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The Present State of 
 
 Historical Writing 
 
 in America 
 
 1. By J. FRANKLIN JAMESON 
 II. By JOHN BACH McMASTER 
 III. BY EDWARD CHANNING 
 
 Reprinted from the Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society 
 
 FOR October, 1910 
 
 WORCESTER, MASSACHUSETTS 
 
 THE DAVIS PRESS 
 
 1910 
 
A ■ 
 
 IN EXCHANK 
 
 
 
 ■i^,: 
 
THE PRESENT STATE OF HISTORICAL 
 WRITING IN AMERICA. 
 
 I. 
 
 BY J. FRANKLIN JAMESON. 
 
 The Present State of Historical Writing in America 
 is a large subject. It is natural, when this Society 
 stands so near to the hundredth anniversary of its foun- 
 dation and is upon the threshold of a new building and, 
 as we all hope, of a new stage in its activities, that the 
 President should wish to mark the transition from the 
 old conditions to the new by a thoughtful consideration 
 of the actual status in America of that study to which 
 the Society is dedicated. Such thought may enable 
 us to enter upon the new era with a full consciousness 
 of the setting in which this organization is to play its 
 part, the terrain in which it is to manoeuvre. The 
 metaphors imply that the Society is not to drift, but 
 to make a conscious and deliberate effort to relate its 
 activities to the present status of historical science in 
 this nation, and by such effort to advance that status. 
 Yet how many difficult questions must be answered 
 before we can fully describe this present condition of 
 things, this stage of advancement which it is so impor- 
 tant for us to understand ! Merely to enumerate some 
 of them may be somewhat profitable and impressive, 
 but it will be obvious that no one brief paper can go far 
 toward making real to us the whole circle of what we 
 think to survey. What stage of progress have we 
 reached in the accumulation of printed materials for 
 history in our libraries, or of unprinted materials in 
 our archives? How largely have the latter been reduced 
 to order and made ready for the use of scholars? How 
 
4 
 
 much have we done in the pubHcation of documentary 
 materials, what remains undone, and how well are we 
 doing such work? What is the quantity and what the 
 quality of our output of historical monographs? What 
 is upon the average the mental caUbre and what the 
 training of those who make them? How do we stand 
 with respect to the pubHcation of histories of a higher 
 order, marked by literary sense or the effort to general- 
 ize? How deep or how copious is American thought 
 on the theoretical or philosophical aspects of history? 
 How largely have our historical workers pursued, or 
 appreciated, or been affected by, the advances made in 
 the many other sciences to which history is more or 
 less related? What are the present purposes, nature, 
 and effects of American historical teaching, elementary, 
 secondary, collegiate, or university, which after all 
 represents far more than nine-tenths of the total effort 
 expended on history in this country? In our universi- 
 ties, what is the status of research? How are our his- 
 torical societies and journals performing their functions? 
 What is the character of those books of history which 
 most hold the public attention — so far as the public 
 attention can be said to be held by any books whatever? 
 What sort or quality of history is presented to the popu- 
 lar mind in the ten-cent magazines and the newspapers, 
 which now constitute almost the sole reading-matter 
 of American mankind? 
 
 Not one of these questions is easy to answer, yet all 
 must be answered before we can adequately picture to 
 ourselves the present state of historical writing in the 
 United States. It is vain to make any attempt this 
 morning to pursue them all, but it may not be vain to 
 have enumerated them; for if then we perforce narrow 
 the scope of the present paper to a consideration of a 
 manageable portion of the whole field, we shall neverthe- 
 less do this with some consciousness of the relation which 
 that portion bears to the whole unmanageable total. 
 
 In selecting a part of the field, it is natural for me to 
 think of that which is represented by organized activi- 
 
ties in the pursuit of history, partly because I have been 
 for some years occupied with a corner of that lesser 
 portion, rather than with literary histories, and have no 
 doubt that 
 
 My nature is subdued 
 To what it works in, like the dyer's hand ; 
 
 and partly because it is much easier to make general 
 and summary statements concerning the results of 
 organized historical work than concerning those more 
 various and literary activities and products which spring 
 from the free spirit of the individual historical worker. 
 We can apply the pedometer and the stop-watch to 
 Pegasus in harness much more easily than to Pegasus 
 in spontaneous aviation. 
 
 How then do we Americans stand with respect to 
 organized historical work? The question may be 
 answered by comparison with our status at some period 
 in the past, by comparison with the stage of progress 
 exhibited by the chief European nations, or by compari- 
 son with some ideal which, given our opportunities 
 and our resources, we should be expected to have reached. 
 It may also be answered by consideration of the various 
 forms in which, in any country, historical work is usually 
 found organized, the chief typical organizations for the 
 pursuit of our study. If we choose to subdivide and 
 classify, we may speak of the historical work of govern- 
 ments, of societies, of professional journals, of universi- 
 ties and colleges, and of co-operative organizations 
 formed for the production of a given work. At all events 
 these have been in this country the most significant 
 forms in which historical work has been organized. 
 
 Intelhgent democratic governments will usually show 
 more tendency to subsidize such publications as make 
 immediate appeal to the mass of mankind, such as will 
 rapidly inform or educate great numbers of readers, 
 than such as make their appeal to the few, teach the 
 teachers of teachers, or lay secure foundations, far 
 below the surface, for the best work of future generations. 
 Relatively to the resources of the country, our federal 
 
