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aeLIBRARY OF THE
UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIATHE DEDICATION OF THE
WILLIAM L. CLEMENTS
LIBRARY OF AMERICANA
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UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGANLONDON: HUMPHREY MILFORD

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESSS LIBRARY BUILDING

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AMERICAN HISTORIAN’S
RAW MATERIALS

eAn —Address

By J. FRANKLIN JAMESON, LL.D., Lirr.D.

DIRECTOR OF THE DEPARTMENT OF HISTORICAL RESEARCH
IN THE CARNEGIE INSTITUTION

‘WITH

THE PRESENTATION
AND OTHER EXERCISES/AT
THE DEDICATION OF
THE WILLIAM L. CLEMENTS LIBRARY
OF AMERICANA

JuNE 15, 1923

ANN’ ARBOR
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
MCMXXIII323489

COPYRIGHT, 1923
BY UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

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PRINTED FOR THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
AT THE HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS
CAMBRIDGE, MASS., U.S.A.Contents

INIRODUGTION 3.05 @ ae oe a ee eee I
He, LIBRARY, BUIEDING? 3 ee 3
MEE SGIR AGREB MEN Da ce ce ce Creer eens

THE EXERCISES AT THE DEDICATION

THE PRESENTATION BY WILLIAM L. CLEMENTS .. II
THE ACCEPTANCE BY VICTOR M.GORE....... 16
REMARKS OF GEORGE PARKER WINSHIP ...... 19
THE HISTORIAN’S RAW MATERIALS

BYo) MRANKIEING JANMBSON| =) 0) =) 0 9 eee 26

ADDRESS AT THE LAYING OF THE CORNER STONE

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS
BY PRESIDENT MARION L. BURTON. ....... 53

A TEMPLE OF AMERICAN HISTORY
BYAWILLIAM WARNER: BISHOP. = 3 i) eeIntroductionlp May, 1921, William L. Clements entered into
an agreement with the Regents of the Univer-
sity of Michigan to give his library of Americana
to the University, and to provide a building to
house the books and to afford facilities for their
conservation and use.

The corner stone was laid on March 31, 1922,
with simple exercises. An address was delivered by
William Warner Bishop, Librarian of the General
Library of the University.

Mr. Clements and the Regents, in December, 1922,
entered into a definitive Gift Agreement setting forth
in detail the conditions under which the William L.
Clements Library of American History should be
received by the University and should perform its
functions.

The Library Building was dedicated on June 15,
1923, the exercises being held in Hill Auditorium.
Representatives were present from thirty-seven col-
leges, universities, and libraries. In addition a num-
ber of Mr. Clements’s personal friends came from
Bay City and elsewhere.

The University gave a luncheon on this occasion
to the official representatives and to the friends of
the donor, at the Michigan Union, at which the
President of the University welcomed its guests,
and George Parker Winship, the delegate from Har-
vard University, responded on their behalf.INTRODUCTION

After the exercises of dedication in Hill Audito-
rium, the library building was open for inspection,
and was visited by the guests, many members of
the Faculties, and large numbers of Alumni attend-
ing Commencement.

The addresses at the laying of the corner stone,
at the luncheon, and at the dedicatory exercises are
printed here, in the hope that the principles laid
down by the donor, and the desires and aspirations
expressed by the other speakers, may serve as a
guide to the use and growth of the William L.
Clements Library of American History at the
University of Michigan.The Library Building

HREE views of the building are given in this

volume: a general view of the exterior, a view
of the Main Room, and a picture of the Rare Book
Room or Treasure Room.

The Library was planned by Albert Kahn of De-
troit, carrying out the detailed specifications drawn
up by Mr. Clements. Mr. Kahn is the architect
of the General Library and of many of the other
University buildings, as well as of numerous notable
structures in Detroit and elsewhere. Mr. Kahn
personally drew the basic designs for the structure,
and has overseen the furnishings and fittings. His
keen interest in the building and its peculiar prob-
lems has been most fortunate in its results.

The building was erected by the Owen, Ames and
Kimball Company of Grand Rapids. It is of Indi-
ana limestone. It is approached from South Uni-
versity Avenue by a broad terrace to the entrance
loggia. The ceiling of this loggia 1 is decorated in blue
and gold, and there are carvings showing the arms
of the University, of Columbus, and of Washing-
ton, over the three doors which lead directly to the
Main Room. There are niches at either end of the
loggia, in which statues may one day repose. The
central doors are of bronze.

34 INTRODUCTION
The Main Room, about 90 by 50 feet, which

rises through two stories, occupies the entire front
of the building. It is panelled in fumed oak to the
cornice, from which springs a ceiling in low vault-
ing. The panels in the ceiling and the border below
them were painted in formal patterns by Thomas
di Lorenzo of New York. The room is lined with
book-cases, those in the two alcoves in the south
corners being made especially deep, to receive maps
and atlases. Exhibit cases are placed near the en-
trance doors, while the room itself has been charm-
ingly furnished under Mr. Kahn’s direction.
Opposite the entrance and in the rear of the
Main Room lies the Treasure Room, with massive
doors opening off the Main Room. This room is a
real vault, its floor, walls, and ceiling being of re-
inforced concrete, while its windows are closed with
steel shutters, and the doors have tempered steel
plates concealed in the wood. In this room are
kept the great rarities of the Library, including the
Shelburne Papers, the collections of De Bry, the
Discovery books before 1700, the Jesuit Relations,
and other works of more than ordinary importance.
A small reading-room is provided in the north-
east corner of the building, where books may be
read under the supervision of the Custodian or his
Assistant. The office of the Custodian is between
the small reading-room and the Treasure Room.
The northwest corner is given over to offices for
the two ranking professors of American History,THE LIBRARY BUILDING 5

one on each floor. There is a separate outside en-
trance from the Campus, leading to these rooms,
which does not give access to the rest of the build-
ing under ordinary conditions. Each office is
sufficiently large for a seminar or small class to
meet with the professor in his study.

On the second floor, overlooking the Main Room,
is a gallery, which contains a selection of modern
books of reference for the convenience of the pro-
fessors of History and others working in the build-
ing. There is also a large working-room for the
Staff, on the second floor, in which are housed at
present the bibliographical collections and a part of
the Vignaud Library.

The basement is given over to newspapers and to
photostat rooms. The newspapers are stored on
steel shelves furnished by the Snead and Company
Iron Works of Jersey City. A room for the janitor,
an unpacking room, and a large hallway occupy the
rest of the basement.

A driveway leads to the door on the Campus side
of the building. Besides the ordinary service uses,
this enables visitors, in bad weather or when they
are invited for special functions, to step directly
from their conveyance into the building. The base-
ment plans provide ample room for depositing
wraps on such occasions.

The building is heated by steam carried in a
tunnel from the central power plant of the Uni-
versity, half a mile away. There are thus no fires6 INTRODUCTION

and no ashes in the structure itself. This elimina-
tion of the ordinary heating plant, combined with
the fire-proof construction, makes the protection
against fire as nearly absolute as possible. The
electric-light wires, the water pipes and the tele-
phone wires are all carried in the same tunnel with
the steam pipes.

Every precaution has been taken in the structure
itself to guard against injury to the books whether
by dust or careless handling. The books are all in
enclosed cases, with heavy plate-glass doors. The
exhibit cases are very strongly made, and the rarer
books have received the special protection of the
Treasure Room.

The building as a whole is handsome, and its in-
terior is particularly pleasing. Neither the donor
nor the architect has spared any pains to ensure
permanent and suitable housing for the Library.

W.. -W2B:The Gift Agreement

Apene Library was transferred by Mr. Clements
to the University under a gift agreement dated
December 14, 1922. This is printed in full in the
Regents’ Proceedings for that month.

By this gift agreement the donor transfers to the
University the Library and the building, subject to
certain conditions to be observed by the University.
The University agrees to maintain the Library, and
further to make adequate provision (at least $25,000
yearly) for its support and growth. There is created
a Committee of Management to direct the Library,
consisting of the President of the University (Chair-
man), the Librarian (Vice-Chairman), the Donor
during his life-time, the ranking professor of Amert-
can History, and two members at large not resident
in Ann Arbor. The two first chosen as members at
large are George Parker Winship of Cambridge and
William Smith Mason of Chicago. The Committee
of Management elects a Custodian-Librarian and
other officers.

It is definitely provided that books are not to be
removed from the building, nor are duplicates to be
sold. The donor, however, may substitute other
and better copies at his option in place of any books
in the collection as transferred. Regulations are to

78 INTRODUCTION

be adopted to ensure proper use of the books within
the building.

