such 
 generous and publick-spirited Gentlemen.*" 
 This, we may suppose, was the reason why 
 the work was never carried beyond the year 
 1624. If it had been carried down, on the 
 same scale, to the year of publication, 1747, 
 it would have made an eight-volume history 
 of the colony of Virginia, a work of such 
 bulk that even " Persons of High Fortune 
 
IN AMERICA. 73 
 
 and Distinction " in Virginia might be ex- 
 cused for hesitating to support it. 
 
 Yet these persons might have done well to 
 sustain him, for his " History of the First 
 Discovery and Settlement of Virginia " is 
 an excellent piece of work, — pleasing in 
 style, accurate, and fair. That it is too pro- 
 lix, however, is a thing that cannot be de- 
 nied; and this is the more to be blamed 
 because the proportions between the different 
 parts show us clearly that the author was 
 dominated by his materials, rather than mas- 
 ter of them, and that he relates much of his 
 story at great length simply because it is 
 in his power to do so. Thus, out of the 
 seventeen years which he treats, he devotes 
 three fourths of his space to the first three 
 years and the last five, evidently because 
 materials were most abundant for these. 
 For the years 1607-1609 he could draw on 
 the most detailed portion of Captain John 
 Smith's narrative, — a source the complete 
 trustworthiness of which he seems in general 
 not at all to doubt, though disposed to make 
 considerable allowances for personal pique 
 and party spirit in regard to Smith's ex- 
 pressions concerning the Virginia Company. 
 " Not," he says, " that I question Captain 
 
 7 
 
74 HISTORICAL WRITING 
 
 Smith's Integrity ; for I take him to have 
 been a very honest Man, and a strenuous 
 Lover of Truth," 
 
 When this esteemed guide leaves him, the 
 ex-president of William and Mary falls back 
 upon the papers in the Capitol at Williams- 
 burg, and the collection of documents made, 
 for historical purposes, by his late uncle. Sir 
 John Randolph. With the year 1619, how- 
 ever, his narrative widens into a very copious 
 account, which is derived, in a far greater 
 degree than has been generally supposed 
 hitherto, from one of the sources which he 
 mentions. The mode in which he refers to 
 it is as follows : " But I must confess myself 
 most indebted, in this Part of my History, to 
 a very full and fair Manuscript of the Lon- 
 don Company's Records, which was commu- 
 nicated to me by the late worthy Presi- 
 dent of our Council, the Honorable William 
 Byrd, Esq." The records so described have 
 a curious history, and one which, it may be 
 remarked parenthetically, authors have al- 
 most invariably related incorrectly. In 1624 
 King James I. seized the papers of the com- 
 pany and dissolved it. Shortly before this, 
 in anticipation of such a seizure, certain 
 officers of the company had secretly caused 
 
IN AMERICA. 75 
 
 to be pre]3ared an attested copy of the re- 
 cords of its proceeding's during the last 
 five years, to serve as evidence for their 
 justification in case of prosecution. The 
 co})y, when completed, was entrusted to the 
 president of the company, Shakespeare's 
 friend, the Earl of Southampton. On the 
 death of his son, the Lord High Treasurer 
 Southampton, in 1667, the two volumes of 
 the copy were bought of his executors, for 
 sixty guineas, by Captain William Byrd, 
 of Virginia, and for more than a century 
 formed a part of the extensive library of the 
 Byrd family at Westover. These are the 
 two volumes of which Stith made use, and 
 he appears to have used them very freely. 
 All subsequent historians have referred to 
 them, but to all appearances they have not 
 really used them. It would take too long to 
 relate how most of them passed into the pos- 
 session of Thomas Jefferson, and then into 
 that of Congress. In the Library of Con- 
 gress these primary sources for the history 
 of our first colony have now been buried for 
 sixty years, and all efforts to make them 
 public have hitherto failed before the apathy 
 of Congress and the difficulties presented by 
 its cumbrous machinery. Extracts from a 
 copy have lately been printed. 
 
76 HISTORICAL WRITING 
 
 The fifth work to be mentioned, the best 
 of all, was written by a man of conspic- 
 uous station, — lieutenant - governor, chief 
 justice, and finally governor of Massachu- 
 setts, — and was bodily associated with a 
 striking event in our Revolutionary history. 
 TJie book referred to is the history of the 
 colony and province of Massachusetts by 
 Thomas Hutchinson, the famous Tory gov- 
 ernor. The scene alluded to was in the time 
 of the Stamp Act troubles, when already the 
 first volume of the history had appeared. A 
 Boston mob, of the sort which in our school- 
 days we are taught to venerate as gatherings 
 of liberty-loving patriots engaged in resist- 
 ing oppression, attacked the lieutenant-gov- 
 ernor's house. The fact was that he had 
 disapproved of the Stamp Act policy, and 
 had opposed it by every legal means. Bat 
 liberty-loving patriots engaged in resistance 
 to oppression cannot be expected to give 
 attention to defenses so subtle. They broke 
 in the doors and windows, demolished all 
 the furniture in the house, and destroyed or 
 scattered all the books and papers of the 
 occupant. A clerical neighbor made efforts 
 to save these last, and nearly all of the 
 invaluable manuscript of the second vol- 
 
IN AMERICA- 77 
 
 ume of the history was thus preserved. Al- 
 though it had lain in the street, scattered 
 abroad several hours in the rain, yet so much 
 of it was legible that the author was able 
 to supply the rest, and to transcribe it. In 
 spite of the loss of materials, the second 
 volume was published nine years later. " I 
 pray God," says the writer in his preface, 
 after speaking of the riot, " to forgive the 
 actors in and advisers of this most savage 
 and inhuman injury, and I hope their pos- 
 terity will read with pleasure and profit what 
 has so narrowly escaped the outrage of their 
 ancestors." It is well known that in this 
 same j^ear the governor retired to England, 
 from which he never returned. Long after- 
 wards, and years after he had died in exile, 
 his grandson, at the request of the Massa- 
 chusetts Historical Society, published the 
 third volume of the history. The recent 
 publication of his " Diary and Letters "has 
 made clear, to a generation more disposed to 
 be just to those who were faithful to their 
 king, that Governor Hutchinson was, both 
 in patriotism and in character, fully the 
 equal of his opponents. Of his qualities as 
 a historian there is but one opinion. He 
 was industrious in research, and liad access 
 
78 HISTORICAL WRITING 
 
 to many materials, especially those collected 
 by Cotton Mather, for Mather's son was his 
 brother-in-law. He wrote with excellent 
 judgment, and in a good though not bril- 
 liant style. " His mind," says the late Dr. 
 Deane, " was eminently a judicial one ; and 
 candor, moderation, and a desire for truth 
 appear to have guided his pen." Even the 
 third volume, which treats of the period from 
 1749 to 1774, the period in which he was 
 himself so large a figure in the bitter polit- 
 ical contests which led to the Revolution, is 
 written with much fairness. The spirit with 
 which Hutchinson approached the history 
 of the colony and province is shown by a 
 note found among his papers, and written 
 near the end of his life, in which he says : — 
 " In the course of my education, I found 
 no part of science a more pleasing study 
 than history, and no part of the history of 
 any country more useful than that of its 
 government and laws. The history of Great 
 Britain and its dominions was of all others 
 the most delightful to me, and a thorough 
 knowledge of the nature and constitution of 
 the supreme and of the subordinate govern- 
 ments thereof I considered as what would be 
 peculiarly beneficial to me in the line of life 
 
IN AMERICA. 79 
 
 upon whicli I was entering ; and the public 
 employments to which I was early called, 
 and sustained for near thirty years together, 
 gave me many advantages for the acquisition 
 of this knowledge." 
 
 Here again, as in the case of Cotton Ma- 
 ther and Prince, we may suggest a parallel 
 with the European movements. Hutchin- 
 son's approach to historical study was mainly 
 from the point of view of the student of 
 institutional history. In Europe, by the 
 middle of the eighteenth century, the age of 
 erudition had been succeeded by an age 
 mainly devoted to the study of the develop- 
 ment of institutions. The Puritan Hutchin- 
 son was in his way a member of the school 
 of Montesquieu, Turgot, and Voltaire, — a 
 disciple, consciously or unconsciously, of tlie 
 " Essai sur les Moeurs." 
 
80 HISTORICAL WRITING 
 
 III. 
 FROM THE REVOLUTION TO THE CIVIL WAR. 
 
 It is difficult to make any general state- 
 ment concerning the relation which great 
 national crises bear to the development of 
 literature as a whole, or of historical litera- 
 ture in particular. Sometimes, after a nation 
 has passed through a period of struggle, the 
 same mental energy which has carried it 
 through the conflict bursts forth into great 
 literary activity. Sometimes such a period 
 is followed by a time of silence, as if the 
 national forces had been exhausted in mili- 
 tary and political effort. In the case of 
 wars for freedom and independence, how- 
 ever, it is generally the former which hap- 
 pens ; for, however great the losses of war, 
 the gain of liberty and of opportunity for 
 free expansion is felt to be far more than 
 a compensation, and the sense of freedom 
 gives a freshness and spontaneity that urge 
 toward literary expression. Thus the French 
 Revolution, unfettering all the forces of tjie 
 
IN AMERICA. 81 
 
 national life, bronglit on a period of activity 
 in historical production more remarkable 
 than any since the sixteenth century, and 
 one noteworthy in general literary activity. 
 The same is in a very high degree true of 
 the heroic and successful struggle of the 
 Netherlanders for freedom. No period in 
 the history of Dutch literature is more bril- 
 liant than that which followed the virtual 
 securing of freedom by the Twelve Years' 
 Truce, — a period made brilliant not only by 
 the work of the best poets of the nation, but 
 also by that of some of its best scholars and 
 historians. 
 
 In the United States, no movement so 
 noteworthy resulted from the successful ac- 
 complishment of the War for Independence. 
 Not much literature of considerable value, 
 historical or other, appeared during or im- 
 mediately after the Revolution. One reason, 
 no doubt, was that crudity of life and thought 
 which is inevitable to the colonial state ; the 
 country was too young and too immature to 
 make it reasonable to expect a great litera- 
 ture. And yet it is to be remembered that, 
 in the period just preceding, so very credit- 
 able a piece of work as Hutchinson's " His- 
 tory of Massachusetts Bay " had appeared. 
 
82 HISTORICAL WRITING 
 
 giving promise of good things in literature 
 and history. Nor is it an adequate explana- 
 tion to adduce the undoubtedly great losses 
 which Tory emigration had brought to the 
 classes most likely to be interested in liter- 
 ary development and to further it. 
 
 The truth seems to be that, by great and 
 perhaps premature efforts to secure inde- 
 pendence, the States had become exhausted 
 to such a degree that the eventual acquisi- 
 tion of freedom, though hailed with loud 
 rejoicings, could not have, upon a people 
 wearied, discordant, and drained of their 
 resources, the vivifying effect which such 
 achievements are wont to have. If one keeps 
 in mind only the year 1776, he will think of 
 the Revolutionary era as a period of national 
 glory ; but if he takes into consideration the 
 year 1786, and such incidents as Shays's 
 Rebellion, he will see that at its close the 
 condition of the thirteen bodies politic was 
 far from sound, even though independence 
 had at length been secured. Even the union 
 of 1789 did not at once bring on a healthier 
 state. It was entered into with reluctance, 
 and it was followed by discord. Alexander 
 Hamilton, the young Federalist Rehoboam, 
 laid upon the necks of an unwilling people 
 
IN AMERICA. 83 
 
 the yoke of a national consolidation which 
 their fathers had never borne. Availing 
 himself of the general uneasiness, like the 
 wily Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, his astute 
 opponent, Jefferson, summoning discontented 
 Israel to its tents, erected at ancient Beer- 
 sheba and newly settled Dan the golden 
 calves of the Virginia and Kentucky Resolu- 
 tions, and through their worship prolonged 
 the congenial Separatism which had de- 
 scended to this generation from its predeces- 
 sors. The Revolutionary and Napoleonic 
 wars in Europe delayed still longer the ad- 
 vent of internal tranquillity. 
 
