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palt 'Bicentennial l^ublicationsi
ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
gale 'Bicentennial publications!
IVith the approval of the President and Fellows of Tale University^ a series of volumes has been prepared by a number of the Professors and In- structors^ to be issued in connection with the Bicentennial Anniversary^ as a partial indica- tion of the character of the studies in which the University teachers are engaged.
This series of volumes is respectfully dedicated to
W^z ^raouate0 of ttie ^niber^it^
ESSAYS
IN
HISTORICAL CRITICISM
THE LEGEND OF MARCUS WHITMAN . THE AUTHOR- SHIP OF THE FEDERALIST . PRINCE HENRY THE NAVIGATOR . THE DEMARCATION LINE. THE PROPOSED ABSORPTION OF MEXICO, 1847-1848 . LEOPOLD VON RANKE, etc., etc.
BY
EDWARD GAYLORD BOURNE
n
Professor of History in Yale University
NEW YORK : CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
LONDON: EDWARD ARNOLD
1901
Copyright, 1901, By Yale University.
Published, September, igor.
UNIVERSITY PRESS • JOHN WILSON AND SON • CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A.
in I I: AIM!;(il 'I I I RRARY
PREFACE
The first essay in this collection, The Legend of Marcus Whitman^ although bearing the same title as the article which I published in The American Historical Review last January, is substantially a new piece of work. In Part II the material contained in that article . is reproduced and in addition the testimony of the sponsors of the story and of their supporters has been subjected to rigorous criticism, and the origin of some of its peculiar elements has been brought to light. The distinguishing feature, however, of the essay as published here is the full presentation of the literary history of the legend. It is my hope that this ac- count of the genesis, diffusion, and wide acceptance in the latter half of the nineteenth century of a narrative about a momentous event in American history that is as unhistorical as the legend of the Donation of Constantine will prove to be a serviceable contribution to the literature of historical criticism.
The circumstances of the preparation or publication of these essays are indicated in the footnotes, except in the cases of the short paper on The Federalist Abroad , which formed part of an Introduction to a new edition of The Federalist in the Universal Classics^ and of The Beginning of the Seminary Method in Teaching History which was con-
viii PREFACE
tributed to The Educational Beview. All the essays have been revised, and in some cases slight additions have been made.
In venturing to select a title for the collection which is accurately descriptive of only the first three or four essays, I have been influenced by the desire to indicate precisely the character of what is perhaps the most distinctive part of the book. The other papers, too, if not strictly essays in histori- cal criticism, were written in the spirit of it and in conformity
to its methods.
E. G. B.
New Haven, September, 1901.
CONTENTS I
THE LEGEND OF MARCUS WHITMAN :
Part I Page
Sketch of Marcus Whitman 3
His Extraordinary Posthumous Fame 4
The Legend 6
Its Source 8
The Story unknown before 1864 16
Put before the American Board 22
The Origin of the Story 26
Its Diffusion 29
Shown to be unhistorical 36
Barrows's Oregon 40
New Life infused 42
Systematic Propaganda 47
Countermining 51
Whitman Day 52
Part II
Real Cause of Whitman's Journey 55
The Sponsors of the Legend untrustworthy 61
Later Variations of the Story 64
The Affidavit of Gushing Eells . 69
Whitman's Purpose in going to Washington 75
His Visit without Political Significance 79
Genesis of the Imaginary Details of the Alleged Interviews with
Webster and Tyler "82
Whitman in Boston ; the Primary Objects of his Journey . 86
Whitman and the Emigration of 1843 89
The Real History of Marcus Whitman 99
Notes
Spalding's Memorial 100
Earliest Printed Version of the Fictitious Interview between
Webster and Whitman 101
X CONTENTS
THE LEGEND OF MARCUS WHITMAN — Conanwerf
Page Elwood Evans's Summary of his Conclusions in the Whitman
Controversy, 1884 104
George Catlin's Account of the Visit of the Flatheads to St. Louis 105
de Saint- Araant on Whitman, 1852 106
Mrs. A. L. Lovejoy on Whitman's Ride 106
Mr. A. L. Lovejoy 's Account of Whitman's Ride 108
n
THE AUTHORSHIP OF THE FEDERALIST 113
The Problem 113
The Authorship of Numbers 18, 19, and 20 . 115
The Structure of The Federalist 117
Internal Evidence in cases of Numbers 49-58 119
Numbers 62 and 63 137
III
MR. PAUL LEICESTER FORD ON THE AUTHORSHIP
OF THE FEDERALIST 149
His suj^^osed " Syllabus of The Federalist ^ 154
IV
THE FEDERALIST ABROAD 159
In France 159
In Germany and South America 161
V
MADISON'S STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF FEDERAL
GOVERNMENT 165
Early Direction of his Studies 165
His Authorities 166
His Use of the Material 167
VI
PRINCE HENRY THE NAVIGATOR 173
The Significance of his Work 173
His Aims 174
His Method 183
His Activities 187
CONTENTS xi
vn
Pagk
THE DEMARCATION LINE OF POPE ALEXANDER VI . 193
Precedents 194
The Occasion 195
The Treaty of Tordesillas 202
Magellan's Voyage 206
The Congress of Badajos 209
The Attitude of England 214
The Attitude of France 215
Results 216
VIII
SENECA AND THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA .... 221
Seneca misinterpreted by Roger Bacon 221
By All Subsequent Writers 222
IX
THE PROPOSED ABSORPTION OF MEXICO IN 1847-1848. 227
The Mexican and the Spanish War 227
President Polk's Policy 229
Cabinet Deliberations on the Mexican Question 230
All of Mexico 233
The Cabinet Discussion of the Treaty 238
The Treaty in the Senate 240
X
LEOPOLD VON RANKE 245
History in the Nineteenth Century 245
Ranke's Early Interests 246
His First Teaching 248
His Contribution to Historical Criticism 250
His Work as a Teacher 253
His Ideal 255
His Works 257
XI
RANKE AND THE BEGINNING OF THE SEMINARY
METHOD IN TEACHING HISTORY 265
Precursors of the Historical Seminary 266
Karl V. Raumer 267
Ranke on his Seminary 269
Von Sybel and Waitz on Ranke's Seminary 273
xii CONTENTS
xn
Pagb
FRANCIS PARKMAN 277
The Opportunity for American Scholars m History . . . . 277
Parkman's Early Life 279
His Self-training 280
The Oregon Trail 281
The Conspiracy of Pontiac 282
His Novel, Vassal Morton 283
His Series of Histories 283
His Characteristics as an Historian 285
His Fame 287
XIII
JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE 291
Froude's Environment in Youth 291
His Devotion to Carlyle 293
His Views of History 294
His Characteristics as an Historian 296
INDEX 299
THE LEGEND OF MAECUS WHITMAN
ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
THE LEGEND OF MARCUS WHITMAN PART I
Sixty-six years ago, Marcus Whitman, a physician in Wheeler, Steuben Co., N. Y., received an appointment from the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions to assist the Rev. Samuel Parker in establishing a mission among the Indians of the Oregon Territory. Upon their arrival at Green River (in Wyoming) Dr. Whitman decided to return to enlist more help. Early the next year he started out again with his bride, accompanied by the Rev. and Mrs. Henry H. Spalding and Mr. W. H. Gray, whom he had induced to join him in his arduous enterprise. Eleven years later, in November 1847, the energetic and faithful missionary with his wife and twelve other persons were massacred at their Station Waiilatpu, now Walla Walla, by the Cayuse Indians. The simple chronicle of Dr. Whitman's life as recorded in the obituary notice seven months later in The Missionary Herald, the official organ of the Mission Board, reads as follows : —
"Doct. Whitman was bom in Rushville, in the State of New York, September 4, 1802. He joined the Church in that place in January, 1824 ; though he dated his conversion from a revival in Plainfield, Massachusetts, in 1819. He gave himself to the missionary work in 1834. In February, 1835, he went to Oregon for the first time. Having returned the same year, he was married in February, 1836 ; and in the following month he set out a second time for his chosen field
4 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
of labor. He made a visit to the Atlantic States in the spring of 1843, being called hither by the business of the mission. He was a diligent and self-denying laborer in the the work to which he consecrated his time and energies. In the last letter received from him, he described at considerable length his plans and hopes in regard to the Indians, show- ing his interest not only to the Kayuses, but in more distant tribes."^
Fifty-two years later, in the most careful appraisal of human achievement in America that has ever been made, the voting for the Hall of Fame at New York University, Marcus Whitman received nineteen out of a possible ninety-eight votes to be ranked as one of the fifty greatest Americans. In the class of missionaries and explorers he stood fourth, being suipassed by Adoniram Judson with thirty-five, Daniel Boone with thirty-four, and Elisha Kent Kane with twenty- one votes, and followed by Fremont and George Rogers Clark with seventeen, Houston with fourteen, and Meri- wether Lewis with thirteen votes. Turning to the voters we find Whitman ranked first in his class by the college Presi- dents, receiving ten votes from twenty-five voters.
In the total vote this simple missionary whose career was described by those who presumably knew the most about it in less than twenty lines, ranked equally with Count Rum- ford, William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, and James Munroe, and surpassed Chief Justice Taney, Senator Ben- ton, Salmon P. Chase and Winfield Scott.^
History will be sought in vain for a more extraordinary growth of fame after death. In Rome there is nothing more impressive than to see the magnificent column of Trajan sur- mounted by a statue of the Apostle Peter and to reflect on the historic changes that made suitable in the eyes of the Romans of a later day that transformation of the emperor's monument into a pedestal for the figure of a simple mission- ary of whom he probably never heard. But centuries passed
1 The Missionary Herald, July 1848, 237.
8 H. M. MacCracken, The Hall of Fame, New York, 1901, 58.
THE LEGEND OF MARCUS WHITMAN 6
before this took place, and even the simpler transformation of the missionary Peter into the first Bishop of Rome required several generations.
But in the case of Marcus Whitman, the frontier missionary in less than half a century is transformed into a great historic figure who shaped the destiny of the far northwest and saved the Oregon territory to the United States. Such a trans- formation can be accounted for only in two ways : either the historians and public men of fifty years ago were unaccount- ably ignorant of an epoch-making achievement of their own day, which has since become known through the discovery of authentic sources of the history of that time at once explain- ing previous ignorance and establishing the real facts ; or, an extraordinary legend has sprung up and spread until it has entirely overgrown and concealed the true history of a great transaction in our national life. If the last is the case it throws new light on the possibility of the development of un- historical narratives and renders nugatory so much of apolo- getic criticism as is based on the belief that legendary narratives cannot grow up and displace the truth in a few years in an age abounding with documents. For if such a reconstruction of history has taken place in the United States in the latter half of the nineteenth century, involving an event of such immense importance and world-wide publicity as the acquisition of Oregon, no principles can be laid down dogmatically as to the lapse of time requisite in some earlier period for the development and spread of unhistorical narratives.
In this case of the story of Marcus Whitman a critical in- vestigation will show that it is the second alternative which is forced upon us. No new sources of value relative to the history of the Oregon question have been discovered and the extraordinary posthumous fame of Marcus Whitman is found to rest upon the unsubstantial foundation of a fictitious narrative first published many years after his alleged achievement.
When a traditional narrative is subjected to criticism two
6 ESSAYS TN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
questions present themselves : " Is it true ? " — and if not : " How did it come to be believed to be true ? " In other words, " What is its origin and history ? " The answer to the first question is of especial interest only to students of Amer- ican history. The answer to the second on the other hand will be not only of general, but of scientific interest, for it will trace the steps by which the imaginative reconstruction of history strangely distorting the relative significance of men and events, has slowly but steadily pushed aside the tnith, until it has invaded not only the text-books but the works of historians whose reputation gives their utterances a certain authority. It will also illustrate not only the abiding preva- lence of the uncritical spirit in a supposedly skeptical age among all classes of people, but also how readily a fictitious narrative, if only vivid and realistic, and sufficiently reiter- ated, is taken up in the face of living witnesses who dispute its truth, and of perfectly accessible sources which demon- strate its falsity.
For these reasons and for the additional one that an exam- ination into the origin of the Whitman story will throw light on its credibility I shall investigate the second question first. To enable the reader to follow such a study a brief outline of the accepted story must be given.
About the first of October, 1842, and during the period when the Oregon country was under the joint occupation of the United States and Great Britain, while Dr. Whitman was dining at a trading post of the Hudson's Bay Company at Fort Walla Walla the news comes of the ariival of a colony of Canadians from the Red River country. The assembled company is jubilant and a young priest cries out " Hurrah for Oregon ! America is too late, and we have got the country." Whitman realizes that if Canadian immigration has really begun the authorities at Washington ought to know it, and a counter American immigration ought to be promoted, so that when the joint occupation of Oregon is terminated, the presence of a majority of American settlers may turn the balance in favor of the United States by right of possession.
THE LEGEND OF MARCUS WHITMAN T
The government must be informed as to the value of Oregon and its accessibility by overland emigration. In spite of the protests of his fellow missionaries, he immediately starts for Washington where he arrives March 2, 1843, most oppor- tunely to secure the postponement of negotiations looking to the surrender of Oregon by pledging himself to demonstrate the accessibility of the country by conducting thither a thousand immigrants, which he does during the ensuing summer.^
The essential points in this statement are the cause and purpose of Dr. Whitman's journey to the East in 1842, his influence on the Oregon policy of the government and his organization of the great immigration of 1843. Incidental or collateral assumptions usually accompany this statement to the effect that great ignorance and indifference in regard to Oregon prevailed in Washington and generally throughout the United States, and that Dr. Whitman was able to dispel the ignorance and to transform the indifference into a deep and widespread interest. In both the essentials and the ex- planatory details the story of how Marcus Whitman saved Oregon is fictitious. It is not only without trustworthy contemporary evidence, but is irreconcilable with well established facts. No traces of knowledge of it have ever been found in the contemporary discussion of the Oregon question. The story first emerges over twenty years after the events and seventeen years after Whitman's death and its conception of the Oregon policy of the government is that handed down by tradition in an isolated and remote commu- nity.2
The evidence advanced in support of this story is exclu- sively the oral testimony of a small group of people who have alleged that their accounts rested on Whitman's words
1 Cf. Barrows' Oregon, 160 ff.; McMaster, With the Fathers, 307-310; McMaster, School History of the U. S., 323-4, and the other books noted below.
2 Its first appearance in a formal history was in W. H. Gray's History of Oregon, 1792-1849, Drawn from Personal Observation and Authentic Information, Portland, Oregon, 1870.
8 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
or upon their own recollections. None of this testimony is of earlier date than 1864, and nearly all of it is subsequent to the publication of the story in its most complete form. As much of it repeats the gross historical errors of the story as originally published, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that if these witnesses derived these errors from the printed narrative they probably derived other features of their testi- mony from the same source. If this is made probable, it does not necessarily convict these witnesses of conscious dis- honesty. No one who appreciates the fallibility of human memory as an instrument of precision and understands the subtle influence upon the mind of suggestion need be con- fronted by the painful dilemma that either they must reject the evidence of their reasoning powers or believe that vene- rated friends have been dishonest. Again most of the con- troversy in regard to this matter has involved religious and sectarian interests and has been conducted in large measure by people at once untrained in weighing evidence and pro- foundly interested in the final judgment.
So far then as the oral testimony or written discussion is found inconsistent with the historical facts such inconsistency may be accounted for either as a conscious effort to deceive, an unconscious perversion owing to suggestion and inaccu- rate recollection, or as a misinterpretation of the evidence owing either to ignorance or bias.
The original account of Whitman's journey, its causes, purpose, and results was first published in a series of articles in The Pacific, a religious paper in San Francisco, in the fall of 1865, contributed by the Rev. H. H. Spalding, a col- league of Dr. Whitman in the Oregon mission.^
1 For the date and place of the earliest publication of this story I am indebted to Mr. William I. Marshall of Chicago, who has made most painstaking and elabo- rate investigations into the history of the Whitman Legend (of. his discussion of my paper before the American Historical Association at Detroit. It will be printed in the Annual Report for 1900). I had not been able to trace the story in print with a precise date earlier than the Congregationaiist of Oct. 5, 1866. lam also indebted to Mr. Marshall for collating the text of this narrative as it is given by Spalding in Senate Exec. Doc. 37 ^ 41 st Congress, third session, with the
THE LEGEND OF MARCUS WHITMAN 9
A few months later a strikingly similar narrative was pub- lished by W. H. Gray, another former member of the Oregon Mission, in the Astoria Marine Grazette in July and August, 1866. Both narratives are here reproduced.
The Spalding Naeratiye.
" In 1841 no missionaries crossed, but several emigrant fami- lies, bringing wagons, which, on reaching Fort Hall, suffered the same fate with those of 1840. In 1842 considerable emigration moved forward with ox teams and wagons, but on reaching Fort Hall the same story was told them, and the teams were sacri- ficed, and the emigrant families reached Dr. Whitman's station late in the fall, in very destitute circumstances. About this time, as events proved, that shrewd English diplomatist, Gov- ernor Simpson, long a resident on the Northwest coast, reached Washington, after having arranged that an English colony of some 150 souls should leave the Selkirk Settlement on the Eed Kiver of the lakes in the spring of 1842, and cross the Eocky Mountains by the Saskatchewan Pass."
"DR. whitman's winter JOURNEY, 1843."
" The peculiar event that aroused Dr. Whitman and sent him through the mountains of New Mexico, during that terrible winter of 1843, to Washington, just in time to save this now so valuable country from being traded off by Webster to the shrewd Englishman for a ^cod fishery' down east, was as follows: In October of 1842 our mission was called together, on business, at
The Gray Narrative.^
<* In September, 1842, Dr. Whitman was called to visit a patient at old Fort Walla walla. While there, a number of boats of the
original text in 7%e Pacific. As printed above, the first section is the closing paragraph of the ninth of a series of eleven articles on the Oregon Indian Mis- sions and appeared Sept. 28, 1865; the next two sections are from the tenth and eleventh articles, which appeared on October 19 and November 9 respectively. The last article is reprinted in Gray's History of Oregon^ 289-291, but without giving the year of its original publication.
1 From Gray's History, 288-289. As Gray put his History together from his
10 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
The Spalding Narrative — continued,
Waiilatpu — Dr. Whitman's station — and while in session, Dr. W. was called to Fort Walla-Walla to visit a sick man. While there the ^ brigade ' for New Caledonia, fifteen bateaux, arrived at that point on their way up the Columbia, with Indian goods for the New Caledonia or Frazer River country. They were accompanied by some twenty chief factors, traders, and clerks of the Hudson's Bay Company, and Bishop Demois, who had crossed the mountains from Canada, in 1839 — the first Catho- lic priest on this coast; Bishop Blanchett came at the same time.
'^ While this great company were at dinner, including several priests, an express arrived from Fort Colville, announcing the (to them) glad news that the colony from Red River had passed the Rocky Mountains and were near Colville. An exclamation of joy burst from the whole table, at first unaccountable to Dr. Whit- man, till a young priest, perhaps not so discreet as the older, and not thinking that there was an American at the table, sprang to his feet, and swinging his hand, exclaimed : * Hurrah for Colum- bia ! (Oregon.) America is too late ; we have got the country.' In an instant, as by instinct. Dr. Whitman saw through the whole plan, clear to Washington, Fort Hall, and all. He immediately rose from the table and asked to be excused, sprang upon his horse, and in a very short time stood with his noble ^Cayuse,' white with foam, before his door ; and without stopping to dis-
The Gray Narrative — continued,
Hudson's Bay Company, with several chief traders and Jesuit priests, on their way to the interior of the country, arrived. While at dinner, the overland express from Canada arrived, bringing news that the emigration from the Red River settle- ment was at Colville. This news excited unusual joy among the guests. One of them — a young priest — sang out : ' Hurrah for Oregon! America is too late; we have got the country.'
newspaper articles the above citation may safely be taken as the account pre- sented by him in the Marine Gazette.
On August 11, 1866, Gray testified under oath that the foregoing account of the Walla- Walla dinner was derived from Whitman himself. See infra, p. 32.
THE LEGEND OF MARCUS WHITMAN 11
The Spalding Narrative — continited, ^
mount, he replied to our anxious inquiries with great decision and earnestness : * I am going to cross the Eocky Mountains and reach Washington this Winter, God carrying me through, and bring out an emigration over the mountains next season, or this country is lost.' The events soon developed that if that whole- souled American missionary was not the * son of a prophet,' he guessed right when he said a * deep laid scheme was about culminating which would deprive the United States of this Oregon, and it must be broken at once, or the country is lost.' We united our remonstrances with those of sister Whitman, who was in deep agony at the idea of her husband perishing in the snows of the Eocky Mountains. We told him it would be a
The Gray Narrative — continued.
'Now the Americans may whistle; the country is ours !' said another.
" Whitman learned that the company had arranged for these Eed Eiver English settlers to come on to settle in Oregon, and at the same time Governor Simpson was to go to Washington and secure the settlement of the question as to the boundaries, on the ground of the most numerous and permanent settlement in the country.
" The Doctor was taunted with the idea that no power could prevent this result, as no information could reach Washington in time to prevent it. ' It shall be prevented,' said the Doctor, * if I have to go to Washington myself.' * But you cannot go there to do it,' was the taunting reply of the Briton. *I will see,' was the Doctor's reply. The reader is suflSciently acquainted with the history of this man's toil and labor in bringing his first wagon through to Fort Boise, to understand what he meant when he said, * I will see.' Two hours after this conversation at the fort, he dismounted from his horse at his door at Waiilatpu. I saw in a moment that he was fixed on some im- portant object or errand. He soon explained that a special effort must be made to save the country from becoming British territory.
12 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
The Spalding Narrative — continued.
miracle if he escaped death either from starving or freezing, or the savages, or the perishing of his horses, during the five months that would be required to make the only possible circuit- ous route, via Fort Hall, Taos, Santa Fe, and Bent Fort. His reply was that of my angel wife six years before : ' I am ready, not to be bound only, but to die at Jerusalem or in the snows of the Rocky Mountains for the name of the Lord Jesus or my country. I am a missionary, it is true, but my country needs me now.' And taking leave of his missionary associates, his com- fortable home, and his weeping companion, with little hope of seeing them again in this world, he entered upon his fearful journey the last of Oct. 1842, and reached the City of Washing- ton the last of March 1843,^ with his face, nose, ears, hands, feet, and legs badly frozen. It is well that the good man did not live to see himself and his faithful associates robbed and their char- acters slandered by that very Government he was ready to lay down his life for. It would have been to him, as it is to me, the most mournful event of my life. . . ."
"DR. whitman's successful MISSION AT WASHINGTON."
" On reaching the settlements, Dr. Whitman found that many of the now old Oregonians — Waldo, Applegate, Hamtree, Keyser,
The Gray Narrative — continued.
" Everything was in the best of order about the station, and there seemed to be no important reason why he should not go. A. L. Lovejoy, Esq., had a few days before arrived with the immigration. It was proposed that he should accompany the Doctor, which he consented to do, and in twenty-four hours' time they were well mounted and on their way to the States. They reached Fort Hall all safe ; kept south into Taos and thence to Bent's Fort, on the Arkansas Eiver, when Mr. Lovejoy became
1 In the republication of this narrative in Exec. Doc. 37, and in all other repetitions, the precise date of Whitman's arrival in Washington is given as the 2d or 3d of March, obviously for the purpose of getting him there before the adjournment of Congress.
THE LEGEND OF MARCUS WHITMAN 13
The Spalding Narrative — continued,
and others — who had once made calculations to come to Oregon, had abandoned the idea because of the representations from Washington that every attempt to take wagons and ox teams through the Rocky Mountains and Blue Mountains to the Co- lumbia had failed. Dr. Whitman saw at once what the stopping of wagons at Fort Hall every year meant. The representations purported to come from Secretary Webster, but really from Gov- ernor Simpson, who, magnifying the statements of his chief trader, Grant, at Fort Hall declared the Americans must be go- ing mad, from their repeated fruitless attempts to take wagons and teams through the impassable regions of the Columbia, and that the women and children of those wild fanatics had been saved from a terrible death only by the repeated and philan- thropic labors of Mr. Grant, at Fort Hall, in furnishing them with horses. The doctor told these men as he met them that his only object in crossing the mountains in the dead of the winter, at the risk of his life, and through untold sufferings, was. to take back an American emigration that summer through the mountains to the Columbia with their wagons and teams. The route was prac- ticable. We had taken our cattle and our families through several years before. They had nothing to fear, but to be ready on his return. The stopping of wagons at Fort Hall was a Hudson Bay Company scheme to prevent the settling of the country by Amer- icans, till they could settle it with their own subjects, from the Selkirk settlement. This news spread like fire through Missouri. The doctor pushed on to Washington and immediately sought an interview with Secretary Webster — both being from the same State — and stated to him the object of his crossing the moun-
Thb Gray Narrative — continued.
exhausted from toil and exposure, and stopped for the winter, while the Doctor continued on and reached Washington."
" Thus far in this narrative I give Dr. Whitman's, Mr. Love- joy's, and my own knowledge. I find an article in The Pacific of November 9, from Mr. Spalding, which gives us the result : — * On reaching the settlements,' " etc.
14 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
The Spalding Narrative — continued.
tains, and laid before him the great importance of Oregon to the United States. But Mr. Webster lived too near Cape Cod to see things in the same light with his fellow-statesman who had trans- ferred his worldly interests to the Pacific coast. He awarded sincerity to the missionary, but could not admit for a moment that the short residence of six years could give the Doctor the knowledge of the country possessed by Governor Simpson, who had almost grown up in the country, and had travelled every part of it, and represents it as an unbroken waste of sand deserts and impassable mountains, fit only for the beaver, the gray bear and the savage. Besides, he had about traded it off with Governor Simpson, to go into the Ashburton treaty, for a cod-fishery on Newfoundland.
" The doctor next sought, through Senator Linn, an interview with President Tyler, who at once appreciated his solicitude and his timely representations of Oregon, and especially his dis- interested though hazardous undertaking to cross the Rocky Mountains in the winter to take back a caravan of wagons. He said that, although the doctor's representations of the character of the country, and the possibility of reaching it by wagon route, were in direct contradiction of those of Governor Simpson, his frozen limbs were sufficient proof of his sincerity, and his mis- sionary character was sufficient guarantee for his honesty, and he would, therefore, as President, rest upon these and act accord- ingly ; would detail Fremont with a military force to escort the doctor's caravan through the mountains; and no more action should be had toward trading off Oregon till he could hear the result of the expedition. If the doctor could establish a wagon route through the mountains to the Columbia River, pronounced impossible by Governor Simpson and Ashburton, he would use his influence to hold on to Oregon. The great desire of the doctor's American soul, Christian withal, that is, the pledge of the President that the swapping of Oregon with England for a cod fishery should stop for the present, was attained, although at the risk of his life, and through great sufferings, and unsolicited, and without the promise or expectation of a dollar's reward from any source. And now, God giving him life and strength, he would do the rest, that is, connect the Missouri and Columbia
THE LEGEND OF MARCUS WHITMAN 15
The Spalding Narrative — continued,
rivers with, a wagon track so deep and plain that neither national envy nor sectional fanaticism would ever blot it out. And when the 4th of September, 1843, saw the rear of the doctor's caravan of nearly two hundred wagons with which he started from Mis- souri last of April emerge from the western shades of the Blue Mountains upon the plains of the Columbia, the greatest work was finished ever accomplished by one man for Oregon on this coast. And through that great emigration, during the whole summer, the doctor was their everywhere-present angel of mercy, ministering to the sick, helping the weary, encouraging the wavering, cheering the mothers, mending wagons, setting broken bones, hunting stray oxen ; climbing precipices, now in the rear, now in the center, now at the front ; in the rivers looking out fords through the quicksands, in the deserts looking out water ; in the dark mountains looking out passes ; at noontide or mid- night, as though those thousands were his own children, and those wagons and those flocks were his own property. Although he asked not and expected not a dollar as a reward from any source, he felt himself abundantly rewarded when he saw the desire of his heart accomplished, the great wagon route over the mountains established, and Oregon in a fair way to be occupied with American settlements and American commerce. And especially he felt himself doubly paid, when, at the end of his successful expedition, and standing alive at home again on the banks of the Walla- Walla, these thousands of his fellow summer pilgrims, wayworn and sunbrowned, took him by the hand and thanked him with tears for what he had done." ^
That this narrative is the primary source of the Whitman legend and that it was first brought before the public in 1865 ^ by Mr. Spalding are abundantly proved by both
1 Cf. Spalding's later and more compact and explicit statement, infra, p. 100.
* /. e., as a whole. The story of Whitman's interview with Webster Mr. Spalding related in conversation in 1864, and it was published in the Sacra- mento Union, Nov. 16, 1864, from which it was reprinted in the Dansville, N. Y., Advertiser of May 4, 1865. This version, which is sometimes found in the popular accounts, formed a part of the remarks of the Speaker of the Oregon House of Representatives on the occasion of the presentation to the State of the tomahawk
16 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
external and internal evidence. In the first place, although Mr. Spalding's statements have been reaffirmed or disputed for twenty years or more by many people in the northwest professing to speak of their own knowledge, during all this time no evidence of a date earlier than 1864 has been brought forward to show that anybody east or west had ever heard of it prior to that date. Second, upon its original appearance, in part, in 1864, it was related on Mr. Spalding's authority ; ^ and as late as 1894 the Rev. Myron Eells, the son of Gushing Eells, and for many years an indefatigable champion of the Whitman story, in his life of his father, wrote : " Rev. H. H. Spalding was about the first person to make known the fact of Dr. "Whitman's going East on a political errand. Dr. G. H. Atkinson learned of it, and believed that this work ought to be set to the credit of missions. He said so publicly. In his journey East in 1865 he told the secretaries of the American Board that while they had been accustomed to look upon their Oregon mission as a failure it was a grand success. They were very skeptical and thought that many extravagant assertions had been made about Whitman's achievement. Dr. Atkinson replied: 'Write to Dr. Eells, as you know him to be careful in his statements and are accustomed to rely on what he says.' " ^
That the story was new in 1864-5 has been so positively denied that it will be necessary to present the evidence of this fact in some detail. This will be done by reviewing in a series certain critical junctures at which if the story had been known it could hardly have failed to receive mention.
As Dr. Atkinson was the man who first brought this story to the attention of the American Board and was most
with which "Whitman was killed. It is, although a little earlier in date, not to be treated as a part of the original source of the story, for it is second-hand from Spalding. For the text of this account see Note B. p. 101.
1 See p. 102.
2 Father Eells, or the Result of Fifty-Jive Years of Missionary Labors in Wash- ington and Oregon; A Biography of Gushing Eells, D. i>., Boston, 1894, 106.
THE LEGEND OF MARCUS WHITMAN 17
persistent in giving it publicity the date at which he learned it is of vital importance in determining the date at which it first became known. Since he was apparently unremitting in his efforts to diffuse the story as soon as it came to his knowledge and since he had probably the best facilities of anybody connected with missions in Oregon for hearing the story as soon as it began to circulate, the presumption, in the absence of any contemporary dated evidence to the contrary, is very strong that the story was new in 1864-5. Dr. Atkinson arrived in Oregon in June 1848, a little over six months after the Whitman massacre, as the first mission- ary of the American Home Missionary Society.^ On June 13 he had a conference with W. H. Gray as to where he had better establish his station. June 21 he arrived in Oregon City, where he had an extended conference with Mr. Spald- ing. In Oregon City at this time were Cushing Eells to whom Dr. Atkinson referred the secretaries of the Ameri- can Board in 1865 for confirmation of Spalding's narrative, and A. Lawrence Lovejoy who accompanied Whitman across the mountains in 1842 and to whom Dr. Atkinson appealed for evidence in 1876. Yet neither from Spalding nor Eells nor Lovejoy did the young home missionary hear a word in 1848 of the saving of Oregon by Marcus Whitman.2
If the story had been known then or thought of by any one of these men, could they have helped telling it to Dr. Atkinson and could he, the enthusiastic young missionary, have helped recording it ? During the next fifteen years Dr.
1 Before the Oregon treaty, 1846, Oregon was technically foreign territory and the missionaries there were under the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions,
2 See Doctor Atkinson's Journal for June 13, and June 21st, 1848, and Mrs. Atkinson's Narrative, in Biography of Rev. G. H. Atkinson, D. Z)., etc., com- piled by Nancy Bates Atkinson, Portland, Or., 1893, 116-120-121, and 109.
Mr. Spalding wrote an account of the massacre to the American Board, and another to Mrs. Whitman's parents. There is nothing in either about Whit- man's political services, see The Missionary Herald, July 1848, 338-341 ; and the Transactions of the Oregon Pioneer Association^ 1893, 93-103.
2
18 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
Atkinson's labors as a home missionary took him at one time or another all over Oregon and Washington and brought him repeatedly into contact with the pioneers and the early mis- sionaries, and had the story then been known to any of the people who in the last fifteen or twenty years have alleged that it was familiar to them long before 1865,^ Dr. Atkin- son could hardly have escaped knowledge of it during these years of home missionary travel.
Other examples of this universal silence prior to 1865 may be given. Joel Palmer, an Oregon pioneer of 1845, recorded in his journal under date of Sept. 17, 1845, that Dr. Whit- man and his wife came to his camp with provisions. The following is his account of the visit.
" The doctor and lady remained with us during the day ; he took occasion to inform us of the many incidents that marked his ten years' sojourn in this wilderness region, of a highly interesting character. Among other things he re- lated that during his residence in this country, he had been reduced to such necessity for want of food as to be com- pelled to slay his horse f stating that within that period, no less than thirty-two horses had been served up at his table." 2
This comprises all of Whitman's life that Palmer mentions in his diary, and as he had other interviews with Whitman and with Spalding, before his book was published two years later, this silence is significant. Spalding himself, the author of the legend, three years after " Whitman's Ride," was evi- dently unaware that Oregon had been " saved " to the United States, for he prophesied in a letter to Joel Palmer, April 7, 1846, that Oregon would become an independent republic. " Others," he writes, " following in their track [i. e., of an "in- dustrious," " virtuous," " Sabbath-loving " people], learning of
1 For these testimonies, see the art. of Mr. Eells, in The Whitman College Quarterly, Mar. 1898, or the quotation from it in Prof. H. W. Parker's art. in The Homiletic Review, July, 1901.
2 Joel Palmer: Journal of Travels over the Rocky Mountains to the Mouth of the Columbia River, etc., Cincinnati, 1847, 57.
THE LEGEND OF MARCUS WHITMAN 19
this new world and finding our ample harbors, soon this little, obscure point upon the map of the world will become a second North American Republic, her commerce whitening every sea and her crowded ports fanned by the flags of every nation." ^ The letter contained nothing about the supposed crisis in 1842-43.
In 1851 Anson Dart, Superintendent of Indian Affairs for Oregon, in response to instructions from Washington to in- vestigate large claims against the government, made by the American Board of Missions, for losses sustained at their sev- eral mission stations in upper Oregon at the time of the mas- sacre of Dr. Whitman and family and others in the fall of 1847, started on a tour of inspection from Oregon City, May 30, accompanied by Elkanah Walker as interpreter. June 17th, he arrived at the site of the Whitman mission. His special report on the mission losses seems not to have been printed, but his account of the journey says nothing as to Whitman's political services in behalf of Oregon. If he had heard of them he could hardly have failed to note what he had heard in this general report, nor, if the story- existed at that time, could he have failed to hear of it, for he was attended on the journey by one of Whitman's col- leagues, Elkanah Walker, and at an earlier time he had had under his direction H. H. Spalding as Indian Agent at Umpqua.2
In 1853, Isaac Ingalls Stevens was appointed Governor of Washington Territory. He was enthusiastic over the devel- opment and exploration of the region, and before going thither he devoured all the books about it that he could find, and learned all that he could by correspondence with citizens of Oregon and Washington.^ In the course of one of his jour- neys he passed the site of the Whitman mission and makes this entry in his diary Nov. 5, 1853 : " Mr. Whitman must
1 Ihid., 173.
2 House Executive Documents, 32d Cong., 1st Sess., II, part 3, 472-481.
* Life of Isaac Ingalls Stevens, by his son Hazard Stevens, Boston, 1900, I, 298.
20 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
have done a great deal of good for the Indians. His mission was situated upon a fine tract of land and he had erected a saw and grist mill." ^
Again, in 1856, Joseph Lane, the territorial delegate, who had gone out to Oregon in 1849 as Governor of the Territory, eulogized in Congress the services to Oregon of Marcus Whitman. " Never, in my opinion, did missionary go forth to the field of his labors animated by a nobler purpose or devote himself to his task with more earnestness and sin- cerity than this meek and Christian man." Gen. Lane then related how Whitman devoted his time to teaching the Indians the arts of civilization, but said not a word of political services.^
In 1858 Dr. Atkinson in a review of his ten years of labor in Oregon dwelt at some length on the usefulness of the mis- sionaries in that region. Among other things he says : " We gave our influence to make Oregon a free state," but not a word of the services of Whitman.^
Even more striking is the silence of Gushing Eells in a brief sketch of the old Oregon Mission to the Indians and a description of the Walla Walla country, published in The Home Missionary in 1860. He writes : " In the autumn of 1836 Marcus Whitman, M. D., with Mrs. Whitman, together with other missionary associates, arrived at Fort Walla Walla on Columbia river. — Dr. and Mrs. Whitman stopped among the Cayuse Indians. And commenced their labors at a place since called Waiilatpu, situated twenty-five miles east of Ft. Walla Walla. — The missionary work was prosecuted rather steadily among the Cayuse, Nez Percys, and Spokane Indians till 1847. On the 29th of November of that year. Dr. and Mrs. Whitman met a violent death at the hands of the Cayuse Indians." * If Gushing Eells knew at this time
1 Ihid., 403. James G. Swan in his Northwest Coast, or, Three Years' Resi- dence in Washington Territory, New York, 1857, describes the immigration of 1843, 236-7, but is silent about Whitman.
2 Cong. Globe, 34th Cong., 1st Sess., part I, 776. 8 The Home Missionary, Dec. 1858, 185.
* The Home Missionary, March, 1860, 261. The passages quoted contain all
THE LEGEND OF MARCUS WHITMAN 21
that Marcus Whitman saved Oregon to the United States in 1843 it would have been a fitting occasion upon which to mention it.
The only evidence that has been advanced to show that the " saving of Oregon " was attributed to Marcus Whitman be- fore Spalding published his articles is an extract from a book by a French traveller, de Saint-Amant, published in 1854,^ and this evidence is secured by the use of deceptive phrases in translating the passage. This writer is said to have " pub- lished to his countrymen that Whitman, the missionary, was largely instrumental in saving Oregon to the United States." ^ These words, it will be remembered, are the language that Gushing Eells used in 1866 when he declared his belief that Whitman was " instrumental in saving a valuable portion of this Northwest to the United States." ^ The French writer's words are : " Le R^v^rend Whitman, missionnaire anabaptiste am^ricain, dtait venu s'etablir avec sa famille parmi les di- verses tribus de Whalla-Whalla, on pent aussi bien dire au milieu des ddserts. II avait acquis une certaine influence sur les Cayuses, les Nez-Perc^s, les Spokans, etc. Ayant devanc^ la prise de possession du pays par ses concitoyens, il s'^tait fait agent tr^s actif des intdrets am^ricains, et n'avait pas pen contribu^ a pousser k Tannexion; mais malgr^ tout son m^rite, il n'avait pas compris que son credit et son influence ne r^sisteraient pas to uj ours aux effets de la super- stition de ces races sauvages. II en tomba victime avec sa famille. Une dpid^mie dtait survenue, et comme le R^v^rend cumulait I'art de gu^rir le corps avec la pretention de sauver Tame, et que plusieurs cas de d^c^s foudroyants ^gar^rent ces esprits malades et faibles (ce que nous avons eu la honte de voir aussi dans nos pays civilises,) des doutes s'^lev^rent
that is said of Whitman in the article. In the June number of The Home Mis- sionary in 1860, "A Former Missionary" described the Walla Walla country, but passed over Whitman in silence, pp. 31-32.
1 Voyages en Calif ornie et dans VOre'gon, par M. de Saint-Amant, Envoy € du Gouvernement frangais en 18.51-1852. Paris, 1854.
2 J. R. Wilson in the Whitman College Quarterly, Dec 1897, 46. « See p. 25.
22 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
sur la droiture des intentions du docteur Whitman, encore plus que sur la port^e de sa science m^dicale. Bref, il fut massacrd avec sa famille en novembre, 1847." ^ I have quoted the whole passage for the light it throws on its probable source.
It is to be noticed in the first place that this account char- acterizes the entire period of Whitman's labors down to 1847. It says nothing about the year 1842-3 nor does it give any intimation of knowledge of the details or the general features of the Spalding story. The account of the causes of the massacre is so similar to that given by Brouillet in his pam- phlet 2 that one is led to the intrinsically probable conclusion that de Saint- Amant as a Frenchman and a Catholic derived his information either from Brouillet himself or from some of his missionary colleagues. The assertion about the tendency of Whitman's political activity is hardly more than a natural deduction from such statements as Brouillet made in his pamphlet. To use the very words of Eells or Spalding which were the product of the legendary representation of the Oregon crisis in 1842-3, in translating the words of Saint Amant to prove that he was familiar with their contentions, and that consequently they were matters of common knowl- edge in Oregon in 1851-2 would not be defensible in a trained historical scholar.^
In harmony with the universal silence which has been found to have prevailed before 1864 in regard to the contents of the Spalding narrative, is the obvious skepticism of the secretaries of the American Board in 1865 when Dr. Atkin- son informed them of the political results of Whitman's journey east in 1842-3, In the twenty-two 3^ears that had
1 Saint-Amant, 26-7. This passage is translated infra, p. 106.
2 Cf. Brouillet in House Exec. Docs., 1st Sess. 35th Cong., I, pp. 16 ff. On Brouillet, see p. 28 below.
3 President Penrose of Whitman College did this in his widely circulated reply to my assertion that the Spalding story was never heard of before 1865, relying, I have no doubt, on Dr. "Wilson's translation, without ever having looked at the original text. See his article in the Boston Transcript of Jan. 21, 1901.
THE LEGEND OF MARCUS WHITMAN 23
elapsed since Whitman appeared in Boston, no missionary in the hundreds of pages of correspondence in their records or in personal interviews had ever told them the story of how Whitman had saved Oregon,i and hence when they first hear it they not only discredit the story but also its source.
Dr. Atkinson then requested them to write to Dr. Eells as to one upon whose testimony they could rely. Accepting this suggestion, Secretary Treat wrote on February 22, 1866, to Gushing Eells, who, it will be remembered, had been a colleague of Whitman's, asking for a statement of the results of the old Oregon Mission work, and received in reply a letter dated Walla Walla, W. T., May 28, 1866, in which the religious and educational labors of the missionaries are reviewed. The following are the essential passages relative to Whitman's ride, and their dependence upon Spalding's narrative published the preceding fall is sufficiently obvious.
" Dr. Whitman understood with a good degree of correctness, apparently, that it was the plan of the Hudson's Bay Company to secure this country to the English Government. Undoubt- edly he felt strongly in reference to this subject. At that time his missionary associates judged that he was disturbed to an unwarrantable degree. The result has furnished accumulative evidence that there was sufS.cient reason for determined earnest- ness on his part.
"An unyielding purpose was formed by Dr. Whitman to go East. The mission was called together to consider whether or not its approval could be given to the proposed undertaking. Mr. Walker and myself were decidedly opposed, and we yielded only when it became evident that he would go, even if he had to become disconnected from the mission in order to do so. Accord- ing to the understanding of the members of the mission, the single object of Dr. Whitman, in attempting to cross the conti-
1 See the statement of W. I. Marshall, The Whitman Legend in the Report of the Am. Hist. Association for 1900. The Home Missionary published several letters a year from the Oregon country every year between 1848 and 1865, and in not one of those letters is there a single reference to the Whit- man legend.
24 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
nent in the winter of 1842-43, amid mighty peril and suffering, was to make a desperate effort to save this country to the United States.
*' On reaching Washington, he learned that representations had been made there, corresponding to those which had been often repeated on this coast. ' Oregon,* it was said, * would most likely be unimportant to the United States. It was difficult of access. A wagon road thither was an impossibility.' By such statements Governor Simpson (the territorial Governor of the Hudson's Bay Company) had well-nigh succeeded in accomplishing his object of purchasing this country, not for a mess of pottage, but a cod fishery ! Dr. Whitman was barely able to obtain from President Tyler the promise that negotiations should be suspended.
*^ His next object was to expose the falsity of the statement that the Rocky and Blue Mountains could not be passed by immigrant wagons. It soon became known, to some extent, that Dr. Whitman would accompany those who would attempt to go to the Columbia that season in this manner. The fact induced numbers to decide to go who would not otherwise have done so. If I judge correctly, the testimony has been unvarying and abundant, that the success of the expedition depended upon the knowledge, skill, energy, and perseverance of Dr. Whitman. Extravagant language has been used, expressive of the confidence of the emigrants of 1843 in his ability to conduct them success- fully through difficulties which, in the estimation of many, were regarded as utter impossibilities. The fording of the Platte with such a train was an untried, and in some respects a perilous undertaking; and yet it was signally successful.
" In 1839, Rev. J. S. Griffin and his missionary associates trav- elled from the western frontier to Fort Hall with wagons. They were there told by agents of the Hudson's Bay Company that it was impracticable, if not impossible, to take their wagons to Walla Walla. Consequently teams and wagons were exchanged for pack animals and fixtures. In 1840, Rev. H. Clarke and other missionary laborers performed the same journey in like manner. At Fort Hall they were induced to leave their wagons. In 1843, this game was tried again, and at the opportune moment when Dr. Whitman was absent from camp. On his re- turn he found some weeping, others much disturbed. He at once comprehended the plot, and then and there is said to have
THE LEGEND OF MARCUS WHITMAN 26
addressed them as follows: — 'My countrymen! You have trusted me thus far; believe me now, and I will take your wagons to Columbia Kiver.'
'' I may not be able to furnish evidence entirely satisfactory to others; but in view of all the past relating to this subject, — of which I have been an eye and ear witness since August, 1838, — I am prepared to say that to my mind there is not the shadow of a doubt that Dr. Whitman, by his efforts with President Tyler and Secretary Webster, in 1843, and his agency during the same year in conducting an immigrant wagon train from the western frontier to the Columbia Eiver, was instrumental in saving a val- uable portion of this Northwest to the United States. Am I extravagant in adding, that the importance of this service to our country will not be likely to be overestimated ? When the iron track of the North Pacific railroad shall have the two oceans for its termini, and the commerce of the world shall move over the most direct route ; and when the latent resources of this vast region shall have been fully developed, there will be a theme worthy of the best endeavors of the statesman and the orator."
Secretary Treat's comment is as follows :
" While it is apparent from the letters of Dr. Whitman at the Missionary House, that, in visiting the Eastern States in 1842- 43, he had certain missionary objects in view (of which Mr. Eells may not have been cognizant), it is no less clear that he would not have come at that time, and probably he would not have come at all, had it not been for his desire to save the dis- puted territory to the United States. It was not simply an American question, however ; it was at the same time a Protest- ant question. He was fully alive to the efforts which the Koman Catholics were making to gain the mastery of the Pacific coast and he was firmly persuaded that they were working in the inter- est of the Hudson's Bay Company with a view to this very end. The danger from this quarter had made a profound impression upon Ms mind. Under date of April 1, 1847, he said : ' In the autumn of 1842 I pointed out to our mission the arrangements of the papists to settle in our vicinity, and that it only required that those arrangements should be completed to close our operations.' "
26 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
Mr. Treat, apparently satisfied with this deceptive confir- mation, from Doctor Eells' reply, which was published sub- sequently in the Missionary Herald^ and from the statements Doctor Atkinson had made, prepared an address on " Early Indian Missions," which he delivered at the meeting of the American Board in Pittsfield, Sept. 27, 1866. The report of this address in the Oongregationalist, Oct. 5, 1866, is the earliest printed version of the Whitman story that appeared in the East. It omitted the Fort Walla Walla incident, but narrated the fictitious interviews with Tyler and Webster and credited Whitman with organizing the emigration of 1843.
The date and form of the first appearance of the Whitman legend having been established we may inquire into the circumstances of its origin before tracing its gradual diffusion and adoption.
By articles III and IV of the Oregon Treaty of 1846 the possessory rights of the Hudson's Bay Company and of all British subjects in lands or other property were to be re- spected and the lands and property belonging to the Puget's Sound Agricultural Company were to be confirmed to it or purchased by the United States at a proper valuation. Settlers encroached upon the lands claimed by these com- panies and the Oregon land grants were also in conflict with the claims. Much annoyance and litigation resulted and the only settlement possible was for the United States to buy out the rights of these two corporations. A treaty providing for such a purchase at a valuation to be determined by a joint commission was concluded between England and the United States in July 1863 and proclaimed March 6, 1864. The commission began its labors in January 1865. From May 30, 1865, to May 10, 1867, the counsel were employed in taking testimony. The claims of the Hudson's Bay Company aggregated over $4,000,000 and those of the Puget's Sound Agricultural Company over 11,100,000. Sep-
1 Dec. 1866, 370-373.
THE LEGEND OF MARCUS WHITMAN 27
tember 10th, 1869, the commission awarded the two com- panies 1450,000 and 8200,000 respectively.^
Many of the old settlers in Oregon cherished a resentment against the Hudson's Bay Company for real or fancied wrongs and the thought of such immense claims being pre- ferred by foreign corporations was exasperating. The feeling was intensified by the belief that the Hudson's Bay Company had intrigued against the interests of the United States dur- ing the joint occupation.^ On the other hand, for one reason or another, the most of the land claims of the Protestant missions were forfeited because they were not actually occupied at the time of the passage of the land law. The title to all the stations of the American Board lapsed in this way except that to Waiilatpu, where the occupants had been massacred. In 1862 the Board put in a claim to Lapwai, Mr. Spalding's station in the Nez Percys country, but it was disallowed, and he devoted years to the effort to secure a reversal of the decision. That the mission claims should be rejected while those of the Hudson's Bay Company were rec- ognized by the National Government seemed an outrage to Spalding.3 To cap the climax, just about this time it came to his attention that an attack on the work of the missionaries of the American Board had been given an extensive publicity by being included in a public document.
^ See J. B. Moore's International Arbitrations, I, 237-270.
2 Cf . Gray's comment on the award : " A more infamous claim could not well be trumped up, and the men who awarded it should be held responsible, and handed down to posterity as unjust rewarders of unscrupulous monopolies. Not for this alone, but for paying to the parent monopoly the sum of $450,000, for their malicious misrepresentations of the country, their murders, and their perjury respecting their claims to it." Hist, of Oregon, 213.
3 See his frenzied statement in some resolutions drafted by him and adopted by the Christian Church at Brownsville, Or., in 1869, and the almost equally excited preamble to another set of resolutions, in his Early Labors of Mission- aries in Oregon, 56-59 ; see also pp. 70, and 78-80, in Senate Executive Doc. S7, 41st Cong., 3d Sess., 1871. This will be cited henceforth as '* Executive Doc. 37." The claim of the American Board to 640 acres at Lapwai in the Nez Perces country under the act of Congress of Aug. 14, 1848, had been advanced in June 1862 by Cushing Eells acting as their attorney. Lapwai had been Spalding's station. See Executive Docs., 3d Sess. 37th Cong., II, 570-72.
28 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
At the time of the Whitman massacre Spalding had under- gone a teiTible nervous and physical strain from which apparently he never recovered.^
He believed the massacre had been instigated by the Catholic missionaries, and this belief made him almost if not quite a monomaniac on the subject of Catholicism. He charged the Catholic missionaries repeatedly with having instigated the massacre. These charges were echoed by others, and in their morbid imaginations, behind the scenes, as the concealed prime movers of the tragedy, stood the Hud- son's Bay Company, vindictive at the loss of Oregon through the activity of the missionaries. A fierce controversy arose whose embers are still smouldering.^ The Vicar-General of Walla Walla, the Reverend J. B. A. Brouillet, prepared a reply to these charges which was published in New York in 1853,3 and later in 1858 was included by J. Ross Browne, a special agent of the Treasury Department, in a report which
1 " A poor broken-down wreck, caused by the frightful ending of his fellow associates, and of his own missionary labors." Gray's Oregon, 482. " His nervous system remained a wreck ever afterward." Mrs. F. F. Victor, River of the West, Hartford, 1870, 409. " There can be no doubt that Spalding's mind was injured by this shock. All his subsequent writings show a want of balance which inclines me to regard with lenity certain erroneous statements in his publications. I find in the Oregon Statesman of August 11, 1855, this line: * H. H. Spalding a lunatic upon the subject of Catholicism and not over and above sane upon any subject.' " H. H. Bancroft, Oregon, I, 665, note. On the other hand, Mr, A. Hinman who knew Spalding before and after 1847, in a private letter dated Mar. 5th, 1901, says : " The statement made by Professor Bourne that the strain occasioned by the massacre unbalanced Mr. Spalding's mind is without the semblance of any foundation whatever. He was the same Spalding after the massacre as he was before, truthful and reliable." Of Spalding's trustworthiness the reader will have an opportunity to judge a little later.
2 A sketch of this controversy written with a strong Protestant bias and in places with obvious lack of candor will be found in J. G. Craighead's The Story of Marcus Whitman, Philadelphia, 1895, 86-101. Gray's Oregon fairly vibrates with the passion of it. The accounts of the massacre written at the time by the missionaries, may be read in Mowry's Marcus Whitman, and the Early Days of Oregon.
8 Protestantism in Oregon : Account of the Murder of Dr. Whitman and the Ungrateful Calumnies of H. H. Spalding, Protestant Missionary, by the Rev. J. B. A. Brouillet, N. Y., 1853. Brouillet had saved Spalding's life.
THE LEGEND OF MARCUS WHITMAN 29
he prepared for the Commissioner of Indian Affairs on the Indian War in Oregon and Washington Territories.^
Brouillet's reply was temperate in tone and in marked contrast to the tremulous passion of Spalding's articles, but he made assertions about the attitude of the Indians toward the Protestant missionaries, about the inefficacy of their work, and the worldly interests which influenced them which Spalding and his missionary colleagues regarded as slanders. But to have this Catholic disparagement of their labors dis- tributed as a public document, of which he became aware as has been said at about the same time ^ when the claim to the Lapwai Mission station fell through, and the Hudson's Bay Company's claims were recognized, incensed Spalding beyond endurance and roused him to ceaseless efforts to overwhelm the Catholics with obloquy and to demonstrate the injustice of the forfeiture of the title to the Lapwai Mission Station. He began writing and lecturing ^ on what the missionaries had done for Oregon, upon the work of Whitman, and the mas- sacre. He secured a large number of affidavits repelling as false Brouillet's charges and induced many religious bodies to adopt resolutions drafted by himself setting forth his version of Whitman's achievements and the radical injustice of the treatment accorded to himself in the affair of the Lapwai sta- tion. These labors occupied five years, and in 1870 he came east, where through the influence of William E. Dodge, the
1 Executive Doc. [House of Rep.), 35th Cong., 1st Sess., No. 38. Spalding's charges are quoted on pages 49-51.
2 The exact date is uncertain. Spalding said it was " long after its publica- tion." Exec. Doc. 37, 5.
3 Bancroft says, I, 657, note : " In 1866-67 Spalding revived the memories of twenty years before, and delivered a course of lectures on the subject of the Waiilatpu mission, which were published in the Albany (Or.) States Rights Demo- crat, extending over a period from November 1866 to February 1867." But the lectures apparently began at least one year earlier, for in one of them printed in the Early Labors, he says it is eighteen years since the massacre, which occurred in November, 1847. Exec. Doc. 37, 26.
The articles in The Pacific, it will be remembered, appeared in 1865. The Rev. Myron Eells informs me that Spalding's articles extended over a year. He has one, No. 37, which appeared in January, 1868.
30 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
Vice-President of the American Board, he was enabled to get the material which he had compiled and collected in defence of Whitman and of himself published under the title : Early Labors of the Missionaries of the American Boards etc., in Oregon^ etc., as Executive Document 87 (Senate), 41st Con- gress, 3d session.^
It was as an element in this extraordinary campaign of vindication that the legendary story of Whitman was devel- oped. Nothing could more effectively catch the public ear and prepare the public mind for resentment against the Catholics than to show that Whitman saved Oregon to the United States and then lost his life a sacrifice to the malig- nant disappointment of the " Jesuits " and the Hudson's Bay Company.
Some of the heads to the various sections in this collection may be quoted to show its range, but no adequate idea of the hodge-podge can be gained by any description. One must believe it unique in all the vast mass which has issued from the Government Printing Office.
I. " The Oregon of 1834 " ; II. " The helpless condition of the territory at that date in the hands of the Hudson's Bay Company"; III. "Hostility of the Hudson's Bay Company to American citizens." IV. " The early Oregon missions. Their importance in securing the country to the Americans." This section contains the chapter, " The Martyr Whitman's services to the Emigrant Route. His terrific winter journey through the Rocky Mountains. His successful mission at Washington." (This chapter contains the articles from The Pacific^ quoted above, on Whitman's ride.) V. "The Whit- man massacre and the attempts to break up the American settlements." VI. "Who instigated the Indians to murder the Missionaries and the Americans ? " The material relating to the Lapwai station is subordinate in amount to that vindi- cating the missionaries and will be found on pp. 58-59, 69, and 79-80.
1 Once printed as a public document, the evidence and testimony in behalf of Spalding could be utilized effectively in renewing the effort to recover the mis- sion claim.
THE LEGEND OF MARCUS WHITMAN 31
More than once it is directly asserted that Whitman was murdered because his journey to Washington frustrated the policy of the Hudson's Bay Company. For example :
" There is abundant proof to show that the said Whitman massacre and the long and expensive wars that followed were commenced by the abovesaid British monopoly for the pur- pose of breaking up the American settlements and of regain- ing the territory, and that they were especially chagrined against the said Whitman as being the principal agent in dis- appointing this scheme." ^
The constant reiteration of the Whitman story in Spalding's collection of materials in Doc, 37 emphatically illustrates the reliance that was placed upon it.^
Having indicated, so far as has been practicable in the absence of explicit testimony, the occasion and motives which gave rise to the legend of Marcus Whitman, I will now com- plete the story of its diffusion and acceptance. In the summer of 1866 during the period of suspense in regard to the settlement of the Hudson's Bay Company's claims, and while the counsel were taking testimony in Oregon, Mr. W. H. Gray, the former mechanic and helper at the Whitman mission, published his version of the early history of Oregon in a series of articles in the Astoria Marine (xazette. These articles were an intensely bitter arraignment of the Hudson's Bay Company, and were later incorporated into his History of Oregon.^ In one of them'* he told the story of Whitman's
1 Exec. Doc. 37, 42. In the report of Dr. G. H. Atkinson's address before the American Board at Norwich in 1868 it is said : " He told most effectively the story of the manner in which the heroic missionary Dr. Whitman, who was sub- sequently murdered for the deed, made the journey from Oregon to Washington in 1842," etc. The Congregationalist, Oct. 15, 1868.
2 Cf. for example, 20, 23, 25, 42, 75-76, and 78, Exec. Doc. 37, 41st Cong., 3d Sess.
8 In the preface to this work the reader is promised, among other things, "The American History of the Hudson's Bay and Puget Sound Agricultural Companies."
* The Astoria Marine Gazette^ Aug. 6, 1866. Cf. History of Oregon, 315-6. Curiously enough, in the History, Gray preferred to quote Spalding's article in The Pacific.
32 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
intercession in Washington in behalf of Oregon, as he declared he had heard it from Whitman himself, but sub- stantially as Spalding had narrated it the year before with one important exception.^ Following these articles in chronologi- cal order comes Dr. Treat's address before the American Board at Pittsfield in September, and the publication of the story in The Congregationalist, October 5th, from which it was copied by the New York Evening Post, and in turn from the Post by the Portland Oregonian of November 16,^ 1866.
1 The nature of this exception and the character of Gray as a witness will appear from the following extract from his deposition under oath, Aug. 1 1, 1866, during the taking of testimony in the Hudson's Bay and Puget Sound Agricul- tural Companies' case.
" Int.[errogatory] 29. * Are the statements made by you in that article [in the Marine Gazette, Aug. 6] true 1 '
" Ans. * I think they are, to the best of my knowledge and belief.'
" Int. 30. ' Did Dr. Whitman tell you that he went to see Mr. Webster and Mr. Fillmore for the purpose stated in that article ? '
*' Ans. ' Dr. Whitman, when he left his station to go to the States, gave me the facts as stated in that or previous articles. On his return he visited me at Ore- gon City ; he gave me the substance, almost verbatim, as near as I can recollect, of that article.'
" Int. 31. ' Did he say that he saw Mr. Webster as Secretary of State, and Mr. Fillmore as President on the subject 1 '
"Ans. ' He said he called upon them both, and had conversations with them.'
" On being cross-questioned closely as to Fillmore, Gray said, * I had a doubt in my own mind when I penned the article whether it was him or Tyler.*
"Int. 38. ' Did Dr. Whitman inform you that Mr. Webster stated that he (Mr. Webster) was ready to part with what was to him an unknown and unimportant portion of our national domain, for the privileges of a small settlement in Maine, and the fisheries on the banks of Newfoundland ? '
"Ans. 'The substance of that idea was communicated to me by Dr. - Whitman.'
" It is subsequently recorded : * The witness desires to state that since testi- fying on cross-examination he has ascertained that Mr. Tyler was President, instead of Mr. Fillmore, at the time of Dr. Whitman's visit to Washington.' "
Hudson's Bay and Puget Sound Agricultural Co.'s Claims, IV. Evidence for the United States. Washington. 1867. 172-4 and 191.
I am indebted to Mr. W. I. Marshall of Chicago for the information that Gray was cross-examined on this Whitman matter and that a complete set of the doc- uments relating to the claims of these companies is in the State Library at Albany where I consulted them. Again, in 1883, Gray solemnly afBrmed that his statements about Whitman's interviews in Washington, in his History, 315-8, were derived from Whitman himself. Eells, Marcus Whitman, 9.