6 
 
 government turned out better historical work seventy- 
 years ago, in the days of President Sparks's volumes and 
 the foHo "American State Papers," than it has in more 
 recent years, when it has become more perfectly demo- 
 cratic. But never did any government in the world's 
 history pour forth such a mass of information regarding 
 any great series of events, nor scatter the volumes of 
 information so freely, as did our government in the case 
 of the 128 volumes of the ''Official Records of the War 
 of the Rebelhon. " It is hardly less characteristic that 
 our government historical volumes, whether well or 
 ill executed, have been brought out casually and sporad- 
 ically, with no previous and expert effort to form a 
 comprehensive and systematic plan. A clerk of a 
 committee thinks it would be an excellent thing to have 
 a compilation of documents on the history of a given 
 matter, and that he is the ideal man to prepare it. He 
 readily persuades his chairman, the chairman somewhat 
 less readily persuades the committee, the committee 
 perhaps persuades Congress, and we have one more 
 historical ''pub. doc," possibly in several volumes, 
 possibly worth having, but very likely not half so useful 
 to the cause of history as twenty other compilations 
 that could be suggested. Efforts to improve this course 
 of procedure, to provide the government with a steady 
 supply of expert advice on documentary historical 
 publications, are under way, and a bill is before Congress, 
 but its fate is of course by no means certain. Under 
 the present system, or want of system, in selecting what 
 shall be done and who shall do it, our government's 
 historical pubhcations are, on the average, not only far 
 inferior to those of Great Britain, France, Germany, 
 and Austria, but even to those of small countries like 
 Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Denmark. 
 In respect to our State governments, a various tale 
 is to be told. Many of our newer states, in the West 
 and South, are putting forth most creditable work, 
 worthy of being compared with what countries of 
 equal population and resources in Europe accomplish. 
 
Examples are Wisconsin, — a commonwealth having per- 
 haps the most enlightened and progressive government 
 in the United States, — Iowa, Illinois, North CaroUna, 
 and Virginia. These States and some others have put 
 their historical work into the hands of persons who 
 know not only how such things should be done, but also 
 what is worth doing, facing with fresh and open minds 
 the question. What has been really important in the 
 development, social, economic, and political, of a nine- 
 teenth-century democratic community? Most of the 
 older and richer State governments of the northeast, 
 on the other hand, have steadily maintained antiquated 
 and conventional views as to what is worth while in 
 documentary historical publication. That of Massa- 
 chusetts has for fifty years displayed the most astonish- 
 ing indifference to her history, publishing almost nothing 
 out of the rich stores of her archives, in a period in which 
 a dozen American States and nearly a dozen European 
 countries have revolutionized the writing of their his- 
 tories by extended and judicious publication of fresh 
 original materials. Other of the eastern States have 
 continued to putter with muster-rolls and the mihtary 
 records of wars already well known, quite as if no breath 
 of new life had swept across the historical field since the 
 early days of Victoria and Van Buren. Here again 
 a defective organization is frequent, while in the West 
 and South large results have been derived by either one 
 of two excellent modern systems, that of the state-sup- 
 ported historical society, best exemplified in Wisconsin, 
 or that of the state historical commission or department, 
 exemphfied by North Carolina and Mississippi. 
 
 On the whole it is our historical societies that have 
 made the largest gains in productivity during the last 
 twenty-five years. The number of those which are 
 in active existence is very great, probably more than 
 two hundred, a far larger number than those of Great 
 Britain, and perhaps as large as that of the strictly 
 historical societies of France or of Germany. The 
 number of members is still more impressive. There are 
 
8 
 
 ten thousand members of historical societies reported 
 in Pennsylvania alone. The pecuniary resources of 
 these societies are also great. No doubt they form 
 the richest body of such societies in the world. Their 
 buildings are certainly worth in the aggregate as much 
 as two million dollars, their libraries more than 
 a million, their endowments something between one 
 and two miUions. Doubtless the work which they are 
 doing, in the way of research and pubhcation, is not 
 always in full proportion to their wealth, but it is very 
 much better than it was twenty-five years ago. They 
 are less inclined to print essays written by their members, 
 often discursive or of temporary utility, more inclined 
 to print documentary materials, which will have in the 
 future the same original value they have at present. 
 The number of members sufficiently educated in history 
 to insist on good workmanship in the pubhshed products 
 of the society has greatly increased. This is especially 
 true in the eastern States. The number has also greatly 
 increased of those who, having a keen practical eye to 
 the uses of history, make or sustain the societies' efforts 
 to direct attention toward those elements in state or 
 local history which have the highest degree of real 
 importance. Such members, persons who see state or 
 local history in its broad relations to national history, 
 and disregarding tradition take up those topics that 
 promise most in the way of fresh and vital instruction, 
 are naturally more numerous among the more open- 
 minded men of the West. The eastern societies are still 
 prone to pursue a certain munber of conventional 
 themes — the early voyages, the Indians, the battles 
 of the Revolution, the interminable biographies of 
 deceased members. They are also, as we should expect, 
 little inclined to lift their eyes over their own state 
 borders and take broad national views. In five years 
 of work in Washington, so circumstanced that I am 
 likely to know of historical researches undertaken in 
 national archives or library, I have hardly known an 
 instance in which the publishing authorities of any 
 
eastern historical society have set on foot any serious 
 researches in those great and rich repositories. Seldom 
 indeed do they touch the period since 1783. 
 
 Nevertheless much has been gained. Twenty-five 
 years ago the publications of most of our historical societies 
 seemed, at least to impatient young minds, hopelessly 
 provincial and unscholarly. But we were then just 
 at the beginning of a new period in all our historical 
 work. The preceding generation had felt the influence 
 of the best European standards in the domain of his- 
 torical literature, ours was to feel it in the domain of 
 historical criticism. Prescott and Motley were of the 
 school of Thierry and Mignet, Bancroft a disciple of 
 Heeren; we were to be followers of Ranke. A generation 
 of criticism of sources could not fail to have its effect 
 on societies largely devoted to their publication. Exact- 
 ness of text, minute care in annotation, adequate atten- 
 tion to bibliography, elaborateness of indexing, char- 
 acterize the volumes put forth by most of our historical 
 societies, even though sometimes they are applied to 
 materials of trivial importance, hardly worth the pains 
 expended upon them. 
 
 Besides this improvement in method on the part of 
 our state and local historical societies, we are to note 
 the growth in recent years of many historical organiza- 
 tions whose scope is national. Foremost among these 
 is the American Historical Association, founded in 1884, 
 and already the largest, and presumably the most 
 useful, historical society in the world. Others, while 
 not limited geographically in their scope, are devoted 
 to the American history of a single religious denomina- 
 tion. It is noteworthy that the American Jewish His- 
 torical Society and the corresponding Catholic organiza- 
 tion have been much more fruitful of good works than 
 the historical societies founded in the various Protestant 
 bodies, which have hardly awakened to the value and 
 interest attaching to American religious history. 
 