 Nevertheless, the years that intervened 
 between the first and the second war with 
 Great Britain were not wholly barren. 
 Something of literature began to grow up, 
 though the flowers that blossomed in the 
 prim and formal inclosures of the " Monthly 
 Anthology" and the "Portfolio" seem to our 
 eyes but a pale and sickly product. Even 
 for history something was being done. The 
 events of the Revolution, still fresh in re- 
 membrance, were commemorated in several 
 histories, of which one, at least, — that writ- 
 ten by the Rev. William Gordon, — was of 
 great excellence. Biographies of those who 
 
84 HISTORICAL WRITING 
 
 had taken a leading part in its events, such 
 as Chief Justice Marshall's celebrated "Life 
 of Washington," were in several instances 
 written with so much care and information 
 that they are among the most important 
 historical authorities for the story of the 
 War for Independence. Often, indeed, those 
 earlier lives have for the student of to-day 
 much more of the attraction of freshness 
 and originality than the biographies written 
 in our own time ; the writers of these latter 
 have frequently so full a sense of the Amer- 
 ican political history of ' which their subject 
 forms a part that the individuality of the 
 portrait is impaired by the attention paid to 
 the background. 
 
 There was also a third class of historical 
 works, to which, in the first years of the re- 
 public, important contributions were made. 
 To our minds, the great glory of that period 
 seems manifestly to be the attainment of 
 national independence and national union. 
 To the man of that day, inhabitant of a par- 
 ticular State, and little accustomed to " think 
 continentally," as the phrase was, the thought 
 that his colony had become an independent 
 and sovereign State was often quite as promi- 
 nent, and was a source of pride and inspira- 
 
IN AMERICA. 85 
 
 tion to a deofvee difficult for us to conceive. 
 So it was that all at once, in several of the 
 newly fledged States, zealous and sometimes 
 able hands undertook the task of writing 
 their histories. Several such works, of vari- 
 ous degrees of merit, appeared during the 
 interval between the two wars. Within two 
 or three years after the conclusion of peace, 
 David Eamsay, a doctor in Charleston, and 
 member of the Continental Congress, pub- 
 lished a history of South Carolina during 
 the Revolutionary War, followed later by a 
 history of the colony and State from the 
 beginning, which has enjoyed and deserved 
 a good reputation. Another ex-member of 
 Congress, Hugh Williamson, published in 
 1812 a history of North Carolina. In 1804 
 came a history of Virginia by an Irish jour- 
 nalist in that State, John Daly Burk. It 
 cannot be highly praised. But the success 
 of a book so extensive (four volumes) shows 
 that, in that commonwealth and elsewhere, 
 interest in history had advanced greatly 
 since the time when poor Stith cut short the 
 superabundant product of his pen because 
 of inadequate support from " Persons of 
 high Fortune and Distinction." A few years 
 earlier came Robert Proud's valued " His- 
 
 8 
 
86 HISTORICAL WRITING 
 
 tory of Pennsylvania," and Benjamin Trum- 
 bull's " History of Connecticut ; " while, in 
 Massachusetts, George Minot wrote a con- 
 tinuation of Hutchinson's history ; and in 
 Georgia, Edward Langworthy prepared a 
 history of that State, since lost. But the 
 best of them all was the Rev. Jeremy Bel- 
 knap's "History of New Hampshire," which, 
 though published more than a hundred years 
 ago, has never yet been superseded. Be- 
 side his industry and fidelity as an investi- 
 gator, Belknap had a singularly good style. 
 He also edited and published two volumes 
 of American biography, by various hands, 
 which were of real service to American his- 
 tory. 
 
 Belknap's writings, however, are not his 
 only, perhaps not his chief, title to recognition 
 by our generation. Our principal debt to 
 him is for his influence, which seems without 
 doubt to have been the dominant influence, 
 in founding the first of the local historical 
 associations of America, the Massachusetts 
 Historical Society, in January, 1791. This 
 was in some degree the beginning of a new 
 phase in the development of American his- 
 tory, though by means of the same local 
 channels through which, as has been said. 
 
IN AMERICA. 87 
 
 the current of American historical work 
 mostly ran during the generation succeeding 
 the Revolution. It was the beginning of 
 organized effort. The local historical socie- 
 ties of the present time in the United States 
 are in many cases far from being what we 
 could wish them to be. Some are lifeless, 
 or, like Pope and Pagan in Bunyan's alle- 
 gory, are toothlessly mumbling over and over 
 again the same innutritions materials ; some, 
 that seem full of activity, direct that activ- 
 ity toward any but the most scientific ends. 
 But in their day they have certainly been of 
 great use, and that in two ways : First, they 
 have heightened and fostered by association 
 the growing interest in American history, so 
 long as that interest was mostly for colonial 
 and local history, and until a wider interest 
 should prevail. The local historical society 
 has been, in Paul's phrase, our schoolmaster 
 to lead us to the general study of American 
 history ; the study of that national life which 
 in Belknap's time had hardly begun, and 
 which long remained latent or unattractive 
 to the eye of local patriotism. 
 
 In the second place, the historical socie- 
 ties have done good service as collectors and 
 publishers of historical materials. The sets 
 
88 HISTORICAL WRITING 
 
 of publications of the Massachusetts His- 
 torical Society dating from 1792, and those 
 of the New York Historical Society dating 
 from 1811, are invaluable and indispensable. 
 We smile a little over some of the contents 
 of their early volumes, the remarkable arti- 
 cles and bits of information which our naive 
 great-grandfathers thought worth preserving, 
 but which are to us as the poke bonnets and 
 spinning-wheels of old garrets. But side by 
 side with the topographical descriptions of 
 towns, the copies of epitaphs, the accounts of 
 the northern lights, and the letters from a 
 gentleman recently returned from Niagara, 
 there is a part — and really much the larger 
 part — of the early work of these societies 
 which is still valuable. Not only was it of a 
 more scientific character than most of what 
 had preceded it, but it was of peculiar value 
 as establishing a certain tendency in our 
 historical work ; a tendency, namely, to make 
 the publication of materials as much an 
 object of the historical scholar's care as the 
 publication of results. The idea has, to be 
 sure, been slow in taking root. Even at the 
 present day it is but a very small part of the 
 population of the United States that can be 
 induced to believe the publication of dry 
 
IN AMERICA. 89 
 
 records and documents, well edited, to be 
 not only as useful as the publication of 
 interesting books of history, but, as a gen- 
 eral rule, considerably more useful. But in 
 so far as the salutary notion has permeated 
 the public mind, that happy result has been 
 largely due to the wise efforts of those who, 
 eighty or a hundred years ago, were estab- 
 lishing the first local historical societies. A 
 zeal for the collection and preservation of 
 such materials at once arose, one of the first 
 fruits of which was the " Annals of Amer- 
 ica," which Dr. Abiel Holmes, father of Dr. 
 Oliver Holmes, published in 1805. 
 
 It creates some surprise to observe how 
 little was done in the domain of American 
 historical literature in the period between 
 the end of the first administration of Jeffer- 
 son, that golden age of the young republic 
 and of the Democratic-Republican party, and 
 the times of the rule of Jackson and the new 
 Democracy. Esj)ecially singular, at first 
 sight, is the absence of activity during the 
 period immediately succeeding the War of 
 1812 ; for, as has already been observed, such 
 activity commonly ensues upon wars which 
 have had an inspiring effect upon the na- 
 tional consciousness. The War of 1812 was 
 
90 HISTORICAL WRITING 
 
 anything but glorious, so far as military 
 events were concerned. But, for all tliat, 
 tlie popular consciousness was not mistaken 
 in obtaining from it a powerful stimulus to 
 national feeling. Its great result, unmen- 
 tioned though it was in the Treaty of Ghent, 
 was the immediate emancipation of the 
 United States from colonial dependence on 
 Europe, and from the colonial ideas which 
 still lingered in their politics, and the se- 
 curing to them of opportunity for unlimited 
 development, on their own lines, of freedom 
 to live their own life. 
 
 How profoundly the national conscious- 
 ness was affected by the opportunity and the 
 responsibility of working out its own salva- 
 tion may be seen even in the boastful con- 
 fidence, the 'crude elation, the vociferous 
 patriotism, and the national arrogance which 
 were so painfully dominant in the America 
 of fifty or sixty years ago, and to which 
 we are wont to give colloquially the name 
 of " Fourth of July." Undoubtedly, Amer- 
 ica was inspired by the rapidly opening 
 prospect of a boundless career. If the char- 
 acteristic historical fruits of such inspira- 
 tion were absent, or at any rate not present 
 in any abundance, we must look for the 
 
IN AMERICA. 91 
 
 explanation in that rapid expansion of the 
 nation's material life which went on between 
 1815 and 1830, and of which the immense 
 westward emigration of those years is but a 
 single though a most conspicuous sign. 
 
 When historical literature did start into 
 new life in the United States, such of it as 
 was concerned with American history showed 
 the influence of this popular impulse ; but 
 for a while the time of flowering seemed 
 to have been delayed. Usually, periods in 
 which party politics have become quiescent 
 are favorable to the growth of historical 
 literature; and the age of Monroe, an era 
 of good feeling among the people, though 
 one of extremely bad feeling among the 
 politicians, was such a period. But it should 
 be remembered that the impulse of the new 
 era was more likely to be felt by those who 
 were boys at the time of the War of 1812 
 than by their elders, and therefore would 
 show its effects in literature at a somewhat 
 later date. 
 
 As we approach the consideration of the 
 classical period of American historical lit- 
 erature, we find ourselves confronted with a 
 striking fact of geographical distribution. 
 If we tried to name the ten principal historical 
 
92 HISTORICAL WRITING 
 
 writers o£ that period, we should find that 
 seven or eight of them were Massachusetts 
 men, of old New England families, born in 
 or near Boston, and graduated at Harvard 
 College. How are we to account for this 
 extraordinary localization of our science? 
 Of course there are those general causes 
 which produced the remarkable fertility of 
 New England in good literature at that time, 
 and made Boston for so long a period our 
 literary centre, — the greater prevalence of 
 urban life in New England; the indelible 
 intensities of Puritan blood ; the inherited 
 traditions of a capital city continuously lit- 
 erary from its origin, and of our oldest col- 
 lege ; the stimulating influence of the recent 
 Unitarian revolt, and the resulting contro- 
 versies ; that leaven of buoyant energy in 
 political and literary thought which infused 
 the world in or about the revolutionary year 
 1830 ; and other such general causes. But 
 more special explanations are required, for 
 in the case of other sciences and branches of 
 learning we do not find such a proportion 
 obtainino-. The other muses were not thus 
 partial to that one city and region ; for 
 instance, if political economy has a muse, 
 she was not. Doubtless, something was due 
 
IN AMERICA. 93 
 
 to the presence of libraries. History is per- 
 haps more dependent upon these than any 
 other of the departments of literature or 
 science then studied. Large libraries could 
 be found only in those parts of the country 
 where there were cities, and Boston and 
 Cambridge, side by side, with the libraries 
 of the Boston Athenaeum and of Harvard 
 College, and later the Boston Public Library, 
 were of all our cities the best provided in 
 this respect. Here, therefore, it might have 
 been expected that historians would con- 
 gregate, and it has been so. There is one 
 spot of a few acres in Cambridge upon which 
 three of the most eminent historical scholars 
 of the last generation dwelt, and on which 
 have dwelt three of the most prominent his- 
 torical writers of our own time. 
 
 But there was still another reason why 
 history should spring up and flourish in 
 New England, and that was a political one. 
 Throughout our political history we have 
 had two parties which, under various names, 
 have preserved an essential identity. They 
 are usually described as the party of loose 
 construction and the party of strict construc- 
 tion. This is describing them with refer- 
 ence to their attitude toward the Constitu- 
 
94 HISTORICAL WRITING 
 
 tion only. A more penetrating analysis will 
 discover in them the party of political mea- 
 sures and the party of political principles, — 
 a party with a programme and a party with 
 a creed. The Democratic party, during its 
 long history, has been mainly marked by its 
 adherence to a certain definite set of politi- 
 cal principles. The average American citi- 
 zen, in quiet times, has had no other polit- 
 ical platform than those principles, and has 
 therefore remained a member of the Demo- 
 cratic party. But from time to time there 
 has arisen, out of this mass of Americans 
 unanimous in adhesion to American political 
 principles, a body of men eventually consti- 
 tuting a great party, united in devotion to 
 some great political measure or set of mea- 
 sures, in effort, that is, to alter or add to our 
 political fabric. The Federalist party arose, 
 with a strong sense of work to be done, 
 made its contribution by cementing the Union 
 more firmly, and subsided into the mass of 
 Democracy. With other purposes, but still 
 with j)urposes of contribution and of alter- 
 ation, the Whig party arose, did its work, 
 and dissolved. Still a third time, the desire 
 for measures restricting slavery and consoli- 
 dating still more firmly the national Union 
 
IN AMERICA. 95 
 
 drew together a great party which has left 
 its impress indelibly upon our national in- 
 stitutions. Parties marked by this devotion 
 to given political measures will infallibly 
 be loose-constructionist in their view of the 
 fundamental document, as will any body of 
 men, acting under a given instrument, whose 
 main desire is to get certain specific things 
 done; the party of political principles mean- 
 while adheres to a strict construction. 
 