In the event of failure on the part of the Univer-
sity to perform all or any of its undertakings in this
gift agreement, the donor (or his heirs) may, after
due notice and full opportunity to make good the
default, resume possession of the Library and offer
it on similar terms to another institution of learning.The Exercises at the Dedication-BOOK ROOM
of Lord Shelburne pres

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BY WILLIAM LAWRENCE CLEMENTS
Regent of the University of Michigan

R. PRESIDENT AND MEMBERS OF THE BOARD
oF REGENTS:

This day and hour mark the conclusion of a
book-collector’s career. A library of American his-
tory has been created, and a disposition made of
it. There has been constructed a building, that the
integrity of this library may be preserved, and that
there may be special facilities for historical research
work. My interest in the Library is transferred,
with its work and development, to its new owner—
the University of Michigan.

I have hopes of far-reaching benefits through this
change of ownership; above all, for the Depart-
ment of History, with its advanced students.
Further, hopes for the creation at the University
of sentiment for books which narrate truths, and
which are important in our country’s history.
With this appreciation, another great and scholarly
result will develop from this foundation. Inspira-
tion and written expression in full measure will
come from those who see and use such books, along
with a realization of the great things they stand for,
and the pivotal events they first narrate. A new

It12 EXERCISES AT THE DEDICATION

school of men will thus be born at Michigan, such
as our eastern sister universities of Cambridge and
New Haven for years past have encouraged. These
men, in their fullness of life, imbued with this feel-
ing, will favor and show love for their Alma Mater.

In all times the love for books worth carefully
preserving has developed in men that spirit of
generosity which has given the world the greatest
foundations for libraries. The matchless library
giving renown to Oxford owes its existence to the
great collector, Sir Thomas Bodley. Many noble
imitators have followed his example. Dibdin’s en-
thusiasm over Earl Spencer’s library led to the
creation of perhaps the most famous municipal
library in the world — the John Rylands Library
at Manchester, where the treasures of Althorp re-
pose. The world’s greatest library, the British
Museum, is ever the receiving reservoir of many
English collections and donations.

The importance of the collector’s efforts, and
sometimes of his gifts to public and university li-
braries in our own country, is no less great than in
England. The beginning of the Library of Congress
was President Jefferson’s carefully selected books.
Would the New York Public Library be great, ex-
cept in number of volumes, without the gifts of the
Astor and Lenox Foundations? The James Lenox
and the John Carter Brown libraries, rich in the
source materials of American history, are both mon-
uments to the enthusiasm and intelligence of pri-THE PRESENTATION 1g

vate collectors. It is devoutly to be wished that
private donation shall be a source for increasing the
library facilities at the University of Michigan.

The location of Ann Arbor is advantageous for
an important library of historical materials, quite
aside from any sentimental interest I may have.
In a survey made by me in 1912, it was clearly
shown that the Middle West was quite unprovided
with a library of source books and auxiliary works,
or manuscripts of American history which would
enable any student to make independent, first-
hand investigations. In general, the great libraries
of American history unfortunately do not repose
in the stacks of colleges or universities. The vari-
ous state libraries must always be consulted for
unpublished documents when their local history is
concerned. The libraries of the Massachusetts, New
York, and Pennsylvania Historical Societies have
books and manuscripts of paramount importance.
For national records and documents, the Library
of Congress must always be consulted. Serving
the Middle West for the periods of Discovery,
Colonization and Revolution, many source books
and manuscripts are now here, for the glory of the
greatest and oldest Middle West university, the
University of Michigan.

It must not be supposed that this library is for
the use of the undergraduate, or for others who
have not exhausted the facilities of the General
Library. It is primarily a library for advanced144 EXERCISES AT THE DEDICATION

research on the part of scholars already well
equipped, rather than a library to serve as a ve-
hicle of instruction for either the undergraduate or
the ordinary graduate student. Above this is
independent investigation, deep and exhaustive, of
historical facts.

I must say a word of warning about the conser-
vation of the treasures in this library. In the pro-
gress of time there goes on the process of elimina-
tion of those documents, books, and manuscripts
which in the original have so much historical, senti-
mental, and esthetic value. Fire, disintegration,
misuse, and countless causes gradually reduce these
perishable treasures. However, much can be done
to delay destruction for a long time. May we
use with the greatest care these materials which
can never be replaced! Let those who have no
valid right to examine or handle, be content with
a look; and for those who would make the exami-
nation, may not facsimiles serve the purpose?
Frequently, even among scholars, the esthetic or
sentimental value of a book counts for naught.
The book, to those who lack this appreciation, is
worth merely what it expresses in sentences. That
any man or library should buy a Gutenberg Bible
and pay its auction price when a facsimile is at
hand, is to these persons an indication of mental
feebleness. Such a man fails to appreciate the full
significance of the original. He fails to mark it with
all its meaning in the history of civilization. ItsTHE PRESENTATION 15

counterfeit in a facsimile will satisfy him. Venera-
tion for the original issue goes with another type of
man. But few are privileged to hold a copy of
“Hariot’s Virginia,” for but six copies are known;
yet it is the “first folio” of the territory of what is
now the United States, and so truthful in narrative,
and so beautiful in execution, that it bespeaks the
conditions of the time. From him who has no senti-
mental or esthetic interest, rare books should be
carefully guarded.

Mr. President and Members of the Board of
Regents, I present to you this library, which has
been gathered together with enthusiastic diligence
during a period of twenty years. I also present
to you a building suitable in design for the work to
be done, with furnishings and all equipment. In
a Committee of Management is to be vested your
supervision of both library and building. May this
Committee wisely administer affairs, exploit the
subjects, and create more and more interest in our
country’s history! May they be mindful of the con-
servation of treasures which can never be replaced!

You have shown your appreciation of the many
scholarly benefits which may be Michigan’s reward
by setting aside a liberal sum each year for acces-
sions to the library and for its support. Both of us
have strong faith. May the products from study,
even though small in volume, teach us the lessons
that we should know from history, and add to the
scholarly fame of our State!The Acceptance

 

ON BEHALF OF THE REGENTS OF THE
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN, BY
REGENT VICTOR M. GORE

T is most fitting that this noble benefaction
should receive the seal of its high purposes in
the opening glory of the summer. Its swaying in-
fluences render this hour one of supreme exaltation.
We greet all America as we view these valuable
records of our heroic and constructive past. The
depths of our history open before us. We are car-
ried back to the struggles of the early voyagers.
We live again the epic lives of the fathers as we are
brought face to face with the tragic birth of this
Republic. We hear the divine agonies of the Revo-
lution. We feel the spell of its master minds and
the appealing eloquence of that surpassing hour.
As we ponder, we catch the meaning and the joy of
that militant challenge: “From injuries to arms,
from arms to liberty, from liberty to glory.”

With impressive simplicity the generous owner
has transferred to this University invaluable source
materials of our country’s history; the story of the
Republic, conquered from the wilderness, wrested
from monarchy, saved from extreme democracy,
and sent forth, in true and perfect balance, upon

a new line of freedom.
16THE ACCEPTANCE Thy)
The University of Michigan, and thoughtful men

and women everywhere, welcome these vast ma-
terials of our nation’s thought and action, as they
come, free as the summer air, from the hand of an
inspired giver. The quickening call of this great
collection goes forth as a personal message to the
scholar, statesman, publicist, and historian. It bids
them solve our issues, enrich our literature, exalt
our standards of citizenship, broaden our outlook,
and work out our destiny upon the high plane of
American ideals. What prodigal stimulus to higher
culture and advanced research in this outstand-
ing benefaction! It represents one life-long, self-
appointed trust fulfilled; one life-long prayer an-
swered in the fullness of time. Who can picture the
truths of history, the brilliant productions, the vital
lessons of liberty under law, that genius will garner
from its treasures?

We welcome it to this Campus as a new and splen-
did creation. We welcome it in the name of higher
education and research whose cause it serves and
glorifies. We cherish it as a noble and persuasive
example directing the aspirations of men to things
eternally worth while. We count it a memorable
contribution to the resources of learning and schol-
arship. We prize it, also, for its esthetic as well as
its intellectual value — imposing ornament of stone
and spirit. And, lastly, we welcome it in honor of
that forward-looking munificence which gave it
birth and transformed a beautiful dream into an18 EXERCISES AT THE DEDICATION

uplifting reality. Such foresight and sacrifice at
once deepen our pride and strengthen our faith in
mankind.