^ Gray's Oregon, 480. " We ask in astonishment : Has the American Board at
THE LEGEND OF MARCUS WHITMAN 33
In 1868 the Rev. H. K. Hines, a Methodist clergyman of Fort Vancouver, introduced the story to the people of that denomination in a vividly written article in the Ladies' Re- pository of Cincinnati.^ More important, however, were the efforts of Dr. Atkinson during his sojourn in the East in 1868-69. He told the story of the Oregon Mission and of Whitman's saving the country to the United States with thrilling effect at the meeting of the American Board in Nor- wich, Ct.^ Later he addressed the Chamber of Commerce in New York, through the influence of Mr. William E. Dodge, and the Board of Trade in Chicago.^ The significance of Dr. Atkinson's advocacy for the spread of the story at this time will appear from the testimony of Mrs. Atkinson in regard to her husband's activities. " He there took the opportunity to try to establish the fact of Doctor Whitman going to Wash- ington in midwinter to save Oregon to the United States. In Oregon at that time very few admitted this, but Doctor Atkinson was firm in the belief of this important fact, and urged Doctor Whitman's associate missionaries to speak out to establish it, but there was great opposition to the idea, especially by enemies and non-sympathizers with mission- aries."* The opposition to the story in Oregon evidently prompted Gray to appeal to A. Lawrence Lovejoy, who accompanied Whitman on his journey, for confirmation, but
last opened its ears, and allowed a statement of that noble martyr's efforts to save Oregon to his country to be made upon its record 1 "
1 See Extracts in Exec. Doc. 37 y pp. 24-25, Thirty years later, in his Mis- sionary History of the Pacific North- West, 469 (Portland, 1899), Mr. Hines gives an account of Whitman's journey in pretty exact accordance with the facts, the only fabulous incident being the alleged report, by the emigration of 1 842, that the United States would probably relinquish Oregon to England.
2 The Congregationalist, Oct. 15, 1868. The address in fuU was printed in the Missionary Herald, Mar. 1869, 76-82.
8 Biography of G. H. Atkinson, pp. 147 and 500-501. The New York ad- dress is published in the Biography, 286-299. It was issued in a pamphlet at the time by John W. Amerman, New York.
* Biography, 147. The reader will note that three years after the publication of the story of Whitman's ride "to save Oregon" "very few" in Oregon believed it.
3
34 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
Lovejoy's reply failed to substantiate the essentials of the Spalding story.^
Among the other publications of 1869 which gave currency to the story may be mentioned Mrs. F. F. Victor's The River of the West, an article by her in the Overland magazine,^ and Dr. Rufus Anderson's Foreign Missions, their Relations and their Claims?
The first elaborate presentation in book form of the legend of Marcus Whitman will be found in G-ray^s History of Oregon, Portland, 1870. William H. Gray, as has been said, was origi- nally the mechanic and helper at the Whitman mission, from which he resigned in September 1842. As a contemporary of Whitman, his testimony was naturally regarded from the first as an important corroboration of Spalding's narrative. His account, although professedly based upon his own knowledge and interviews with Whitman, was derived from Spalding, whose articles in the Pacific he quotes. Like Spalding, Gray was equally vindictive towards the Hudson's Bay Company and the Catholics, and made repeated use of the Whitman story to create public opinion against them both.*
In the following year, 1871, Spalding's compilation, Early Labors of Missionaries in Oregon,^ which has already been
1 See Lovejoy's letter to Gray of Nov. 6, 1869. Gray's Oregon, 324-327.
2 The River of the West, Hartford, 1869, pp. 308 and 312. Gray's articles in the Astoria Marine Gazette were the source from which she drew the account. The Overland, Aug. 1869, pp. 154-55. Mrs. Victor accepted the incident of the Walla Walla dinner in the Overland article, but expressed some doubt as to whether Whitman exerted any real influence in Washington, or had much to do with starting the emigration of 1843. Five years later in the Overland, 1874, she still accepted the legend in part, pp. 45, 122, and 126. When by subsequent investigation she found that the story was fictitious, and said so, she was de- nounced as the enemy of missions.
* New York, 1869, see p. 200. The statement was derived from Doctor Atkin- son's speech before the American Board.
* Gray's Oregon, pp. 288-291, 315-317, 322-327, and 361.
5 Executive Doc. 37, Senate, 41st Cong., Third Session. The true character of Spalding's compilation was set forth in a review in The Catholic World for Feb. 1872, 665-682. This is the only critical examination of this document which I have seen. Internal evidence indicates that it was written by one of the Catholic priests familiar with the events of the massacre, and I am inclined to
THE LEGEND OF MARCUS WHITMAN 35
described, appeared and seemed to supply a varied mass of first-hand confirmatory evidence. Critical study of it, how- ever, soon reveals that nearly every statement in it bearing on Whitman's journey originated with Spalding himself. The peculiar style, the recurrence of identical phrases and of the same historical errors, and other internal evidence make it clear that this document has no value as testimony beyond that of Spalding's own word.
A decade now passes without any noteworthy addition to the literature of the Whitman legend,^ but its next appear- ance gave it a decided lift in the world, for it was deemed worthy of mention, although with some critical reservation by an eminent historian. Von Hoist, in his chapter on the Oregon Question, wrote of Webster : " and it is said that he was actually ready to give up Oregon, if England would, in consideration therefor, show an inclination to make con- cessions in the settling of the boundary of Maine, and the question of the cod-fisheries ; but that Whitman, the mission- ary, succeeded in preventing Tyler's concurrence in this plan by promising to lead a caravan overland to Oregon. How much truth there is in this story can probably never be authentically determined." ^
think that Vicar General Brouillet was the author. The present editor of The Catholic World was unable to give any information on the subject.
More than half of J. G. Craighead's The Story of Marcus Whitman (Phila- delphia, 1895), {. e. 86-182, is devoted to a defence of Spalding's document and a <jriticism of this article in The Catholic World. Doctor Craighead's defence of Spalding is futile. It rests on the assumption that Spalding was a trustworthy witness, which, as I shall show, was far from the case.
* Doctor Atkinson gave the story prominence in his Centennial address, The American Colonist, before the Pioneer Historical Society at Astoria, Feb. 22, 1876. See his Biography, 260-272. It was in preparation for this that he wrote to A. L. Lovejoy for an account of his recollections of Whitman's journey. Lovejoy's reply is printed on pp. 272-275 and in Nixon's How Marcus Whitman Saved Oregon, 305-312. J. Quinn Thornton, in his History of the Provisional Gov- ernment of Oregon, accepts the legend of Whitman's having effected a change in the Oregon policy by his journey to Washington. Constitution, etc., of the Oregon Pioneer Assoc, Salem, Or. 1875, 68. Thornton was a pioneer of 1846, and a friend of the Whitmans.
2 Von Hoist, Constitutional History of the U. S., Chicago, 1881, lU,. 51-52. Von Hoist cites as his source Gray's Oregon, 290. He accepted the assertion of
36 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
The next tkree or four years were critical in the history of the legend of Marcus Whitman. In the Northwest Mrs. Frances Fuller Victor ^ and the Hon. El wood Evans ,2 who had earlier given currency to the story, had now become convinced that it was a fabrication and attacked it with great vigor. It is to be hoped that the history of this controversy may some day be published, for the picture of the grapple of criticism with a legend in its earlier growth, and of the survival if not victory of the fiction in spite of crushing attack in an age which flatters itself on its intelligence, would be full of sobering instruction for the historical student.
Whitman's leadership of the Emigration of 1843, and apparently the fable about Sir George Simpson's political intrigues.
1 Mrs. Victor became an assistant to H. H. Bancroft about the year 1878. Bancroft's Literary Industries, N. Y. ed., 293. She is the author of the volumes on Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Colorado, Wyoming, and Nevada, in his series. Soon after the publication of her River of the West (1870), Mrs. Victor discovered that she had been led into error in following Gray's articles in the Astoria Marine Gazette in regard to the American Board Mission history and particularly in regard to Whitman's acts and motives. For a long time she supposed that his misstatements were merely errors. Her first sus- picions that the Whitman story had been manufactured arose from her discovery that the Spalding-Gray narrative was being used in a petition to Congress by Spalding and Eells in pushing the claim of the American Board for the stations at Waiilatpu and Lapwai. " This document Mr. Spalding refused to let me see, although he had it in his hands at the time I asked for it without a doubt that he would allow me to see it. This incident occurred soon after the publication of the History and of The River of the West, and before I had offered any public criticism of Gray's statements." Letter from Mrs. Victor, May 18, 1901. This " petition " was probably Exec. Doc. 37, or that part of it which begins on p. 41 of the document. An extract is printed below on p. 101. Mrs. Victor apparently did not know of Spalding's articles in The Pacific, which antedated Gray's nearly a year. I understand from what Mrs. Victor writes that she convinced Mr. Evans in regard to the Whitman matter.
2 Elwood Evans went out to Puget Sound from Philadelphia in 1851, as Deputy Collector of Customs. Returning home in 1852 he again went to the Northwest as private secretary to Governor Stevens, 1853. From this time he was a careful observer of events and student of the history of the Northwest. He wrote a history of Oregon, the MS. of which, with a mass of other material, he put at Bancroft's disposal, who awards him high praise as lawyer, scholar, and writer. Literary Industries, 292, 350-51. Bancroft's History of Washington, etc., 54. He was the author of the general historical chapters in the History of the Pacific Northwest, Oregon, and Washington, Portland, Oregon, 1889. The true account of Whitman's journey, and a brief refutation of the fictitious account, will be found in this work, I, 197-8.
THE LEGEND OF MARCUS WHITMAN 37
The strongest champion of the story at this crisis was the Rev. Myron Eells, a son of Gushing Eells. In 1882 he published his History of Indian Missions on the Pacific Coast} In the first part of this work he tells the true history of Whitman's journey as derived from the contemporary evi- dence in the Missionary Herald ^ and in the second . part the fictitious account as derived from Spalding, Gray, Geiger, and Gushing Eells.^ To the untrained reader the second narra- tive would seem equally as well authenticated as the first.
Mr. Eells' next contribution was a pamphlet entitled Marcus Whitman, M, D. Proofs of his work in saving Oregon to the United States, and in promoting the Immigration of ISIfS,^ In this is reproduced all the first-hand testimony that the most strenuous exertions had been able to gather at that stage of the controversy. All that is presented in addition to the assertions of Spalding and Gray and the earlier statement of Gushing Eells is made up of the recollections in 1883 of William Geiger, Gushing Eells, Mrs. E. Walker, Perrin B. Whitman, Alanson Hinman, and S.» J. Parker, M. D., of conversations with Whitman forty years earlier. There is no dated evidence that any one of these men revealed the tenor of these conversations before the publication by Spald- ing and Gray in 1865-66 of their recollections of substan- tially identical conversations. The testimony of these men will be examined in connection with that of Spalding and Gray. Nowhere in Mr. Eells' pamphlet is the contemporary first-hand testimony, printed in the Missionary Herald in 1843, reproduced.
The critical examination of the case by Elwood Evans and Mrs. Victor, if one may judge from the citations of their news- paper letters by their opponents, was searching and ought to have convinced unbiassed minds. Their conclusions are
1 Philadelphia, 1882.
2 See pp. 43-46.
' See pp. 167-181. Dr. Atkinson's Introduction emphasizes Whitnian's agency in defeating " Sir George Simpson's attempt at Washington to buy Oregon for Newfoundland and the cod fisheries," 4.
* Portland, Or., 1883, Geo. H. Hines.
38 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
stated by Mr. Eells in his pamphlet and in two articles by Rev. Dr. Thomas Laurie in the Missionary/ Herald.^ These articles make a show of candor by pointing out the errors of detail in the statements of Spalding and Gray, but there is no real criticism of the evidence, and Dr. Laurie's fundamental disingenuousness is proved by the fact that although he was in a way the official historian ^ of the Board he did not even intimate that their records and letter books of 1842-43 contained any evidence to settle the controversy, nor did he choose to bring again to light the printed testimony of the Missionary Herald. Not only that, but he replies to Mrs. Victor and Mr. Evans by quoting statements of Gushing Eells that the contemporary records show to be errors. Again, when Mr. Evans asserted that Whitman would not have gone east in 1842-43 if it had not been for the order to discontinue the mission stations at Lapwai and Waiilatpu, Dr. Laurie replies : *' The writer will not say how it was, but let Dr. Whitman speak for himself," and then quotes a letter of Whitman's four years later.^ Why Dr. Laurie refrained from saying " how it was " will appear later.
The position of Elwood Evans as summarized by Dr. Laurie was : (1) " Dr. Whitman's journey in 1842-43 had no political intent or significance whatever. (2) No desire or wish to defeat British claim to the territory or any part of it had any influence in actuating such a journey. (3) His exclusive purpose was to have the Board rescind its order to abandon Lapwai and Waiilatpu." *
1 " Dr. Whitman's Services in Oregon," Missionary Herald, Feb. and Sept., 1885, pp. 55-63, 346-354. The arguments of Mr. Evans and of Mrs. Victor will be found in the Portland Oregonian of December 26, 1884, and February 8 and 15, 1885.
2 He published in 1885, The Ely Volume ; or the contribution of our Foreign Mis- sions to Science and Human Well-Being, Boston, 1885. On pp. 76-82 is an ac- count of Whitman's achievements, based on Dr. Atkinson's article in the Mission- ary Herald of March, 1 869.
* Missionary Herald, 1885, 350. On this letter see infra, p. 97.
4 The Missionary Herald, 1885, 353, from The Oregonian of Dec. 26, 1884. As these conclusions are identical with those set forth in the second part of this paper, I may say that when I wrote the article on The Legend of Marcus Whitman^
THE LEGEND OF MARCUS WHITMAN 39
This controversy engendered much bitterness of feeling and recrimination.' Mr. Evans and Mrs. Victor and the other critics were denounced as the enemies of missions and as the champions of the secularists and Jesuits ; and Mr. Evans asserted in turn his belief the legend did not originate with Spalding and Gray, but that they were put up to it by Secretary Treat of the American Board in order that the Board might secure grants of land from the Government in recognition of the services of the missions. ^
The publication of new evidence has shown that Mrs. Victor and Mr. Evans were over confident in their refusal to believe that Whitman went to Washington, but their main position, as summarized above, was solidly established. In view of this, the comments on the controversy of Myron Eells are of interest : " The discussion which followed (the denial of the truth of the Whitman story), often called the Whitman controversy, was long and voluminous, especially in 1884- 85. Dr. Eells followed it with the greatest interest, though he let others do the most of the writing. At times he almost feared that from Dr. Whitman, from the cause of missions, from the cause of Christ would be snatched the honors which he believed belonged to them." ^ Again : " In 1885 the Whitman controversy was the fiercest, especially in the Portland Oregonian, where I published three long articles. I also published a pamphlet in his defence.^ At times I almost felt that the public would believe I was defeated. But the controversy was fought through; we had the last
which was published in the American Historical Review, Jan. 1901, 1 had not seen Mr. Eells' pamphlet or Dr. Laurie's articles, and did not know the details of the controversy in Oregon and "Washington. Mr. Evans's own statements of his posi- tion may be found in Note C, at the end of this essay.
1 The Weekly Ledger, Tacoma, Jan. 16, 1885, cited by Dr. Laurie, Mission- ary Herald, 1885, 351.
3 Father Eells. — A Biography of Gushing Eells, D. D., By Myron Eells. Boston and Chicago, 1884, 113.
* This pamphlet included Mr. Eells' three articles, and papers by E. C. Ross and "W. H. Gray in reply to Mr. Evans and Mrs. Victor. It was published by G. H. Hines, Portland, 1885.
40 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
words, which were not answered, and we felt that we had gained the victory." ^
The feeling was justified by the event. The real spread of the Legend and its acceptance by scholars of reputation dates from the period of this controversy. That this should be the case is surprising and at first sight perplexing. The explana- tion, however, is very simple and not at all creditable to American historical scholarship or critical discernment.
During the progress of this controversy the Rev. William Barrows, a Congregational clergyman, who forty years earlier was living in St. Louis and had seen Whitman at the time of his arrival there in February 1843, published a series of articles on the history of Oregon in the N^ew York Observer,^ which later, in a revised form, constituted a considerable part of the text of his Oregon : The Struggle for Possession, which was published in December, 1883, by Houghton, Mifflin, and Co., in the American Commonwealth Series, edited by Horace E. Scudder.
Although Dr. Barrows lived near Boston he seems to have successfully withstood the temptation, which would perhaps have proved irresistible to the ordinary historian, to consult the records of the American Board or even their printed Reports and the files of the Missionary Herald, He chose rather to draw from such turbid sources as Spalding's Execu- tive Document 37 and Gray's History. One of their fables, e, g,y the presence of Sir George Simpson in Washington, he rejects with engaging candor, only to insert it five times within fifty pages.^ Barrows' book is constructed without method, is bewildering and repetitious to the last degree, intermingling inextricably perversions of fact with pure fictions, and enormously distorting the history of the Oregon question by making it turn mainly on the activities of the small group of missionaries of the American Board and of Whitman in particular. It was a favorite theme with Mr.
1 Art. on Marcus Whitman in The Advance^ July 4, 1895.
2 The Observer for Dec. 7, 21, 1882 ; Jan. 4, 11, 18, 25, and Feb. 1, 1883. 8 Cf. pp. 233, with pp. 153, 158, 202, 203, 204.
THE LEGEND OF MARCUS WHITMAN 41
Barrows to expatiate on the ignorance of the west and of western history prevalent in the east,i and it was to be his singular fortune to write a book on the west the acceptance of which as history by eastern scholars was to be a far more convincing demonstration of his thesis than anything he ever said in its support.^
This rehash of Spalding and Gray, overladen with much irrelevant disquisition, became the accepted source of Oregon history for writers of text-books and popular articles, although H. H. Bancroft's Oregon^ which was published a year later, offered a painstaking and comprehensive narrative based on contemporary sources and scrupulously authenticated by foot- notes.^ But Bancroft's Oregon^ since it formed part of a series which was too vast for one man to write and which therefore must be the work of various anonymous subordinates, was ignored as " machine made " history, and therefore unworthy of consideration, and confidence was reposed in the handi- work of Mr. Barrows. Never were confiding scholars and a
^ Cf. his United States of Yesterday and To-morrow, Boston, 1888, passim.
2 The book was warmlj praised by the Magazine of American History, Dec. 1883. The editor, Mrs. Lamb, contributed a leading article to the September number, 1884, entitled A Glimpse of the Valley of many Waters, which was a de- scription of the Walla- Walla country. The legend of Whitman is narrated after Gray and Barrows.
* It is perhaps not superfluous to remark that the task before Mr. Bancroft and his " assistants " was essentially different from that before Mr. Winsor and his collaborators. In the one case the results of generations of historical investi- gation were to be sifted and summarized : in the other the critical and construc- tive work had to be done from the very beginnings. Whatever may be the defects of detail, the Bancroft History of the Pacific States is a great achieve- ment. It cannot be used uncritically, nor can many histories be safely used that way, but, after such a critical examination of the sources as I have made in this study of The Legend of Marcus Whitman, it is not a common experience to find in any general history, constructed directly from the raw material, so faithful and trustworthy a presentation of the contents of those sources as in the parts of the first volume of Bancroft's Oregon that I have subjected to this test. The gulf between it and Barrows is immeasurable. To Mrs. Frances Fuller Victor as the avowed author of Bancroft's Oregon, working under his editorial supervision, every student of Oregon history is under great obligations for her scholarly and honest presentation of the facta derived from the unparalleled collection of materials gathered by Mr. Bancroft.
42 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
more confiding public so taken in. The result has been that more people in this country know the fictitious history of the Oregon question invented by the Rev. H. H. Spalding than know the real facts, and that for many others who have not accepted the whole of the Whitman legend the real history of Oregon has been distorted out of all proportion. These are strong words, but the propagation of the legend of Marcus Whitman after the publication of Barrows' Oregon is simply amazing, in view of the almost concurrent publication of Bancroft's Oregon, in which the true history of Marcus Whit- man is told and the legend dismissed with a contemptuous footnote. ^
The first indication of the new life breathed into the legend by Barrows' Oregon was its insertion in a school history by Mr. H. E. Scudder.2 The significance of this was keenly appreciated by Gushing Eells : "When Dr. Eells was pre- sented with a copy of the latter work (Scudder's History of the United States, for Schools and Academies') which con- tains also [z. e., beside the narrative] a picture of Dr. Whit- man leaving his station for Washington, it was most plain that the truth learned by the school children had been fostered by God and would be scattered so far and wide and deep that no combination of learned men or human reasoning could successfully oppose it." ^
About the same time Charles Carleton Coffin, a most suc- cessful historical story teller for boys and girls, prepared from Spalding and Gray a vivid narrative of the incident for his Building the Nation, in which will be found all the legendary details of the original fiction.* The influence of Barrows was
1 " This is the statement made of "Whitman's object and arguments by the prudential committee to whom they were addressed : but Gray wickedly asserts that Whitman went to Washington with a political purpose, instead of going on the business of the mission." I, 343. Bancroft's Oregon was written before the Whitman controversy of 1882-84 but was not published until after it. This accounts for the slight attention paid to the Spalding-Gray story.
2 History of the United States, for Schools and Academies, Philadelphia, 1884, 348-49 ; cf. also, Scudder's New History of the United States, 1897, 310-11.
* Biography ofCushing Eells, 116.
* N.Y., 1883, pp. 371-86.
THE LEGEND OF MARCUS WHITMAN 43
now reinforced by the independent appearance of the story in several works of authority. The engagement of Dr. Atkinson to write the historical part of the article on Oregon in the Encyclopcedia Britannica secured its insertion there ,^ and, relying partly on Von Hoist and Barrows, Lyon G. Tyler gave it recognition with some criticism and correction in his Letters and Times of the Tylers? Likewise following Bar- rows and Gray, J. P. Dunn, Jr., the author of the volume on Indiana in the Commonwealth Series^ incorporated the story in his Massacres of the Mountains? The year following (1887) Samuel Adams Drake adopted in his Making of the Grreat West the legendary account of the cause of Whitman's journey, but passed by in discreet silence his political influence. He attributed to him the organization of the emigration of 1843.*
In 1889 the influence of Barrows is manifest in securing Whitman nearly a column in the Dictionary of American Biography? The mention in the articles on Oregon in the American supplement to the Britannica^ and in the Inter- national Cyclopaedia^ and the sketch in Blisi Encyclopaedia of Missions^ may also be attributed to the same source. In this same period the legend appears in two church histories of accepted authority.^
1 Vol. XVII (1884), 825.
2 Letters and Times of the Tylers, II, 438-39, Richmond, 1885, and III, Williams- burg, 1896, 47. Mr. Tyler published a letter in the Magazine of American History, Feb. 1884, 168-170, in which he explained his father's Oregon policy. Aside from this, he apparently accepts the Whitman story, and places confidence in Gray.
^ New York, 1886, 38-42. Executive Doc. 37 is, through Gray, Dunn's source for the account of The Whitman Massacre, 83-100.
4 Pp. 233, 239^0. Carl Schurz, in his Henry Clay, II, 278, credited Whitman with giving the government valuable information and with leading the emigra- tion of 1843.
5 Edited by James Grant Wilson and John Fiske, N. Y., 1889. For Mr. Charles H. Famam's elaborate History of the Descendants of John Whitman of Weymouth, Mass., New Haven, 1889, 237-39, the nephew of Doctor Whitman, Perrin B. Whitman supplied his version of the legend. See infra, pp. 65-66.
6 N. Y., 1891, art. Whitman.
"^ The History of Congregational Churches in the United States, by Williston
44 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
Following Mr. Charles Carleton Coffin, another successful writer of boys' books, Hezekiah Butterworth, gave the legend prominence in his tale, The Log School-House hy the Oolicm- Ma,^ and made it the subject of a poem from which a selec- tion may be quoted as a curiosity :
" That Spring, a man with frozen feet Came to the marble halls of state, And told his mission but to meet The chill of scorn, the scoff of hate. * Is Oregon worth saving ? ' asked The treaty-makers from the coast ; And him the Church with questions asked. And said, ' Why did you leave your post? '
" Was it for this that he had braved The warring storms of mount and sky ?
^ Yes ! — yet that Empire he had saved, And to his post went back to die — Went back to die from Washington, — Went back to die for Walla Walla For Idaho and Oregon.'*
In this review of the literature of the Legend of Marcus Whitman we now pass to the jesiv 1895, the date of the pub- lication of the first professed biographies. In that year the Rev. J. G. Craighead, for many years one of the editors of the I^ew York Evangelist^ who had been familiar with the story since 1870 and had in vain devoted weeks to the effort to authenticate the part of it describing Whitman's work in Washington,^ published his Story of Marcus Whitman : Early
Walker, D. D., 377-78, N. Y., 1894, and Congregationalism in America, by A. E. Dunning, D.D., N. Y., 1894, in Ch. XXI, contributed by Dr. Joseph E. Roy, 442.
1 N. Y,, 1893. The hero is aroused by Whitman's appearance in the east, p. 28. The legend is given in brief, pp. 235-38 ; the poem, pp. 244 ff. On p. 103 the author remarks : " Exact history has robbed this story of some of its romance, but it is still one of the noblest wonder-cales of our own or any nation." In 1890 the story finds a place in another widely used text- book, Montgomery's Leading Facts of American History, 725-58; ed. of 1900, 263-64.
2 See infra, p. 81, n. 1.
THE LEGEND OF MARCUS WHITMAN 45
Protestant Missions in the Northwest} As has already been said, the larger part of this volume is devoted to a defence of Spalding's Executive Document 37 from the attack of the Catholic World?' It was to be expected, then, that Doctor Craighead would accept Spalding and his fellow witnesses wherever their assertions were not in palpable contradiction to such other evidence as he was familiar with or chose to take into consideration. His book, consequently, is a typical specimen of specious apologetics. The apparently candid sifting and rejection of the obviously legendary narratives of Whitman's interviews with Tyler and Webster inspires the reader with confidence, and he is given no reason to suspect that other essential features of the story which Doctor Craig- head saves are just as destitute of contemporary evidence, or just as contradictory to known facts.
For example, he repeats the incidents of the Walla- Walla dinner, without even hinting that they had been completely disproved.^ Again, although he devotes one hundred pages to defending Spalding's Document against the Catholic Worlds he glides over the crushing attack of Mrs. Victor and Mr. Evans by giving a brief summary and then evading the point at issue. " Some writers," he remarks, " have endeavored to convince the public that the chief object of Doctor Whitman's winter journey to the east was not to induce immigration to Oregon nor to convey such information to our government as was needed in order to settle aright the question of boun- daries between Great Britain and the United States. They claim that his main purpose was to visit Boston, in order to induce the American Board to countermand an order sent out that year, on account of the hostile disposition shown by a few Indians, discontinuing two of the stations ; and thus con- centrating the missionaries for greater safety ; and in confir- mation they adduce the fact that his missionary associates
1 Philadelphia, 1895. Presbyterian Board of Publication and Sabbath School Work.
2 See supra, p. 34, n. 5.
8 Story of Marcus Whitman^ 60-61.
46 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
met together in order to discuss this very question the month previous to his leaving for the east." No intimation is given of the evidence in the files of the Missionary Herald ad- vanced by Mrs. Victor and Mr. Evans, and no effort is made to reply to their attack on Spalding's evidence except to quote Gushing Eells' letter to Secretary Treat of May 28, 1866, and the confirmatory testimony of Spalding and Gray, and then to draw the comforting conclusion : " This evidence . . . must prove conclusive to every candid mind, and settle this question, which indeed has only been raised within a few years." ^ Other examples of the superficial and disingenuous method of this writer might be given, but it is unnecessary. In the final chapter, " Oregon Saved to the United States," some of the most extravagant statements ever made about Whitman are quoted with approval.^
The other biography of this year is much better known. Its title is : How Marcus Whitman Saved Oregon ; a True Romance of Patriotic Heroism^ Christian Devotion, and Final Martyr- dom. — By Oliver W. Nixon, M. D., LL. D.s
1 Pages 66-68.
2 For example, this from The Advance of March 14, 1895 : "Is there in history the record of a man who by himself saved for his country so vast and so valu- able a territory as did Whitman by his prophetic heroism of 1842-3 ? His ride across the continent in the winter of 1842, a winter memorable for its severity, is without a parallel in history. It stands as the sublime achievement of a prophet and a hero, who saw and suffered that his country might gain. The United States paid $10,000,000 for Alaska. It bought Louisiana for millions more. It paid a Mexican War, blood, and money, for the acquisition of Texas and New Mexico. But what did it pay for Washington and Oregon and Idaho, a territory into which New England and the middle States might be put, with Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia and three Connecticuts ? It paid not one cent. That vast region cost the Nation nothing. It cost only the sufferings and perils of Marcus Whitman, who risked his life and endured aU hardships that the territory of his adoption might belong to the country of his birth."
3 Star Publishing Co., Chicago, 1895. Dr. Nixon has been the literary editor of The Chicago Inter-Ocean for twenty years or more, and in the columns of this journal he has been the standing champion of the Whitman story, rushing to its defence against criticism with an impetuosity that has rendered him apparently incapable of stating his opponents' position correctly or of verifying his own asser- tions in rebuttal. Cf. references, p. 54, infra.
THE LEGEND OF MARCUS WHITMAN 47
An ardent champion of the story, through thick and thin, Dr. Nixon accepts all its legendary elements such as the Walla Walla dinner, and passes over in silence all adverse evidence. By his enthusiasm and the deft interweaving of genuine materials from Mrs. Whitman's diary and letters, and Dr. Whitman's letters with the fictions of Spalding and the other sponsors of the story he has made his book as inter- esting as a narrative as it is utterly untrustworthy as history.
Dr. Nixon's multiform and unflagging advocacy of the legend of Marcus Whitman entitles him to rank with Wil- Kam Barrows as a dominating influence in its later diffusion. Two weeks after the publication of his book, on July 4th, " forty of the leading ministers of that city (Chicago) and in nearby towns, took for texts the heroic life of Marcus Whit- man for patriotic sermons. "^ The acceptance of the legend by some of the school text-book writers now inspired its ad- vocates to solicit its insertion in as many as possible. Dr. Nixon may here tell the story: —
"Another Grand Feature
is, we are reaching and have reached the writers and pub- lishers of history. Two of the best juvenile histories of the past year, which will go into the hands of millions of chil- dren, have excellent Whitman chapters. I have letters from both authors and publishers who express their delight in writing them. I am in receipt of letters from other eminent historians who express regret that the name of Whitman is not mentioned in their chapters, and one of them adds, ' Rest assured. Doctor, when I issue a new edition Whitman shall have a grand chapter. ' I think we can hail such victories as being as substantial as any achieved on any field of battle. "^
It is not necessary here to refer to all the text-books which have now accepted the story, but a few deserve notice. An illustration of Dr. Nixon's labors is no doubt afforded by the
1 From Dr. Nixon's Oration at Whitman College, Whitman College Quarterly^ m, No. 4, 1900, 14. The book was pubUshed June 20, 1895.
2 Dr. Nixon's Oration, loc. cit., 17-18.
48 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
School nistory of the United States^ by William A. Mowry and Arthur May Mowry, ^ which was published in 1898. In the body of the work all that is said is " Dr. Marcus Whit- man had practically saved this country to us by an emigration brought over in 1843," but in an appendix, just preceding the account of the War with Spain, a page is devoted to the legend.
Reliance upon Barrows' Oregon^ on the other hand, accounts for the acceptance of the legend by such historians as Pro- fessor Burgess, Professor McMaster, and John W. Foster. Professor Burgess asserts that President Tyler upon receiving the information which Whitman brought ceased to consider giving up Northern Oregon and adds : " The Administration caused Dr. Whitman's descriptions of Oregon to be printed and distributed throughout the United States and also his offer to lead a colony to take possession of the country." ^ Professor McMaster has popularized Barrows in his excellent school history, 3 and Ex-Secretary John W. Foster has fallen into the same trap.* Probably the same explanation is to
1 Boston, 1898, 254 and 418. In the First Steps in the History of our Country ^ by the same authors, Boston, 1899, the whole history of the Oregon question cen- ters around Marcus Whitman, and the chapter concludes, p. 234 : " Thus we see how, through the sterling patriotism, intrepidity, and energy of one man, it has happened that three states, Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, were added to our Union, three stars to our flag, and six members to the American Senate."
2 Burgess, The Middle Period, N. Y., 1897, 315-16. It is needless to say that these statements are without authentic evidence and are derived from Spalding through Barrows.
8 McMaster, School History, N. Y., 1897, 322-324. Barrows is followed also in presenting Spalding's Protestantized version of the mission of the Four Flathead Indians to St. Louis in 1832. In McMaster's With the Fathers (1896), in the chapter on " The Struggle for Territory," the Whitman legend is told with vivid details, 307-10.
* See A Century of American Diplomacy, Boston, 1900, 305. Another victim of Barrows is Professor Thomas of Haverf ord. See his History of the United States, Boston, 1893 and 1897, 242-43, and also his Elementary History, Boston, 1900, 290- 298, where, as in Mowry's book, the story of the Oregon question is the story of Whitman. Among other text-books which have incorporated the story may be mentioned Gordy's, 1898 (it is entirely omitted in the edition of 1899), and Charles Morris's two books. In his History of the United States, Philadelphia, 1897, it appears in a footnote, p. 315, but in his Primary History, 1899, 210-15, the com-
THE LEGEND OF MARCUS WHITMAN 49
be given of the qualified acceptance of the story by Professor Sparks ^ and the unquestioning presentation of the legend in all its details by Dr. W. E. Griffis.2
Of the latest writers to be mentioned, one boldly takes her stand on the borderland between history and fiction. Eva Emery Dye's McLoughlin and Old Oregon^ A Chronicle^^ gives evidence of much conscientious study. It is a " chron- icle," in the same sense as Quentin Durward or one of Shake- speare's " histories." Where documents exist they are utilized, where they do not exist invention takes their place. This book is a literary picture of early Oregon, of exceptional interest and, in outline and coloring, rich in instruction. In regard to the Whitman story, it is not more unhistorical than Nixon's book, but at the critical points in the story it assumes, for the time being, the semblance of carefully authenticated history, when, in reality, it is a skilful com- bination of the true history, the Spalding legend and the author's own invention. The other, Dr. William A. Mo wry, essays the impossible task of combining into a consistent and trustworthy narrative the Spalding legend and the genuine materials. His Marcus Whitman and The Early Days of Oregon^ is perhaps the most plausible attempt to save the legend, stripped of its exaggerations, that has been made. He freely acknowledges that Spalding erred in "details," and surrenders the most obviously fabulous features of the story. His point of view in writing Oregon history is that of the missionary group, and his book will, no doubt, be hailed as a successful defence, but his apparent success is won at a sacrifice of his standing as an historical investigator.
plete legendary account is to be found, and Marcus Whitman receives more space than Webster and Clay combined, and only a little less than is accorded to the whole Civil War.
1 The Expansion of the American People, Chicago, 1900, 306-7.
2 The Romance of Conquest, Boston, 1899, 172-173.
3 Chicago, 1900.
* New York, 1901. Dr. Mowry very kindly offered to send me advance sheets of his book to enable me to include it in my review of Whitman literature. This was a courtesy all the more to be appreciated because he must have realized that I could not approve of his method of using and of ignoring evidence.
4
50 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
Two or three examples may be given of his methods. In Chapter X he discusses the missionary situation in 1842 and Whitman's resolution to come east.
In this critical juncture, instead of setting before the reader all the contemporary uncolored testimony, Dr. Mowry begins with Gushing Eells' letter of 1866, written to sup- port the Spalding story. The next citation is from Mr. Eells' affidavit of forty years after the event; then comes an extract from Elkanah Walker's contemporary letter, which is attributed to Gushing Eells ! Although this error renders more glaring the inconsistency between the contemporary testimony and Gushing Eells' later statements. Dr. Mowry says nothing of this disagreement. It is not until Ghapter XV is reached that the record of the mission meeting authorizing Whitman's journey is printed, and then with the last eight words omitted.^
In discussing Whitman's relation to the emigration of 1843, Dr. Mowry omits all reference to the absolutely con- vincing adverse testimony printed by Myron Eells, and relies on such flimsy evidence as Spalding's Zachrey letter. ^ Again, comparison of his book with the extracts quoted in this essay from Mrs. Whitman's letters will reveal how clearly Dr. Mowry is the advocate and not the historian. His book will be searched in vain for any rigorous methodical criticism of the evidence.^ Dr. Mowry, however, in spite of the shortcomings of his narrative, has laid students under great obligation, by the documents he has printed.*
The new and "grand feature " of reaching the writers of school books which has been described, was, however, early
1 Page 175. The purpose of Whitman's journey as stated in the record was " to confer with the committee of the A. B. C. F. M. in regard to the interests of this mission." See p. 56.
2 Cf. Myron Eells' Marcus Whitman, 27-29, with Mowry's Marcus Whitman^ 194-196, and m/ra, pp. 93-95.
^ Dr. Mowry's reliance on Spalding leads him to quote Dr. White's letter to the Indian Commissioner from Spalding's garbled extract which reduces forty lines into nine. Mowry, 208. White's Ten Years in Oregon, 191.
* Especially the correspondence relating to the massacre.
THE LEGEND OF MARCUS WHITMAN 51
destined to confront an equally persistent and indefatigable effort to put before the authors of text-books the real facts in the case. "The Chicago Mephistopheles in this matter," as Dr. Nixon has feelingly characterized him, is Mr. Wil- liam I. Marshall, of the Gladstone school. Having convinced himself after what is probably the most painstaking exami- nation of the question that has ever been made, that the Whitman story was a fabrication, Mr. Marshall prepared to write a book on the subject. Before it was ready for publi- cation, however, his attention was arrested by the remarkable efflorescence of the legend in the newest and most attractive school text-books. Realizing as a practical teacher the tre- mendous significance of this phase of the development of the legend, and aware of the relative ineffectiveness of public controversy against such an array of writers and champions as would now rush into the fray, he began about three years ago a silent campaign by submitting portions of his manu- script and transcripts of his material to the authors of the existing text-books. In this way he convinced many that they had been taken in, and put others on their guard against a like misfortune. ^
1 Mr. Marshall writes that he first learned of the Whitman story through Dr. Mowry in 1877. In 1884, having become convinced that Whitman did not save Oregon, he criticised the story in a lecture in Baltimore (Nov. 13), and in 1885 in a lecture in Fitchburg (June 2) showed the story to be unfounded. An account of Mr. Marshall's labors was given by him at the meeting of the American His- torical Association at Detroit, Dec. 28, 1900, and will be found in the Annual Report for 1900. The results so far were indicated in an article in the School Weekly of Chicago, Eeb. 22, 1901, by which it appears that the following authors of school books acknowledge that they are convinced by the evidence presented by Mr. Marshall and announce their intentions either to omit or revise their ac- counts of Whitman : H. E. Scudder, D. H. Montgomery, J. B. McMaster, W. F. Gordy, A. F. Blaisdell, and Mrs. A. H. Burton. Edward Eggleston wrote that he did not " need to be warned against such a fake as the Whitman fable, which I am every now and then entreated to insert." John Fiske vrrote : " You have entirely demolished the Whitman delusion, and by so doing have made yourself a public benefactor. I am sorry to say that I was taken in by Barrows and Gray, and supposed what they said about Whitman to be true." The story is not to be found in any of Mr. Fiske's printed books, but he incorporated it in his centennial oration at Astoria in 1892. That he had been appealed to as early as February, 1895, to put it into his text-book would appear from his letter to President Pen-
62 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
The next episode in the history of the diffusion of the legend of Marcus Whitman is the wide celebration of the semi-centennial anniversary of his death. At the meeting of the American Board in New Haven in October, 1897, Mr. G, L. Weed of Philadelphia delivered an address, and a committee was appointed to arrange for memorial services in Boston and Washington, and for the general observance of Whitman day.^ Sunday, November 28, was selected, and its observance was urged in The Congregationalist? As a result it was reported in The Outlook that " on last Sunday the Congregational Churches of the United States very gen- erally celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the massacre of Dr. Whitman," and, in explanation. The Outlook reminded its readers that "Whitman was the first to discover the
rose of Whitman College which, is published in The Advance, March 14, 1895, in which he says : " If my series of works on American History ever come down to such a recent period, I shall try to do justice to the noble Doctor. If not I shall at some time revise my oration and print it in a volume of essays."
It will not be out of the way for me to say here that when I wrote my article " The Legend of Marcus Whitman," published in the American Historical Review in January, 1901, I knew nothing of Mr. Marshall's extensive researches, to which my attention was first called in December, 1900. I was likewise igno- rant of an article in The American Catholic Historical Researches for Oct. 1899, 187-197, by H. M. Beadle, in which the same conclusions are reached as in my own paper.
1 The Congregationalist, Oct. 21, 1897.
2 Ibid., Nov. 18. In this issue William A. Mowry published a long article on Whitman, in which he succeeded in finding support for his views by leaving out from his quotations from the records anything that militated against his position. In the November number of the Ladies' Home Journal, Mr. George L. Weed brought the complete Spalding legend before hundreds of thousands of readers. Dr. Nixon's account in his Oration of the action of the Board may be quoted : " The American Board were aroused from a silence of fifty years, and began to ask, What can we do ? They appointed a committee of their ablest men to recommend special services in the churches on the fiftieth anniversary of Whit- man's death, and many eloquent discourses were heard all over the East and Middle West." Mention may be made at this point of the part played in difius- ing a knowledge of the Whitman story by those who were engaged in raising money for an enlarged endowment for Whitman College. Dr. Nixon makes special mention of the labors of Miss Virginia Dox in New England, New York, Ohio, and Michigan. " There are 10,000 interested hearers and readers of the Whitman story to-day in all New England, where there were ten, five years ago." Whitman Coll. Quart., Ill, No. 4, 14 and 16.
THE LEGEND OF MARCUS WHITMAN 53
designs of the Hudson's Bay Company and the first to report those designs to the Government at Washington, whereby the territory which now includes the States of Oregon, Wash- ington, and a part of Idaho was saved to our country." ^
On that November 28 the labors of the obscure a^d for- gotten missionary, Henry H. Spalding, attained their cul- mination, and from hundreds of pulpits and to hundreds of thousands of readers during that month went forth his story of How Marcus Whitman Saved Oregon.
The coronation of the work was the vote for the Hall of Fame, two years later.
Rising obscurely in the columns of local papers, spreading slowly in missionary channels, the stream gathers volume and headway, successfully defeats all effort to arrest its course and rolls onward, until, in its particular province in American History, it has washed away landmarks and altered the face of the country. Whether the stream can be returned to its own channel and the history of the Oregon question be restored to its original outlines as they existed before 1865 is open to question. In one of his early articles the Reverend William Barrows after a highly imaginative picture of Whitman's interview with Webster remarked: —
"In a century or so that scene will furnish one of the grandest historical paintings of North America, Webster, Whitman, and Oregon : it will take about a century to clear the foreground of a thousand other men and petty scenes."
It has really taken only about fifteen years. The fore- ground is already clear of Wyeth and Kelly, of Jason Lee and Samuel Parker, of Senators Linn and Benton, and other protagonists of Oregon. The ambition of some of the present apostles of the Legend is higher still. One of them, the Hon. J. Wilder Fairbank, who delivers an illustrated lecture on The Ride that Saved an Empire^ concludes this effort with
1 The Outlook, Dec. 4. The celebration in Washington took place Dec. 9, and the meeting was addressed by Rev. Dr. Newman, Justice Brewer, and Gen. O. O. Howard. In Philadelphia a memorial to Whitman was dedicated Nov. 29. The serai-centennial was also celebrated at Walla Walla, where a monument was erected. See Whitman College Quarterly, Dec. 1897.
54 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
SL program which must make some of the elder generation "stare and gasp."
"Two names I purpose linking together before the youth of our land — Abraham Lincoln and Marcus Whitman. Two patriot^, two martyrs, these two men, lineal cousins, with the blood from their Whitman sire in their veins, no wonder they did such noble deeds, stood at their posts, died for their country. All honor to such heroes of the past. Let us keep in touch with them through the onward march of the twentieth century. In the interest of truth, justice, and American honor. " ^
To judge from the past, the prophecy of the Reverend Wil- liam Barrows in 1883, and the modest proposal of J. Wilder Fairbank in 1901, are quite as likely to attain realization as the disquieting vox clamantis of criticism is to get a respectful hearing. 2
PART II
The genesis and diffusion of the Legend of Marcus Whit- man have been set forth in detail to demonstrate beyond a doubt that the story was new in 1864 or 1865, and that, widespread as has been its diffusion since, every single ex- tant version is a branch from that parent stem, and depends upon testimony elicited subsequent to that first publication. It will now be my purpose to make clear the real cause and purpose of Marcus Whitman's journey east in 1842-43, to examine the evidence of his political services in Washington
1 New Haven Evening Register, Feb. 19, 1901.
2 Tor the benefit of any who have a curiosity to see how criticism affects the advocates of the Whitman story, T append references to some of the more important comments on and replies to my article in The American Historical Re- view. The Chicago Inter-Ocean, Dec. 30, 1900, Jan. 9, 10, 11, 21, 26, and Feb. 9 ; The Congregationalist, Jan. 19 ; The Advance, Jan. 17 and 24; The Interior, Jan. 17, and Feb. 14 ; The Christian Work, Mch. 7 ; The Homiletic Review, July, 1901 (Professor H. "W. Parker) ; Journal of Education, Jan. 24 (W. A. Mo wry), and President Penrose of Whitman College in the Boston Transcript of Jan. 21, and in many other prominent papers simultaneously. The last was a shot fired in the dark, as the author had not read the article to which he replied.
THE LEGEND OF MARCUS WHITMAN bb
and of his relation to the Oregon Emigration of 1843, to compare the legend with the real history, and to offer such explanation as can be given of the origin of some of the peculiar features of the fiction.
It will not be superfluous, perhaps, to remind the reader that the evidence advanced is the contemporary spontaneous testimony of the actors themselves at the time, and not their recollections or reports of their recollections, or reports of their subsequent conversations about their recollections first put in writing twenty to forty years later.
The real cause of Dr. Whitman's journey to the east was the decision of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions to discontinue the southern branch of the mission, and his purpose was to secure a reversal of that order, and reinforcements from the Board, and to bring back, if possible, a few Christian families. The rapidly increasing immigration into Oregon made an increase of Protestant missions seem essential if Oregon was to be saved from becoming Catholic.
Owing to difficulties of the work among the small and widely scattered groups of Indians and to dissensions among the missionaries ^ of the Oregon mission, the Prudential Com- mittee of the American Board passed the following resolu- tion, February 23, 1842: "That the Rev. Henry H. Spalding be recalled, with instructions to return by the first direct and suitable opportunity ; that Mr. William H. Gray be advised to return home, and also the Rev. Asa B. Smith on account of the illness of his wife; that Dr. Marcus Whitman and
1 Mrs. Whitman wrote her father in October, 1840: "The man who came with us [Spalding] is one who never ought to have come. My dear husband has suffered more from him in consequence of his wicked jealousy, and his great pique towards me, than can be known in this world. But he suffers not alone — the whole mission suffers, which is most to be deplored. It has nearly broken up the mission." See the whole letter in Transactions of the Oregon Pioneer Association for 1893, pp. 128-133. Mr. Spalding had been a suitor of Narcissa Prentiss (Mrs. Whitman). — Mrs. Dye's McLoughlin and Old Oregon, p. 19. On a point like this, Mrs. Dye would aim at fidelity to fact, and her statement is prac- tically confirmed by Mrs. Whitman's letter.
56 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
Mr. Cornelius Rogers be designated to the northern branch of the mission ; and that the two last named be authorized to dispose of the mission property in the southern branch of the mission." ^
This action of the Prudential Committee was discussed at the meeting of the Oregon Mission, September 26, 1842. Mr. Gray requested that he might be released to establish a boarding-school under the auspices of the Hudson's Bay Company's officials, which was refused. On the 28th it was
^^Besolved: That if arrangements can be made to continue the operations of this station, that Dr. Marcus Whitman be at liberty and advised to visit the United States as soon as practi- cable to confer with the committee of the A. B. C. F. M. in regard to the interests of this mission.'^
<*E. Walker, moder. '^Gushing Eells, Scribe, "H. H. Spalding."
Mr. Walker's diary for the days of the meeting of the Oregon Mission reads : —
" Monday^ 2Q. Rose quite early this morning, and made prep- arations for leaving our camp. We rode quite fast and reached the station of Dr. W.'s about ten, and found Spalding there. Did nothing of business until evening, when we had rather a session discussing Mr. Gray's case. Saw a man from Maine, and had considerable conversation with him on the state of things in the States.
" Tuesday, 27. We did not do much to-day. The Dr. pre-
1 Records of the Prudential Committee of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, at the Congregational House, Boston. Cf . The Missionary Herald, Jan. 1843, p. 14, and the Report of the A. B. C. F. M. for 1842, p. 194. The Indians at times were insolent and threatening. Cf. Whitman's letter of November, 1841. Trans, of the Or. Pioneer Assoc, 1891, 154-62.
2 From letter-book Oregon Indians in the records of the Board. The letter is dated, " Waiilatpu, Oct. 3d, 1842," and endorsed "Rec'd, 30 Mar., 1843." For the action of the mission see Miss. Herald, Sept. 1843, p. 356, also Reptrrt of the A. B. C. F. M., 1843, 169, where these records are correctly summarized.
THE LEGEND OF MARCUS WHITMAN 57
ferred some charges against myself and Mr. E. which, we did not admit, and held him to the talk we had last summer. The meeting in the evening was held, and it was interesting to me.
" Wednesday^ 28. Rose this morning with the determination to leave, and found Mr. S. had the same view, and was making preparations to leave, as he felt that nothing could be done. At breakfast the Dr. let out what was his plan in view of the state of things. We persuaded them to get together and talk matters over. I think they felt some better afterwards. Then the question was submitted to us of the Dr. 's going home, which we felt that it was one of too much importance to be decided in a moment, but finally came to the conclusion if he could put things at that station in such a state that it would be safe we could consent to his going, and with that left them and made a start for home." ^
On October 3, 1842, Mr. Walker wrote to the Board a long letter regarding the work in Oregon, urging them to keep up the missions for the benefit of the incoming white settlers as well as for the Indians for whom they had been established. "With this view of the case," he writes: —
"You will see why we were unwilling to abandon the South branch, for, as it seemed to us, by giving that up we were giving up the whole mission. Notwithstanding we thought that the object of your letter had been accomplished by the reconcilia- tion which had taken place, still we felt ourselves placed in a trying situation, we hardly knew what course to pursue, but concluded to wait until we could receive an answer to the [letter of the] committee of the mission stating that the diffi- culties of the mission were settled. We found too that there was a difficulty in sustaining the mission, as so many had withdrawn and as the reinforcements had stopped at the Islands [Hawaiian Islands]. After considerable consultation without coming to any definite conclusion, and as we were about starting for our place, a proposition was made by Dr. Whitman for him
^ From the MS. in the possessioa of the Oregon Hist. Soc.
58 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
to return to the States this winter to confer with the Prudential Committee and conduct a reinforcement out next summer if it was thought best to continue the mission. At least something definite could be decided upon. The proposition being presented just as we were on the eve of leaving we felt at first that we could not then give a decided answer to it. We wanted him to think and pray over it and proposed we return and send in writing our conclusion. But we were told that there was no time to be lost, that we must decide it now, or it would be too late. After some more consultation, we stated that if the sta- tion could be put in a situation which would render it safe to be left and after proper arrangements could be made, we would consent to Dr. Whitman's going to the States. We do not approve of the hasty manner in which this question was decided. Nothing it seemed to us but stern necessity induced us to decide in the manner we did. It seemed death to put the proposition in force, and worse than death to remain as we were. I have no doubt if his plan succeeds it will be of great good to the mission and the country." ^
This letter was endorsed by Gushing Eells : " I am happy to say that the subjects of this letter have been frequently discussed of late by Mr. Walker and myself. I do not now yecoUect that there has been any important difference in the conclusions arrived at." Mr. Spalding wrote from Clear- water, October 15, a letter of twenty quarto pages in answer to the letter of the Board of February 26, 1842.2 jt ig a reply to the charges preferred against him and contains not a word about Whitman's journey. Mr. W. H. Gray wrote from Waiilatpu, October 3, 1842, to the Board to announce his appointment as " Secular Agent and General Superinten- dent of the Oregon Institute " and his release by the mission. He adds: "Dr. Whitman will be able to give you the par- ticulars respecting the affairs of the mission, and the results of the last meeting," etc., etc.^
1 Letter-book as before. Cf. the " Remarks " in the Miss. Herald, Sept. 1843, 356.
2 Letter-book, Oregon Indians. ^ Ibid.
THE LEGEND OF MARCUS WHITMAN 59
Mrs. Whitman wrote her brother and sister, September 29, 1842 : " I sit down to write you, but in great haste. My beloved husband has about concluded to start next Monday to go to the United States. ... If you are still in Quincy you may not see him until his return, as his business requires great haste. He wishes to reach Boston as early as possible so as to make arrangements to return next summer, if pros- pered. The interests of the missionary cause in this country calls him home."^ The next day Mrs. Whitman wrote to her parents, brothers, and sisters. "You will be surprised if this letter reaches you to learn that the bearer is my dear husband, and that you will, after a few days, have the pleasure of seeing him. May you have a joyful meeting. He goes upon important business as connected with the missionary cause, the cause of Christ in this land, which I leave for him to explain when you see him, because I have not time to enlarge. He has but yesterday fully made up his mind to go, and he wishes to start Monday, and this is Friday. ... He wishes to cross the mountains during this month, I mean October, and reach St. Louis about the first of Dec, if he is not detained by the cold, or hostile Indians. O may the Lord preserve him through the dangers of the way. He has for a companion Mr. Lovejoy, a respectable, intelligent man and a lawyer, but not a Christian, who expects to accompany him all the way to Boston, as his friends are in that region, and per- haps to Washington. "2
Mrs. Whitman wrote to her absent husband from Was- kopum, March 4, 1843 : " I have never felt to regret in the least that you have gone — for I fully believe the hand of the Lord was in it — and that he has yet blessings in store for Oregon. Yes, for these poor degraded Indians." Again, from Waiilatpu, May 18, 1843, " wishing you my dear hus- band ... as speedy a return to the bosom of your family as the business of the Lord upon which you have gone will
1 Transactions of the Oregon Pioneer Association^ 1893, 165.
2 Ibid., 167-68.
60 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
admit of."^ Still again, in a letter to her sister, March 11, in remarking upon the sacrifice of so long separation from her husband, Mrs. Whitman said: "I can see no earthly- inducement sufficiently paramount to cause me voluntarily to take upon myself such a painful trial. . . . But there is one object, our blessed Saviour, for whose sake, I trust, both you as well as we are willing if called to it, to suffer all things. It was for Him, for the advancement of His cause, that I could say to my beloved husband, ' Go ; take all the time necessary to accomplish His work; and the Lord go with and bless you.' "^
If we compare the situation and purpose revealed by these contemporary private letters from all the parties concerned with the accounts published by Spalding ^ and Gray* from which the Legend of Marcus Whitman has been derived it is clear that Spalding's account of the transaction is purely ficti- tious. There is not a hint of the Walla Walla dinner nor any place for it in the chain of events, and on the other hand Spald- ing's narrative suppresses the real facts. More than that, " the colony from the Red River " over the " glad news " of whose approach there was such rejoicing, arrived the year before,^
1 Letter-book, Oregon Indians.
2 Transactions of the Oregon Pioneer Association, 1893, 155. That Whitman went east on the business of the mission was a matter of common knowledge at the time. " In 1842 Dr. Whitman visited the United States to obtain further assistance, in order to strengthen the efforts that had already been made. . . . In 1843 Dr. Whitman returned again to Oregon and resumed his labors." Ten Years in Oregon, by D. Lee and J. H. Frost, N. Y., 1844, 213. According to Nixon, Mrs. Whitman's diary reveals nothing as to a political object. He ex- plains this silence on the ground that absolute secrecy was necessary. How Marcus Whitman Saved Oregon, Chicago, 1895, 107. Yet, according to Gray, Whitman defiantly announced his purpose at the Fort Walla Walla dinner. Gray's Oregon, 288. Spalding, in his contemporary letter to Dr. White, the sub-Indian Agent, mentions Whitman's visit to the States, but gives no reason. White's Ten Years in Oregon, 202. Gray's Oregon, 235.
8 Supra, p. 9.
* History of Oregon, 288, and supra, p. 9.
5 Sir George Simpson, An Overland Journey Round the World, Philadelphia, 1847, 1, 62 and 94. There were twenty-three families in the party. ** Chaque annee il vient da Canada an certain nombre de families qui ne sont point engagees.
THE LEGEND OF MARCUS WHITMAN 61
and its arrival was reported by Whitman without comment or concern. 1
In an ordinary case the irreconcilable divergences between the unimpeachable contemporary testimony and the narra- tives of Spalding and Gray would be enough to prove their utter un trustworthiness as witnesses. In this case, how- ever, there is so much disposition to save ever}^ feature of the Spalding story that is not specifically disproved that It seems to be necessary by additional examples to show the absolute unreliability of these sponsors of the legend. The most conclusive proof of Spalding's untrustworthiness if not dishonesty in matters relating to this missionary history can be found in his Executive Document 37^ where he constantly garbles and interpolates his quotations. An example may be given by means of parallel columns. While Dr. Whitman was absent from his mission on his journey east in 1842-1843 his mill was burned by the Indians. Elijah White, the United States sub-Indian Agent, made a special investigation of the circumstances and reported them in his letter of April 1, 1843, to Commissioner Crawford at Washington.
A la fin de 1841, il en est arrive trente de la colonie de la Riviere Rouge ; pr^s de la moitie s'est etabli au Ouallamet." Du Flot de Mofras, Explorations du Territoire de I' Oregon, etc., pendant les Annies I84O, I84I, et 184^, Paris, 1844, II, 209. Cf. Bancroft's Oregon, I, 252; also Myron Eells, History of Indian Missions on the Pacific Coast, Philadelphia, 1882, 166, and his pamphlet Marcus Whit- man, M. D., in which Spalding's own diarj is quoted under date of Sept. 10, 1841. "Arrived at Colville. Mr. McDonald's brother is here from a party of twenty- three families from the Red River, crossing the mountains to settle on the Cowlitz, as half servants of the company," p. 18. It is not improbable that the missionaries in 1841-2 may have talked over the bearing of this immigration upon the future of Oregon, and that Spalding's dramatic scene at Fort Walla Walla may have been suggested to his imagination by the hazy recollection of some such discussion. The mistake in the date of the immigration was not dis- covered until the Whitman controversy arose. This may be accounted for by the fact that a similar mistake was made by Gustavus Hines in his Oregon : Its History, Condition, and Prospects, etc., Buffalo, 1851, 387. This book was written while Hines was in the east (cf. Bancroft, Oregon, I, 225, note) and the mistake was a not unnatural slip of the memory. Gray, who used Hines as a source, gives an account of this colony on pp. 212-213, under the date 1842.
1 Letter to the Secretary of the Am. Board, Nov. 1841, in Trans, of the Oregon Pioneer Assoc, 1891, 158.
62 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
In Elijah White's Letter: In Spalding's quotation:
The chief Peathercap "ac- The chief Feathercap "ac- knowledged his opinion that knowledged it as his opinion the mill was burnt purposely that the mill was burnt pur- by some disaffected persons to- posely by some disaffected per- ward Dr. Whitman. I spoke sons toward Dr. Whitman, kindly," etc.^ The mill, lumber, and a great
quantity of grain was burnt by Catholic Indians, instigated by Eomanists, to break up the Protestant mission, and pre- vent supplies to the oncoming emigration by Dr. Whitman." ^
Here is a deliberate interpolation in an official document of the year 1843 to manufacture evidence of a knowledge of Dr. Whitman's plans as represented by Spalding, and of such malignant hostility on the part of the Catholics as would render plausible his accusations in regard to the Whitman massacre. Again, where Dr. White quotes an old chief as saying in regard to the conference he was holding : " Clark pointed to this day, to you, and this occasion ; we have long waited in expectation ; sent three of our sons to Red River School to prepare for it," Spalding changed the last clause to " sent three of our sons to the rising sun to obtain the book from Heaven," thus manufacturing first-hand confirmation of the story of the Indians who came to St. Louis for the Bible. 3
1 Ten Years in Oregon : Travels and Adventures of Doctor E. White and Lady^ etc., Ithaca, N. Y., 1850, 191 ; and Gray's Oregon, 229.
2 Exec. Doc. 37, 13.
8 Cf. Ten Years in Oregon, 185, and Gray's Oregon, 225, with Exec. Doc. S7, 13. On the story of this visit of the Flathead Indians, see p. 105. In his text of this letter of White's, Spalding made a great number of minor alterations. Spalding was an Indian Agent on the Umpqua River in 1851. Anson Dart, Snpt. of Indian Affairs in Oregon, asked to have him superseded for neglect of duty. {House Exec. Docs., 32nd Cong., 1st Sess., vol. ii. pt. 3, p. 472.) Spalding then wrote the American Home Missionary Society that Dart had made a treaty " with the tribes of the Middle District, an article of which provides that no American (i. e., Protestant missionary) shall ever again enter their country." He describes his
THE LEGEND OF MARCUS WHITMAN 63
These examples might be multiplied, but it is unnecessary ; such instances as these show beyond question that not an affidavit or resolution or interview or narrative in Executive Document 37 can be accepted as evidence unless otherwise authenticated and confirmed.
Inasmuch as W. H. Gray is commonly considered an in- dependent contemporary witness for the Whitman story, it is necessary to examine his trustworthiness. Gray was at Waiilatpu when the missionaries discussed the recall of Spalding and the discontinuance of the Southern mission. Yet in letters in the Daily and Weekly Astorian, reprinted in Circular No. 8 of the Pioneer and Historical Society of Oregon, he said : " The order to abandon the mission, I con- fess, is new to me ; " and in reply to Mrs. F. F. Victor's assertion that Dr. Whitman went east to secure a reversal of
emotions at being prohibited from taking up his work again with the Indians. " I lifted up my lamentations amid the wild roar of the ocean's waves. I wept for the poor Nez-Perces. ... I wept as I called to mind the many years of hard labor, etc. ... all apparently laid a sacrifice at the bloody shrine of the Papacy, by the baptized hands of an American officer, the husband of a Presbyterian wife ! The Superintendent was of course influenced to this anti-American step by the same influences which instigated the poor benighted Indians to butcher their best friends. . . . Henceforth my field of labor is among my countrymen in this vaUey. I am now about my master's business, — preaching the Gospel." {The Home Missionary, April, 1852, 276.) The next number of the Home Mission- ary contained a letter from Dart, who happened to be in New York, in which he said : '* There is no truth in Mr. Spalding's statements in question," No treaties had been made with the Middle District tribes, and in the thirteen treaties with the tribes west of the Cascade Mountains then before the President there was " not one word . . . touching the subject, directly or indirectly as stated by Mr. Spalding under the head of ' Treaty of Expulsion.' " The Home Missionary, May, 1852, 20.
On December 7, 1857, Elkanah Walker wrote to Secretary Treat of the American Board : *' I am compelled to believe until I have better evidence that Mr. Spalding's publication in regard to Dr. Dart was more with the intention of effecting the removal of him from his office of Superintendent of Indian Affairs in Oregon than because he believed such treaty had been made. My reason for this is, in conversation with Mr. Spalding, I said I was present, and no such treaty was made excluding Protestant missionaries. He replied, ' I knew it. He could make no such treaty.'" From vol. 248 of the correspondence of the missionaries in the records of the Board. For this last extract I am indebted to Mr. W. I. Marshall.