 Now there must of necessity be a radical 
 difference between these two, and between 
 any two bodies of population in which they 
 are respectively dominant, in regard to their 
 attitude toward history. The abstract prin- 
 ciples of political philosophy may be sup- 
 posed to remain ever the same. To the 
 purely legal view of the strict-construction- 
 ist, based on these principles, the fundamen- 
 tal relations of politics remain unchanged. 
 That which was the Constitution in 1789 is 
 the Constitution in 1891 ; and what it is, is 
 to be found by logical reasoning from po- 
 litical principles. The advocate of a pro- 
 gramme of measures, of political change, on 
 the other hand, will be constantly recurring 
 to notions of development. To the practical 
 aims which are foremost in his mind, the 
 
96 HISTORICAL WRITING 
 
 study of human experience will be of the 
 most direct service, and he and his will 
 incline to historical ways of thinking and 
 to historical studies. It is not an accident 
 that the founder of the Democratic party, 
 with all his interest in science, in philoso- 
 phy, and in the theory of politics, was but 
 little addicted to the study of history ; while 
 his rival, the first Federalist President, was, 
 of all the statesmen of his time and country, 
 the most learned in that department. 
 
 To come, then, to the application. Our 
 explanation of the concentration of histori- 
 cal science in the northeastern corner of our 
 country is, in addition to the general rea- 
 sons for its literary fertility, that the politi- 
 cal predilections of the region were such as 
 made the study of human history natural 
 and congenial there. As New England was 
 the chief seat of the Federalist, the Whig, 
 and the Eepublican parties, the chosen abode 
 of loose construction, it was natural that it 
 should also be the chosen abode of historical 
 science ; for no man can escape sharing the 
 interests which political or economical condi- 
 tions have made most vivid in those around 
 him. We may be confirmed in our view by 
 observing that, in respect to writings of a 
 
IN AMERICA. 97 
 
 purely political or economical character, the 
 superiority of the South in both quantity 
 and quality was no less incontestable. As 
 for Massachusetts in especial, it may be 
 observed that in a State where public spirit 
 has always been so strong, — in other words, 
 in a State where the interests and life of the 
 community have been so highly regarded by 
 individuals, — a deep interest in the life and 
 the progressive development of communities 
 is likely to follow. 
 
 But before passing to the consideration of 
 our principal schools of classical historians, 
 it may be well to say a word concerning one 
 who belongs to neither North or South, — 
 Washington Irving. We need not speak of 
 him at great length, for his strictly historical 
 works were few, and his fame was mainly 
 achieved in other walks of literature. Nor 
 did he have a great influence upon the de- 
 velopment of historical writing among us, 
 unless in the way of general influence upon 
 American style. In fact, it is quite possible 
 that no one of his mature and sober pieces 
 of writing had as much real effect on the 
 progress of American historiography as the 
 admirable humorous composition with which 
 he began, as far back as 1809, — the '• His- 
 
98 HISTORICAL WRITING 
 
 tory of New York" by Dietrich Knicker- 
 bocker. Aside from its striking success as 
 a literary production, the book had a great 
 effect in awakening interest in the early or 
 Dutch period of New York history. De- 
 scendants rushed with sober indignation to 
 the defense of ancestors at whom the genial 
 humorist poked his fun, and very likely the 
 great amount of work which the state gov- 
 ernment in the next generation did for the 
 historical illustration of the Dutch period, 
 through the researches of Mr. Brodhead in 
 foreign archives, had this unhistorical little 
 book for one of its principal causes. But, 
 on the other hand, he made it permanently 
 difficult for the American public to take a 
 serious view of those early Dutch days. 
 Oloffe the Dreamer and Walter the Doubter, 
 Abraham with the ten breeches and Stuyve- 
 sant with the wooden leg, have become too 
 thoroughly domesticated among us to admit 
 of that. 
 
 In 1828 appeared the " Life and Voyages 
 of Columbus." The short time in which it 
 was prepared, not more at any rate than two 
 years, shows that it cannot have been a work 
 of original research carried out absolutely 
 after the modern manner. It was in fact 
 
IN AMERICA. 99 
 
 based on the documentary publications of 
 Don Martin Fernandez de Navarrete, though 
 with much use of the libraries of Obadiah 
 Rich, then our consul at Madrid, of Na- 
 varrete himself, of the Duke of Veragua, and 
 of the Council of the Indies, and of other 
 libraries at Madrid and Seville. The result 
 was an excellent piece of historical work, as 
 well as a literary production which it would 
 be superfluous to praise. At about the same 
 time the author proposed a series of writings 
 on the Arabs in Spain, beginning with some 
 account of Mohammed himself. The fruit 
 of this project, the book entitled " Mahomet 
 and his Successors," made no pretensions to 
 original research, and appeared, as did the 
 " Life of Washington," many years after the 
 period which we have been considering. 
 
 The very fact that we pass over books not 
 based on original research shows of itself 
 that the period which we are approaching 
 was one marked by higher ideals of histor- 
 ical scholarship than had prevailed before. 
 When this classical period of American his- 
 torical writing does arrive, it is found to 
 be marked from the first by two separate 
 tendencies ; there are, we may almost say, 
 two schools, distinct throughout the period. 
 
100 HISTORICAL WRITING 
 
 On the one hand, we have the historians 
 who have devoted themselves to pictur- 
 esque themes lying outside the history of 
 the United States, — men whose traditions 
 and associations have been mainly literary, 
 of whom Prescott, Motley, and Parkman are 
 the types. On the other hand, there are the 
 historians who have interested themselves in 
 American affairs, whose associations and im- 
 pulses have in many cases been in a great 
 degree political, but who have been more 
 especially the inheritors of those impulses al- 
 ready spoken of as marking the early years 
 of the century. The chief example of this 
 last division is George Bancroft, whose hon- 
 ored life was so exceptionally prolonged that 
 he was enabled to give to one great work the 
 labor of fifty years, an experience unex- 
 ampled in the annals of historical literature. 
 The first volume of his " History of the 
 United States " was published in 1834 ; the 
 author's last revision was put forth in 1883 ; 
 and he died but a few months ago, at the age 
 of ninety, having lived almost as many years 
 as Ranke, and with as severe an industry. 
 
 If we S23eak of the product of his long 
 period of labor in connection with the date 
 of its commencement rather than of its close, 
 
IN AMERICA. 101 
 
 it is because the work, from its very begin- 
 ning, has not ceased to bear some marks of 
 an origin in the year 1834. At that time 
 Mr. Bancroft was thirty-four years old. 
 Graduated early from Harvard, he had next 
 had the privilege of university training in 
 Germany. This was in those days a very 
 unusual opportunity. It is amusing to read 
 of the difficulties which, at the modern 
 Athens itself, George Ticknor encountered 
 in 1813 in preliminary movements toward 
 a course of study at Gottingen. "I was 
 sure," he relates, " that I should like to 
 study at such a university, but it was in vain 
 that I endeavored to get farther knowledge 
 upon the subject. I would gladly have pre- 
 pared for it by learning the language I 
 should have to use there, but there was no 
 one in Boston who could teach me. . . . Nor 
 was it possible to get books. I borrowed a 
 Meidinger's Grammar, French and German, 
 from my friend Mr. Everett, and sent to 
 New Hampshire, where 1 knew there was 
 a German Dictionary, and procured it. I 
 also obtained a copy of Goethe's ' Werther,' 
 in German, . . . from amongst Mr. J. Q. 
 Adams's books, deposited by him, on going 
 to Europe, in the Athenaeum," etc. 
 
102 HISTORICAL WRITING 
 
 This was in 1813, and it cannot have been 
 much different in 1818, when Bancroft went 
 to Gottingen. The two years spent there 
 seem to have been given to quite general 
 studies. In such studies as were historical, 
 it is not to be thought that in the days be- 
 fore Ranke had appeared, and before any 
 permanent work of Niebuhr had been pub- 
 lished, it was possible to find in Germany 
 such inspiration for historical studies as in 
 times more recent, even had the young Amer- 
 ican yet resolved upon such studies. What 
 could be obtained was a much better know- 
 ledge of methods and results than America 
 afforded. Of those historians under whom 
 Bancroft studied, Heeren, Savigny, Schlos- 
 ser, one cannot in his History find trace of 
 much influence, except that Heeren's interest 
 in the history of colonies and of their reflex 
 action upon the mother country probably 
 bore fruit later. Of method he may have 
 earned much from these teachers ; his ideas 
 were derived elsewhere, and mainly, in truth, 
 from the soil from which they sprang. They 
 are the ideas of America in the year 1834. 
 The extraordinary popularity of the early 
 volumes can be accounted for only in view of 
 this fact. For the popularity of the later 
 
IN AMERICA. 103 
 
 volumes, it is not necessary to resort to any- 
 other exjjlanation than that of the enormous 
 amount of labor and care expended on them, 
 the very unusual facilities in respect to ac- 
 cess to archives and masses of correspond- 
 ence which the author's diplomatic positions 
 afforded him, and the encyclopaedic full- 
 ness and minuteness of his knowledge of 
 his subject. But for the earlier volumes 
 these explanations fail ns. If they surpassed 
 in research and scientific value the averagfe 
 of that time, they were still not highly re- 
 markable in those respects. And yet the 
 tenth edition of the first volume was pub- 
 lished within ten years of the date of the 
 original edition. The book at once took 
 rank as the standard history of the United 
 States. Thousands and thousands of copies 
 have since been sold. At Washington, upon 
 the doors of the Senate and House of Re- 
 presentatives, its writer's name has long ap- 
 peared, almost the sole name of a private 
 person in the brief list of those to whom 
 our legislative bodies have given the privi- 
 lege of entrance upon their floors. 
 
 Whence did this immediate and un- 
 bounded popularity and acceptance arise ? 
 Mainly, I believe, from the fact that the his- 
 
104 HISTORICAL WRITING 
 
 toi'ian caught, and with sincere and enthusi- 
 astic conviction repeated to the American 
 people, the things which they were saying 
 and thinking concerning themselves. One 
 need not imitate the professional scorn of 
 the Pharisee and declare that the people 
 that knoweth not the esoteric law is cursed, 
 and yet may freely hold the opinion that 
 the popularity of a work of national history 
 does not depend on the profundity and skill 
 of its research, nor on the correctness and 
 completeness of its results, nor even on its 
 qualities of arrangement and style, so much 
 as on the acceptableness to the national 
 mind of the general idea which it exhibits 
 in regard to the nation's development. Ban- 
 croft's first volume succeeded mainly because 
 it was redolent of the ideas of the new 
 Jacksonian democracy, — its exuberant con- 
 fidence, its uncritical self -laudation, its op- 
 timistic hopes. The Demos heard, as an 
 undercurrent to his narrative, the same 
 music which charmed its ears in the Fourth 
 of July oration ; indeed, many of Bancroft's 
 most characteristic ideas are to be found in 
 his own oration pronounced at Northampton 
 on July 4, 1826 ; and the style was one whose 
 buoyancy of rhetoric was well suited to those 
 
IN AMERICA. 105 
 
 sanguine times. It would be but a shallow 
 criticism that should see in all this only the 
 ebullition of national vanity. The uncriti- 
 cal patriotism of those times, as of other 
 times in the course of history, was in some 
 respects admirable, and in many respects 
 useful. But we need not forget that it was 
 uncritical. The opening words of the intro- 
 duction to the book will serve as well as any 
 to exhibit what is meant : — 
 
 " The United States of America [it be- 
 gins] constitute an essential portion of a 
 great political system, embracing all the civ- 
 ilized nations of the earth. [This bears the 
 stamp of Heeren's ideas.] At a period when 
 the force of moral opinion is rapidly increas- 
 ing, they have the precedence in the prac- 
 tice and the defense of the equal rights of 
 man. The sovereignty of the people is here 
 a conceded axiom, and the laws, established 
 upon that basis, are cherished with faithful 
 patriotism. While the nations of Europe 
 aspire after change, our Constitution en- 
 gages the fond admiration of the people by 
 which it has been established. . . . Our gov- 
 ernment, by its organization, is necessarily 
 identified with the interests of the people, 
 and relies exclusively on their attachment 
 
106 HISTORICAL WRITING 
 
 for its durability and support. Even the 
 enemies of the state, if there are any among 
 us, have liberty to express their opinions 
 undisturbed, and are safely tolerated where 
 reason is left free to combat their errors. 
 Nor is the Constitution a dead letter, unal- 
 terably fixed ; it has the capacity for im- 
 provement, adopting whatever changes time 
 and the public will may require, and safe 
 from decay, so long as that will retains its 
 energy. . . . Other governments are con- 
 vulsed by the innovations and reforms of 
 neighboring states ; our Constitution, fixed 
 in the affections of the people, from whose 
 choice it has sprung, neutralizes the influ- 
 ence of foreign principles, and fearlessly 
 opens an asylum to the virtuous, the unfor- 
 tunate, and the oppressed of every nation." 
 