To-day the University of Michigan proudly makes
obeisance to her loyal son and benefactor, Regent
William Lawrence Clements. His vision foresaw,
his thrift provided, and his loyalty laid this priceless
gift at the feet of his Alma Mater. This gracious
act is the crown and culmination of a great life;
the flower and fruitage of that fine reaction of the
University upon the life of her son. Henceforth,
their names are one and inseparable until both are
forgotten.

Men and women of Michigan: To collect, con-
serve, and finally to donate to public use a vast
library portraying the activities of American life
and freedom is to associate one’s name with im-
mortal memories; to speak the praises of the giver
and officially to accept the gift is a labor of grati-
tude and love. Wherefore, on behalf of the Board of
Regents of this University, I have the signal honor
of accepting the William L. Clements Library of
American History.Remarks

By GEORGE PARKER WINSHIP, Lirr.D. (Micu.)

Librarian of the Harry Elkins Widener Collection
Harvard University

RESIDENT BURTON has asked me to do an

impossible thing, which is, to stand here facing
this very distinguished assemblage, and speak as
an outsider. Try as I may, I cannot feel otherwise
than thoroughly at home in Ann Arbor, in a Uni-
versity of Michigan gathering. Here I took my
degree, at the hands of former President Hutchins,
only six years ago, — making me one of the young-
est Michigan graduates present, — and both before
and since that, to me most happy, occasion, the
many friends here have never allowed me to feel in
any way a stranger in this academic family. To
it, indeed, I now belong as one of the members of
the Committee of Management to whom the Board
of Regents have entrusted the very interesting, and
important, duty of directing the initial steps of
this youngest offspring of the University.

It is none the less a very agreeable obligation put
upon me, to convey to you, Mr. President, to the
members of the Board of Regents, and to all who
form the University of Michigan, the heartiest
greetings of the President and Fellows of Harvard

1920 EXERCISES AT THE DEDICATION

College. The congratulations which they com-
missioned me to extend to you are, I will not say
a bit envious, but phrased with a very keen appre-
ciation of the value and the importance of what
Michigan is now getting, and the liveliest interest
in seeing Michigan get the utmost good out of
something Harvard has not and wishes it had.

All of your guests, assembled here from many
institutions and learned bodies, extending from
Florida and Atlanta to Palo Alto in California,
will join me in this expression of our best wishes to
Michigan for the fullest utilization of this great
opportunity which is to be given to her to-day. I
can say this confidently, for the thing that has im-
pressed me most in the conversations with those
who have assembled here during these few days, is
the extent to which the novelty, the peculiar char-
acteristics, and the academic possibilities of this
new Michigan institution are appreciated by the
people from other places. We have come here to
do honor to this University and to its benefactor;
and we have come believing that it is our great good
fortune to be present at a most significant American
academic occasion. This day marks the creation
of an opportunity to develop a new medium for
accomplishing the purposes for which our univer-
sities exist. Weare very happy to be here, to share
in your happiness and good fortune.

There is one thing I should like to say, because
it seems to me important, and to be in danger ofREMARKS OF MR. WINSHIP 21

being overlooked among the more consequential
aspects of the Library which we are here to dedi-
cate. We are about to hear, from the man who is
in this country best qualified to express the judg-
ment of the historical brotherhood, of this Library
as a storehouse of American historical material.
President Burton has already told us how much it
means to the University as a place of research, as
a laboratory for the intensive training of graduate
students and investigators.

I want to say a word about its possible value for
the college undergraduates who are not particu-
larly interested in historical sources. Of these the
University will ordinarily contain a considerable
number. I yield to no one in my regard for Ameri-
can History, in my belief that it is the subject
which, more than any other, ought to be taught
thoroughly to every young man and young woman
who is to live in these United States. And I be-
lieve equally strongly that the degree to which the
advancement of scholarship is fostered must be
one of the final tests by which our institutions of
higher education are to be judged. But we must
not leave out of account the undergraduates.
They come before the graduate students, and there
are a good many more of them.

The William L. Clements Library places the
University of Michigan in a distinguished position
tor the teaching of our country’s history, and for
training scholars. It seems to me, and hope is22) EXERCISES AT THE DEDICATION
parent to the thought, that this Library is likely

to do something else, which I regard as not less
important for an American college — to promote
an appreciation of culture, of the refinements of
life, among the students who are here for their col-
lege years. Learning, scholarship, are compara-
tively easy toimpart. The appreciation of culture,
the understanding of what it is and why it makes
so much difference in the lives of individuals, are
much more difficult to demonstrate to the boys and
girls who become men and women at our colleges
and universities.

The building which Mr. Clements is giving to
his Alma Mater, to this University which is going to
be held responsible for a large share of the opinions
and the habits of those who will mould the desti-
nies of this great, pivotal state, is, above all else,
in my opinion, a centre for culture. It stands
among the laboratories and class-rooms and dormi-
tories and professors’ studies and club houses as the
visible illustration of the charm and the abiding
value of those refinements of life which go to the
making of gentlefolk.

There is only one building in the United States,
or elsewhere that I know of, quite like this one that
Mr. Clements has built with so much care, into
which he has put so much of himself. This is better
than the other, as it ought to be, having had the
opportunity to benefit by most of its experiences.

The other is the John Carter Brown Library atREMARKS OF MR. WINSHIP 23

Providence. A few years after that building was
opened, a young man went into it one June day
with a charming, and obviously very new, wife.
He asked if they might look about, explaining that
he had graduated from Brown University the year
the library was completed, and that he made up
his mind the first time he visited the building, that
when he was able to have a home of his own, he
would have rugs and chairs and the general feeling
of things, of the place, such as he saw and felt there.
He had never until then known that such things
existed; but when he saw them, he knew that they
were good. So when he took to himself a wife, he
forthwith brought her to see what he wanted to
have in their home, the sort of things he wanted
their children to grow up to appreciate as an
essential part of the natural surroundings of a col-
lege-bred family.

It seemed to me then, and it seems to me now,
that the John Carter Brown Library did one of the
best things it could do for college undergraduates
when it gave that boy a realization of the physical
refinements which have so much to do with mak-
ing life not only pleasanter, but actually, literally
better. And it is this that I expect the Clements
Library to do for Michigan.The American Historian’s
Raw Materials

ADDRESS BY J. FRANKLIN JAMESON
Peps Einar:

Director of the Department of Historical Research tn the
Carnegie Institution

R. Presipent, Mr. CLemMEntTs, FELLow Stv-
DENTS, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:

We have met here to celebrate, with gratitude
and admiration, not only a princely gift to the Uni-
versity of Michigan, but also a priceless benefaction
to the study of American history, and ultimately,
we may hope, to the world of letters. No doubt
the primary and most immediate use of these
books and manuscripts will be their use by the
teachers and students of the University of Michi-
gan, and no doubt Mr. Clements is too loyal an
alumnus to wish it to be otherwise; but such is,
in our time and country, the liberality of libraries,
that a signal benefaction to one of them is a benefit
to all students of the subject involved. Therefore,
a student from a distant city may be asked to
speak at the dedication of this library with full
confidence that his appreciation of the occasion
and of the gift will be as cordial as if he were a

2526 EXERCISES AT THE DEDICATION
member of the University of Michigan. The gift is,

in the long run, to the confraternity of scholars,
and it is a pleasure to express with the warmest
feeling their gratitude. Accumulated through years
of energetic and resourceful endeavor, these treas-
ures are now made available to all the studious, in
a beautiful building, with a liberality as noteworthy
as the marvellous work of collecting.

Mr. Clements will not wish me to dwell flat-
teringly upon the personal aspects of the gift, but
I think it a public duty, on such an occasion, to
remind those who hear me that, in this happy
land, the liberality is as characteristic of our men of
fortune as the energy. That the Americans are wor-
shippers of the dollar is an old accusation, familiar
to academic audiences, who indeed are always made
abundantly aware of our country’s defects. But,
waiving the question whether devotion to the dol-
lar may not after all be quite as magnanimous an
affection as devotion to lesser coins, such as the six-
pence, the franc, and the mark, let us not consent
to blush for our country till we have duly reflected
on the wonderful and unexampled ease with which
the American can be separated from his dollars at
the call of any one of a hundred good causes. A na-
tion which sets out to raise a hundred million dol-
lars for the relief of suffering caused by wars three

_ or four thousand miles away and raises with ease a

hundred and fifty millions; in which a single reli-
gious denomination raises without difficulty a hun-THE HISTORIAN’S MATERIALS 27

dred millions for purposes of Christian benevolence;
in which a score of universities and colleges in a
single year obtain from their alumni and friends
several millions each of additional endowment —
such a people, one may think, can look any nation
in the face and not be excessively ashamed of a
natural instinct toward being prosperous. I must,
moreover, confess that to me — such has been my
mode of life —it would seem more difficult to part
with my books than with my dollars, few as both
are; but Mr. Clements has achieved even that, and
with noble generosity has established here a collec-
tion and an institution that are at the service of the
whole world of historical scholarship.