64 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
the order he denied that a meeting of the mission was held in September, 1842, which authorized Whitman's journey.^ He thus deliberately denied something that he must have known perfectly well if he remembered anything at all about the transaction, and professed ignorance of another fact of which he could not have been ignorant.
Again he solemnly vouched for his account of the Walla Walla dinner as based on his own knowledge, and for the story of Governor Simpson's negotiations in Washington and Whitman's success in frustrating them as derived from Whit- man himself.2 Gray shared Spalding's intense prejudices and vindictiveness toward the Hudson's Bay Company and the Catholic missionaries, and consequently his History of Oregon is very untrustworthy as a source of Oregon history. ^
When it was brought out during the Whitman controversy in 1881-5 that the Hudson's Bay Company's Colony from the Red River arrived in 1841, and therefore could not have afforded the occasion for the dramatic scene at Walla Walla and for Whitman's resolution to go east in September, 1842, Spalding's "inaccuracy in his recollection of details " was ac- knowledged, but the rejection of the great facts of the history on account of "the infirmity of memory of Mr. Spalding" * was deprecated, and two new explanations of Whitman's journey were immediately forthcoming, which have been ac- cepted by writers who could not, like Barrows and Nixon, re- peat the Walla Walla dinner story after it had been exploded.
One of these is a deft combination of a gross exaggeration
1 Circular 8, 5-6.
2 History of Oregon, 288 ; supra, p. 32 ; and Eells, Marcus Whitman, 8.
8 " It would require a book as large as Gray's to correct Gray's mistakes." Bancroft's History of the Northwest Coast, II, 536. ** It has, however, three faults — lack of arrangement, acrimonious partisanship, and disregard for truth." Ban- croft, History of Oregon, I, 302. " His book, in my best judgment, is a bitter, prejudiced, sectarian, controversial work in the form of a history." Peter H. Burnett, Recollections and Opinions of an Old Pioneer, N. Y., 1880, 222. These last two judgments I regard as absolutely just.
It will not escape notice that Gray, like Spalding, suppressed all reference to the missionary troubles in 1842 and to the action of the Board.
* Dr. Laurie in The Missionary Herald, Feb. 1885, 56-57.
THE LEGEND OF MARCUS WHITMAN 65
of Dr. Whitman's plan to secure additional missionaries and some lay helpers, with a readjustment of the Walla Walla dinner story. Its author was Perrin B. Whitman, who as a lad of thirteen returned with Dr. Whitman in 1843. Thirty- nine years later he wrote Myron Eells: "I came across to Oregon with my uncle, Dr. Marcus Whitman, in 1843. I heard him say repeatedly, on the journey and after we reached his mission, Waiilatpu, that he went to the States in the winter of 1842 and 1843 for the sole purpose of bring- ing an immigration with wagons across the plains to Oregon. He was called down to old Fort Walla Walla (now Wallula), then a Hudson's Bay Company's trading post, on a sick call, about the last days of September, 1842. While there, and dining with the trader in charge of the fort, Archibald McKinley, Esq., the Hudson's Bay Company's express from the north, came in and reported that sixty families from British possessions would be at Walla Walla as early the next sum- mer as they possibly could arrrive, to settle probably in the Yakima valley. There was a general outburst of rejoicing over the news by the Jesuit priests, oblates, fort employees, etc., who were at that time there all shouting, ' the country is ours; the Ashburton treaty has, of course, been signed.' The doctor, pushing his chair back from the table, and excusing himself, said he would go home (to Waiilatpu) that afternoon (twenty-five miles), and start immediately to the States overland. He then and there told trader McKin- ley and his guests, that during the next summer he would bring overland ten American immigrants for every one that would come from Canada. He returned that afternoon, as he said he would, and with but little preparation, except to have good horses, started on the perilous journey the third day of October, 1842, with Hon. A. L. Lovejoy as travelling companion." 1
In this statement it may be noted that the Hudson's Bay Company colony is one which was to arrive in 1843, ^ and
1 Myron Eells, Marcus Whitman, 12-13.
2 To judge from Spalding's faux pas, it would be safer on the whole to base
5
66 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
Whitman defiantly announces his intention to bring into the country " ten American immigrants for every one that would come from Canada." If the reader will compare this story with the contemporary letters and reports above quoted, and then with Gray's account, he will not easily avoid the con- clusion that before writing this letter Perrin B. Whitman refreshed his memory by consulting Gray's History,
The other explanation was offered by Dr. William Geiger, who came out to Oregon in 1839, from Angelica, N. Y., the home at that time of Mrs. Whitman's father. In response to an inquiry from Myron Eells as to what happened at the Walla Walla dinner, Dr. Geiger wrote under date of October 17, 1881: "I think there is a misconception in the matter; Dr. Whitman had got information of Mr. Lovejoy and others of the immigration of 1842, that the United States was about to exchange this country for the Newfoundland banks fish- eries, or a share in them, through the representations of the Hudson'' s Bay Company that the whole country was a barren waste. But the doctor, knowing the value of this country (Pacific Coast) went to Fort Walla Walla to find out about it (the proposed trade), and was informed that that was the expectation. (As witness the Red River emigration.) He, Dr. Whitman, determined to check the transaction if pos- sible." ^ June 5, 1883, Dr. Geiger under oath repeated this explanation in substance, but omitted to mention the expected equivalent for Oregon.^
Whitman's action on a prospective immigration. It is hardly necessary to say that there was no such Hudson's Bay Company immigration in 1843.
1 Myron Eells, Marcus Whitman, M. D., 18. Perrin B. Whitman, at the instance of Gray, addressed a letter "To the Public," Oct. 11, 1880, in which he said "Dr. Whitman's trip East, in the winter of 1842-43, was for the double purpose of bringing an immigration across the plains, and also to prevent, if possible, the trading off of this Northwest Coast to the British Government." Ibid., 13.
2 Ibid., 3. Perrin B. Whitman adopted a phase of this explanation in pref- erence to his earlier one in the account of Marcus Whitman which he sent Mr. C. H. Farnam. There he wrote : ** Dr. Marcus Whitman having informed him- self of a pending treaty between the United States Government and Great Britain which would deprive our government of this glorious west, decided to proceed to
THE LEGEND OF MARCUS WHITMAN 67
That this explanation is a mere afterthought, to supply a political crisis to account for Whitman's journey when the Walla Walla dinner story collapsed is as nearly certain as anything of the kind can be.
In the first place, the immigration of 1842 was organized by Dr. Elijah White with the approval and encouragement of the Administration in Washington, from which he received the commission of sub-Indian Agent, with the assurance that if Dr. Linn's Oregon bill passed Congress he would receive an appointment as Agent. ^ Love joy joined the immigration from western Missouri, and would derive his notions of the policy of the government in regard to Oregon from Dr. White. The first American that White saw after he crossed the Blue Mountains was Dr. Whitman. "The visit was very agreeable to both, as he had much to tell Dr. White of Oregon affairs, and the Dr. him of his two years' residence in the States."^ Dr. White then went on to the Willamette Valley, where he called a meeting " for the purpose of com- municating certain information from the government of the United States, relative to this country." ^ The drift of this communication can be gathered from the resolutions drawn up by the meeting. The most significant for our purpose is the first one: "That we, the citizens of Willamette valley, are exceedingly happy in the consideration that the govern- ment of the United States have manifested their intentions through their agent, Dr. E. White, of extending their juris- diction and protection over this country."*
It is then from Mr. Love joy and others of Dr. White's party, as Dr. Geiger solemnly informs us after forty years, that Dr. Whitman learned "that the United States was
Washington at once and stay such proceedings if possible." C. H. Farnam, Descendants of John Whitman of Weymouth, Mass., New Haven, 1889, 237.
1 Letter of Ex-Secretary of War J. C. Spencer to Dr. White, under date of July 29, 1846. " You was," writes Spencer, " to raise as large a company of our citizens as possible, to proceed with you, and settle in Oregon." Ten Years in Oregon. Travels and Adventures of Dr. E. White and Lady, etc. Ithaca, 1850, 322-325. This will be cited henceforth as White's Ten Years in Oregon.
2 White's Ten Years in Oregon, 166.
* Ihid., 168. The meeting was held Sept. 23, not June 23 as printed.
* Ihid., 169.
68 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
about to exchange this country for the Newfoundland banks fisheries, or a share in them.''^
If the reader will compare Dr. Geiger's conception of the political crisis with Spalding's (pp. 14, 101), he will see that they are the same. If he searches further he will find that Mr. Spalding was the first man who ever put it on record that the United States were going to exchange Oregon for the cod fisheries. As Perrin B. Whitman readjusted the Spalding and Gray story by making Dr. Whitman hear of a prospective immigration rather than of one just arriving, so Dr. Geiger readjusts the same story by having Whitman in- formed by Lovejoy of what Spalding said he learned after he reached Washington. The original story and the two read- justments are equally at variance with authenticated history.
There was in 1842 no political crisis in the fate of Oregon for Whitman to discover in Oregon, nor was there one in Washington for him to be informed of that could suggest the necessity of a journey. Under critical examination all urgent political reasons for Whitman's journey to the United States disappear. On the other hand, the unexpected arrival of the large immigration of 1842 of one hundred and twenty- five persons, the news of the policy of the Government as brought by Dr. White, and the probability of a greatly in- creased immigration in the immediate future emphasized the mission crisis and demonstrated to Whitman's mind the fatal shortsightedness of the American Board in discontinuing the Waiilatpu mission at a time when its services would be more than ever needed to promote the spiritual and temporal wel- fare of the whites and Indians in Oregon. ^
1 It is perhaps superfluous to remark that no contemporary evidence has ever been found that the rumor attributed to Lovejoy was ever current in 1842. His two letters about Whitman's ride give no clue. The account of the immigration of 1842 in White's Ten Years in Oregon, and in Medorem Crawford's Journal reveal no anxiety that the United States would give up any part of Oregon, nor do such representative newspapers as Niles's Register or the N. Y. Tribune, in dis- cussing Lord Ashbnrton's mission, intimate that the Oregon boundary was likely to be taken up. See the issues of Jan. 29, 1842. Lord Ashburton arrived April 3, and the next notice in Niles^s Register is Aug. 6. The Oregon immigration of 1842 left Independence, Mo., May 16.
2 See infra, pp. 90 and 106-109.
THE LEGEND OF MARCUS WHITMAN 69
We have now reached a point where we can determine the character of Gushing Eells' testimony, upon which great reliance is placed by the defenders of the Spalding narrative. The support of the story by Gushing Eells was really a deter- mining factor in its preservation, for it secured its acceptance by Secretary Treat of the American Board in 1866, and later brought to its defence a most efficient champion in the person of his son, Myron Eells. Gushing Eells' evidence consists of the letter of May 28, 1866, printed above, on pp. 23-25, and of an affidavit made in the midst of the Whit- man controversy in 1883.
The affidavit reads : —
"September, 1842, a letter written by Dr. Whitman, ad- dressed to Eev. Messrs. E. Walker and Gushing Eells at Tshi- makain, reached its destination and was received by the persons to whom it was written. By the contents of said letter a meeting of the Oregon mission of the American Board of Com- missioners for Foreign Missions was invited to be held at Waiilatpu. The object of said meeting, as stated in the letter named, was to approve of a purpose formed by Dr. Whitman, that he go East on behalf of Oregon as related to the United States. In the judgment of Mr. Walker and myself that object was foreign to our assigned work.
" With troubled thoughts we anticipated the proposed meet- ing. On the following day, Wednesday, we started, and on Saturday afternoon camped on the Touchet at the ford near the Mullan bridge. We were pleased with the prospect of enjoying a period of rest, reflection, and prayer — needful preparation for the antagonism of opposing ideas. We never moved camp on the Lord's Day. On Monday morning we arrived at Waiilatpu and met the two resident families of Messrs. Whitman and Gray. Eev. H. Spaulding was there. All the male members of the mission were thus together. In the discussion the opin- ion of Mr. Walker and myself remained unchanged. The pur- pose of Dr. Whitman was fixed. In his estimation the saving of Oregon to the United States was of paramount importance, and he would make the attempt to do so, even if he had to with- draw from the mission in order to accomplish his purpose. In
70 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
reply to considerations intended to hold Dr. Whitman to his assigned work, he said : ' I am not expatriated by becoming a missionary.'
" The idea of his withdrawal could not be entertained, there- fore to retain him in the mission, a vote to approve of his making his perilous endeavor prevailed. He had a cherished object for the accomplishment of which he desired consultation with Kev. David Greene, secretary of correspondence with the mission at Boston, Mass., but I have no recollection that it was named at the meeting. A part of two days was spent in con- sultation. Eecord of the date and acts of the meeting was made. The book containing the same was in the keeping of the Whitman family. At the time of the massacre, November 29, 1847, it disappeared. The fifth day of October following was designated as the day on which Dr. Whitman would expect to start from Waiilatpu. Accordingly, letters, of which he was to be the bearer, were required to be furnished him at his station therewith. Mr. Walker and myself returned to Tshi- makain, prepared letters and forwarded them seasonably to Waiilatpu. By the return of the courier information was re- ceived that Dr. Whitman started on the 3rd of October. It is possible that transpirings at old Fort Walla Walla hastened his departure two days. Soon after his return to this coast Dr. Whitman said to me he wished he could return East imme- diately, as he believed he could accomplish more than he had done, as I understood him to mean, to save this country to the United States. I asked him why he could not go. He said * I cannot go without seeing Mrs. Whitman. She was then in the Williamette valley.'
" I solemnly affirm that the foregoing statements are true and correct, according to the best of my knowledge and belief. So help me God.
(Signed) "Gushing Eells.
" Sworn and subscribed to before me, this 23d day of August, 1883.
(Signed) "L. E. Kellogg,
"Notary Public, Spokane county, Washington Territory." *
1 Eells, Marcus Whitman, 9-10.
THE LEGEND OF MARCUS WHITMAN 71
In the first case we have Dr. Eells' personal recollections after twenty-three years, and in the second case after forty years, of an event about which we want precise knowledge. The defenders of the Whitman story generally take the ground: Here is the personal testimony of Gushing Eells, who was on the ground at the time, and who, as every one knows, was an honest man. You cannot have better evi- dence than this. It is decisive.^
This contention requires us to accept Gushing Eells' mem- ory as an instrument of equal precision with a contemporary written record, and such, at bottom, has been the demand made by the defence in the Whitman question for twenty years. It is this that has prolonged the discussion. The two sides cannot get on common ground, — the common ground of the accepted principles of modern historical criti- cism. 2 Before Gushing Eells' statements can be accepted as history the comparative accuracy of his memory as a record must be ascertained. The gauge or criterion in this case must be Elkanah Walker's letter of Oct. 3, 1842, which Gushing Eells endorsed as a correct record (pp. 57-58), Elkanah Walker's diary, and Mrs. Whitman's letters (pp. 56-59). These contemporary records agree, and Gushing Eells agreed with them at the time. The degree of his divergence from those contemporary records is the measure of the diver- gence of his affidavit from the true history of the occurrence, whether through fallibility of memory, human enough in any case, through the subtle influence of suggestion, or for less pardonable reasons.
If we compare his two statements we find that the affidavit
1 Cf. Craighead, Story of Marcus Whitman, 68.
2 This will be evident to any one who is sufficiently interested in the question to read some of the criticisms on my article in the American Historical Review, Jan. 1901, in particular those by Prof. Parker, Dr. Mowry, and President Penrose (see p. 54). Inasmuch as it is not practicable to demonstrate the validity of a critical process every time it is employed, a general reference may be given to the discussion in Langlois and Seignobos, Introduction to the Study ofHist<rry, pp. 62-86, and especially to the valuable paper of the late Edward L. Pierce on Recollections as a Source of History, in his Addresses and Papers, 375-397.
72 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
deals with the occasion of Whitman's journey which was most at issue in 1883, and the letter of 1866, with the results of the journey.
According to the affidavit, the letter from Dr. Whitman calling a meeting of the mission " was to approve of a pur- pose formed by Dr. Whitman, that he go East on behalf of Oregon as related to the United States," but according to Walker's diary ^ and letter this purpose was not revealed until the meeting was over ^ (see pp. 56-57). Again Gushing Eells says of Whitman, " He had a cherished object, for the accomplishment of which he desired consultation with Rev. David Greene, secretary of correspondence with the mission at Boston, Mass., but I have no recollection that it was named at the meeting." But the record of the meeting ap- proving of the project was signed by Gushing Eells (p. 56).
In his letter of 1866 Mr. Eells wrote : " According to the understanding of the members of the mission, the single object of Dr. Whitman, in attempting to cross the continent in the winter of 1842-43, amid mighty peril and suffering was to make a desperate effort to save this country to the United States" (p. 23). That this was not "the single object " is proved by the contemporary letters beyond the shadow of a doubt, nor do the contemporary sources reveal any consciousness that the future of Oregon was at stake, except in so far as it would be affected by the discontinuance of the southern stations of the American Board Missions.
It will be noticed that neither in his earlier letter or later affidavit did Gushing Eells lend any support to the Spalding and Gray story of the Walla Walla dinner or to the read-
1 The statement in Mr. Walker's diary, under date of September 28, 1842, is: " At breakfast the Dr. let out what was his plan in view of the state of things. We persuaded them to get together and talk matters over. I think they felt some better afterwards. Then the question was submitted to us of the Dr.'s going home which we felt that it was one of too much importance to be decided in a moment, but finally came to the conclusion if he could put things at that station in such a state we could consent to his going, and with that left them and made a start for home."
2 It will be noticed that according to Spalding's narrative the occasion or sug- gestion of the journey did not arise until the meeting was in session (p. 10).
THE LEGEND OF MARCUS WHITMAN 73
justments of that story devised by Dr. Geiger and Perrin B. Whitman. The only conclusion is that he knew nothing of any one of them, and that they could not have been true without his having heard of it.
That Whitman's journey was of service to Oregon Mr. Eells sincerely believed, that Whitman made it because he believed the preservation and reinforcement of the Southern Mission indispensable to the welfare of Oregon he knew, that Whitman may have used the words " Save Oregon " is altogether probable, that Whitman later believed his services to the immigration of 1843 played no small part in promot- ing the occupation of Oregon he clearly recollected. In the lapse of years these constituent elements become merged, and in 1866 his memory reproduces a composite which is not an accurate record. This puts a reasonable and favor- able construction on the discrepancies between Mr. Eells' statements and the contemporary records. Unfortunately, however, for Mr. Eells' credit as an independent witness it is only too clear that while he did not and, no doubt, could not bear witness to Spalding's Walla Walla dinner story, he did reinforce his memory in regard to things about which he had no personal knowledge by consulting the Spalding narrative. The comparison of extracts in parallel columns will prove this.
Spalding's article in The Eells' letter of May 28, Pacific, Nov. 9, 1865:— 1866: —
" On reaching the settlements "On reaching Washington, Dr. Whitman found that many he learned that representations now old Oregonians . . . had had been made there corre- abandoned the idea because of spending to those which had representations from Washing- been often repeated on this ton that every attempt to take coast. Oregon, it was said, wagons and ox teams through . . . was difficult of access, the Eocky Mountains and Blue A wagon road thither was an Mountains to the Columbia had impossibility. By such state- failed. The representations ments Governor Simpson (the purported to come from Secre- territorial Governor of the
74
ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
tary Webster, but really from Governor Simpson. . . . [Whit- man goes to Washington and presses upon Webster the value of Oregon.] Mr. Webster . . . awarded sincerity to the mis- sionary, but could not admit for a moment that the short residence of six years could give the Doctor the knowledge of the country possessed by Governor Simpson, who had almost grown up in the coun- try, and had travelled every part of it, and represents it as an unbroken waste of sand deserts and impassable moun- tains, fit only for the beaver, the gray bear and the savage. Besides he had about traded it off with Governor Simpson, to go into the Ashburton treaty for a cod-fishery on Newfound- land. [Whitman then goes to President Tyler.] . . . The great desire of the doctor^s American soul. Christian withal, that is, the pledge of the President that the swapping of Oregon with England for a cod-fishery should stop for the present, was attained."^
Hudson's Bay Company) had well-nigh succeeded in accom- plishing his object of purchas- ing this country, not for a mess of pottage, but a cod-fishery. Dr. Whitman was barely able to obtain from President Tyler the promise that negotiations should be suspended." ^
As these negotiations of Governor Simpson in Washington and Whitman's success in frustrating them are the very heart and life of the legend of Marcus Whitman, ^ without which it would never have come to anything, and as they
1 *See supra, pp. 12-14 and pp. 23-24.
2 See infra, p. 101. Spalding's second statement.
THE LEGEND OF MARCUS WHITMAN T5
are a pure invention, one of three conclusions is forced upon us. Either this story was invented by Marcus Whitman himself and reported years afterward by Spalding and Eells, or it was invented in common by Spalding and Eells, or Spalding invented it and Eells copied it from him. The last is, I believe, the true solution. But if this is accepted Gushing Eells can no longer be brought forward as an inde- pendent witness in confirmation of Spalding's story, for he draws from that story the material with which he supports it !
Having reviewed the evidence upon which the legendary account of the causes of Dr. Whitman's journey is based, I will now proceed to examine the tradition of what he achieved in Washington and to offer an explanation of the origin of its unhistorical features. That Dr. Whitman con- templated going to Washington during his absence in the east is clear from the statements in the letters of Mrs. Whitman 1 and Dr. White, ^ and it is not improbable that his intention was strengthened, if not suggested, by his confer- ence with Dr. White. ^
What purpose Dr. Whitman had in going to Washington is to be learned from the letters of his companion, A. Law- rence Lovejoy, supplemented by his own letter to the Secre- tary of War and the draft of a bill which he submitted. It is true that Lovejoy's letter was not written until 1876, but
1 See letter of Sept. 30, 1842, quoted above, p. 59, in which Mrs. Whitman says that Mr. Lovejoy " expects to accompany him (her husband) all the way to Bos- ton, . . . and perhaps to Washington."
2 Dr. White wrote the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, April 1, 1843, that the country of the Cayuse Indians *' is well-watered, gently undulating, extremely healthy, and admirably adapted to grazing, as Dr. Whitman may have informed you, who resides in their midst." White's Ten Years in Oregon, 174; also in Gray, 219.
^ See p. 67. Whatever else they talked about, we may be sure that Whitman impressed upon Dr. White, who, as a former missionary, would sympathize with him, the imperative need of more help, now that immigration had begun, for Dr. White wrote the Indian Commissioner in the letter just quoted, " that the mis- sionaries . . . are too few in number at their respective stations, and in too defense- less a state for their own safety. . . . You will see its bearings upon this infant col- ony, and doubtless give such information or instructions to the American board of commissioners or myself as will cause a correction of this evil." Ibid., 193.
76 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
the fact that, although it was drawn from him in the hope of confirming the Spalding story, it is an entirely independent narrative, allows us to use it as a genuine recollection for what it is worth. Mr. Lovejoy wrote to Dr. Atkinson under date of Feb. 14, 1876 ; " I crossed the plains in com- pany with Dr. White and others, and arrived at Waiilatpu the last of September, 1842. My party camped some two miles below Dr. Whitman's place.
"The day after our arrival Dr. Whitman called at our camp and asked me to accompany him to his house, as he wished me to draw up a memorial to Congress to prohibit the sale of ardent spirits in this country. ^ The Doctor was alive to the interests of this coast, and manifested a very warm desire to have it properly represented at Washington ; and after numerous conversations with the Doctor touching the future prosperity of Oregon, he asked me one day, in a very anxious manner, if I thought it would be possible for him to cross the mountains at that time of the year. I told him I thought he could. He next asked : ' Will you accompany me?' After a little reflexion, I told him I would. "2
Lovejoy accompanied Whitman as far as Bent's Fort (Southeastern Colorado) where he stayed until spring. He joined the immigration of 1843 in July near Fort Laramie, with whom Whitman was travelling. His letter continues : —
" The Doctor often expressed himself to me about the re- mainder of his journey, and the manner in which he was received at Washington and by the Board of Missions at Boston. The Doctor had several interviews with President Tyler, Secretary Webster, and many members of Congress, touching the interests of Oregon. He urged the immediate termination of the treaty with Great Britain relative to this country, and the extension of the laws of the United States,
1 Lovejoy was a lawyer.
2 Nixon, How Marcus Whitman Saved Oregon, 306. Lovejoy's letter occu- pies pp. 305-312. Lovejoy's letter to Gray of Nov. 6, 1869, is similar in tenor as a whole, but does not mention all the facts quoted above. Gray, 324-327. Cf. the report of conversations with Mr. and Mrs. Lovejoy in Note F, pp. 106-109.
THE LEGEND OF MARCUS WHITMAN 77
and to provide liberal inducements to emigrants to come to this coast." ^
Whether this part of Lovejoy's letter is equally free from the influence of the Spalding narrative might be questioned, but I believe it can be taken as a genuine recollection, al- though possibly with some exaggeration of the number of interviews with Tyler and Webster, for it shows no trace of the Spalding legend of Whitman's having arrived in the nick of time to save Oregon from being "traded off for a cod fishery." Such as it is, this is the only account of what Whitman urged upon the government that is not interwoven with fictitious elements and based on a misconception of the situation. A further light, however, on the nature of Whit- man's interviews with the officials is afforded by his letter to the Secretary of War, with the accompanying draft of a bill dispatched after his return. That he was asked to present this proposition which he made to the Secretary of War in the form of a bill, appears in the opening words : " In com- pliance with the request you did me the honor to make last winter while in Washington, I herewith transmit to you the synopsis of a bill."^ The specific proposals of this bill were designed to facilitate immigration to Oregon by rendering the journey safer from Indians' attack, less expensive, and more comfortable to the immigrants. The most serious diffi- culties in the transit were the illness often caused by lack of a variety of diet, the scarcity of fodder and water, the dangers in fording the streams, the liability of the wagon wheels to fall to pieces in the long passage of the elevated arid region and the exposure to Indian depredations. To meet these needs Whitman proposed the establishment of ferries at the important river crossings and of government
1 Gray's Oregon, 326. I use the earlier letter this time, the only essential difference between the two being a parenthetical statement that Congress was in session when Whitman arrived, which is a mistake and may be an explanatory afterthought. See Note F for later expressions from Lovejoy.
2 See Letter and BiU in Trans, of the Oregon Pioneer Assoc. 1891, 69 ff., and in Nixon, How Marcus Whitman Saved Oregon, 315 ff. In 1847 Whitman again urged the plan with some farther developments. Ibid., 332-39.
78 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
farming stations every two hundred miles, with blacksmith, gunsmith, and carpenter's shops, under the charge of govern- ment agents empowered to act as notaries and justices. Such stations would be self-supporting from the sale of produce and the services rendered to the immigrants. Whatever the merits of this plan, which was in fact an alternative for the establishment of military posts as urged by the Secretary of War,i it was not adopted and had no influence on legisla- tion. ^ Moreover, there was nothing novel in the general Oregon policy which Lovejoy represents Whitman as press- ing upon the government. It had been urged for years by prominent senators and representatives, and the government was already moving in that direction. Four years earlier, for example, Jason Lee, one of the pioneer Methodist mis- sionaries, presented a memorial signed by nearly all the settlers in the Willamette valley " to Congress, praying that body to extend the United States government over the terri- tory," and his letter and the memorial were included in Caleb Cushing's report on Oregon, of which 10,000 extra copies were printed.^ Over a month before Whitman arrived in Washington Senator Linn's Bill passed the Senate by a vote of 24 to 22, providing for the extension of the laws of the United States over the whole of the Oregon territory, the erection of courts and the granting of lands to settlers.* So far from there being any danger that Oregon would be lost to the United States ^ the real danger was that the govern-
1 In his report traDsmitted with the President's Message in Dec. 1841, Secre- tary Spencer declared it indispensable that a chain of posts should be established extending from Council Bluffs to the mouth of the Columbia, so as to . . . main- tain a communication with the territories belonging to us on the Pacific." Exec. Docs., 27th Cong., 2nd Sess., 1, 61. This was repeated in Dec. 1842 with more ur- gency. Exec. Docs., 27th Cong., 3rd Sess., 1, 186. Pres. Tyler gave the proposal a fa,vorable mention in his Message. Ibid., 9.
2 Yet Dr. Craighead had the hardihood to write of Whitman in Washington : •' His information was needed and was welcomed, and his plan to save Oregon was adopted." Story of Marcus Whitman, 188.
8 House Report, No. 101, 25th Cong., 3d Sess.
* The bill and the debates are conveniently summarized by Greenhow, Oregon, 377-388.
^ In his Report, transmitted to Congress in Dec. 1842, the Secretary of Wajr
THE LEGEND OF MARCUS WHITMAN 79
ment would be pushed by the Oregon advocates in the West into an aggressive policy which might result in war with England.^ The appearance of a solitary missionary in Wash- ington advocating what a majority of the Senate had already voted, and what State legislatures were demanding in reso- lutions ^ was a mere drop in the bucket. That Whitman influenced American diplomacy in any way at Washington is not only destitute of all evidence but is intrinsically improb- able. The belief that he did so originated with Spalding, and the ever-present stamp of his invention in all the vary- ing narratives is the reference to " trading off Oregon for a cod-fishery." That Whitman's visit to Washington was an event without political influence or historical significance is clear from the fact that no contemporary mention of his pres- ence there has ever been found. There is nothing in the G-lohe or the National Intelligencer among Washington papers, or in Niles^s Register^ although its pages for 1843 contain many
urged his proposed military stations " if we intend to maintain our right to the territories on the Pacific belonging to us, which, it is supposed, does not admit of question." Exec. Docs., 27th Cong., 3d Sess., I, 186. Cf. Dr. White's Commis- sion, 67, supra. Du Flot de Mofras commented as follows on the public doc- uments relating to Oregon published before 1843 : " Les documents officiels que nous avons cites prouvent assez I'importance que le cabinet de Washington attache h. la possession de ces vastes contrees." Explorations du Territoire de V Oregon, etc., pendant les Annies 1840, 1841, et 1842, Paris, 1844, II, 242.
How the situation impressed another foreign writer will appear from this contemporary remark : " Quoiqu'il arrive, les Etats-Unis ne laisseront pas les Anglais s'etablir impunement sur le territoire de TOregon." Les Territoires de rOr^on, par P. Grimblot, Revue des Deux Mondes, Mai 15, 1843, 538.
1 Lord Palmerston said in the House of Commons, March 21, " if that bill \i. e., the Linn Bill] passed into a law, an event which he conceived to be impos- sible, it would amount to a declaration of war." London Times, March 22, 1843, p. 3, col. 4.
2 " There were militant resolutions of the Legislatures of Illinois and of Mis- souri, relating to the Territory of Oregon ! " J. Q. Adams's memorandum of a meeting of the Committee of Foreign Affairs, Feb. 25, 1843. Diary, XI, 327. Feb. 9, Representative Reynolds, chairman of a select committee on Oregon, re- ported a bill for the immediate occupation of the territory. His report asserted the right to all the territory up to 54° 40' and the expediency of immediate occu- pation. Reports of Committees, 27th Cong., 3rd Sess., Vol. II, Rep. No. 157. The report is summarized in Niks' s Register ^ XLIII, 397 ; see also Adamses Diary, XI, 314.
80 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
insignificant items of Oregon news, or in the Washington correspondence of the Tribune or the Journal of Commerce, Curtis 's Webster and Webster's Private Correspondence are alike silent. Interested as John Quincy Adams was in all diplomatic matters, Chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Relations, watchful and suspicious of the admin- istration, his voluminous Diary knows nothing of Marcus Whitman. Equally devoid of light are Benton's Thirty Years' View, although Benton was a champion of Oregon, and Greenhow's History of Oregon, although Greenhow was a translator in the State Department and an indefatigable col- lector of information about Oregon. ^ The Life and Speeches of Senator Linn, of Missouri, who was the most advanced leader of the Oregon party, make no reference to Whitman. Tyler's Tyler lacks any contemporary reference to Whit- man's presence in Washington, and if the author had found any he would have given it because he makes some conjec- tures as to the origin of the notion that Whitman exerted any influence on the diplomacy of that year. 2 Had Whitman
1 Greenhow's preface is dated February, 1844. He devotes twenty-five pages to the Oregon Question in 1843 and half a page to the Emigration of that year, p. 391. It is possible that the following note on p. 396 may refer to Whitman. " A worthy missionary, now established on the Columbia, while acknowledging, in conversation with the author, the many acts of kindness received by him from the Hudson's Bay Company's agents, at the same time declared — that he would not buy a skin to make a cap, without their consent."
2 L. G. Tyler's Letters and Times of the Tylers, II, 439. In the appendix pp. 692-699 is a letter from Dr. Silas Reed under date of April 8, 1885, which twice makes mention of Whitman's visit to Washington, but says nothing further than that he " furnished valuable data about Oregon and the practicability of a wagon route thereto across the mountains," p. 697.
That Whitman did press this point about the practicability of a wagon route is rendered probable by the tone of a sentence in his letter to the Secretary of War in regard to the immigration of 1843 : " they have practically demonstrated that wagons drawn by horses or oxen can cross the Rocky Mountains to the Columbia River, contrary to all the sinister assertions of all those who pretended it to be impossible." {Nixon, 316-17). Yet too much stress cannot be laid on Dr. Reed's testimony, as he was an old man in 1885 and made several mistakes in his letter, of which a significant one is the apparent confusion between Dr. White and Dr. Whitman. On p. 696, he says, writing of the spring of 1842 : "From Dr. Whitman, a missionary to Oregon much useful information for emigrants and the
THE LEGEND OF MARCUS WHITMAN 81
exerted even a small part of the influence attributed to him this universal silence would be inexplicable. This complete absence of contemporary references in print to Whitman's presence in Washington has naturally led advocates of the story to push their investigations among the manuscript rec- ords and to make inquiries of old officials, but the results have been equally disappointing. ^
Senators who had charge of the bill was also obtained at that time." This mnst refer to Dr. White who was in Washington at this time and who had been a mis- sionary to Oregon. Whitman did not arrive till after the bill passed the Senate. On p. 697, however, Dr. Reed makes Whitman's information in 1843 contribute to the passage of the bill. On other points in this letter cf. Mr. Tyler's remarks, p. 699. In recent years John Tyler, Jr., President Tyler's private secretary, has said that he remembered Whitman's visit to Washington, that he was " full of his project to carry emigrants to Oregon, that he waited on the President and received from him the heartiest concurrence in his plans." Mowry's Marcus Whitman^ 172-73. The latter part of the letter of L. G. Tyler to Dr. Mowry refers to President Tyler, not to Whitman. It is probable that after forty years John Tyler, Jr.'s, recollection of Whitman was more or less affected by Barrows' narrative, enough at least to change Whitman's plan to facilitate and pro- tect emigration into a plan to "carry emigrants." It is also nearly certain that in this lapse of years the dim figures of Dr. White and Dr. Whitman had coalesced in the memory of John Tyler, Jr. Cf. pp. 96-7.
In the Atlantic Monthly for Oct., 1880, in an art. entitled " Reminiscences of Washington " there is what appears to be an independent recollection of Whit- man's visit to Washington, but it bears the familiar marks of Spalding's invention. It was written by Ben. Perley Poore. All that needs to be said is that Poore spent the years 1841-1848 in Europe and the Orient !
1 Nothing has ever been found that has been made public except the two let- ters and the synopsis of the bill in the War Department records, printed in Nixon, 315-39. Mrs. Victor, writing in the San Francisco Call, July 28, 1895, declares that when Spalding came east in 1870 with the materials which make up Execu- tive Document 37, he " presented the Whitman story, as published in this docu- ment, to the editor of the New York Evangelist, Dr. J. G. Craighead, with the request that he should do all that he could to maintain Dr. Whitman's claim to be considered the saviour of Oregon. This the gentleman promised, and afterward went to Washington, where he spent two months in looking for evidence that this claim had any foundation. Failing in this, he wrote to Hon. Elwood Evans of Olympia, now of Tacoma, telling him that there was nothing discovered to cor- roborate the statement of Gray and Spalding, and asking him for light. A copy of this letter is among the papers in my possession." Again in 1883, Dr. Craig- head wrote Myron Eells : " What you say about negotiations between influential persons is laughed at by the State Department as not possible and absurd on the very face of it. Mr. Hunter, then in the State Department and for nearly a
6
82 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
In the legendary accounts of Whitman's visit to Washing- ton and his interviews with Webster and Tyler the essential features are his arrival just in time to frustrate the effort of Sir George Simpson, the Governor of the Hudson's Bay Company, to secure the cession of Oregon in exchange for the cod-fisheries,^ and it was upon this achievement that the claim that he saved Oregon to the United States was origi- nally based. 2 The incident is purely imaginary, and wher- ever it recurs it is the stamp or hall-mark, so to speak, of Spalding's invention. ^ The fisheries were not the subject of negotiation in 1842, nor were they proposed for the expected negotiation of 1843.* Consequently Webster could not have told Whitman what Spalding attributes to him. It is in the highest degree improbable that either Tyler or Webster told
generation chief clerk, takes no stock whatever in the big claim for Dr.Whitman." Eells' Marcus Whitman, 22.
1 See Spalding's narrative, supra, p. 14, and his other statement that "Whitman " reached the City of Washington not an hour too soon, confronting the British agents Ashburton, Fox, and Simpson, who, there is evidence to show, in a short time would have consummated their plans, and secured a part, if not all, of our territory west of the mountains to Great Britain."
2 See the whole passage, infra, p. 101. Lord Ashburton left the United States early in Dec, 1842.
3 For the recurrence of this note, see Spalding, Exec. Doc. 37, 22, 75 ; Eells in Miss. Herald, 1866, 371; Atkinson, ibid., 1869, 79; Gray, Oregon, 316; Gray's deposition, p. 32 above ; Poore in Atlantic Monthly, Oct. 1880, 534; Eells, History of Indian Missions, 174; Nixon, How Marcus Whitman Saved Oregon, 128-9. Barrows in his Oregon, 224-238, shows that the interviews are unhistorical by a process which completely undermines the rest of his narrative. Leaving the question of candor or honesty aside, what can be said of the trustworthiness of a writer who says, p. 233, that there is no evidence that Sir George Simpson was in Washington in 1842-43 and yet incorporates the myth in his narrative on pp. 153, 158, 202, 203, 204, going so far on p. 203 as to reconstruct a conversation with Webster out of Sir George's Overland Journey Round the World ? Barrows puts into Webster's mouth a remark about Whitman which was made by an anony- mous friend of Webster's to an anonymous writer ! Cf. Barrows, 225, with Exec. Doc. 37, 24, or Nixon, p. 133. Spalding does the same thing in his headline. The article is cited by Spalding from the Independent, Jan., 1870, but it is not there and has not been found, although a careful search has been made for it.
* " The only question of magnitude about which I did not negotiate with Lord Ashburton is the question respecting the fisheries." Webster to Mrs. Paige, Aug. 23, 1842, Private Corresp., II, 146. That the fisheries were not to be considered in 1843 is shown by Webster's letter to Minister Everett, Nov. 28, 1842, ibid., 153-54.
THE LEGEND OF MARCUS WHITMAN 83
Whitman anything about their plans, for the President re- fused to give the Senate that information in December, 1842,1 and it was only with the greatest difiQculty that John Quincy Adams wormed it out of Webster on March 25, in the course of a three-hour interview. ^ Equally fictitious is the story of Sir George Simpson's presence in Washington to negotiate or to influence negotiations in regard to Oregon and the fisheries.^ How Mr. Spalding came to fabricate these particular features of his account of Whitman in Wash- ington and how they came to be accepted, destitute as they are of any foundation in fact, naturally piques one's curi- osity, and the following explanation is offered not merely
1 See Pres. Tyler's special message, Dec. 23, in reply to the Senate Resolution of Dec. 22, 1842. Statesman's Year Book, II, 1315, or Niles's Register, LXIII, 286.
2 Adams's Diary, XI, 344-347. The real Oregon policy of the administration was something very different from Spalding's invention. It was to yield to Eng- land the territory north of the Columbia, excepting perhaps an approach to Puget Sound, if England would acquiesce in or promote our acquisition of California from San Francisco harbor northward and the annexation of Texas to the United States. English influence was strong in Mexico and it was believed that if Eng- land urged these concessions on Mexico she would grant them for a reasonable consideration. See Adams's Diary, XI, 340, 347, 351, and 355 ; Tyler's Tyler, II, 692 and 698. Webster's Private Carres., II, 154. That Webster revealed this project to Adams March 25 and about the same time or even later approached General Almonte, the Mexican minister, on the subject shows that Whitman's interviews, if he had them, had not had the slightest effect. See Adams's Diary, XI, 347 and 355, entries of March 25 and April 7. The legendary date of Whit- man's arrival in Washington was March 2 or 3. He arrived later than that, but probably not so late as the 25th.
8 No evidence of Sir George Simpson's presence in Washington in 1843 outside of the Spalding narrative and its derivatives has ever been found. That the Ore- gon question had not been under discussion between England and the United States in the winter of 1843 is clear from Webster's letter to Minister Everett, March 20, 1843, in which he says : " I have recommended to the President already to propose to the British government to open a negotiation here upon the Oregon subject." Private Corres., II, 171. Webster resigned May 8th and the attorney- general Legare took charge of the department ad interim. May 16, 1843, President Tyler wrote him : " We should also lose no time in opening a negotiation relative [to] the Oregon," Letters and Times of the Tylers, III, 111, In the legend, how- ever, Tyler promises Whitman in March to stay all proceedings until he heard from Whitman's emigration. See Spalding's narrative, above, p. 14 ; Gray, Oregon, 316 ; C. Eells, above, p. 24 ; Perrin B. Whitman, in C. H. Famam's Descendants of John Whitman, 240.
84 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
to gratify such curiosity but to illustrate the way in which this history as a whole was manufactured, and, in particular, its late origin. Spalding, Gray, Eells, and the others who accepted the story, it must be remembered, had little knowl- edge of American history and few books. Such information as they possessed was the residuum left in their memory from conversation and the reading of newspapers. As time goes on, without the aid of books, the events of different years run together and a man recollects impressions and political gossip without any definite knowledge as to their succession in time.
In 1865 they recollected that they had heard that Sir George Simpson was or had been in Washington in the inter- est of the Hudson's Bay Company. As a matter of fact, he was in Washington for this purpose in 1853. ^ Again, they recalled that years before they had heard of negotiations between the United States and England relative to Canada in which the United States for concessions to Canada re- ceived additional privileges in the cod-fisheries. This was true in the Canadian reciprocity treaty of 1854.^ These vaguely recollected incidents thrown back ten years in time formed the nucleus for Spalding's fictitious accounts of the negotiations of 1843, and made them seem to Gray and Eells in conformity with their own recollections.^
That Whitman's visit east dispelled ignorance about Ore-
1 Sir George Simpson was in Washington in Oct., 1853, to promote the settle- ment of the Hudson's Bay Company's claims against the United States arising from their property and possessory rights. HudsorCs Bay and Pugefs Sound Agricultural Companies, Evidence of Hudson's Bay Co., I, 447. It will be remem- bered that it was the final arrangement to settle these claims that was one of the occasions that gave rise to the original publication of the Whitman story, see p. 26.
2 See Treaties and Conventions of the United States ; Rhodes' Hist, of the United States, II, 8.
3 Possibly Gray's error, in his article in the Astoria Marine Gazette of August 6, 1866, and in his deposition, of asserting that Whitman had interviews with Webster and Fillmore may add plausibility to this explanation. If Gray's mem- ory moved Fillmore's presidency back ten years it is not strange that Spalding's memory should not save him from moving back Sir George Simpson's visit and the fisheries negotiation ten or eleven years.
THE LEGEND OF MARCUS WHITMAN 85
gon or inspired enthusiasm are equally without foundation. No doubt he could contribute some facts of interest, but the widely circulated TVaveZs of Farnham were in the field; ^ Greenhow's exhaustive history was being distributed as a public document; Fremont was under commission to explore the Rockies ; the Wilkes Exploring Expedition had explored the Columbia River and Puget Sound Regions two years earlier, and Sub-Indian Agent White was writing frequent reports to his superiors at Washington. The ignorance and indifference of the government and the public are fictions of a later day.
In such investigation of the newspapers as I have been able to make I have found just one news item about Whit- man's journey east, outside of the missionary intelligence of two or three religious papers which refer to his visit to Boston. Whitman called on Horace Greeley in the last part of March and gave him some account of the conditions in Oregon and of his journey. There is not a word in the interview that indicates that there was any crisis in Oregon affairs, that he had a political errand, or wished to stir up public sentiment on Oregon. ^ Here was a unique opportu-
1 Travels in the Great Western Prairies, the Anahuac and Rocky Mountains and in the Oregon Territory, by T. J. Farnham, New York, 1843. Besides Farnham's Travels there were Samuel Parker's Journal of an Exploring Tour beyond the Rocky Mountains, of which 15,000 copies were sold in a few years after its pub- lication in 1838. Wyeth's Memoir, included in Cushing's Report, in 1839, of which 10,000 extra copies were printed, and J. K. Townsend's Narrative of a Journey across the Rocky Mountains, 1839. On the general question of the amount of public information on Oregon, see Bancroft's Oregon, 1, 349-383, and Greenhow, Oregon, 356-389.
2 This interesting description of Whitman's appearance and travels is too long to quote in full. He impressed Greeley as a " noble pioneer, ... a man fitted to be a chief in rearing a moral Empire among the wild men of the wilderness. ... He brings information that the settlers in the Willamette are doing well, that the Americans are building a town at the falls of the Willamette." Then follows an item in regard to members of Farnham's party and Whitman's itinerary. " We give the hardy and self-denying pioneer a hearty welcome to his native land." N. Y. Weekly Tribune, Mar. 30, 1843. This item was copied into the Cleveland Herald of April 6. In the same issue appeared three columns of extracts from the N. Y. Tribune's cheap edition of Farnham's Travels. Any one can draw correct conclusions as to the relative strength of these two influences in arousing public interest.
86 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
nity to reach the public, for Greeley was much interested in Oregon, and printed all the news relative to it that he could gather, and had published a cheap edition of Farnham's Travels, which had an immense sale.^
Turning now to Boston we find in the records of his confer- ences with the Board the real history of his journey and its purpose. His own statement is summarized in the record as follows : —
" Left the Oregon country 3rd October, 1842, and arrived at Westport, Mo., 15th February,^ and in Boston 30 March, 1843. Left unexpectedly and brought few letters. Letters of March, 1842, had been received and acted on. The diffi- culties between Mr. Spalding and others were apparently healed, and Mr. S. promises to pursue a different course. The mission wish to make another trial with Mr. Smith and Mr. Gray out of the mission. Mr. Gray requests a dismis- sion and has left the mission and gone to the Methodist settlement. Mr. Rogers also.^ . . . There is, however, an influx of Papists, and many emigrants from the U. S. are ex- pected. The religious influence needs to be strengthened. The mission therefore propose and request that : —
1 WeeMi/ Tribune, May 25, 1843.
2 If Whitman did not arrive at Westport till Feb. 15, it is clear that he could not have reached Washington, March 2 or 3, as is alleged in the legendary account. The date in Spalding's original article was "last of March" (see above, p. 12 ), but later he changed the date to March 3 to get Whitman to Washington before the adjournment of Congress. In the spring of 1843 it would have been almost if not quite impossible to go from Westport, about three hundred miles west of St. Louis, to Washington in fifteen days. In that year the Missouri river was frozen up from February until the end of April. (R. W. Miller's Hist, of Kansas City, 35.) Whitman, however, according to the recollections of Samuel Par- ker's sons, went to Ithaca, N. Y., before going to Washington. (Fells' Marcus Whitman, 15.) Mowry goes so far as to reject the date of Whitman's arrival in Westport as given by Whitman a few weeks later, in favor of an earlier date. This he obtains by accepting without question Lovejoy's recollection, after twenty- five years, of the date on which Whitman left Bent's Fort. He then asserts arbi- trarily, forgetting that it was midwinter, that it could not have taken Whitman so long to reach Westport. See his Marcus Whitman, 169.
* The omitted passage reports the condition of the Indians and the friendliness of the traders at Fort Walla Walla.
THE LEGEND OF MARCUS WHITMAN 87
" 1. One preacher be sent to join them to labor at Waiilatpu — and that
" 2. A company of some five or ten men may be found of piety and intelligence, not to be appointed by the Board or to be immediately connected with it, who will go to the Oregon country as Christian men, and who, on some terms to be agreed upon, shall take most of the land which the mission have under cultivation, with the mills and shops at the several stations, with the most of the stock and utensils, paying the mission in produce from year to year, in seed to the Indians, and assistance rendered to them — or in some similar manner, the particulars to be decided upon in con- sultation with the men. The result of this would be: —
"1. Introducing a band of religious men into the country to exert a good religious influence on the. Indians and the White population which may come in especially near the mission stations.
" 2. Counteracting papal efforts and influences.
" 3. Releasing the missionaries from the great amount of manual labor, which is now necessary for them for their subsistence, and permitting them to devote themselves to appropriate missionary work among the Indians, whose lan- guage they now speak.
" 4. Doing more for the civilization and social improvement of the Indians than the mission can do unaided.
" 5. It would afford facilities for religious families to go into the country and make immediately a comfortable settle- ment, with the enjoyment of Christian privileges, — both those who might be introduced upon the lands now occupied by the mission and others who might be induced to go, and settle in the vicinity of the stations.
"6. It would save the mission from the necessity of trading with immigrants. Those [who] now enter the country expect to purchase or beg their supplies from the mission for a year or two, and it would be thought cruel to refuse [to] provide such supplies." 1
1 Submitted to the Prudential Committee April 4, 1843, Doct. Marcus Whit- man, Abenakis and Oregon Indians, Letter-book, 248. Whitman wrote his brother-
88 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
Then follow a few facts about Oregon but not a word on the political question or Whitman's trip to Washington. According to Love joy's recollection ^ Whitman felt that the Board disapproved of his action in coming east. Of this there is no record. Yet the self-defensive tone of his later letters reflects the same impression. In such a conjuncture what more effective defence could he have made than to show the urgency of the political crisis in Oregon and in Washington ?
Whitman's journey, in fact, was measurably successful, and the requests of the mission were granted. The minute in regard to his project for an emigration was: "A plan which he proposed for taking with him, on his return to the mission, a small company of intelligent and pious laymen, to settle at or near the mission station, but without expense to the Board or any connection with it, was so far approved that he was authorized to take such men, if those of a suit- able character and with whom satisfactory arrangements could be made, can be found. "^
Such was Whitman's plan of emigration,^ and how differ- ent from the legendary proposal to Tyler and Webster to take out a thousand emigrants! The fact that Whitman returned in company with the emigration of 1843 has been transformed by legend into the accomplishment of a pre- viously announced purpose to organize and conduct such a body of emigrants. The emigration which he planned he
in-law from Shawnee Mission, May 28, 1843 : " My plan, you know, was to get funds for founding schools and have good people come along as settlers and teach- ers." Trans. Oregon Pioneer Association, 1891, 178.
1 Gray's Oregon, 326 ; Nixon, 311. This is confirmed by the recollections of Dr. Geiger, and Perrin B. Whitman, Eells' Marcus Whitman, 4 and 13.
2 Records of the Prudential Committee. Cf . Report of the A. B. C. F. M. for 1843, 169-173 ; Missionary Herald, Sept. 1843, 356.
2 He seems to have made it public in a measure before leaving Oregon. At any rate Hines refers to " the departure of Dr. Whitman to the United States with the avowed intention of bringing back with him as many as he could enlist for Oregon " as having alarmed the Indians. It was also rumored that the Nez-Perce's had despatched one of their chiefs to incite the Indians of the buffalo country to cut off Whitman's party on his return. Hines's Oregon, Auburn and Buffalo, 1851, 143. Eines's narrative is based on his diary at the time.
THE LEGEND OF MARCUS WHITMAN 89
did not carry out, feeling that by going on immediately with the already organized emigration of 1843 he would be of greater service.^ Whitman did not organize the emigra- tion of 1843, but joined it and rendered valuable services en route. As the facts about the emigration of 1843 are perfectly accessible in Bancroft, ^ I shall merely quote from Whitman's letters such extracts as will illustrate his pur- poses, his relation to the emigration, and his own view of what he had accomplished by coming East.
On May 12, 1843, Whitman writes from St. Louis, "I have made up my mind that it would not be expedient to try and take any families across this year except such as can go at this time. For that reason I have found it my duty to go on with the party myself. "^ Calling attention to the Catholic missionary efforts, for which he refers the committee to De Smedt's Indian Sketches^ he continues, " I think by a careful consideration of this together with these facts and movements you will realize our feelings that we must look with interest upon this the only spot on the Pacific Coast left where protestants have a present hope of a foothold. It is requisite that some good pious men and ministers go to Oregon without delay as citizens or our hope there is greatly clouded, if not destroyed."
1 He wrote his wife's parents from Waiilatpu, May 16, 1844 : "I did not mis- judge as to my duty to return home ; the importance of my accompanying the emigration on the one hand, and the consequent scarcity of provisions on the other, strongly called for my return, and forbid my bringing another party that year." Trans, of the Oregon Pioneer Association, 1893, 64.
2 Cf. Bancroft, Oregon, I, 390 ff. It is perhaps unnecessary to say that Whit- man never pretended that he organized the emigration. In his letter to the Sec- retary of War, received June 22, 1844, he wrote: "The Government will now doubtless for the first time be apprised through you, or by means of this commu- nication, of the immense immigration of families to Oregon which has taken place this year. I have, since our interview, been instrumental in piloting ... no less than three hundred families," etc. iViron, 316. He would not have expressed himself in this way if his achievement had been the fulfilment of his pledge to Tyler to organize and conduct such a company.
3 Two weeks later, May 27, he wrote from Shawnee Mission School : " I hope to start to-morrow. I shall have an easy journey as I have not much to do, having no one depending on me." Trans. Oregon Pioneer Association, 1891, 177.
90 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
On May 30, he writes again from Shawnee : —
" I cannot give you much of an account of the emigrants until we get on the road. It is said that there are over two hundred men besides women and children. They look like a fair representation of a country population. . . . We do not ask you to become the patrons of emigration to Oregon, but we desire you to use your influence that in connexion with all the influx into this country there may be a good proportion of good men from our own denomination who shall avail themselves of the advantages of the country in common with others. . . . We cannot feel it at all just that we are doing nothing while worldly men and papists are doing so much. De Smedt's business in Europe can be seen, I think, at the top of the 23d page of his Indian Sketches, etc. You will see by his book I think that the papal effort is designed to convey over the country to the English. ... I think our greatest hope for having Oregon at least part protestant now lies in encouraging a proper attention of good men to go there while the country is open. I want to call your attention to the operation of Farnham of Salem and the Bensons of N. York in Oregon. I am told credibly that secretly government aids them with the Secret service fund.^ Capt. Howard of Maine is also in expecta- tion of being employed by government to take out emigrants should the Oregon bill pass."
On Nov. 1 he wrote from the Fort Walla Walla: "My journey across the mountains was very much prolonged by the necessity for me to pilot the emigrants. I tried to leave the party, at different points, and push forward alone, but I found that I could not do so without subjecting the emigrants to considerable risk." Then follows a plea for more help from the mission board : —
" We very much need good men to locate themselves two, three or four in a place and secure a good influence for the Indians, and form a nucleus for religious institutions, and keep back Romanism. This country must be occupied by
1 Cf. Parrish's statement in Bancroft^ 1, 177.
THE LEGEND OF MARCUS WHITMAN 91
Americans or foreigners : if it is by the latter, they will be mostly papists. ... I regret very much that I was obliged to return so soon to this country, but nothing was more evidently my duty. . . . Yet I do not regret having visited the States, for I feel that either this country must be Amer- ican or else foreign and mostly papal. If I never do more than to have been one of the first to take white women across the mountains and prevent the disorder and inaction which would have occurred by the breaking up of the present emigration and establishing the first wagon road across to the border of the Columbia river, I am satisfied. ^ I do not feel that we can look on and see foreign and papal influence making its greatest efforts and we hold ourselves as expatri- ated and neutral. I am determined to exert myself for my country and to procure such regulations and laws as will best secure both the Indians and white men in their transit and settlement intercourse. " ^
In the following summer, on July 22, Whitman wrote in regard to the emigration of 1843, " The lateness of the spring prevented them from setting out so soon by a month as in ordinary seasons. No one but myself was present to give them the assurance of getting through,^ which was necessary to keep up their spirits, and to counteract reports which were destined to meet and dishearten them at every stage of the journey."*
From these contemporary letters it is clear that Whitman made no claim to have organized the emigration of 1843 or to have rendered them services, beyond encouragement and
1 Cf. his letter, just cited, of May 16, 1844 : "As I hold the settlement of this country by Americans rather than by an English colony most important, I am happy to have been the means of landing so large an emigration on to the shores of the Columbia, with their wagons, families, and stock, all in safety." Transac- tions of the Oregon Pioneer Association, 1893, 64.
2 As, for example, by his letter to the Secretary of War.
* In Hastings' Emigrant Guide to Oregon and California, etc., Cincinnati, 1845, emigrants are cautioned not to leave Independence later than May 1. 147.
* All these letters are in the Letter-book, Oregon Indians. I may hereby express my appreciation of the courtesy with which the officials of the Board gave me access to their records.
92 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
advice and guidance. These services were amply recognized by the leaders of the emigration.
In Jesse Applegate's most interesting narrative, "A Day with the Cow Column," and in Peter H. Burnett's Recollec- tions there are warm tributes to Whitman's disinterested and untiring efforts for the welfare of the emigration ; but neither of these leaders of the movement intimates that the organiza- tion of the expedition was owing in any way to Whitman. ^ In none of the strictly contemporary sources is Whitman credited with having organized the emigration and in many of them he is not even mentioned. ^
1 Applegate's article was originally published in the Overland Monthly y August, 1868, 1, 127-133. It is reprinted in Nixon's How Marcus Whitman Saved Oregon, 146-163, and in the Quarterly of the Oregon Historical Society for December, 1900. Applegate says : •' Whitman's great experience and indomitable energy were of priceless value to the emigrating column. ... To no other individual are the emigrants of 1843 so much indebted for the successful conclusion of their journey as to Marcus Whitman," 131-132. Cf. Burnett's Recollections and Opinions of an Old Pioneer, N. Y., 1880, " Dr. Whitman who had performed much hard labor for us and was deserving of our warmest gratitude." 126.
* The emigration of 1843 attracted much attention in the newspapers, but Whitman's name is nowhere mentioned as a leader with those of the Applegates, Burnett, and the others. See Burnett's Recollections, 97-98. After Burnett decided to go, he " set to work to organize a wagon company. I visited the sur- rounding counties wherever I could find a sufficient audience and succeeded even beyond my own expectations." Cf. this extract from a letter from Iowa Territory dated March 4, 1843 : " Just now Oregon is the pioneer's land of promise. Hun- dreds are already prepared to start thither with the spring, while hundreds of others are anxiously awaiting the action of Congress in reference to that country, as the signal of their departure. Some have already been to view the country and have returned with a flattering tale of the inducements it holds out. They have painted it to their neighbors in the highest colors. These have told it to others. The Oregon fever has broken out and is now raging like any other contagion." N. Y. Weekly Tribune, April 1, 1843. As this letter is dated March 4, and Whit- man arrived at the present site of Kansas City, Feb. 15, and went straight to St. Louis, it is obvious he had no connection with this excitement. Several of the writers realizing this have attributed to Lovejoy the work of getting up the emi- gration ; but he was at Bent's fort in Colorado while Whitman was in the East. After his arrival in Oregon, Burnett wrote an account of the journey which was published in the N. Y. Herald, and later in Geo. Wilkes' History of Oregon, N. Y., 1845, Part II, 63 fE. (cf. Burnett's Recollections, 177). In this narrative the only reference to Whitman in connection with the organization of the expedition is the following: " A meeting was held in the latter part of the day [May 18], which resulted in appointing a committee to return to Independence and make inquiries
THE LEGEND OF MARCUS WHITMAN 93
The real force behind the emigration of 1843 was the pro- visions for granting lands to settlers in Linn's bill which it was expected would pass Congress in 1843. ^ That a large emigration was in preparation for 1843 Whitman knew in
1842, five months before he left Oregon. May 12, 1842, Gray wrote from Waiilatpu : " There will probably be a large party of immigrants coming to this country in the spring of
1843. Some young men are now returning with the expec- tation of bringing out a party next spring. "^ That Whit- man may have urged individuals to join the emigration is likely enough, and is affirmed by Lovejoy, that he gave some advice to prospective emigrants while on his way East seems certain; 3 but he had no time to do more, and they would not have had time to get ready unless they had begun before his arrival.* The legendary account of Whitman's relation to the emigration of 1843 has been supported by a letter published by Spalding from John Zachrey, one of the emi- grants of 1843, who wrote in 1868 : —
" In answer to your inquiries, I would say that my father and his family emigrated to Oregon in 1843, from the State of Texas. I was then 17 years old. The occasion of my father starting that season for this country, as also several of our neighbors, was a publication by Dr. Whitman, or from his representations, concerning Oregon and the route from the States to Oregon. In the pamphlet the doctor
of Dr. Whitman, missionary, who had an establishment on the Walla Walla, respecting the practicability of the road." I am indebted to Mr. W. I. Marshall for this reference to Burnett's contemporary account.
1 The proofs of this are numerous. Dr. Whitman himself in his letter to the Secretary of War, received June 24, 1844, says of the emigration : " The majority of them are farmers, lured by the prospect of bounty in lands, by the reported fer- tility of the soil," etc. Nixon, 316. " But if the Oregon bill passes, a party under Lieutenant Fremont, or some one else, will go through the Rocky Mountains to Oregon ; and parties of emigrants or explorers will go also." Letter of Asa Gray to George Englemann, Feb. 13, 1843. Letters of Asa Gray, I, 297.
2 Letter-book, Oregon Indians.
8 " A great many cattle are going, but no sheep, from a mistake of what I said in passing." Whitman's letter to his brother-in-law, May 28, 1843. Trans. Ore* gon Pioneer Assoc, 1891, 178.
* Cf. statement of Elwood Evans, p. 104 below.
94 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
described Oregon, the soil, climate and its desirableness for American colonies, and said that he had crossed the Rocky Mountains that winter principally to take back that season a train of wagons to Oregon. We had been told that wagons could not be taken beyond Fort Hall. But in this pamphlet the doctor assured his countrymen that wagons could be taken through to the Columbia River and to the Dalles, and from thence by boats to the Willamette; that himself and mission party had taken their families, cattle and wagons through to the Columbia, six years before. It was this assurance of the missionary that induced my father and sev- eral of his neighbors to sell out and start at once for this country."^
Mr. Spalding is our sole authority for the text of this letter. A reference to p. 62 will show the reader how he interpolated Dr. White's letter to the Indian Commissioner. That this letter of Zachrey's contains interpolations is prac- tically proved by the fact that one of its statements, which is absolutely false, occurs elsewhere in a document which Spalding wrote. On pp. 71-78 of Exec. Doc. 87 is a narra- tive of the Oregon missionary history in the form of a series of resolutions adopted at three different times by three differ- ent churches. This narrative is identical in much of its language and in its ideas with Spalding's other narratives, of which extracts are given on pp. 9-15 and 100-101.