 Another interesting growth of recent years is the 
 group of organizations devoted to the history of the 
 
10 
 
 various ethnic elements which have entered into the 
 population of the United States^ — such as the German 
 American Historical Society, the excellent Swedish 
 Colonial Society, and that larger association for Scan- 
 dinavian-American history which seems now to be in 
 process of formation. No one who appreciates how 
 important it is to the American life of these newer 
 elements that they should remember and respect the 
 culture they brought with them, can fail to regard these 
 as among the most useful of our historical societies. 
 Useful to their members, they are capable of being 
 doubly useful to the rest of us, who are prone constantly 
 and enormously to underestimate all but the English 
 element in American development, prone to take the 
 view assumed by the London paper of August, 1909, 
 which thanked Heaven that the North Pole, though 
 unhappily not discovered by an Englishman, had yet 
 been discovered by an Anglo-Saxon — meaning the 
 celebrated Dr. Cook, geboren Koch! 
 
 In our survey, then, of the present state of historical 
 writing among us, we may look with legitimate com- 
 placency upon the stage of development which our 
 historical societies have attained. It is true that there 
 are at least forty historical societies in Europe which 
 are doing work of a grade hardly attained by more than 
 two or three of ours. It is disquieting that in so rich 
 a country there should not be a larger number of well- 
 to-do amateurs engaged in the work of these societies, 
 which normally would attract the interest of well-to-do 
 amateurs in a very high degree — so at least one would 
 expect, and so it has been in other countries and pe- 
 riods. But the disinclination of the American rich to 
 intellectual production is evinced in many another field, 
 and at all events the outlook for our societies is in most 
 ways encouraging. 
 
 Of our historical jom-nals most of the same things 
 are to be said which have been said of the societies. 
 Nearly all of them, indeed, are organs of particular 
 societies, and cannot be expected to rise in quality, or 
 
11 
 
 in influence upon other historical work, above the grade 
 fixed for them by the quahties of the societies from which 
 they spring. I may be permitted to say much the same 
 of the general organ of the profession, the "American 
 Historical Review." Without denying or palliating 
 faults in the editing, one may safely say in general 
 terms that it is about what the status of historical 
 science among us permits it to be. Its chief articles 
 seem to me to compare favorably with those in some 
 of the better sort of European journals. Its reviews 
 of books are inferior. In the first place, we have not de- 
 veloped so large a class of persons who, whether they 
 themselves write or not, are accomplished judges of 
 what historical books should be. In the second place, 
 there are many subjects or fields, especially in European 
 history, in which no American has acquired a large 
 amount of expert knowledge, partly because our remote- 
 ness from European archives and libraries has made it 
 a difficult matter to acquire such familiarity, except in 
 fields for which the sources have to a great extent 
 already been published. Finally, there is the well- 
 known excess of our national amiability, heightened in 
 the case of the historical profession by the friendly and 
 truly fraternal feelings which frequent meetings in the 
 sessions of the American Historical Association, and 
 frequent participation in common tasks for its service, 
 have engendered. It is a beautiful trait, rooted in 
 benign conditions of social development, but it stands 
 in the way of incisive criticism. I should be sorry to 
 see our Gelehrten speaking of each other as the Germans 
 still sometimes do, but if they would be more rigid in 
 their standards and more plain-spoken in their criti- 
 cisms, they would do more to improve American work. 
 When we come to speak of the American universities 
 as part of our machinery for historical production, it 
 is impossible to repress a certain feeling of disappoint- 
 ment. Thirty years ago, when the Johns Hopkins 
 University was beginning its extraordinary mission 
 in the higher education, and graduate work in the 
 
12 
 
 United States was in its infancy, we all felt that a his- 
 torical professor had it as one of his normal functions 
 to produce historical books at frequent intervals, and 
 that the young man whom he was training in the prepa- 
 ration of a doctoral dissertation was, in the normal case, 
 producing simply the first in a long series of historical 
 monographs. Time and the vast hordes of youths 
 eager to acquire collegiate education (or of parents eager 
 to pay for it) have somewhat undeceived us. The truth 
 is, that more than half of our historical professors do 
 not produce anything at all, and most of the others 
 produce only very slowly: and the doctoral dissertation, 
 instead of being the first in a long series of Arbeiten, has 
 been in more than nine cases out of ten, by actual 
 calculation, the young man's sole and last contribution 
 to his science. Doubtless the prime duty of a college 
 teacher is to teach, and the multitudes clamoring more 
 or less actively for historical instruction should receive 
 it ; but one cannot resist the wish that the young teacher 
 might, like the young oyster, be carried by artificial 
 means across that critical period of danger to his Ufe 
 which ensues when he is first compelled to go forth into 
 a world of pressure and struggle. 
 
 The authorities of universities still appreciate that 
 original research is necessary to the mental health of 
 professors and to their highest usefulness as teachers, 
 and are in some degree aware that, from the point of 
 view of the nation at large, it is a pity that so large a 
 body of persons specially trained for historical investi- 
 gation should be debarred from it ; but there seems to be 
 little chance of immediate remedy in the case of most 
 teaching professors. Meanwhile, however, some of the 
 most enterprising of the western State universities, 
 taking a leaf out of their experience in the sustaining 
 of agricultural and other scientific research, have begun 
 an interesting experiment by the appointment of men 
 who are not expected to teach, but to occupy themselves 
 with historical researches deemed especially useful to 
 the State. Much may be done by such especial foun- 
 
13 
 
 dations; but it will be remembered that bright expecta- 
 tions of the same sort were entertained concerning 
 fellowships thirty years ago, when they were first in- 
 stalled in our system. 
 