Moreover, it is not merely in respect to the schol-
ars of all places that the benefaction is unbounded.
We lose more than half its significance if we do not
bear in mind that its effects are unlimited in point
of time. Space and geography we know, but no
imagination has power to compass the benefits
to be derived in future time from a great library.
Imagination can, however, be somewhat helped
by projecting forward curves of progress already
historic.

In 1602 Sir Thomas Bodley was furnishing and
presenting to the University of Oxford the library
that bears his name. In a spirit like that of Mr.
Clements he writes to the vice-chancellor: “Al-
though I do not rest as yet satisfied with this Quan-
tity of Books, that I have gathered already, Yet28 EXERCISES AT THE DEDICATION

because I am unwilling that the Hope of having
more should stop the Use of these in being, To the
Prejudice perhaps of many Men’s Profiting in their
Private Studies, I would intreat you therefore now
to acquaint the University with my full Resolu-
tion, .. . To set the Library open, for Students
to frequent it, before the next Act” [Commence-
ment].

That was 221 years ago. What could Bodley
imagine of what the Bodleian Library was to do for
the scholarship of Oxford and of England in 221
years? As little can we imagine what the Clements
Library is destined to do for that of Ann Arbor and
of the United States. Two hundred years is a long
time. Gibbon, in a well-known passage concerning
the great comet seen in the fifth year of Justinian,
records its last preceding appearance, 575 years
before, at the time of the death of Julius Cesar,
and, twice 575 years afterward, in 1680, its careful
observation by Flamsteed and Cassini, and adds,
in his grand manner, that, at the next appearance
of this comet, “in the year two thousand three
[two] hundred and fifty-five, their calculations may
perhaps be verified by the astronomers of some
future capital in the Siberian or American wilder-
ness.” No doubt Gibbon, in his complacent way;
was pleased with this Bold flight of imagination;
yet not half the long period of recurrence of the
comet of 1680 has passed away, and already the
world’s greatest telescopes and most remarkableTHE HISTORIAN’S MATERIALS 29

observatories are in what he called the American
wilderness. And in much less than the 332 years
remaining, the government of Siberia will have
given over the attempt to create a new heaven and
a new earth, and will have established observatories
and institutions for studying the old ones.

But if none of us can imagine in full the future
development and fruition of this library, who among
us is not fired by the attempt to foresee? Already
it is one of the world’s foremost libraries of Amer-
icana. It must be left to others, who know its treas-
ures more in detail, and whose happy fortune it 1s to
use them at once, to attempt their fuller description.
What especially strikes the observer at a distance
is the fact that, while there has been no shrinking
from the purchase of costly rarities, —far from it,
— the principle on which the library has been built
up has not been the accumulation of rarities as an
end in itself, but the provision of materials for the
study of our country’s history.

Of all the kinds of raw material which the writers
on historical method enumerate, only two have
important value for the student of American his-
tory. Old buildings and ruins, minor archeological
remains, inscriptions and coins and medals, ballads
and traditions, have little part in the fabric that he
weaves. All his story lies within the period since

the invention of printing; nearly all those whose
fortunes he traces have been able to write, and,
practically speaking, his raw material consists of30 EXERCISES AT THE DEDICATION

printed books and of manuscripts. Usually he has
been obliged, either to gather them together at his
own expense, or to seek them where they could be
found. Thus he has sought his books in the general
libraries into which they have been gathered some-
what incidentally; and he has sought his manu-
script materials either in the offices of government
business into which they have flowed in the course
of that business, and in which by our national care-
lessness about archives they have mostly been left,
or else, in the case of the correspondence of public
men, in the hands of more or less careful descend-
ants. Deliberate and conscious collection of ma-
terials for the study of American history on the
part of others than the collector has no very large
record. A brief glance at that record may be of
interest.

For the first such provision, one has to look to a
distant country and a remote period of time. In
what, to me at least, seems the noblest church
interior in the world, on a great slab of stone in the
floor of the Cathedral of Seville, may be read the
following inscription: “Here lies the very magnif-
icent lord Don Hernando Colon [Ferdinand Colum-
bus], who applied and spent all his life and property
in the advancement of letters and in bringing to-
gether and preserving in this city all his books, of
all the sciences, which he found in his life-time. .. .
He died in this city on the 12th day of July 1539.

He was the son of the valorous and memorableTHE HISTORIAN’S MATERIALS 31

lord Don Christoval Colon, first admiral, who dis-
covered the Indies and the New World in the life-
time of the Catholic Kings Don Fernando and
Dofia Ysabel of glorious memory, on the 11th day
of October, 1492. . . . Pray God for them.”

Although it was books “of all the sciences”’ which
that great bibliophile Ferdinand Columbus col-
lected in countless journeys in all parts of western
Europe, till his library numbered 15,000 volumes,
and although Americana were not yet numerous at
the time of his death, it was always one of his chief
desires to bring into his collection whatever books
related to those Indies which the great Admiral had
discovered. He left his books for public benefit to
the dean and chapter of the Cathedral of Seville,
and there in its cloisters still remains the Biblioteca
Colombina, where you may see the Admiral’s own
Seneca and Pliny, the Book of Prophecies written
out with his own hand, and Don Fernando’s own
catalogue of his treasures.

Within the United States, the first deliberate and
intentional provision, of any consequence, of ma-
terials specially collected for the study of American
history by others than the collectors, would seem to
have been that made by the earliest of our histori-
cal societies, the Massachusetts Historical Society,
founded in 1791, and the New York Historical So-
ciety, in 1809. From those beginnings has sprung a
whole class of institutions whose libraries form one
of the American student’s chief resources. Then,7

  

32 EXERCISES AT THE DEDICATION

in 1818, Israel Thorndike, one of Boston’s rich
men, hearing that a great collection of material
on America which had been brought together by
the German professor Ebeling, of Hamburg, was
for sale, and that an agent of the King of Prussia
was angling for it, bought the collection of 3000 or
3500 volumes, and of valued maps and charts, for
$6500, and presented it to the Library of Harvard
University. In 1823 another Bostonian, Samuel A.
Eliot, bought for $5000 the collection of Americana
which had been brought together by David M.
Warden, consul-general of the United States in
Paris, and presented it to his Alma Mater. Thus
was established that laudable habit of the alumni
of American colleges, of buying collections already
formed by scholars in Europe and giving them to
the struggling libraries at home.

The figures that have been quoted show rates of
purchase adapted to make the modern librarian
smile or weep, according to his temperament. The
world of that time was indeed the happy hunting-
ground of the collector of Americana. Jared Sparks,
visiting North Carolina in 1826, and discoursing
in his journal of the earlier books on its colonial his-
tory, mentions that at a recent auction sale of a
deceased person’s property a copy of Lawson’s His-
tory of Carolina (London, 1718) was bought “‘for
the state library, at the price of sixty dollars! ...
the most remarkable instance of the bibliomania,
probably, which has occurred in this country.”THE HISTORIAN’S MATERIALS 33

Can these words be heard without emotion, in these
days when the only limit is the sky?

Those collections which were made solely for the
benefit of the books which the collectors meant to
write, but which afterward were sold to public in-
stitutions, hardly come within the limits of our
survey as defined; but great portions of the present
public provision for American historical study have
this origin. Jared Sparks had accumulated a great
store of books and manuscripts. Many of the latter
were originals, for the lax notions of the custodians.
of public papers in his earlier years often permitted
him to carry away originals, provided he would
leave copies in their places! At his death, his manu-
scripts went to the Library of Harvard; his books,
later, went to that of Cornell. Peter Force’s great
collection of books and original manuscripts and
transcripts was bought in 1867 for the Library of
Congress. George Bancroft’s passed later to the
New York Public Library; that of Hubert Howe
Bancroft, which itself had absorbed the collections
of the Emperor Maximilian and many another, to
the Library of the University of California.