Resolution 6 reads: "By the arrival of the Protestant Whitman at the city of Washington, in March, 1843, through untold winter sufferings in the mountains of Utah and New Mexico, not an hour too soon to prevent the transfer of all Oregon to Great Britain to go into the Ashburton and Webster treaty for a cod-fishery on Newfoundland: by his personal representations to President Tyler of this country, of its vast importance, and his assurance of a wagon route, as he assured him we had taken cattle, a wagon, and his missionary families through six years before," etc.^ The false statement that is common to the Zachrey letter and
1 Exec. Doc. 37, 26. « Exec. Doc. 37, 75, 76.
THE LEGEND OF MARCUS WHITMAN 95
to the narrative embodied in this resolution is the asser- tion that Whitman took his wagon through to the Columbia in 1836. This was not true and could not have been truthfully asserted by Whitman either to President Tyler or in the supposititious pamphlet. Mrs. Whitman says in her diary of that journey under date of Aug. 22 : " As for the wagon, it is left at the Fort"^ [Boisd]. If the Zachrey letter is accepted in its entirety Whitman is proved to have falsified. If it was interpolated by Spalding, as I think is clear, how much of it did Zachrey write ? No copy of any pamphlet, nor any newspaper article by Whitman published for the purpose indicated has ever been found. Nor would it, humanly speaking, have been possible for Whitman, who reached Westport Feb. 15, and Boston March 30, and was back again in St. Louis May 12, to write a pamphlet which could be circulated in Texas, ^ where Zachrey lived, early enough for his father and his neighbors to sell out and get ready to start from Independence, May 22, for Oregon. ^
The genuine residuum of the Zachrey letter, less the Spald- ing interpolations, represents the coalescence after twenty- three years in Zachrey's memory of what Whitman did on the journey for the emigrants with the indistinct recollection of the inducements to start. It is probable that reports of some of Dr. White's speeches to promote emigration in 1842 * reached the elder Zachrey, and the boy later attributed the efforts of White to Whitman. The other testimonies advanced to prove that Whitman was an active promoter of the emigration of 1843 likewise dissolve into thin air when subjected to criticism. In 1883 Myron Eells printed per- sonal statements from fourteen survivors of the emigration
1 Transactions of the Oregon Pioneer Assoc, 1891, 52. The cart, the wagon was changed to a cart two days before they arrived at Fort Hall {ibid., 47), was still at Fort Boise in 1839. See Farnham's Travels, 77.
2 It will be remembered that the settled part of Texas, then a foreign State, was hundreds of miles from Independence.
* This date is given by Burnett, Recollections, 99. Burnett kept a diary of the journey.
* Cf. White's Ten Years in Oregon, 142-143.
96 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
of 1843, one of which was the Zachrey letter.^ Not a single one of the fourteen who was a responsible head of a family in 1843 reported that he was induced to go by Dr. Whitman. The two Applegates and J. M. Shively, leaders of the move- ment, asserted that they never heard of Whitman till he joined the emigration on the Platte River. One reported that he believed many were influenced by Whitman, but, on the other hand, J. W. Nesmith, in later life a senator from Oregon, wrote: "I know of no person who was induced to come to Oregon in consequence of Dr. Whitman's represen- tations." Of the three besides Zachrey who testify to Whit- man's influence in their own cases one was a boy of ten in 1843, another presumably a young girl in 1843, who attrib- uted her coming to "a pamphlet Dr. Whitman wrote," and the third a man who said that his father was on the way to Wisconsin, and was persuaded by Whitman to go to Oregon instead. In reviewing this question Dr. Mowry omits all the adverse testimony, candidly printed though uncritically and fallaciously summarized by Myron Eells, while President Penrose calmly and reassuringly writes : " Undoubtedly there were many who had not heard of Dr. Whitman and were not influenced by him to go, but on the other hand a con- siderable number, about two-fifths of those who have been questioned on the subject, say that they went because of representations made by Dr. Whitman, either personally or through newspapers or through a pamphlet. "^ The recol- lections of those who were children or youth in 1843, that their parents were influenced by Whitman's articles or pam- phlet all refer to Dr. White's efforts in 1842. Such a confusion at first sight seems less likely than it really was because of the enormous factitious reputation that the legend has created for Whitman in the last thirty years. But from 1842 Dr. White was a more prominent and a better known man than Dr. Whitman. As the representative of the United States government he would be a conspicuous person
1 Marcus Whitman. M.D., 27-31.
2 His letter to the Boston Transcript, Jan. 21, 1901.
THE LEGEND OF MARCUS WHITMAN 97
in the recollections of those days. That the confusion was natural is confirmed by the fact that in the earliest reports of the Whitman massacre it is Dr. White and not Dr. Whitman whose death was announced.^
As the years passed Dr. Whitman attached so much im- portance to his services to the emigration that he came to emphasize such a service as the main purpose of his journey to the East. If it had been among his purposes it was to such a degree incidental and minor that he apparently never mentioned it to the Committee of the American Board, nor did his fellow missionary, Mr. Walker, refer to it.
In 1847, in defending his return East in 1842, Whitman declared that the American interest in Oregon hinged on the success of the immigration of 1843. Had that been disas- trous it may be easily seen what would have 'become of Amer- ican interests. The disaster last year to those "who left the track I made for them in 1843 . . . demonstrates what I did in making my way to the States in the winter of 1842-3, after the third of October. It was to open a practical route and safe passage and secure a favorable report of the jour- ney from emigrants, which in connection with other objects caused me to leave my family and brave the toils and dangers of the journey." He reiterates this same idea the month before his death. ^
1 New York Tribune, May 25, 1848. From Pittsburg Chronicle, by telegraph from Louisville, May 21 : " By the arrival of Major Meek, late and exciting news has been received from Oregon/' Then follows a brief account of the massacre. " Dr. White and his wife and eighteen others were killed." Meek's winter jour- ney across the mountains to bring the news and get help was as remarkable a performance as Whitman's, although it has been eclipsed by the legend.
2 These letters were printed in the Oregon Native Son, February, 1900, 471-472. In 1846, in urging courage and resolution upon a weaker brother, Whitman goes so far in claiming to have saved Oregon by his own energies that we get a glimpse perhaps of one of the germs of the legend. ** I was in Boston when the famous time came for the end of the world, but I did not conclude that as the time was so short I would not concern myself to return to my family. ... I had adopted Oregon for my field of labour, so that I must superintend the immigration of that year, which was to lay the foundation for the speedy settlement of the country if prosperously conducted and safely carried through ; but if it failed and became disastrous, the reflex influence would be to discourage for a long time any
7
98 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
It may be questioned if the emigration of 1843 would have met with disaster if Whitman had not been with them, or, if it had, whether that would have really made any differ- ence in the history of the Oregon question. The sufferings of the emigration of 1846 did not prevent the southern road from being attempted again in 1847 ^ and with success. The value of Whitman's services in 1843 was great and need not be questioned. That they were indispensable there is no reason to suppose.
Two questions may now be considered which have fre- quently been urged in support of the legend. First, if the fate of Oregon was not at stake but only the continuance of the mission, why did Whitman make the perilous winter journey; why did he not wait till summer? The answer is twofold. First, by starting immediately he hoped to reach the settlements before winter set in.^ If successful he would have time to get up his party of Christian lay helpers and return the following summer. If he waited till summer he would be absent from his mission and his wife two years. The second question is, why did he go to Wash- further attempt to settle the country across the mountains, which would be to see it abandoned altogether. Now, mark the difference between the sentiments of you and me. Since that time you have allowed yourself to be laid aside from the ministry for an opinion only. . . . Within that time I have returned to my field of labour, and in my return brought a large immigration of about one thousand individuals safely through the long and the last part of it an untried route to the western shores of the continent. Now that they were once safely conducted through, three successive immigrations have followed after them, and two routes for wagons are now open to the Willamette valley. Mark, had I been of your mind I should have slept, and now the Jesuit Papists would have been in quiet possession of this the only spot in the western horizon of America not their own. They were fast fixing themselves here, and had we missionaries had no American population to come in to hold on and give stability, it would have been but a small work for them and the friends of English interests, which they had also fully avowed, to have routed us, and then the country might have slept in their hands forever," Letter to Rev. L. P. Judson, Transactions Oregon Pioneer Assoc, 1893, 200-201.
1 Bancroft, I, 543-572.
* Mrs. Whitman wrote her parents, Sept. 30, 1842: "He wishes to cross the mountains during this month, I mean October, and to reach St. Louis about the first of Dec." Trans. Oregon Pioneer Assoc. ^ 168.
THE LEGEND OF MARCUS WHITMAN 99
ington first if his main business was in Boston ? The answer to that is that as his business in Washington was to urge government measures to make emigration to Oregon easier and safer, he could not delay because the people he wished to see might scatter to their homes. His main purpose in going to Boston would not be affected one way or the other by a delay of a week or two, but his opportunities in Wash- ington to urge his plan for protecting and aiding emigration might be seriously diminished by a few days' delay after the adjournment of Congress.
That the generally accepted story of Marcus Whitman is entirely unhistorical has been demonstrated. There was no political crisis in Oregon affairs in 1842-43 either in Oregon to give occasion to Whitman's ride, or in Washington to render his arrival and information important. There is no reason to suppose that the course of events in Oregon or in Washington would not have gone on just as they did if Whitman had stayed in Waiilatpu.
The real history of Marcus Whitman is briefly as follows : Sent out as a missionary to the Oregon Indians in 1836, he established a prosperous station which proved a haven of rest for the weary emigrant and traveller. In 1842 he is ordered to give up the station, but at the very time when the orders come a large emigration party arrives much reduced by the hardships of the journey from Fort Hall. Their leader, Dr. White, announces that the United States are going to occupy the country and that many are preparing to come the follow- ing year.
If the mission station is abandoned it would be giving up Protestant mission work just at the time when the Catholics had begun to come in and when the country was going to be settled, and when the mission station would be of especial service to the emigrants. If it were still kept up, more help must be secured : clergymen for religious work and Christian laymen to attend to the increasing business of the mission station, the farms, the mill, the sheltering of the sick and orphans, etc. If emigration on a grand scale was to begin,
100 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
the government ought to protect it and establish supply sta- tions. If anything was to be done to reverse the action of the Board it must be done at once, or a year would be lost.
Dr. Whitman was an energetic, impulsive man, of sanguine temperament, and he revolted at giving up the station at the time when its best opportunity to render material and tangible services to Oregon was at hand.
The missionaries gather and discuss the situation. Before they separate he is resolved. He will listen to no dissuasion. After presenting the needs of the emigrants at Washington and securing the reversal of the decision of the Board at Boston he returns. The mission increases in its usefulness to the emigrants. It is a hospital and orphan asylum and a refuge for the sick and helpless. The Indians, however, for whom it was established, foresee the inevitable. Disease and death invade their ranks; superstition and jealousy, distrust and resentment, take possession of their minds, and the dreadful tragedy of Waiilatpu follows.
That Marcus Whitman was a devoted and heroic missionary who braved every hardship and imperilled his life for the cause of Christian missions and Christian civilization in the far Northwest and finally died at his post, a sacrifice to the cause, will not be gainsaid. That he deserves grateful com- memoration in Oregon and Washington is beyond dispute. But that he is a national figure in American history, or that he "saved" Oregon, must be rejected as a fiction.
NOTE A Extract from the Memorial of H. H. Spalding to Congress,
ENTITLED AMERICAN CONGRESS V. PROTESTANTISM IN OrEGON,
Exec. Doc. 37, 41st Cong., Third Sess., p. 42
And that said Whitman, by his sleepless vigilance, became convinced that a deep-laid plan was about culminating to secure this rich country of Oregon Territory to Great Britain, from misrepresentation on the part of Great Britain, and for want of information as to the character and value of the country on the part of the Government of the United States.
THE LEGEND OF MARCUS WHITMAN 101
And that to preivent the sale and transfer of said Territory, and the consequent loss to the United States of this great Northwest and its valuable seaboard, and the great commercial considera- tions therewith, said Whitman did, in the dead of winter, at his own expense, and without asking or expecting a dollar from any source, cross the continent, amid the snows of the Rocky Moun- tains and the bleakness of the intervening plains, inhabited by hostile savages, suffering severe hardships and perils from being compelled to swim broad, rapid, and ice-floating rivers, and to wander lost in the terrific snowstorms, subsisting on mule and dog meat, and reached the city of Washington not an hour too soon, confronting the British agents Ashburton, Fox, and Simp- son, who, there is evidence to show, in a short time would have consummated their plans and secured a part, if not all, of our territory west of the mountains to Great Britain, and by his own personal knowledge disproving their allegations, and by com- municating to President Tyler important information concerning the country, and the fact that he had taken his wagons and mis- sion families through years before, and that he proposed taking back a wagon-train of emigrants that season, did thereby pre- vent the sale and loss of this our rich Pacific domain to the people of the United States.
And that said Whitman did then return to Oregon Territory and conduct the first wagon-train of 1,000 souls to the Columbia Biver, thereby greatly increasing American influence, and com- pletely breaking the influence of the British monopoly and add- ing immensely to the courage and wealth of the little American settlement.
NOTE B
The Earliest Printed Version of Whitman's Political Ser- vices IN Behalf of Oregon. Published in "The Sacra- mento Union," Nov. 16, 1864, in an Account by ''C." [S. A. Clarke] of the Presentation to the State of Oregon of the Tomahawk with which it was asserted Dr. Whit- man WAS killed
In accepting the gift the Speaker of the Oregon Assembly, Mr. J. H. Moores, "Related an incident of our early history
102 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
never to my knowledge before given to the public, and that was heard by him from the lips of the Kev. Mr. Spalding, an- other early missionary, and the coadjutor of Dr., Whitman. When the Ashburton Treaty was in progress, news came to the little settlement in Oregon that the government was about dis- posing of the whole Northwest coast to the English, and it made a deep impression on the mind of Whitman, whose long resi- dence had produced a sincere attachment for the land of his adoption. He appreciated its future value and importance, and looked upon its broad rivers and fertile valleys as fields for the development of population, wealth, and power. Time has real- ized the conjecture, which he did not live to see, but he was restless under the impression that his favorite region might be transferred to another power, and, midwinter as it was, he undertook the dreary and then dreaded journey across the plains for the sole purpose to remonstrate against the act. Webster was Secretary of State, and to him he went, after hastening to Washington, and asked what was the character of the negotia- tions. He was told that the preliminaries of the treaty were about agreed upon, and his remonstrance was met with a smile.
"'Why, Doctor, you have come too late; we have about traded off the Northwest coast for a codfishery. '
" ' But, Sir, you do not know What you are doing; you do not realize that that territory you mention with a smile, almost a sneer, could make a home for millions; that its broad navigable rivers lead to an ocean whose commerce includes the Indies and the Empires of the Orient; that we have fine harbors and broad bays to invite that commerce thither and offer an anchorage to the navies of the world. Then there are beautiful and fertile valleys, whose harvests will yield eventually an increase to the nation's wealth.'
" ' You are enthusiastic. Doctor,' answered the Secretary, with an easy smile. * You certainly are an enthusiast. The reports that come to us from Oregon differ materially from yours. The central portions of the continent are a barren waste, and the waters of the western slope course through a mountain wil- derness or else a desert shore. The mountaineer can hunt and trap there. The tourist may sketch its snow-capped ridges, and describe the Indian in his native haunts. The trapper finds a home there.'
THE LEGEND OF MARCUS WHITMAN 103
" * Sir, you have no idea of the land you sneer at. Oregon has all the virtues we claim for it. A few Americans have gone thither to develop our nation's wealth. We are far off, but our hearts are with the nation of our birth. We are pioneers, and can it be possible that our claims will be ignored, — that our country can consent to trade off her territory and our allegiance to a foreign power ? '
" Dr. Whitman did not rest the question with the Secretary. He visited President Tyler himself, and left no stone unturned until he had awakened an interest in his cause in the minds of the President and a portion of his Cabinet, and a due considera- tion of the matter induced the final preservation of the greater portion of the Northwest Territory as a portion of the National Domain.''
I am indebted for this transcript to Mr. William I. Marshall of Chicago. This earliest version of Whitman's services in behalf of Oregon mainly relates to incidents of which no living person in Oregon in 1864 had any first-hand knowledge. The only men who at any time could have confirmed or denied this story of their own knowledge were Daniel Webster and Marcus Whitman. Webster had been dead twelve years and Whitman seventeen years.
As a newspaper correspondent's report of a speech which reproduced the substance of Mr. Spalding's oral narration, this version of Whitman's work for Oregon in Washington cannot, of course, be pressed for details, but it may be remarked that there is no mention of the Walla Walla dinner, and that the account assumes that the Ashburton Treaty was still unsigned in 1843, and bases Whitman's services on his influence in Washington. It also makes him start in midwinter instead of early in October. The correspondent also explicitly states that to his knowledge it had never before been made public. If this correspondent found no one in that Oregon Assembly who had heard of it before 1864, this year can safely be assumed to be the date of its first revelation by Mr. Spalding. In Myron Eells' Did Marcus Whitman Save Oregon? this article is wrongly credited to the Sacramento Daily Bulletin.
104 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
NOTE C
Mr. Elwood Evans' Summary of his Conclusions in the Whitman Controversy ^
"First, Dr. Whitman's winter journey in 1842-43 liad no political intent or significance whatever.
" Second, no feeling as to the Oregon boundary controversy, or desire or wish to defeat British to the territory or any part of it, had any influence in actuating such a journey.
" Third, his exclusive purpose was to secure the rescinding by the American Board of Foreign Missions of the order of 1841 to abandon the southern stations of Waiilatpu and Lapwai.
"Fourth, there is no evidence that he visited Washington City during the spring of 1843.
"Fifth, that he in any manner whatever or in the remotest degree stimulated the ' great immigration of 1843, ' is as unten- able as the political claim we have been discussing. Nor would it be referred to, but for the connection that American occupancy of the territory had in hastening the settlement of the Oregon controversy. Dr. Whitman left Oregon in October, 1842, and he only reached St. Louis in March, 1843. No opportunity had ever occurred for meeting parties who could be influenced to go to Oregon. In those early days the Oregon immigration had to arrange in the fall of the preceding year for the next year's great journey. Dr. Whitman's connection with that immigration commenced with the crossing of the North Platte Eiver in June, where he overtook the train. He accompanied it, and rendered valuable service as a physician and as an experi- enced traveller. Escorted by it to Oregon, though in no respect whatever a factor in its formation or progress, perhaps his pres- ence contributed greatly to its successful transcontinental march."
1 The Oregonian, Portland, Dec. 25, 1884. Cited from Mowry's Marcus Whitman, p. 112.
THE LEGEND OF MARCUS WHITMAN 105
NOTE D
Dr. Mowry prints the contemporary newspaper accounts of the visit of the four Flathead Indians to St. Louis. ^ George Catlin travelled with the two survivors on their return and painted their portraits. He writes : " These two men were part of a delegation that came across the Rocky Mountains to St. Louis a few years since to enquire for the truth of a representa- tion which they said some white men had made amongst them, * that our religion was better than theirs, and that they would all be lost if they did not embrace it. ' Two old men of this party died in St. Louis, and I travelled two thousand miles, companion with these two young fellows, towards their own country and became much pleased with their manners and dis- positions." ^ This is probably as near the truth in regard to this mission as we can get, for the contemporary newspaper accounts are admittedly exaggerated. The account given by Barrows in his Oregon, 108-113, is an imaginative perversion of these newspaper accounts. Barrows gives the farewell speech of one of the Indians which has been reproduced in many places,* but never with any references which properly authenticate it. The nearest to an authentication of it that I have been able to make traces it to Mr. Spalding. In 1870 he reported the char- acteristic features of the speech to a writer in The Chicago Advance, who, in reproducing it, says : " The survivor repeated the words years afterward to Mr. Spalding."* Dr. Mowry confidently asserts that the speech was taken down as it was uttered by one of General Clark's clerks. There is no trace of the speech in the contemporary accounts as reproduced in Dr. Mowry's book. I feel pretty certain that the speech was in- vented by Mr. Spalding. Until it can be carried back of Mr. Spalding, it ought not to be continually reprinted as an authentic document.
1 Marcus Whitman, 37-44. In Lee and Frost's Ten Years in Oregon, New- York, 1844, 110-111, the original account in the Christian Advocate is called " high wrought " and " incorrect statements."
2 Catlin's Illustrations of the Manners, Customs, and Condition of the North American Indians, New York, 1841, II, 109.
* Barrows, 110-111. Also in Mowry, 46.
* Exec. Doc. 37, 8.
106 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
NOTE E
Translation of the Passage from de Saint- Amant quoted ON pp. 21-22
"The Reverend Mr. Whitman, an American Baptist mis- sionary, came and established himself with his family among the different tribes of Whalla-Whalla almost in the midst of the wilderness. He gained some influence over the Cayuse, the Nez-Perces, the Spokanes, etc. Having preceded the taking possession of the country by his fellow citizens, he became a very active agent of the American interests, and contributed in no small degree to promote annexation ; but in spite of all he did for them, he did not realize that his standing and influence would not always prevail against the consequences of the super- stition of these savages, and he fell a victim to it with his family. An epidemic spread, and as the Eeverend added the art of healing the body to his pretension to save souls, and as several shocking deaths disturbed these feeble and ailing minds (which occasionally happens among civilized people to our shame), doubts sprang up in regard to the honesty of Dr. Whit- man's purposes, and still more in regard to the character of his medical knowledge. In short, he was massacred with all his family in November, 1847."
NOTE F
Report of an Interview with Mrs. A. L. Lovejot, 1899
OR 1900
" In a recent conversation with Mrs. Elizabeth Lovejoy, wife of the late General A. L. Lovejoy, she said : —
" * Mr. Lovejoy had but recently reached the neighborhood of Dr. Whitman, and was encamped within three miles of his place, in company with Dr. Elijah White and others, who had just crossed the plains, and were on their way to the Willamette Valley. Dr. Whitman sent a messenger to Mr. Lovejoy, re-
THE LEGEND OF MARCUS WHITMAN 107
questing him to call at his place. Dr. Whitman informed Mr. Lovejoy that he had received a letter from "the Board," express- ing dissatisfaction with his mission; that it was making so little progress that the Board had about decided to discontinue it. He said he was much worried about it, as he had been there so long, had worked so hard, and was so deeply interested in the work that it would be very hard for him to give it up ; that he knew that Mr. Lovejoy had influential relatives who were con- nected with the Board, and that he most earnestly wished him to go to Boston with him to use his influence with the Board to have his mission continued. Mr. Lovejoy said that he was a young man, just starting in life ; that he had not means to spare for such a trip, and would rather go on to his destination; but Dr. Whitman still urged him, saying that it should not cost him anything, that he had a letter of credit that would get him all the money he needed. So, finally, Mr. Lovejoy consented to go upon those conditions. They left Waiil-at-pu on the 3d of October, 1842, and made quick time to Fort Hall, when the doctor turned south and went away down into the Spanish coun- try. They had a fearful time, came near freezing and starving to death. When they were within a few days' travel of Bent's Fort, on the head waters of the Arkansas River, they met some one, who informed them that a pack train was about ready to start to St. Louis. Dr. Whitman immediately made up his mind to take the strongest animal and proceed on, and, if possi- ble, join the pack train, and leave Mr. Lovejoy to take care of himself and the broken-down animals. Mr. Lovejoy reminded the doctor of their agreement, and objected to being left in that manner; but the doctor said it was then so late, near the 1st of January, that it was so important for him to be in Boston by a given time, and, besides, he did not feel authorized to saddle such an expense upon the Board. When Mr. Lovejoy finally reached Fort Bent, about the 4th of January, he found that Dr. Whitman was not there, and had not been heard from. The pack train had just left the fort and was at least 10 miles away. Mr. Lovejoy explained to Captain Sevier, the manager of the fort, the importance of the doctor's business, whereupon the Captain dispatched a messenger to stop and detain the train until the doctor could reach it. Knowing Dr. Whitman must be lost, Mr. Lovejoy and others from the fort took fresh horses
108 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
and set out to hunt for him. After two days' search they re- turned without him; but the doctor came in soon after their arrival, worn out, nearly starved, and half -crazed by the hard- ship and excitement of being so long lost. Dr. Whitman left Fort Bent on the 7th day of January, 1843.' "
n
Letter of D. P. Thompson
PoKTLAND, Or., Feb. 6, 190a Hon. p. W. Gillette.
Dear Sir, — From early in the '50s until 1864, I was much in company with General A. L. Lovejoy, of Oregon City. I have very often heard him relate the incidents of the trip made in the fall and winter of 1842. and 1843 from the Whitman Mission to Bent's Fort, on the head waters of the Arkansas River, in com- pany with Dr. Marcus Whitman. The emigration of the fall of 1842, headed by Dr. Elijah White, and with whom Mr. Lovejoy also came, brought letters to the Oregon people, among which were letters for Dr. Whitman, informing him of the intention of the American Board of Foreign Missions of Boston to dis- continue the missions in "the Oregon country." When Dr. Whitman read these letters, notwithstanding the lateness of the season, he at once decided to go East and prevent it, if possible. In an interview with Dr. White and Mr. Lovejoy, they tried to dissuade the doctor from so hazardous a trip, but to no pur- pose. He was determined. Mr. Lovejoy, who at that time was a strong young man, and cared little where he went, so there was a field of adventure, was not hard to persuade to accompany the doctor. Dr. Whitman was anxious to have Mr. Lovejoy go, as he was from Boston, was related to some of the leading families there in the mission work, and his influence through them might be a great help to secure the continuation of the Oregon missions. So it was decided to go at once. They had the company of some mountain men as far as Fort Hall, which place they soon reached. Captain Grant, manager of the Hud- son's Bay Company at Fort Hall, tried to persuade them to abandon the journey, on account of the lateness of the season and the danger from the hostile Sioux and other Indians, but to
THE LEGEND OF MARCUS WHITMAN 109
no purpose. They started south and went down through the Spanish country, and after much hardship and many narrow escapes reached Bent's Fort. Their horses were so worn out that Dr. Whitman thought it best to go on with a pack train just starting to St. Louis, and leave Mr. Lovejoy there. I have often heard General Lovejoy speak of Dr. Whitman as being a man of most indomitable will, and no discouragement could change him when once his mind was made for the accomplishment of a pur- pose. He was determined to save the Oregon mission from being discontinued, and he did it; but afterward lost his life at what he regarded as his post of duty.
D. P. Thompson.
P. S. — I have many times heard General Lovejoy say that all of those statements claiming that Dr. Whitman made that winter ride to "save Oregon" was nonsense — mere bosh, and wholly untrue. He said that during their long ride the doctor often conversed freely with him on the object of his visit, and always indicated that he was going in the interest of his mission, and to try to persuade the Board to keep up and maintain the Oregon missions. He said Dr. Whitman thought the Board did not understand and appreciate the importance of those missions.
D. P. T.
These two extracts, kindly placed at my disposal by Mr. William I. Marshall of Chicago, are from an article entitled "Oregon's Early History, " published in the Morning Oregonian, Portland, Or., Feb. 26, 1900, by P. W. Gillette. Mr. Gillette himself had the conversation with Mrs. Lovejoy.
THE AUTHORSHIP OF THE FEDEEALIST
THE AUTHORSHIP OF THE FEDERALIST
The Fedekalist is universally regarded as the most im- portant contribution of our country to political science, and yet, although some twenty-five editions of it have been pub- lished, the authorship of twelve important numbers, about one-seventh of the whole, is still undetermined, and in the opinion of Mr. Lodge, the latest critical editor, must remain so. The authorship of three other numbers, 18, 19, and 20, earlier in dispute, Mr. Lodge believes to be satisfactorily settled. The remaining twelve numbers, 49-58, 62, and 63, are attributed to Hamilton in the so-called Hamilton lists, and to Madison in the Madison lists. Madison never wavered in the assertion that he was the author of them, and although the Madison lists differ from each other in regard to a few other numbers, they uniformly assign these numbers to Madison. Mr. Lodge, although the weight of testimony is, in his view, favorable to Hamilton, declares that he "is not even yet completely satisfied " that Nos. 49-58 are not from Madison's pen. In regard to Nos. 62 and 63 he has "very little doubt," thinking they both belong to Hamilton.^
Mr. Lodge concludes: "No one is entitled to assign the disputed numbers to either Hamilton or Madison with abso- lute confidence. They were surely written by one or the other, and with that unsatisfactory certainty we must fain be content."
The case, in brief, is one where the external evidence is conflicting, and where, hitherto, conclusions have been reached largely in accordance with the predilections of the
1 See Lodge's The Federalist, Introduction, for a presentation of the external evidence. All references are to Lodge's edition unless another is mentioned.
8
114 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
respective admirers of the two claimants, by rejecting as less trustworthy the testimony of one or the other set of lists. For example, George Bancroft ^ is as sure that Madison wrote the numbers as John C. Hamilton ^ is that his father was the author.
In such a juncture the obvious step is to call in a new set of witnesses; in other words, to examine the papers them- selves for internal evidence and not to acquiesce in a negative conclusion until every resource has been exhausted. It is hardly likely that two men of such different individualities as Hamilton and Madison, however similar their political expe- rience, and however sincerely working together in the same cause, could write extensively in its behalf without their respective contributions bearing some mark of their authors. Fixed ideas, pet phrases, habitual modes of expression, char- acteristic political theories, will occur again and again, not only in the essays in question, but elsewhere in the works of the writers. The weight of such evidence is cumulative. Every additional example strengthens one side and propor- tionally weakens the other. Internal evidence is often inad- equate to determine the author of an anonymous work when there are many possibilities. In the case before us all that is required of it is to turn the balance decidedly one way or the other between two even contestants, for such they seem to the student after Mr. Lodge's discussion.
In fact hardly as much as this is necessary, for the case was made to appear an even one by unfairly discrediting Madi- son's testimony as compared with that of Hamilton. With- out such studied disparagement the external evidence is far stronger for Madison's authorship. Mr. Lodge's process is a curious one and starts with rejecting a specific statement of Madison's which can be substantiated beyond any doubt. In the Hamilton lists, he writes, there are " two errors as to two numbers, while in the Madison lists there are twelve errors as to six numbers. Tried, therefore, by the list of
1 History of the Constitution of the United States, II, 336. * See his edition of The Federalist.
THE AUTHORSHIP OF THE FEDERALIST 115
admitted errors, Hamilton's authority is shown to be six times as good as that of Madison." Passing by the crude- ness of this method of expressing relative degrees of proba- bility, it is to be noted that eight of these twelve "errors " in the Madison lists are made up as follows : Nos. 18 and 19 are three times, and No. 20 twice, attributed to Madison alone. These " errors " are in the earlier Madison lists. After the publication of the Hamilton lists which attributed Nos. 18, 19, and 20 to "Madison and Hamilton jointly," Madison ex- plained the discrepancy in a note to No. 18 in Gideon's edi- tion of 1818. "The subject of this," he writes, "and the following numbers happened to be taken up by both Mr. Hamilton and Mr. Madison. What had been prepared by Mr. Hamilton, who had entered more briefly into the subject, was left to Mr. Madison, on its appearing that the latter was engaged upon it, with larger materials, and with a view to a more precise delineation, and from the pen of the latter the several papers went to press."
In the fuller statement of Madison, in Bancroft's History of the Constitution^ II, 337, he says: "It is possible, though not recollected, that something in the draught \i. e.^ Hamil- ton's draught] may have been incorporated into the numbers as printed. But it was certainly not of a nature or amount to affect the impression left on the mind of J. M., from whose pen the numbers went to the press, that the numbers were of the class written by him." Then follows a simple and natural explanation of how Hamilton might have re- garded them as joint work. Mr. Lodge, however, without giving this explanation of the facts, says that Madison in Gideon's edition of 1818 "concedes 18, 19, and 20 to be the joint work of Hamilton and himself." With all respect to Mr. Lodge, it may be asserted that he made no such conces- sion. In the Gideon editions those numbers are ascribed to Madison alone, and the explanation quoted above is given in a footnote. That explanation beyond doubt can be shown to be true to the letter, and in such a way as greatly to increase one's confidence in Madison's memory and his
116 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
honesty. The "raw material" of those numbers, with the historical references exactly given, exists in Madison's papers in his own handwriting, and is printed in his Writings, Vol. I, 293-314. Take No. 20, for example, as a test case. Fully nine-tenths of it is drawn from Madison's own abstract of Sir William Temple's Observations upon the United Prov- inces and of Felice's Code de VHumanite, This can be veri- fied by any one in a few minutes by comparing No. 20 with pp. 302-309 of Madison's Writings, Vol. I. That Madison should assert No. 20 as his own was natural and right; that when Hamilton's assertion of joint authorship was made public he should explain the discrepancy by stating the facts was also natural ; that his explanation was truthful internal evidence proves beyond a doubt, and that he *' conceded" No. 20 to be a joint work in any common acceptation of the term is without foundation. Sir William Temple's claim to be recognized as joint author of No. 20 is far stronger than Ham- ilton's. There are two paragraphs out of twenty-four in No. 20 which appear to have come from Hamilton. Most of the rest is from Sir William Temple. The case with Nos. 18 and 19 is similar, although neither is drawn from so few sources as No. 20 ; in each there is a possibility of a larger use of Hamilton's notes. After a comparison of these numbers with Madison's Notes on Confederacies, no editor can have any excuse for assigning these numbers to " Hamilton and Madi- son," as has been uniformly done by Hamiltonian editors since 1810. It should at least read, " Madison and Hamil- ton," although there seems to be no good reason why the exact and truthful course of the Gideon editions should not be followed in the future.
It will hardly be denied that eight of the twelve " errors " of the Madison lists now disappear, and we have then four errors in regard to two numbers in the Madison lists as com- pared with Hamilton's two errors in regard to two numbers.
When Mr. Lodge believed Hamilton's testimony six times as good as Madison's, he regarded the question of the author- ship of Nos. 49-58 as almost evenly balanced between the
THE AUTHORSHIP OF THE FEDERALIST 117
two. According to his own process of weighing evidence, Hamilton's authority is shown at most to be only twice as good as Madison's, and perhaps only half as good.^ If the scale was evenly balanced before, it must turn now, for the very case used by Mr. Lodge to show that Madison's testi- mony was less trustworthy than Hamilton's memorandum, when examined in the light of Madison's collected material, proves that Madison's statement was accurate to the letter and that Hamilton's rested on a natural misapprehension.
Let us turn now to the more difficult problem presented by Nos. 49-58, 62, and 63. In regard to the series 49-58, an ingenious attempt to reconcile Hamilton's list with Madison's was made in the suggestion that as Hamilton made a mistake of a single figure in attributing 54 to Jay instead of 64, it was not improbable that he made a similar mistake in the next line and wrote 37-48 instead of 37-58.2 The value of this conjecture must depend upon the tendency of the inter- nal evidence.
If one examines the structure of The Federalist^ there seems to be a somewhat systematic division of labor in the preparation of its parts. Jay's few contributions deal with foreign relations, with which he was especially conversant; three distinctively historical papers, like 18, 19, and 20, come from Madison's hand because his studies in the history of federal government had supplied him with ampler materials. With these exceptions, all of the first part of The Federalist^ issued originally as the first volume, deals with general ques- tions emphasizing the defects of the Confederacy and the value of a more perfect union, and of these papers Hamilton wrote all but two. To him these were congenial topics, and he could throw into their discussion his whole force without reserve. As the originator of the essays, he could naturally choose for himself the particular part of the work he preferred
1 Following Mr. Lodge's example we might count Hamilton's assertion of joint authorship of 18, 19, and 20 as "errors," and raise his number of " errors" to eight.
2 See The Historical Magazine, VIII, 306.
118 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
to do, and request his collaborators to undertake the portions for which they were particularly fitted. It is not, then, with- out significance that in the opening paragraph of No. 3T, the first of the connected Madison papers, it is said that the plan of the writers "cannot be complete without taking a more critical and thorough survey of the work of the Convention, etc." This is called "the remaining task." Madison was by far the most competent person to perform the "remaining task." He was present at every session of the Convention and did more than any one else to bring it to a successful issue. Hamilton, on the other hand, was absent from June 29 to Aug. 13, and did not speak ^ from Aug. 13 to Sept. 6, on account of "his dislike of the scheme of gov- ernment in general. " ^ If Hamilton refrained from participat- ing in the discussions of the Convention for this reason, is it not altogether probable that he proposed to leave to Madison, as far as practicable, the task of defending the details of the Constitution ? This supposition is strengthened by the fact that Madison had evidently formed a plan of treatment for the numbers that he did not write. ^
His work, however, was cut short by his having to leave New York early in March to prepare for the Virginia Conven- tion. Nos. 49-58 appeared between Feb. 5 and Feb. 22, and are closely connected in subject-matter with the preceding Madison numbers. Nos. 62 and 63 discuss the make-up of the Senate and logically attach themselves to No. 58, which concludes a similar treatment of the House of Representa- tives. They were published Feb. 29 and March 7. They could have been written by Madison; that they should be was in accordance with the apparent plan of 77ie Federalist On the other hand, there seems to be no good reason why they should come from Hamilton as long as Madison was in
1 He could not vote, as both Yates and Lansing of New York had left the Convention.
2 Madison's Debates, Scott's ed., 671.
^ After he left New York he wrote at least once to Hamilton in regard to the later course of The Federalist. April 3, Hamilton replies, explaining the line of argument which seemed best to him. Lodge's Works of Hamilton, VIU, 182.
THE AUTHORSHIP OF THE FEDERALIST 119
New York. The approaching departure, however, of Madi- son toward the end of February, compelled Hamilton to take up the task if the series was to be continued, and he wrote Nos. 59-61, on the control of the Union over the federal elec- tions, three numbers that could have come after 62 and 63 more logically than before them.
These considerations make it somewhat more probable that these numbers were written by Madison than by Hamilton, but the weight of the probability must be left to the judg- ment of the reader.
In examining the internal evidence, limitations of space as well as lack of indications will prevent the treatment of the numbers with equal detail, but as they are attributed en bloc to either Madison or Hamilton by most of the lists, satisfac- tory proof that any two or three of them were written by one of the two will go far to turn the scale in his favor for the rest. I shall, therefore, present the evidence as fully as pos- sible in regard to some numbers, and only the most striking indications in regard to the rest.
Number 49.
No. 49 continues the discussion on the separation of the powers begun in No. 48, and takes for special considera- tion a protective device proposed by Jefferson in his Notes on Virginia, providing for any two departments to unite in calling a convention in case the third should encroach on the Constitution.
This project of Jefferson's was known to Madison in August, 1785.^ By May, 1786, he had in his possession a copy of the privately printed edition of Jefferson's NotesJ^ The first published edition of the Notes came out in London early in August, 1787, ^ and it was from this edition that Madison quoted in the preceding number of The Federalist
1 Writings of James Madison, I, 183. To be cited as Writings.
2 Ihid., 234.
8 Ford's Jefferson's W<yrlcs, III, 79.
120 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
(No. 48). The only place where any one could learn of this constitutional device of Jefferson's was in the appendix to some of the editions of his Notes. Madison had known of it for years and owned two of these editions of the Notes, A copy of Jefferson's Notes was among Hamilton's possessions, but it was the Philadelphia edition of 1788,^ which was not published until Jan. 23, 1788,2 in Philadelphia, while No. 49 of The Federalist was printed in New York, Feb. 5.
If Hamilton wrote Nos. 49-58, the decision that Madison's contributions for the present should cease with No. 48 must have been reached at least some days earlier than Feb. 5, because 49 and 50 are papers based on some research. It is, then, while not impossible, extremely unlikely that a book published in Philadelphia not earlier than Jan. 23 should have reached New York and come into Hamilton's possession soon enough for him to select from it the text for the first of a new series of papers which appeared Feb. 5. On the other hand, Madison having quoted extensively in No. 48 from the Notes, nothing would be more natural than for him to discuss Jefferson's project, thus freshly reminded of it.
In the text of this essay, p. 314,^ Jefferson's device is referred to "as a palladium to the weaker department of power against the invasion of the stronger." In No. 43, p. 275, Madison writes : " Equality of suffrage in the Senate was probably meant as a palladium to the residuary sover- eignty of the States." In 1792, he said of "the partitions and internal checks of power" that "they are neither the sole or the chief palladium of constitutional liberty; "* and in his last message he referred to the Constitution as the "palla- dium" of the American people.^ I have not noted "palla-
1 J. C. Hamilton, The Federalist, cxi. The copy was in Mr. J. C. Hamilton's possession.
2 It is first announced in the Pennsylvania Packet of Jan. 25, as " published this day." That it was not actually on the market for a few days is not unlikely, if we may judge from the practice of publishers to-day.
8 The references are to Lodge's edition.
4 Writings, IV, 473.
s In the paragraph before the last.
THE AUTHORSHIP OF THE FEDERALIST 121
dium " in any of Hamilton's writings that I have read. The use of the term "constitutional charter," p. 314, is common in Madison, e.g, cf. "The citizens of the United States have peculiar motives to support the energy of their constitu- tional charters," IV, 468 (1792); "forced constructions of the constitutional charter," IV, 506 (1798), IV, 520, "as laid down in the constitutional charter," IV, 391 (1835). This expression I have not noted in Hamilton's discussions. The same general proposition of frequently referring constitu- tional questions to the people Madison criticises in a letter to Jefferson in February, 1790. The similarity of the criticism is worth noting in this connection. The objections in No. 49 are, " as every appeal to the people would carry an implication of some defect in the government, frequent appeals would in a great measure deprive the government of . that veneration which time bestows on everything, ... in every nation the most rational government will not find it a superfluous advantage to have the prejudices of the community on its side," p. 315. In his letter to Jefferson, Madison asks: " Would not a government so often revised become too un- stable and novel to retain that share of prejudice in its favor which is a salutary aid to the most rational government? " ^
It may be added that Chancellor Kent notes that: "Mr. Hamilton told me that Mr. Madison wrote 48 and 49, or from pa. 101 to 112 of Vol. 2d." ^ The pages, as given, show that the numbers are those of the collected editions and not the original numbers as printed in the journals.
Number 50.
This number discusses the propriety of periodical instead of occasional appeals to the people, and reviews the history of the Pennsylvania Council of Censors, of 1783-84. In regard to this institution and Jefferson's scheme criticised in No. 49, John C. Hamilton writes: "As to this, as well as to the scheme of Jefferson, an analogy in Hamilton's writings
1 Madison's Writings, I, 504. ^ Dawson's The Federalist, cxl.
122
ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
— for the same reason, that no such project had come before him — was not to be expected."^ The question naturally arises, then, "Why should Hamilton select this unfamiliar topic for a number of ITie Federalist f " To Madison, on the other hand, the project was familiar. The results of its work form the subject of the latter part of No. 48, and he had dis- cussed this Council of Censors briefly as early as August, 1785, in his letter to John Brown, of Kentucky.^
Number 51.
In No. 51 the writer continues the discussion of the pre- ceding numbers as to the proper means "of maintaining in practice the necessary partition of power among the several departments." This line of thought was a favorite one with Madison.
Number 61.
" Second. It is of great im- portance in a republic not only to guard the society against the oppression of its rulers, but to guard one part of the society against the injustice of the other part. Different in- terests necessarily exist in dif- ferent classes of citizens. If a majority be united by a com- mon interest, the rights of the minority will be insecure." Cf. Madison's Notes on the Confederacy, Writings^ I, 325- 26, April, 1787.
"Whilst all authority in it will be derived from and de-
Mddison,
(Objects of the Senate.) " These were, — first, to pro- tect the people against their rulers, secondly, to protect the people against the transient impressions into which they themselves might be led." Debates, 2^. (June 26.) . . . "as different interests neces- sarily result from the liberty secured, the major interest might, under sudden impulses, be tempted to commit injus- tice on the minority. " Debates, ibid. See also letter to Jeffer- son giving an account of the Convention, Oct. 1787. Writ- ings, I, 353.
1 J. C. Hamilton's edition of The Federalist^ cxiii.
2 Writings, I, 183.
THE AUTHORSHIP OF THE FEDERALIST
123
Number 51.
pendent on the society, the society itself will be broken into so many parts, interests and classes of citizens, that the rights of individuals, or of the minority, will be in little dan- ger from interested combina- tions of the majority " ^ (pp. 325-26).
"In a free government the security for civil rights must be the same as that for relig- ious rights. It consists in the one case in the multiplicity of interests, and in the other in the multiplicity of sects. The degree of security in both cases will depend on the number of interests and sects j and this may be presumed to depend on the extent of country and num- ber of people comprehended under the same government " ^ (p. 326).
Madison,
" The Society becomes broken into a greater variety of inter- ests and pursuits of passions which check each other." Writings^ I, 327, from Notes dh the Confederacy, April, 1787.
"The only remedy is, to enlarge the sphere , and thereby divide the community into so great a number of interests and parties, that in the first place a majority will not be likely at the same moment to have a common interest sepa- rate from the whole. " Debates, 119, June 6, 1787. " In a large society the people are broken into so many interests and par- ties that a common sentiment is less likely to be felt and the requisite concert less likely to be formed by a majority of the whole." Letter to Jefferson, Oct. 24, 1787, Writings, I, 352.
"The same security seems requisite for the civil as for the religious rights of individ- uals. If the same sect form a majority, and have the power, other sects will be sure to be depressed. Divide et impera is, under certain qualifications.
1 Madison uses the phrase " interested combinations of the majority," in Writ- ingSf IV, 23, 1829, and the phrase "interested majority*' in The Federalist, 59.
2 Cf . also Madison's remarks in the Virginia Convention. " But the United States abound in such a variety of sects that it is a strong security against re- ligious persecution." Elliot's Debates, III, 330.
124 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
Number 51, Madison,
"This view of the subject shows that in the exact pro- portion as the territory of the Union may be formed into more circumscribed Confederacies, or States, oppressive combina- tions of a majority will be facilitated."
" In the extended republic of the United States, and among the great variety of interests, parties and sects which it embraces, a coalition of a ma- jority of the whole society could seldom take place on any other principles than those of justice and the general good."
"It is no less certain than it is important, notwithstanding the contrary opinions which
the only policy by which a re- public can be administered on just principle." Letter to Jefferson, Writings^ I, 352-53, Oct. 24, 1787.
"It may be inferred that the inconveniences of popular States, contrary to the prevail- ing Theory, are in proportion not to the extent, but to the narrowness of their limits." Notes on the Confederacy, Writings, I, 327, April, 1787. "As in too small a sphere oppressive combinations may be too easily formed against the weaker party, so," etc. Let- ter to Jefferson, Oct. 24, 1787. "In the extended republic of the United States," . . . "greater variety of interests and pursuits of passions," for the rest see above, p. 123. " The only remedy is to enlarge the sphere, and thereby divide the community into so great a number of interests and parties that, in the first place, a ma- jority will not be likely at the same moment to have a com- mon interest separate from that of the whole or of the minority." Debates, p. 119, (June 6).
" It was incumbent upon us, then, to try this remedy, and with that view to frame a re-
THE AUTHORSHIP OF THE FEDERALIST 125
Number 51, Madison.
have been entertained, that publican system on such a
the larger the society, provided scale and in such a form as will
it lie within a practical sphere, control all the evils which have
the more duly capable it will been experienced." Debates^
be of self-government." ^ p. 119.
The five numbers, 47-51, form a continuous discussion, complete in itself, of the true meaning of the maxim of the separation of the powers, its applicability to the United States, etc. Madison's right to be regarded as the author of the first two has never been disputed. The evidence that he also wrote No. 51 has been laid before the reader. It seems to me to establish the proof of his authorship as certainly as an undisputed assertion could. The evidence in the case of Nos. 49 and 50 is confirmatory. The significance of this evidence can be fairly weighed only by a comparison of it with that which has been put forward in behalf of Hamilton in J. C. Hamilton's edition of The Federalist^ pp. cx-cxv,^ and for No. 51 on p. cxiv.
The next group of essays, Nos. 52-58, take up in detail the structure of the House of Representatives as framed by the Constitution. The internal evidence in regard to the authorship of these numbers, so far as I have been able to detect it, is much less in amount. Some of it, however, is striking.
Number 52. Madison.
"The definition of the right "The right of suffrage is
of suffrage is very justly re- certainly one of the fundamen-
garded as a fundamental arti- tal articles of republican gov-
cle of republican government, ernment, and ought not to be
It was incumbent on the con- left to be regulated by the
vention, therefore, to define and Legislature." Debates, ^. 4:10,
1 Cf. Madison in Federalist, No. 10, 60.
2 It is but fair to J. C. Hamilton to remember that when he made his argu- ment in favor of Hamilton's authorship Madison's Writings had not been pub- lished. He had examined some of them in MS., but not thoroughly enough.
126 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
Number 52. Madison.
establish this right in the Con- stitution. To have left it open for the occasional regulation of the Congress would have been improper for the reason just mentioned" (pp. 327^28).
Aug. 7 (Hamilton was absent at that time).
Number 53. Subject : Frequency of Elections.
Number 63.
In support of biennial elec tions it is urged that time will be necessary for the legislator to gain "a certain degree of knowledge of the subjects on which he is to legislate " (p. 335).
"Some knowledge of the affairs, and even of the laws of all the States, ought to be pos- sessed by the members from each of the States " (p. 336).
"The distance which many of the representatives will be obliged to travel, and the ar- rangements rendered necessary by that circumstance, might be much more serious objections with fit men to this service if limited to a single year than if extended to two years " (p. 338).
Madison.
"Three years will be neces- sary, in a government so ex- tensive, for members to form any knowledge of the various interests of the States to which they do not belong, and of which they can know but little, from the situation and affairs of their own; one year will be almost consumed in preparing for and traveling to and from the seat of national business." Debates^ June 12, p. 151.
Madison argued that annual elections wouid be extremely inconvenient for the represent- atives. "They would have to travel seven or eight hundred miles from the distant parts of the Union." Debates, June 21, p. 216.
The amount of evidence in regard to No. 53 is not great, but this is to be noted in regard to its character. Two of the most important arguments in No. 53 for biennial rather than
THE AUTHORSHIP OF THE FEDERALIST 127
annual elections are arguments advanced by Madison in the Convention in favor of triennial elections. Hamilton partici- pated in the discussion, June 21 (p. 217). Like Madison, he favored triennial elections. Of the five points that he made in his speech, not one is mentioned in No. 53. If Ham- ilton wrote No. 53 he did not repeat a single one of five argu- ments which seemed good to him six months before, but devoted himself to an elaboration of the points made by Madison. It may be remarked in addition that one of the so- called Hamilton lists, that of Chancellor Kent, attributes No. 53 to Madison.
Number 54.
As additional bits of external evidence, not recorded by previous writers, it may be remarked that Madison in a letter, in 1819, casually referred to No. 54 as expressing his views, thus implying that he wrote it;^ and that in the Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1829 he publicly asserted his authorship of the number. ^
Again, it is to be noted that Hamilton, in the Benson list and in the list copied at his own request by J. C. Hamilton, did not claim No. 54 for himself, but assigned it to Jay.^
1 " For the grounds on which three-fifths of the slaves were admitted into ratio of representation, I will, with your permission, save trouble by referring to No. 54 of The Federalist." Letter to Robert Walsh, Nov. 27, 1819. Writings, IV, 154.
2 " Mr. Madison then rose and said that, although he was not desirous to take part in this discussion, yet under all the circumstances he was, perhaps, called on to state, that the paper in question was not written by Mr. Hamilton, or Mr. Jay, but by the third person connected with that work." Debates of the Virginia State Convention, 1829-30, 188.
^ J. C. Hamilton's edition, xcvii. In the 1810 edition, the first in which the authorship of the individual numbers was indicated, the Benson list is followed, except in the one particular, that No. 54 was assigned to Hamilton and not to Jay. No. 64, also, is assigned to Hamilton. As the assignments in this edi- tion were from a private memorandum in his own [i. e., Hamilton's] handwriting, Mr. Lodge conjectured that possibly there might have been still another list " of which nothing is now known." This conjecture is established by the statement of Mr. Charles Fenton Mercer in the Virginia Convention of 1829 in regard to the authorship of No. 54. Mr. Mercer said : " This volume, the third of an edition of Hamilton's works, the editor of which, he supposed, had obtained his
128 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
It may be said, of course, that he intended in that list to write 64, but as a matter of fact he did not assign 54 to himself, and whether he intended to write 64 is open to most serious doubt. In the last number of the Camillus papers, 1794,^ he quotes from Nos. 42 and 64 of The Federalist and appends this note : " It is generally understood that two persons were concerned in the writing of these papers, who, from having been members of the Convention, had a good opportunity of knowing its views — and were under no temptation at that time in this particular to misrepresent them." If Hamilton, in 1794, remembered that Jay ^ wrote No. 64, this note was highly disingenuous ; but there is no reason to suspect Hamil- ton of such disingenuousness. Therefore in 1794 Hamilton attributed 64 either to himself or to Madison.^ That he attributed it to himself is made practically certain by his not attributing it to Madison in the Benson list. It seems fair to conclude, therefore, that in attributing 54 to Jay in that list and the list copied by J. C. Hamilton, Hamilton did not make a mere clerical error, but consciously disclaimed writ- ing 54.
This number consists of a defence of the compromise over the question whether slaves were population or property, by which it was settled that three-fifths of the slaves should be enumerated in determining the representative population. For rhetorical purposes the argument is put in the mouth of a Southerner. That the writer was familiar with the discus- sion in the Convention seems almost certain from the turn he gives to his argument, but Hamilton was absent from the Convention during the repeated discussions of this compro- mise, while Madison was there and participated in them.
For example, Mr. Patterson of New Jersey, in the Con- key to the names of the authors of Publius from a manuscript of Mr. Hamilton which he saw many years ago, in the possession of the late Richard Stockton, an eminent statesman of New Jersey." Virginia Debates, 1829-30, 188.
1 Works, Y, 320-21.
2 Jay was not a member of the Convention.
8 That Hamilton did at one time attribute No. 64 to himself seems clear from the 1810 edition.
THE AUTHORSHIP OF THE FEDERALIST 129
vention, raised this objection: "Has a man in Virginia a number of votes in proportion to the number of his slaves ? and if negroes are not represented in the States to which they belong, why should they be represented in the general gov- ernment?" (Debates, p. 314.)
This was not one of the common criticisms, and the follow- ing passage in No. 54 seems like a distinct echo of it : " It may be replied, perhaps, that slaves are not included in the estimate of representatives in any of the States possessing them. They neither vote themselves nor increase the votes of their masters. Upon what principle, then, ought they to be taken into the federal estimate of representation? " (Fed., p. 341).
Number 5Jf. Madison,
" We have hitherto (i. e. in " In a general view I see no this defense) proceeded on the reason why the rights of prop- idea that representation related erty, which chiefly bears the to persons only, and not at all burden of Government and is to property. But is it a just so much an object of legisla- idea? Government is insti- tion, should not be respected tuted no less for protection of as much as personal rights in the property, than of the per- the choice of Rulers." (Writ- sons, of individuals" (p. 342). ings, I, 181. Letter to John
Brown, Aug. 23, 1785.) "This middle course reconciles the two cardinal objects of govern- ment, the rights of persons and the rights of property." Ibid., 187.
The evidence in regard to the next four numbers is scanty and ambiguous. They take up questions which Madison did not discuss in his letters and speeches in much detail, and which Hamilton did discuss in the New York Convention. The questions, too, were the most obvious ones concerning the constitution of the House of Representatives, and the arguments advanced in these four numbers cover the ground
130 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
pretty completely. Therefore if Madison wrote them Hamil- ton could hardly have gone over these questions without using some of these arguments. They would be familiar to him from his recent proof reading of the second volume of The Federalist published in May. That he did use arguments in his speeches in the New York Convention contained in Madison's numbers renders it a probable hypothesis that he might have done so more extensively. Chancellor Kent re- marked upon the similarity between the argument of the speeches and of 27ie Federalist. Such a use of arguments first drawn up by Madison could hardly have been avoided and would have been perfectly legitimate. Campaign material once published is regarded as common property for other advocates to use. In fact, if the external testimony on both sides were not substantially in agreement in assigning the ten essays to either one or the other in a body, and if Hamilton's speeches in the New York Convention had antedated these numbers, the internal evidence would have pointed to Ham- ilton as their probable author. Since, however, his speeches were later than these essays, the internal evidence must be ambiguous.
Number 55.
The subject of this essay is the ratio of representation; Hamilton was absent from the Convention while the subjects of Nos. 55 and 5Q were under discussion.
Number 55. Madison.
" The ratio between the rep- " The representatives must
resentatives and the people be raised to a certain number
ought not to be same where in order to guard against the
the latter are very numerous as cabals of a few. . . . They
where they are very few." must be limited to a certain
"... The truth is, that in all number in order to guard
cases a certain number at least against the confusion of a
seems to be necessary to secure multitude. " Federalist, p. 57.
the benefits of free consultation ^^I agree that after going
THE AUTHORSHIP OF THE FEDERALIST 131 Number 55. Madison.
and discussion, and to guard beyond a certain point, the
against too easy a combination number may be inconvenient;
for improper purposes ; as, on ... but it is necessary to go to
the other hand, the number a certain number in order to
ought at most to be kept secure the great objects of rep-
within a certain limit in order resentation. Numerous bodies
to avoid the confusion and in- are undoubtedly liable to some
temperance of a multitude. In objections, but they have their
all very numerous assemblies, advantages also; if they are
of whatever character com- exposed to passion and fermen-
posed, passion never fails to tation, they are less subject
wrest the sceptre from reason," to venality and corruption."
pp. 346-47. (Cf. No. 49, Register of Debates, II, 185
"The passions, therefore, not (Aug. 14, 1789). the reason, of the public would sit in judgment," p. 318.)
No. 55 does not refer to the prospects of the rapid enlarge- ment of the House by the accession of new States, a fact which Hamilton emphasized in meeting the objections that the House was too small. ^ It had been urged that the Presi- dent would corrupt now the Senate and now the House. The reply in No. 55 is that the Constitution has rendered the members of Congress ineligible " to any civil offices that may be created, or of which the emoluments may be increased during the term of their election," p. 350. Hamilton met this argument by asserting that there would be at the President's disposal few offices " whose respectability can in any measure balance that of the office of Senator." I, 466.
Number BQ.
The subject of this paper is that the House will be " too small to possess a due knowledge of the interests of its con- stituents," p. 350. In No. 35 (by Hamilton), published Jan. 8, in discussing taxation, the writer says in regard to this
1 Works, I, 426.
132 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
objection to the powers of the House : " I reserve for another place the discussion of the question which relates to the suffi- ciency of the representative body in respect to numbers," p. 203. This passage, occurring in the next to last essay before Madison, was to discuss the actual work of the Convention, falls in line with my conjecture that the whole of the discus- sion of the Constitution and its fitness to American condi- tions was originally assigned to Madison.
To meet the objection that the representatives would not have adequate knowledge, the writer of No. 66 says : —
Number 56, Madison,
"Divide the largest state In the Virginia Convention into ten or twelve districts, Madison said : " Could not ten and it will be found that there intelligent men chosen from will be no peculiar interests ten districts from this State in either which will not be lay direct taxes on a few objects within the knowledge of the in the most judicious manner? representative of the district " Can any one divide this State (pp. 351-52). into ten districts so as not to
contain men of sufficient infor- mation?" Elliot, III, 253-54.
Hamilton, in the New York Convention, said: "The natural and proper method of holding elections will be to divide the State into districts in proportion to the number to be elected. This State will consequently be divided at first into six. One man from each district will probably possess all the knowledge the gentlemen can desire." {Elliot^ I, 434.)
It will be remembered that the Constitution assigned in the beginning ten representatives to Virginia and six to New York. Hamilton, in the New York Convention, illustrates the adequacy of the representation by supposing the division of the State into six districts, and Madison does the same in the Virginia Convention by supposing Virginia to be divided into ten districts. The writer of No. 66^ in addressing the people of New York, supposes the largest State divided into ten districts, etc. If Hamilton wrote b6, why should he take
THE AUTHORSHIP OF THE FEDERALIST 133
Virginia as an example in February and New York in July ? He might do so, of course, but there is a certain natural- ness in a Virginian taking the largest State — his own State — as the extreme example, even though addressing New Yorkers, while the most natural example for a New Yorker, as well as the most directly pertinent, would be New York.
Both Hamilton and Madison remarked upon the assistance that would be derived from State systems of taxation, etc. The writer of bQ says, after a similar remark: "A skiKul individual in his closet with all the local codes before him might compile a law on some subject of taxation for the whole Union," p. 352. Madison, in No. 37, refers to the lack in the Constitution of " the symmetry which an abstract view of the subject might lead an ingenious theorist to bestow on Constitution planned in his closet or in his imagination," p. 221. The writer of 53 (Madison?) says, "some portion of this knowledge may no doubt be acquired in a man's closet," p. 337. The closing paragraph of No. bQ cites the experience of Great Britain, " which presents to mankind so many polit- ical lessons, both of the monitory and exemplary kind" (p. 354). "Monitory" is almost a favorite word with Madison. I have noted the following instances : " Monitory examples," IH, 244; "monitory reflection," IV, 334; "In- structed by these monitory lessons," IV, 424; and, in The Federalist^ No. 20, p. 118, "this melancholy and monitory lesson of history." In referring to the experience of Great Britain the writer cites Burgh's Political Disquisitions, Madison was reading Burgh just about this time, for in his " Additional Memorandum for the Convention of Virginia in 1788, on the Federal Constitution," he quotes Burgh on the union between England and Scotland. ( Writings^ I, 392, note b.) I have met with no reference to Burgh in Hamilton's writings.
Number 57.
No. 57 deals with the charge that the " House of Repre- sentatives " will be taken from that class of citizens which
134
ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
will have least sympathy with the mass of the people, and be most likely to aim at an ambitious sacrifice of the many to the aggradizement of the few," p. 355. This objection, which the writer styles "perhaps the most extraordinary" of "all the objections which have been framed against the federal Constitution," was prominently in Madison's mind at this time (Feb. 19). A fortnight earlier he sent Washington a copy of a letter from Rufus King, which announced that " distrust of men of property or education " was having a more powerful influence in Massachusetts " than any specific objections against the Constitution." I, 372. No. 57 goes over ground covered in part by No. 52 (Feb. 8), and it may be conjectured that the evident strength of this objection invited a special essay, and the argument at first adheres rather closely to the form of the objection as it appears in Madison's letter of the same date to Jefferson on the nature of the opposition in Massachusetts.
Number 57.
" Who are to be the electors of the federal representatives? Not the rich more than the poor; not the learned more than the ignorant; not the haughty heirs of distinguished names more than the humble sons of obscurity and unpropi- tious fortune " (p. 356) ; and again, " Who are to be the ob- jects of popular choice? Every citizen whose merit may recom- mend him to the esteem and confidence of his country. No qualification of wealth, of birth, of religious faith or of civil profession is permitted to fetter the judgment or disap-
Madison.