 Last among the forms of organized historical work 
 to be considered is the general history produced by 
 co-operation. Not unknown in previous centuries, this 
 genre of historical composition has especially flourished 
 during the last generation. Spain, France, England, 
 Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark, Mexico, all 
 have furnished excellent examples. Twenty-five years 
 ago the United States provided an elaborate one in 
 Justin Winsor's "Narrative and Critical History," and 
 has not surpassed it since. The merits to be expected 
 from such undertakings, in an age of specialization, are 
 obvious. As literary products, as efforts toward the 
 profounder interpretation of the national life, they are 
 sure to suffer from the prescription of uniformity among 
 their component parts. They will usually succeed better 
 in the summing up of results already achieved by the 
 writers of monographs than in the pioneer work of 
 developing new thoughts or opening up new fields of 
 research. 
 
 In non-literary labors, however, in the plodding 
 mechanical work of bringing additional bodies of ma- 
 terial to the knowledge of students or making them 
 accessible in print, there is a far greater field for co- 
 operative endeavor than is commonly realized. This 
 is a subject especially deserving the attention of American 
 historical societies. We are a nation notoriously apt 
 for organization. Our librarians, our scientific men, 
 our teachers, have shown conspicuous success in bring- 
 ing about valuable results through co-operation. The 
 more plastic historical organizations of our western 
 States have lately shown their ability to unite by engag- 
 ing in a most interesting common task, the making of 
 a calendar of all the papers in the French archives relat- 
 ing to the history of the Mississippi Valley — a task 
 transcending the scope of any one of these organizations, 
 
14 
 
 yet which would bring almost unlimited duplication 
 and waste if each should attempt independently to 
 perform its own local part of the whole. The historical 
 societies of the East have hitherto shown almost no 
 sign of the ability or the wish to co-operate, though it 
 would be easy to name a score of undertakings which 
 especially invite co-operative labor. To take an imagi- 
 nary instance, yet not wholly imaginary, let us suppose 
 that one of the New England societies or states possesses 
 a part of the essential materials for the study of the 
 regime of Andros and Dudley, another society, another 
 portion, and so on. Can anyone commend a procedure 
 whereby each society, without concert with the others, 
 publishes (or neglects to pubhsh) solely the fragments 
 of the whole mass which it happens to have in its build- 
 ing? Can the historian be well served by the result — 
 one part printed on one system in 1850, let us say, another 
 part printed on another system in 1900, a third part 
 still reposing in manuscript, and all parts treated on 
 the basis of the accident of possession? It is but an 
 ideal illustration, but the principle is a practical one, of 
 frequent application. Situated as the American Anti- 
 quarian Society is with respect to the more local his- 
 torical societies of the eastern States, it is ardently 
 to be hoped that, in the new era opening before it, a 
 considerable part of its duty may be felt to be the pro- 
 motion of broad-minded and active co-operation among 
 its fellow societies. 
 
 The picture I have attempted to draw of the state 
 of organized historical work among us is not altogether 
 a gratifying one. But I am much attached to that say- 
 ing of Bishop Butler, ''Things are as they are, and the 
 consequences of them will be what they will be ; why then 
 should we deceive ourselves?" I see no occasion in 
 these matters to be either optimist or pessimist. Much 
 better and more rational than either, is to be a meliorist, 
 believing that conditions are improving, doing one's 
 part to make them improve. 
 
15 
 11. 
 
 BY JOHN BACH MCMASTER. 
 
 Had some member of our Society, at its first meeting 
 nearly a century ago, undertaken to review the state 
 of historical writing in our country since the Revolution, 
 his task would have been easy. A History of New 
 England by Hannah Adams, a couple of works on 
 the Revolution by Ramsay, American Annals or Chron- 
 ological History of America from its Discovery by 
 Abiel Holmes, Marshall's Life of Washington, Minot's 
 History of Shays's Rebellion, a View of South Carolina 
 by Drayton, and a View of the United States by Tench 
 Coxe, a History of Virginia, another of Pennsylvania, 
 another of the District of Maine and Minot's Province 
 of Massachusetts Bay, would about complete the list. 
 Conspicuous by its absence from the list is a class of 
 historical works for the production of which the time 
 was well fitted. Thirty years had passed since the 
 surrender of Yorktown, and two and twenty since Wash- 
 ington took the oath of office as first President of the 
 United States. That the rebellion of the thirteen colo- 
 nies, the fight for independence, the partition of the Brit- 
 ish Empire, the desperate struggle for fife which followed 
 the Peace of Paris, the adoption of the Constitution, 
 and the starting of the little republic on a career of 
 astonishing prosperity were events of no common sort 
 in the history of mankind was well known to the Fathers. 
 Yet none of them thought it worth while to write out 
 for posterity a full and truthful narrative of the part 
 he played in the founding of a great nation. Some 
 five and forty years separate us from the surrender 
 at Appomattox ; and our library shelves are loaded with 
 books written by those who were conspicuous in the 
 struggle for the preservation of the nation. Nothing 
 of this sort was done by the men who witnessed the 
 Revolution, the fall of the Confederacy and the adop- 
 tion of the Constitution. Those who wrote produced 
 books of little interest to posterity. We could easily 
 
16 
 
 spare the Notes on Virginia if the author had devoted 
 the hours spent on the composition of it to the writing 
 of a monograph on the Framing, Adoption, and Signing 
 of the Declaration of Independence, or "My Own Story" 
 of his stormy administration. We should be glad to 
 exchange, a Defense of the Constitution of Govern- 
 ment of the United States of America, for the Personal 
 Memoirs of John Adams while a member of the Conti- 
 nental Congress, while peace commissioner, minister 
 to Holland, and Great Britain, and President of the 
 United States. We should much prefer a narrative 
 by Monroe of his diplomatic experience in Spain, Eng- 
 land and France, to his Examination of the Conduct 
 of the Executive. The writing of history in those days 
 was little better than a pastime to which gentlemen of 
 literary taste might turn from more serious occupations. 
 Histories of States, histories of towns were written, but 
 no work of wide range and serious importance was 
 undertaken till well past the first quarter of the century. 
 Meantime the basis for such a work, a great body of 
 original material, was slowly being formed. Such His- 
 torical Societies as existed, put forth their Collections, 
 Transactions, Proceedings, some State papers and public 
 documents were printed; biographies of a few of the 
 Revolutionary leaders were written, and more than fort}^ 
 books of travel, by foreigners and natives in various 
 parts of our country, were published. This was a good 
 beginning and in the decade which followed 1830, a 
 great stride forward was taken. Jared Sparks, our 
 pioneer in historical literature, opened it with the Diplo- 
 matic Correspondence of the American Revolution. 
 Then came his Life of Gouverneur Morris, the series 
 known as the Library of American Biography, the Works 
 of Franklin, and the Writings of Washington. The 
 assaults made by later editors on his methods and his texts 
 are well founded. But he deserves to be remembered 
 as the first man to ransack the archives of States and 
 families at home and abroad in search of the materials 
 of our history, and bring together and make accessible 
 