By reason of the colonial dependence of early
America upon Europe, no small part of the material
for American history is to be found in manuscript
in foreign archives. As early as 1825 certain of our
states began an endeavor to supplement their own
archival materials by securing transcripts of such
papers from archives in Europe. Success was vari-i

   

34 EXERCISES AT THE DEDICATION

ous and slow. To the aristocratic European gov-
ernments of 1830 and 1840 it seemed a dubious
procedure, to lay open the very arcana of their rule
to the prying eyes of American democrats. Indeed,
the less democratic the appearance of the latter,
the greater was their prospect of success. In the ob-
scurity of a “House Miscellaneous Document” of
1880 you will find imbedded an amusing account by
Charles Gayarre of his experiences in Spain, when
he went there in 1850 to obtain for the State of
Louisiana copies of documents for its early history.
Charming as well as learned, and related to many
distinguished families in both Spain and France,
he was the ideal envoy for such a purpose. The
Minister of Foreign Affairs, a Spanish duke, re-
ceived him with great civility, as of his own caste,
and promised him every desired facility. But at the
end of their interview the duke said: ‘“‘Sefior Don
Carlos, you and I will, if you please, deal with this
matter personally; we will not, if you please, deal
with it through your minister, who, if I may Say SO,
is not one of us!”’

The most complete and successful of such state
expeditions was that which John Romeyn Brod-
head, in 1841-1844, made on behalf of the State
of New York to the archives of the Netherlands,
France, and Great Britain. Since then, seven other
states have carried out systematic courses of search
and transcription in the archives of Great Britain;
and several, among which Michigan holds the firstTHE HISTORIAN’S MATERIALS a5

place, in those of France. Our neighbors of Can-
ada, whose Public Archives put to shame the
archaic provision for records in Washington, have
procured enormous masses of transcripts from both
London and Paris; and the Library of Congress,
the one bright light amid the encircling gloom
which envelops the archival situation in Washing-
ton, has procured transcripts of a far larger part
of the British archives than scholars at a distance
seem to know, and of an increasing portion of the
French and Spanish.

Meanwhile the Congress of the United States,
although not in all particulars appreciative of the
needs of historical students, has at least placed a
high value on the papers of our presidents, and has
from time to time added them to the historical
papers which, as business archives, have always
been in the government’s hands. Thus, under acts
of 1834 and subsequent years, it purchased the
papers of Washington; in 1848 those of Jefferson,
whose library had already been bought, and those
of Madison and Hamilton; in 1849 those of Mon-
roe; and in subsequent years it has acquired, by
purchase or gift, those of Franklin, Jackson, Van
Buren, Polk, Johnson, Grant, Roosevelt, Taft, and
many other public men. With all these and the
papers of the Continental Congress concentrated in
the Manuscripts Division of the Library of Con-
gress, Washington presents, in spite of the lamen-
table situation with respect to the government ar-36 EXERCISES AT THE DEDICATION

chives, unrivalled opportunities for the historical
study of the federal government and of federal
politics.

It may not be entirely certain how one should
classify such collections of Americana as those of
James Lenox and John Carter Brown, in such a
survey. No doubt both those gentlemen began
with the thoughts and desires of the collector pure
and simple; but as their collections grew to more
and more imposing dimensions, and as they were
more and more often requested, and more and more
readily responded to the requests, to place their
treasures at the service of historical students, their
thoughts expanded from interest in rarities as such
to the conception of their libraries as storehouses of
material held in trust for scholars’ use. So Mr.
Lenox by his will erected his library into a per-
manent institution, which is forever to be at the
service of historical scholarship in our greatest city,
and Mr. Brown’s son by his will created a similar
institution in Providence. More fortunate than
these, Mr. Edward E. Ayer has in his lifetime had
the happiness of giving his celebrated collection to
the Newberry Library in Chicago, and Mr. Clar-
ence Burton that of seeing his valuable acquisitions
already functioning as a part of the Detroit Public
Library, and performing their appointed service in
helping all who would study the history of the
West.

And now this day sees the dedication, here in AnnTHE HISTORIAN’S MATERIALS 37

Arbor, and the presentation to the University of
Michigan, of a collection of the utmost importance
and value, brought together with tireless energy
and ever alert intelligence, and worthily housed in
a stately building that betokens permanence for the
institution and steady use for its invaluable treas-
ures. May we not profitably give active thought to
the question: What will be the uses to which these
impressive treasures will be put?

On an April day in 1781, when the great brewer
Henry Thrale had died and his brewery was about
to be sold to settle the estate, a familiar story re-
lates that Dr. Samuel Johnson, who was one of the
executors, appeared bustling about the works, with
an ink-horn and pen in his buttonhole, like an
exciseman; and on being asked what he really con-
sidered to be the value of the property which was
to be disposed of, he answered: “We are not here
to sell a parcel of boilers and vats, but the poten-
tiality of growing rich beyond the dreams of av-
arice.” The sententious doctor was right; for al-
though he and his fellow executor sold the brewery
for a hundred and thirty-five thousand pounds, yet
forty years later its excise duties alone amounted to
more than that sum.

But Johnson’s doctrine may serve to point a mor-
al, even for so remote an occasion as the present.
What we are here to dispose of is not a parcel of
valuable books and manuscripts, but the potential-

ity of intellectual gains far beyond the calculations38 EXERCISES AT THE DEDICATION

of the market-place, and of mental achievements far
beyond the imaginings of any who are here present.
For what is a great historical library but a means for
writing history? And the future developments and
uses of history, who can measure or imagine? The
Benedictines of the early eighteenth century, and
the other giants of erudition who in those days
piled up, in folio upon folio, enormous masses of his-
torical material from monastic libraries and royal
archives, could not imagine the uses to which their
vast accumulations of data would later be put,
when once Hume and Voltaire and Turgot had
pointed the way toward writing history in the light
of general ideas respecting the development of
society. Still less could those laborious compilers
imagine what use would be made of their data in
the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when the
French Revolution and the Russian Revolution,
the writings of Comte, of Spencer, and of Marx, the
studies of tribal life, of primitive archzology, and of
comparative religion, had transformed or profoundly
affected the historian’s conceptions of society and
of its development. But after all, these books and
manuscripts are here to be used; the use of a great
historical library is for the making of better and
more useful histories; and the greatness of the fu-
ture of history we can somewhat discern, even if we
cannot securely predict the lines along which it will
develop.

It may be that history is, as Mark PattisonTHE HISTORIAN’S MATERIALS 39

charged it with being, the most ephemeral variety
of literature, for every generation insists on having
the story retold for its own purposes, and few are
the historians who, like Thucydides and Gibbon,
survive from one age to the next. But the muta-
tions of history are not casual or irrational. They
have their causes, and we can almost discern their
laws. Certainly we can distinguish the successive
phases or zones or climates through which modern
historiography has passed, and can see that it has
passed through them at about the same time in all
civilized countries, so that the causes of each suc-
cessive mutation must apparently be causes com-
mon to the whole intellectual life of Europe and
America.

It is not difficult to see how the historical work
of the period now ending is to be classified. In the
main, the work of the last sixty years has consisted
in the accumulation, sifting, and criticism of ma-
terials, work of the pick and spade, work of the
quarryman and mason rather than of the architect.
On the whole, it has not been an age of great his-
torians, as was the period of fifty years preceding.
From the publication of Niebuhr’s Roman history,
of Boeckh’s Staatshaushaltung der Athener in 1817,
of Hallam’s View of the Middle Ages in 1818, of
Guizot’s Origines du Gouvernement Représentatif
in 1821, of Ranke’s first volume in 1824, and of
Mignet’s and Thiers’s histories of the French Rev-
olution in that year and the year preceding, for7

40 EXERCISES AT THE DEDICATION

fifty years great historians had the ear of the public
—the writers we have named, and the Thierrys
and Macaulay and Carlyle and Grote and Prescott
and Motley and Bancroft and Parkman. Historians
were read. Their masterpieces brought some of
them fortunes such as in our day could be obtained
only out of school textbooks. Of Macaulay’s His-
tory 140,000 copies were sold in the United King-
dom within a generation of its first publication,
while its sales in the United States had exceeded
those of every book but the Bible and one or two
schoolbooks of universal use. His volume of £s-
says, mostly historical matter, sold almost as well,
in both countries; and, be it noted, all of those
essays were contributions to a periodical, whereas
in our day it may almost be said that no American
magazine of the first class ever prints an historical
article.