 The passage is typical, both as to style 
 and as to doctrine. Its sincerity is so mani- 
 fest that it is impossible not to admire and 
 be touched by its ardent Americanism, its 
 faith in popular government, in the Ameri- 
 can Constitution, and in the boundless success 
 of the United States through material prog- 
 ress and the simple arts of peace. But a 
 generation which has grown accustomed to 
 less use of literary as well as other stimulants 
 
IN AMERICA. 107 
 
 probably finds its eloquence somewhat tur- 
 gid, and tempers its enthusiasm with the 
 sadder consciousness of a success less perfect 
 than was anticipated. The same qualities 
 and the same defects are to be found in all 
 the subsequent volumes of the work ; up to 
 its completion in 1885, it still continued, as 
 our phrase is, to vote for Jackson. But if 
 there had been, meantime, no change in the 
 fundamental principles, there was a great 
 improvement in the workmanship. It is 
 sufficient evidence of this to point to the 
 rate of production of the individual volumes. 
 The first three volumes appeared in 1834, 
 1837, and 1840; the next three, after a 
 period of political and diplomatic life, in 
 1852, 1853, and 1854; the seventh and 
 eighth, at intervals a little greater ; the ninth, 
 not until 1866 ; the tenth, in 1874 ; the two 
 concluding volumes, as late as 1882. 
 
 From 1846 to 1849, the historian was our 
 minister to England, and from 1866 to 1874 
 he was minister in Germany. The result 
 was the collection of an enormous mass of 
 material from the archives of foreign states, 
 and from the stores of family correspond- 
 ence. Because of the long duration and 
 the great fame of his researches, similar 
 
108 HISTORICAL WRITING 
 
 opportunities, almost unlimited in extent, 
 were at liis service in this country. Some- 
 times his narrative seems too much domi- 
 nated by the possession of the abundant 
 materials of this class to v^hich his prefaces 
 refer with so conscious a pride. The last 
 volumes are limited in scope, giving a his- 
 tory of little but military and diplomatic 
 movements during the Revolution. Perhaps 
 it is as well. Bancroft's talents for the nar- 
 ration of military and diplomatic history 
 were of a very high order. He had great 
 skill in marshalling large arrays of facts, 
 good judgment, and a lucid and picturesque 
 style. On the other hand, a history of pop- 
 ular movements, of public opinion and of the 
 internal development of the United States, 
 would exhibit at the greatest disadvantage 
 the author's faults, — not only his loud and 
 uncritical Americanism and his rhetorical 
 bias, but the superficiality of his insight into 
 national psychology, his failure to perceive 
 its complexities, his tendency to convention- 
 alize, to compose his American populations 
 of highly virtuous Noah's-ark men. The ex- 
 cursuses in which he attempts this are among 
 the least happy and adequate portions of his 
 work. 
 
IN AMERICA. 
 
 109 
 
 An interesting though far from pleasing 
 episode in the history of Bancroft's labors 
 was the chapter of controversies with critics. 
 A slighting remark respecting a predecessor, 
 in the second volume of the history, had 
 drawn upon the historian the wrath of the 
 old president of Harvard College, who soon 
 showed that his Federalist pen had not lost 
 itsincisiveness and vigor. For reasons partly 
 personal, partly political, Bancroft was highly 
 unpopular in the literary society of Boston, 
 and not a few attacks followed. The ninth 
 volume of the history, dealing with a great 
 part of the military history of the Revolution, 
 aroused an especially large number of as- 
 sailants. Descendants of Greene, Reed, 
 Schuyler, and Sullivan, in able pamphlets, 
 attempted to show that the historian had 
 dealt unjustly with their respective ancestors. 
 The historian was so much superior to his 
 critics in knowledge and skill, that in most 
 cases he seemed to come off victorious from 
 the encounter. But the careful reader of 
 this mass of controversial literature will 
 probably feel that a good number of the 
 criticisms made were just, especially as con- 
 cerned Bancroft's use of quotations, which 
 he sometimes so excises and transposes as 
 
 10 
 
110 HISTORICAL WRITING 
 
 strangely to pervert their meaning. He will 
 note, too, the haughtiness and acerbity of 
 temper with which criticisms were received, 
 the slender recognition of fellow-laborers, 
 and, where criticisms had been supported 
 by proof, the grudging and minimized ac- 
 knowledgment of error. But, in spite of 
 all these defects, the American people owe a 
 great debt to the famous historian who has 
 just departed, after a long lifetime spent in 
 enthusiastic study and inspiring exposition 
 of their history. 
 
 A few words should be said concerning 
 some other writers of the period, who gave 
 themselves to the sober field of American his- 
 tory. It would be pleasant to be able to say 
 more than a word of Peter Force, of whose 
 great collection of the " American Archives " 
 Congress published nine volumes and then 
 stopped. To the lasting disgrace of Con- 
 gress, all subsequent efforts have failed to 
 obtain appropriations for the completion of 
 this monumental work. The work of collec- 
 tion and publication was carried on in more 
 varied ways by President Sparks. In making 
 his large collections in America and Europe, 
 and in editing the " Library of American 
 Biography," the writings of Washington and 
 
IN AMERICA. Ill 
 
 Franklin, and the " DIjilomatic Correspond- 
 ence of the Revolution," he performed ser- 
 vices of inestimable value to American his- 
 tory. That he at the same time did it no 
 
 ^small disservice by his mode of editing, as 
 when he toned down the actual words of 
 Washington into tame correctness, was 
 vigorously charged by Lord Mahon and 
 others. Sparks's letters in answer to Ma- 
 hon were models of dignified reply to 
 criticism. The view of the controversy 
 which would now be taken is, probably, that 
 President Sparks did not conform to all 
 the best rules of editing as they were then 
 known. It is quite true that he ought not 
 to be judged by the more exacting standards 
 of the present day ; yet 1833, when Ranke 
 was already teaching and writing, and the 
 '' Monumenta " had begun to be published, 
 was by no means in the dark ages of histori- 
 cal method. But there was much exaggera- 
 tion in the fault found with Sparks, and due 
 recognition of his invaluable pioneer work 
 
 I will prevent extreme censoriousness as to 
 defects of workmanship. Gentle Washing- 
 ton Irving thus alludes to the fault, when 
 speaking of these letters in the preface of 
 his " Life of Washington ; " — 
 
112 HISTORICAL WRITING 
 
 " A careful collation of many of them 
 with the originals [Sparks had to work from 
 the letter-books mostly] convinced me of the 
 general correctness of the collection, . . . 
 and I am happy to bear this testimony to 
 the essential accuracy of one whom I con- 
 sider among the greatest benefactors to our 
 national literature." 
 
 Downright Hildreth alluded to it in terms 
 more direct. 
 
 Hildreth's own work came later, — late 
 enough to feel the force of increasing sec- 
 tional animosities, and to show the effects of 
 them in an unfortunate degree. A man of 
 very decided convictions, and ardently in- 
 terested in politics, the Whig editor wrote 
 the " History of the United States " with a 
 strong partisan bias. In the first three vol- 
 umes, bringing the story down to the close 
 of the Revolution, this naturally finds less 
 place, and the lucidity, directness, and accu- 
 racy of the writer made his book one of much 
 value, though a little dry to the general 
 reader. But in the last three volumes, treat- 
 ing the history of our national politics down 
 to 1821, its partisanship of the Federalists 
 is so manifest that all its lucidity, directness, 
 and general accuracy cannot wholly redeem 
 
JN AMERICA. 113 
 
 it. If for Federalists we substitute Demo- 
 crats, we shall have to say much the same 
 things of the otherwise excellent " History 
 of the United States" to 1841, which 
 George Tucker of Virginia published, just 
 before the outbreak of the Civil War. In 
 1859 and 1860 appeared the first two vol- 
 umes of the "History of New England" by 
 John Gorham Palfrey, as good a piece of 
 work as had ever been done among us ; but 
 it belongs quite as much to the next period, 
 in which the remaining volumes were pub- 
 lished ; and it is time to turn to the writers 
 of what I have called another school. 
 
 It was something more than a difference 
 of subject that separated the writers already 
 characterized from Prescott and Motley. A 
 difference of attitude underlay the difference 
 in choice of subject. The impulses which ac- 
 tuated the former were founded, sometimes 
 in political but at any rate in national feel- 
 ings. Those of the latter were rather those 
 of the literary man. It was only after long 
 hesitation and with some regret that Pres- 
 cott abandoned the plan of devoting himself 
 entirely to the history of literature. He 
 was averse to politics, though the historians 
 of Europe have seldom been more engaged 
 
114 HISTORICAL WRITING 
 
 in them than they were in his time. His 
 correspondence and his prefaces show us 
 how much the literary aspect of his work 
 occupied him ; truthful and artistic narration 
 was his main aim. Writers of such predi- 
 lections as these would be likely to turn away 
 from the sober history of their own country, 
 and seek their themes in the more pictur- 
 esque fields of European history. The choice 
 of subjects which Prescott made gives the 
 plainest evidence of such purposes. Even 
 apart from the brilliant treatment which 
 his genius gave them, and from which it is 
 hard for our minds now to separate them, it 
 is plain that the reign of Ferdinand and 
 Isabella, the conquest of Mexico, the con- 
 quest of Peru, the history of Philip the 
 Second, were subjects eminently capable of 
 picturesque treatment. 
 
 The reader's interest in the volumes writ- 
 ten upon these engaging themes is height- 
 ened by the knowledge of the difficulties 
 surmounted in their preparation. Like 
 three other eminent historians, his contem- 
 poraries, Augustin Thierry, Karl Szayno- 
 cha, and the Marquis Gino Capponi, he was 
 blind, or nearly so. Everett, speaking at 
 the memorial meeting of the Massachusetts 
 
7^ A3IEEICA. 115 
 
 Historical Society just after his death, beau- 
 tifully applied to him the words of the Greek 
 poet, " Greatly the Muse loved him, and she 
 gave him both good and evil ; she deprived 
 him of his eyes, but gave him the gift of 
 sweet song." Only during the composition 
 of the second of his books, " The Conquest 
 of Mexico," was he able to make any consid- 
 erable use of his eyes. During a part of the 
 ten years given to the preparation of the 
 " History of Ferdinand and Isabella," and 
 of the time spent on the " Conquest of Peru," 
 he could use them for an hour or two each 
 day. During the rest of the time, including 
 the whole period given to the " History of 
 Philip the Second," he was forced to rely 
 entirely upon the eyes of others. In fact, 
 his investigations for the first of his books 
 began by going through seven quarto vol- 
 umes in Spanish, with a reader who un- 
 derstood not a word of the language. Bet- 
 ter assistance was eventually procured, and 
 great amounts of reading were done. The 
 writing machine now preserved in the cabi- 
 net of the Massachusetts Historical Soci- 
 ety was obtained, and released the patient 
 scholar from the necessity of constant dic- 
 tation. Fortunately, he possessed ample 
 
116 HISTORICAL WRITING 
 
 means for the purchase of books. The con- 
 sultation of foreign archives in person was, 
 indeed, impracticable. But, through the 
 kindness and exertions of devoted friends, 
 of whom his amiable and winning character 
 had attracted a large number, this obstacle 
 was in a great degree removed, and the suc- 
 cessive narratives rest on an increasing am- 
 plitude of original and unpublished docu- 
 ments, drawn not only from public and 
 private repositories in Spain, but in the case 
 of Philip the Second from most of the great 
 collections of Western Europe. But, for 
 all this, the writing of these eleven volumes 
 under such disabilities remains a most re- 
 markable achievement, and one which bears 
 strong testimony to the high qualities of 
 Prescott's character. 
 