17 
 
 a vast quantity of papers scattered over the land in 
 public and private collections. The decade was notably 
 rich in source material. To it belong Irving's Voyages of 
 the Companions of Columbus — a companion piece to his 
 Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (1828-1831), 
 the American Archives of Peter Force, EUiot's Debates in 
 the several State Conventions on the Federal Constitu- 
 tion, The Life, Correspondence and Papers of John Jay, 
 and Gilpin's collection of the papers of Madison. What is 
 even more interesting, it was in this decade that the first 
 great American historian made his appearance. When 
 in 1834, George Bancroft published the first volume of 
 a History of the United States, he stepped at once into 
 the front ranks of historical writers. His style no longer 
 appeals to us. The tone of exaltation, the liberty which 
 he took with quotations have often been condemned. 
 But his widespread and long continued search for origi- 
 nal documents, his accuracy in the statement of facts 
 marked him out as a real historian ; and to him belongs 
 the honor of having placed the writing of history in 
 our country on a high plane of scholarship and of start- 
 ing it on an honorable career. His point of view was 
 that of the philosophical historian. He analyzes the 
 characters of men, and from history, as he narrates it, 
 draws lessons of political wisdom. The sociological 
 side interested him not at all. The period which he 
 covered lacks but three years of three centuries. Yet 
 the astonishing changes in manners and customs, which 
 separated the Americans who adopted the Constitution 
 from the English colonists who founded Jamestown and 
 Plymouth, find no place in his pages. 
 
 For a decade and a half Bancroft was without a rival 
 in his chosen field. The writers of history were more 
 busy than ever. Histories of cities, histories of towns, 
 histories of States, mostly worthless, and biographies 
 of men great and small came by scores and hundreds 
 from the press. Above the mass of busy writers 
 there rose a few masters who, thinking the annals of 
 their own land too prosaic, sought and found their 
 
18 
 
 themes elsewhere. Prescott, before 1850, took the read- 
 ing pubUc by storm with his Ferdinand and Isabella, 
 his Conquest of Mexico, and Conquest of Peru ; and ere 
 another decade went around Hildreth had written the his- 
 tory of our country from the discovery of the New World 
 to 1821, Palfrey was at work on his History of New Eng- 
 land, and Motley had made himself famous in the Old 
 World and the New by his Rise of the Dutch Republic. 
 
 Thus was it when the Civil War opened ; three of our 
 countrymen had produced works so important in their 
 subject matter, so broad in scope, so scholarly and so 
 well written as to entitle them to a place among the 
 world's great writers of history. A fourth who, in the 
 opinion of many, has outstripped the three, had opened 
 his story of the French in America with the Conspiracy 
 of Pontiac. Each one of them belonged to the literary 
 and dramatic school of historians. It was by no mere 
 accident that Motley began his literary career with 
 a novel called Merry-Mount, and Parkman his with 
 Vassall Morton. These bespoke their type of mind. 
 The things that would interest them in history would 
 be, not the great masses of toiling men, not the silent 
 revolutions by which nations pass from barbarism to 
 civilization, from ignorance to knowledge, from poverty 
 to wealth, from feebleness to power, but the striking 
 figures of history, great Kings and Queens, the leaders 
 of armies, men renowned for statescraft, and the dra- 
 matic incidents in the life of nations. Each must have 
 his hero and his villain, his plots, conspiracies and bloody 
 wars. Just as Froude had his Henry VIII; just as 
 Macaulay had William III, Carlyle his Robespierre 
 and Cromwell, and Thiers his Napoleon, so Motley had 
 his William of Orange and Philip of Spain, Prescott his 
 Cortez, Pizzarro, Ferdinand and Isabella, and Parkman 
 his Pontiac, Frontenac and La Salle. History as viewed 
 by writers of this school is a series of dramas in each 
 of which a few great men perform the leading parts 
 and use the rest of mankind as their instruments. And 
 what could be more dramatic than the periods they 
 
19 
 
 chose — Spain at the height of her power and glory, the 
 Conquest of Mexico and Peru, the struggle of France 
 and England for possession of North America, the rend- 
 ing of the Empire of Philip II. 
 
 The Conspiracy of Pontiac met with little favor at 
 home or abroad. But very different was the reception 
 given him when fourteen years later he published the 
 Pioneers of France in the New World, and followed at 
 intervals of two years by The Jesuits in North America, 
 and La Salle, and the Discovery of the Great West. 
 These were masterpieces. The incidents were dramatic, 
 the characters strongly drawn, the setting of forest and 
 prairie, lake and frontier, was picturesque, and the well 
 told narrative as interesting as fiction. No finer exam- 
 ples of this particular school of history are to be found 
 in any language. 
 
 By the close of the sixties much of the early history 
 of our country had thus been covered by writers of 
 distinction. Irving had told the story of the discovery 
 of the new world, Bancroft that of the English colonies 
 from their settlement to the Revolution, Parkman that 
 of the French in Canada and the Valley of the Missis- 
 sippi. But the history of the United States from the 
 admission of Missouri where Hildreth left it, was still 
 unwritten. The material for history was diligently 
 gathered. Biographies, histories of States, recollec- 
 tions, memoirs, books and pamphlets on every possible 
 phase of slavery and its issues, diaries, compilations 
 of the speeches and letters of statesmen, were produced 
 in abundance; but no attempt was made to tell the 
 story of the last forty years. The march of a people 
 across a continent, breaking prairies, clearing farms, 
 constructing steamboats, railways, canals, opening 
 routes of trade and commerce and building towns and 
 cities as they went, and dealing with grave financial, 
 industrial, and economic questions with a boldness and 
 on a scale nowhere else attempted, furnished none of 
 the dramatic incidents which appealed so strongly to 
 the historians of the school then in high favor. 
 