The opposition in Massachu- setts was made up "partly of ignorant and jealous men who had been taught, or had fan- cied that the Convention at Philadelphia had entered into a conspiracy against the liber- ties of the people at large, in order to erect an aristocracy for the rich, the well horn, and the men of education." Writ- ings, I, 377. (Letter to Jeffer- son, Feb. 19.)
THE AUTHORSHIP OF THE FEDERALIST
135
Number 57.
point the inclination of the people" (p. 356.)
" The aim of every political constitution is, or ought to be, first to obtain for rulers men who possess most wisdom to discern and most virtue to pur- sue the common good of the society" (p. 356).
"No person is eligible (in Great Britain) as a representa- tive of a county unless he possess real estate of the clear value of six hundred pounds sterling per year ; nor of a city or borough, unless he possess a like estate of half that annual value" (p. 360).
Madison.
" The objects to be aimed at were to fill all offices with the fittest characters, and to draw the wisest and most worthy citizens into the legislative service." Debates, 226. "a body, in the government suffi- ciently respectable for its wis- dom and virtue." Ibid., 243.
" In Great Britain no one can be elected to represent a county without having an estate of the value of six hundred pounds sterling a year; nor to repre- sent a corporation without an annual estate of three hundred pounds." Virginia Debates, Elliot, III, 395.
The form of this statement in No. 57 corresponds so closely with that of Burgh I, 850 and II, 271, that it seems altogether probable that it was drawn from that source like the similar material on p. 354. As was before remarked, Madison was studying Burgh at this time.
Number 58.
No. 58 combats the objection that the House will not be increased in size as the population grows. Hamilton dis- cussed the same question in the New York Convention, I, 426, in a similar way. Like the author of No. 58, he remarks that the large States will control the House and consequently will favor augmentations of its numbers still further to increase their effective influence. An additional argument is presented in No. 58, to which there is nothing similar in
136 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
Hamilton's speech. It is that the new States, although small at first, will " be gained over to the just views of the House of Representatives by an expedient too obvious to be overlooked. As these States will, for a great length of time, advance in population with peculiar rapidity, they will be interested in frequent reapportionments of the representatives to the num- ber of inhabitants." So the large States in the House can join forces with the new States in the Senate " to make reap- portionments and augmentations " at the same time, p. 36-4.
Madison wrote Jefferson in a somewhat similar vein in March, 1787, on changing " the principle of Representation in the federal system '* from one of equality to one proportioned to population. " A majority of the states conceive that they will be the gainers by it. It is recommended to the Eastern States by the actual superiority of their populousness, and to the Southern by their expected superiority; and if a majority of the larger states concur, the fewer and smaller states must finally bend to them," I, 286. On p. 365 of this number occurs a favorite expression of Madison's. The author sees in the history of England " an infant and humble representa- tion of the people gradually enlarging the sphere of its activity and importance." Compare "to enlarge the sphere as far as the nature of the government would admit," Debates, 118; "the only remedy is, to enlarge the sphere," Ibid., 119; "an enlargement of the sphere," I, 327; "the Federal principle which enlarges the sphere," IV, 21; "enlarging the sphere," IV, 327 and 328; "enlarge the sphere of liberty," IV, 483; " enlargement of the sphere," i>e5a^gs, 528; "extending the sphere," Federalist, 309; "extend the sphere," Federalist, 58. Hamilton uses "extending the sphere," in Federalist, 48, and "enlargement of the orbit," p. 47, but the metaphor is by no means as common as with Madison, and the exact phrase "enlarge the sphere " I have not noted in Hamilton.
The final paragraph of this number seems like an echo of a discussion in the Convention, Aug. 10. The subject is the proper quorum for the House, and there is noticeable simi- larity of language. As against a quorum larger than a ma-
THE AUTHORSHIP OF THE FEDERALIST
137
jority, it was urged in the Convention that it would tempt the minority "to extort, by threatening a secession, some unjust and selfish measure." Debates^ p. 498. This clas- sical use of the word "secession " occurs five times in the dis- cussion in three pages. It is therefore a plausible conjecture that the use of the phrases " extort unreasonable indulgences " and "the baneful practice of secession" (p. 368) suggested itself to the writer of 58 in discussing this question, on account of the association of ideas. Hamilton was not present at this discussion.
No. 62 continues directly the discussion in 58 on the char- acter and utility of the two houses of Congress.
Number 62. Madison.
"... it will be proper to inquire into the purposes which are to be answered by a Senate " (p. 387).
"It is a misfortune incident to republican government, though in a less degree than to other governments, that those who administer it may forget their obligations to their constituents and prove unfaith- ful to their important trust" (p. 387).
"In this point of view, a senate as a second branch of the legislative assembly, dis- tinct from and dividing the power with a first, must be in all cases a salutary check on the government" (ibid.).
"The necessity of a senate is not less indicated by the propensity of all single and numerous assemblies to yield to the impulse of sudden and
"... it will be proper to take a view of the ends to be served by it" [i. e. , a Senate]. Debates, 241.
" A people deliberating . . . on the plan of government most likely to secure their happi- ness, would first be aware that those charged with the public happiness might betray their trust." Debates, 242.
"An obvious precaution against this danger would be to divide the trust between different bodies of men, who might watch and check each other." Debates, ibid.
"Another reflection . . . would be that they themselves, as well as a numerous body of representatives, were liable to err also from fickleness and passion." Debates, ibid.
" The use of the Senate is to consist in its proceeding with
138
ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
Number 62.
violent passions, and to be seduced by factious leaders into intemperate and pernicious resolutions " (pp. 387-88).
"... a body which is to correct this infirmity ought itself to be free from it, and consequently ought to be less numerous" (p. 388).
" It ought, moreover, to pos- sess great firmness, and con- sequently ought to hold its authority by a tenure of con- siderable duration " (p. 388) .
"Another defect to be sup- plied by a senate lies in a want of due acquaintance with the objects and principles of legis- lation. It is not possible that an assembly of men called for the most part from pursuits of a private nature, continued in appointment for a short time and led by no permanent motive to devote the intervals of pub- lic occupation to a study of the laws, the affairs, and the com- prehensive interests of their country, should, if wholly left to themselves, escape a variety of important errors in the exer-
Madison.
more coolness, with more sys- tem, and with more wisdom, than the popular branch. En- large their number, and you communicate to them the vices which they are meant to cor- rect." Debates, 126.
"A necessary fence against this danger would be to select a portion of enlightened citi- zens whose limited number and firmness may seasonably inter- pose against impetuous coun- cils." Debates, 242.
"The members (of the Sen- ate) ought therefore to derive a firmness from the tenure of their places." Remarks on Jefferson's Draught of a Con- stitution for Virginia, Writ- ings, I, 185.
" It would next occur to such a people that they themselves were liable to temporary errors, through want of information as to their true interest; and that men chosen for a short time, and employed but a small portion of that in public affairs, might err from the same cause." Debates, 242.
"It [the Senate] ought to supply the defect of knowledge and experience incident to the other branch; there ought to be time given, therefore, for attaining the qualifications necessary for that purpose."
THE AUTHORSHIP OF THE FEDERALIST
139
Number 62.
cise of their legislative trust " (p. 388).
"What, indeed, are all the repealing, explaining, and amending laws which fill and disgrace our voluminous codes, but so many monuments of deficient wisdom; ... so many admonitions to the people of the value of those aids which may be expected from a well-constituted Senate?" (p. 388).
"A good government im- plies two things : first, fidelity to the object of government, which is the happiness of the people ; secondly, a knowledge of the means by which that object can be best attained. Some governments are deficient in both these qualities; most governments are deficient in the first. I scruple not to assert that in American gov- ernments too little attention has been paid to the last" (p. 389).
"From this change of men must proceed a change of opin- ions; and from a change of opinions a change of meas- ures" (p. 389).
Madison.
Eemarks on Jefferson's Draught, Writings, I, 185.
"Try the codes of the sev- eral states by this test, and what a luxuriancy of legisla- tion do they present. ... A review of the several codes will show that every necessary and useful part of the least volu- minous of them might be com- pressed into one-tenth of the compass and at the same time be tenfold as perspicuous." Notes on the Confederacy, April, 1787, Writings, I, 324.
" The want of fidelity in the administration of powers hav- ing been the grievance felt under most governments, and by the American States them- selves under the British govern- ment, it was natural for them to give too exclusive an atten- tion to this primary attribute." Letter to John Brown, August, 1785, Writings, I, 177.
" A frequent change of men will result from a frequent return of elections ; and a fre- quent change of measures from a frequent change of men." No. 37 of The Federalist, p. 218.
"The internal effects of a Cf. par. 1 above, also what mutable policy are still more follows it on "mutability of
140
ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
Number 62,
calamitous. It poisons ^ the blessings of liberty itself. It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood ; if they be repealed or revised before they are pro- mulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is to- day, can guess what it will be to-morrow" (p. 340).
"Another effect of public instability is the unreasonable advantage it gives to the saga- cious, the enterprising, and the moneyed few over the indus- trious and uninformed mass of people. Every new regulation concerning commerce or reve- nue, or in any manner affecting the value of the different spe- cies of property, presents a new harvest to those who watch the change, and can trace its consequences."
"But the most deplorable effect of all is that diminution of attachment and reverence which steals into the hearts of
Madison.
laws : " " This evil is inti- mately connected with the former, yet deserves a distinct notice, as it emphatically de- notes a vicious legislation. We daily see laws repealed or superseded before any trial can have been made of their merits, and even before a knowledge of them can have reached the remoter districts within which they were to operate." Notes on the Confederacy, April, 1787, Writings, I, 324.
" In the regulations of trade, this instability becomes a snare not only to our own citizens, but to foreigners also," ibid.
" The sober people of Amer- ica . . . have seen with regret and indignation that sudden changes and legislative inter- ferences, in cases affecting personal rights, become jobs in the hands of enterprising and influential speculators, and snares to the more industrious and less informed part of the community." The Federalist, No. 44, 278.
"By correcting the infirmi- ties of popular government, it will prevent that disgust against that form which may
1 A favorite metaphor with Madison. Cf. The Federalist, 81 and 286 ; also Writings, II, 126 and 600 ; III, 360, and IV, 206.
THE AUTHORSHIP OF THE FEDERALIST 141
Number 62, Madison.
the people towards a political otherwise produce a sudden
system which betrays so many marks of infirmity and disap- points so many of their flatter- ing hopes "^ (p. 391).
transition to some very differ- ent one. . . . The real danger to republican liberty has lurked in that cause." Kemarks on Jefferson's Draught, Writings, I, 185-86.
Number 63.
Number 63,
Madison.
The first topic is the need of a due sense of national character.
"Yet however requisite a sense of national character may be, it is evident that it can never be sufficiently pos- sessed by a numerous and changeable body. It can only be found in a number so small that a sensible degree of the praise and blame of public measures may be the portion of each individual ; ^ or in an assembly so durably invested with public trust, that the pride and consequence of its members may be sensibly in- corporated with the reputation and prosperity of the com- munity. The half-yearly rep- resentatives of Ehode Island would probably have been little
Motives restraining a major- ity from injustice.
" Secondly. Respect for character. However strong this motive may be in individ- uals, it is considered as very insufficient to restrain them from injustice. In a multitude its efficacy is diminished in pro- portion to the number which is to share the praise and the blame. ^ Besides, as it has reference to public opinion, which, within a particular society, is the opinion of the majority, the standard is fixed by those whose conduct is to be measured by it. The public opinion without the society will be little respected by the people at large of any country. Individuals of extended views and of national pride may bring
1 Cf. Letter to Edmund Pendleton, Feb. 24, 1787, Writings, I, 230; cf. also 325, 333, 350, and 445, and The Federalist, 56, for similar expressions of the same idea.
* " Respect for character is always diminished in proportion to the number among whom the blame or praise is to be divided." Madison, Z)e6afes, 118.
142
ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
Number 63.
affected in their deliberations on the iniquitous measures of that State, by arguments drawn from the light in which such measures would be viewed by foreign nations or even by the sister states " (p. 392).
"... such an institution may be sometimes necessary as a defence to the people against their own temporary errors and delusions'' (p. 393).
" It may be suggested that a people spread over an extensive region cannot, like the crowded inhabitants of a small district, be subject to the infection of violent passions, or to the danger of combining in pursuit of unjust measures" (p. 394). The writer makes a cross reference to No. 10 [by Madi- son] for an elaboration of this theory.
The Senates of Sparta, Eome, and Carthage.
"In each of the two first there was a senate for life" (p. 394).
Madison.
the public proceedings to this standard, but the example will never be followed by the mul- titude. Is it to be imagined that an ordinary citizen or even Assembly man of Rhode Island, in estimating the policy or paper, ever considered or cared in what light the measure would be viewed in France or Holland, or even in Massa- chusetts or Connecticut?" Notes on the Confederacy, April, 1787, Writings, I, 326.
" It would next occur to such a people, that they themselves were liable to temporary errors." Debates, 242.
" It may be inferred that the inconveniences of popular states, contrary to the pre- vailing theory, are in propor- tion, not to the extent, but to the narrowness of their limits." Notes on the Confederacy, Writings, I, 327. Cf. also The Federalist, No. 10, p. 6^,
" Sparta.
2 Kings, 28 senators. Senate. I. For life." Additional Memorandum for the Convention of Virginia in 1788 on the Federal Constitu- tion. Writings, I, 394.
THE AUTHORSHIP OF THE FEDERALIST
143
Carthage.
"... a smaller council, drawn out of the senate " (p. 395).
"Lastly in Sparta we meet with the Ephori, and in Eome with the Tribunes, two bodies, small indeed in numbers, but annually elected by the whole body of the people " (p. 396).
Carthage.
"Senate . . . must have been great since the 100 drawn out of it." Ibid.f 395.
Sparta.
" Ephori, chosen annually by the people," etc. Addi- tional Memorandum, etc., I, 394.
"... liberty may be endan- gered by the abuses of liberty, as well as by the abuses of power: . . . and that the for- mer, rather than the latter, are apparently most to be apprehended by the United States" (p. 397).
" It is of infinite importance to the cause of liberty to ascer- tain the degree of it which will consist with the purposes of the society. An error on one side may be as fatal as on the other. Hitherto, the error in the United States has lain in the excess." Letter to Mazzei, Dec. 10, 1788, Writ- ingSj I, 445.
"In Sparta, the Ephori, the annual representatives of the people, were found an over match for the senate for life, continually gained on its au- thority and finally drew all power into their own hands " (p. 399).
"To these examples might be added that of Carthage, whose Senate, according to the testimony of Poly bins, ^ instead of drawing all power into its
" Ephori, chosen annually by the people and concurred in their behalf with kings and Senate, over both of whom they had authority. They . . . in fine, directed every- thing." Additional Mem., Writings, I, 394.
Carthage.
" Whilst Senate retained its authority, says Polybius,^ wis- dom and success marked every- thing. People at first gave
1 I have not noticed any reference to Polybius in Hamilton. Besides the pas- above, Madison quotes Polybius in Writings, I, 298, 347.
144 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
Carthage. Carthage.
vortex,^ had at the commence- way to Senate; at length, in- ment of the second Punic War toxicated by wealth and con- lost almost the whole of its quests, they assumed all original portion" (p. 399). power." Additional Mem.,
1788, Writings, I, 399.
The evidence in favor of Madison's authorship of Nos. 62 and 63 is, it seems to me, absolutely decisive. Jay's author- ship of No. 64 was finally established by finding a draft of the essay in his papers. It will hardly be denied that a consider- able part of Nos. 62 and 63 has been found in Madison's writ- ings. The evidence in regard to Nos. 51 and 53 is also convincing; and that in the case of the others is confirma- tory. The value of the evidence can be best appreciated by comparing it with that advanced in Hamilton's favor by his son. 2 It will also be remembered, in view of the direct con- flict of testimony between Hamilton and Madison, that it is a question of memory and not of veracity. If the conjecture referred to on p. 117 be regarded with favor, that is, that Hamilton, in haste and agitation, wrote "37 to 48 inclusive byM." instead of "37 to 58," then his error in regard to Nos. 62 and 63 could easily be accounted for. He would in any case recollect the salient fact that he again took up the writing of the essays because Madison had to go to Virginia. Madison left New York March 4. Nos. 59, 60, and 61, by Hamilton, were published Feb. 22 and 26. Hamilton might easily forget that Madison contributed two papers after he himself had begun to write again, just as he unquestionably did forget that Jay contributed No. 64 at that same time. That Hamilton's memory was at fault where his list differed from Madison's seems to have been the final conclusion of an exceptionally competent and friendly critic. Chancellor Kent, of New York, who was not only a friend of Hamil-
1 A favorite metaphor with Madison. I have not noticed it in Hamilton's writings. For other examples in Madison's works, see Federalist^ 309 ; Debates^ 372 and 399, and Writings, II, 465, and III, 246.
2 See J. C. Hamilton's edition of The Federalist, cx.-cxxxii.
THE AUTHORSHIP OF THE FEDERALIST 145
ton's, but had listened to him in the New York Convention, and many times later in court, received from him once in Albany the assurance that the designation of the authorship of The Federalist in his possession was correct. Later, Chancellor Kent pasted a copy of the Washington Gazette list in his copy of The Federalist on a fly leaf opposite the Hamil- ton list, and added: "Mem". I have no doubt Mr. Jay wrote No. 64 on the Treaty Power. He made a speech on that subject in the N. Y. Convention, and I am told he says he wrote it. I suspect, therefore, from internal Ev[idence] the above to be the correct List, and not the one on the opposite Page."^ The Washington Gazette list coincides with Madison's own list except in regard to Nos. 17, 20, and 21. It is clear, then, that Chancellor Kent, in spite of Ham- ilton's assurance in regard to Nos. 50, 51, 52, 54-58, 62, and 63,2 ^as led by the weight of internal evidence to suspect that the Madison lists assigned the authorship correctly. This change took place before the publication of Madison's Writings and perhaps before the publication of the Journal or the Debates, Such a change by one who was a friend of Hamilton and a careful student of The Federalist^ as well as a great lawyer, is significant.
1 Dawson's The Fcederalist, cxl.-cxli. ; J. C. Hamilton's edition, cxii, note. 3 His Hamilton list assigned 49 and 53 to Madison.
10
THE AUTHORSHIP OF THE FEDERALIST
A EEYIEW OF MR. PAUL LEICESTER FORD'S ARGUMENT
THE AUTHOESHIP OF THE FEDERALIST:
A REVIEW OF MR. PAUL LEICESTER FORD'S ARGUMENT
In the Introduction to his edition of The Federalist^ Mr. Paul Leicester Ford offers a different solution from the one reached in the foregoing essay, and the method employed is also different. His conclusion is at variance with all the lists, while mine is in accord with Madison's testimony. The amount of evidence necessary to prove a conclusion contrary to the combined testimony of Hamilton and Madi- son is obviously much greater than that required to prove a case in harmony with the assertions of either one.
Mr. Ford begins by objecting to conclusions drawn from comparisons of language and thought. A general objection of this sort has little weight. Every piece of historical criti- cism must stand or fall on its own merits. Internal criti- cism may be applied in a rash or an ignorant fashion, but it must be met point by point. Mr. Ford has failed to examine my method with care, or he would not have made the com- parison about the Esprit des Lois, nor alleged that I quoted Madison's speeches in the Virginia convention to prove that
1 This part of Mr. Ford's Introduction, xxx.-xxxix, was first published in the American Historical Review in July, 1897, ostensibly as a reply to my essay in the April number, and was accompanied by the larger part of the present paper in the form of a running comment. It wiU be conceded, I think, that some of his assertions were proved absolutely to be mistaken, and that the basis of others was seriously undermined. Notwithstanding this, Mr. Ford reprinted his article nearly a year later in his edition of The Federalist without corrections or defence. As his edition will deservedly have a wide circulation and a long life, I have decided to reprint here my strictures on his discussion of the authorship of the disputed numbers. This will accoout for the form of the present article.
160 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
he wrote the disputed numbers. I did that but twice (pp. 132, 135) and, if those instances are examined critically, it will be seen that they were perfectly legitimate. All the other parallel passages except one from Madison are from his letters or memoranda written before The Federalist.
The next point that Mr. Ford makes is that Madison's opportunities for remembering the facts about the authorship of the disputed numbers were not as good as Hamilton's. That may be true as he puts the case, but Madison was a methodical man, and he may have kept a list from the begin- ning. However that may be, in the only case that can be tested with absolute certainty, that of the authorship of Nos. 18, 19, and 20, 1 have shown that Madison did remember the facts far more exactly than Hamilton. Mr. Ford offers no instance where it can be proved that Hamilton was more nearly right than Madison.
Mr. Ford next tries to establish the earliest dates of Madi- son's and Hamilton's lists, but his conclusions cannot be ac- cepted. In the first place it is an unsupported conjecture that Madison's list was no older than the date of the copy of The Federalist that he sent to Gideon in 1818, i, e., not ear- lier than 1799. Second, we have Madison's own assertion that his list was an early one, if not substantially a contem- porary one. He wrote Robert Walsh, in 1819, as follows: " If I have any interest in proving the fallibility of Mr. Ham- ilton's memory, or the error of his statement, however occa- sioned, it is not that the authorship in question is of itself a point deserving the solicitude of either of the parties; but because I had, at the request of a confidential friend or two, communicated a list of the numbers in that publication, with the names of the writers annexed, at a time and under cir- cumstances depriving me of a plea for so great a mistake in a slip of memory or attention." (Writings of James Madison, III, 126.) Again, in his letter to Paulding (1831), Madison says that his assignment, " if erroneous, could not be ascribed to a lapse of memory," but to a lack of veracity. He calls it " the distribution communicated by me at an early day to a
THE AUTHORSHIP OF THE FEDERALIST 151
particular friend, and finally to Mr. Gideon." Hamilton's lapse of memory he attributes partly to " the period of time,
not less than . years, between the date of the Federalist
and that in the memorandum." {Writings^ IV, 176-177.) All this is decisively against the unsupported hypothesis that Madison did not draw up his list until twelve years had elapsed.
Mr. Ford tries to fix the date of the earliest Hamilton statement of the authorship, that given to Chancellor Kent, by concluding that " as he is spoken of in the memoranda as 'General Hamilton,' it must have been made while he held that rank, or in the years 1798 or 1799." But the fact that Chancellor Kent calls Hamilton "General" fixes the date only in one direction, ^. e., Kent would not have called Ham- ilton " General " at a date prior to his holding that rank ; nor would he, on the other hand, cease to call him so after he had left the army. Such titles stick to men the rest of their lives. Dawson, for example, in his Introduction, styles Hamilton "General," but that does not indicate that Daw- son wrote in 1798 or 1799.
The passage just quoted from Madison's letter to Walsh gives the probable reason why he did not enter the discussion earlier.
In regard to Mr. Ford's next point, relating to the sub- division of the work, I will refer to my previous discussion of that matter (pp. 117-119).
Mr. Ford tries to show that it was his professional engage- ments that led Hamilton to suffer Madison to write twelve consecutive numbers, but Madison was early invited to take part, and the real question is not why he wrote so many after No. 37, but why he wrote so few in the first part (see above, p. 117). Jay did not write more because of his illness during that winter. Mr. Ford's parallel example in April is not well taken, for the reason that although no more numbers were published in the journals for over two months, the rest of the numbers were written in April or possibly earlier. May 4, Hamilton wrote Madison: "The second \i, e., volume of
152 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
Publius] will be out in the course of a week.'* (Writings, VIII, 183.) When the first volume was issued, March 22, the publishers announced: "The second is in the press." (Dawson, p. Iviii.) It is obvious that the last eight numbers were written and the second volume carried through the press at the time when Mr. Ford concludes that Hamilton suspended his labors.
Mr. Ford's argument from transitions and so-called breaks seems to me a very precarious one. In fact it breaks down just at the point where it ought to be strong. There is such a typical "break" at the beginning of No. 47, but as all the testimony is against a change of authorship at that point, he concludes that the "break" merely indicates the taking up of a new subject by the same writer, whereas at No. 52, the evidence being conflicting, the "break" indicates a new writer and not a new subject, although the subject is new. An examination of these transitions in general seems to me to show that they are not significant unless you know beforehand what they mean.
In assigning Nos. 49, 50, and 51 to Madison, Mr. Ford apparently does not realize that he raises Hamilton's certain errors to five (including 54 and 64), and proportionately strengthens Madison's testimony.
Mr. Ford next suggests a length -test, but if it is valid it counts against his conclusions in regard to Nos. 49-51 ; if he is right in these conclusions his length-test breaks down, for we have in that case four short papers from Madison in suc- cession. On the other hand Nos. 62 and 63 contain about 2,500 and 3,000 words.
Mr. Ford ignores the striking break in continuity between Nos. 61 and 62, where 62 obviously joins on to No. 58.
The evidence from references to English history is unfairly weighed, because the cases in No. 47 are omitted on the ground that it cannot be positively ascribed to Madison. The only evidence against the unanimous testimony of all the lists in regard to 47 is the extremely equivocal transition or "break" test. It is impossible to believe that Madison, who
THE AUTHORSHIP OF THE FEDERALIST 153
was one of the most careful students of history of the time, had to have his attention called by Hamilton to the utility of examples from English history. I have called attention to the fact that Madison was reading at this time Burgh's Dis- quisitions^ which are quoted in No. 56. Madison's Notes, being '''Notes of Ancient and Modem Confederacies,''^ would not naturally contain facts about England.
In regard to No. 54, I will refer to the points made in my article, (p. 127). As the number is put into the mouth of a Southern statesman, whether Madison or Hamilton believed in the arguments is irrelevant; the only requirement is that the arguments should be such as a Southerner would use.
That Madison was " absolutely opposed " to property repre- sentation is asserted without evidence, and, in fact, is a mistake. He wrote in 1785: "In a general view, I see no reason why the rights of property, which chiefly bears the burden of government, should not be respected as well as personal rights' in the choice of rulers." (Writings, I, 181; also p. 129.)
In regard to the uncertainty expressed in No. 52 on the term of the Virginia assembly, it may be said that as " Publius" pretended to be a citizen of New York, that uncertainty might have been assumed as a natural touch for a New Yorker.
There is no praise for the House of Lords in No. 63. It is merely cited to prove that there is no danger to be feared from the organization of the Senate when an aristocratic body like the Lords has not been able to hold its own against the Commons.
The reference to the senate of Maryland, as far as it goes, points to Madison's being the author of No. 63, rather than Hamilton, In the Convention, Madison said of it: "In no instance had the Senate of Maryland created just suspicions of danger from it." Hamilton, on the other hand, said: "The Senate of Maryland has not been sufficiently tried." (Scott's ed. of the Debates, pp. 155 and 182; cf. also Madi- son's favorable opinions in his Writings, I, 177 and 186.)
The mention of local circumstances of New York State, etc., in Nos. 54 and 57 contains nothing beyond the ordinary
154 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
knowledge that an intelligent man would acquire in a few months' residence. Furthermore there are similar references to several other States in No. 57.
As for the insertion of an additional paragraph in No. 56 when it was republished in the edition of 1788, the conclu- sions Mr. Ford draws are by no means so sure as they seem to him. When I wrote my article I took it for granted that Lodge was right when he said the insertion was first made in the 1802 edition, but the fact, first brought out by Mr. Ford, that it was made in 1788 puts a different face on the matter. The number was published Feb. 19, and Madison did not leave New York till March 4. According to the announce- ment made March 22, a part of the second volume at least was already in the hands of the printers. It is not at all improbable that that insertion may have been made with Madison's assent, or by him at Hamilton's suggestion. We are informed that Hamilton was very scrupulous not to make changes in numbers not his own when the edition of 1802 was prepared, but any changes in Madison's numbers for the 1788 edition could have been made with his consent. In any case, with this possibility, the argument of Mr. Ford falls far short of conclusiveness. If the change were made with Madison's consent, the retention of the insertion by Madison in 1818 is explained.
Finally, Mr. Ford assumes that a memorandum found among Hamilton's papers and identified by Lodge (I, 497) as a " Brief of Argument on the Constitution of the United States," was in reality a syllabus of The Federalist, and he prints it as such in his edition. He goes further, and sug- gests that it was probably drawn up "as a guide for Madi- son," and concludes that it is a valuable piece of evidence as to the authorship of the disputed numbers.^ These assump- tions will not stand examination. They reveal very clearly that some of Mr. Ford's conclusions are mere haphazard con- jectures, and not based on sound critical method. It is in- trinsically improbable that Hamilton would have thought it 1 See pp. xxxiii and xliii-xlvii.
THE AUTHORSHIP OF THE FEDERALIST 155
necessary to outline for Madison the line of argument to be followed in defending the details of a Constitution which he more than any one else had made, and in the making of which Hamilton had taken little active part. It is doubtful if Mad- ison would have accepted any such subordinate position. John C. Hamilton {Republic^ III, 519) identifies this piece as the draft of the latter part of Hamilton's speech of July 13. Inasmuch as the things to be discussed in a speech de- fending the Constitution and in The Federalist are the same, the heads to be taken up would necessarily be almost identical. To fit this "Brief" to his hypothesis, Mr. Ford rearranges the heads or topics. Even then the likeness is noteworthy in only a part of the topics. The decisive argument against Mr. Ford's conjecture is the fact that some of the heads reproduce the topics of some of Hamilton's earlier numbers. Compare, for example, "D" of the "Brief" with The Fed- eralist^ No. 9; also. Powers II. with No. 22, and Powers I. with No. 23. Second, while the historical examples of re- publics cited by Madison in No. 39 could not be very different from those which Hamilton might cite, owing to the limited number of well-known republics, yet the similarity between the two documents is mainly in the use of this common material. The portion of 39 which has been so frequently quoted is the analysis of the federal and national elements of the Constitution, and of this famous analysis there is not a vestige in Hamilton's "Brief."
The question, however, is absolutely settled by the fact this syllabus reproduces in skeleton form an argument elaborated in one of the earliest Madison papers. No. 14, published Nov. 30. Toward the end of the syllabus we find these apparently meaningless figures under the caption :
|
u |
Exaggerated ideas |
of extent :" |
||
|
"N. |
45 |
42 |
||
|
S. |
31 14 |
31 11 |
438 |
|
|
973 |
764i |
mean 868f by 750" |
156 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
What could Madison make out of that memorandum unaided? Turning, however, to No. 14, p. 84, the signifi- cance is clear. The whole number is devoted to confuting Montesquieu's notion that republican government was suited only to small territories. One of several arguments urged against its application to the Union is that the Union is not really so large after all. " The limits as fixed by the treaty of peace are : on the east the Atlantic, on the south the lati- tude of 31 degrees, on the west the Mississippi, and on the north an irregular line, running in some instances beyond the 45th degree, in others, falling as low as the 42d. Computing the distance between the 31st and 45th degrees, it amounts to 973 common miles ; computing it from 31 to 42 degrees, to 764|^ miles. Taking the mean of the distance, the amount 86 8|. The mean distance from the Atlantic to the Missis- sippi does not probably exceed 750 miles," etc. The same argument and additional points that I have omitted will also be found in the memorandum which Madison drew up for use in the Virginia convention. The natural and unbiassed conclusion is that this statistical argument was originally drawn up by Madison, and that it was so effectively used by him in No. 14 that Hamilton, in preparing himself for the New York convention, jotted down a brief memorandum of the figures for the dimensions of the country. This was per- fectly legitimate. It is by no means necessary to prove or to assume that every argument in Tlie Federalist originated with Hamilton. There are no difficulties in believing that this document is what John C. Hamilton and Lodge called it, " Brief of Argument," etc. There are insuperable difficulties in believing it to be what Mr. Ford says it was : a syllabus drawn up by Hamilton in January, 1788, to guide Madison in expounding the details of a government that Hamilton did not believe in and of which Madison, more than any one else, was the framer.^
1 This last and conclusive disproof of Mr. Ford's position on the question of this " Syllabus of the Federalist," is from my review of his edition in the American Historical Review in October, 1898.
THE FEDERALIST ABROAD
THE FEDERALIST ABROAD
That The Federalist did not receive adequate recognition at the time of its publication as a remarkable contribution to political literature has been frequently asserted, but without good grounds. Undoubtedly some disparaging comments have been unearthed, but its rare quality was promptly recog- nized by competent judges. Interesting evidence of this fact is afforded by the literary history of The Federalist abroad. The keen interest in France in the development of the Amer- ican Republic gave American works on politics a ready wel- come there, and it was in France and by Frenchmen that The Federalist received its first foreign recognition as an important contribution to political literature. In 1792 it be- came clear to the moderate men in France that the dispro- portionate influence of Paris in political affairs was a source of danger and ought to be counterbalanced. The consequent desire to win support for any well considered plan of decen- tralization seems to have prompted the translation of The Federalist into French in that year. The translator was a young lawyer of the Girondist party, C. M. Trudaine de la Sablifere, a friend of Andr^ and M. J. Chenier. The author- ship of the essays was first formally announced on the title- page of this edition, and Hamilton and Madison immediately took rank among the great political writers of the day.
On August 24th, the National Assembly acting on a motion originally presented to the Legislative Assembly the 10th of February, passed a decree : " que le titre de citoyen f ran§ais sera d^cern^ a tons les philosophes qui ont eu le courage de ddfendre la liberty et I'^alitd dans les pays etrangers." The matter was then referred to the Committee on Public Instruc-
160 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
tion to make nominations.^ The scope of this plan of confer- ring honorary citizenship on eminent foreigners was extended on the 26th by including men who had served the cause of liberty by arms.
This was approved, and the Assembly then took action as follows, according to the record: [PAssembl^e Nat.] "Declare ddf^rer le titre de citoyen frangais an Docteur Joseph Priest- ley, h Thomas Payne, ^ Jdrdmie Beintham, k William Wil- berforce, h Thomas Clarkson, a Jacques Makintosh, a David Williams, h, N. Gorani, h Anarcharsis Cloots, k Corneille Paw, ^ Joachim-Henry Campe, k Pestalozzi, ^ Georges Washing- ton, h Jean Hamilton, h N. Maddis6n, k H. Klopstack, et k Thad^e Kociusko."^ This great distinction, placing two Americans without much previous literary reputation upon a level with Jeremy Bentham and Sir James Mackintosh, is a striking indication of the appreciation of The Federalist by some at least of the leaders of French thought and politics.
Two editions of this French translation were published in 1792, which indicates a considerable popular interest in the essays of Publius. In the National Convention, however, the Paris or centralizing party got the upper hand, and soon the name of "federalist" was to be perilously akin to that of "traitor." The Convention on September 25th declared, "the French Republic is one and indivisible," and referred to a committee the proposition to inflict the death penalty on
1 See the Prochs-Verhaux du Comity d' Instruction Publigue, Paris, 1889, 114-116.
« The Proces-Verbal de l'Assembl€e Nationale, torn. 13, Aug. 18-27, 1792. The inclusion of Hamilton and Madison in the list may have been owing to M. J. Ch^nier. He had presented a petition to the National Assembly on Aug. 24, in behalf of this proposal to admit to French citizenship eminent foreigners, and in his long list of benefactors of humanity is included " Madisson, qui, dans te F^d&aliste, a d^veloppe avec profondeur le systeme des Confederations." CEuvres de M. J. Ch^nier, V, 150. The mistakes in the initials of Hamilton and Madi- son are to be accounted for by the fact that the title-page of Le Fe'd&alisle gave simply the surnames. Schiller was added to the list the same day by a special vote. This honorary naturalization of foreigners is mentioned in Aulard, Histoire Politique de la Revolution Fran^aise, Paris, 1901, 566.
THE FEDERALIST ABROAD 161
those who should propose a dictatorship, a triumvirate, a tri- bunate, or le gouvernement federatif,^
During the conservative reaction in 1795 another edition of The Federalist was issued.^
In Germany The Federalist became known through the French translation. This was the subject of a very intelli- gent and thorough review in the Allgemeine Literatur- Zeitung^^ in which it was declared that there were few books designed for the general public that had so successfully com- bined profound reflection with popular exposition. It was, on the whole, to be reckoned among the pre-eminent works of political literature.
On at least three other occasions and in three other coun- tries, when, as in France, in 1792, the question of centraliza- tion versus decentralization under a federal constitution has been at issue, The Federalist has been enlisted in the discus- sion. In the beginning of the perennial struggle between a unitary and a federal constitution in the Argentine in 1818, The Federalist was frequently appealed to,* and, finally, in 1868, a Spanish translation from the English text was pub- lished in Buenos Aires by the well-known publicist, J. M. Cantilo.^
There was a strong federal movement in Brazil in 1840-42, and a widespread desire to establish a Federal Republic like the United States.^ This gave the occasion for a Portuguese
1 Proces- Verbal de la Convention, Nationale, I, 49-50.
2 Trudaine de la Sabliere, the translator, like so many of his party, met his death on the scaffold in 1794.
3 Dec. 27, 1792. The reviewer ranked The Federalist much higher than he did John Adams's Defence o/ the Constitutions of the United States.
* " The writings of Franklin, The Federalist, and other American works are frequently quoted." H. M. Brackenridge, Voyage to South America in the Years 1817 and 1818, II, 141.
^ This edition has escaped the notice of Lodge and Ford. Its title is : ** El Federalista. Articulos sobre la constitution de los Estados Unidos escritos en 1787 por Mr. Hamilton, Mr. Madison y Mr. Jay . . . con un apendice que con- tiene los articulos de Confederacion y Constitucion de los E. U. Traduccion hecha del testo Ingles por J. M Cantilo. Buenos Aires, 1868."
6 See the article by L. de Chavagnes, "Le Bre'sil en 1844," in the Revue de Deux Mondes, July, 1844, 76-79.
11
162 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
translation from the French edition of 1795, which was pub- lished in Rio Janeiro in 1840.
Lastly, in 1864, when the long contest for a real Federal Union in Germany was approaching its final stage, Wilhelm Kiesselbach reviewed for the German people the history of the formation of the American Union, in a two-volume work entitled Der Amerikanische Federalist. JPoUtische Studien fiir die deutsche Gegenwart (Bremen, 1864). A large part of the second volume is devoted to a presentation of the con- tents of The Federalist in a condensed form.
That The Federalist has never been republished in England has given rise to some remark, but the reason is clear. The number of American editions has been ample to supply the ordinary demand arising from literary or historical interest, and there never has been any exceptional interest in the topics constituting the main themes of The Federalist^ because federalism has never been in England a really practical polit- ical issue save as it has recently been a phase of the Irish Home Rule question or of the schemes of imperial federation.
MADISON'S STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF FEDERAL GOVERNMENT
MADISON'S STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF FEDERAL GOVERNMENT ^
It is a fact of no little interest that Madison, whose ideas pervaded the "Virginia Plan," who shaped the growth of the Constitution in the Federal Convention, who was its inde- fatigable champion in the Virginia convention, and who, in The Federalist^ was the ingenious and sympathetic advocate of its fitness for American conditions, was our first thorough and systematic student of the history of federal government. His historical studies seem to have been especially directed in this channel as early as 1784, when he realized that the Confederation was a failure and rapidly approaching helpless- ness and disintegration. In March of that year he wrote Jefferson : —
" You know tolerably well the objects of my curiosity. I will only particularize my wish of whatever may throw light on the general constitution and droit publique of the several confederacies which have existed. I observe in Boenaud's Catalogue several pieces on the Dutch, the German, and the Helvetic. The operations of our own must render all such lights of consequence. Books on the Law of N. and N. fall within a similar remark."
Again, on April 27, 1785, he asked for " Treatises on the ancient and modern Federal Republics, on the law of nations, and the history, natural and political, of the New World."
With Jefferson's help and by careful scanning of cata- logues, Madison gathered a collection of works on the history of federal government, which was probably the most com- plete in the country at that time. With his customary pains-
1 From a paper read before the American Historical Association in New York in 1896.
166 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
taking diligence Madison studied these works, and, in preparation for the Philadelphia Convention, he drew up a careful analysis of the constitution of the Lycian League, the Achaean League, Amphictyonic Council, Swiss Confedera- tion, Germanic Empire, and the United Netherlands. In this analysis a brief sketch of the origin and general character of the federation was followed by particular examination of the nature of the federal authority and of the defects or " vices " of the constitution, as he called them, which led to its decay.
We may feel sure that Madison, in 1787, had more thor- oughly studied and knew more of the history of federal gov- ernment than any other American or Englishman. It will be of interest to take a glimpse at the range of these studies. His knowledge of the Greek federations he derived mainly from Polybius and a treatise in Latin on the Greek republics by the eminent Dutch scholar, Ubbo Emmius.^ Gillies' History of Qreece^ published within a year, was also drawn into service, as well as two recent French works, Comte d'Albon's discourses on the history and government of Europe,^ and the extensive cyclopsedia of comparative pol- itics, edited by Felice, which was usually referred to by Madison under its secondary title, Le Code de V Humanite^
These works also proved rich in information on the consti- tution of the Swiss Confederation, the Netherlands, and the Empire. Felice's work, which is in thirteen volumes, Madi- son had ordered in 1785 through Jefferson, who praised it as "a very good dictionary of universal law," and who bought it for him before Madison's order could have arrived. For
1 Freeman's confident assertion, "It is clear that Hamilton and Madison knew hardly anything more of Grecian history than what they had picked np from the Observations of the Abbe Mably was unjust and mistaken. See his History of Federal Government (Bury's ed.), 249. Madison cites or refers to Polybius in his
Writings, I, 298, 347, 399. The title of Ubbo Emmius* book is Grcecorum Respiiblicce Descriptoe, Leyden, 1632.
2 Discours politiques, historiques et critiques sur quelques gouvemments de V Europe, Nenchatel, 1779.
8 Yverdun, 1778.
MADISON'S STUDIES IN FEDERAL GOVERNMENT 167
Switzerland he used a Dictionnaire de Suisse,^ the account of Temple Stanyan, published in 1714, of which Dr. John- son said, " The Swiss admit that there is but one error in Stanyan," and Coxe's Sketches, which is praised by Free- man. The most serviceable description of the constitution of the Netherlands he found in Sir William Temple's Observa- tions. For Germany he relied upon Felice and upon Savage's History/. In addition to these studies it hardly needs to be said that Madison, like several of his contemporaries, had studied Aristotle's Politics and mastered Montesquieu's Spirit of the Laws, Of the last he made an abstract for Washing- ton's use prior to the convention, and Washington borrowed and copied with his own hand Madison's material on the history of federations.
The question naturally arises, what use did Madison make of these materials ? Turning to the journal of the conven- tion, we find that in his important speech of June 19 against Patterson's plan for revising the Articles of Confederation, he reviewed, as he says, "the Amphictyonic and Achtean Confederation among the ancients and the Helvetic, Ger- manic and Belgic among the moderns," tracing their analogy to the United States in the Constitution and extent of their federal authorities and in the tendency of the particular mem- bers to usurp on these authorities and to bring confusion and ruin upon the whole. Later, in the same speech, he showed by examples from the same history how vulnerable loose con- federacies were to foreign attack by intrigue.
Similarly, on June 28, he enforced his argument that the small States had nothing to fear from combinations of the large States, by appealing to the history of the Empire, where it was the "contentions, not the combinations, of Prussia and Austria that have distracted and oppressed the German Empire." In Nos. 18, 19, and 20 of The Federalist this material is again digested into a powerful argument against any form of government in which the sovereign authority deals with States rather than with individuals. The moral
1 Edited by V. B. Tscharner, Zurich, 1773.
168 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
is driven home in compact and telling sentences at the close.
Having done what he could to advocate the Constitution in New York, Madison, in March, 1788, went to Virginia to prepare for the Virginia convention. For this purpose he drew up " an additional memorandum " on the defects of mere confederacies. In the mean time he had added to his previous material notes on the Hanseatic League, the Union of Calmar, and the Union of Scotland and England. This memorandum also took up the traces of representative institutions among the ancients, especially in Sparta, Rome, and Carthage, and the utility of a moderating senate. In the Virginia conven- tion Madison was as prominent as in the Philadelphia con- vention, and his efforts not less important. He met the specious eloquence of Patrick Henry by repeated appeals to solid facts, to those of recent experience, and to those of an earlier age. This Madison was prepared to do by his expe- rience in the old Congress and by his historical studies.
From the reports of the Virginia convention one may see how effectually Madison performed this task. The report is, of course, condensed : —
" If we recur to history and review the annals of mankind, I undertake to say that no instance can be produced by the most learned man of any confederate government that will justify a continuation of this present system or that will not demonstrate the necessity of the change, and of substituting for the present pernicious and fatal plan the system now under consideration, or one equally energetic.
" The powers of the Amphictyonic Council were exercised on the component states which retained their sovereignty. To this capital defect it owed its disorders and final destruc- tion. The Germanic system is neither adequate to the exter- nal defense nor internal felicity of this people. The doctrine of quotas and requisitions flourishes here; without energy, without stability, the Empire is a nerveless body ; the most furious conflicts and the most implacable animosities between its members strikingly distinguish its history. Concert and
MADISON'S STUDIES IN FEDERAL GOVERNMENT 169
co-operation are incompatible with such an injudiciously con- structed system."
Of late the fanciful suggestion that the Federal Constitu- tion was imitated from the United Netherlands has here and there received favor. The indebtedness to Holland was of a far different kind in Madison's eyes. "The confederate Government of Holland," he proceeds, "is a further confir- mation of the characteristic imbecility of such governments. From the history of this Government we might derive lessons of the most important utility. Governments destitute of energy will ever produce anarchy. These facts are worthy the most serious consideration of every gentleman here. Does not the history of these confederacies coincide with the lessons drawn from our own experience ? I most earnestly pray that America may have sufficient wisdom to avail her- self of the instructive information she may derive from a con- templation of the sources of their misfortunes, and that she may escape a similar fate by avoiding the causes from which their infelicities sprang."
In short, for Madison, all his study of the history of federal government confirmed his diagnosis of the existing evils. Permanent peace, prosperity, and development could not be obtained under any type of confederacy known to history. All have fallen a prey to dissension and disintegration. Some- thing new must be devised in the form of a federal constitu- tion. From the debates in Philadelphia emerged our Constitution, to be recognized and classified as a new type : the Bundesstaat, or Federal State, the creation of Madison's thought more than of any one else's. The evils of the Con- federation were obvious, and history showed Madison that they were irremediable. When we realize fully Madison's part in the Constitution, the unsparing toil which he devoted to its formation and adoption, we can form some idea — although, of course, not an exact one — of the importance in our history of his studies in the history of federal government.
PRINCE HENRY THE NAVIGATOR
PRINCE HENRY THE NAVIGATOR*
The various commemorations of the discovery of the New World during the last two years have quickened the histori- cal instincts of every student, and as the momentous nature of that event in the history of the world becomes more vividly apparent, the essentially historical problem to learn how it all came about becomes more and more fascinating. Colum- bus became convinced that his project was practicable by the combined force of two lines of influence, the speculative views of Aristotle, Seneca,^ and Toscanelli, and the results of the Portuguese explorations of the coast of Africa, which at every step winnowed the geographical tradition of its terri- fying chaff. According to his son Ferdinand, it was his reflections upon the Portuguese voyages that prompted his careful study of the cosmographers and collection of evidence from every quarter.^ If they went so far south would it not be possible to go west and strike land ?
It is possible that Columbus might have ventured without the incitement of the Portuguese explorations, but without
1 Read at the meeting of the American Historical Association, held in Chicago in July, 1893, in connection with the World's Historical Congress.
2 I have tried to show elsewhere, pp. 221 ff., that the interpretation of Seneca, Nat. Qucest.y Pref. 9-11, which Columbus adopted from the Imago Mundi of Pierre d'Ailly, who derived it from Roger Bacon, and which has been universally ac- cepted by modem writers, is a mistake. Apart from the tradition of this mediaeval interpretation there is no good reason to suppose that Seneca had any reference to a transatlantic voyage.
* " Standosi Egli (t. e., I'Ammiraglio) in Portogallo, comincib a congietturar. che, siccome quel Portoghesi caminavano tanto lontauo al mezo di, medesima- mente si potrebbe caminare aUa volta dell' Occidente, e che di ragione si potrebbe trovar terra in quel camino." Hisiorie del S. D. Fernando Colombo, in Venetia, MDLXXI, folio 12. The edition of the Historie, published in London, 1867, as Vita di Cristoforo Colombo, descritta da Ferdinando, Suo Figlio, etc., Nuova edizione, diligentementa Riveduta e corretta, is entirely untrustworthy. The text is changed capriciously and sometimes important clauses are left out.
174 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
Columbus America would have been discovered in 1500 by Cabral as the almost inevitable result of the efforts of Prince Henry the Navigator. Few careers have been more extraor- dinary in their influence on history, and yet comparatively little attention outside of Portugal has been given to his work and its results in the abundant literature that has lately ac- cumulated about the discoveries.^
In view of the extraordinary character of Prince Henry's work, I have thought it worth while to try to determine as exactly as possible by a careful examination of contemporary sources just what his aims were, and what prompted his course of action.
The earliest authentic statement of Prince Henry's aims that I have found, and which may be taken as his own, is in a charter issued Oct. 22, 1443, and recently published, I think for the first time, which prohibits any one from making a voyage beyond Cape Bojador without permission from the Prince. The passage reads : " Dom Affonso, etc. We make known to all who see this Charter that the Infant Dom Hen-
1 His life has been written five times. First, by Freire (Candido Lusitano), Lisbon, 1758. Second, by Gustav de Veer. Prinz Heinrich und seiner 2kity Danzig, 1864 ; an excellent piece of work. Third, The Life of Prince Henry ^ Surnamed the Navigator, etc. By K. H. Major, London, 1868; very learned, with a large controversial element, and not very systematically arranged. The con- densed edition of 1874 is better adapted for general reading. Fourth, Dom Henrique 0 Infante, Memoria Historica por Alfredo Alves, Porto, 1894, 8vo, 125; an interesting volume which received the royal prize offered in view of the ap- proaching fifth centenary of Henry's birth for the best work on his career. Fifth, Prince Henry the Navigator, etc. By C. Raymond Beazley, London and New York, 1895. The work of Oliveira Martins, Os Filhos de D. Joao I. Porto, 1891, should also be mentioned. Freire's work was translated into French by the Abbe de Cournand, Lisbon, 1781. 2 vols. Of the special discussions, "J. Escola de Sagres e As Tradigoes Do Infante D. Henrique," a lecture before the Royal Academy of Sciences of Lisbon in 1877, by the Marquez de Souza Holstein, contains the most new information. The most recent critical review of the rise of Portuguese exploration is Mr. Beazley's Introduction to the second volume of the translation of Azurara by himself, and Mr. Prestage, The Hakluyt Society, London, 1899. The two recent documentary publications that throw light on the period are described when cited. Prince Henry was born March 4, 1394, and the five hundredth anniversary of his birth was celebrated with appropriate ceremo- nies in Oporto in March 1, 1894.
PRINCE HENRY THE NAVIGATOR 1T5
rique, my much esteemed and beloved uncle, understanding that he would do service to our Lord God and to us, set about sending his ships to learn of the part of the world beyond Cape Bojador, since until that time there was no one in Christendom who knew about it, nor did they know whether there were people there or not, nor in the sea charts and maps was anything beyond Cape Bojador depicted except what seemed good to the makers ; and since it was a doubtful matter, and since men did not venture to go, he sent thither fourteen times till he learned about that region, and they brought him some thirty-eight Moors, and he ordered a chart made, and he told us that his plan was to send his ships fur- ther to learn of that region," etc.^ The same aim is as- serted in another charter of Affonso dated Feb. 2, 1446,2 and directly by Prince Henry himself in December, 1458, except that in this last case the field of discovery begins from Cape Non.3 Gomes Eannes de Azurara, in his invaluable Chronicle of the Discovery and Conquest of Guinea, which was written before 1453, reports a conversation between Prince Henry and Antonio Gongalvez just before Gongalvez's voyage in 1442.* This may be considered as an authentic representation of Prince Henry's views either in 1442 or at
1 Alguns Documentos do Archivo Nacional da Ton-re do Tomho Acerca das Nava- gagoes e Conquistas Portuguezas, Lisbon, 1892, 8. This charter may be taken as a personal statement of Prince Henry's, as Affonso was only twelve years of age and under the guardianship of the Regent Dom Pedro and of Prince Henry.
2 Alguns Documentos, 9.
* " Sendo certo como des a memoria dos homes se nom avia algua noticia na Christandade, dos mares, terras e gentes que eram alem do Cabo de Nam contra o meio dia e esguardando quanto servi9o se a Deus em ello fazer podia, e bem essy a El Rei D. Affonso meu snr. e sabrinho, que Deus mantenha, me fundei de enquerer e saber parte de muitos annos passados aca do que era des o dito Cabo de Nam em diante, nam sem grandes meus trabalhos e infindas despezas special- mante de dinheiros e rendas da Ordem" (of Christ). Cited from MS. in the Portuguese archives, in A Escola de Sagres e As Tradigoes do Infante D. Henrique^ by the Marquez de Souza Holstein, Lisbon, 1877, 47.
* Azurara, Chronica do Descohrimento e Conquista de Guine', Paris, 1841, 94. Azurara is now accessible to the English reader in the translation of Beazley and Preetage. London, The Hakluyt Society, 1896 and 1899. The passage referred to in the text is in I, 55.
176 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
the time of Azurara's writing. Gongalvez desired to ex- change the Moors he had recently taken for Negroes, and urged that from the Negroes they could obtain information of a more distant region, and that he would make every effort to secure such information. Prince Henry replied that not only of that land did he desire information, but also of the Indies, and of the land of Prester John, if it were possible.
In one of the earlier chapters of his work, Azurara gives in detail the objects which Prince Henry had in view. He tells us that the Prince was of a temper that prompted him to be ever beginning or finishing great deeds, and "consequently after the capture of Ceuta he continually kept vessels armed against the Infidels, and because he desired to know the land which is beyond the Canaries and a cape called Cape Bojador, since till that time, neither by writing, nor by the memory of men was the character of the land beyond that cape definitely known. To be sure some said St. Brandan had passed that way, and others that two galleys had been there but never returned.^ . . . And because the Prince desired to know the truth of this, it seeming as if he or some other lord did not seek to know it, no mariners or merchants would ever go there, since it is evident that they would not try to sail to a place unless they might hope for profit from it, and seeing that no other prince was working at this he sent his ships to these parts, acting in the service of God and of King Dom Eduarte, his lord and brother. . . . And the second reason was, because he expected that he would find in these lands some Christians or some harbors to which they might safely sail and derive much merchandise from these kingdoms which they could get on good terms, since with them no one traded from these parts, nor for any other so far as was known, and that likewise the products of these kingdoms
1 Probably a reference to the Doria Expedition of 1291, for which see Pertz Der jElteste Versuch zur Entdeckung des Seeweges nach Ostindien, Berlin, 1859. Pertz's discussion is reproduced by Major in his Prince Henry, 99 ff. My refer- ences are to the original edition of Major's book.
PRINCE HENRY THE NAVIGATOR 177
could be exported thither, a traffic which would bring great profits to the inhabitants.
" The third reason was, because it was said that the power of the Moors in that part of Africa was much greater than was commonly supposed, and that there were no Christians among them or any other people. And since every judicious man is constrained by natural prudence to desire to know the power of his enemy, the Prince labored at sending to learn definitely how far the power of the infidels extended.
" The fourth reason was, that during the thirty-one years that he had warred against the Moors he had never found a Christian king nor lord outside of this land that for the love of our Lord Jesus Christ had been willing to help him in war. He wanted to know if there could be found in those regions any Christian friends in whom the love of Christ would be so strong that they would desire to help him against the enemies of Christ."
The fifth reason, briefly stated, was the salvation of souls through the spread of Christianity.
Azurara gives as a sixth reason, and an especially impor- tant one, that Prince Henry's horoscope signified that he should make great conquests and discover things hid from other men.i The detail with which these reasons are stated, the similarity between them and those stated in the Bull of Nicholas V., to be cited presently, and the fact that Azurara wrote as an official historian, all indicate that these reasons, except the sixth, ^ are to be taken as derived from Prince Henry himself. If so, they represent his attitude not far from 1446, or about the time Azurara was beginning his work.^
1 Azurara, Chronica de Guin^, 44-49 ; Beazley and Prestage's Trans., I, 27-30.
2 The sixth is a kind of afterthought or supplementary reason apparently suggested by Azurara himself. The title of the chapter is : " No qual se mostram cinquo razaoes porque o senhor Lffante foe movido de mandar buscar as terras de Guynea." Further, after stating the five reasons, Azurara proceeds : " Mais sobrestas cinque razaoes, tenho eu a VI, que parece que he raiz donde todallas outras procedera."
2 The fourth reason indicates the date, thirty-one years after the capture of Ceuta.
12
178 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
In the Bull of Nicholas V., Jan. 8, 1454, we find an his- torical statement so similar to those cited from Azurara and the documents quoted above that the conclusion is unavoid- able that it must have been supplied by Prince Henry in his petition to the Pope. It reads : " When long ago it had come to the knowledge of the Infant that never, or at least, not within the memory of man, had it been customary to sail the Ocean Sea in this manner toward the Southern and East- ern Shores, and that it was to that degree unknown to us of the West that we had no certain knowledge of the people of those parts, believing that he would do very great service to God, if by his efforts and activity the Sea itself should be opened to ships even to the Indians who are said to worship Christ^ and he might thus be able to come into relation with them and arouse them to help the Christians against the Saracens and other such enemies of the faith and to subdue continuously some heathen or pagan peoples living between slightly [deeply 2] corrupted with the teachings of the un- speakable Mahomet and to preach to them and to have preached to them the unknown name of the most sacred Christ, always armed however^ with royal authority since twenty-five years [of age *] he had never ceased to send al- most yearly a force from the peoples of these kingdoms with the greatest toils, dangers and expense in very swift ships, called caravels, to explore the Sea and the maritime provinces toward the Southern regions and the Antarctic Pole ; and so
1 The subjects of Prester John.
2 The text of the Alguns Documentos reads minime, while that in the BuLlarum CoUectio, Lisbon, 1707, reads ni'mium.
3 Tamen. This particle is omitted in Sixtns the Fourth's transcript of this document. This most involved sentence according to the punctuation in the Bullarum CoUectio contains 47 lines !
* "Regia tamen semper auctoritate munitus, a viginti qninque annis {,) citra exercitum," etc. The reading in Alguns Documentos inserts a comma after annis, which is evidently a mistake. Citra goes with annis. In Sixtus Fourth's transcript [Bull. Coll. 32) ex tunc is found in place of citra. A viginti quinque annis probably refers to Prince Henry's age. Santarem, Recherches sur la Priority de la D€couverte de la Cote occidental d^Afrique, 204, translates it " depuis I'age de vingt-cinque ans," i. e., from 1419.
PRINCE HENRY THE NAVIGATOR 179
it came to pass that when ships of this sort had explored and taken possession of many harbors, islands and seas, that they came at length to the province of Guinea, and having taken possession of some islands", harbors, and the sea adjacent to that province, sailing further they reached also the mouth of a certain great river commonly considered the Nile, and against the peoples of those regions in the name of King Alfonso and the Infant for some time a war existed, and in it very many neighboring islands were subdued and peace- fully possessed. Thence also many people of Guinea and other regions captured by force, certain also by an exchange of unprohibited articles or some other lawful contract of pur- chase, have been brought to the said Kingdoms; of whom many have been converted to the Catholic faith, and it is hoped that in the divine mercy, if progress of this kind continues that either the whole people will be converted to the Faith, or, at least, the souls of many be gained for Christ."!
There are several things in this passage which merit spe- cial attention. We find here evidences of the crusading spirit in Prince Henry, along with the spirit of scientific curiosity. The same spirit, somewhat belated, at times dominated Columbus, but manifested itself in the impracti- cable project of recovering the Holy Sepulchre ; with Prince Henry it was practical and aimed at the conquest of Africa. Other indications of the strength of this spirit in Prince Henry will be noted later. It is apparent from this passage and the preceding that the prince planned the circumnaviga- tion of Africa. " The Indians who worship Christ " are obviously the subjects of Prester John, whose kingdom after the thirteenth century was commonly supposed to be in East
1 Alguns Documentos, 15-16 ; Bullartim Collectio, 18-20. The Latin text and an English translation of this Bull may be found in William Bollan's Coloniae An- glicanae IJlustratae: or, The Acquest of Dominion, and the Plantation of Colonies made by the English in America, with the Rights of the Colonists, examined, stated, and illustrated, London, 1772, 117-136. According to Bollan the full text of the Bull was first published by Leibnitz in his Codex Juris Diplomaticus, 1 693. Dumont transcribed it from Leibnitz's text for his Corps Universel Diplomatique.
180 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
Africa.^ From this time the hope of reaching the kingdom of Prester John was a powerful incentive with the Portu- guese discoverers. Both Diaz and da Gama were on the lookout for him and King John tried to reach him by an overland expedition.
That Henry was confident of reaching a region that he thought of as India, whether it may have been in Eastern Africa or India proper, appears with equal clearness from Diogo Gomez's narrative of his voyage in 1456 (?). When he was in the territory of a certain chief Batimasa, south of the Gambia, he wanted, as he says, "to make an experiment by sending James, a certain Indian whom the Lord Infant sent with us so that if we should enter India, we might have an interpreter. " 2
The other passages from Gomez upon Prince Henry's plans naturally fall in here. The first two relate to the earliest periods of the explorations, and perhaps cannot be entirely trusted. A voyage in 1415 is mentioned, and the Infant is said to have always taken pains to send, at his own expense, to explore foreign parts. ^ The next year he sent out another expedition to investigate the ocean currents.*
When Tristan and Gongalvez brought the first captives in 1442, Prince Henry carefully examined them as to their
1 See Yule's art. "Prester John," Encydopcedia Brit., XIX, 717. Santarem, Recherches sur la Priority, etc., 323, gives the following, " Texte ecrit au verso des cartes de la Cosmographie de Ptolemee par le Cardinal Franfois-Guillaume nilastre," with the date 1427 : "Quarta Africe tabula, tota pene ad austrum et ultra Egiptum, continet Getuliam, Libiam interiorem, Ethiopian! junctam Egipto, Nubiam, Indiana inferioremque (sic) ad Ethiopian! vergit et ipsam Ethiopiam. . . . Et in istis India et Ethiopia est terra Presbyteri Johannis Christiani, qui dici- turregnare super 72 reges, quorum 12 sunt infideles, reliqui Christiani, sed diver- sorum rituum et sectarum."
2 Gomez, De Prima Inventione Guineae. Schmeller, Ueber Volenti Fernandez Alema, Ahhandlungen der Milnchner Akademie, 1845, Iste Classe, 29. Beazley, Prince Henry, 293. Beazley gives a translation of Gomez's accounts of his own voyages, pp. 289-98. A translation of the same portion of Gomez will also be found in Major, Prince Henry, 288-98. Gomez is supposed to have written not later than 1483. Schmeller, 17.