 The books themselves need no factitious 
 interest arising from the knowledge of the 
 circumstances of their production. They are 
 too admirable and too familiar to need praise 
 in respect to interest of narrative, grace of 
 style, or artistic skill in the management and 
 marshaling of the various parts. The unity 
 of design and beauty of detail, the romantic 
 charm and picturesqueness which the author 
 sought, he certainly obtained. Scarcely less 
 
IN AMERICA. 117 
 
 praise must be given to the conscientiousness 
 of his research, though it may be doubted 
 whether his critical insight was of the most 
 penetrating sort. Nor was he a profoundly 
 philosophical historian, distinguished for 
 searching analysis. In one of his early 
 private memoranda, he confesses that he 
 hates "hunting up latent, barren antiquities," 
 and though he later, to some extent, con- 
 quered this repugnance, the studies which 
 make the analytical and sociological historian 
 were never thoroughly congenial to him. It 
 is mainly the concrete aspects of life that 
 engage his interest, and as a historical painter 
 of these, he was, in the period of the publica- 
 tion of his works, the years from 1837 to 
 1858, without a rival, save Macaulay and 
 Michelet. 
 
 In the preface to the first volume of his 
 " Philip the Second," confessing the diffi- 
 culty of imparting unity of interest to a 
 narrative which must necessarily embrace 
 topics so various, Prescott had alluded par- 
 ticularly to the subject of the revolt of the 
 Netherlands. He had said that, though but 
 an episode to his own subject, this alone 
 might well form the theme of a separate and 
 extensive work, and had announced that 
 
118 HISTORICAL WRITING 
 
 before long such a work might be " ex- 
 pected," to use his own words, " from the 
 pen of our accomplished countryman, Mr. J. 
 Lothrop Motley, who, during the last few 
 years, for the better prosecution of his labors, 
 has established his residence in the neighbor- 
 hood of the scenes of his narrative." The 
 work thus announced, the famous " Rise of 
 the Dutch Republic," was published in 1856. 
 Accordingly when, in 1859, Prescott died, 
 leaving his " History of Philip the Second " 
 no farther advanced than to the year 1580, 
 the historian who should in a sense continue 
 his work was already in the field. The first 
 of Motley's works carried down to the year 
 1584 a narrative whose subject, though not 
 the same as that of Prescott's last work, 
 necessarily had much in common with it. 
 For the history of the Dutch revolt against 
 Philip could hardly be written without say- 
 ing much concerning other aspects or por- 
 tions of his reign. In the year 1860 ap- 
 peared the first two, in 1868 the last two, 
 volumes of the "History of the United 
 Netherlands," embracing the years 1584 to 
 1609. "The Life and Death of John of 
 Barneveld," a work in form biographical, 
 but really continuing the " History of the 
 
IN AMERICA. 119 
 
 Netliei'lands " for a decade more, appeared 
 in 1874. 
 
 Enormous labors in the investigation of 
 archives were performed in the preparation 
 of these books. Motley had the intense zeal^ 
 of the born investigator, a rare and heroic 
 quality of^whTch' the world takes little note 
 in historians. He had likewise in full pos- 
 session those qualities which engage the 
 reader. No American has ever written a 
 history more brilliant and dramatic. The 
 subject was a noble one. It was full of 
 picturesque incident, of opportunities for 
 glowing description, of thrilling tales of 
 heroism. But it was not simply these that 
 so engaged Motley's interest that, as he 
 afterwards said, he felt as if he must write 
 upon it. It was a great national conflict for 
 freedom, and as such was profoundly con- 
 genial to one who, above all things, loved 
 liberty. The warm heart and enthusiastic, 
 ardent temper of the historian laid him open 
 to dangers of partiality which, it must be 
 confessed, he was far from wholly escaping. 
 The American public little appreciate the 
 extent to which he was influenced by such 
 feelings. Guizot, in a review article, noted 
 Motley's advocacy, but thought it too appa- 
 
120 HISTORICAL WRITING 
 
 rent to do harm, and excused it as being on 
 the right side, that of political and religious 
 liberty. Throughout the volumes on the 
 " Rise of the Dutch Republic," Motley is a 
 thorough partisan of William the Silent, — 
 a sincere and conscientious partisan, to be 
 sure, but a partisan none the less. Some 
 may think that it is little harm to exaggerate 
 the virtues of William the Silent, or to 
 soften the defects of a character so heroic ; 
 but certainly it is a pity to add one more to 
 the long chain of English writers who, out 
 ,of_ ancestral prejudice, have dealt hard meas- 
 ure to all Spaniards. Similarly, in his nar- 
 rative of the great internal contest between 
 the adherents of Prince Maurice and the 
 adherents of Oldenbarneveld, the Calvinists 
 and the Arminians, it must be declared de- 
 liberately that Motley is a partisan of the 
 latter, and is distinctly unfair to the former. 
 It is easy to see the reasons in both cases. 
 As a lover of liberty, the cause of William 
 and the Netherlanders, fighting for freedom, 
 engaged his warm affection. In the later 
 period, his Unitarian sympathies made it 
 natural for him to embrace the cause of 
 the Arminians against the Calvinists. Dr. 
 Holmes, to be sure, in his memoir of Motley, 
 
IN AMERICA. 121 
 
 defends liim from this latter charge. The 
 Dutch historian, Groen van Prinsterer, in 
 his " Maurice et Barneveld," though express- 
 ing a warm admiration for Motley, has criti- 
 cised him as unfair to the Remonstrant 
 cause. With his usual keen scent for Cal- 
 vinism, the doctor endeavors to show that 
 Mr. Groen van Prinsterer has taken up this 
 position because he is himself a Calvinist. 
 But Mr. Groen van Prinsterer does not 
 stand alone. It should not be forgotten that, 
 if none of the Dutch historical writers were 
 as brilliant as Motley, the nation stood, in 
 historical scholarship, hardly second to any 
 in Europe ; five historians could be named 
 every one of whom was probably as learned 
 in the facts as Motley himself. The dispute 
 is, in the end, one for the Dutch to settle, 
 and Dutch opinion is still divided. But so 
 long as the leading opinions are in general 
 more moderate than Motley's, and so long 
 as the Dutch are not '' vehemently suspected " 
 of having more of the ardent temper of the 
 advocate than Motley had, we may feel justi- 
 fied in mingling a certain sense of partiality 
 with our strong admiration of his warmth, 
 
 his brilliancy, and his dramatic force. 
 
 11 
 
122 HISTORICAL WRITING 
 
 IV. 
 
 THE PEKIOD SINCE 1861. 
 
 We were able to make a sharp division 
 between tlie first period in the history of 
 American historical writing and the second ; 
 the first chapter including writers who were 
 themselves of the emigrating generation, 
 while in the second none were included who 
 were separated from the original settlers by 
 a less interval than two generations. Simi- 
 larly, the second period was plainly separated 
 from the third by the revolutionary war, 
 during the distresses and troubles of which 
 there was little leisure for historical or other 
 composition. The historical literature of the 
 colonial period was confined to a few spo- 
 radic writers, not organically connected one 
 with another; it had not acquired momen- 
 tum enough to carry it in continuous life 
 across that time of difficulty and preoccupy- 
 ing care. 
 
 But with the third and fourth periods the 
 case is different. American historical liter- 
 
IN AMERICA. 123 
 
 ature had now acquired vitality, and hence- 
 forth its development was uninterrupted. If, 
 therefore, we select any chronological point 
 at which to divide this last and most impor- 
 tant period, the point chosen will necessarily 
 seem from some points of view an arbitrary 
 one. It is quite true that the civil war 
 formed the starting point for many new 
 tendencies in our historical, as in our gen- 
 eral literature. But, on the other hand, 
 much went on as before. In the first place, 
 some of the histories spoken of in the last 
 paper, though begun before the war, were 
 not completed until after it. The first two 
 volumes of Motley's " History of the United 
 Netherlands " had appeared in 1860 ; the 
 last two were published in 1868 ; and his 
 " Barneveld," which is virtually a continua- 
 tion of them, in 1874. Another work, whose 
 publication similarly overlapped the fourth 
 period, was Palfrey's " History of New Eng- 
 land," probably the best single large piece 
 of work that has been done in America on 
 any part of our colonial period. After much 
 labor in America and considerable research 
 in England, the first and second volumes had 
 been successively published just before the 
 war broke out. The third did not foUow 
 
124 HISTORICAL WRITING 
 
 until 1865 ; the fourth, not until 1875. At 
 the writer's death the history of the New 
 England colonies had been brought down to 
 the year 1740 ; the fifth volume, recently 
 published, carries it to the outbreak of the 
 Ke volution. If Dr. Palfrey was not a man 
 of great insight into popular movements, and 
 was too constant an apologist of the rulers of 
 New England, his book was nevertheless 
 admirable on account of his extensive know- 
 ledge of sources, his industry, clearness, ac- 
 curacy, and skill in narration. Among its 
 many excellences, one which deserves par- 
 ticular notice is the degree of attention which 
 it bestows upon the history of England itself 
 during the Puritan era, and upon the mutual 
 influence of Old England and New England 
 during that period of exceptionally close 
 sympathy and connection. Often the genius 
 of a writer is quite as much displayed by 
 new apportionments of their relative amounts 
 of attention to the different aspects of his 
 subject as in any other way, for thus his 
 insight into the proportions and relations of 
 various factors is practically displayed. 
 
 Meanwhile, other historians, not in the 
 field during the preceding period, have con- 
 tinued the traditions of the school which has 
 
IN AMERICA. 125 
 
 been described in a previous article under 
 the names of Prescott and Motley. An es- 
 pecially close example of this is the case of 
 John Foster Kirk, who was one of the pri- 
 vate secretaries successively employed by 
 Prescott, and who, after Prescott's death, 
 wrote a valuable book upon the " History of 
 Charles the Bold," a contribution in the 
 same general field as that of his master's 
 labors. But the author who has most con- 
 spicuously continued the school of pictur- 
 esque historians is Francis Parkman, the 
 eminent historian of the French dominion 
 in North America. 
 
 The subject is one highly attractive to an 
 American historical writer of this school, 
 who wishes at the same time that his studies 
 shall not be too remote from his own age and 
 country. Chivalry and heroism and romantic 
 adventure, the glamour of a foreign civiliza- 
 tion and the poetic charm of unfamiliar 
 forms of religion, are all there ; but the story 
 has also a close and important relation with 
 the growth of our own nation. Prescott 
 had been able to impart an additional in- 
 terest to his " History of Ferdinand and 
 Isabella " because of the episode formed by 
 the voyages of Columbus ; and perhaps Mot- 
 
126 HISTORICAL WRITING 
 
 ley's history of the struggle of the Dutch 
 for independence may have had a special 
 interest for the general reader in a country 
 of whose history a struggle for independence 
 is one of the most familiar portions. Pres- 
 cott, too, had chosen distinctly American 
 subjects in his " Conquest of Mexico " and 
 his " Conquest of Peru." But no one of 
 these had so direct a bearing on our national 
 history as the story of New France. For 
 several generations some of the most impor- 
 tant English colonies were occasionally men- 
 aced and always limited by the presence 
 upon their frontier of a considerable military 
 power established there by a nation usually 
 unfriendly. Furthermore, the presence of 
 this power was one of the chief influences 
 toward colonial consolidation, and its final 
 removal was one of the causes which made 
 possible the revolt from the government of 
 Great Britain. It is therefore with good 
 reason that the general title given to the 
 whole series of Mr. Parkman's narratives is, 
 '' France and England in North America." 
 The project of a series of so wide a scope 
 developed gradually in the writer's mind. 
 Soon after graduation from college he had 
 gone on several occasions to make more or 
 
IN AMERICA. 127 
 
 less extensive visits to the wild regions o£ 
 the Northwest. Much of his subsequent 
 historical work shows the effects of the fa- 
 miliarity thus gained with the scenery and 
 men of the wilderness. One of these effects 
 was the choice, for the subject of his first 
 historical production, of the Conspiracy of 
 Pontiac. It was from this work that the 
 writer was led on to the preparation of a 
 series of historical narratives upon the whole 
 course of the French dominion in America, 
 its relations to the English colonies, and its 
 final destruction by the military power of 
 Great Britain. For the history of Pontiac's 
 conspiracy forms a natural sequel to the 
 history of the French and Indian war, and 
 to that of New France generally. 
 