20 
 
 With the close of the Civil War, however, a great change 
 began in historical writing. Since that time the history of 
 our country has been written and rewritten in the greatest 
 detail. Not only does that dreadful struggle mark the 
 end of an era in our national life as distinct as that of 
 the war for independence, but it also marks the begin- 
 ning of a change in our point of view of our history. 
 This was manifested in the first place by the eagerness 
 with which every scrap of information regarding the 
 war has been collected and printed, an eagerness not 
 shown by those who took part in the Revolution. 
 Scarcely had the smoke of battle cleared away when 
 the participants on both sides from the highest to the 
 lowest made haste to tell of their part in the war. We 
 have histories of particular battles and particular cam- 
 paigns, of regiments, brigades, corps and armies, narra- 
 tives of life in the prisons, and of escapes from the 
 prisons, of blockade runners, of private soldiers; mem- 
 oirs, Personal Memoirs, Own Story, by generals and ad- 
 mirals on both sides, and of men who filled high places 
 in the State. The Federal Government at a cost of sev- 
 eral millions has published the official Records of the 
 Union and Confederate Armies and Navies, many of the 
 States have done the same, and Military Societies have 
 been organized to gather and preserve authentic material. 
 
 The interest in our history aroused by the Civil War 
 was still further stimulated by the centennials of the 
 battles and events of the Revolution, by the founding 
 of Patriotic Societies, and by the establishment in our 
 Universities and Colleges of chairs of American History. 
 The result has been both bad and good. Bad, in that 
 it has brought forth books utterly worthless as histories 
 and designed to catch the popular interest and enrich 
 the publisher. Good, in that it has led to a study of 
 our history with a care and detail such as was never 
 made before. No part of it has been passed by, and 
 much of it has been rewritten. The part covered by 
 Bancroft has been traversed in far more attractive 
 form by Mr. Fiske, and is now being rewritten in a truly 
 
21 
 
 scholarly way by Mr. Osgood and Dr. Channing. Mr. 
 Schouler has written our history from the close of the 
 Revolution to the Civil War, Von Hoist our Constitu- 
 tional History to 1861, Justin Winsor edited the Narrative 
 and Critical History of America to 1840, Wilson the Rise 
 and Fall of the Slave Power in America, Frothingham 
 the Rise of the Republic of the United States; and the 
 whole story from Columbus to the end of the nineteenth 
 century has been told in the American Nation, edited by 
 Dr. Hart. Special periods have called forth the remark- 
 able histories of Mr. Henry Adams and Mr. Rhodes. 
 From the graduate schools of our Universities have come 
 year after year monographs of no mean sort. Material 
 for the history of our country is collected in no one place. 
 A part is in the Old World buried in the archives and 
 libraries of England, France and Spain. A part is at 
 home scattered over all the land from Maine to Cali- 
 fornia in the archives of six and forty states, in a thou- 
 sand libraries and in private hands. Travel which a 
 search for it entails is costly both in time and money. 
 And so great is its bulk that the mere examination of 
 it is beyond the span of Hfe allotted to any man. The 
 historian who should undertake to write even a century 
 of our history, examining every source with the infinite 
 care so necessary to a true understanding of every event, 
 would assume a task physically impossible to perform. 
 To him every well written monograph is a godsend 
 indeed; and it should, in fairness to the hundreds of 
 young men who have prepared such monographs, be 
 said, that they have been exceedingly well done. And 
 so, too, has much of the work of our later historians. 
 They have found out that war and strife, treaties and 
 conventions, the doings of great leaders and the plat- 
 forms of great parties do not contribute all that is worth 
 noting in the life of a people. They have found out 
 that the invention of a labor saving machine, the dis- 
 covery of a cure for some dread disease, may really be 
 a more important event in the history of a nation than 
 any battle its generals ever won, or any treaty its states- 
 men ever concluded. 
 
22 
 III. 
 
 BY EDWARD CHANNING. 
 
 History is a mode of thought and expression. His- 
 torical writing is the appHcation of the historical method 
 to expression with pen and ink. Historical labor finds 
 its activities in many directions. It may be grouped 
 under three heads: (1) the collecting and printing of 
 original sources; (2) the reporting on masses of material 
 or on specific topics; (3) historical writing. The first 
 two of these groups represent craftsmanship; the third 
 division represents art. It is necessary for the eluci- 
 dation of the ages to gather documents into storehouses 
 and to make them accessible by various modes of arrange- 
 ment, by convenient calendars and Usts of one kind 
 or another. Some of this material is in printed books; 
 another part is composed of original manuscripts. 
 Between these two divisions is a series of limited dupli- 
 cations by means of transcripts which are made by hand, 
 or by the typewriter, or, in a more limited form, by 
 photography. Of these the photograph is the best and, 
 in view of the great improvements that are being made 
 in photography, it might not be amiss to suggest that it 
 would be well to postpone or to restrict the duplication 
 of manuscripts until the time comes when they can be 
 reproduced by the camera. The task of making accessi- 
 ble the tools of the historical writer is a necessary part 
 of historical labor and those who engage in it deserve 
 appreciation and recognition, — they are the altruists of 
 the profession, in that they cut themselves off from the 
 reputation-making forms of historical endeavor. 
 
 The second class of historical labor presents itself 
 to the mind under the words reports, theses, and doctoral 
 dissertations. Hundreds and thousands of young men 
 and old ones, as well as the middle-aged, all over the 
 country are devoting themselves, with the greatest 
 assiduity, to the making of extracts and abstracts of 
 original sources, arranging them under appropriate 
 
23 
 
 headings, and translating them into twentieth century 
 EngHsh, as ordinarily used in America. These mono- 
 graphs, reports, and dissertations, thus laboriously com- 
 piled, are issued in the printed form by universities, 
 some of which do not confine themselves to the printing 
 of works produced within their walls, but take what 
 they can get ; others are issued by learned societies under 
 the names of transactions, publications, proceedings, 
 or collections. Given an adequate amount of material 
 and a sufficiency of time, he must be a mediocre man, 
 indeed, or one whose brain has become indurated, who 
 cannot produce a monograph or volume, or even a series 
 of volumes of this type. 
 