Very different indeed has been the characteristic
historical work of the last sixty years — and not to
be disparaged because different. It has been much
more like the work of the Benedictines and other
giants of erudition who flourished between 1650
and 1750. The scholars of this recent period, Ger-
man, French, British, American, — perhaps even
more largely, in proportion, the scholars of smaller
or younger but ambitious nations, — have added
enormously to the mass of published raw material
for the historian’s work. Volumes upon volumes of
records and documents and correspondence haveTHE HISTORIAN’S MATERIALS 41

been put into print for the service of the historian
that were not available to his gifted predecessors.
Critical dissection of the sources has been carried
out with thoroughness and rigor. A far greater
acuteness in estimating their relative values has
been developed, and has carried with it a great in-
crease in detachment of view and fairness of mind.
Archeological discoveries, studies of primitive man,
and the advance of comparative philology have
combined to give a new perspective to ancient his-
tory; while in modern history a broader knowledge
of religion, of law, of economics, of morals, and of
the structure of society has extended the domain
of history into horizons far beyond those of the pre-
ceding generations, who for the most part held that
history was simply past politics. The period has
been preparatory. We have had our historians, but
in the main our modest function has been, in Lord
Bacon’s phrase, “‘to tune the instruments of the
Muses, that they may play that have better hands.”

After such an age of accumulation, sifting, and
criticism of the materials, the natural next develop-
ment is into an age of generalization, of synthesis,
of history more largely governed and informed by
general ideas. Such was the course of progress after
the period of the Benedictines and their compeers,
and such is likely to be its course now. When
masses of good materials have been got together
and made ready for use, why not proceed to use
them, for large ends? Why not turn from the ex-42 EXERCISES AT THE DEDICATION

act copying of words and punctuation marks, the
scrutiny of texts, the dissection of documents, to
the higher purposes which all these processes are
meant to serve, as in Raphael’s School of Athens
we rise from geometry and low mechanic arts to
divine philosophy? There are signs, indeed, that
we are moving in this direction, taking a new in-
terest in general ideas. Not to speak of Benedetto
Croce and the other Continental writers who seek
to broaden the interpretation of historical facts,
even among us unphilosophical Anglo-Saxons an
immense acclaim and popularity have welcomed the
bold attempts of Mr. Wells and Mr. Van Loon. No
doubt we sometimes wish that Mr. Wells might
view with more indulgence the mistakes and frail-
ties of lesser men, like Napoleon and Julius Cesar.
No doubt Mr. Van Loon’s colors sometimes strike
us as a little too bright. But histories that are read
do more good than histories that are not read.
Surely we have piled up the raw materials with
the intention that they should be used by men of
insight who can make the public listen. For what
other purpose have we “tuned the instruments of
the Muses”? By all means let the concert begin.
But our firm conviction that it has been well
worth while to bring together great collections of
historical material for the use of the next genera-
tion rests on stronger ground than the mere belief
in a reaction from the labors of Dryasdust, a revul-
sion from historical nearsightedness to historicalTHE HISTORIAN’S MATERIALS 43
farsightedness. We have passed through what is

apparently the greatest crisis in history, have un-
dergone what is apparently the greatest calamity
that has ever befallen the human race. We are ina
new world, and though the older among us may shut
our eyes to the fact, and ignore its implications, the
younger generation do not and will not. Now any
study of the history of historical writing makes
clear the fact, that each great crisis in human af-
fairs has evoked in the next generation a striking
access of interest in human history and a crop of
great historians to meet the need.

To a world that for five hundred years had
looked to Rome as the centre of power and author-
ity, and to which its mighty name had been the
symbol of all that steadied civilization and made its
gains secure, the capture of Rome by the hosts of
Alaric seemed an appalling calamity. Would not
the shattering of that central pillar bring down
the whole fabric of the civilized world? Could
the ordered life of the Orbis Terrarum survive the
downfall of the majestic city? Out of that dark
terror and dismay arose the first great attempt at a
world-history, in that treatise of the City of God in
which St. Augustine essayed to

assert eternal Providence
And justify the ways of God to men.

Again, after the convulsions in western Europe
attendant upon the Protestant Reformation and
the ensuing Wars of Religion, we find, in every4

44 EXERCISES AT THE DEDICATION

country, the generation that had grown up during
those wars producing great historians, and great
historians of a particular type, namely, historians
who were also statesmen or men of affairs, who
were able to view the history of states with eyes
experienced in their supervision — Bacon and Ra-
leigh in England, for instance, in France President
de Thou and Agrippa d’Aubigne, in Holland Hugo
Grotius, in Italy Fra Paolo Sarpi, in Hungary
Nicholas Istvanfi.

Or, again, observe the effect of the French Revo-
lution and the gigantic wars of the period of Napo-
leon. On the morrow of Waterloo the sun rose upon
a new world. The tremendous cataclysm of the
French Revolution and the titanic struggles which
followed had revealed new depths and unsuspected
forces in human nature, and gave a richer pro-
fundity to all thought concerning human affairs.
“Whenever,” said Niebuhr, himself one of the pro-
ducts of that age, “whenever a historian is en-
deavoring to revive past times, his interest in them
and sympathy with them will be the deeper, the
greater the events he himself has witnessed with a
bleeding or a rejoicing heart.’’ And so, while those
elders who were already engaged in writing his-
tories continued during those dreadful years to
write the same dull stuff which had contented read-
ers in the quiet years preceding, the effect upon the
younger generation was profound. If they did not
see a new heaven and a new earth, as the first en-THE HISTORIAN’S MATERIALS 45

thusiasts of the Revolution had imagined, in that
hopeful dawn when it was “bliss to be alive, and
to be young was very Heaven,” at least they saw
before them after Waterloo a new Europe, and had
a fresh and deeper sense of how it had come into
existence. Of the great political historians who
in every country adorned the period ensuing,—
the years from 1815 to 1860, —and who in almost
all cases were statesmen or men of public affairs,
a dozen have already been named — Guizot and
Macaulay and the rest. Now nearly every one of
them was born between 1787 and 1800.

Take courage then, friends who are occupied
with the teaching of history, and who wonder some-
times how good a use the next generation will make
of the materials which the present generation has
so richly provided. Whether we live to see the
fruits or not, this new world will have fresh ways of
looking at the world’s history, and vigorous meth-
ods of expounding its meaning. We may look for-
ward with confidence to a powerful renaissance of
historical work of high quality, at the hands of a
younger generation. The tremendous and appalling
events which we have witnessed in the war and the
Russian Revolution and the financial downfall of
nations may not have graven as deep lines as we
had hoped or supposed upon the brains of the elder
generation, brains already occupied with many cor-
rugations, but they have entered, consciously or
unconsciously, into the very fibre of the young.46 EXERCISES AT THE DEDICATION

Leave it to them. Elderly men cannot successfully
manage a new world. A large part of this earth’s
present distresses comes from the fact that they are
still trying to do it. (The Committee on Foreign
Relations in the last session of the United States
Senate was of an average age of sixty-one.)

In the present state of the study of American
history there is much to discourage the thoughtful
mind. Public interest in it is slight, if one can
judge from the publishers’ lists and from the con-
tents of the popular magazines and the Sunday
newspapers, which have now become almost the
sole reading-matter of American mankind. In the
schools, I am told, history is in danger of being
crowded out of the curriculum and replaced by a
weak solution of sociology. The chief manifesta-
tion of public interest in history comes in the form
of a passionate insistence, in newspaper articles, in
harangues before school-boards, and in conventions
of patriotic societies, that the innocent souls of
school-children shall not be poisoned by any sugges-
tion tending toward fairness of mind in respect to
the Revolution. It is, it seems, a necessity of pa-
triotism that the sacred one-sided traditions of
elder days shall never be modified by any subse-
quent additions of knowledge. The mayor of New
York, for some reason, asks his commissioner of
accounts — of all persons — to report on textbooks
in American history, and the silly outpourings of
this ignorant mind are given two columns in theTHE HISTORIAN’S MATERIALS 47

greatest of American newspapers, which, we can feel
sure, would not give ten lines to the wisest sayings
of Lord Acton. And apparently the readers of news-
papers are mostly of one mind with their writers
in the conviction that the main matter of American
history is the events of 1775 and 1776, and its main
duty the laudation of the patriotism of those years
—though nothing can be more certain than that
the patriotism of 1861, on both sides, was of a far
higher quality than that of 1775, and that of 1918
of a far higher quality than either.