 This book completed, therefore, and pub- 
 lished in 1851, the author went back to take 
 up at the beginning the history of the French 
 in. North America, the great task upon which 
 he has been engaged ever since, and which 
 is now nearly completed. As in the case of 
 Prescott, physical difficulties which might 
 well seem insurmountable opposed. Extreme 
 ill health made it always necessary to con- 
 fine mental exertion within narrow limits, 
 and more than once stopped it entirely for 
 
128 HISTORICAL WRITING 
 
 several years at a time. Weakness of sight 
 seems to have made it always impossible to 
 read or write continuously for much more 
 than five minutes, while once, at least, it has 
 been for a period of three years impossible 
 to endure the light of day, or to read or 
 write to the smallest extent. 
 
 But the volumes composed under the pres- 
 sure of these calamities need no indulgence 
 from the critic. It may almost be said that 
 they need no praise, so widely spread and so 
 permanent has been their fame. The first 
 of the series, though published only twenty- 
 seven years ago, has already long passed its 
 twentieth edition. Others are approaching 
 it. The series has shown a continuous im- 
 provement, and especially in thoroughness 
 and fullness of research. It is in this respect, 
 indeed, that American historians have, at 
 the outset of their careers, been least ade- 
 quately provided. In Germany the class of 
 historical writers and the class of historical 
 professors are so nearly identical that the 
 young student who starts out upon a career 
 of historical authorship has almost always 
 the advantage of having learned his trade 
 under a teacher experienced in it. In other 
 words, with all the opportunity it presents, 
 
IN AMEBIC A. 129 
 
 and tlie need it has for that genius and in- 
 sight and maturity which can neither be 
 communicated nor described, there are many 
 things in the more technical portions of the 
 pursuit which by long experience have been 
 reduced to practical rules ; and these rules 
 can be learned of a master, if only by imita- 
 tion. But English and American historical 
 writers have till lately worked so much in 
 isolation that they could have no apprentice- 
 ship in the communicable portions of the 
 art. In the highly developed arts of re- 
 search and of historical criticism, therefore, 
 our historians have started out uninstructed, 
 and have learned these as they went on, with 
 no other teachers than their own mistakes 
 and their constant desire for completeness. 
 There has also been a great improvement in 
 the always brilliant and engaging style of 
 Mr. Parkman, which, with increasing years, 
 has grown more severe in taste. 
 
 The first book of the projected series was 
 called " Pioneers of France in the New 
 World." Its first part described in fascina- 
 ting narrative the history of the Huguenot 
 settlement in Florida, and its extinction by 
 the Spanish ; the second took up the story 
 of the permanent beginnings of the French 
 
130 HISTORICAL WRITING 
 
 dominion, tlie settlement of Acadia, and tlie 
 labors of Chamj^lain and his associates. The 
 next volume, published two years later, con- 
 tinues the story from 1635 to 1652, under 
 the title of " The Jesuits in North America." 
 For this volume especially, the author was 
 able to make great use of his early acquired 
 knowledge of Indian character and civiliza- 
 tion ; the sublime devotion of the mission- 
 aries and their heroic endurance of torture 
 and martyrdom at the hands of the savages 
 confer upon it an additional and most touch- 
 ing interest. The next volume, " La Salle 
 and the Discovery of the Great West," treats 
 of an episode, though an episode whose con- 
 sequences were at one time likely to be 
 highly important. The volume called " The 
 Old Regime in Canada " is devoted, after the 
 narration of the history of the transitional 
 period 1652-1672, to a description of Cana- 
 dian government and life, in chapters care- 
 fully based on original sources, and of sur- 
 passing interest. The ablest of the colonial 
 governors and the history down to 1701 
 are treated in the volume called " Count 
 Frontenac and New France under Louis 
 XIV." The intermediate period to 1748 
 having been left for the time being, Mr. 
 
IN AMERICA, 131 
 
 Parkman has given us the conclusion in 
 " Montcalm and Wolfe," two volumes, the 
 best in the series, on that American portion 
 of the seven years' war which we are wont 
 to call the French and Indian war. 
 
 It will be seen how wide is the range of 
 interest covered by these volumes. They 
 are not simply a history of a great attempt 
 to create, under the forms of absolute mon- 
 archy, feudalism, and Catholicism, a central- 
 ized and military power. Nor are they 
 simply a history of the efforts of that power 
 to overbalance and check the system of free, 
 Protestant and English colonies, unorganized 
 and discordant indeed, but strong with the 
 strength of popular institutions, of love of 
 freedom, and of habits of individual initia- 
 tive. This alone would be sufficient to make 
 the tale bright and commanding. But we 
 have also the adventures of explorers and 
 traders, the achievements of missionaries, 
 the heroism of martyrs, the wild life of the 
 Indian tribes, the scenery of the forest, the 
 events of war, the brilliant picture of French 
 aristocracy transferred, for purposes of war 
 or government or devotion, to the wilds of 
 America ; and it cannot be said that the 
 writer has proved unequal to the adequate 
 
132 HISTORICAL WRITING 
 
 treatment of a single one of these so varied 
 elements of interest. 
 
 I have devoted nmch space to Mr. Park- 
 man as being, next after one or two who 
 survived from the preceding period, the most 
 conspicuous figure in the American historio- 
 graphy of the last twenty-five years, the only 
 historian who can fairly be called classical. 
 No one can predict the advent of genius, but 
 it appears not very likely that the roll of the 
 classical historians will be much increased in 
 the immediate future, or that the next gener- 
 ation will in this respect abound in eminent 
 names. Amiel says : — 
 
 " The era of mediocrity in all things is 
 commencing. Equality begets uniformity, 
 and we divest ourselves of the bad by sacri- 
 ficing the eminent, the remarkable, the ex- 
 traordinary." 
 
 Such, at any rate, is likely to be the case 
 with our historical writing for a long time. 
 Nor is it in the main to be regretted. If 
 there is not produced among us any work of 
 supereminent genius, there will surely be a 
 large amount of good second-class work done ; 
 that is, of work of the second class in respect 
 to purely literary qualities. Now it is the 
 spread of thoroughly good second-class work 
 
IN AMERICA. 133 
 
 — second-class in tliis sense — that our science 
 most needs at present; for it sorely needs that 
 improvement in technical process, that supe- 
 rior finish of workmanship, which a large 
 number of works of talent can do more to 
 foster than a few works of literary genius. 
 If, therefore, that leveled Americanism to- 
 ward which M. Renan tells us that the world 
 is now progressing is, in the matter of his- 
 torical work, to take among us the form 
 which we have been supposing, we need not 
 lament. We may even hope that out of im- 
 proved scholarship may grow in time a supe- 
 rior profundity of thought ; for in truth 
 profundity of thought has not been among 
 the merits of any of our most distinguished 
 historians. We may do well to remember 
 that, in the historical literature of Europe, 
 when the Anakim of the sixteenth century 
 were replaced by the mousing but erudite 
 BoUandists and Benedictines of the seven- 
 teenth and the first half of the eighteenth, it 
 was only that the way might be prepared, by 
 patient and scholarly accumulation of mate- 
 rials, for the advent of a school of historians 
 more philosophical and profound than any 
 that had preceded. 
 
 But the series of American historians to 
 
 12 
 
134 HISTORICAL WRITING 
 
 which Motley and Parkman belong was not 
 characterized solely by the pursuit, in gen- 
 eral, of literary ends. Another distinguish- 
 ing mark was its devotion to European rather 
 than to American history. In our time the 
 devotees of European history are not numer- 
 ous in the United States (indeed, if one can 
 judge from the contents of our magazines, 
 European history is hardly at all a matter 
 of interest to most Americans) ; and such 
 devotees as there are have not all inherited 
 the literary traditions. A few scholars have 
 done excellent work in church history, for 
 the cultivation of which a special society has 
 been formed. Most eminent among these is 
 the learned layman whose "History of the 
 Inquisition " has reflected so much honor 
 upon American scholarship. Almost no 
 American has done anything \\^orth while in 
 the study of ancient history. This is a strik- 
 ing fact, when one thinks of it. The history 
 of Rome, especially, offers, one would think, 
 much that should interest Americans. There 
 is even a similarity of national character ; 
 the faces upon Roman busts are such as one 
 might see any day in the streets of New 
 York or Philadelphia. When one considers 
 how large a place the study of the classics 
 
IN AMERICA. 135 
 
 has long had in American education, one 
 cannot help feeling that such lack of interest 
 in the history of the classical nations indi- 
 cates that the instruction has not been suffi- 
 ciently vital. On the other hand, a very 
 respectable number of scholars are at work 
 in lines of Oriental history. 
 
 Of those who have occupied themselves 
 with modern history, some indeed have writ- 
 ten with a view mainly to the construction 
 of a picturesque narrative ; but mixed with 
 these there has been an increasing number 
 of workers whose aims have been chiefly 
 scientific. An accomplished teacher, with a 
 few advanced students, has published essays 
 upon Anglo-Saxon law. Several Boston law- 
 yers have published important studies in the 
 history of English law. Here a historical 
 scholar devotes himself to the study of the 
 merchant-guild, or meditates the vexed sub- 
 ject of early landholding among the Ger- 
 mans ; there another illustrates the history 
 of the Prussian state. Another labors upon 
 the history of sacerdotal celibacy, benefit of 
 clergy, ordeal, and wager of battle. All this 
 would have seemed very dry to the last gen- 
 eration ; but the most judicious of the mod- 
 erns see in it a hopeful sign for the future 
 
186 HISTORICAL WRITING 
 
 of the science, a sign that what work is done 
 among us in European history hereafter will 
 be, in increasing proportion, solid in con- 
 struction and addressed not unsuccessfully 
 to superior and specialized intelligence. 
 
 We have been speaking of departments of 
 historical work in America upon which the 
 war had little effect, and in whose develop- 
 ment it could only arbitrarily be taken as a 
 dividing point. But with work upon our 
 own history, which has occupied an increas- 
 ing proportion of our attention, it is other- 
 wise. Its character has been profoundly 
 affected by that great conflict. Not that we 
 have yet had the best that we shall have in 
 the way of books on the conflict itself. We 
 have had excellent pieces of military history, 
 a host of regimental histories and war arti- 
 cles. But the books which have attempted 
 to deal with its political aspects have been, 
 with a few exceptions like that of Mr. Alex- 
 ander Stephens, hopelessly unfair, full of 
 crude assumption, impervious to argument. 
 The remedy for all these things will be the 
 coming forward of the younger generation, 
 whose motive for studying the war is not 
 that of personal participation. 
 
 But the mental effects have extended far 
 
IN AMERICA. 137 
 
 more widely than this, far more widely than 
 the whole field of history, in fact. The lit- 
 erature, the art indeed, of the United States 
 can never again be like what it was before 
 the civil war. It was not simply that the 
 government became more firmly consoli- 
 dated, the people more closely bound to- 
 gether. The nation emerged from that ter- 
 rible struggle adult and mature. It was 
 able to look upon itself and the world around 
 it, its past and its future, at once with more 
 sobriety and discrimination, and with a 
 heightened self-respect, born of the sense 
 that great achievements and sacrifices for 
 inspiring causes had vindicated to it a right 
 to independent views. Colonial attitudes of 
 thought ceased, as colonial attitudes in poli- 
 tics had ceased after the war of 1812. Na- 
 tional sensitiveness to condescending criti- 
 cism from Europeans lost its acuteness ; we 
 began to feel, not in vanity, but in sobriety, 
 that now we were as worthy as they. We 
 began to look at our characteristics and 
 modes of life with an externality of view 
 unknown to the preceding generation. It 
 was possible for the international novelist to 
 arise, — that is, the novelist, to whom the 
 American is not undoubtedly the greatest of 
 
138 HISTORICAL WRITING 
 
 all human types, but simply one human type 
 among several, all alike to be exhibited with 
 intelligent candor. Mr. Howells's voice, 
 speaking to the American of forty years 
 ago, would have been the voice of one crying 
 in the wilderness, — a wilderness of vocifer- 
 ous panegyric upon all things American, 
 whose very vociferousness betrayed a latent 
 uneasiness. The development of our archi- 
 tecture, the gradual abandonment of Gothic 
 and Renaissance styles for earlier styles, 
 plainer, more Roman, more suited to the 
 genius of a practical people, is another illus- 
 tration. For the first time in our history 
 we have become a self-reliant nation. 
 