 Of recent years, the output of doctoral dissertations 
 has greatly increased, owing in part to the establishment 
 of a large number of fellowships which are oftentimes 
 designated as being for research. The ultimate aim 
 of nearly every one of the seekers for doctorates is to 
 engage in the teaching of history in a university, a 
 college, a normal school, or perchance, in a high school. 
 The importance of providing a constant stream of 
 youthful, well trained pedagogues is recognized by all, 
 and justifies the founding and giving of scholarships 
 and fellowships. But we should realize that the pro- 
 duction of pedagogues is not the same thing as the bringing 
 forth of scholars, much less is it the making of historical 
 writers or historians. Professor Jameson has remarked 
 upon the barrenness of our doctors. I, too, as a teacher 
 of youth, a conductor of doctoral candidates, a guider 
 in the evolution of theses, have become conscious of 
 the pertinacity with which writers of essays and theses 
 in our colleges and universities, whether they get doc- 
 toral degrees or not, stop with the work they do under 
 direction. Get them out of the university, get them 
 away from professorial stimulus, make them teachers, 
 make them librarians, and their original work stops. It is 
 the most heart-rending thing that university teachers of 
 history have to face at the present time. As incitements 
 to individualistic, original research, pecuniary aid has 
 
24 
 
 not as yet proved effective. The man who is going to be 
 a great seeker after truth and a fruitful setter-forth 
 of the facts of human history to his fellowmen cannot 
 be a recluse, living on the scanty bounty of fellowships 
 as they have been and are administered by American 
 universities. The historical seeker and writer must 
 have interests that will compel him to come into con- 
 tact with other human beings. The names that occur 
 to us of great historical writers, Gibbon, Macaulay, 
 Trevelyan, and Lecky in England, Bancroft, Parlonan, 
 Irving, Prescott, Motley, and Palfrey in America, are 
 not those of closeted students, living on the bounties 
 of others. They were all active in pursuits, other than 
 those in which they won their fame. In saying this, 
 I am referring solely to the production of writers of 
 history. Scholarships and fellowships have their justi- 
 fication in producing teachers, catalogue-makers and 
 other craftsmen; but the artist is not to be thus made. 
 The man who has it in him to write a great book will 
 do it and do it better if he has to earn his own living, 
 and is thereby forced into contact with his fellowmen, 
 even if he half starves in the midst of his career. 
 
 The qualifications of the historian are multitudinous. 
 He must have training in research, must be able to 
 handle material in manuscript and in printed form, and 
 to sift the truth from the falsehood. He must have 
 the faculty of using the work of others, of recognizing 
 first-class monographs at a glance, almost. The ma- 
 terials of American history are so vast that the historian, 
 even of a fairly limited period, can hardly hope himself 
 to read all the original sources. He must use the work 
 of others; but he himself must also constantly be using 
 original materials; otherwise he will lose the faculty 
 of recognition; and he will miss that local color and 
 flavor which make historical writing tolerable. The 
 task of the historical writer i^ on all fours with that of 
 the person who works with colors, — the historian seeks 
 to reproduce with the pen the impression his research 
 and reading have made on his mind, as the artist seeks 
 
25 
 
 to reproduce mental impressions with the brush. The 
 task of the man who endeavors to state the truth in 
 an attractive manner in words is far more difficult than 
 that of the novelist or the poet. For the one is hampered 
 in every line by the necessity of speaking the truth, 
 the other is not. The task of the historian is construc- 
 tive, by reproduction to place in public view the record 
 of the bygone times. 
 
 With the worker in colors, the novelist, and the poet, 
 the historian must possess imagination. He must be 
 able to picture to himself in broad outline, the condition 
 of a people at a given time, to see the march of armies, 
 to recognize the inter-action of economic forces, and 
 then to reproduce these impressions with a lightness 
 of touch that will make them readable and with a 
 heaviness of detail that will make them convincing. 
 In his presentation, he must seek to produce a truthful 
 impression upon his reader. Oftentimes, to do this he 
 must sacrifice absolute accuracy in detail and in per- 
 spective. If the impression produced upon his reader 
 is truthful, it matters little whether all his dates are 
 correct, all his names are properly spelled, or if all 
 his facts are accurate. Indeed, his dates may every 
 one of them be correct, his names may all be properly 
 spelled, his facts may be absolutely accurate, and the 
 impression left upon his reader be entirely false. 
 
 The historian must be a person of broad sympathies; 
 to be an antiquarian is not enough. He must have some 
 sympathy with the ways of the economist and must 
 regard the march of fact in the light of the laws of 
 human development. Professor MacMaster has rightly 
 termed the older historians ''dramatic writers." They 
 attributed the Revolution to the Adamses, to Washing- 
 ton, to Henry, to Otis, and to the other great men of 
 that epoch. Approaching the problem from a more 
 modern standpoint, it becomes increasingly evident 
 that the separation from England was largely due to 
 the play of economic forces. At the same time, there is 
 no such thing as economic history; all history is economic. 
 
26 
 
 All historical development is founded upon industry, 
 upon the necessity of supporting life, and the way in 
 which it is done. It is impossible to separate economic 
 history from political history. None the less, the his- 
 torian owes a debt of deepest gratitude to the economist 
 for rescuing his subject from the abyss of dramatism. 
 The historian must also have enough of training in 
 law to be conscious of the way in which lawyers look 
 at affairs. He must realize the meaning of the word, 
 of the phrase, ''the law." It is true that the historian's 
 business and the lawyer's business are very different. 
 The qualities of the mind that make a successful his- 
 torian are not those that make a successful lawyer; 
 but lack of the feeling or the knowledge of how lawyers 
 look at certain problems is fatal to the best historical 
 production. Similarly, he must have some acquaint- 
 ance with that which is termed science; he must under- 
 stand the scientific temperament; and must know some- 
 thing of the results of scientific inquiry. 
 