8 Ad inquirendum extremas partes, Gomez, 19.
* Desiderans scire causam tarn magni maris currentis, Ibid., 19.
PRINCE HENRY THE NAVIGATOR 181
country, and learned the route to Timbuctu. In 1444 Gon- ial© de Sintra and Dinis Dias were sent out, and were en- joined to go beyond Petra Galeae to see if they could find other languages spoken. The result of this expedition was the establishment in 1445 of a post in the island of Arguim. Soon after this the Prince directed his commanders to avoid strife with the natives and to enter into peaceful commer- cial relations with them, as he desired to convert them to Christianity. 1
The foregoing pages contain the contemporary evidence in regard to Prince Henry's aims. I now propose briefly to consider the influences which impelled him to a course of action so exceptional in his time, yet so rich in results. What first turned his attention to that continent which has preserved its mysteries longer than any other part of the world except the Poles? Prince Henry's original interest in the exploration of Africa is generally attributed to his expe- riences in the conquest of Ceuta in 1415, when Portugal attempted to carry the age's long war against the Moors into Africa.^ At the capture of this fortress, the African counter- part of Gibraltar, he won his spurs.
The primary impulse then would seem to have been cru- sading zeal.^ Once on the ground, at Ceuta, he was brought face to face with the fact that while little was known of the coast of Africa there was a considerable internal commerce which was very profitable.* Thus the desire to promote
1 Gomez, 23.
2 Barros, Dec. 1, Lib. I, Cap. 2. The first five Books of Barros' Decadas da Asia have been translated into German by Dr. E, Feust, Niirnberg, 1844.
3 As examples of the crusading spirit the following may be noted : " de pois da tomada de Cepta, sempre trouxe continuadamente Navyos Armados contra os infiees." Azurara, 44. (See above, p. 177.) " Omnes proventus qnos habebat et ex Guinea omnia expendebat in bello et continua armata in mare contra Sarracenos pro fide Christiana." Gomez, in Schmeller, 32.
* ** Ad mare arenosum Cathaginenses qui nunc vocantur Tunisi cum carobanis et camelis aliquando 700 pertransierunt usque ad locum qui dicitur Tambuctu et aliam terram Cantor pro auro arabico quod ibi invenitur in copia maxima, de quibus hominibus ac animalibus multociens vix decima pars reversa est. Quod audiens Infans Henricus movit eum (i. e. Gonzalo Velho in 1416)^ inquirere
182 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
commerce was early excited in his mind and irrespective of his explorations received steady attention. In Azurara's quaint phrase he brought the East and the West together that men might learn to exchange wealth.^ The evidence cited above in regard to his aims shows clearly, however, that as soon as he realized to what an extent Africa was unex- plored, the zeal for discovery was awakened in him and soon took the first place in his mind. However profitable the ex- peditions down the coast of Africa were during the latter part of his life, they were evidently a heavy expense during the earlier years. ^
Early in the next century, in the first glow of triumph over the successful voyage of da Gama to India, a Portu- guese geographer, whose treatise was not printed until 1892, was so profoundly impressed with the magnificent culmination of Prince Henry's work, that he attributed his impulse to
terras illas per aquam maris ad habendum commercia cum ipsis et ad nutrien- dum suos nobiles." Gomez, in Schmeller, 19, on the year 1416. On the basis of this and perhaps with additional information Hieronymus Miinzer wrote about 1494 : " Idem Henricus, frater Eduardi, considerans paternas census non tantis expensis sufficere, animum applicuit terras incognitas aperire. Considerans autem regem de Tunis, i. e. Carthagine multum auri quotannis habere, duos ex- plorationes ad Tunis misit ; certiorque factus, quo modo rex de Tunis merces per Atlantica juga in Aethiopiam meridianem miserit, et aurum sclavosque attulerit, idem hoc ipsum per mare temptayit facere, quod rex de Tunis per terram multis annis potuit efficere." Evidently by this time the voyages were paying so well as to be a valuable adjunct to the royal revenue. (See note, p. 188.) Kunstmann, Hieronymus Miinzer's Bericht iiber die Entdeckung der Guinea, 60.
1 Ca tu per continnades passagees fizeste ajuntar o levante com o poente, porque as gentes aprendessem a comuder as riquezas. Chronica de Guin^, 41.
2 Prince Henry, in 1458, said the voyages had been made " not without great labors on my part and infinite expense, especially of the monies and income of the Order." Souza Holstein, 47. (See above, note 3, p. 175.) The Military Order of Christ (Ordem da Milicia de Nosso Senhor Christo) was the successor and heir of the Templars. The king's charter declared " que a Ordem de Christo se tinha feito em Reformagao do Templo, quo se desfez." Pope John XXII. recog- nized the new order by a brief, March 14, 1319. Santa "Rosa de Viterbo, Eluci- dario das Palavras, Termos, e Frasas Antiquades da Lingua Portugueza, art. " Tempreiros," II, 248, Lisbon, 1865. Prince Henry was appointed Grand Master of the Order by his father. King John, in 1418. He exercised the functions of Master, but did not become a full member. He took the title of Governor. Souza Holstein, A Escola de Sagres, 74.
PRINCE HENRY THE NAVIGATOR 183
divine inspiration. " Lying one night in his bed, it came to the Infant in revelation how it would be doing much service to our Lord to discover the said Ethiopias (i. e., Guinea); in which region would be found a great multitude of new peoples and black men, as from the time of this discovery till now we have known by experience; whose color and fashion and manner of life [no] one could believe if he had not seen them; and of these folk a large part were to be saved by the Sacrament of Holy Baptism; it being further told him that in those lands would be found so much gold with other such rich merchandise that with it the kings and peoples of these kingdoms of Portugal might maintain them- selves well and adequately and would be able to make war against the infidels, enemies of our most holy Catholic faith; and this revelation [of the] discovery of so many and so great provinces newly made known to Christendom surely seems to come by a new mystery of God and not by other temporal means. "^ Barros evidently refers to this passage when he remarks in connection with Henry's work, "Some indeed maintain that this undertaking, since he was a Catholic prince of very pure and religious life, was rather revealed to him than prompted by him." 2
When Prince Henry was once started upon his life-work he prosecuted it with energetic persistency and availed him- self of every possible source of information in a way that proves at once his scientific sagacity and his profound devo- tion to the cause. One of the most striking examples of his systematic investigation is the instance where he gathered from captive Azenegues a sufficiently accurate description of the mouth of the Senegal to enable his sailors to recognize the stream when they saw it for the jBrst time.^ At another time the close agreement between information brought home
^ Esmeraldo de Situ Orbis por Duarte Pacheco Pereira. Edigao Commemo- rativa da Descoberta da America por Christovao Columbo, no sen Quarto Cente- nario Sob a Dirreccao de Raphael Eduardo de Azevedo Basto. Lisbon. Imprensa Nacional, 1892, 37.
2 Barros, Decade, I, Bk. I, ch. 11.
8 Azurara, Chronica, 278.
184 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
by Gomez and that which he had received by letter from a merchant in Oran confirms his belief in both reports.^
Prince Henry did not neglect literary sources. His brother Dom Pedro brought from Venice in 1428 a copy of Marco Polo 2 and a map. The description of the map which has been handed down by Antonio Galvao in his " Treatise on the Discoveries^^ is evidently greatly exaggerated, ^ but it probably did contain a fairly correct outline of Africa as did an Italian map of 1351 (the so-called Lauren tian Portulano). Such maps were based on information derived through the channels of land trade just as Prince Henry secured a de- scription of the Senegal. The familiar map of Fra Mauro (1457-59), which was made for King Alfonso V. of Portugal, is another example of such a happy combination of guess- work and vague reports. If we may trust Damiao Goes, who wrote about the middle of the next century. Prince Henry was a careful student of the ancient geographers and knew of the supposed voyage of Hanno around Africa, the expedition ordered by Pharaoh Necho and the report of Strabo of the finding of fragments of Spanish vessels in the Red Sea.* This statement must be received with caution as it is partially inconsistent with the ever reiterated assertion of the contemporary documents of the absolute novelty of the voyages down the coast of Africa.
To avail himself of the highest ability in nautical matters the Prince engaged at great expense an expert map and in- strument maker as well as skilful navigator, Jacome or Jayme
1 " Et postquam reversus sum ad D. Infantem retulendo haec omina, dixit mihi, quod niercator in Oran ei scripserat jam duo menses elapsi de guerra, etc. Et sic credebat omina." Gomez, in Schraeller, 28.
2 See the preface of the early Portuguese edition by Yalentim Fernandez, quoted by Martins. Osjilhos de D. Jodo, I, 132.
8 It was said to contain the Straits of Magellan and the Cape of Good Hope and to have helped the prince in his discoveries. See Major, Prince Henry, 62, or the Hakluyt Soc. Edition of Galvao's Tratado, 66. The words " fairly correct •outline " of course are not to be taken too strictly. These maps indicated the peninsular character of Africa, and showed the retreat of the western coast line by the Gulf of Guinea, etc.
* Souza Holstein, A Escola de Sagres, 23.
PRINCE HENRY THE NAVIGATOR 185
of Majorca, to come to Portugal to instruct his ofQcials. This seems to be the sole evidence of the existence of a nautical school at Sagres, which apparently must be given up if any systematic institution is thought of. The same is true of the supposed foundation of a chair of mathematics at the Uni- versity of Lisbon attributed to him by Major and others. Prince Henry's will first published after Major wrote gives a detailed statement of his foundations and mentions many churches and a bequest to a chair of theology, but is silent in regard to any nautical school at Sagres or a chair of mathematics. 1
The main line of results of Prince Henry's work are prob- ably familiar to most readers of this essay. As was indi- cated at the beginning, he removed some of the greatest obstacles to geographical progress, the fantastic and imagi- nary terrors of the deep. I cannot do better than to quote a passage from Diogo Gomez which with its vivid reflection of contemporary ideas is more forcible than any modern state- ment: "And these things which are written here are put down with all respect to the most illustrious Ptolemy who wrote much that is good on the parts of the world, but in regard to this region he was wrong. For he divides the
1 Barros* words are : " Pera este descubrimento mandou vir da ilha de Mal- horca hum Mestre Jacorae, homem mui docto na arte de navegar, que fazia car- tas e instrumentas, o qual Ihe custou muito pelo trazer a este Reyno pera ensinar sua scieucia aos oflficiaes Portuguezes daquelle mester." Dec. I, ch. XVI. Codine, from whose review of Major this citation is taken {Bull, de la Soc. de Geog. Juin, 1873, 645), deduces from it "la cre'ation d'une Ecole hydrograph- ique." This expanding generalizing process has been followed by most of the modem writers on Prince Henry, but in the absence of corroborative testimony Barros' words do not warrant the deduction. The most ancient chroniclers are silent on the subject. The contemporary documents are silent. Prince Henry's will covers six octavo pages and mentions all his foundations so fully that its silence in regard to the School of Sagres is almost decisive. Consequently the Marquis de Souza Holstein concludes "that in Sagres there never existed a school in the sense in which the word is generally understood." A Escola de Sagres, 77. Prince Henry's will is given on pp. 81-86. This most interesting document is also printed in 0 Infante D. Henrique por Manuel Barradas, Lisbon, 1894, 129-146, and separately in cheap form by the Typographia Lisbonense, Porto, 1894, 12mo.
186 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
world into three parts, the middle part inhabited, the north- ern part he wrote is without inhabitants on account of the ex- cessive cold, and the southern part on the equator he wrote was uninhabited on account of the heat. Now of all these things we found just the contrary, because we saw (or have seen) the Arctic pole inhabited even beyond where the pole star is directly overhead, and the equator inhabited by blacks where there is such a multitude of tribes that it is almost not to be believed. And that southern part is full of trees and fruits; but the fruits are different and the trees are incred- ibly tall and large. And I say this, to be sure, because I have seen a large part of the world, but never the like of this."i One wishes that before his death the great prince might have beheld the wonders of the tropics with his own eyes.
The opening of the Atlantic to continuous exploration is the most momentous step in the history of man's occupation of the earth. It was destined to change the centre of grav- ity of the civilized world. Western Europe, so many cen- turies the frontier, became the centre, and to London, the Melbourne of Prince Henry's time, was given the fortune for a time at least to be the world's commercial capital, and to England, the inheritance of the Indies that he sought to reach.
The priority of Henry's efforts to explore the coast of Africa has been disputed, but the case with him is much as it is with Columbus and his alleged precursors. Their voy-
^ Gomez, in Schmeller, 23, ** quia polam arcticum vidimus habitatum usque ultra perpendiculum poli," etc. Compare with Columbus' voyage one hundred leagues beyond the island of Tile (Thule). " lo navigai I'anno 1477 nel mese di Febraio oltra Tile isola, cento leghe, la cui parte australe e lontana dall' equino- ttiale settantatre gradi . . . non era congelato il mare, quantunque vi fossero si grosse maree, che in alcuni luoghi ascendeva ventisei bracci, e discendeva altre- tanti in altezza." Historic, cap. VI.
In both statements there is a fabulous element which may simply be the natural exaggeration of a sailor's yarn, coupled with ignorance. There is no good reason, it seems to me, to decline to believe that Columbus made an arctic voyage, because he asserts that he saw tides one hundred and fifty feet high, or that Gomez did not because he asserts that he went beyond the North Pole !
PRINCE HENRY THE NAVIGATOR 187
ages cannot be proved or disproved. In any case they have no determinable relation to later progress. As in Columbus' case so in Prince Henry's, continuous knowledge and explo- ration date from and are based upon his work. Further, the evidence is incontestable that Henry and, at least, most of his contemporaries believed that he was a pioneer and his sailors the first to go beyond Cape Bojador. Further still it is difficult to reconcile their positive assertions, and the absence of contemporary^ testimony to the contrary with the detailed history of French voyages resting on conjectures as to the contents of documents no longer extant.
In saying a few words in conclusion on the character and personality of Prince Henry I shall limit myself to the men- tion only of some of the more striking features. No reader of Azurara's quaint and charming narrative can fail to see that Prince Henry was a man whose force of character, untiring resolution, and generosity exercised an immense influence over his followers, infusing them with zeal and boldness. They strain every nerve to win his approval, and he possesses their unfaltering allegiance.
He interests us chiefly as the organizer of discovery, he seems so devoted to that as sometimes to be described solely as such. But to his contemporaries he is that, and as well a crusading prince, following up the capture of Ceuta with continual naval onslaughts upon the infidels, a military mis- sionary, the commander of the Order of Christ, working to plant Christianity in Africa and the islands of the sea, the promoter of great commercial and industrial enterprises, con- trolling the tunny fisheries off Algarve, the coral fisheries off Portugal, the manufacture and sale of soap, the dye facto- ries, and several large fairs. ^ He also controlled the whole commerce of the west coast of Africa, letting it out on shares and apparently establishing the first commercial and discov- ery company of modern times. ^
1 Holstein, 77-78, cites titles of charters touching these enterprises.
2 Holstein says, p. 53 : " Ao esfor^o individual succedeu bem depressa o esforfo collectivo. Logo em 1444 se forma em Sagres uma companhia que se
188 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
That the slave trade should form an important part of that commerce was inevitable at that time, but it was only with the occupation of tropical America that the slave trade took on its worst phase. The slaves imported to Portugal were utilized mainly for domestic service, and became Christians, which at that time would greatly mitigate their condition if not secure their emancipation. ^
As a soldier. Prince Henry belongs at once to the middle ages and to modern times. He fights at Ceuta and at Tangiers like a mediseval knight, while he plans a military exploring expedition like a modern master of strategy. His plan to circumnavigate Africa, and strike the Moors from behind in conjunction with the shadowy Christian Monarch of the East was Napoleonic. One may ask, indeed, if a bolder or more magnificent conception was formed from the death of Alexander the Great till the rise of Napoleon.
I have spoken of him as a crusader. The essential aim of the Crusades was to secure the dominance of Christianity. Prince Henry's work directly led to a greater extension of Christianity than he could have imagined. The enrichment of the Old World and the development of the New by the discoveries have vastly increased the weight and influence of Christianity in the world.
propoe continuar os descobrimentos de costa occidental d' Africa." Sr. Oliveira Martins in his lecture enlitled Navegaciones y Descuhrimientos de los Portugueses Anteriores al Viage de Colon, Madrid, 1892, on pp. 17-18, writes : " Y la {i. e., a sys- tem of exploration) hallo el gcnio inventive del Infant, ampliando el tipo ya historica de las companas de Pescadores a las proporciones de una Compania colonial y maratiraa que luego formd en Lagos para la explotacion del rio de Oro." Neither of these writers cites any document, and I have been unable to lay my hands on any other contemporary evidence than that in Ca da Mosto's narrative which shows that the African commerce was definitely organized. The average profits were 1700 per cent (perche di un soldo ne facevano sette e dieci). If one furnished his own ship and cargo he must pay the Prince 25 per cent of the return cargo ; Prince Henry, on the other hand, would furnish both ship and cargo, and receive half the profits, and if the voyage failed the Prince would bear the loss. Navigazioni di Messer Alvise da Cd da Mosto, cap. I. An English translation of Ca da Mosto's voyages may be found in the second volume of Kerr's Voyages, London, 1824.
1 Azurara states that 927 slaves were imported between 1443 and 1448, and that most of them became Christians. Cronica de Guin€, 454.
PRINCE HENRY THE NAVIGATOR 189
But while emphasizing these other sides of his character, we must not overlook Prince Henry as a true lover of science, always actuated by an unquenchable desire to find out the secrets of the earth from the time when, at twenty years of age, he is said to have sent Gonzalo Velho beyond the Canaries to learn the cause of the swift currents of the sea.
Talent de Men /aire, The desire to do well, was his motto. No man ever chose a motto of more singular propriety, and no man ever lived up to it more faithfully than did Prince Henry the Navigator.
Rightly is he numbered among those who by valiant deeds have freed themselves from the law of death.
*' — aquelles que por obras valerosas Se vao da lei da morte libertando." ^
1 Camoens, Os Lusiadas, Cant. I, Sta. 2.
THE DEMAECATION LINE OF POPE ALEXANDER VI.
THE DEMARCATION LINE OF POPE ALEXANDER VI.^
The history of the Line of Demarcation established by Pope Alexander VI., separating the Spanish and Portuguese fields of discovery and colonization, has received compara- tively little attention from English writers. ^ So far as I have been able to learn, no satisfactory or reasonably com- plete single account of the subject from beginning to end exists in the language. In view of the approaching period of Columbian anniversaries and the reawakened interest in all things pertaining to the discovery of the New World, a brief history of this curious yet momentous transaction will be appropriate.
Columbus, upon his return from his first voyage, landed near Palos, March 15, 1493. He promptly despatched a letter to Ferdinand and Isabella giving an account of his discoveries.^ They replied March 30, and by the middle of
1 Read before the American Historical Association in Washington, in Decem- ber, 1891.
2 Since the first publication of this paper in the Yale Review^ May, 1892, two learned discussions of this subject have been published in English. Henry Har- risse's The Diplomatic History of America. Its first chapter, 1452-1494. B. F. Stevens, London, 1897, and Dr. S. E. Davrson's The Lines of Demarcation of Pope Alexander VI. and the Treaty of Tordesillas, A. D. 1493 and 1494. Trans, of the Royal Soc. of Canada, V, 1899-1900. The Copp-Clark Co., Toronto. In preparing my essay for republication I have in general made only such changes as seemed necessary. I am indebted to both Mr. Harrisse and Mr. Dawson for some suggestions and corrections.
8 Mr. Harrisse believes that Columbus sent on an account of his voyage earlier while in Portugal. Diplomatic History, 12. Gomara states that a messenger was immediately despatched to Rome with an account of the discoveries. Hist. General de las Indias, I, leaves 29 and 30. Antwerp Ed. of 1554.
13
194 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
April, Columbus was in Barcelona in the presence of the Catholic sovereigns. On the 3d of May, Pope Alexander VI., in response to their request, issued his first Bull grant- ing the sovereigns exclusive rights over the newly discov- ered lands. Evidently no time was lost. Why this appeal to the Pope, and why such haste, are questions which at once suggest themselves.
The pretensions of the later Popes of the Middle Ages to the sovereignty of the world are well known to historical students. It became not uncommon for the Popes to grant all territory wrested from the infidels to the victorious Chris- tian prince. Among the many examples of the exercise of this divine sovereign right, the papal grants to Portugal in the latter half of the fifteenth century form important links in the chain of events under discussion. Nicolas V.,^ June 18, 1452, authorized Alphonso V. of Portugal to attack and subdue any or all Saracen, pagan, and other infidel commu- nities whatsoever, to reduce their inhabitants to perpetual servitude, and to take possession of all their property. Any one who attempted to infringe or defeat this grant would
1 Following Barros, almost all writers mention a Bull of Martin V., e. g., Munoz, Hist, del Nuevo Mundo, 159. Barros says that Prince Henry asked Martin V. for a grant of all the land he should discover from Cape Bojador to the Indies : " que . . . Ihe aprouvesse conceder perpetua doa9ao a Coroa destes Reynos de toda a terre que se descubrisse per este nosso Mar Oceano do Cabo Bojador te as Indias inclusive" Da Asia de Joao de Barros, Dec, I, Lib. I, cap. ii. No such Bull of Martin V. has come down to recent times, and it is alto- gether probable that Barros wrote Martin V. when he should have written Nicolas V, If such a Bull had been promulgated by Martin V. it would have been mcluded in the great Bull of Leo X. of Nov. 3, 1514, see p. 203. Prince Henry requested Pope Eugene IV. to grant indulgences in favor of those who perished in his expeditions. Azurara, Cronica de Guin^, cap. xv. The Bull of Jan. 5, 1443, was granted in response to this request and granted both the indul- gences and the possession of territories wrested from the infidels. Alguns Docu- mentos do Archivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo Acerca das Nauegagoes e conquistas Portugezas, Lisbon, 1892, 7. As a precedent for the Demarcation Bulls the grant of the Canaries to Louis of Spain by Clement VI., Nov. 15, 1344, is important. The Bull is translated by D'Avezac in his lies de I'Afrique, Paris, 1848, part 3, 152-53. The original text and accompanying documents may be read in Theiner's ed. of the Annals of Baronius and Raynaldus, XXV, 341-46. This grant was more like a feudal investiture than the later grants to Portugal.
THE DEMARCATION LINE 195
incur the wrath of Almighty God and of the blessed Peter and Paul Apostles. ^ After a short interval, Jan. 8, 1454, Nicolas issued a Bull in which, after reviewing with praise the zeal of Prince Henry in making discoveries and his desire to find a route to southern and eastern shores even to the Indians, he granted to King Alfonso all that had been or should be discovered south of Cape Bojador and Cape Non toward Guinea and "ultra versus illam meridionalem pla- gam " as a perpetual possession. Intruders would be visited with excommunication.2
These rights were confirmed by Sixtus IV., in a Bull issued June 21, 1481, which granted to the Portuguese Order of Jesus Christ spiritual jurisdiction in all lands acquired from Cape Bojador "ad Indos." This Bull also contained and sanctioned the treaty of 1480 between Spain and Portugal, by which the exclusive right of navigating and of making discoveries along the coast of Africa, with the pos- session of all the known islands of the Atlantic except the Canaries, was solemnly conceded to Portugal.^
Enough has been cited to show that the appeal to the Pope was natural. I venture to conjecture that in these papal
1 " Hlorumque personas in perpetuam servitutem redigendi . . . concedimus facultatem." It will be a surprise to many to learn that the revival of human slavery thus received full papal sanction. The first African slaves were brought to Portugal in 1442. The system was in its infancy. What might not the world have been saved if the Vicar of God had forbidden instead of authorizing it ! The Church is credited with promoting the abolition of slavery in the Middle Ages. It is difficult to see how she can be cleared of having powerfully contrib- uted to renew it. This Bull of Nicolas V. was repeated and sanctioned by the Bull of Leo X., Nov. 3, 1514, which is in the Bullarum Collectio quibus Sere- nissimis Lusitaniae, Algarbiorumque Regibus Terrarum Omnium . . . jus Patrona- tus a summis Pontificibus liberaliter conceditur. . . . Omnes ex legali Archivo de- ductae, et in hoc volumen redactae . . . jussu serenissimi Petri Secundi Lusitaniae Regis. Ulyssipone, Anno 1707. This Bull of Leo X. is not in Mainard's Bul- larium, Rome, 1741.
2 See pp. 178-9 for a translation of part of the passage and for a reference to a translation of the Bull. Nicolas, the next day, issued a Bull in reference to the extension of Christianity in these regions. Raynaldus, Annales XVIII, 423,
3 Bullarum Collectio, 45 ; Alguns Docs., 47-55, The treaty of 1480 which Har- risse, 3, quotes from a MS. is printed in Alguns Docs., 42-43. Innocent VIII. added his confirmation, Sept. 12, 1484. Raynaldus, Annales XIX, 349.
196 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
grants to Portugal we may find a clew to the real cause why Columbus failed to enlist the support of the Portuguese King John II., for his project to reach the Indies by sailing west- ward. Our scanty sources give us two or three different reasons, such as that Columbus made excessive demands upon the king, and that the king hesitated by reason of the great effort and heavy expense already incurred in the con- quest of Guinea. 1
The Portuguese had come to consider it only a question of time when they should reach the Indies by sailing around Africa, and the exclusive use of that route was secured to them by papal Bulls and a treaty with their only rivals. Is it not likely then, that the real reason why they had no encouragement for Columbus was that they thought it not worth while ? They had a sure thing of the African route and only time was needed to develop it. Why then waste time and money on a mere possibility ? ^ Spain, on the other hand, had no chance at all at the Indies, unless they could be reached, as Columbus proposed, by sailing westward.
Returning now to our second query, why so prompt an appeal to the Pope? Columbus recorded in his journal, March 9, 1493, that in their interview. King John of Portu- gal had affirmed that by the treaty of 1480 this new conquest would belong to him. Columbus promptly replied that he had not been in the direction of Guinea. We can feel almost certain that this remark of King John's was reported by Columbus to Ferdinand and Isabella, ^ and that they felt
1 Historie del Signor Don Fernando Colon, ch. xi.
2 Two criticisms were passed on this conjecture when first offered. One, that the Portuguese could not then hav^e been confident of reaching India. On this point it is decisive to refer to the Fra Mauro Map of 1459 (see Ruge, Gesch. des Zeitalters der Entdeckungen, 80, and Winsor, Nar. and Crit. Hist., 2, 41), to the citation from Barros, and to the Bull of Jan. 8, 1454 pp. 194-5 supra, and to Munoz, Hist, del Nuevo Mundo, Lib. II, cap. xix. The second criticism was : What then of the story that King John of Portugal secretly tried to avail him- self of Columbus' ideas by sending a caravel westward 1 (Historie, cap. xi.) This presents a difficulty, but I cannot see that it shuts out the conjecture. Ruge, 232, declares this statement of the Historie destitute of historical credibility.
2 In the Historie Columbus is credited with having suggested the appeal to the
THE DEMARCATION LINE 197
prompt action to be necessary. Apparently King John took some definite action to formulate and maintain his claim, for Raynaldus states that a contention arose between the sove- reigns of Castile and Portugal over the new realm. ^
Further, the instructions given to the Spanish ambassador to the Pope, as Herrera reports them, are quite explicit in stating that the discoveries had been made without the slight- est encroachment on the possessions of Portugal.^ It was also stated that some learned men were of opinion that by reason of the admiral having taken possession of the new countries, there was no need of the Pope's confirmation or donation, yet as obedient children to the Holy See and pious princes their Catholic Majesties desired his Holiness to grant them the lands already discovered or that should be discov- ered. The Bull was issued with the consent of the whole Sacred College.^ *
Traces of this contention between Portugal and the Span- ish sovereigns are to be found in the Bull of May 3, 1493, of which the following are the essential points.
After briefly reciting the zeal of the Catholic sovereigns
Pope : " Per piu chiaro e giusto titolo delle quali di subito i re catolici per consig- lio deir ammiraglio procacciarono di haver dal sommo pontefice 1' approbatione e donatione della conquista di tutte le dette Indie." Historic, etc., ch. xlii.
1 The statement introduces the text of the Bull of May 3, 1493, and may have been based on documents in the Papal Archives : " Exorta vero raox post Chris- tophori Columbi reditum lis est inter Castellanura et Lusitanum Reges de Oceani novique orbis imperio ; nam Lasitanus inventas k Columbo insulas ad se spectare contendit, negabat vero Castellanus, etc." Raynaldus, Annates Eccles., Tom. XIX, 420.
2 Herrera, Historia General, Decade I, Lib. II, ch. iv. Harrisse questions this. Dip. Hist, 37.
8 Herrera, Ibid.
* Harrisse found in the Archives of the Frari at Venice the letter which Alex- ander VI. sent with the Bulls on the 17th of May, 1493, to Francis de Spratz, the nuncio at the court of Spain. It refers to several documents, but all it says of the Demarcation Bull is the following : " Praeterea aliud breve super concessione dominii et bonarum illarum nuper ab hominibus Regiis inventarum per nos facta prefatis Regibus." Bibliotheca Vetusta Americana, Additions, 2,
Raynaldus, XIX, 421, § 19, prints the letter of the Pope to Ferdinand and Isa- bella accompanying the Bulls. It is dated May 3, and calls attention to the ex- isting rights of Portugal. These of course were specified in the Bull of May 4.
198 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
in extending the gospel, which was signally shown by their promotion of the voyage of Columbus/ and enjoining upon them perseverance in the work, the Pope grants them full possession of all lands discovered and to be discovered, which are not under the dominion of Christian princes. " Further, because some of the kings of Portugal have acquired rights in parts of Africa through the Apostolic See, we grant you and your successors exactly the same rights just as fully as if here expressed in detail." ^ It is clear from this passage that King John's attitude, and back of that, the earlier papal Bulls to Portugal, were the occasion of this appeal to the Pope.
In this first Bull there is no reference to any dividing line. The Spaniards can discover and hold any lands hitherto un- known and not in the possession of a Christian prince.
But no sooner was this Bull promulgated than it was superseded by another in which the unlimited grants and the whole passage of some twenty lines, referring to the pre- vious grants to Portugal and bestowing the same rights on Spain in the newly discovered lands, were omitted. Hum- boldt remarked that only the Papal Archives could reveal the secret of that change in twenty-four hours. ^ There is little reason now to expect light from that quarter.^
It is possible that when the Bull of May 3 appeared the ambassador or some representative of King John protested, and declared that the rights of the king of Portugal were
1 " Dilectum filium Christophorum Columbura, virum utique dignum et pluri- mum commendandum, ac tanto negotio aptum."
2 A condensed paraphrase. The original is extended and emphatic.
The Bull is printed in Navarrete, Coleccion de los Viajes y descubrimientos, II, 23-27. The passage cited occurs on p, 26.
3 Kritische Untersuchungen, (Ideler's translation of the Examen Critique) II, 37. * Harrisse, Bibliotheca Americana Vetusta, 2, says : " Whilst in Rome we vainly
endeavored to discover diplomatic documents relating to the difficulties which arose between Spain and Portugal at the time of the discovery of America. Father Augustin Theiner wrote afterwards to us : * Je n'ai pas manque de parcourir dans les archives secretes du Vatican les registres originaux d' Alexander VI, pour voir s'il y avait d'autres pieces relatives qui auraient pu echapper a I'attention de Eaynaldi mais je n'ai rien trouve."
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based on decrees and that they must be respected, and not obscured or diminished.^ It seems more likely, however, that the protest issued from the representatives of Ferdinand and Isabella who pressed for a delimitation of the Spanish possessions from the Portuguese to avoid future contests. ^
By the new Bull of May 4,^ a line was to be drawn from the North to the South Pole, one hundred leagues west and south of any one of the islands known as the Azores and Cape Verd Islands.* All lands discovered and to be discovered to
1 Gomara asserts that King John had asked for a Bull : " Hizo gran sentimi- ento el liey don Juan segundo de tal nombre en Portugal quaudo leyo la bula y donacion del Papa, aunq sus embaxadores lo avian suplicado assi a su Santidad." Gomara, I, leaf 142, obverse. Further, according to Gomara, Ferdinand and Isa- bella despatched a courier to Rome, but the negotiations were carried on by their ambassadors at Rome, " y sus embaxadores que pocas meses antes avian ydo a dar el para bien, y obediencia al Papa Alexandre Sexto segun usan9a de todos los Principes Christianos, le hablaron y dieron las Cartas del rey y reyna con la re- lacion de Colon," Gomara, I, leaves 29 and 30. Now John II. of Portugal, in 1492, had sent the Commendador Mor d' Aviz D. Pedro da Silva as an ambassador on the death of Innocent VIII, and to present his obedience to Alexander VI. Santarem, Rdagoes Diplomaticas, III, 162. If the Spanish special ambassadors remained until May, 1493, it is not unlikely that the Portuguese representative did likewise.
It will be remembered that as the Portuguese rights extended east "ad In- dos," and embraced lands not yet found, and as the new lands were supposed to be the Indies, the grant of May 3 was in downright conflict with the earlier ones to Portugal,
2 This is the view of Harrisse and Dawson. See Diplomatic History, 27-39, and Dawson's Essay, 484 ff. Raynaldus says of the BuU of May 4 : " Tertio dip- lomate Alexander ad contraversias, quas inter Castellanos ac Lusitanos oboriri possent dum classibus Oceanum sulcabant, dirimendas Indias orientales occiden- talesque discrevit." Tomus, xrx, 421. The possibility of disputes might have suggested itself to the Pope.
The second Bull of May 3 I have not discussed. It was a brief grant to Spain of the same rights for her discoveries which had been conferred on Portugal for hers. The rights of Portugal are there summarized. The Latin text and Eng- lish translation of this Bull are printed by Dawson. Harrisse also gives a trans- lation of it on pp. 20-24 of his Diplomatic History.
8 Printed in full in Fiske's Discovery of America, U, 580-593, with Richard Eden's translation. It is also in Navarrete, Calvo's Recueil, Poore's Constitutions and Charters, and Dawson. Besides Eden's translation there is one in the Eng- lish edition of Sportono's Codice diplomatico Colombo- Americano and in Dawson. Eden's translation is reproduced in Hart's American History told hy Contempora- ries, I, 40-43.
* " Quae linea distet a qualibet insularum, quae vulgariter nuncupantur de los
200 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
the west and south of this line whether toward India or any other direction, not in the possession of any Christian prince at Christmas, 1492, should belong exclusively to Spain. No one else could frequent them either for trade or any other reason without special permission of the Spanish sovereigns.^ This Bull apparently met the instructions of the Spanish and Portuguese envoys, but it did not satisfy the home governments.
To reach the Indies was the prime object of both Spain and Portugal. The Bull of Sixtus IV. to Portugal had men- tioned the Indies by name, and unless Spain received a grant to all parts of the Indies reached by sailing west, not yet occupied by a Christian prince, her efforts might prove in vain. Probably the Pope was asked to remedy this defect, for on September 25, 1493, he issued a new Bull which made the full rights before granted apply in detail to all lands already found or that shall be found sailing west or south, which are in the western, or southern, or eastern regions, or India. 2 The Spaniards now had free scope for their west- ern expeditions. There is no hint as yet of a demarcation line on the other side of the globe. That King John was dissatisfied with the Bulls of May 3 and 4 appears from the letter of Ferdinand and Isabella to Columbus of September 5, 1493.^ He protested at Rome that their Catholic Maj-
Azores y Cabo Verde, centum leucis versus Occidentem et Meridiem." The Azores and the Cape Verd Islands were supposed to be in the same longitude. What is meant by " versus Occidentem et Meridiem " has puzzled everybody. How a meridian line could be southwest from any given point has baffled expla- nation. May it not have been simply a confusion of thought resulting from the fact that the lands discovered by Columbus lay to the south of west from Europe or the Azores, and that the Pope evidently thought of the discoveries as to be prosecuted west and south ? With this thought in mind he had used the terms " versus Occidentem et Meridiem " appropriately a few lines before. The ten- dency of such documents to formal repetition, combined with inadvertence and this idea of the southwesterly direction of the new lands, may account for a repetition that makes nonsense.
1 This lays the corner stone of the old colonial system.
2 A Spanish translation will be found in Navarrete, II, 404-406, Dawson gives Solorzano's Latin translation as it is supposed to be and an English version.
3 Navarrete, 11, 108.
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esties broke in upon his limits, but the Pope replied that he had drawn a boundary line.^ After the Bull of September 25 he was even more displeased. Rumors came to Spain that he had despatched an expedition to the New World. ^ Envoys were sent back and forth and it was learned that he objected to the Spaniards sailing south of the Canaries and proposed an east and west demarcation line on that parallel.^
King John would not submit the matter to arbitration, and brought heavy pressure to bear upon the Pope to make a change, but in vain; apparently the trouble would have ended in war, just what the establishment of the boundary was designed to avoid, had not the flourishing condition of Spain restrained him. He particularly protested against being confined to so narrow a space in the great ocean as would be bounded by a line only 100 leagues west of his own islands.*
This was a real grievance. Experience had shown the Portuguese pilots that a direct southerly course down the African coast was subject to delays by calms, adverse cur- rents, and unfavorable winds. Vasco de Gama recommended that Cabral on his voyage to India in 1500 should sail south- west until he reached the latitude of the Cape of Good Hope, when he should sail due east, availing himself of the trade winds. This course would be safer and quicker.^ The
1 Herrera, Dec. I, Lib. II.
2 Navarrete, II, 109.
8 Herrera, Dec. I, Lib. IL ch. viii.
* MuSoz, Historia del Nuevo Mundo, Lib. IV, cap. xxviii.
^ These instructions entitled " Esta he a maneira que parece k Vasco de Gama que deve teer Pedro Alvarez em sua yda, prazendo Nosso Senhor,"were first pub- lished by Vamhagen from the Portuguese Archives. The following essential passage is given on p. 422 of the first volume of his Historia Geral do Brazil : " E se ouverem de gynar, seja sobre a banda do sudueste, e tanto que neles deer o vento escasso devem hyr na volta do mar ate meterem o Cabo de Booa Espe- ran9a em leste franco, e dy em diante navegarem segundo Ihe servyr o tempo, e mais ganharem, porque corao forem nadyta parajem nam Ihe myngoara tempo, com ajuda de nosso senhor, com que cobrem o dito Cabo," quoted from D'Avezac, Considerations G€ographiques sur I'Histoire du Br€sil, Note D, Bulletin de la Soc. de Geog., Aoixt et Septembre, 1857, 246. As no such document can now be
202 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
Spanish sovereigns felt it safe to concede something, for Columbus had estimated the distance from the Canaries to the new lands as something over 900 leagues. Three pleni- potentiaries from each kingdom met at Tordesillas, and June 7, 1494, signed the treaty of that name. The new divid- ing line was drawn 370 leagues ^ west of the Cape Verd Islands, a point according to their information almost ex- actly halfway between the Cape Verd Islands and the new discoveries.
Within ten months each party must despatch one or two caravels which should meet at the Grand Canary ; along with them should be sent pilots, astrologers, and mariners ; thence all should proceed to the Cape Verd Islands and measure off by leagues or degrees 370 leagues. If the line ran through
found in the Portuguese Archives, Harrisse boldly declares these instructions spurious. Discovery of North America, 683, n. In Alguns Documentos, however, there are fragments of a series of very detailed instructions to Cabral in regard to the management of the business of the expedition when he should reach India. See pp. 97 fE. If portions of this body of instructions have become lost the absence of the original manuscript of the instructions printed by Varnhagen from the Archives is not conclusive against their authenticity. They may well have formed the first part of the extant instructions the beginning of which is missing.
The discovery of America was destined to follow as a consequence of the Portuguese voyages, even if Columbus had never lived. The authenticity of these instructions might be given up without weakening that conclusion. Whether Cabral discovered Brazil in consequence of these instructions or by accident does not matter. A glance at a map of ocean currents will show that either such instructions or such an accident would be inevitable if voyaging down the coast of Africa were kept up. The true glory of Columbus lies in his persist- ence and resolution in acting upon his intellectual convictions. It is true he was misled by miscalculations of the size of the earth. Every one else, however, had the same supposed facts, but Columbus was ready to act on them, and had they been true, how much simpler to sail due west 3,000 miles than around Africa 12,000 to 15,000 miles 1
1 John II. had asked for 200 leagues more. " Quexose de los Reyes Catolicas que le atajavan el curso de sus descubrimientos, y riquezas. Reclamo de la bula, pidiendo las otras trezientas leguas mas al poniente." Gomara, I, leaf 1 42, obv. Gomara adds that Ferdinand and Isabella out of generosity, and because King John was a relative, with the approval of the Pope, gave him two hundred and seventy more leagues at Tordesillas. Whether " con acuerdo del Papa " refers to an oflBcial approval of Alexander's that I have not found, or merely to a private consent, or to the Bull of Julius II., it is difficult to say.
THE DEMARCATION LINE 203
any island, a tower was to be erected to mark it.^ This treaty was to be perpetual and the sanction of the Pope was to be asked for it.^ But Alexander VI. made no further effort to satisfy both sides. The treaty was also despatched to Columbus at the earliest opportunity to secure his assent as it affected his privileges, but he never assented to it and always relied upon the original line in preferring his claims.^ Nor did the new arrangement receive papal sanction until the Bull of Julius II., obtained at the instance of King Em- manuel of Portugal, was granted January 24, 1506.* The last Bull on these matters is that of Leo X. on November 3, 1514. During the year he had received a glowing account of Portugal's eastern discoveries and a splendid embassy from the King Emmanuel with presents of eastern products.^ In response he issued a Bull filling forty-five printed pages which included and confirmed all the previous Bulls giving Portugal rights in the east. More than that it grants to Portugal all past and future conquests and discoveries, not only from Cape Bojador to the Indians but everywhere
1 The first proposition to establish " a meridian in a permanent manner by marks graven on rocks, or by the erection of towers." Humboldt, Cosmos, II, 277, n.
2 The treaty is printed in Navarrete, 11, 130-143, in Calvo, Recueil Complet de Trait^s de VAm&ique Latine, VI, 19-36, and in Alguns Documentos, 80-90. In Cairo's text the spelling is modernized. The treaty went into full operation June 20, 1494. Up to June 20, any lands found between 250 and 370 leagues west of the Cape Yerd Islands were to belong to Spain.
3 See the Discovery of North America, 56, and Diplomatic History of America, 80-84. Harrisse quotes from Columbus' deed of entail (Mayorazgo) of 1498. Navarrete, II, 226, and from his will, 1505, Ibid., II, 313. For translations, see Ford's Writings of Columbus, 83 and 244. In these documents the treaty of Tor- desillas is entirely ignored. The change in the line deprived Columbus of his royalty of one-tenth of the products of Brazil. See the Contract in Navarrete, 11,7.
* Printed in Alguns Documentos, 142-43.
s See Roscoe's Leo X., 1, 428-32, and for the original correspondence, pp. 521- 26. The reference is to Bohn's large edition, 1846. The Bulls of Julius II. and Leo X. were secured by Portugal and given in return for homage to the Pope. Mr. Fiske quotes from a small volume entitled Obedientia potentissimi Lusitaniae regis — ad Julium Pont. Max., Rome, 1505. The newly foimd lands were laid at the Pope's feet, " Accipe tandem orbem ipsum terrarum. Deus enim noster es." Discovery of America, I, 458.
204 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
else even in parts then unknown.^ Curiously enough no reference is made to Alexander's Demarcation Bulls.
The second part of my subject, the determination of the line, was beset with difficulties. The primary difficulty lay in the fact, that if the line ever should be taken to determine disputed boundaries it would have to be located with exact- ness, and to measure longitude with accuracy was entirely beyond the science of the time.^
There were no chronometers; the modern chronometer dates from 1748. Their astronomical tables were very defec- tive, and the very first step, agreement as to length of a degree on a great circle, could not be reached, as the first accurate measurement was not made until 1669. Probably these difficulties did not exist for Pope Alexander.
Humboldt suggested that the Demarcation Line was placed 100 leagues west of the Azores in order that it might coin- cide with the meridian of magnetic no-variation, whose existence Columbus had discovered on his first voyage. Columbus noted other physical changes 100 leagues west of the Azores. On this hypothesis, it would always have been possible for the mariner to know when he crossed the De- marcation Line. Here would have been a genuine " scientific frontier. "3 But the line was moved and thus a dispute
1 Bullarum Collectio, 50, " tain a Capitibus de Bojador et de Naon, usque ad Indos, quam etiam ubicumque, et in quibuscumque partibus, etiam nostris tem- poribus forsan ignotis." This Bull really supersedes the Demarcation Bull and practically simply establishes the validity of the rights of discovery and conquest. It is not referred to by any Spanish authorities so far as I have noted.
2 Peschel's Die Theilung der Erde Unter Papst Alexander VI. und Julius II., Leipzig, 1871, discusses, in an interesting manner, the scientific difficulties and the progress of geodesy.
* Humboldt, Untersuchungen, II, 37. This hypothesis is accepted by Dawson as amounting to a " certainty," p. 493. Harrisse, on the other hand, declares it " scarcely admissible.'' Diplomatic History, 38. The evidence is against Hum- boldt and Dawson. Columbus first records the variation of the needle in his journal under date of September 17, when, according to the sum of the distances traversed each day, he had gone at least 350 leagues west of Gomera in the Canaries. As the middle of the Azores lies about five degrees west of Gomera, the spot where the variation of the compass was first noticed would be from 250 to 270 leagues west of the Azores, according to the varying estimates of the
THE DEMARCATION LINE 205
opened wliich Contarini, in 1525, believed would never be settled. 1
Ferdinand and Isabella took up the matter promptly. The eminent cosmographer Jayme Ferrer was asked in August, 1493, to bring his charts and instruments to Barcelona. In February, 1495, he sent on a rude method of determination.^ In April of that year the convention of pilots, astrologers, and mariners provided for in the treaty of Tordesillas was appointed for July. After agreeing upon a method of cal- culation each party was to proceed to the determination of the line. If either party found land where the line ought to fall, word was to be despatched to the other, who within ten months after receiving word must send to mark it.^ All maps made thereafter must contain the line.*
The first appearance of the Demarcation Line on a map
length of a degree made by the geographers of the day. The estimates ranged ronghly from 16 to 20 leagues to the degree. It was only in the account of his third voyage, 1498, that Columbus says that in his voyage to the Indies he noticed changes in the sea and sky and the variation of the needle one hundred leagues west of the Azores (Navarrete, 1, 254). The discrepancy is not strange, perhaps, in view of the lack of means for measuring longitude, but the location of these phenomena — exactly 100 leagues west of the Azores — in 1498 looks a little like an afterthought. Possibly Columbus stretched a point to bring forward evidence in favor of the original line. Again, if the distance of 100 leagues from the Azores was chosen for scientific reasons, why do we hear of no objection to the removal of the line to 370 leagues west of the Cape de Verde Islands, which would sacrifice these scientific advantages ? The distance 100 leagues may have occurred to the Pope as a reasonable margin of protection to Portugal, or it may have been adopted from the suggestion of Ferdinand and Isabella. Herrera tells ns that the ambassador sent to the Pope in the first instance received the follow- ing instructions : " The ambassador was directed to let him know, that the said discovery had been made, without encroaching upon the crown of Portugal, the admiral having been positively commanded by their Highnesses not to come within 100 leagues of the mine, nor of Guinea, or any other part belonging to the Portugueses, which he had done accordingly." Dec. I, Lib. II, ch. iv,, John Stevens' version.
1 Relazione dV Gasparo Contarini, Alberi, 1 ser. II, 48.
2 Navarrete, II, 98. Ferrer decided that the 370 leagues were equivalent to 23 degrees on the equator.
^ Nothing seems to have come of this proposed convention. Herrera says of the agreement of April, " It does not appear to have been performed." Yet see Harrisse's notes 90 and 92, Diplomatic History.
4 Navarrete, II, 170-173.
206 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
that is preserved is on the so-called Cantino Map, of 1502, where it cuts off the portion of the newly discovered Brazil, east of the mouth of the Amazon, as belonging to Portugal.^
The Demarcation Line next plays a part of controlling importance in the history of the first voyage around the world. The most telling argument that Magellan advanced in favor of his expedition, and as it seems to me, beyond doubt the decisive one with Charles V., was that the Moluc- cas or the Spice Islands, the pearl of the precious Indies, lay within the Spanish half of the world. This appears clearly in the account of Maximilianus Transylvanus, a source of the highest value on this point, as he was son-in-law to a brother of Christopher Haro.^ He tells us that Magellan and Christopher Haro an India merchant having been un- justly treated by the king of Portugal, came to Spain ; " and they both showed Csesar ^ that it was not yet quite sure whether Malacca was within the confines of the Spaniards or the Portuguese, because, as yet, nothing of the longitude had been clearly proved, yet it was quite plain that the Great Gulf and the people of Sinae lay within the Spanish bound- ary. This, too, was held to be most certain, that the islands which they call the Moluccas, in which all spices are pro- duced, and are thence exported to Malacca, lay within the Spanish western division, and that it was possible to sail there ; and that spices could be brought thence to Spain more easily, and at less expense and cheaper, as they came direct from their native place."* According to Correa, Magellan told the officials of the House of Commerce in Seville, that
1 Harrisse calculated the longitude of the line on this map where it is labelled, " Este he omarco dantre castella y Portuguall," as 62° 30' west of Paris. Winsor, Narrative, and Critical History, II, 108. Mr. Winsor gives a sketch of the map.
2 Through his relationship to Haro and the fact that he heard the reports of the survivors of Magellan's expedition he had every facility for getting at the facts. See Guillemard's Magellan, 140.
8 Charles V.
4 Letter of Max. Transylvanus to the Archbishop of Salzburg, quoted from the version given by Lord Stanley in his First Voyage Round the World, 181. This statement quite likely came from Haro himself. A Spanish version of Max. Transylvanus' letter is in Navarrete, IV, 249-284.
THE DEMARCATION LINE 207
Malacca and Maluco, the " islands in which cloves grow, be- longed to the Emperor on account of the Demarcation Line," and that he could prove it. They replied that they knew he was speaking the truth, but it could not be helped because the Emperor " could not navigate through the sea within the demarcation of the king of Portugal. Magellan said to them : ' If you would give me ships and men I would show you navigation to those parts, without touching any sea or land of the king of Portugal.'" ^
As has been already remarked, to get at the land of spices was the prime object of all the age of discovery. As the papal grants to Portugal of the exclusive use of the eastern route to the Indies made it an object for Ferdinand and Isabella to promote the projects of Columbus to reach the land of spices and thus led to the discovery of America, so the establishment of the Demarcation Line, coupled with the same unfailing attraction exerted by the land of spices, after the new world was found not to be the Indies, led Charles V. to welcome Magellan's plan to find an all Spanish route to these precious islands and to prove that they belonged to Spain, and thus opened the way for another of the greatest exploits in the history of the race.^ The value of the spice trade and the consequent strength of this inducement may
1 Qaoted from the translation of the passages of the Lindas da India, II, ch. xiv (Hakluyt Soc. ed.), given by Lord Stanley, First Voyage, 244-46. Com- pare also the " Contract and Agreement made by the King of Castile with Fernan Magellan," which is given in abridgment in Lord Stanley's First Voyage, 29. " Since you Fernando de Magallanes . . . wish to render us a great service in the limits which belong to us in the ocean within the bounds of our demarcation. . . . Firstly, that you are to go with good luck to discover tiie part of the ocean within our limits and demarcation. . . . Also, you may discover in any of those parts what has not yet been discovered, so, that you do not discovei nor do any- thing in the demarcation and limits of the most serene King of Portugal, my very dear and well beloved Uncle and brother, nor to his prejudice ; but only within the limits of our demarcation." The original document is in Navarrete, IV, 116- 121.
2 The only practicable way to test the Spanish claim to the Moluccas was to reach them from the west, for " they considered it a very doubtful and dangerous enterprise to go through the limits of the Portuguese, and go to the east." Max. Transylvanus, in Lord Stanley's First Voyage, 188.
208 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
be gathered from these facts. Navarrete prints a document of the year 1536 which estimated that an annual income of 600,000 ducats could be derived from the Moluccas if a regular factory were established there for the development of the spice trade. ^ The value of the gold and silver that Spain derived yearly from America is variously estimated, but the contemporary estimates fall short of this estimated value of the spice trade.^ The "Victoria," the surviving ship of Magellan's expedition, reached Seville September 8, 1522, having justified all the heroic leader's assertions to the satisfaction of the Spanish authorities.^
The question of the proprietorship of the Moluccas now became a pressing one, for Portugal had no intention of allowing Spain to steal in at the back door of her treasure house. February 4, 1523, Charles V. sent two ambassadors to the king of Portugal to propose an expedition to deter- mine the line of Demarcation and in the mean while the ob-
* Navarrete, V, 165.
2 Gomara, Historia General de las Indias, Antwerp ed., 1554, 1, leaf 300, states that in the years, 1492-1552, the Spaniards had got over $60,000,000 of gold and silver from America. Contarini, in 1525, estimated the annual income of Spain from the mines of gold and silver at 500,000 ducats. He says of the king : " Ha poi il re dell' oro, che si cava dall' Indie, venti ^er cento, che puo montare circa a cento mila ducati all' anno." Relazioni degli Amhasciatori Veneti, Alberi, 1st ser.,
II, 42. Contarini estimated Charles' revenue from his low country provinces at 140,000 ducats a year. Ibid., 25. The value of a ducat was about .$2.34. Hum- boldt estimated the average annual supply of the precious metals from America was, 1492-1500, $250,000; 1500-1545, $3,000,000. Essai sur la Nouvelle Espagne,
III, 428, second edition, from McCulloch's Commercial Dictionary, art. " Precious Metals," ed. of 1869. According to Soetbeer's researches, the annual production from 1493 to 1520 was silver, $2,115,000; gold, $4,045,500. From 1521 to 1544, silver, $4,059,000 ; gold, $4,994,000. Nasse, in Schoenberg, Handbuck der Polit- Oekonomie, I, 361 (1885).
3 The cargo consisted of 533 quintals of cloves which cost 213 ducats. Accord- ing to Crawford the quintal was worth at that time in London 336 ducats, making the value of the cargo over 100,000 ducats. The cost of the expedition was only 22,000 ducats. Thus Peschel, Zeitalter der Entdeckungen, 644, n. 4. Guillemard, Life of Magellan, 310, puts the value of the cargo at about one quarter of Peschel's estimate. In either case the value of the spice trade is vividly illustrated. Appar- ently Ouillemard takes too low a value for the maravedi. In the sale of the Moluccas it was stipulated that the ducats be equivalent to 375 maravedis. Navarrete, IV, 393.
THE DEMARCATION LINE 209
servance of a closed season at the Moluccas.^ They asserted the Spanish ownership of the Moluccas. ^ The king of Portu- gal refused the terms proposed.
January 25, 1524, plenipotentiaries were appointed and by February 19, it was agreed that each side should appoint three astrologers and three pilots as scientific experts, and three lawyers as judges of documentary proofs, to meet in convention in March on the boundary of Spain and Portugal between Badajos and Yelves. Meanwhile neither side should send vessels to the Moluccas until the end of May.8
At this famous assemblage, known as the Badajos Junta, we find among the Spanish experts Ferdinand Columbus and Sebastian del Cano who had accompanied Magellan, and as advisers, Sebastian Cabot and Juan Vespucci, the nephew of Amerigo.
The first session opened April 11, on the bridge over the Caya, the boundary line, and thereafter the meetings were held alternately in Badajos and Yelves, dragging along till May 31. Even the street urchins followed with curious eyes the men who were dividing the world.*
1 Navarrete, IV, 302-305.
* On what has been called Schoner's Globe, of 1523, more exactly the Rosen- thal Gores, the line is drawn near the middle of the Peninsula of Malacca. Nordenskiold dates these gores from 1540. Winsor, Christopher Columbus, 589, the gores are reproduced on p. 590. The Demarcation Line is drawn as the Spaniards drew it, after the Badajos Junta, a valid argument that these gores were made later than May, 1524.
8 Navarrete, IV, 320-326.
* " Acontecio que passeando se un dia por la ribera de Guadiana Francisco de Melo, Diego Lopes de Sequiera, y otros de aquellos Portugueses, les pregunto un nino que guardava los trapos, que su madre lavava, si eran ellos los que repartian el mundo con el emperador, y como le respondieron que si, al90 la camisa, mostro las nalguillas, y dixo, pues echad la raya por aqui en medio. Cosa fue publica, y muy reida en Badajos, y en la congregacion de los mesmos repartidores." Gomara, I, leaf 141, reverse. Gomara's account of the conference was translated by Richard Eden, and may be read in Edward Arber's First Three English Boohs on America, 271-274. Hakluyt moralizes over the small boy's jest : " But what wise man seeth not that God by that childe laughed them to scorne, and made them rediculous and their partition in the eyes of the world." "Discourse concerning Western Planting,^' Doc. Hist. Maine, II, 141-42.
14
210 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
The lawyers could not agree as to priority of possession,^ while the scientific experts could not agree upon the longi- tude of the Moluccas within 46 degrees, one-eighth of the earth's surface. The Spanish judges reported the Moluccas inside their line by thirty degrees. ^ Apart from the insuper- able difficulties of calculating the longitude exactly, no agreement could be reached as to the starting point. The Spaniards asserted that the measurement ought to begin at San Antonio, the most westerly of the Cape Verd Islands, for, as the line had been moved at the king of Portugal's request and not so far west by thirty degrees as he had de- sired, it was only reasonable to take the westernmost island. The Portuguese quibbled; as the treaty said "islands "and that the expedition to fix the line should sail from the Cana- ries to the Cape Verd Islands, the only starting point that fulfilled the conditions was the meridian passing through the two islands Sal and Buena Vista, which were first encoun- tered in coming from the Canaries, in other words the most easterly of the group. In fact the Portuguese were in a strait ; if the line were pushed westward they might lose the Moluccas, if eastward they might lose Brazil. ^ Their policy was obstruction and delay, so they rejected all Spanish maps and proposed four astronomical methods of determining the longitude. This would take time.
May 31, Ferdinand Columbus read the decision of the Spanish judges, that the line be drawn three hundred and seventy leagues west of San Antonio and be represented on all maps made thereafter.* As the Spaniards calculated the longitude they thus secured not only the Moluccas but also
1 As the Pope's Bull provided for lands " to be fonnd " as well as for those already discovered ("inventas et inveniendas, detectas, et detegendas "), it sanc- tioned the establishment of a right of possession by discovery.
2 Navarrete, iv, 367.
^ Gomara says the Portuguese realized the mistake of the removal of the line westward by the treaty of Tordesillas. I, leaf 139, seq. Arber, I, 274.
* The line, according to this decision, is traced on the map of 1527 once at- tributed to Ferd. Columbus, and also on the map of 1529. See Kohl's Die Beiden Aeltesten General-Karten von Amerika. In Guillemard's Magellan there is a re- duction of the map of 1529.
THE DEMARCATION LINE 211
Sumatra, while Portugal was acknowledged to have the right- ful possession of Brazil for two hundred leagues weSt of the eastern extremity.^
In 1526 another vain attempt was made at a settlement, and in the mean time war between the representatives of the two nations had broken out in the Moluccas. By 1529 the two royal houses had become united by a double marriage and a second Spanish expedition had been unfortunate, so to settle the difficulties Charles V. by the treaty of Saragossa gave up his claim to the Moluccas to Portugal for 350,000 ducats, but retained the right of redemption. ^ On the other hand, if the line should ever be accurately fixed and the Moluccas be found within Portugal's division, Spain was to repay the 350,000 ducats. Meanwhile a new Demarcation Line, more accurately described, was to be drawn seventeen degrees or 297 leagues east of the Moluccas. The Pope was to be asked to sanction this treaty. ^
Spain relinquished the Moluccas but retained the Philip- pines which were then of no value, and they became the western extremity of their Empire, "las Islas del poniente."* As long as Spain held her continental colonies in the New World the Philippines were in Spanish eyes a part of America and in their commercial relations an appendage to New Spain or Mexico. In 1844 the Philippines were trans-
1 " Conforme a esta declaracion se marcan, y devan marcar, todos los globos y mapas, que hazen los buenos cosmografos, y maestros, y a de passar poco mas o menos la raya de la reparticion del nuevo mundo de Indias por las puntas de Humos, o de hue Abrigo, como ya en atra parte dixe, y assi parecera muy claro que las yslas de las especias, y aun la de Zamotra caen y pertenecen a Castilla. Pero cupo-le a el la tierra, que Uaman del Brasil, donde esta el Cabo de Sant Augustine. La qual es de punta de Humos a punta de buen Abrigo, y tiende costa ocho cientas legues norte sur, y dozientas por algunas partes leste oeste." Gomara, I, leaf 141, reverse.
2 Navarrete, IV, 393.
8 He seems to have done so : " Accordados os Reis desta maneira derao conta ao Papa Clemente VII. que aMm de o approuvar o louvou muito." CoUegao de Noticias para a Hist e Geog. das Nagoes Ultramarinas, Lisboa, 1825, III, Parte I. Noticia do Brazil, 7.
* To the Portuguese, on the other hand, the Azores have been the Western Islands, and the Philippines the Eastern Islands.
212 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
ferred to the eastern hemisphere by dropping from the Manilan calendar the 31st of December. ^ Before that change people in the Philippines had lived on Spanish time, fifteen hours slow, and the day was dropped or added in the voyage between Hongkong and Manila instead of at the meridian of 180°. Leaving now the antipodes we may return to the controversies on this side of the globe.
After the Badajos Junta the Spaniards drew the line about as it is marked on the maps of 1527 and 1529, or roughly speaking from near Para to a point about one hundred miles east of Montevideo, while the Portuguese drew it from the same point so that it ran parallel for a part of its course with the river Parana. Thus the region now occupied by the most of Uruguay and the Argentine States of Entre Rios and Cor- rientes was disputed territory.
Both estimates gave Portugal far more than she was entitled to according to a modern scientific determination which makes it fall about one hundred and fifty miles west of Rio de Janeiro.^
But as Spain's main interest was in Peru there was no immediate collision, and the union of the two countries from 1580 to 1640 still further postponed the conflict.
In 1680, Lobo, the Portuguese governor of Rio de Janeiro, founded the settlement of Sacramento on the north bank of the River Plate in the disputed territory ; the governor of La
1 Guillemard, Magellan, 227. Those who find it difficult to reconcile our acquisition of the Philippines with the preservation of the Monroe Doctrine can- not fail to be reassured by the reflection that when the doctrine was promulgated the islands were a part of Spanish America.
2 As calculated by D'Avezac, Bulletin de la Soci^€ de la G^og., Aofit et Sep- tembre, 1857, map at the end. In the number of Mars et Avril, 18.58, Varnhagen contests this calculation.