 In the domain of American history, the 
 chano:e has taken effect in two directions or 
 modes. In the first place, we have become 
 more critical and discriminating, have learned 
 more nearly to look upon the course of 
 American history with an impartial eye, 
 from the standpoint of an outsider. In the 
 second place, there has ensued a broadening 
 of the field of investigation and work, that 
 its scope may correspond to the scheme of 
 things in America, to the configuration of 
 actual affairs. We are no longer content 
 to adopt the same plans of distribution of 
 
IN AMERICA. 139 
 
 attention to different j^hases of history which 
 has seemed proper to European historians. 
 Our writers recognize, consciously or uncon- 
 sciously, that here the elements of life have 
 been mixed in different proportions, and that 
 history should conform to these different 
 proportions as equally valid and worthy of 
 observance. 
 
 To take at once one of the most important 
 illustrations of this, one of the most vital 
 differences between European history and 
 that of the United States. It seems to be a 
 fact that the scope of statesmanship, the 
 influence of great individuals upon the gen- 
 eral life, has been far less extensive here 
 than there. It is certain to be so in new 
 countries ; in them Nature is supreme. Why 
 was it that, while Greece itself was produ- 
 cing statesmen, the colonial Greeks of Sicily 
 produced none ? Simply because the abun- 
 dance of Nature left no field for them. In 
 modern Europe the pressure of population 
 upon the means of subsistence, and all the 
 difficulties which beset the general life wher- 
 ever the gifts of Nature are not superabun- 
 dant for the needs of man, have raised such 
 problems for man to cope with, such tasks 
 for the forces of human intelligence, as have 
 
140 HISTORICAL WRITING 
 
 necessarily evoked great administrative states- 
 men. 
 
 But with us it has not been so. Just as 
 our national housekeeping has not needed, 
 and therefore has not developed, the scien- 
 tific financial methods of burdened Europe, 
 the vastness of our national resources solv- 
 ing of itself every problem, so in general 
 Nature has managed for us, and economic 
 and other conditions have with peculiar com- 
 pleteness shaped our course. The govern- 
 mental ideas which have been represented 
 by the Straffords, the Richelieus, the Tur- 
 gots, the Pitts, the Bismarcks of the old 
 world (I do not mean ideas of absolutism, 
 but ideas of dominant influence of great in- 
 tellects upon national destinies), have been 
 alien to America. Once, indeed, the effort 
 was made to apply to America the methods 
 of European administrative statesmanship). 
 That is, if I am not mistaken, the essence 
 of the Federalist experiment, more deeply 
 its characteristic than any phase of its atti- 
 tude towards the American Constitution. 
 And why did the Federalist experiment 
 break down ? Simply because of those 
 forces which the Hebrew war song indicates 
 when it declares that the stars in their 
 
IN AMERICA, 141 
 
 courses fought against Sisera. Nature would 
 rule. With the advent of Jeffersonian demo- 
 cracy, the reins were thrown upon her neck ; 
 and from that time to this the field of in- 
 fluence of natural conditions upon our na- 
 tional destiny has been peculiarly great, the 
 field of influence of great individuals far 
 smaller than in the Old World. All this 
 imposes upon our historical scholars a duty 
 to which they have been far more disposed 
 to conform since the attainment of a firmer 
 national self-respect. They do not properly 
 reflect the life that they seek to reflect if 
 they write solely of individual persons or 
 groups of persons and their conscious efforts ; 
 they must cease blindly to follow European 
 schemes, and study economic and natural 
 conditions and developments, the unintended 
 growth of institutions and modes of life, the 
 unconscious movements and changes of 
 masses of men. 
 
 That this need of emancipation from the 
 traditions and conventions of European his- 
 toriography has been making itself felt, con- 
 sciously or unconsciously, is plain to any one 
 who surveys the historical literature of our 
 day. Never was there a time in America 
 when so great a proportion of the best his- 
 
142 HISTORICAL WRITING 
 
 torical work was devoted to the subject of 
 the history of institutions and economics. 
 One writes of the history of finance ; another, 
 of the fortunes of institutions transplanted 
 westward, and the genesis of governmen- 
 tal ideas among the lawless frontiersmen ; 
 another, of the history of cooperation ; still 
 another, of movements of migratory popula- 
 tion, and the influence of German or other 
 national elements absorbed into our mass. 
 The magazine writers give us series of ar- 
 ticles on colonial manners and customs rather 
 than on colonial wars. One writer even 
 attempts the difficult task of writing a gen- 
 eral history of our people. The historical 
 publications of our universities are mostly 
 devoted to the history of institutions and 
 economics. Forty years ago, a man might 
 write on the diplomacy of the American 
 Revolution ; nowadays, he is much more 
 likely to write on the history of the produce 
 exchange, or government land-grants for 
 railways, or education. Monographs in the 
 field of sociological history or on special 
 topics of the history of civilization are the 
 characteristic feature of our present histor- 
 ical literature. 
 
 One field indeed, whose cultivation would 
 
IN AMERICA. 143 
 
 naturally go along with these, is not yet 
 receiving adequate attention, the study, 
 namely, of the thought or inner life of our 
 nation, of public opinion, of popular move- 
 ments, political and other. It is not that we 
 have no one corresponding to M. Renan ; 
 for the union of so subtle and profound an 
 insight, so delicate and sympathetic an ap- 
 preciation, and so exquisite a style, is not to 
 be expected in a raw and youthful nation, 
 and indeed has scarcely appeared before in 
 any nation. But it is a matter of surprise 
 that, with the exception of a few such books 
 as Mr. Royce's " California," there seems 
 but little tendency to the cultivation of that 
 branch of history which may best be de- 
 scribed as the study of the development of 
 national psychology. But perhaps this will 
 come in time. 
 
 This has been spoken of as the most im- 
 portant tendency of the historical writing of 
 America to-day, not because its votaries or 
 its productions are numerically in a majority, 
 for that may very likely not be the case, but 
 because of the belief that it is intrinsically 
 the strongest tendency, and has the future 
 with it. It is dangerous to prophesy ; but 
 there are good reasons why such a prophecy 
 
144 HISTORICAL WRITING 
 
 may not be too audacious. The history of 
 every science is in some degree conditioned 
 by the natural course of things in the world 
 at large ; but it appears true, and will per- 
 haps even have been shown by these papers, 
 that this is in a peculiar degree the case 
 with the science of history. Views of the 
 past, and ways of looking at it, change with 
 the changing complexion of the present. 
 But it is always found that the actual march 
 of affairs is far in advance of its expression 
 in literary theory and literary practice. 
 Democracy had for some time been estab- 
 lished among us before the poetry of demo- 
 cracy arose. The world changes, but our 
 view of it does not change so fast ; only with 
 great effort can it be kept up to date, so to 
 speak. Accordingly, it may be possible to 
 discern in the face of things at present 
 something which may be relied on to shape 
 in part the historical science of the imme- 
 diate future. Those characteristics of Amer- 
 ican existence which have been mentioned 
 seem deeply rooted, permanent, essential ; 
 therefore it is likely that the adjustment of 
 the sphere of our historical writing into con- 
 formity with the actual facts, relations, and 
 proportions of our national existence will go 
 
IN AMERICA. 145 
 
 on to still further completeness, and that 
 this tendency affords some presage as to its 
 predominant qualities in the immediate fu- 
 ture, — qualities catholic and philosophical, 
 and contributory rather to historical science 
 than to historical literature. 
 
 Of course not everything is sharing, or is 
 likely to share, in this onward current. In 
 particular, the tendencies of many of our 
 numerous local historical societies form a 
 counter-current, or, better, an eddy, in which 
 chips of ancient timber float placidly round 
 and round in the same little circle, quite 
 unaffected by any general currents whatever. 
 Most of them are very useful, and those of 
 the West, at any rate, seem to be exceed- 
 ingly active. But, with a few bright excep- 
 tions, our older historical societies seem a 
 little inaccessible to new ideas, and more 
 than a little wedded to tradition. The 
 thought of touching anything that occurred 
 since the Revolution, that is, of having any- 
 thing to do with the most important part of 
 our history, seems seldom to occur to them. 
 Indeed, it is good fortune if the really active 
 members are not absorbed exclusively in the 
 study of the early voyages and discoveries, 
 or of the Indians, the two subjects most re- 
 
 13 
 
146 HISTORICAL WRITING 
 
 mote from the pi-esent affairs of the United 
 States, and therefore great favorites. 
 
 It is not likely that the more popular sort 
 of books will change greatly in any short 
 time. The voluminous and copiously illus- 
 trated county and city histories, with which 
 swift and enterprising compilers from time 
 to time present us, will probably not be 
 much affected. Provided adequate attention 
 has been given to the essential parts of their 
 work, the advertisements of important in- 
 dustries and the engravings of prominent 
 citizens, it will not be worth while to alter 
 a method which has hitherto served well 
 enough the main purpose of such publica- 
 tions. Indeed, it is to be expected that a 
 large number of even the books of leading 
 importance, whose ideas gradually filter into 
 the popular books and school text-books, will 
 continue to be constructed in accordance with 
 the plans traditional to the art. This, pro- 
 vided it is not done from mere blindness 
 or imperviousness to new ideas, will not be 
 regretted. No one quarrels with Mr. Henry 
 Adams for confining his brilliant and in- 
 structive books mainly to the political and 
 constitutional history of the periods which 
 they treat, or with Mr. Schouler for a similar 
 
IN AMERICA. 147 
 
 course. There is still a vast work remaining 
 to be done in our political history pure and 
 simple. The main object is not the cessation 
 of all former varieties of work, but the addi- 
 tion of nuQiberless new ones, and the per- 
 vasion of all with more modern and catholic 
 ideas. 
 
 But now as to the channels through which 
 the historical movement of the present time 
 goes on, and those likely to be used in the 
 immediate future. With but a few excep- 
 tions, the local historical societies are not 
 likely to be of great use in this way. His- 
 torical scholars of a modern spirit are no 
 longer much in the habit of using their 
 transactions as media of communication with 
 the world. The newly founded American 
 Historical Association, on the other hand, 
 may be put to very good uses. The found- 
 ing of that society was a most hopeful sign. 
 If adequately supported by the real workers, 
 it may prove of signal benefit to the progress 
 of the science in the future. The scope of 
 its publications is broad and national. Its 
 connections with the government will enable 
 it to publish still more, and out of it may 
 grow a Historical Manuscripts Commission, 
 which would be likely to accomplish as much 
 
148 HISTORICAL WRITING 
 
 for history among us as the prototype has 
 accomplished in England. Whether through 
 this channel or not, the government will not 
 probably much longer delay to engage in 
 some scheme of historical publication. Sev- 
 eral state governments are now carrying out 
 such enterprises. 
 