 The historical writer must be a master of perspective ; 
 he must see events and men in their true relations. He 
 must not exalt one period unduly, or give too heavy a 
 weight to one set of events ; he must not dilate too much 
 on the influence of men and omit to set forth with equal 
 skill the influence of underlying forces. This is not 
 saying that an historical writer cannot treat a limited 
 period or a limited topic or that biography may not be 
 one form of historical writing; but within his field, the 
 historical writer must see the perspective truly. This 
 is one of the most difficult of all achievements for the 
 historian, because in his researches, he is likely to come 
 upon new material relating to some one part of his studies 
 that no one else has ever seen, or rather that no one 
 else has ever understood. The temptation is great to 
 apportion his space according to the importance of 
 his materials, not according to the importance of the 
 events or the men. 
 
 The difference between the tasks of those whom I 
 have termed historical craftsmen and those whom I 
 
27 
 
 have called historical writers lies in the amount of think- 
 ing necessary for the best production in their respective 
 fields. The searching for documents, the copying of 
 them accurately, the verifying of texts, and the seeing 
 them accurately printed is a work that demands time, 
 labor, and patience. The writing of reports or theses 
 likewise demands prolonged labor in searching out 
 facts, some skill in ascertaining the truth of them, and 
 some facility in putting them together. The object 
 of these productions, however, is not so much to stim- 
 ulate and interest large numbers of readers as to pro- 
 vide accurate and painstaking statements of fact for 
 the use of university professors and historical writers. 
 It is not expected of the monographer that he shall be 
 interesting or stimulating, he can be as dry and detailed 
 as he pleases. The object of the historian is very 
 different and his mode of procedure must be quite unlike 
 that of the purveyor of transcripts, the editor of original 
 documents, or the writer of monographs. 
 
 The first thing that the historian must do, after he has 
 looked over his field carefully, from one end to the other, 
 and acquired some knowledge of relative values and 
 perspective, is to familiarize himself with the facts. 
 It is not enough for him to note down this, that, or the 
 other on paper and then from these notes make up his 
 text. He must pass all this matter through his brain; 
 he must make it a part of himself. To accomplish this, 
 he must become very familiar with his facts; he must be 
 saturated with detail. He must be on speaking terms, 
 so to say, with the men and women who take any leading 
 part in his story. He must know, not merely a critical 
 year or so, in their lives, he must be acquainted with 
 their environment, with their upbringing, with their 
 mental and moral qualities. In treating of economic 
 problems, he cannot array a mass of facts on paper, he 
 must make the facts part of himself; he must ponder 
 them carefully, day after day, month after month, possibly 
 year after year, until their true relation and interaction 
 come to be revealed to him. It is only after this pro- 
 
28 
 
 longed research, this saturation of self with facts, after 
 having gone through these long mental processes, often 
 fraught with serious misgivings, that the historian is 
 prepared to put pen to paper and try to reveal to others 
 that which the past has revealed to him. In writing 
 he seeks to tell the story in such a way that his readers 
 will become convinced without being aware that they 
 are being argued with. In his statements he must be 
 careful not to arouse opposition, but to produce the 
 effect he desires by the employment of lights and shadows 
 precisely as does the artist. He must weigh every 
 sentence, nearly every word, with a view to euphony, 
 to form, and even to grammar. In all this, he must 
 put his own soul into his work and let it shine forth. 
 The labor and risk involved in producing even a small 
 piece of historical writing is very great. Sometimes, 
 the author feels that it would be advisable to stop. It 
 is absolutely impossible to write a definitive history. 
 Every historian misses or has not access to many, many 
 facts and papers. At any moment a document may 
 come to light to destroy all statements as to some one 
 fact or series of facts; the next historical writer must 
 revise the dicta of centuries. An author is always 
 prejudiced by his environment; he is limited by the span 
 of human existence. He must therefore apportion his 
 time so that his chosen task stands a fair chance of 
 accomplishment. Nor can he be blamed for closing 
 his research and beginning the arrangement of his facts, 
 for there is scarcely a field within the purview of the 
 writer on American history that would not yield to 
 research, if carried on for many, many years, or indefi- 
 nitely. The time comes when the historian must begin 
 to make up his mind. In doing this it is not at all 
 necessary that he should have read every bit of evidence. 
 Take the countless diaries and journals of the blockade 
 of Boston, or simply those dealing with Bunker Hill; 
 there are differences between them, no doubt, but in 
 essentials they teach the same truths. These will be 
 patent to the man of historical genius when he has read 
 
29 
 
 three or four of them, and will never become visible to 
 him whose mind works in another way, no matter how 
 many he may read. 
 
 In looking about for writers of history in this country 
 at the present moment, the seeker is met with greater 
 discouragement than would befall him in almost any 
 other path of original research. The American people 
 are in the midst of a cycle of commercialism. There 
 has not been a time for many years, at any rate, when 
 scholarship has been so lightly valued in the United 
 States as it is at the present moment. In talking with 
 students, in viewing the books that are printed, one is 
 driven to this conclusion, lamentable though it is. 
 Scholarship is momentarily at a very low ebb, because 
 it is not valued throughout the country at large. Now- 
 adays the size of the output and not the quality of the 
 production is what attracts attention. The standard- 
 ization of education, not the making of scholars, is the 
 cry. Let anyone turn the matter over in his own mind 
 and see if he cannot count the really first-class works 
 of American historical writers within the last twenty- 
 five years, on his fingers; and yet conceive of the num- 
 ber of persons engaged in historical pursuits and the 
 number of books constantly published under the guise 
 of history! Some day the wheel will turn around; 
 scholarship will again be valued as a national asset; 
 and a new Parkman will arise! Possibly, he may 
 produce only one volume, but if that volume shall be 
 of the quality of the ''Pioneers of France," it will do 
 more for the cause of educating the plain people and the 
 building up of his own reputation than the printing 
 of documents by the ton or the publication of mono- 
 graphs by the dozen. 
 

 
 
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