Where the line really should have been drawn is mainly a question of curi- osity, as it ceased to have political importance before its location was so deter- mined. The discussions of D'Avezac and Varnhagen I have summarized in an appendix to this essay as published in the Report of the American Historical As- sociation for 1891, 128-129. Elaborate calculations of the problem are made by Harrisse in his Diplomatic History, by Dawson, and by August Baum in his inaugural dissertation, Die Demarkationslinie Papst Alexander VI. und ihre Fdg- ungen, Cologne, 1890.
THE DEMARCATION LINE 213
Plata prepared to expel the intruders, but before hostilities had gone far the home governments entered into negotia- tions. It was agreed to appoint a commission of experts like that of 1524 to meet as then in Badajos and Yelves to determine the exact location of the line of Demarcation. In case no settlement could be reached they were to submit the matter to the Pope. At this convention Spain and Portugal took positions exactly the reverse of what they maintained in 1524. Now that the Moluccas were no longer at stake the Portuguese insisted on taking the westernmost of the Cape Verd Islands as the starting point, while the Spaniards thought it equitable to take the centre island of the group. They could not agree upon maps. According to the Portu- guese map, that of Teixeira, the new colony was on their side if the measurement began at San Antonio (the westernmost of the Cape Verd Islands), but not if they measured from the Spanish starting point. According to D'Avezac's conclu- sions the Spanish calculation at this time was very nearly correct, although a disinterested judge would pronounce in favor of beginning the measurement from the western ex- tremity of the Cape Verd group. The Spaniards proposed to submit the matter to the Pope and Cardinals in full con- sistory or to the Academies of London and Paris, but Portu- gal refused. 1
A scientific settlement in which both parties could acqui- esce seemed hopeless, so finally the two sovereigns in 1750 agreed in consigning to oblivion the rival claims growing out of the Demarcation Line and began all over again, declaring
1 Dissertacion Historica y Geographica Sobre el Meridianode Demarcacion entre los Dominios de Espana y Portugal, etc., por Don Jorge Juan, y Don Antonio de Ulloa, etc., Madrid, 1740,46-68 ; Calvo, Recueil Complet, I, 205-18 ; MS. memoir of Lastarria, extracted in L'Art de V&ifier les Dates, edited by the Marquis of Fortia, 3d series, XIII, 6-8; the part of this work relating to Brazil was published separately as Histoire de I'Empire du Br€sil depuis sa d€couverte jusqu'a nos jours, par David Bailie Warden. Calvo includes a text of Juan and Ulloa's Disser- tacion, which is rare, in his Recueil Complet des Trait€s, etc., de l'Am€rique Latine, I, 190-293. Calvo's text is inaccurate, and was evidently set up from a hasty MS. copy. In one place eight lines have fallen out, and he can only conjecture, " Es probable que aqui se omitio por inadvertencia una clausula 6 algunas palabras."
214 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
Alexander's Bull and the treaty of Tordesillas and others based thereon all null and void. Spain secured unques- tioned possession of the Philippine Islands, while the boun- daries of Brazil were drawn for the most part as they exist to-day, partly on the basis of possession and partly on that of the physical configuration of the country.^
The execution of this treaty in turn gave rise to conflicts, and in 1761 it was abrogated. So far as Spain and Portugal are concerned the story closes with the boundary treaty of 1779.2
A brief glance may now be given to the attitude of other nations toward the demarcation lines. In regard to England it is, I think, not without significance that Henry the Seventh's letters patent to John Cabot seem intentionally to avoid flagrant conflict with the rights of Spain, for Cabot was commissioned to explore " all parts, regions and bays of the Eastern, Western, and Northern Sea." Spain's field of discovery by the Demarcation Bull lay south and west of the line, but Cabot is not authorized to go in a southerly direction from England. We may say, then, that although Cabot's voyage did not respect the rights of Spain in full, the king evidently desired to respect them in spirit so far as he could without relinquishing the enterprise altogether.
Richard Hakluyt in his Discourse concerning Western Plant- ing which was written in 1584 at Ralegh's request to inter- est Elizabeth in colonial expansion, devotes a long chapter to " An Aunswer to the Bull of the Donation of all the West Indies graunted to the Kinges of Spaine by Pope Alexander the Vlth, whoe was himselfe a Spanairde borne. "^ In 1613 the Spanish Secretary of State protested against the English settlements in Virginia and the Bermudas on the
1 The text of the treaty of 1750 is in Martens, Supplement au Recueil des traiMs de paix, I, 378-422, and in the Statement by the United States of Brazil to the President of the United States of America. New York, III. It is summa- rized in Baum and in L'Art de V&ifer les Dates, XIV, 148-149.
2 Baum, 52.
3 Documentary History of Maine, II, 129-151. This essay of Hakluyt's is in- cluded in Goldsmid's edition of the Voyages.
THE DEMARCATION LINE 215
ground that they infringed upon the possessions of the king of Spain "whose title . . . was indisputable by the Con- quest of Castile, and by the Pope's Bull of Donation." ^ The question came up in the House of Commons in 1620 and 1621 when title by papal grant was derided. ^
In 1531 Francis I. prohibited the Norman vessels from voyages to Brazil or Guinea, where the king of Portugal claimed to be sovereign. ^ The municipal council of Rouen protested in vain. This royal decision was secured by the Portuguese ambassador by bribing Admiral Chabot. Again in 153T and 1538 the Portuguese secured new ordinances prohibiting voyages to Brazil and Malaguette under pain of confiscation and bodily punishment.* Baron Saint Blancard vigorously protested, maintaining the freedom of the seas, and that trade with the peoples of the New World could not be monopolized by one nation any more than trade with the peoples of the Old World. ^
The same contention is made even more clearly by the French author of one of the relations in Ramusio's Naviga- tioni : " The Portuguese have no more right to prevent the French resorting to these lands, where they have not them-
1 Calendar of State Papers^ Colonial Series, 1, 16. An elaborate answer seems to hare been prepared.
2 Debates of House of Commons, 1620 and 1621, 1, 250-51, cited from Bancroft's History of the United States, I, 10.
* Francis I. is said to have remarked, in reference to the Demarcation Line : " Je voudrais bien qn'on me montr^t I'article du testament d'Adara qui partage le Nouveau-Monde entre mes freres, I'Empereur Charles V. et le Roi de Portugal, en m'excluant de la succession." Bernal Diaz relates this anecdota
* Pigeonneau, Hist, du Commerce de la France, II, 150-54. In 1539, Chabot was disgraced and Francis I. withdrew his prohibitions, but he was never active on the side of the voyagers. See Pigeonneau, 134-70.
fi *' Dictus Rex Serenissimus [Portugaliae] nullum habet dominium nee juris- dictionem in dictis insulis ; imo gentes eas incolentes plurimos habent regulos quibus more tamen et ritu silvestri reguntur, et ita ponitur in facto. Etiam po- nitur in facto probabili quod dictus serenissimus Rex Portugalise nuUam majorem habeat potestatem in dictus insulis quam habet Rex Christianissimus, imo enim mare sit commune, et insulae praafatae omnibus apertae, permissum est nedum Gallis sed omnibus aliis nationibus eas frequentare et cum accolis commercium habere." Cited from D'Avezac, from Varnhagen, Historia geral do Brazil, 443, or French ed., I, 441.
216 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
selves planted the Christian faith, where they are neither obeyed nor loved, than we should have to prevent them from going to Scotland, Denmark, or Norway because we had been there before them. " ^ If this doctrine could have prevailed it would have changed the history of the New World. That it did not prevail was owing in a large part to the papal Bulls.
The Portuguese rights in the Indian Seas, then repre- sented by Spain, were contested by Grotius in 1609, in a tract entitled "Mare Ziherum seu de Jure quod Batavis Competit ad Indica Commercia^'^ which maintained the doc- trine of the freedom of the seas asserted by these French writers, 2
This sketch may be concluded with a brief glance at some of the more important results of Pope Alexander's attempt to divide the undiscovered heathen parts of the world be- tween Spain and Portugal.
The most striking result was entirely unexpected and con- trary to the design of the Bull. Designed, in the interest of Spain, to exclude Portugal from discovery and colonization in the west, it secured Portugal a title to Brazil which her only formidable rival could not impeach. Another result, also undesigned, but of great importance, was the promotion of geographical knowledge. The establishment of the De- marcation Line led to Magellan's voyage, and the efforts to de- termine it gave a powerful impulse to the progress of geodesy. ^
1 Pigeonnean, Hist., II, 153, from Ramusio, IV, 426. The author is supposed to have been Pierre Crignon.
2 As the reputation of Grotius grew, and his great work, De Jure Belli et Pacts (1625), established him as an authority, the "learned " Selden undertook to confute his doctrine in his Mare Clausum, which was designed to uphold Eng- land's sovereignty of the narrow seas. But time and progress were with Grotius, and the range of territorial waters has since narrowed with the growth of com- merce and the march of civilization.
8 Humboldt, Cosmos (Harper's ed.), II, 277, says : " The papal lines of de- marcation . . . exercised great influence on the endeavors to improve nautical astronomy, and especially on the methods attempted for the determination of the longitude." For various efforts of scientific men to get the longitude of places to determine the line in South America, see Juan y Ulloa, Dissertacion, 68-94 ; Calvo, Recueil, I, 217-229; L'Art de Verifier Us Dates, 3d ser., XIII, 8.
THE DEMARCATION LINE 217
Third, the earlier bulls to Portugal, and Alexander's, formed the corner stone of the old colonial system with its rigorous monopoly of commerce for the mother country, from the evils of which the civilized world is not yet free.^
Men now smile when they read or hear of the attempt of Alexander Sixth to divide the undiscovered world between Spain and Portugal, but what single act of any Pope in the history of the Church has exercised directly and indirectly a more momentous influence on human affairs than this last reminder ^ of the bygone world sovereignty of the Holy See ?
1 " Quibuscumque personis cujuscumque dignitatis . . . districtius inhibemus ne ad insulas et terras firmas, inventas et inveniendas . . . pro mercibus haben- dis, vel quavis alia de causa accedere praesumant absque vestra ac haeredum et successorum vestrorum praedictorum licentia speciali." Alexander's Bull of May 4, 1493.
2 " Dieser Federstreich war die letzte Erinnerung an die Kosmische Autoritat des romischen Papsttums." Gregorovius, Gesck. der Stadt Rom, 7, 326.
i
SENECA AND THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA
i
SENECA AND THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA ^
Ferdinand Columbus tells us that among the causes that moved his father to discover the Indies was the high author- ity of those who said it was possible to sail from Spain west- ward to India like Aristotle . . . and like Seneca in his first book on Nature who says that from the uttermost parts of Spain to the Indians one might sail in a few days with a fair wind. 2 The passage in Seneca to which reference is here made is the following : ** Punctum est istud in quo navigatis, in quo bellatis, in quo regna disponitis ; . . . Sursum ingen- tia spatia sunt in quorum possessionem animus admittitur; . . . tunc contemnit domicilii prioris angustias. Quantum enim est, quod ah ultimis litorihus Hispaniae usque ad Indos jacet ? Paucissimorum dierum spatium, si navem suus ventus implevit. At ilia regio coelestis per triginta annos velocis- simo sideri viam praestat, nusquam resistenti, sed aequaliter cito." {Nat, Quaest. Praef. 9-12.)
The two sentences in Italics have been quoted by nearly every writer on the discoveries from Ferdinand Columbus to the present day and have without exception so far as I have noticed been misinterpreted in two ways. The error began with Roger Bacon who, in his Opus Majus,^ in support of
1 Reprinted with some rearrangement from The Academy (London) of Feb- ruary 11, 1893.
2 Eistorie, cap. vii. The passage is no doubt based on the words of Colum- bus in his letter to Ferdinand and Isabella describing his third voyage. Navar- rete, I, 261.
* Edition of J. H. Bridge, London, 1900, I, 290. Bacon's Opus Majus was in large part the source of the Ymago Mundi of Cardinal Pierre D'Ailly (Petrus de Aliaco) which Columbus studied and from which he derived his knowledge of the geographical theories of the ancients.
222 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
Aristotle's precise statement "quod mare parvum est inter finem Hispaniae a parte occidentis et inter principium Indiae a parte orientis, " adds, "et Seneca, libro quinto Naturalium dicit quod mare hoc est navigabile in paucissimis diebus, si ventus sit conveniens." Bacon quoting apparently from memory took paucissimorum absolutely, as indicating that Seneca believed the Atlantic to be a comparatively narrow body of water. And such has been, in general, the practice of writers on the discoveries from that day to this. Recent examples of this interpretation are to be found in John Fiske's The Discovery of America (I, 369) and Gaffarel's Histoire de la JDecouverte de VAmerique (I, 157). It is clear, however, to one who reads the context with care, that pau- cissimorum is to be taken relatively and in contrast with thirty years, ^. e., a very few days compared with thirty years. But, as compared with thirty years, thirty, sixty or ninety days might with equal propriety be termed "very few," con- sequently the passage cannot be cited as indicating a belief on Seneca's part that the distance westward from Spain to India was inconsiderable.
More important than this, however, is the question whether Seneca had in mind at all a voyage across the Atlantic. He is not discussing possible routes to India nor any geographi- cal question, but is contrasting the relative dimensions of the earth, the scene of human life, and the universe — the realm of thought. "The stage of human life is but a point; in its widest extent from the furthest West to the far East, from one end of the world to the other, the longest journey ^ man can take is but a space of a very few days with fair winds, while that heavenly region it would take the swiftest star ever in motion thirty years to traverse." Such is the true sense of the passage. From a rhetorical point of view, the
^ Cf . this passage from Pliny's Natural History, which shows that to the Roman of Seneca's time the distance from Spain to India was synonymous with the long- est possible earthly journey : " Pars nostra terrarum, de qua memoro, ambienti (ut dictum est) oceano velut innatans longissime ab ortu ad occasum patet, hoc est, ab India ad Herculis columnas." Hist. Nat., lib. II, cap. eviii.
SENECA AND THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 223
distance from Spain westward to India, as an absolutely unknown quantity, would be out of place in the comparison. Seneca would naturally use a great but known distance. The use of the superlative ultimis indicates that he is thinking of a place not only far from Rome {cf, Hispania Ulterior), but as far as possible from India. Had he been thinking of a westward voyage, the more emphasis laid upon ultimis the weaker his comparison. Again, in that case why should he not have used proximis if, as some have thought, he believed the distance to be short ? The journey from Spain to India in Seneca's time would have been all by water save the few miles at Suez. Is it likely, then, that any ancient reader of Seneca would have thought of any other distance from Spain to India than that of the known route ? Roger Bacon found it natural, if not necessary, in loosely paraphrasing Aristotle {De Coelo^ II, 14) to be extremely explicit; e, g., "Dicit Aristoteles quod mare parvum est inter finem Hispaniae a parte occidentis et inter principium Indiae a parte orientis." Had Seneca been thinking of a westward voyage, something then unthought of save by the most eminent geographers, would he not have been as explicit as Bacon? In fine, this traditional modem interpretation, examples of which may be seen in Humboldt (TJntersuchungen^ I, 148-50) and Payne {History of the New Worlds 42), has come from reading this passage in Seneca apart from its context, in the light of mod- ern geographical knowledge, and with a strong bias toward finding anticipations of modern discoveries in the pages of ancient writers. In this case Seneca's famous prophecy —
" Venient annis saecula seris Quibus Oceanus vincula rerum Laxet, et ingens pateat tellus, Tethysque novos detegat orbes, Nee sit terris Ultima Thule,"
may have set the current of interpretation.^
1 A writer in The Nation of March 9, 1893, reviewed with approval this in- terpretation of Seneca's meaning, and added the following apt comments : — " The truth is, that Seneca was using here a well-recognized phrase signifying
224 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
the known toorld. Now, to the Koman of his day, Spain was the * jumping-off place,' and from it the world lay not to the West but to the East ; so Juvenal —
* Omnibus in terris quae sunt a Gadibus usque Auroram et Gangen.'
There is no more sense in reading the Atlantic Ocean into these passages than there would be in supposing that in Dr. Johnson's
* Let observation, with extensive view, Survey mankind, from China to Peru,'
the sage meant to confine his vision to the Pacific."
THE PROPOSED ABSORPTION OF MEXICO IN 1847-1848
THE PROPOSED ABSORPTION OF MEXICO IN 1847-1848^
During the last eighteen months, few students of our his- tory can have failed to be struck with the points of similar- ity between some of the aspects and incidents of our recent public policy and some of the phases of the Mexican War. Not only in broad outlines is there a resemblance between the two situations, but it exists even in details. What a curious coincidence that in the one case we should have assisted the exiled Santa Anna to return to Mexico, counting on his friendly aid in attaining our demands, and that in the other the exiled Aguinaldo should have been brought home and his followers equipped as our allies! Indeed let any one who thinks this comparison forced read over his Biglow Papers, The famous epistle of Birdofreedom Sawin from Mexico echoes with contemporaneous discussion, and one long pas- sage, with two or three changes in the names, might well serve the Anti -Imperialists as a tract for the times.
But it is not my purpose on this occasion to follow out in detail the comparison between the two wars and the issues arising from them, but rather, in view of the present persist- ent asseveration that the victory in Manila Bay imposed upon the United States at once the duty and the necessity of secur- ing and retaining the Philippines, to inquire how we escaped annexing all of Mexico in 1848. This relic of New Spain, less populous than our antipodal islands, contiguous to our territory, a political wreck from the incessant turmoil of a generation, in the complete possession of our armies for
* Read at the meeting of the American Historical Association at Cambridge, Mass., December 29, 1899.
228 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
months, with the flag flying from the "Halls of the Monte - zumas,'* was finally relinquished, although the situation presented every argument urged for the retention of the Philippines more cogently, and annexation would have in- volved fewer social, political, and constitutional difficulties. In the light of present events and of current opinion it is hardly credible that, if confronted to-day by that situation, our people would avoid their duty and leave the conquered to work out their own salvation merely disburdened of some undeveloped territory.
That a policy so alien to our present ideas should have prevailed only a half century ago invites some explanation in addition to the obvious one that expansion and the ex- tension of human slavery were, in the minds of an increas- ing number, inextricably bound together, and consequently brought the deepening moral abhorrence of slavery, which was taking fast hold of the idealists, to re-enforce the oppo- sition of conservatism. As a result just that idealist element which, to-day, leads the movement for expansion under the banner of political altruism, shrank back fifty years ago from having anything to do with it.
It is to offer some further explanation beyond this obvious one that I undertake a brief inquiry into the rise, diffusion, and probable strength of a desire to acquire all of Mexico. For such an inquiry will show that the movement for expan- sion, although associated in the minds of many people with the extension of slavery, was by no means identical with it, being on the one hand strongly opposed by some of the ablest champions of the institution and on the other hand ardently advocated by its enemies, while the body of its support was in no inconsiderable degree made up of men on the whole indifferent to the slavery question. The emergence of this expansionist movement at this time in spite of the obstacles to its success prepares us for its triumphant career at the present day, when it has no substantial hindrance save the conservative spirit, to whose objections our sanguine people are wont to pay little attention.
THE ABSORPTION OF MEXICO 229
It is well known that President Polk on assuming office announced to George Bancroft that he proposed during his term to settle the Oregon question and to acquire California. ^ He is, I think, with the possible exception of Grant, the only President who has entered office with a positive and definite policy of expansion. Polk was in fact an expansionist, not at the behest of slavery as has been charged, but for the cause itself; yet a prudent expansionist, for he hesitated at the incorporation of large masses of alien people, refusing to countenance, as we shall see, the all-of-Mexico movement and yielding only in the case of the proposed purchase of Cuba.
To accomplish his purpose in regard to California, when negotiations failed. President Polk was ready to try con- quest and he welcomed, if he did not provoke, the war with Mexico.2 The conquest of sparsely settled California and New Mexico was easily accomplished. The resistance of Mexico, although more desperate than was expected, was not effectual and in April, 1847, Mr. Trist was despatched with the project of a treaty. Our commissioner was authorized to offer peace on the cession of all territory east of the Rio Grande from its mouth to the southern boundary of New Mexico, New Mexico, Upper and Lower California and a right of way across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. "The boundary of the Rio Grande, and the cession to the United States of New Mexico and Upper California constituted an ultimatum," and less than that was under no circumstances to be accepted. The refusal of these terms was followed in September by the capture of the City of Mexico. The news of this triumph of the American arms which reached Wash- ington late in October soon gave rise to an active agitation to incorporate all of Mexico into the Union. ^ The oppo-
1 Schouler's Hlstcn-y of the United States, IV, 498.
2 Compare the narrative in Schouler's Historical Briefs, 149-151, which is a faithful presentation in brief of the material contained in Polk's diary.
8 Cf. Von Hoist, III, 341-344. It will be noticed that Von Hoist, not having access to Polk's diary, worked in the dark in regard to the President's Mexican policy and attributes designs to him which he did not entertain. The New York Sun asserted in October that it had advocated the occupation of Mexico in May. Niles's Register, LXXIII, 113.
230 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
nents of the administration averred this to be the design of the President, although it was not, and the suspicion was increased by the known fact that the Secretary of the Treas- ury, Robert J. Walker, was an advocate of this policy. ^
Inasmuch as President Polk initiated his own policy and resolutely and independently pursued his own plans, no account of his presidency can be satisfactory to-day which is not based on a careful examination of the voluminous diary ^ in whose pages are recorded not only his own views and intentions, but also brief reports of cabinet meetings and of conferences with party leaders. Turning to this record we find that Polk told his cabinet, September 4, 1847, that if the war was still further prolonged he would "be unwill- ing to pay the sum which Mr. Trist had been authorized to pay," in the settlement of a boundary, by which it was con- templated that the United States would acquire New Mexico and the Calif ornias; and that "if Mexico continued obsti- nately to refuse to treat, I was decidedly in favor of insisting on more territory than the provinces named." The question was discussed by the cabinet on September 7, and Secretary Walker and Attorney-General Clifford are recorded as "in favour of acquiring in addition the department or state of Tamaulipas, which includes the port of Tampico." Secre- tary Buchanan, the Postmaster-General, and Secretary John Y. Mason opposed this proposition. The President declared himself " as being in favour of acquiring the cession of the Department of Tamaulipas, if it should be found practicable." Clifford proposed the recall of Trist and the prosecution of the war with the greatest vigor until Mexico should sue for peace. This was approved by Walker and by the President, ex- cept as regards the recall of Trist. A month later he changed his mind and Trist was recalled, as he notes, October 5,
1 Baltimore American in Niles, LXXIII, 113.
2 George Bancroft's typewritten copy of the MS. of the diary Is among the Bancroft Papers in the Lenox Library. For an account of the diary see Schonler, Historical Briefs, 121-124. I may take the occasion here to express ray apprecia- tion of the courtesy of Mr. Eames and Mr. Paltsits in giving me every facility in the examination of the diary and correspondence of Polk.
THE ABSORPTION OF MEXICO 231
"because his remaining longer with the army could not probably accomplish the objects of his mission, and because his remaining longer might and probably would impress the Mexican government with the belief that the United States were so anxious for peace, that they would ultimate {sic) conclude one on the Mexican terms. Mexico must now sue for peace, and when she does we will hear her propositions."
Another month passes and Secretary Buchanan has shifted his position, presumably in response to some indications of a changing public sentiment, such as the recent Democratic victor}'- in Pennsylvania, and we are not surprised to learn that he " spoke in an unsettled tone " and " would express no opinion between these two plans," i. g., for the President in his message "to designate the part of Mexican territory, which we intended to hold as an indemnity, or to occupy all Mexico, by a largely increased force, and subdue the coun- try and promise protection to the inhabitants." Buchanan would, so Polk gathered from his utterances, favor the acquisition of Tamaulipas and the country east of the Sierra Madre Mountains and withdraw the troops to that line. This in fact Buchanan announced to the President nearly two months later, January 2. "My views," records the Pres- ident, November 9, " were in substance that we would con- tinue the prosecution of the war with an increased force, hold all the country we had conquered, or might conquer, and levy contributions upon the enemy to support the war, until a just peace was obtained, that we must have indem- nity in territory, and that as a part indemnit}-, the Califor- nias and New Mexico should under no circumstances be restored to Mexico, but that they should henceforward be considered a part of the United States and permanent ter- ritorial governments be established over them; and that if Mexico protracted the war additional territory must be acquired as further indemnity."
He adds in regard to Buchanan : " His change of opinion will not alter my views; I am fixed in my course, and I
232 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
think all in the Cabinet except Mr. Buchanan still concur with me, and he may yet do so."
On November 18, Polk requested Buchanan to prepare a paragraph for the message to the effect: "That failing to obtain a peace, we should continue to occupy Mexico with our troops and encourage and protect the friends of peace in Mexico to establish and maintain a Republican Government, able and willing to make peace." By this time Buchanan had come into an agreement with the President, and on the 20th the cabinet all agreed that such a declaration should be inserted in the message. But if peace could not be obtained by this means the question was as to the next step. " In Mr. Buchanan's draft, he stated in that event that *we must ful- fill that destiny which Providence may have in store for both countries.'"
Experience warns us, when a statesman proposes humble submission to the leadings of Providence, that he is listening anxiously and intently to the voice of the people. President Polk was too independent a man to get his divine guidance by those channels and announced to his cabinet: "I thought this would be too indefinite and that it would be avoiding my constitutional responsibility. I preferred to state in sub- stance, that we should, in that event, take the measure of our indemnity into our own hands, and dictate our own terms to Mexico."
Yet all the cabinet except Clifford preferred with Buchanan to follow whither destiny should lead.^ The paragraph was still troublesome, and Polk presented a third draft to the cabinet, November 23. "Mr. Buchanan," records the diar}^ "still preferred his own draft, and so did Mr. Walker, the latter avowing as a reason, that he was for taking the whole of Mexcio, if necessary, and he thought the construction placed upon Mr. Buchanan's draft by a large majority of the people would be that it looked to that object. "
Polk's answer does him honor: "I replied that I was not
1 It is interesting to note that Buchanan nsed this rejected paragraph in a letter to a Democratic meeting in Philadelphia. Von Hoist, III, 341 n.
THE ABSORPTION OF MEXICO 233
prepared to go to that extent; and furthermore, that I did not desire that anything I said in the message should be so obscure as to give rise to doubt or discussion as to what my true meaning was ; that I had in my last message declared that I did not contemplate the conquest of Mexico. And that in another part of this paper I had said the same thing."
It will be noticed that on this occasion Robert J. Walker comes out squarely for all of Mexico. He seems to have improved the occasion again in his Treasury report to express his views, but the President required that to be in harmony with the message. Perhaps it will not be superfluous to remark that the most advanced expansionist in Polk's cab- inet always had been an expansionist, was opposed to slav- ery, although a Southerner by adoption, and was during the Civil War a strong Union man.
Twice later this crucial paragraph was revised. In its final form it read: "If we shall ultimately fail [i, e., to secure peace], then we shall have exhausted all honorable means in pursuit of peace, and must continue to occupy her country with our troops, taking the full measure of indem- nity into our own hands, and must enforce the terms which our honor demands." ^ An earlier passage, however, in explicit terms renounced the " all-of -Mexico " policy in these words : " It has never been contemplated by me, as an object of the war, to make a permanent conquest of the Republic of Mexico, or to annihilate her separate existence as an inde- pendent nation. "2
The opening of Congress gave an opportunity for the rising feeling for all of Mexico to show its strength. Yet it must not be forgotten that the new House had been elected over a year earlier, when the opposition to the war was perhaps at
1 Niles's Register, LXXIII, 230.
2 Ibid. The sincerity of this renunciation coming from one who had declared that war existed by the act of Mexico was not unnaturally doubted. Calhoun wrote his son, Dec. 11 : " You of course have seen the Message and the course it indicates to be pursued toward Mexico. The impression here is that it is intended to conquer and subject the whole country." Correspondence of John C. Calhoun in Report of the Am, Hist. Assoc., 1899, II, 741.
234 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
its height, and not yet counterbalanced by the excitement of the victories of 1847. During the first weeks of the session many series of resolutions in favor of and against the pol- icy of all of Mexico were presented. Several of the latter were offered by Southern Whigs like Botts of Virginia and Toombs of Georgia, and illustrate the point that the slavery and expansion interests were not identical. ^ Similarly, as Calhoun made the ablest speech against the absorption of Mexico, so the most outspoken advocates of it were Senator Dickinson of New York, a Hunker Democrat, and Senator Hannegan of Indiana. Hannegan offered the following resolution, January 10 : " That it may become necessary and proper, as it is within the constitutional capacity of this government, for the United States to hold Mexico as a ter- ritorial appendage. "2 Senator Dickinson, who at the Jack- son dinner on the 8th had offered the toast, " A More Perfect Union embracing the entire North American Continent,"^ on the 12th made a speech in the Senate advocating expansion, in which he declared for all of Mexico and asserted that it was our destiny to embrace all of North America. " Neither national justice," said he, "nor national morality requires us tamely to surrender our Mexican conquests, nor should such be the policy of the government if it would advance the cause of national freedom or secure its enjoyment to the people of Mexico."
Calhoun at the earliest opportunity, December 15, had offered these trenchant resolutions : " that to conquer Mexico or to hold it either as a province or to incorporate it in the Union would be inconsistent with the avowed object for which the war has been prosecuted; a departure from the settled policy of the government ; in conflict with its character and genius, and in the end subversive of our free and popular institutions."*
1 Cf. tlie letters of Wilson Lumpkin, John A. Campbell, and Waddy Thomp- son to Calhoun at this time. Correspondence of John C. Calhoun. Ibid., 1135, 1140-42, 1150-52.
2 Cong. Globe, 30th Cong., Ist Session, 136. 8 Niles's Register, LXXIII, 336.
* Cong. Globe, 26. Calhoun wrote his daughter December 26 : " The prospect
THE ABSORPTION OF MEXICO 235
These resolutions drew from Cass a few days later the wonderful assertion that "there is no man in this nation in favor of the extinction of the Nationality of Mexico." Whereupon Calhoun rejoined: "Why, you can hardly read a newspaper without finding it filled with speculation upon this subject. The proceedings that took place in Ohio at a dinner given to one of the volunteer officers of the army returned from Mexico show conclusively that the impression entertained by the persons present was, that our troops would never leave Mexico until they had conquered the whole coun- try. This was the sentiment advanced by the officer and it was applauded by the assembly, and endorsed by the official paper of that State. "^
Calhoun put the case even more strongly in his speech in the Senate, January 4: "There was at that time [L e., at the beginning of the session] a party scattered all over every por- tion of the country in favor of conquering the whole of Mex- ico. To prove that such was the case, it is only necessary to refer to the proceedings of numerous large public meet- ings, to declarations repeatedly made in the public journals, and to the opinions expressed by the officers of the army and individuals of standing and influence, to say nothing of dec- larations made here and in the other House of Congress. "^ Some of these expressions may be briefly noticed. General John A. Quitman, one of the most energetic of the army
is, that I shall be able to carry them [i. e., the resolutions]. If I should, it will do much to arrest the war. If they should be defeated, we may look for the entire conquest and subjugation of Mexico, What a fearful result it will be for our country and institutions !" Correspondence, 741.
1 Cong. Globe, 30th Cong., 1st Sess., Ibid., 54.
2 Quoted by Von Hoist, III, 343. Cf. Niles's Register, LXXIII, 334. For the whole speech see Calhoun's Works, IV, 396-424. A writer in the Charleston Courier aflSrmed : " Most of the leading Democratic papers openly advocate that policy." Niles, LXXIII, 354. Calhoun wrote his son-in-law, February 4 : *' My speech has had a very wide circulation and the impression is that it made a deeper im- pression than any I ever delivered. It brought to the surface the strong feeling which has been working below in favor of the conquest and holding as a Province, or annexing all Mexico ; and which I can hardly doubt, if not intended, was looked to by the administration as not an undesirable result." Correspondence, 742.
236 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
officers, subsequently a persistent advocate of the acquisition of Cuba, arrived in Washington in December and presented a plan to the President for a permanent occupation of Mex- ico. ^ Commodore Stockton, the Dewey of the conquest of California, at a great dinner given in his honor the 30th of December, advocated, not the annexation, but the occupation of Mexico until that people should be completely regener- ated, and would accept civil and religious liberty and main- tain a genuine republic. ^
The National Ura, the organ of antislavery, advocated the absorption of Mexico by the admission to the Union of indi- vidual Mexican states as fast as they should apply. The dis- rupted condition of Mexico would favor this solution. ^
In New York the Hunker Democrats came out strongly. The "Address to the Democracy of New York, " unanimously adopted by the Syracuse Convention, explains that as the purpose of the occupation of Mexico is to advance human rights, such occupation is miscalled a conquest. "It is no more than the restoration of moral rights by legal means." The field for such a work is " opened to us by the conduct of Mexico, and such moral and legal means are offered for our use. Shall we occupy it? Shall we now run with
1 Claiborne's Quitman, II, 79.
2 Niles's Register, LXXIII, 335. The following passage is quoted from the New York Post in Niles's Register, LXXIII, 334, in article on "Manifest Destiny": ** Now we ask whether any man can coolly contemplate the idea of recalling our troops from the territory we at present occupy, from Mexico — from San Juan de Ulloa — from Monterey — from Puebla — and thus by one stroke of a secre- tary's pen, resign this beautiful country to the custody of the ignorant cowards and profligate ruffians who have ruled it the last twenty-five years. Why, humanity cries out against it. Civilization and Christianity protest against this reflux of the tide of barbarism and anarchy." I have not had an opportunity to read the article in the Post to determine whether it was wholly serious. Nor is it, perhaps, of especial importance, for if a parody, it bears witness no less to preva- lent opinion.
3 The National Era, Aug. 19, 1847. The article fills three and one-half columns. The plan was presented again February 3, 1848. As these Mexican accessions would probably have preserved their non-slaveholding character, the number of free states would have been immensely reinforced by any such proceeding.
THE ABSORPTION OF MEXICO 237
manly vigor the race that is set before us? Or shall we yield to the suggestions of a sickly fanaticism, or sink into an enervating slumber? . . . We feel no emotion but pity for those whose philanthropy, or patriotism, or religion, has led them to believe that they can prescribe a better course of duty than that of the God who made us all.''^
January 12, Senator Rusk of Texas called on the Presi- dent to request him not to commit himself further against the annexation of all of Mexico. Polk told him that his views had been distinctly stated in his message, and that his mind had not changed.
As in our own day foreign pressure in this direction was not lacking. More than a year earlier Bancroft wrote Buchanan from London : " People are beginning to say that it would be a blessing to the world if the United States would assume the tutelage of Mexico. "^ Rumors, too, were current of a rising annexationist party in Mexico.^
The foregoing all show that the agitation for " all of Mex- ico " was well started and needed only time to become really formidable. It was deprived of that requisite element of time by the astonishing course of Trist, who despite his re- call still lingered with Scott's army and finally negotiated a treaty on the lines of Polk's ultimatum. How this conduct struck the President can best be told in his own words. When he heard, January 4, that Trist had renewed negotia- tions, he entered in his diary: "This information is most
1 Niles's Register, LXXIII, 391.
2 G. T. Curtis's Buchanan, I, 576. In this connection it is interesting to com- pare the forecast, at a somewhat later date, of Alexander von Humboldt : "Die Vereinigten Staaten werden ganz Mexico an sich reissen und dann selbst zerfal- len." Roscher, Kolonien, Kolonialpolitik und Auswanderung, 177.
8 In a letter to Calhoun from one John G. Tod, dated City of Mexico, April 5, 1848, it asserted that " Many good Mexicans, however, do not desire Peace, they want the Country to be occupied by our Troops, this policy gives them an assurance of security for life and property, and affords them a prospect of dimin- ishing the power and influence of the Church." Correspondence, 1163. Cf. the citation by Von Ilolst, III, 342, from Hodgson's Cradle of the Confederacy, 251- 252, in regard to the annexation party in Mexico. Hodgson's estimate, however, must be greatly exaggerated.
238 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
surprising. Mr. T. has acknowledged the receipt of his letter of recall, and he possesses no diplomatic powers. He is acting no doubt upon General Scott's advice. He has become the perfect tool of Scott. He is in this measure defying the authority of his government. . . . He may, 1 fear, greatly embarrass the government." On the 15th came a long despatch from Trist, which Polk declared " the most extraordinary document I have ever heard from a Diplo- matic Representative. His despatch is arrogant, impudent, and very insulting to his government and was personally offensive to the President. He admits he is acting without authority and in violation of the positive order recalling him. It is manifest to me that he has become the tool of General Scott and his menial instrument, and that the paper was written at Scott's instance and dictation. I have never in my life felt so indignant, and the whole Cabinet expressed themselves as I felt."
Buchanan was directed to prepare a stern rebuke to Trist, and Marcy to write Scott to order him to leave the head- quarters of the army.
January 23, Senators Cass and Sevier advised the Presi- dent to inform the Mexican government that Trist had been recalled. The next day Buchanan thought such a letter proper if Polk had made up his mind to reject the treaty. This Buchanan thought should be done. Polk said he could not decide till he saw the treaty. On the 25th the question was put before the cabinet. Walker agreed with Buchanan. In regard to the treaty Polk said that if "unembarrassed " he "would not now approve such a treaty," but was now in doubt about his duty. Buchanan still favored rejection, while Marcy was in favor of approval if the treaty were on the lines of the ultimatum, and John Y. Mason took sides with Marcy. It was finally decided on the 28th to despatch the letter to the Mexican government. The next entry of importance records the arrival of the treaty after nightfall, February 19. Polk found it within Trist's original instruc- tions as regards boundary limits and thought that it should
THE ABSORPTION OF MEXICO 239
be judged on its merits and not prejudiced by Trist's bad conduct. The next evening, Sunday, the cabinet discussed the treaty. Buchanan and Walker advised its rejection. Mason, Marcy, Johnson, and Clifford favored its acceptance. Buchanan announced that he "wanted more territory and would not be content with less than the lines of Sierra Madre in addition to the Provinces secured in this treaty." Polk reminded Buchanan of his entire change of position during the war and adds in his diary that he believed the true reason of Buchanan's course to be that he was a can- didate for the presidency. If the treaty were well received he would not be injured, if opposed he could say that he opposed it.
February 21, the President made known his decision to the cabinet: "That under all the circumstances of the case, I would submit it to the Senate for ratification, with a rec- ommeiidation to strike out the 10th Art. I assigned my rea- sons for this decision. They were briefly, that the Treaty conformed on the main question of limits and boundary to the instructions given Mr. Trist in April last — and that though if the Treaty was now to be made, I should demand more, perhaps, to make the Sierra Madre the line, yet it was doubtful whether this could be ever obtained by the consent of Mexico. I looked to the consequences of its rejection. A majority of one branch of Congress is opposed to my ad- ministration; thiey have falsely charged that the war was brought on and is continued by me, with a view to the con- quest of Mexico, and if I were now to reject a Treaty made upon my own terms as authorized in April last, with the unanimous approbation of the Cabinet, the probability is, that Congress would not grant either men or money to prosecute the war. Should this be the result, the army now in Mexico would be constantly wasting and diminishing in numbers, and I might at last be compelled to withdraw them, and then lose the two provinces of New Mexico and Upper California which were ceded to us by this Treaty. Should the opponents of my administration succeed in carry-
240 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
ing the next Presidential election, the great probability is that the country would lose all the advantages secured by this Treaty. I adverted to the immense value of Upper California, and concluded by saying that if I were now to reject my own terms as offered in April last, I did not see how it was possible for my administration to be sustained."^
The rumor soon spread in Washington that Buchanan and Walker were exerting their influence to have the treaty re- jected. On the 28th, Senator Sevier, the chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations, informs the President that the committee will recommend the rejection of the treaty and advise sending a commission. The other members of the committee were Webster, Benton, Mangum, and Hanne- gan. Polk declared his opinion unchanged, and expressed his belief that Webster's object was to defeat the treaty. Sevier said Webster wanted no territory beyond the Rio Grande, and Polk comments in his diary : " Extremes meet. Mr. Webster is for no territory and Mr. Hannegan is for all Mexico, Benton's position cannot be calculated." Polk concludes his entry with : " If the treaty in its present form is ratified, there will be added to the United States an im- mense Empire, the value of which twenty years hence it would be difficult to calculate." It was surely the irony of fate that the eyes of this resolute Augustus, enlarger of empire, were so soon closed in death and that he was not suffered to see in the consequences of his policy the fulfil- ment at once of the most dismal prognostications of its opponents and of his own confident prophecy.
For several days the treaty hung in the balance. On Feb- ruary 29, Polk records : " From what I learn, about a dozen Democrats will oppose it, most of them because they wish to acquire more territory than the line of the Rio Grande and the Provinces of New Mexico and Upper California will
1 Calhoun wrote his son, February 23 : ** The treaty with Mexico has just been laid before the Senate and read. It will be warmly opposed, but I think it will be approved by the body. It will be a fortunate deliverance if it should be." Cor- respondence, 744.
THE ABSORPTION OF MEXICO 241
secure." On March 2, the outlook appeared more hopeful; on the third Benton and Webster are recorded as the leading opponents. The suspense came to an end, March 10, when the treaty was ratified at 10 p. m., 38 to 14, four senators not voting.
The reception of the treaty and its recommendation to the Senate clearly defined the position of the administration and tended to discourage the advocates of "all of Mexico." If Trist had returned as ordered and the war had been pro- longed, we should probably have acquired more territory, but how much more is of course uncertain. Calhoun in his opposition realized that every delay in bringing the war to a close would strengthen the expansion party and complicate the situation in ways that would contribute to advance their cause. ^ We can best realize the importance of the element of time in this matter and so appreciate the significance of Trist's unexpected action in securing a treaty if we remem- ber how long it took after the battle of Manila Bay for the final policy of acquiring all the Philippines to be developed. Trist's treaty arrived about four months after the news of the capture of Mexico City and it was at least four months and a half after the battle of Manila Bay before the present administration decided to demand all of the Philippines. Nor must we forget in this comparison that the formation and expression of public opinion through the agency of the press proceeds to-day at a much more rapid pace than fifty years ago.
In conclusion, then, in answer to the question how we escaped the annexation of all of Mexico in 1847-48, the fol- lowing reasons may be assigned: The growing realization that territorial expansion and the extension of slaver}- were so inextricably involved with each other that every acces-
1 As late as May 22, 1848, when it was still doubtful whether Mexico would ratify the Trist Treaty, Calhoun wrote his brother-in-law: "Should it not be ratified, there will be a great effort made to take the Whole." — Correspondence, pp. 755-56. Calhoun believed that it had been the intention of the administration " to conquer and annex the country." — Letter to the same, April 15, Correspon- dence, 751.
16
242 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
sion of territory would precipitate a slavery crisis powerfully counteracted the natural inclinations of the people toward expansion which are so clearly revealed to-day. Second, the fact that the elections for the Congress that met in Decem- ber, 1847, took place over a year earlier, before the great military victories of 1847 had begun to undermine the first revulsion from a war of conquest, gave the control of the House to the Whigs, who as a party were committed against conquest and annexation. Thirdly, there was the opposition of President Polk, who effectually controlled the policy of the government; and finally, the lack of time for the movement to gather sufficient headway to overcome these obstacles.
LEOPOLD VON EANKE
LEOPOLD VON RANKE^
A LITTLE more than sixty years ago the expectation had become general that historical research would be as charac- teristic a note of the nineteenth century as philosophical speculation had been of the eighteenth. 2 It is hardly pos- sible so soon to decide what has been the dominant intel- lectual characteristic of our century, ^ but certainly, in the increase of positive historical knowledge, the elaboration of sound historical method, the enlargement of the range of his- torical evidence, and especially in the development of the historical way of looking at things, the nineteenth century stands out conspicuous above any century since the Renais- sance. To these immense changes no one contributed so much as Leopold von Ranke, the centenary of whose birth was celebrated last week.*
That the American Historical Association should observe in some way this anniversary is fitting for general reasons, and, in particular, because Ranke was an honorary member of our organization. It is not my purpose to-night to pre- sent a general account of Ranke 's life. That was done in a
1 An address before the American Historical Association in Washington, December 26, 1895, in commemoration of the one hundredth anniversary of Ranke's birth, December 21, 1795.
2 " , . . cette opinion, deja (i. e., 1824-1830) tres repandue, que Thistoire serait le cachet du dix-neuvieme siecle, et qu'elle lui donnerait son nom, comme la philosophie avait donne le sien au dix-huitieme." Augustin Thierry, preface to his Dix Ans d'l^tudes Historiques, 1834.
3 Comte, forty years ago, wrote : " Le siecle actuel sera principalemeut carac- terise par I'irrevocable pre'ponderance de I'histoire en philosophie, en politique, et meme en poesie." Politique Positive, III, 1, cited from Lord Acton's The Study of History, 131.
* Hanke was born December 21, 1795.
246 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
highly successful way by our secretary at the Boston meeting in 1887.^ I have in mind rather a brief consideration of the formative influences of Ranke's career as revealed in his autobiographical sketches and letters, ^ the distinctive ele- ments in his aim and method, and the influence of his work.
If any man was a born historian it was Leopold Ranke, yet he was comparatively late in realizing his vocation. When at the age of sixty-eight he looked back over his school days, he recalled no unusual interest in history. Like many another boy of twelve, he was taken with his teacher's his- torical talks and revelled in the tales of chivalry, especially those whose scenes were laid in his native Thuringia. The boys played at Greeks and Trojans, read Schiller's Lager and Napoleon's Bulletins,^ but of all the impressions of the time those of the ancient world were the strongest. Later at the gymnasium, Schulforte, these interests are still upper- most. While there he read the Iliad and the Odyssey through three times and fairly lived in the Homeric world.* At evening prayers, instead of listening to the dry lectures, he read the Old Testament histories. All this preparation was spontaneous and unconscious.
When he went to Leipzig, at the age of eighteen, he still had no conception of history. The lectures of Wieland,^ the professor of history, failed to impress him, and from his- torical works he was repelled by the mass of undigested facts.* The lectures on church history of Tzschirner were
^ H. B. Adams in Papers of the American Historical Association, III, 101-120; also in American Academy of Arts and Sciences, XXII, part 2, 542-558.
2 As found in Zur Eigenen Lebensgeschichte, von Leopold von Ranke. Herausge- geben von Alfred Dove, Leipzig, 1890. All citations, unless otherwise indicated, are from this volume.
8 Dictation of October, 1863, page 15. Their knowledge of the Trojan War was derived from Becker's Erzahlungen.
* Page 21.
^ Ranke tells us that Wieland sputtered so that it moistened the paper of those who sat on the front seat. On one occasion these victims raised a red umbrella, so as to take notes in shelter. The kindly professor took it in good part. Page 28.
6 Pages 28, 59.
LEOPOLD VON RANKE 247
more satisfactory, and he went home from them "with the incitement to study the great persons, the mighty leaders of literature in mediaeval and modern times." ^ During the earlier years at Leipzig his studies were mainly Old and New Testament Introduction and New Testament Interpre- tation. Doctrinal studies did not attract him, and the preva- lent rationalism awakened no sympathy. It is interesting to note that he made a thorough historical study of the Psalms, 2 trying to connect one and another with specific events in the history of the kings. To the stimulating in- struction of Hermann and Beck in philology he always looked back with gratitude. Hermann taught him to under- stand Pindar, who, with the tragedians, remained a favorite among the poets. Thucydides he studied with especial thor- oughness, making many extracts of his political teachings.
The first German historical work that impressed him was Niebuhr's Roman History^ and it exercised the greatest in- fluence on his historical studies. At first, however, he did not fully appreciate its scientific significance, and it served mainly as a stimulus to his classical studies. It breathed the classical atmosphere, calling to mind the great writers of antiquity and convincing him that there might be mod- ern historians. Among the other literary influences of this period were Fichte's Addresses to the Gierman Nation^^ and like all his fellow-students he greatly admired Goethe. Of more importance, however, was his resorting to Luther's works to learn modern German at the fountain head. In so doing he became so absorbed in their contents and so im- pressed with Luther's greatness that, in 1817, when public interest in Luther was revived by the tercentenary of the Reformation, he essayed a life of the reformer. To the young student fresh from the study of Luther's own writings the current popular accounts seemed feeble. The project, how- ever, proved beyond his resources.^
In 1818 Ranke went to Frankfort-on-the-Oder to take a position not unlike that of a professor of ancient languages
1 Pages 29, 60. 2 Pages 31, 41, 59. » Pages 31, 59.
248 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
in a New England college fifty years ago. He had to teach Latin and Greek and the history of classical literature, con- ducting sometimes as many as thirty-three exercises weekly. The transition, he tells us,^ from philological studies which comprise the historical to the actually historical was very- easy, and it was helped by the task of teaching the history of ancient literature. To do this from the customary hand- books he found contrary to his nature and feeling. The authors of some of them apparently had not even read the prefaces of the works they discussed, to say nothing of the works themselves. He based his lectures on his own personal study of the authors. In the course of his prepara- tion he read the ancient historians systematically. In the universal outlook of Herodotus he found something especially congenial to his mind. His teaching of the classical authors became more and more imbued with the historical spirit. He taught them as monuments of antiquity.
That Ranke, with his heavy burden of teaching, founded his lectures on personal study of the sources shows the ex- traordinary stuff of which he was made. The classical his- torians were followed by the post-classical, and those by the mediaeval so far as they were accessible. Thus early he started on the straight ^nd narrow path of Jhistorical science — " critical study of the genuine sources " — from which he ne ver'departed. "^ ~ ~
This is one of the great characteristics of Ranke, and one of the secrets of his success. He expended very little time at any period of his career on secondary sources. The method was laborious, but every day's work told, and little had to be done over, or unlearned. Even while at Leipzig he had been led to the sources of mediaeval history by his friend Stenzel, at whose rooms he saw for the first time a collection of the jSeriptores^^ and began to read them — much as Luther saw and read his first Bible at Erfurt. At Frank- fort it was almost with rapture that he read in Grotius's edition of Jordanes and Paulus Diaconus, the story of the
1 Page 39. 2 Page 649.
LEOPOLD VON RANKE 249
German Migration.^ In an old library he found other col- lections of the mediseval historians, and came to know the mediseval empire. ^ Thence he passed on with the old French chroniclers till the fifteenth century, when his greatest in- terest was aroused. In this field, at the age of twenty-six, he must tarry and begin to write.
What parallel to that course can be mentioned? That ardent, penetrating spirit, saturating itself with all the rich- ness of ancient life and thought and then following the ages down, gaining everywhere first-hand impressions, and then pausing in the age when the seeds planted by antiquity were beginning to sprout, to enter upon a career destined to be one of the most remarkable in the whole range of historical literature I
These six years at Frankfort are the critical period of his life. Here he began his systematic studies, laying a broad and solid foundation for his work at Berlin. Here he real- ized his calling, and the pages of his letters glow at times with a fairly religious enthusiasm for history.^ Here he did the critical work which opened a new epoch in historical study.
During this period, Ranke tells us, Scott's novels were contributing powerfully toward awakening historic feeling and sympathy with the past. On himself the effect was striking; he was interested in them, but his historic sense was offended by Scott's romantic liberties with the facts in Quentin Durwara. ±ie believed tnat tlie Jiistorical narrative as nanded down by Comines was finer and more interesting than the fiction. He turned away from it and resolved in his works to avoid all imaginary and fictitious elements and to stick strictly to the facts.* The words of the preface of his first book record this purpose with classic simplicity: "To history has been attributed the function to judge the past, to instruct ourselves for the advantage of the future.
1 Page 61. 2 Page 32.
8 See the letter to his brother Henry, February 18, 1824, p. 121.
* Page 61.
260 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
Such a lofty function the present work does not attempt. It aims merely to show how it actually took place." "Rigor- ous presentation of thVlScts, however conditional and lack- ing in beauty they may be, is without question the supreme law."i
Having defined the duty of the historian the next question was to show how it might be performed. Was it possible to get at the facts when two contemporary historians of accepted authority like Jovius and Guicciardini gave irreconcilable accounts of the same thing? Ranke's answer to this as well as to the other questions which confront the student of the multifarious sources of modern history was given in his Kritik der neuerer G-eschichtsschreiher. It was the sys- tematic application of what is now familiarly known as the " higher criticism " ^ to works written since the invention of printing. The perception of the necessity of applying these principles of historical criticism which have now become the common property of the learned world, to this new field and the brilliant success in so doing were Ranke's great contribu- tion to historical science.^
His thoroughgoing investigation for this work convinced him of the necessity of examining unprinted sources, to be able properly to continue.* Toward the end of 1824 we find him trying to secure the loan of manuscripts from Berlin, Vienna, Munich, Zurich, Bern, Paris, and Rome.^ "I am now studying," he writes his brother in February, 1825,
1 Gesch. der rom. und germ. Volker, vii.
2 The principles of internal criticism had been gradually developed in the parallel but relatively disconnected fields of the Old Testament literature and the Homeric poems. In Ranke's youth the two great masters in these respective fields were De Wette and Wolf. Ranke early tried his hand on the historical criticism of the Psalms and on Homeric analysis. Pages, 29 and 39.
* Ranke was not absolutely a pioneer in this. Munoz had pointed the way in his Historia del Nuevo Mundo in 1 793, in the preface to which he criticises the earlier writers on the discovery of America and indicates the sources from which their narratives are derived. It does not appear, however, that Ranke was familiar with Munoz's work.
* Page 63. 6 Page 139.
LEOPOLD VON RANKE 251
" later modem history. Would I might be a Moses in this desert to strike and bring forth the water which is certainly in its depths."^ His book in a few months brought him an assistant professorship at Berlin, where his work was light ^ and he could devote all his time to research. In the royal library at Berlin he discovered a collection of forty-eight folio volumes of manuscripts consisting mainly of Venetian RelazionL Nobody had ever utilized them. Johannes von MuUer, twenty years before, planned to publish extracts from them, but he had not done so. Three more volumes were un- earthed at Gotha, and Ranke bought still another. ^ Drawn on by the irresistible attractions of this mine of unworked ore, he gave up the project of continuing systematically his first book, which had stopped at the year 1514, and plunged into this bewildering mass of material, consisting of perhaps a thousand essays, covering most of the years in very un- equal detail from 1550 to 1650. The spoil appeared in his Filrsten und Volker von Sild-Europa im 16. u. 17. Jahrhun- derten^ In the preface of twenty-five pages he gave an account of the Venetian diplomatic system and of the value of the Relazioni and of their distribution. His first book had procured him the call to Berlin ; this brought him a commis- sion from the Prussian Government to go to Vienna and to Italy to explore the Archives.^ "I am headed for the Vene- tian Archives, "he writes; "here rests a still unknown history of Europe."^ The next three years and a half were devoted
1 Page 140. 2 Page 147.
* Page 147 and the preface to Fursten und Vdlker von SUd-Europa. Later editions are entitled Die Osmanen und die spanische Monarchie. In the eighth volume of Von Miiller's collected works, published in 1810, after his death, some extracts are printed, entitled Notiz und Auszug des ersten Teils der Informazioni politiehe eines MS. auf der Kdnigl. Bihliothek zu Berlin. Cf. Eugen Guglia, Leopold von Ranke's Leben und Werke, 83.
* Translated as The Ottoman and Spanish Empires. How many could have been satisfied to put forth a single volume of less than 500 pages as the result of so much study of new sources 1 Ranke, although a voluminous writer, was never diffuse.
6 Page 167.
« Page 169. August, 1827.
252 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
to research in Vienna, Florence, Rome, Naples, and other cities. The wealth of material which he discovered and utilized later in his works went far to draw the veil from this unknown history of Europe.^ Ranke's peculiar service at this time consisted in opening up to scholars a vast mass of a kind of material to which they had previously resorted only occasionally, but from that time diplomatic material has been accorded a chief place among the sources. "The ultimate aim of historical writing is," Ranke said, "the bringing before us the whole truth." This new evidence he prized as enabling us to look upon the past with the eyes of contemporaries. Since Ranke's demonstration of their sin- gular value, many collections have been printed in full and many others carefully calendared.
The use of this material exercised an important influence over Ranke's style and method of treatment. These Hela- tions were clear, impartial, and objective. The Venetian envoys aimed to present to the home government practical information of the most varied kind. They had every reason to adhere to a colorless truthfulness "to show how things actually happened." Their character sketching is simple, with bold outlines. In short, their work made easier for the historian that objective presentation upon which he placed so much stress. It is, I think, safe to say that the most impor- tant literary influence of Ranke's second period was that of the Venetian Relations.'^ His most popular, and from a liter- ary point of view certainly his best work — The History of
1 It is a striking and interesting coincidence that during these years Jared Sparks was doing exactly the same work for American history that Ranke was doing for European history. See, in Professor H. B. Adams's Life of Sparks, chapters xiv-xvi, the account of Sparks's travels in the United States and Europe in search of historical manuscripts and diplomatic relations.
2 Dove writes : " Vieles von der speciellen Kunst der Beobachtung und Zeichnung, die er hier den klugen Diplomaten des heiligen Marcus absah, hat er bis in seine spatesten Tage beibehalten ; zumal seine lebensvollen Character- bildnisse verrathen stets mehr oder weniger die Venetianische Schule." Art ** Ranke," in Allgemeine deutsche Biotj., 252. Nothing can be clearer, I think, than this stylistic influence to any one who compares the styles of Ranke's first two books with each other and with that of the Venetian Relations.
LEOPOLD VON RANKE 253
the Popes — was more completely based on the Relations than any of his other works save the Ottoman and Spanish Mon- archies. He himself realized the influence upon his work of his materials. "Der Stoff brachte die Form mit sich," he writes in his autobiography. ^
But Ranke's work was epoch-making, not only in the development of criticism and in the revelation of sources, but also in teaching. He was the greatest of historical teachers, although never a very popular lecturer. 2 He pos- sessed, however, in a rare degree the faculty of stimulating and drawing out the native powers of his pupils. Through the influence of his teaching and writing, and the influence of his pupils and their pupils unto the third and fourth generation, the study and teaching of history have been transformed and vivified to an extraordinary degree. What historical teacher has ever been able like him, at 88 years of age, to say of his early work so truthfully that one feels no sense of boasting : " What we then began (i, e. , in his early seminar), the seed which we planted, is now grown to be a great tree, so that the birds of the heaven lodge in its branches. "3
The most distinctive and valuable contribution of Ranke to advanced historical teaching was the development of the seminary or practice work. Ranke founded the seminary method in the teaching of history in much the same sense that he discovered the Venetian Relations. Although not in either case wholly a pioneer, he was practically such.* While
1 Page 70. Compare the remark in the preface of the Gesch. der rom. und germ. Volker, 7, " Aus Absicht und Stoff entsteht die Form." His explanation of the fact that his German History during the Reformation was less attractive in style than the History of the Popes was that the German History was based, to a considerable degree, on crabbed reports of the proceedings of Diets and other material much cruder in form than Venetian Relations.
2 As a lecturer he preferred subjects in general history and to cover a long period. The largest attendance he ever had was in the winter of 1841-42, when he lectured on recent history; the maximum attendance then was 153. Dove, art. " Ranke," in Allgemeine deutsche Biog., 258.
8 Page 469.
* "Wilken, for example, the historian of the Crusades, had a seminary in
254 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
a student at Leipzig, Ranke had been a member of the philo- logical seminaries of Hermann and Beck.^ In these courses he became familiar with the methods of these eminent teachers in training students in independent work. Soon after he began his teaching at Berlin, in the summer of 1825, in accordance with a suggestion from his friend Karl von Raumer, the brother of the historian, Ranke announced that in the fall semester he would conduct a practice course (historische Uebungen).^ Karl von Raumer was then profes- sor of natural science at Erlangen and was a man ever active in elaborating successful methods of teaching. Ranke writes him, July 12, 1825, " I have profited by your advice and an- nounced ' historische Uebungen for next term.' " ^ That he carried out the project is confirmed by his own statement in 1837 : " It has been a delight to me since the beginning of my university activity to carry on historische Uebungen."* Owing to Ranke 's tour in Italy, the continuous life of the seminary did not begin until 1831. ^ The years next follow- ing were the most fruitful. Ranke set his students at work on the Middle Ages, the period on which he had prepared himself at Frankfort.^ Only those who expected to make history their profession were admitted to the course, and the members were taught method by his guidance without much theorizing. He allowed them free choice of subjects, but was always ready to suggest problems. His three injunc- tions were criticism, precision, penetration.^
Berlin, bat it exerted no snch influence as Banke's. Wilken is not mentioned in Ranke's letters.
1 Page 34 and Koechly, Gottfried Hermann, 257.
2 In the official Latin, " Exercitationes historicae."
3 Page 148.
* Ranke, Werke, LII, 479.
5 Dove, in his sketch of Ranke in the Allgemeine deutsche Biographie, gives 1833 as the date of the starting of Ranke's seminar after his return ; but the evidence of Ranke's own words seems in favor of the date in the text, and Giesebrecht gives 1831. Gedachtnissrede auf Leopold von Ranke, 11.
8 Page 649.
7 The most interesting accounts of Ranke's seminary work are those given by himself in the preface to the JahrhUcher des Deutschen Retches unter dem Sachs-
LEOPOLD VON RANKE 255
It is unnecessary in this place to enlarge upon the results of this work. A large proportion of the German historians for the next two generations were thus trained by Ranke or his pupils. Waitz, in particular, at Gottingen conducted a seminary with brilliant results, and "proved himself, next to Ranke, the most successful founder and leader of a his- torical school." 1
As a writer of history Ranke faithfully exemplified the principles which he laid down at the beginning. One of the best statements of them is that in the English History — "All hangs together — critical study of genuine sources, impartial view, objective description; the end to be arrived at is the representation of the whole trutb> I am here set- ting up an ideal, respecting whicli 1 shall be told that it can never be realized. Well, the conditions of the case are these: The idea is immeasurable, the realization of it is from its nature limited. Happy is he who has entered upon the right path and attained the results which can stand fur- ther investigation and criticism." ^
To realize, even approximately, this ideal requires the con- stant exercise of the criticism, precision, and penetration, which he enjoined upon his pupils. Among the many ex- amples of his penetration that could be given, the following is perhaps the most remarkable. One of the most striking results of modern historical criticism is the demonstration that the Levitical Law as we have it in the Pentateuch is a late and largely ideal product of Jewish priestly thought, which assumed its present shape during or after the exile, or perhaps a thousand years later than its apparent date. This
ischen Hause, 1837, reprinted in the Werke, LII, 479-81 ; in the entry in his diary for April 6, 1884, 649; in Von Sybel's Geddchtnissrede, Hist. Zeits., LVI, 474; and in Waltz's Die Historischen Uebungen zu Gdttingen, 1867, 4, 5. For a fuller treatment of this phase of Kanke's work, see below pp. 263-74.
1 Von Sybel, " Georg Waitz," Hist. Zeits., LVI, 485. Cf. also Waitz, Die historische Uebungen zu GSttingen. Dr. Stuckenberg in his article on Ranke in the Andover Review, February, 1887, asserts that over one hundred of Banke's students gained distinction.