 Of our few historical magazines, most are 
 the organs of one or another of the local 
 societies; and of the more general ones it 
 is hard to speak with much patience. The 
 fault lies mostly with the general public, who 
 have not yet begun to care much for good 
 historical work. Indeed, for any essay in the 
 domain of European history it is scarcely 
 possible to think of an}^ American outlet, now 
 that our old-fashioned reviews have become 
 extinct or worse. As for American history, 
 what appears in the historical magazines is 
 mostly of a very popular sort ; it is only on 
 condition of their maintaining such a com- 
 position that the " intelligent public " allows 
 them to continue to exist at all. Meanwhile, 
 however, the great literary magazines have 
 opened their columns to series of good pop- 
 ular articles upon colonial or revolutionary 
 history, or even the general or the more 
 recent history of the United States, the last 
 
IN AMERICA. 149 
 
 and apparently the most successful of such 
 ventures being the war articles of ''The 
 Century " magazine. Very likely this indi- 
 cates, or may succeed in creating, a more 
 general interest in history among the unpro- 
 fessional. Meanwhile, the scientific workers 
 may find an avenue of publication through 
 the hospitable columns of the new " English 
 Historical Review," since the prospect of hav- 
 ing one of their own is exceedingly remote. 
 A method of historical publication much 
 in vogue among us at present is that of put- 
 ting forth a series of volumes by separate 
 authors upon kindred subjects. We have 
 had a series of " Campaigns of the Civil 
 War," a series of " Lesser Wars of the 
 United States," with some others, and, per- 
 haps more conspicuous to the public eye, the 
 " American Statesmen " series and the series 
 on "American Commonwealths." The plan 
 has its advantages and its defects. From 
 the point of view of the publisher, it is emi- 
 nently well-conceived. Greater attention is 
 drawn to individual pieces of work when 
 thus collected ; greater interest is excited in 
 the general subject when a mass of work 
 upon it is presented. To some extent, the 
 interests of the publishing business and of 
 
150 HISTORICAL WRITING 
 
 historical scholarship are identical. What- 
 ever increases the audience and the influ- 
 ence of good work must be welcomed by the 
 scholar. But it must not be forgotten — and 
 some of the volumes on "American States- 
 men " and "American Commonwealths " are 
 illustrations of the fact — that, in a series 
 of this sort, the good books bolster up the 
 poor ones, and gain them a factitious repute 
 and power. At the same time, the best 
 books suffer from the general average, sel- 
 dom acquiring more weight than their frac- 
 tion of the collective weight of the series, nor 
 as much as might accrue to them as in- 
 dependent publications. Another result is, 
 that all the kindred subjects therein com- 
 prised, however various in many character- 
 istics, are bound down to the same uniform 
 fullness and style of treatment. If Alex- 
 ander Hamilton is to have a volume of three 
 hundred pages sextodecimo, so must Gou- 
 verneur Morris. Statesman A, whose life 
 was spent in executive affairs, may be treated 
 differently from Statesman B, who spent his 
 life on the bench, but he will not be treated 
 with anything like so strong a difference as 
 the facts demand. If, as Mr. Bagehot says, 
 " the genius of great affairs abhors nicety of 
 
IN AMERICA. 151 
 
 division," still more does it abhor equality of 
 division ; and their treatment should corre- 
 spond to their genius. 
 
 It is well worth while to take such consid- 
 erations into account in any survey of our 
 present state and prospects, because a ten- 
 dency to more organization of historical 
 work is just now very marked. It is not 
 simply a result of that progression towards 
 equality, that fading of individual saliency, 
 which we have before noted. It is a ten- 
 dency peculiarly American. A nation sin- 
 gularly devoted to business has transferred 
 to the fields of literature and science the 
 habits of business management. We edu- 
 cate by correspondence, we facilitate literary 
 work by ingenious mechanical devices, we 
 catalogue and systematize. No nation in 
 the world is so addicted to bibliography and 
 indexing. The English still, as frequently 
 as not, publish books without indexes ; the 
 American who does such a thing is at once 
 denounced by our reviewers as ripe for any 
 atrocity. To say nothing of smaller bibliog- 
 raphies, Sabin's great dictionary of "Ameri- 
 cana" already extends to about twoscore 
 volumes, and will, when completed, embrace 
 as many as a hundred thousand titles. 
 
152 HISTORICAL WRITING 
 
 But we are going further in the organiza- 
 tion of historical work, even to the writing 
 of histories by organized forces, or by coop- 
 eration. An excellent instance is the pre- 
 paration of a most extensive history of the 
 Pacific Coast by the staff of trained assis- 
 tants employed by a wealthy, able, and en- 
 thusiastic Californian historian, Mr. H. H. 
 Bancroft. Retiring from the publishing 
 business with great wealth, Mr. Bancroft has 
 employed the energy and the methods of 
 a business man in the collection, digestion, 
 and presentation of materials. First, a great 
 library has been collected, including all ob- 
 tainable books bearing at all upon the his- 
 tory of Central America, Mexico, California, 
 Utah, Oregon, British Columbia, and Alaska. 
 Thousands of Mexican and Californian 
 pamphlets have been gathered, and files of 
 hundreds of newspapers from all parts of 
 the Pacific Coast. Numerous valuable man- 
 uscripts have fallen into the collector's 
 hands, and enormous masses of manuscript 
 copies of state records and mission archives 
 have been made specially for the library by 
 his secretaries. Old pioneers still surviving 
 have been visited, and their recollections 
 taken down at great length. A Russian 
 
IN AMERICA. 153 
 
 assistant was sent to Alaska to copy the 
 government records there. Half a dozen 
 Spanish ones have done similar work. From 
 twelve to twenty accomplished linguists, we 
 are told, have been constantly employed in 
 Mr. Bancroft's service since 1869. Secre- 
 taries have all this time been reading, trans- 
 lating, summarizing, cataloguing, and index- 
 ing the whole collection. 
 
 The result, attained at the cost of half a 
 million dollars, is a mass of systematized in- 
 formation, such as must make the users and 
 the desirers of historical materials elsewhere 
 deeply envious, and for the collection of 
 which, under ordinary methods, even an an- 
 tediluvian lifetime would scarcely suffice a 
 historian. The highest praise must be given 
 to the zeal for research, the public spirit, and 
 the enterprise and care which have presided 
 over the formation of this priceless collection. 
 But when it comes to writing history by this 
 same method, some reserves are necessarily 
 suggested to the mind. Mr. Bancroft has 
 prepared from these materials, and pub- 
 lished, a gigantic " History of the Pacific 
 States of America," in thirty-four unusually 
 large volumes. It is obvious that a work of 
 such magnitude, carried through in so few 
 
154 HISTORICAL WRITING 
 
 years, could not possibly be written by a 
 single hand. In fact, tlie books were first 
 written by the various members of the cohort 
 of assistants, and the person whose name 
 they bear has simply revised, as a sort of 
 managing editor, the productions of this 
 highly-organized staff. Valuable as the work 
 proves to be, some of the faults of such a 
 plan are evident. There can be no fixing of 
 responsibility. No one knows whom to crit- 
 icise. No one can know whether the au- 
 thority of this or that part of the book, or of 
 the whole, should be much or little. More- 
 over, there is less likelihood, under such a 
 system, of the best historical criticism, the 
 most skillful sifting of the evidence thus 
 elaborately collected. But all this is on the 
 supposition that the main object of historical 
 composition is correctness of detail, that a 
 book is perfect if none of its information is 
 erroneous ; a supposition by no means to be 
 admitted. To any one who has any concep- 
 tion of the use of the higher powers, the 
 rarer qualities of the mind, in historical 
 composition, it will be plain that no really 
 great history can be written by the methods 
 of the " literary bureau," by hiring a force 
 of assistants and seeing that they do it. It 
 
IN AMERICA. 155 
 
 may almost be said that the historian, like 
 the poet, is born, not made ; but if he is 
 made, he is not made by machinery. 
 
 Such dangers as have been above noted 
 must always, in greater or less degree, attend 
 work prejjared by these or similar methods. 
 It is important to observe this, because one 
 sees, in this country so devoted to organiza- 
 tion, a growing tendency toward the pro- 
 duction of historical work in such ways, the 
 application to it of the economic principle 
 and method of division of labor. A far 
 greater amount of work can thus be put 
 forth, and, what perhaps is quite as impor- 
 tant, can be put forth in such a way as 
 greatly to increase its force upon the world ; 
 for work so combined and systematized with 
 other work is not in clanger of being lost or 
 ineffectual, as are, for instance, the disser- 
 tations so ingeniously concealed in German 
 university and school programmes. But it 
 is well to remember that with these advan- 
 tages there are some serious drawbacks. 
 Good w^ork of the second class, and great 
 amounts of it, can thus be done ; good work 
 of the first class cannot. The tale of Pega- 
 sus in harness has this meaning, that the 
 finest qualities of the human mind cannot 
 
156 HISTORICAL WRITING 
 
 be thus systematized. The highest intellects 
 are not at the service of the hirers of clerks, 
 are not to be made cogs or wheels in a his- 
 tory-producing machine. 
 
 By far the most noteworthy of our co- 
 operative histories is the " Narrative and 
 Critical History of America," edited by Mr. 
 Justin Winsor. With its chapters of his- 
 torical narrative by our most learned and 
 able historical scholars, each writing upon 
 his own special field, and with its critical 
 essays upon the sources of information, it 
 seems without doubt to be the most impor- 
 tant and useful contribution ever yet made 
 to American historical science. It splendidly 
 sums up the historical labors of a century. 
 And, by the way, consisting so largely as it 
 does of a bibliographical record of what has 
 been done, the proportion between its parts 
 affords a striking indication of the relative 
 amounts of work which Americans have ex- 
 pended on different portions of American 
 history. It has taken four volumes to set 
 forth the results achieved in our colonial and 
 revolutionary history, while a single volume 
 is thought to suffice for the period from 
 1789 to 1850. Another editor might divide 
 the work somewhat differently ; but the fact 
 
IN AMERICA. 157 
 
 remains that we have expended much more 
 labor on the earlier than on the later period 
 o£ our history. Perhaps new nations have 
 a passion for the study of origins ; or per- 
 haps even those who write history enjoy 
 an interesting story, and find more such in 
 colonial history than in later times. The 
 disproportion indicated is a necessary inci- 
 dent to the scheme of the work. There are 
 also, it should be noted, other limitations 
 which must to some extent beset all co- 
 operative or monographic histories alike. 
 Stretched on the Procrustean bed of uni- 
 form requirements in respect to extensiveness 
 and general method of treatment, the au- 
 thors can present only those things which 
 they have in common, — abundant and cor- 
 rect information, and acute historical criti- 
 cism. Many of the finer qualities of the in- 
 dividual mind are likely to evaporate in the 
 process ; much of what is most valuable in 
 individual views and conceptions of history 
 will find no place for itself. No one who 
 appreciates these will readily assent to the 
 assertion, in the prospectus to the " Narrative 
 and Critical History," that, " when the supe- 
 riority of the cooperative method is fully 
 understood, the individual historian, if he 
 
 14 
 
158 HISTORICAL WRITING 
 
 ventures fortli at all, will be read for enter- 
 tainment rather than profit." 
 
 And now as to the agents by whom his- 
 torical science is to be furthered. Here, 
 also, the present enables us to judge some- 
 what of the future. It is not probable that 
 the advance-guard of our army will be led 
 by the ruling members of the various local 
 historical societies. Nor, on the other hand, 
 will much be done by the class of profes- 
 sionally literary men. At New York, we 
 are assured, there is now a literary centre, 
 and in and near it a literary class ; and lest 
 the public should lose sight of the fact, each 
 of our great magazines has at times an arti- 
 cle by some one of the number in which the 
 rest are commemorated, each star being cata- 
 logued by these prompt astronomers as soon 
 as it succeeds in getting at all above the 
 horizon. But with these complacent Augus- 
 tans, literature appears to be mostly a branch 
 of journalism, and history has little to expect 
 from them. No doubt their school surpasses 
 in breadth and the cosmopolitan quality 
 that which forty years ago had its centre in 
 Boston, but it is as much inferior in scholar- 
 ship as it is in dignity. The local antiqua- 
 ries, the professionally literary men, and the 
 
IN AMERICA. ' 159 
 
 men of wealtli and leisure devoted to study, 
 will no doubt continue to write historical 
 books. But an increasing proportion of tbe 
 annual product now comes from the teachers 
 of history in universities and colleges, and 
 the signs are that the immediate future be- 
 longs to the professorial class. 
 
 The change is more significant than may 
 at first be seen. Its meaning will appear if 
 we bear in mind that want of early training 
 in the technique of historical research and 
 composition which has been already spoken 
 of as characteristic of American historians 
 hitherto. The increasing identification of the 
 writing and the teaching classes may be re- 
 lied on to remove this obstacle to progress. 
 The next generation will have served an 
 apprenticeship under men who write ; and 
 the superior finish, the improvement in scho- 
 larly method, which have been so much 
 needed, will be one of the results. Already, 
 increasing numbers of special students of 
 history are frequenting those universities 
 which afford graduate instruction, and if the 
 annual production of books and other pub- 
 lications giving evidence of scientific train- 
 ing and of high ideals of historical scholar- 
 ship is still small, it is visibly increasing. 
 
160 HISTORICAL WRITING IN AMERICA. 
 
 Thus we have traced the development of 
 our science from its half-conscious infancy 
 down to the present time, and perhaps a 
 little way into the future. It cannot truly be 
 said that it has yet reached anything like 
 maturity, but it is in a vigorous though 
 raw adolescence. 
 
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