The Great War has so thoroughly convinced us
of the value of research in the physical sciences,
that no phenomenon in the recent intellectual his-
tory of America is more striking than the growth
of bureaus of scientific investigation established as

rofitable adjuncts by industrial corporations. One
would think that surely the Great War taught still
more cogently the value of human studies. Surely
the preservation of peace is of more importance
than the successful waging of war; and not less
surely is the preservation of peace made more se-
cure by every advance in the mutual knowledge of
nations and races and classes. Nothing can be more
certain than that, if the peoples of England and
France and Germany and Austria had had any such
knowledge of each other’s history and psychology
and literature and habits as the men of Michigan
and New York, of Virginia and California, have of
each other’s mental furnishings and characters and48 EXERCISES AT THE DEDICATION

ways, the greatest of human disasters need never
have occurred. But this is not yet perceived.

Nevertheless we have, as has been indicated,
strong and satisfying reasons for confidence that
within but a moderate measure of years history will
be coming into its own, will be resuming the place
of influence and authority that belongs to the old-
est of human sciences and almost the oldest variety
of literature. This new world which we see about
us has not been produced by mere cataclysm. Like
every preceding state of human society, it is the
product of a multitude of forces acting through a
long series of years. As the sense of catastrophic
and unaccountable change diminishes, and is re-
placed by the perception of long-continued evolu-
tion, a fresh and irrepressible desire will arise in
many minds, especially of the young, to know and
to explain how forces long in operation have brought
about the present state of the world’s life and so-
ciety. History will spring into new life and vigor,

with fresh acquist
Of true experience from this great event,

and will proceed to use the materials we have accu-
mulated, with deeper insight and wider outlook than
we have had — we whose function it has been, as I
have said, “to tune the instruments of the Muses,
that they may play that have better hands.”

Among those whom this occasion has brought
together are academics who, upon a quite reason-
able estimate, will during their life-times teachTHE HISTORIAN’S MATERIALS 49

history to at least ten thousand young Americans.
Tell me, is it not an inspiring task, that of filling
and clarifying the minds of so many young men
and young women with the best thought that one
can supply as to the age-long processes that have
made our present world of men? And is there not a
more especial inspiration in the privilege of teaching
the history of America? An intelligent Ruman-
jan statesman, the late Take Jonescu, tells in his
reminiscences how, on that fatal last Sunday in
July, 1914, his king asked him what consequences
would, in his judgment, flow from a general Euro-
pean war. He said: “Four things: Rumania will
be conquered; there will be a veritable cascade of
European thrones; the politics of Europe will be
shifted far to the Left; and the United States of
America will be advanced fifty years nearer toward
the supremacy of the world.” His prediction has
come true. To speak of the United States as the

reatest and most powerful of nations is no longer
an ebullience of youthful boasting, but a plain state-
ment of acknowledged fact, not to be made with
careless and exuberant pride, but with only those
emotions that spring from the sense of solemn re-
sponsibility.

Is any theme in history greater? We see here a
power — we are ourselves a part of a power — far
greater than that majestic power of Rome that
ruled the ancient world and cast its shadow across
a thousand years of human history. It should be a$0 EXERCISES AT THE DEDICATION

proud task, to have any part in explaining to the
young or to readers in this and subsequent genera-
tions the process by which this great power has
come into being and developed, not by a decline
from unattainable heights of public virtue held
only by conventional heroes in an imagined golden
age, but chiefly by growth in patriotism and the
spirit of self-sacrifice and humanity, by improve-
ments in the standards of public and private moral-
ity, by liberality and tolerance, by industry and the
simple arts of peace. Here in this central region of
the Mississippi Valley and the Great Lakes, des-
tined before the century closes to be the chief home
of civilized man, we may well picture that inspira-
tion as working its fullest effects. And along with
that imagining we must picture, year after year,
and not in this century alone, devoted students of
that wonderful history flocking as pilgrims to the
noble temple of their science which Mr. Clements
has erected in this place. The worthiest and wisest
of them, we may be sure, will not cease, year after
year and generation after generation, to bless his
name; and he himself may rightly utter the prayer
written nearly six hundred years ago by that lov-
able bibliophile, Richard de Bury, the good bishop
of Durham who was the first to give a great collec-
tion of books to a university: “Let us live after our
death in the memories of those who have lived in
our benevolence before they were born, and who
live now sustained by our beneficence.”The Laying of the Corner StoneTuts address was delivered at the laying of the corner
stone of the William L. Clements Library on March 31,
1922. The donor of the building and of the Library,
Regent William Lawrence Clements, personally laid the
corner stone in the presence of the Regents and a group
of faculty, students, and friends of the University of
Michigan. President Marion LeRoy Burton presided.Introductory Remarks

By MARION LEROY BURTON, LL.D.
President of the University of Michigan

MEMBERS OF THE BOARD OF REGENTS AND OF THE
UNIVERSITY:

We lay to-day the corner stone of the Clements
Library of American History. It represents the life-
long interest and scholarly devotion of the donor.
This occasion is a natural and instinctive response
to a most notable event in the life of the University
of Michigan.

This building will provide a home for a really
great collection of Americana. It is strikingly ap-
propriate, ina University organized and maintained
by the people of this great State, that provision, in
such generous and adequate fashion, should be
made for the study of our own annals. Our reputa-
tion as a true University will be enhanced by this
gift. In this beautiful edifice the actual sources for
thorough research work in American History will be
placed at the disposal of the, Faculty and students.

It is unusually noteworthy, that this munificent
gift is made to the University: by one of its own
loyal sons, who through the years has served faith-
fully and wisely as a member of its Board of

Regents.

5354 LAYING OF THE CORNER STONE

In partial recognition of these and other con-
siderations we have planned these simple exercises.
We have asked the Librarian of the University,
Mr. William Warner Bishop, to deliver the address

upon this occasion.THE MAIN ROOMA Temple of American History

By WILLIAM WARNER BISHOP, A.M.
Librarian of the University of Michigan

a ceremony marks a stage in the accom-
plishment of a great hope and a great purpose.
Behind every building and every project there lies
an idea and an inspiration. Truly Dr. Richard
Storrs was right when he said that the great Brook-
lyn Bridge was carried across the turbulent waters
of the East River on the point of John A. Roeb-
ling’s pencil. And to-day we have placed the cor-
ner stone of a home of learning which lay long in
the mind and heart of the donor before it took out-
ward and visible form under the skilled hands of
the architect. This corner stone typifies no passing
whim or momentary fancy, but rather a settled
purpose, a resolution carried to fruition through
long years of patient search and sustained effort.
That purpose was, first, the creation of a library
of the original printed sources for the history of the
discovery, the exploration and settlement of North
America; and, later, the provision of an adequate
and beautiful structure to house that library in
fitting fashion to reach its fruition in the work of a
great university. Here was an idea and an ambi-

$$56 LAYING OF THE CORNER STONE

tion to fire the imagination of any scholar. It re-
mained for a manufacturer and banker not only to
conceive the idea but to carry it out through thirty
years of devoted labor, in hours snatched from the
cares of a great business career.

Few folk know how slight are the foundations on
which rests our knowledge of the history of this
continent. Accustomed to look to manuscript
sources for the history of the ancient world and the
Middle Age, too many take comfortable refuge in
the thought that, as America was discovered and
explored after the invention of printing, it must be
easy and simple to gather the materials for the
story of the discovery of the continent and the slow
growth of the knowledge of its surface. They forget
that the explorers and discoverers were seldom men
of letters. Their rude accounts and ruder maps got
into print, it is true, with great rapidity at times,
and but slowly at other times. But as a rule the
reports of their findings were printed in small num-
bers, were read to tatters by eager men, were
passed from hand to hand by the explorers, and
disappeared into the limbo of worn-out pamphlets
and discarded tracts. More learned tomes of geog-
raphers and historians came later, printed for the
most part in small numbers, frequently bound up
only as there was prospect of a sale, and also sub-
ject to that fata libellorum so familiar to the world of
letters. But few libraries in the world possess even
the major part of the original printed sources forA TEMPLE OF AMERICAN HISTORY 57

American history. Many early books of prime im-
portance exist in but few perfect copies —in nu-
merous cases but one such is known. The task,
then, of gathering a real library of Americana is
(and has been for two centuries) supremely difficult
and arduous.

And in these later days, particularly since the
appearance of Justin Winsor’s monumental history,
there has arisen a collector’s demand for Ameri-
cana which has received the fullest commercial
exploitation. Prices and costs have multiplied
literally more than tenfold in my own recollection.
As a consequence, mere rarity has often been ex-
alted into value, while fundamental books have
become the sport of competing collectors and the
prey of the shrewd financiers among dealers the
world over. None but one who joins a wise head to
a generous purse may safely fish in these troubled
waters of modern auctions and internationally im-
portant sales.

Fortunate indeed is Michigan that one of her own
sons, who has kept before him the aim of gathering
a true library of Americana, has combined the
scholar’s judgment as to fundamental value with
the collector’s watchful and keen enthusiasm. And
thrice fortunate that he has had a vision of what
such a library can do in promoting historical stud-
ies in his Alma Mater. Not for the mere Joy of
possession, not for the lust of ownership has he
gathered from far and near the original printedSei

    

58 LAYING OF THE CORNER STONE

accounts of the discoverers and explorers, the tracts
revealing the fates of Virginia and New England
and the Middle Colonies in the seventeenth century,
the early voyages to Canada and to our own region
of the Great Lakes. Not that he might say that on
his shelves rests the most complete collection of
pamphlets relating to the American Revolution and
of maps and manuscripts describing its progress
and its triumphant close, has he spent long hours
and much labor. Rather, to provide the materials
for a first-hand study of the earlier history of our
country and the means of utilizing them to the full
for the benefit of historical scholarship has been his
steadfast purpose. That purpose culminates in the
gift of this building and of this collection — the
William L. Clements Library of American History.

On the University rests the obligation to carry
into full fruition the trust thus nobly conferred.
Already the Regents have voted adequate support
and aid. There is every prospect that the library
will grow worthily with the years, will become a
notable part of the University’s equipment for
research. But more is needed than secure provision
for care, than increasing strength in rare books and
precious manuscripts. A spirit of devotion to his-
torical studies, a passion for the truth about
America, can alone justify such a gift and such a
building as this. Here 1s an unrivalled opportunity
for founding a real school of American history;
nay, more — for creating anew an enthusiasm forA TEMPLE OF AMERICAN HISTORY ‘59

that remoter past of our country whose study seems
strangely enough to have fallen into neglect and
almost into oblivion among us. Since Parkman
made the nobility of the Jesuit missionaries, the
care-free and adventurous spirit of the voyageurs,
the petty strife of explorer and savage, live once
more in his glowing pages; since Prescott carried
us breathless along the path of the conguistadores;
since John Fiske wrote his solid and brilliant narra-
tives, there has risen no great historian of America’s
earlier day to inspire alike the respect of scholars
and the enthusiasm of the reading public. The
school history and the historical novel appear to
supply the greater part of what knowledge is cur-
rent to-day as to Columbus and the Cabots, the
early discoverers, the hardy explorers, those Span-
ish, Portuguese, French, Dutch, Swedish, and Eng-
lish navigators who slowly revealed to Europe the
position of the continent, its shore-line, its great
lakes and mighty rivers, its mountain-chains, and
its great plains. Our professed and professional
—not to say professorial — historians have lost
the romance of America in their multifarious mono-
graphs and theses on little themes. Here are to
rest the true and vital materials out of which that
romance may be re-created. And more, here are
the books from which alone can be won the know-
ledge which must underlie all truly successful his-
torical writing.

The opportunity, then, which lies before our his-|

60 LAYING OF THE CORNER STONE

torians in this temple of American history is in-
deed marvellous. In Boston and Cambridge one
can find as much of the earlier records as will soon
be housed here —in Providence even more. In
New York City are fully as great collections. But
nowhere else in America — so far as my knowledge
goes — is there at the disposal of university students
any library of Americana equal to the Clements
Library. On the shores of the Pacific, indeed, the
Bancroft and Huntington libraries — six hundred
miles apart —each has preéminence in its own
field, and the Bancroft Library is in the University
of California. It is our confident hope that out of
the happy conjunction of the Clements Library,
the General Library, the Law Library, and the his-
torical faculty and students, will come a fresh school
of American historical scholarship. Nor should we
forget that but forty miles away, in Detroit, an-
other alumnus of this University has gathered and
given to his city a collection on the Northwest that
will go far to aid and supplement these libraries
here. With the Clements Library for the earliest
period, for the settlement of the Atlantic Coast, and
the American Revolution; with the Burton Library
for Canada and the Great Lakes Region; with the
Law Library for the legal side of our development;
with the General Library supplementing all these
and providing as well the European background of
American history; with the eager spirit and gener-
ous enthusiasm which have characterized MichiganA TEMPLE OF AMERICAN HISTORY 61

teachers and students, why should there not grow up
here a group of competent and effective students
of our country’s past, who shall make our earlier
history live once more for coming generations?
But, says the gentle cynic, it is not in Academe
that great geniuses arise and thrive. And sooth to
say, it is true. The list which inscribes among
English writers alone the imposing names of Gib-
bon and Grote, Carlyle and Macaulay, Parkman,
Motley, and Prescott, John Richard Green and
James Bryce, has but few professors appended
to its illustrious roll. But when one recalls the
solid labors of the great French Benedictines of
St. Maur, of the Bollandists, of such men as have
carried through the great publications of corpora
and rolls and archives, one sees the value and the
service even of professional and academic histori-
ans. Not here, perhaps, shall any Macaulay or Car-
lyle gather the store of knowledge which directs and
underlies his passionate enthusiasms. Perhaps not
here shall be found the inspiration of the prophet
who shall one day interpret for us the mighty
panorama of the upbuilding and unfolding of de-
mocracy on this continent. But if genius rises not
from study in this house to write undying verse
or heroic prose, we may not, the donor may not,
grieve over lost chances. Gentus 1s of the ae
which bloweth where it listeth. Rather shall w
hope here for steady labor, for careful training, ie
honest output of sterling work, for a tradition of62 LAYING OF THE CORNER STONE

high aims and vigorous performance, for a Michi-
gan school of American history which, with the
almost unrivalled means of this library, shall carry
on the spirit of those pioneers who wrought well
with far lesser tools.

Perhaps it is fitting to pause a moment to pay
tribute to some, at least, of these men who have
made this University illustrious by their work in
History. Moses Coit Tyler wrote here the first por-
tion of his great work on the history of earlier
American literature. How he would have rejoiced
at the privilege of using many of the books soon to
stand on this spot! How painfully he gathered, by
many journeys and by generous loans, the materials
for his first two volumes! Burke Hinsdale taught
Education here for years, with that shrewd com-
mon sense which made him a power in the land.
But his real forte was the history of the old North-
west Territory and of America generally. What
treasures of historical knowledge he revealed to the
student whom he thought worthy of his confidence
and his guidance! In earlier years Andrew D.
White began and Charles Kendall Adams followed
the honorable succession of historians at Michigan.
I may not call the entire roll, nor name men still
living, but let me at least mention the names of
Angell and of Cooley —the one full of quite un-
usual knowledge of American affairs, revealed fre-
quently in unexpected glimpses and vistas in con-
versation; the other incisive and clear, blendingA TEMPLE OF AMERICAN HISTORY 63

always the jurist and the historian in his writing and
his lectures. It is a succession demanding no small
attainment of us who have followed in their foot-
steps. May their mantles descend on the young men
who shall labor here in this building and who shall
carry on their work in the next quarter-century!
And now it 1s my high privilege to express pub-
licly the deep feeling of the University toward the
man who has built up the Library to be placed
here, putting himself unreservedly into its gather-
ing, and who gives this building whose corner
stone he has just laid with his own hands. To you,
Sir, we are profoundly grateful! The University
thanks you. It acknowledges its debt to you and
the deep obligation you have placed upon it by this
gift. It will be faithful to the trust with which you
have endowed it. Speaking for Regents, Faculties,
and officers, for alumni and students, I pledge to
you, Sir, not alone our thanks, but our promise to
care for this gift, to add to it in worthy fashion, and
to use it to the benefit of our Alma Mater and our
country. You have spent lavishly of money, more
lavishly of time and strength and thought, to make
possible this shrine of American history. It re-
mains for us and for our successors to carry on your
work, to fulfill your plans, to profit by your labors
and your generosity. Happily, we have you with
us to guide, to aid, to inspire us. With Horace, our
final word, as we salute and thank you, is Serus in
celum redeas!ALDERMAN LIBRARY

The return of this book is due on the date
indicated below

 

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there are exceptions and the borrower should
note carefully the date stamped above. Fines
are charged for over-due books at the rate of five
cents a day; for reserved bcoks the rate is twen-
ty-five cents a day. (For detailed regulations
please see folder on “Loan of Books.”’) Books
must be presented at the desk if renewal is
desired.