2 History of England, V, 428.
256 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
was first put forward conjecturally by Reuss in lectures, but not published, in 1833-34 ; it was first systematically argued by Graf, at one time a pupil of Reuss, in 1866, and it was substantially demonstrated by Wellhausen in 1878. In April, 1828, Ranke wrote his brother Henry: "The dis- covery of the unknown history of the world would be my greatest good fortune ; I believe also that you can and will contribute your share to it. In regard to the most ancient phases of the world's history — the unique evidence for which I believe the Bible is — the most incredible confusion of ideas prevails. When were the Mosaic books written? Did the constitution which they depict ever exist; if so, when? Numberless other questions are not yet answered satisfactorily." ^
Ranke here put his finger on the crucial point of the whole matter and set the exact problem which was to be solved fifty years later. ^ It is hardly too much to say that, in all probability, if Ranke had devoted himself to Hebrew history, taking up the questions he suggested, the work of Graf and Wellhausen would have been done forty or fifty years earlier, and that the Biblical discussions of our own day would have taken place in the time of our fathers and grandfathers.
As a writer Ranke possessed a rare power of discerning in his material the typical. He draws in broad outline and then fills in with apt details. The truth of the picture vitally depends upon the discrimination and honesty with which the choice of "details is made. Leo attacked his method in 1828, and Ranke justified it in the following words, which set forth his principles of composition: "I have made the attempt to represent the general through the particular, directly and without tedious multiplicity of de- tail. In this I have not imitated Johann von Muller or any
1 Pages 195, 196.
2 Yet, with characteristic singleness of aim and devotion to his main purpose, Ranke gave the problem no further attention, as it lay outside his field. Appar- ently he never even familiarized himself with its solution. The section on the History of Israel in the Weltgeschichte might just as well have been written in 1825 for all the influence it shows of modern Biblical criticism.
LEOPOLD VON RANKE 257
of the ancients, but have tried to approximate the phenome- non itself as something which is, on the outside, merely a particular thing, but in its essence is something general with a meaning and a spirit. "^
Four great works of Ranke's stand out above the others — the Histories of the Popes, of Germany during the Reforma- tion, of France in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, and of England chiefly in the Seventeenth Century. It is by these works mainly that he is and will be familiar to English and American readers. In each case those events are selected for treatment which are of importance in the development of European civilization. In each case the historian keeps the rest of Europe under his comprehensive gaze, and at every step illustrates the current of events from the history of the neighbor nations with unrivalled knowl- edge. It is the history of the world he is writing, of that European world the very bone and marrow of whose life came from Rome. The introduction to his English History is one of the finest examples of this characteristic. Com- parison with Macaulay's introductory chapter brings out clearly its peculiar quality. Macaulay's first chapter, like his whole work, is, as he said himself, insular; Ranke's is universal. Both are masterpieces, but they are utterly un- like.2
1 Page 664. Erwidermg auf Heinrich Leo's AngriJ^ (I82is). A penetrating and illuminating criticism of Ranke's attitude toward his material will be found in the letters of Strauss. Briefly summarized it is this: Herodotus is a prose epic, in Sallust's work are the characteristics of the epigram, in that of Tacitus those of the dramatist. In Ranke's work similarly there are the characteristics of the lyric poet. " His attitude toward historical material is not like Homer's, but, like Pindar's, toward the mythical. It is not his purpose first to make us acquainted with the subject, as is usually the intention of historical writers, but he assumes such an acquaintance; he does not himself outline the historical picture, but adds to it, as he presupposes it in the memory of his reader, only the last touches of color, and often in quite unexpected places. His style also corresponds to this : Short periods, which in the soul and imagination of the reader shall resound in a long echo." Zeller, Ausgewdhlte Briefe von David Friedrich Strauss, Bonn, 1895, 316-317. Pindar was Ranke's favorite poet.
2 For brief criticisms of Macaulay by Ranke, see History of England, I, xi.
17
258 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
This intellectual attitude may be traced, in part perhaps, to the influence of Herodotus, whose unconfined survey of the whole world fascinated Ranke at Frankfort.^ "Herodotus did not hate the barbarians," he wrote in his Weltgeschichte ; "otherwise how could he depict them?" So Ranke himself wrote the history of France, not as a German, but as a Euro- pean. An orthodox Protestant, he was suspected of a lean- ing toward Catholicism, a conservative monarchist, he held the scales with wonderful evenness in the case of Charles I. and Cromwell. His devotion to historic truth, holding everything subordinate to showing "exactly how it took place," exposed him to the charge of indifference to philo- sophical and religious interests. This he vigorously re- pelled.2 Yet, after all, it is true that it was political history to which he devoted the most of his efforts. Economic phenomena are ti'eated episodically if at all, yet to Ranke may be attributed a share in the immense development of the study of economic history. Roscher, the pioneer and founder of the historical school of economics, was a student of Ranke's at Berlin in his best period, and of all his teachers he attributed the greatest influence to Ranke and Gervinus. Roscher' s thesis on The Historical Teaching of the Greek Sophists, 1838, and his first book, entitled, Leben, Werk und Zeitalter des Thucydides, testify to Ranke's inspiration.^
We have seen that it was as a teacher of teachers and
Werke, LII, 570. Ranke called on Macaulay in March, 1857. "I told him I admired the form of his writings and particularly the way he explained the present through the past, although I did not agree with him in every point," p. 386.
1 Page 39. " Die unendliche Weltumfassung, die sich in diesem Grundbuch des historischen Wissens ausgepragt hat."
2 " It is ridiculous to hear that I am deficient in philosophical and religious interests, since it is exactly that, and that alone, which impelled me to the study of history." Letter to Ritter, August 6, 1830, 239. Alexander von Humboldt good-humoredly wrote of him as " His non-puritanical, but antipapistical Holi- ness." Letter to Sarah Austin in Janet Ross, Three Generations of English
Women, I, 197. These volumes contain several interesting glimpses of Ranke, of. I, 172, and II, 190.
^ Wolowski's sketch of Roscher in Lalor's Roscher's Political Economy, I, 30. The original title of the thesis is De historicce doctrinoe apud sophistas majores vestigiis.
LEOPOLD VON RANKE 259
writers that Ranke exerted the greatest influence at the uni- versity. It is much the same with his books. They are scholars' books. Only his History of the Popes has been a widely popular work. Four distinct translations of it were published in England and America.^ The History of Ger- many during the Reformation was partly translated, but has long been out of print. Of the French history, the first volume was put into English under the title of Civil Wars and Monarchy in France^ but the enterprise was not con- tinued. The English edition is out of print, and the Ameri- can edition has never been wholly sold. The History of England was translated by Oxford tutors through the influ- ence of Stubbs,^ but the demand in twenty years has not been sufficient to necessitate reprinting the edition. The Weltgeschiehte had the same experience as the French his- tory ; one volume only has been translated. The translations of the Ottoman and Spanish Monarchies and the Prussian History have been out of print for years. The case is differ- ent, of course, in Germany, but even there the demand for Macaulay's Englavid far surpassed that for Ranke's.^ The air of Ranke is too rarefied for the mass of readers. They need the warmth and glow of national or democratic feeling. Ranke is still a power in the academic world. Of recent English historians, Stubbs, Gardiner, and Creighton belong distinctively to his school. Stubbs stands beside Waitz; Creighton takes Ranke 's old theme and elaborates it in greater detail, and Gardiner draws more richly than the master could from Venetian, Roman, French, and Spanish relations, and in his narrative faithfully exemplified Ranke's principles and methods.* Of American historians the only
1 The explanation of this widespread demand for the History of the Popes in England is to be found, no doubt, in the great interest aroused by the. Tractarian movement and the attendant discussions.
'^ Stubbs : Seventeen Lectures on Medieval and Modern History, 57.
3 Wegele, 1054, says that Macaulay's History had " eine unendlich grossere Verbreitung " than Ranke's, This was in large measure owing to the fact that it fell in more with contemporary political feeling.
* Since writing the above, I find in a review by Alfred Stern of Gardiner's
260 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
one who shows the influence of Ranke in a marked way is Henry Adams. ^ In his work we find the criticism, preci- sion, and penetration in a remarkable degree, the character- istic and most successful use of diplomatic relations, the same comprehensive outlook.
Ranke crowned his unexampled labors ^ with his History of the World, Like the aged Humboldt, ^ as the end approached, he felt the impulse to leave the world a general view of the field of his labors — a sort of testament. The undertakingr was truly wonderful, but not so wonderful as has been sup- posed. Ranke in his lectures had been accustomed to treat long periods in a general way, sometimes covering the whole of mediaeval history, and his seminary work was mainly in that field. Occasionally ancient history was the subject of his public courses. Given, then, the preservation of his powers, the rapidity with which he turned off the volumes seems less miraculous. The labor was largely that of sift- ing and arranging accumulated material and of composition. This is clearly true of the volume on ancient histor}\ In it were utilized the results of his Frankfort studies.* The highly interesting chapters on literature are in substance the Frankfort lectures on classical literature. The critics have remarked the freshness of delineation without explaining it. The chapters on Israel come from one whose critical study
History of the Commorncealth, the remark that Gardiner is following " den Spuren Ranke'scher Objectivitat," Hist. Zeits., LXXVI, 335.
1 It mav occnr to some that George Bancroft should be mentioned as a fol- lower of Ranke's methods. This is of coarse true as regards the extensive use of diplomatic material. In other respects Bancroft shows more distinctly the infliience of Heeren, under whom he studied, and some of whose works he trans- lated. The stvle of his early work similarly betrays the influence of Gibbon.
2 The international character and cosmopolitan significance of Ranke's work is impressively shown in the valuable Bibliography prepared by William Price and published in the Report ay the American Historical Association, 1896.
' Alexander von Humboldt wrote most of his Cosmos after he was seventy- five.
* Ranke wrote Alfred von Reumont, April 15, 1879, when he was at work on the earlier part of the Weltgeschichte : "Ich benutze Biicher, die ich mir noch in der Schulpforte angeschafft und kleine Arbeiten, die ich in Frankfort a. O. ent- worfen habe, so dass Alter und Jugend unmittelbar zusammengehen," 546.
LEOPOLD VON RANKE 261
stopped with De Wette.^ The narrative of the Persian wars faithfully follows Herodotus and the older tradition. In his old age Ranke had little sympathy with skeptical criticism. ^ Enough has been said to suggest the relation of this work to Ranke's life. The veteran lives over again his youth. His legacy to the world is to be a view of the world's history; a fusing of the results of youthful labors and youthful think- ing with the calm reflection of age ; in brief, such fruits of his life work of whatever period as were not already before the public. His life was spared until he brought his heroic work nearly to the age where sixty-four years earlier his youthful spirit tarried in its course to depict the entrance upon the stage of the great bearers of modern European cul- ture. He died at the age of ninety, having devoted over sixty years of unremitting effort to the interpretation of human life from the beginning of recorded history down to his own age.
1 Ranke studied De Wette on the Old Testament in 1825, 150. Ranke does cite a modern critic, once — Dillman on Genesis — but still he adheres to a thoroughly conservative opinion.
2 Guglia, 379.
RANKE AND THE BEGINNING OF THE
SEMINARY METHOD IN TEACHING
HISTORY
RANKE AND THE BEGINNING OF THE SEMINARY > METHOD IN TEACHING HISTORY
The development and wide adoption of the seminary method in teaching history during the last two generations, and its great significance in the promotion of historical in- vestigation, lend unusual interest to the question of its origin. It is well known that Ranke, the centennial of whose birth was reverently celebrated last winter ^ in Ger- many, was the first great historical teacher 2 to develop and establish this method, but where he got the suggestion and
1 In December, 1895.
2 Gatterer, at Gottingen, in 1764, founded an Institutura Historicum, which has been regarded as a kind of Historical seminary (cf. Wegele, Geschichte der deutschen Historiographie, 761), but with doubtful propriety. In any case I find no evidence of its having suggested anything to Ranke. Heyne, in his address at the official recognition of the Institute, calls it " societas cum virorum docto- rum et historicis studiis florentium, tum juvenum ad accuratioris doctrinae laudem adspirantium," etc. In other words, Gatterer's Institute was the familiar His- torical Society made up of mature scholars and of students united to promote original research and a more comprehensive knowledge of history. Gatterer's AUgemeine Historische Bibliothek was the organ of the society (cf. Chr. G. Heynii, Opuscula Academica, I, 286). Wilken, also, the historian of the Crusades, con- ducted a seminary at Berlin before and during Ranke's time, but his work was not epoch-making. Wilken is not mentioned in Ranke's letters. Waitz in his Gluckwunschschreiben an Leopold von Ranke zum Tage der Feier seine sfunfzigjdhrigen Doctor juheldums, February 20, 1867, p. 5, says : " Historische Uebungen sind wohl schon lange einzeln an unsern Universitaten veranstaltet worden. Ich habe auch die des alten Wilken besucht, und ich ware undankbar, wenn ich nicht der man- cherlei Belehrung, die ich hier empfangen, gedachte. Aber ich glaube nicht zu viel zu sagen, wenn ich ausspreche, dass, wie das Studium der Geschichte iiber- haupt, so insonderheit das akademische Studium durch Sie ganz neue Impulse erhalten hat." Giesebrecht, in his Gedachtniss7-ede, 11, says: " Er selbst hat nicht von einem Seminar gesprochen, aber seine Uebungen sind das Semiuarium geworden f iir alle jene Seminare, die wir jetzt an unseren Universitaten besitzen."
266 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
the system he followed have not, so far as I know, been set before English readers in any detail. ^
In its earlier use the name Seminary was applied to courses designed for the training of teachers rather than to a method of giving instruction to advanced students. Down to the latter part of the last century in Germany the teachers at the Gymnasia, like American college professors for nearly a century later, were either clergymen or men who had re- ceived a theological education. As the need for trained teachers began to be more keenly felt, philological semina- ries were established at the universities to train young men to be teachers of the classics. Of these early philological seminaries the most famous was that founded at Halle in 1787 by the great Homeric critic, Wolf.^
Three years earlier than this, however, we find at Leipzig an organization which is the prototype of the modern semi- nary, although it did not assume the name. This primitive seminary was founded by C. D. Beck for the purpose of training its members to do independent work. It was known as the Societas Philologica, and met twice weekly during the remainder of Beck's life at Leipzig. The method of proced- ure was as follows: A member selected a passage from a classical author for discussion and announced it to the others a few days beforehand. At the meeting he commented on its critical, grammatical, and historical aspects, and then lis- tened to the criticisms of his associates.^
In 1799 Gottfried Hermann, who had taken his degree at Leipzig in 1790 and thus after Beck's Club was started, formed his famous Societas Graeca, which existed till 1840
1 In the excellent sketch of Ranke, written by the late Prof. J. L. Lincoln, of Brown University, and first published in In Memoriam John Larkin Lincoln, 1894, will be found Von Sybel's account of Ranke's method of work with his Seminary, 578,
2 See Mark Pattison's Essay on Wolf for a description of Wolf's Seminary. North British Revieiu, XLII, 266-268, or his collected Essays, I, 362-3, 367-9.
^ On pp. 5-13 of Commentarii Soc. Philolog. Lipsiensis edi curavit Christian Daniel Beckius, I, Lipsiae, 1801, will be found the " Historia, consilia, et instituta philologicse societatis eiusque exercitatiouum." Volumes of the Proceedings were published at different times.
RANKE'S SEMINARY METHOD 267
and numbered among its 189 active members many of the most distinguished scholars of the century. This Greek Club was conducted in the following manner: A student prepared a critical paper on some subject and handed it in to Her- mann, who read it and marked with a pencil its weak points. At the meeting of the club he passed the marked essay to a member called the opponent, who immediately opened a fire of criticism on the work. The writer defended himself as best he could, and when the discussion was closed Hermann reviewed the questions on their merits. These exercises were very stimulating and contributed in no small degree to Hermann's great success as a teacher. ^
Of these two famous pioneer seminaries Ranke was a mem- ber during his student days at Leipzig, 1814-18.2 At that time he had no special interest in history, but was deeply absorbed in classical literature. In his autobiographical sketches he characterizes Beck and Hermann as the most active and effective of his teachers, and refers to the training for teaching he had received in Beck's seminary.^ From 1818 to 1824 Ranke was a teacher of Greek and Latin and the history of classical literature in the Gymnasium at Frank- fort a. O. In 1824 he was made an assistant professor of history at Berlin, and there he began his first systematic in- struction in that subject in the spring of 1825 with a course on the History of Western Europe, including the history of literature and of the Church.'*
Among Ranke 's intimate friends at this time was Karl v. Raumer, professor of mineralogy at Erlangen. Raumer was at all times deeply interested in improving methods of teach-
1 See Koechly's Gottfried Hermann, Heidelberg, 1874, 79-81 and 240-244, for vivid descriptions of these exercises. On pp. 257-259 will be found a list of the members during the life of the club.
2 Ranke, Zur Eigenen Lebensgeschichte, 34, and Koechly, ibid., 257. Ranke, in the place just cited, refers to Beck's seminary as the " philologisch-padagogische Seminar " at Leipzig, which would indicate that pedagogical objects received some attention. His other reference to Beck's seminary is on p. 60, where it is called simply " Philologische."
8 Zur Eigenen Lebensgeschichte, 34, 60. * Ibid., 145.
268 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
ing and to this day is best known for his pedagogical writ- ings. He began his career as a teacher of natural science at Breslau in 1810. He was disgusted at being expected to teach mineralogy without minerals, as was then the not uncommon practice.^ At Halle in 1819 he had the use of a fair working collection. His instincts as a teacher led him toward practical work and personal contact with the stu- dents.2 Soon after Ranke went to Berlin, Raumer advised his friend to offer practice courses in history. ^ The sugges- tion struck Ranke favorably and he wrote back, July 12, 1825, "I have just profited by your advice and announced a practice course in history (Jiistorische Uehungen) for the next term. I very much wish to stand in a vital relation to my students, although, to be sure, I am not quite the man to be equal to the noble position of a true teacher."^ The Index Lectionum for that year contains the simple announce- ment without further explanation:
"L. Ranke, Dr.
I. Publice exercitationes historicas moderabitur semel p. hebd."5
That Ranke carried out his design appears from his assertion in 1837 that he had conducted practice courses since the beginning of his university activity.^
1 Raumer, Geschichte der Pddagogik, IV, 95. This fourth volume is a sketch of the history of the German universities followed by an autobiographical account of the author's experiences as a student and professor. An English translation will be found in Barnard's American Journal of Education, VI, VII. The passage mentioned in the text may be found in Barnard VII, 77.
2 Compare his essay, Katheder-Vortrag ; Dialog., ibid., 205-211; Barnard, Am. Jour, of Education, VII, 201-206.
8 Possibly Raumer's experience as a pupil of Hugo may have contributed to this suggestion. Hugo's lectures on law at Gottingen were attended with " Ausar- beitung juristischer Aufgaben " (Raumer, ibid., 73).
4 Ranke, ibid., 148.
8 See Travels in the North of Germany in the Years 1825 and 1826. By Henry E. D wight, A. M. N. Y. 1829, 448.
6 Werke, LII, 479. Dove, in his " Life of Ranke," in the Allgemeine deutsche Biographie, says that the dominant factor of Ranke's teaching was his practice courses as established in a new form, first in 1833. Ranke nowhere gives any
RANKKS SEMINARY METHOD 269
It is clear, then, that the seminary method of instruction in history was an adaptation by Ranke of a method already well tried in classical philology at the suggestion of a teacher of science who keenly realized the value of practical work. Ranke 's own experiences in the classical seminaries of Her- mann and Beck, and his instincts as a teacher, disposed him favorably to Raumer's suggestion. ^
His own ideas of the function of the seminary are expressed in the preface to the first published work of his students, Jahrhilcher des deutschen Reiches unter dem Sdchsischen Hause (1837). "On the subjective and personal side this undertaking began in the following way. A university pro- fessor very soon perceives that he has two classes of stu- dents, those who want to be well grounded in science either through their desire for general culture or on account of their future careers, and others who feel within themselves the impulse and call to take active part in the advancement of science. The lectures, I believe, may be suitably directed
hint of a change of method, and evidently regarded 1825 as the beginning of his seminary (see below, p. 270). His work in Berlin was suspended from 1827 to the spring of 1831 by his Italian journey. Giesebrecht distinctly implies that the seminary was formed in the latter year, or early in 1832 {Geddchtnissrede, 11). Apparently the earliest of his pupils to gain distinction was Waitz, who joined his seminary in 1833.
1 Professor Lincoln writes: "These exercises, as he called them, and which he instituted in imitation of Beck's Philological Seminary, of which he was a member in Leipzig, proved to be the seminary of all historical seminaries which have since been established in the German universities with such signal educa- tional results." — In Memoriam John Larkin Lincoln, 577. The latter part of his sentence is from Giesebrecht ; the former part is the only assertion of the kind I have met with in reading a considerable body of Ranke literature. Possibly Professor Lincoln got it from Hanke himself, whom he knew as a student, and later. Ranke may have been influenced, too, by Boechk's Philological Seminary, founded at Berlin in 1812. In 1835 he was a member of the Griechische Gesell- schaft, conducted by Bekker. Both Boechk and Bekker were students of Wolf's. The announcement of Boechk's seminary reads :
"In seminario philologico Euripidis Iphigeniam in Aulide sodalibus inter- pretandam proponet Boechk dieb. Merc, et Saturni hor. X-XI. Ceterisque Seminarii exercitationibus more solito pragerit." In the theological seminary, Marheinecke and Neander announced exercitationes in church history. Dwight's Travels, 450.
270 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
to both. It is certainly useful for the former to get some idea of the tools of the scholar and of original investigation, while the latter class must needs get a bird's-eye view of the whole field of their work, so that later they may not lose their bearings in the details of special investigation. Both must follow the lectures with attention, whether they are devoted to the logical development of the meaning of his- tory or to the presentation of connected facts. Yet the lec- tures are not enough. Especially for the latter and much less numerous class is a closer introduction to the real work of the scholar, to personal activity, desirable. This need for many years has been met sometimes in the seminaries under public authority, and sometimes by personal encouragement in voluntary practice courses.
"Since the beginning of my university teaching it has been a pleasure to me to conduct historical practice courses {his- torische Uehungen). More than once I have had the good fortune to see young men of ability and zeal take part in them.^ Gradually works were produced which were not without scholarly significance; they threw light on difficult points in a new way, and, as they were additions to our knowledge, were not unworthy of being presented to the attention of the learned public. Yet I could not bring myself to encourage the publication of disconnected essays. The ambition which is inseparably connected with one's first publication, with one's entrance into the literary world, should be fixed upon a worthy and important subject. It also seemed to me more advisable to promote the joint pro- duction of a more considerable work which should contribute something essential, as we Germans say, and perhaps fill a gap, rather than merely to put forth a specimen of our activ- ity, in which the world could have little interest. In 1834, upon my suggestion, the Philosophical Faculty of the Uni- versity of Berlin offered a prize for the best essay on the life and work of King Henry I. Several members of our club
1 These sentences, written in 1837, clearly indicate that Ranke's seminary was then more than four years old.
RANKE'S SEMINARY METHOD 271
competed for it and the prize was awarded to one of them.^ Among the other essays were several of merit and one re- ceived a second prize. As a whole, these essays surpassed my expectations." Ranke then goes on to say that he sug- gested to the more advanced members of the seminary that instead of longer scattering their efforts they should concen- trate them on the investigation of the Saxon period. They did so, and the result was the Jahrhucher des deuisehen Retches unter dem Sdchsischen Hause. The essays were care- fully criticised by the members of the seminary. Ranke con- cludes : " I scarcely need give the assurance that these works are independent productions, for they show it themselves. I do not subscribe to all the assertions or judgments expressed in them, nor, on the other hand, would I assume for myself the praise which the authors may have deserved. Every teacher knows that the best that he can do consists in his indirect influence, under which, fortunate natural abilities and peculiar scientific aptitudes receive the freest scope for their exercise." ^
Among the fragments printed with Ranke's memoirs and letters is the following reminiscence, after fifty years, of this early seminary : " I recall in the presence of the once young but now gray -haired members who took part in the historische Uehungen the studies in German history then begun. I have just looked through a long series of Jahrhiicher des deutschen Reiches^ but a still broader survey is afforded by the historico-diplomatic studies conducted in all the other fields. What we then began modestly, the seed which we then planted, is grown to a, great tree in whose branches the birds of the air lodge. I connected my historical seminary {Uehungen) with the earlier studies which I had prosecuted in Frankfort. The old collections of various kinds, with their imperfect texts, I had already begun to read. My memory goes back even further to Stenzel, who was tutor in
1 Georg Waitz. The prize essay was worked over into his published work on King Henry I,
2 TFerArc, LII, 479-481.
272 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
the family of a preacher at the Nicolai Church in Leipzig, but also a trained historian by profession. It was at his rooms that I first saw a collection of Scriptores, and I began to read some of them under his direction. This I continued in Frankfort, where I attempted an essay on the old Em- perors in connection with my teaching. The first volumes of Pertz appeared later, but they reached only to the Caro- lingian period and not actually into the history of the Ger- mans. We therefore had to resort again to the old editions. " I am still surprised at the ability and application of those young students who gathered about me. There were : Giese- brecht, who called on me to-day; Kopke, Wilmanns, and Waitz, to whom I then said — such was the impression he made on me — that he was destined to be the Muratori of German history. Giesebrecht had a poetic temperament, he already was a skilful writer; Kopke, ingenious, with the gifts of a scholar; Donniges, enterprising, full of practical ideas. In this circle the work went on. We came to the Chronicon Oorhejense^ whose spuriousness I recognized at first without being able to prove it. The members of the club made the investigation which was to prove it not genu- ine. Waitz at that time was not with us. He had gone to Copenhagen, and when he returned he was reluctant to adopt our thesis, but soon he convinced himself. With Hirsch, one of our most industrious members, he prepared the essay which convinced us all. Hirsch was the youngest of the group, very well trained and zealous. Then we united to prepare the Annals of the Saxon House, What prompted me to this was the example of Raumer's Hohenstauffen and Sten- zel's Salian Emperors. ^ The blessing of heaven guided these beginnings. The men have made their way in the world, but the old ties of friendship still hold the survivors together, and to me it is a kind of family alliance in literature." ^
1 Ranke also notes th^t residence in childhood and youthful travels in Saxony had early kindled an interest in the country.
2 Zur Eigenen Lebensgeschichte, 649-650. Memorandum entitled Die Alien Schuler, April 6, 1884. Other particulars about the preparation of the Jahrb'ucher may be found in Ranke's letters to Waitz during this period.
RANKKS SEMINARY METHOD 273
Of Ranke's method in conducting the seminary, Von Sybel has given a brief sketch in his memorial address : " For training those who wished to make a profession of writing history, he instituted special historical practice courses, in which, under his sure guidance, the pupil, without much theorizing, learned critical method through his own efforts. Ranke allowed him free choice of his subject, but was always ready from his inexhaustible store of knowledge to propose instructive problems. Errors arising from neglect of critical principles were judged unmercifulty, yet in a friendly man- ner. For the rest, he suffered each mind to follow its own bent, mindful of that supreme rule of teaching that the work of the school is not the formation, but the development of the native powers." ^
A more complete description of this nursery of historians is given by the greatest teacher and scholar among all of Ranke's pupils, Georg Waitz, and with this our sketch of the history of Ranke's seminary may fitly close.
"It was never your wish that the young friends who attached themselves to you should all follow in your foot- steps, or that a definite series of works should be divested of individual characteristics ; least of all did you desire to form a school in the sense of requiring conformity to definite views and ways of looking at things, either as regards the form of presentation or the general conception of the subject. On the contrary, the greatest freedom in the selection of prob- lems and in the methods of treatment was taken for granted. You were not sorry to see the different personalities around you each developing his particular inclinations and capabili- ties. You allowed yourself to be drawn by us to subjects hitherto strange to you, but which your comprehensive mind soon mastered. What a variety of subjects from ancient, mediseval, and modern history was discussed during the years while I was a member of the seminary! You were not quite satisfied once that the majority of the members preferred other fields to modern history — I suppose because
1 " Gedachtnissrede auf Leopold v, Ranke," Hist. Zeitschrift, 56, 474.
18
274 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
in this field the diflBculties of the management of materials are so much greater — but you always acceded, showed rec- ognition and encouragement for every effort, gave opportun- ity to the peculiar ability of each, and knew how to moderate and to reconcile differences when they came into sharp con- flict. And with whatever active sympathy did you follow the later work of the members, no matter what direction it took, or whether they adhered to or diverged from your treatment of the subject.
"To every view you gave freedom; even pretty strong antagonisms in politics and religion, which so often are in- volved in the problems of the historians, you removed, and never let them disturb the relations of the old association. Scientific earnestness and honesty of conviction alone were important for you. So to-day men of the most divergent positions and opinions, who once sat at your feet, gather around you and all confess that from you more than from any one else they received stimulus and teaching. With the historians gather also many who have achieved distinction in other fields, teachers of political science and philosophy, practical statesmen and journalists."^
1 GlucJcwunschschreiben, 4, 5. Waitz, on pp. 5-7, describes the methods he fol- lowed in his own seminary at Gottingen.
FRANCIS PARKMAN
FRANCIS PARKMAN^
In no branch of literature during the century just past have American writers secured such widely recognized dis- tinction as in history. The confluence, early in the century, of two strong currents of intellectual activity, the critical spirit and method of Wolf and Niebuhr, and the sympathetic contemplation of the past, its monuments and life, inspired by the genius of Chateaubriand and Scott, gave a powerful impetus to historical research and invested with a romantic charm times and peoples which to the eighteenth century seemed equally devoid of interest and of instruction. In consequence of the discovery of new sources and the more penetrating and fruitful study of the old, the mass of exist- ing historical literature rapidly became antiquated, and the whole field of history stood ready for fresh exploration. The spirit and method of the new scholarship were soon communicated to the United States by such men as Tick- nor, Everett, Bancroft, and others who returned from study at Gottingen, and the new historical movement in Europe was hardly in full swing, in the second decade of the cen- tury, before the younger generation of literary men in this country fell into line and one after another offered to the world historical narratives that without misgiving could be ranked with the work of Ranke, Raumer, Thierry, or Guizot. The achievements of Irving, Prescott, Ticknor, Bancroft and Motley cannot but seem surprising if one compares our con- temporary barrenness in the allied fields of philosophy and economics.
1 Written as an introduction to The California and Oregon Trail. T. Y. Crowell & Co. New York, 1901.
278 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
The opportunity was, in fact, unique. The complete reno- vation in historical studies forced European scholars to begin again at the beginning and Americans could enter the com- petition on an equality with them. The publication, for example, of Navarre te's documents made Robertson obsolete and opened the way for Irving to write his Columbus with- out fearing the advent of any rival with superior resources. Fresh from his studies in Gottingen and from contact with the best minds in England and France, Ticknor could with equal confidence rear the solid fabric of his History of Span- ish Literature. In like manner, Bancroft, trained in history and philosophy in the best German universities, brought a greater breadth of knowledge to bear upon the story of the English Colonies than had before been bestowed on such a theme by an English writer. Prescott, too, fortunate in his wealth, enlisted in his service to collect material several of the most accomplished scholars in Europe, and wove their contributions to his store into a narrative which for literary charm none of them could equal. Then, following his Span- iards to the New World, in the collision of European civiliza- tion with the ancient culture of Mexico and Peru he laid hold of two of the most dramatic incidents in all history. In the meantime the long panorama of the life in the north- ern forests, of the clash of French and English, of fur trader and settler, and of both with the Indian, had been unfolded by Cooper in a series of romances that carried his name and familiarized his theme throughout the civilized world.
These examples naturally turned the minds of young men of literary ambitions toward history. Such was the effect on Motley and Parkman, the most distinguished successors of Irving and Prescott. Motley was drawn by Prescott's suc- cess into the European field and chose for his life work the history of the struggle of the Dutch against Spanish rule. Parkman, on the other hand, under the spell of Cooper, and hardly less fascinated by Thierry's portrayal of the move- ments of contending races in his Norman Conquest^ found, in undertaking a companion picture to Prescott's Conquest of
FRANCIS PARKMAN 279
Mexico and Conquest of Peru^ the opportunity to reconcile indulgence in his profound love of wild nature with the most conscientious effort to give an adequate historical setting to the drama of the forest, with which the novelist had delighted both hemispheres.
For the details of Parkman's life the reader must be re- ferred to the recent biography by a friend of his later years, Mr. Charles H. Farnham, which contains his autobiography and considerable extracts from his diaries and letters and from such of his minor writings as throw light on his life and opinions ; to the admirable Memoir of his college class- mate and lifelong friend Mr. Edward Wheelwright, in the first volume of the Proceedings of the Colonial Society of Mas- sachusetts ; and for a revelation of his character to Parkman's novel. Vassal Morton.
He was born in Boston of parents of New England ances- try, September 16, 1823. His father, the Rev. Francis Parkraan, was for many years a prominent Unitarian clergy- man. The boyhood of the historian revealed the dominant tastes of his later life. He was studious at school and espe- cially interested in poetry and in acquiring a varied command over his mother tongue, but his vacations he devoted to the woods and to woodland sports. As early as his sophomore year in college, where he was a member of the Harvard class of 1844, he had chosen history as his life work, and, designing to combine the pursuit of literature with the grati- fication of his love of Nature, he selected as his particular subject " ' The Old French War,' — that is, the war that ended in the Conquest of Canada, — for here, as it seemed to me, the forest drama was more stirring and the forest stage more thronged with appropriate actors than in any other passage of our history. It was not till some years later that I en- larged the plan to include the whole course of the American Conflict between France and England, or in other words, the history of the American forest; for this was the light in which I regarded it. My theme fascinated me, and I was haunted with wilderness images day and night."
280 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
No one of our American historians determined upon Lis career and selected his field so early in life, and no one of them made so intelligent and broadly planned a preparation for his chosen work. Irving knew Spain and Spaniards, but could not know the primitive inhabitants of the West Indies, nor did he follow the track of Columbus ; Prescott's knowl- edge of Spain, as of Mexico and Peru, was derived wholly from books or conversation; Bancroft's tastes did not lead him to study the frontier of his time where could be observed with slight variation the chief phases of Colonial life ; Motley knew his Netherlands and numbered many Netherlanders among his friends, but he never saw Spain, and apparently did not regard a first-hand study of the Spanish character as a part of his preparation. Parkman, on the other hand, while he was not less assiduous in the pursuit and analysis of documents, devoted extraordinary pains to the personal study of the actual phenomena with which he had to deal.
The scene of action was the frontier and the forest; the actors : French and English adventurers and explorers, bush- rangers and pioneers, missionaries and wild Indians. Real- izing the relative permanence of these types — that frontier life and colonial life were essentially the same, and that an identical environment acting on the same human factors would produce in the middle of the nineteenth century sub- stantially what existed in the eighteenth, — Parkman not only systematically studied these phases of human character where they could be found, unsophisticated by modern ideas, but he lived with the people themselves.
He had already familiarized himself with the wilder parts of New England, and during his sojourn in Rome in 1844, he spent some days in a Convent of the Passionist Fathers to see face to face the monk and devotee, and now he re- solved to study the real Indian neither bettered nor spoiled by civilization. In the St. Louis of 1846 he would still find not a little that was like the Montreal of 1756, Fort Laramie would reproduce in some essentials the Machilli- mackinac of Pontiac's time, and in the Oregon pioneers could
FRANCIS PARKMAN 281
be seen the counterparts of the sturdy settlers of the forests of Pennsylvania and Ohio; the French half-breed trappers and guides were still the same. This experience, the most remarkable in his course of self -training, is recounted in The Oregon Trail,
The Indian literature of the day was prolific, and the most popular author in the country had made three notable con- tributions to it. Yet the Oregon Trail differs essentially from Irving 's Tour on the Prairies^ Astoria^ or The Adven- tures of Captain Bonneville^ for it not only records the vivid impressions by a most alert observer of a bygone phase of life, but it is, in addition, a fragment of the autobiography of an historian enjoying an almost unique experience. For to Parkman the whole excursion was a journey into the past; each successive stage took him not merely further west, but further back in time.
He was on the prairies about five months in all, about five weeks of which he spent in a village of the Ogillalah Sioux. In his pursuit of these Indians and his sojourn with them, he went as far west, following in part the Oregon Trail, as the Black Hills in Wyoming; then, turning toward the South, he went past Pike's Peak to Pueblo, and homeward in part by the Santa F^ Trail.
Pow-wows, war dances, feasts, buffalo hunting, Oregon trains, Santa F^ caravans and companies of frontier troops on the march to New Mexico — all the varied spectacle of a life now gone forever in this country passed before his eyes and was indelibly printed upon his mind. The influence of this experience can be traced throughout all his works, and in his latest volumes he recalls incidents of this summer. By a strange fatality, however, a course of life that has re- stored many invalids to health nearly cost ^him his life, and bequeathed him an accumulation of infirmities which at- tended him to the grave. He was taken ill soon after leav- ing St. Louis, and then, and later on during renewed attacks of the malady, when he should have rested, a seemingly imperative necessit}^ of continued exertion overstrained a
282 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
system by nature delicate and high-strung. Thenceforth he had to work imprisoned by diseases and all but entire loss of sight.
Upon his return, while in search of health, he dictated from his notes and diary, the story of the summer to his companion in the journey, Quincy Adams Shaw, and the publication of it began in the Knickerbocker Magazine in February, 1847, with the title The Oregon Trail, or a Shim- mer Journey out of Bounds. It was republished in book form in 1849, when the publisher, availing himself of the California excitement, to catch the eye, enlarged the title into The California and Oregon Trail, being Sketches of Prairie and Rocky Mountain Life. The secondary title pre- cisely describes the contents of the book and the original name Oregon Trail must have been selected in 1847 for the same reasons which led the publisher in 1849 to add Cali- fornia to the title-page. As far as the contents go, the name Santa F^ Trail would have been equally appropriate.
Before the appearance of The Oregon Trail in book form, Parkman began the composition of the Conspiracy of Pon- tiae. In the midst of obstacles, always apparently insur- mountable, and for long stretches actually so, with heroic fortitude he kept at work when most men would have given up in despair. For many years he was unable to read or write for more than five minutes at a time, and the first part of Pontiac was written at the rate of six lines a day. His courage did not fail, and after three years of intermittent labor the completed work was offered to the public (1851).
With wise appreciation of his own powers and of the limi- tations under which he labored, he had tried his hand on an episode of his main theme, the final struggle of the Indian, after the collapse of the power of France, to roll back the advancing tide of English civilization. The story of Pon- tiac required neither the mass of reading nor the critical in- sight and ripened judgment which the later works demanded. On the other hand, the range of action from Philadelphia to Mackinac, the varied scenes of frontier life and warfare gave
FRANCIS PARKMAN 283
an ample canvas for vivid description stamped with the fresh impressions of his western travels and recent sojourn among the Sioux. In the earlier chapters, as an introduction to his subject, he takes a broad survey of the whole history of New France, sketching in outline what was to be his life work.
In the thirteen years that follow he labored on under the same cruel shackles, varying severer studies by gardening and by writing his only novel. Vassal Morton (1856). Of Vassal Morton it is sufficient to say that its chief importance to-day lies in its reflection of Parkman's character. In parts it is a thinly disguised self-portrait. Parkman mentions in several of his prefaces his disabilities in a purely objective way, just as he recorded the other conditions of his work. In the narratives there is, however, no odor of the sick-room, no feebleness; the artist's all-embracing memory and con- structive imagination transport him to the woods, and the strain of the effort is betrayed only by a certain tenseness of style. But in Vassal Morton he let himself out, and under the mask of Morton's agony in his dungeon, his own sufferings are revealed.
The novel is full of sharply drawn portraits, vivid descrip- tion of nature and lifelike pictures of manners. It is a little melodramatic in plot, rather too brilliant in conversation, and unreal at critical junctures, but it is interesting, and hardly deserved oblivion. Parkman did not include it in his works, and is said not to have liked to hear it mentioned. One can- not help feeling that as he attained distinction he felt a certain shame at having betrayed his feelings even in that indirect fashion and recovered his consistency of stoicism by ignoring this single lapse.
In the introduction to The Pioneers of France in the Neiv World (1865) Parkman announces his plan of a series to be devoted to " the attempt of Feudalism, Monarchy, and Rome, to master a continent, where at this hour, half a million bay- onets are vindicating the ascendancy of a regulated free- dom." After contrasting in a few paragraphs of compressed but richly colored description the contending civilizations, he
284 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
declares the method of historical composition which he has adopted. His aim " was, while scrupulously and rigorously adhering to the truth of facts, to animate them with the life of the past, and, so far as might be, clothe the skeleton with flesh. Faithfulness to the truth of history involves far more than a research, however patient and scrupulous, into special facts. The narrator must seek to imbue himself with the life and spirit of the time. He must study events in their bearings near and remote ; in the character, habits, and man- ners of those who took part in them. He must be as it were, a sharer or a spectator of the action he describes. "
In rapid succession following the Pioneers came The Jesuits in 1867, The Discover^/ of the Great West in 1869, The Old Regime in Canada in 1874, Frontenac in 1877, Montcalm and Wolfe in two volumes in 1 884, and A Half Century of Con- flict also in two volumes in 1892.
In addition to these labors, no mean achievement for the most vigorous and unhampered mind, Parkman found time to write a considerable body of magazine articles and re- views, to revise in succession the earlier volumes of the series and in the case of The Discovery of the Great West to reconstruct the work in the light of the abundant mate- rials on La Salle which were inaccessible to him when it was originally written.
A detailed criticism of these works will hardly be expected in this j)lace, yet something may well be said as to their range and distinctive features.
Some of the volumes, owing to the nature of the subject, are rather a collection of detached narratives than a con- nected story. In The Pioneers^ for example, the two main themes are the rivalry of the French and Spaniards for Flor- ida and the explorations of Champlain, but both parts are appropriately introduced by vivid sketches of earlier voyages and explorations such as those of De Soto and Verrazano. To The Jesuits is prefixed a compact monograph on the Algonquin Indians which saves the narratives in the main body of the work from being overloaded with explanatory
FRANCIS PARKMAN 285
comment. Most varied of all is The Half Century of Con- flict^ in which the reader ranges from Maine to Louisiana, and follows the exploration of the western prairies. It is in these last volumes, in those on Montcalm and Wolfe and in Frontenae that the history of the English Colonies comes in for special consideration.
Parkman belonged to the narrative school of historians, and chose to picture the past rather than to reason about it. In his conception of the great drama of two rival and diverse civilizations contending for the mastery of the New World, in his nearness to the action and his personal exploration of the scene, and not least in the varied charm of his story, Parkman is the Herodotus of our Western World.
Yet he does not altogether refrain from drawing the lesson for the politician or renounce philosophizing, and in one of his volumes. The Old Regime in Canada^ he has produced an admirable piece of institutional or social history, an exami- nation, as he called it, of "the political and social machine," which is a lit counterpart and supplement to De Tocqueville's Ancien Regime en France,
The most distinctive quality of Parkman 's narratives is picturesqueness. The action is set in a scene artistically reproduced from the author's careful observation. Know- ing his human agents from personal study of the type as well as of their literary memorials, sensitive to all the varied aspects of nature, and familiar with each locality, he visualizes the whole action with extraordinary vividness. It passes his eyes like a panorama. The natural scene plays no such part in the work of any other historical writer, and the search for such exquisite pictures of wild nature in America as abound in his pages would not be an easy one even in our voluminous literature of outdoor life and nature study. In illustration of this artistic gift his descriptions of such widely diverse scenes as a southern swamp, a Canadian winter, or a prairie river in summer-time may be given. The first two are from The Pioneers^ the last from La Salle. "The deep swamp, where, out of the black and root-encumbered slough, rise
286 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
the huge buttressed trunks of the southern cypress, the gray Spanish moss drooping from every bough and twig, wrap- ping its victims like a drapery of tattered cobwebs, and slowly draining away their life ; for even plants devour each other, and play their silent parts in the universal tragedy of nature." — "Here the self -exiled company were soon besieged by the rigors of the Canadian winter. The rocks, the shores, the pine trees, the solid floor of the frozen river, all alike were blanketed in snow, beneath the keen cold rays of the dazzling sun." — "They glided calmly down the tranquil stream. At night, the bivouac, — the canoes inverted on the bank, the flickering fire, the meal of bison flesh or veni- son, the evening pipes, and slumber beneath the stars; and when in the morning they embarked again, the mist hung on the river like a bridal veil ; then melted before the sun, till the glassy water and the languid woods basked breathless in the sultry glare."
To the study of human character and motives, Parkman was drawn from his youth, and his pages are filled with sketches and portraits, into the composition of which went not only general knowledge of human nature, but intimate knowledge of the individual obtained by entering into his life and looking out upon the world with his eyes. That he achieved high success in delineating types of character and ideals far different from his own is evinced by the number of French Canadian scholars and Catholics that he numbered among his friends and admirers. Not that they were wholly satisfied with the story of the long effort to plant a new France in North America, orthodox and loyal, that came from the clear-headed New Englander, the Puritan rational- ist and aristocratic republican, for types of men so divergent cannot write each other's history altogether acceptably ; but to win each other's respect and to spur each other on in the noble race for truth was no mean achievement.
In England Parkman is not infrequently accorded the first place among American historical writers for his rare combi- nation of exact research with a narrative style so full of life
FRANCIS PARKMAN 287
and poetic beauty. On the continent, however, owing, no doubt, to the remoteness of his theme, and to the fact that Frenchmen could hardly be expected to find in the story of failure and loss the same interest that the story of triumph inspires in the Englishman, Parkman has never attained the popularity which came to Irving, Prescott, Bancroft, and Motley. Only The Pioneers and The Jesuits have been translated into French, and only these two and The Old Regime into German.
It is perhaps too soon to attempt an estimate of the prob- able permanence of Parkman's fame, yet one or two factoids in the problem may be indicated. The breadth of his prepa- ration, his occasional preservation of oral tradition, his per- sonal knowledge of wild life and of the American Indian such as no successor can ever obtain will always give his narra- tives in some measure the character of sources. The de- velopment of the science of ethnology, for example, has antiquated Prescott's Mexico and Peru except as a charm- ing reproduction of the impressions and exaggeration of the Spanish historians of the Conquest; but Parkman grew up with the scientific study of American Ethnology, was one of its promoters, and in a large measure embodied its results in his work. Making as conscientious an effort as ever his- torian did by means of documents to understand and reclothe the past with the habiliments of life, his success will prove of a more permanent kind than that of Motley or Prescott, because of his completer equipment for a realistic grasp of that past which he was so near and which he caught as it faded away forever. Finally, with the growth of Canada and of the West, the number of people for whom Parkman's histories are the epic of the founders of the State is ever in- creasing. It is hardly rash, then, in view of these considera- tions and of the rare and varied charm of his narrative to conclude that for a far longer period than is likely to be the fortune of Prescott, Motley, or Bancroft, the work of Francis Parkman will be proof
" ' gainst the tooth of time And razure of oblivion."
JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE
JAMES ANTHONY FKOUDE^
James Anthony Froude was born in Dartington rectory, Totness, Devonshire, April 23, 1818. His childhood was spent in typically English surroundings of the olden time. His father was archdeacon of Totness, and exercised also the functions of a civil magistrate. He was remembered in after years by his son as " a continually busy, useful man of the world, a learned and cultivated antiquary, and an accom- plished artist." Of his early training Froude wrote: "Our spiritual lessons did not go beyond the catechism. We were told that our business in life was to work and to make an honorable position for ourselves. About doctrine. Evangeli- cal or Catholic, I do not think that in my early boyhood I ever heard a single word, in church or out of it."
He went to Oxford while the memory of his brother, Hur- rell Froude, one of the most brilliant of the Tractarian group, was still fresh. He had already "swallowed such antidotes to Catholicism " as would be derived from a careful reading of Gibbon, and he was fortified against scepticism by Paley and Grotius ; but as yet he had little notion of the Evangeli- cal wing of the church. Pilgrim's Progress, even, he never read until he was grown up. At Oxford he seemed to the friends of his brother to be " keeping the party and the move- ment at arm's length." Mozley tells us that "his habits and amusements were solitary," and that "he combined in a rare degree self-confidence, imagination, and inquiry." Froude listened to Newman's sermons with deep interest, read Hume carefully, and found himself in great perplexity.
His confidence in his Oxford teachers was put to a severe
1 Published in The Nation, October 25, 1894, as an obituary.
292 ESSAYS m HISTORICAL CRITIC iSM
strain shortly after graduation by a visit to the family of an evangelical clergyman in Ireland, where he found Christian- ity to be "part of the atmosphere which we breathed." He saw there the genuine fruits of the Reformation which he had been taught at Oxford "to hate as rebellion." His reverence for the reformers revived. " Fact itself was speak- ing for them. . . . Modern history resumed its traditionary aspect." When he returned to Oxford in 1842, as Fellow of Exeter, he had learned " that equall}^ good men could take different views in theology, and Newmanism had ceased to have an exclusive interest for him."
Feeling unsettled in his views, he "read hard in modem history and literature," including Carlyle, Goethe, Lessing, Neander, and Schleiermacher. He approached modern sci- ence through The Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation. "As I had perceived before," he says, "that evangelicals could be as saint- like as Catholics, so now I found that men of the highest gifts could differ from both by whole diameters in the interpretation of the same phenomena." He then dis- covered that the Catholic revival in Oxford was but part of the general movement of reaction in Europe.
At this time he was invited by Newman to contribute to the Lives of English Saints. His reading for this purpose took him into a world where " the order of nature seems only to have existed to give holy men an opportunity of showing their superiority to material conditions." After writing one life he "had to retreat from his occupation." But "the excursion among the will-o'-the-wisps of the spiritual mo- rasses" did not leave him as it found him. "I had been taught by Newman that there was no difference in kind between the saints' miracles and the miracles of the Bible." The alternative probability now forced itself upon him, " that all supernatural stories were legendary, wherever found," and he met the issue with courage although not with com- posure. His distress drew from him a cry of pain, and in the mournful reflections of The Nemesis of Faith, 1848, he revealed to the world his mental struggles.
JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE 293
The work was widely read, and received the censure of the Oxford authorities. In later years Froude referi'ed to it as "something written not wisely, in which heterodoxy was flavored with sentimeatalism." To this sorrowing Werther how like a dash of cold water must have come Carlyle's gruff comment that " he should burn his own smoke and not trouble other people's nostrils with it." The evidence of Froude's courage is to be found in his actions rather than his words. " I found myself unfitted for a clergvman's posi- tion [he was in deacon's orders], and I abandoned it. I did not leave the church. 1 withdrew into the position of a lay member, in which I have ever since remained. I gave up my fellowship and I gave up my profession with the loss of my existing means of maintenance, and with the sacrifice of my future prospects."
He became acquainted with Carlyle in 1849, although not intimately so until 1860. His relationship to Carlyle is the key to his intellectual life. In 1884 he wrote: "I had, . . . from the time I became acquainted with his writings, looked upon him as my own guide and master — so absolutely that I could have said: Malim err are cum Platone quam cum aliis bene sentire ; or, in Goethe's words, which I did indeed often repeat to myself : Mit deifiem Meister zu irren ist dein G-ewinn, The practice of submission to the authority of one whom one recognizes as greater than one's self outweighs the chance of occasional mistake." After all his struggles he was to take a position toward Carlyle essentially the same as that of Newman toward the church, so pervading still was the spirit of the Oxford Movement in the air he breathed. Froude now turned to literature for support, and became a frequent contributor to the Westminster Review and to Frazer's Magazine^ of which he later became the editor. The first two volumes of his History of England appeared in 1856, and he was occupied with this work for the next six- teen years.
His first visit to the United States, in 1872, partook of the nature of a political mission. He delivered lectures to en-
294 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
lighten Americans on the Irish question. Later, he trav- elled in South Africa, Australia, and the West Indies. He was deeply interested in the preservation of the empire, and he lamented the apathy of the home government in regard to the welfare of the colonies, whose value he placed in the opportunities they offered for the expansion of the British people. His narratives of these voyages abound in glowing descriptions of nature, and melancholy reflections on the state of politics in democracies.
Like Carlyle, he was drawn to strong men, to the heroes ; and his biographies of Luther, Bunyan, and Carlyle, of Becket, Caesar, and Beaconsfield, are among the most suc- cessful and characteristic productions of his pen. Several volumes of essays, by the great range of their subjects and the never-failing interest imparted to them, bear testimony to the versatility of his mind.
In 1892 Froude was appointed Regius professor of history at Oxford, an academic honor which it has been customary to bestow upon men who would adorn the position. Actual teaching or lecturing forms a relatively small part of a Regius professor's duties, which lie rather in the field of research and authorship. Fronde's views of history differed widely from those of Stubbs and Freeman, his immediate predeces- sors. Freeman had for years been a relentless critic of his work, and had gone so far in one of his published lectures as to hold up Froude, in a thinly disguised description, in cutting terms, as an example of all that was objectionable in historical writing. Not unnaturally, lively protest was heard against the appointment. Yet Froude deserved the distinction better than three-quarters of his predecessors.
History for Froude was the drama of human life. Like the drama, its main value is not scientific but ethical. "It is a voice for ever sounding across the centuries the laws of right and wrong. . . . Justice and truth alone endure and live. Injustice and falsehood may be long-lived, but dooms- day comes at last to them, in French revolutions and other terrible ways." Another lesson is, that "we should draw
JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE 295
no horoscopes; that we should expect little, for what we expect will not come to pass. Revolutions, reformations — those vast movements into which heroes and saints have flung themselves, in the belief that they were the dawn of the millennium — have not borne the fruit which they looked for. Millenniums are still faraway."
History should be true to life; it can only approximate truth to past fact. " If the drama is the grandest when the action is the least explicable by laws, because then it best resembles life, then history will be the grandest also under the same conditions." "For the mere hard purposes of his- tory, the Iliad and the Odyssey are the most effective books ever written." "Wherever possible, let us not be told about this man or that. Let us hear the man himself speak, let us see him act, and let us be left to form our own opinions about him." "The supreme excellence of the Elizabethan literature is in its purely objective character; and the most perfect English history which exists is to be found, in my opinion, in the historical plays of Shakspere. . . . Shak- spere's object was to exhibit as faithfully as he could the exact character of the great actors in the national drama — the circumstances which surround them, and the motives, internal and external, by which they were influenced. To know this is to know all. . . . No such directness of in- sight, no such breadth of sympathy, has since been applied to the writing of English history. "
Fronde considered a "constructive philosophy of history impossible as yet; for a long time to come study must be confined to analysis." He "objected to all historical theories as calculated to vitiate the observation of facts without which such speculations are not worth the paper they are written upon." "Neither history nor any other knowledge can be obtained except by scientific methods." He was under no illusions in regard to himself. Three years ago he wrote: "For the rest, I do not pretend to impartiality. ... In every conclusion which we form, in every conviction which is forced upon us, there is still a subjective element. . . .
296 ESSAYS IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM
For myself I can say that I have discriminated with such faculty as I possess. I have kept back nothing. I have con- sciously distorted nothing which conflicts with my own views. I have accepted what seems sufficiently proved. I have rejected what I can find no support for save in hearsay or prejudice."
Froude wrote history as he conceived it with a power rarely equalled. His pages pulse with life. But though he drew from sources of the highest value, many of them never before utilized, he lacked a sound critical method of dealing with them. In this respect his later volumes show a marked improvement over the earlier ones. Unbiassed perception seems at times to have been simply beyond his powers ; the facts of his own narrative he often saw as no one else saw them. Objective description he professed to aim at, but rarely attained, for he approached his material too much in the spirit of an artist. In his pictures the shadows are too deep and the lights are too richly glowing.
A sentimentalist by nature, he was deficient in sobriety and poise of judgment, and he lacked the patience for accu- racy in details. He had little interest in modern social or political science, and to the reader of the present day one of the most serious deficiencies of his work is its failure to give adequate attention to the constitutional and economic aspects of the period. Yet, after all deductions, the History remains an imposing contribution to our knowledge of what its author believed "the greatest achievement in English history, the ' breaking the bands of Rome ' and the establishment of spir- itual independence; " and even when for the student it shall have been displaced by the work of some one more largely endowed with the indispensable qualifications of an historian, it will still have an enduring position in the literature of the English people.
INDEX
INDEX
Adams, H. B., 246 n., 252 n.
Adams, J., 161.
Advance, The, on Whitman, 46 n., 54 n.
Alexander VI., Bulls of, 196-200.
American Board, the officials distrust Spalding's narrative, 23 ; claims of, 27.
Applegate, J., on emigration of 1843, 92 ; on Whitman, ib.
Ashburton, Lord, 14, 68 n., 82 n.
Ashburton Treaty, 14, 82 n., 94.
Atkinson, Rev. G. H., first missionary of the Home Missionary Soc. in Ore- gon, 17 ; silent, before 1865, as to poli- tical services of Whitman 17, 18, 20; brings Spalding's story east, 16, 31 ; 35.
Azurara, 175 ; on Prince Henry's aims, 176-177.
B
Badajos, Congress of, 229,
Bancroft, George, 114, 229, 230 n., 278, 280, 287.
Bancroft, H. H., his Oregon quoted, 28 n., 29 n., 64 n. ; characterized, 41 n.
Barros, his Da Asia, trans, into German, 181, 181 n.; error of , 194 n.
Barrows, his Oregon, 7 n. ; character- ized, 40-42; his shuffling on nego- tiations of Sir Geo. Simpson, 82 n.
Beck, C. D., 247, 266.
Biglow Papers, The, 227.
Bollan, W., 179 n.
" Brief of Argument," Hamilton's, 154- 156.
Brouillet, Rev. J. B. A., 22, 28, 29.
Browne, J. Ross, 28.
Buchanan, J., 231 ff.
Bull, The, of Clement V., 1344, 194 n. ; Martin V., 194 n. ; Eugene VI., 1443, ibid.; Nicolas V., 1452, 194; 14.54, 178-179; Sixtus IV., 1481, 195; Al- exander VI., May 3, 1493, 194 ; May 4, 199; Julius II., 1506, 203; Leo X., 1514, 195 n., 203.
Burgess, J. W., 48.
Burgh's Disquisitions, 133, 135.
Burnett,. P. H., on emigration of 1843, 92 ; on Whitman, ibid,
Butterworth, H., 44.
Cabral, Instructions to, 201.
Calhoun, J. C, on Mexican Question,
233 n., 234, 235, 240, 241 n. Cantilo, J. M., translator of Federalist,
161. Carlyle, T., 293, 294. Catholic World, The, 34 n., 35 n. Catlin, G., Account of Flathead mission
to St. Louis, 105. Chateaubriand, 277. Chenier, M. J., on Madison and The
Federalist, 160. Citizenship, honorary of France, 159-
160. Clement, V., Bull of, 194 n. Code de I'Humanite, le, 116, 166. Coffin, C. C, 42. Comte, 245 n. Congregationalist, The, 8 n., 32, 33 n.,
52. Cooper, J. F., 278. Craighead, J. G., his Story of Marcus
Whitman, 35, 44-46, 78, 81." Creighton, M., 259. Criticism, modern historical, rise of,
250.
300
INDEX
d'Albon, Comte,166.
Dart, Anson, Supt. of Ind. Aff. in Or., reports on the Whitman Massacre ; silence about political services, 19 ; falsely accused by Spalding, 62 n.- 63 n.
Demarcation Line, 193-217 ; recent books on, 193n. , location of, at 100 leagues west of Azores, 204 ; deter- mination of, 209 ff. ; influence on Magellan's voyage, 206 ; attitude of English on, 214-215 ; of French, 215-216.
Doria, Expedition of, 176.
Dove, A., 246 n., 252 n., 254 n., 268 n.
Dox, Virginia, 52 n.
Drake, S. A., 43.
Dunn, J. P., Jr., 43.
Dye, E. E., her McLoughlin and Old Oregon, 49.
E
Eells, Gushing, endorses Walker's ace. of Whitman's journey, 58; silence, before 1865, about political services of Whitman, 20, 42 ; letter of May, 1866, 23; examined, 73-75; derived from Spalding, ib. ; affidavit in 1882, 69-70; examined, 71-73.
Eells, Myron, 29 ; his defence of the Whitman legend, 37 ; quoted, 39 ; 95.
Eggleston, E., on Whitman story, 51 n.
Emigration of 1 843, real causes of, 92- 93 ; not organized by Whitman, 95- 96.
Emmius, Ubbo, 166.
Eugene IV., Bull of, 194 n.
Evans, E., 36 ; conclusions as to Whit- man legend, 38 and 104.
Executive Document 37, 8, 12, 27 ; char- acter of, 29-31, 34-35.
Fairbank, J. W., 54.
Farnam, C H., 43 n.
Farnham, T. J., Travels in Oregon, 85.
Federal Government, early works on,
16.5-167. Federalist, The, authorship of, 113 ff. ;
in France, 159-161; in Germany, 161-162; Portuguese translation in Brazil, 161 ; Spanish trans, in Argen- tine, 161; the structure of, 117-118.
Felice, 116, 166.
Fichte, 247.
Fisheries, The, not a subject of nego- tiation in 1842-3, 82.
Fiske, John, and the Whitman Story, 51 ; 222.
Flatheads, mission to St. Louis, 62, 105.
Ford, P. L., criticism of his discussion of the authorship of 2'he Federalist, 149 ff.
Freeman, E. A., 166 n., 294.
Fronde, J. A., early life, 291 ; at Oxford, 291-292; his relation to the Tract- arians, 292 ; his Neynesis of Faith, 292; relation toward Carlyle, 293; travels, 293-294 ; Professor at Oxford, 294 ; views of history, 294-296 ; on Shakspere, 295, on the Iliad and Odyssey, 295 ; his characteristics as an historian, 296.
Gaffarel, P., 222.
Gardiner, S. R., 259.
Gatterer, 265 n.
Geiger, W., 37 ; his account of Whit- man' s journey, 66 ; proofs of its m- correctness, 67-68.
Giesebrecht, 2.54 n., 272.
Gillette, P. W., interview with Mrs. Lovejoy, 106-107.
Gillies, J*., 166.
Gomez, Diogo, 180, 185.
Gordy, W. F., 48 n., 51 n.
Gray, W. H., his History of Oregon, 7, 9, origin of, 31 ; on Whitman, 34; characterized, 64 ; quoted, 27, 28 ; proofs of his untrustworthiness as a witness, 63-64 ; his version of story of Whitman's ride, 9-13 ; arts, in As- toria Gazette, 31 ; affidavit as to Whitman legend, 32 ; letter on Whit- man's journey, 58.
Greeley, H., interview Math Whitman, 85.
Griffis, W. E., 49.
Grotius, 216.
INDEX
301
H
•■
Hakluyt, R., 209 n. ; on Demarcation Liue, 214.
Hall of Fame, vote for Whitman in, 4.
Hamilton, A., made a citizen of France, 160; disclaims authorship of No. 54 of The Federalist, 128 ; his lists, 114- 115, 117.
Hamilton, J. C, on authorship of The Federalist, 114, 125.
Henry, The Navigator, 173-189; earli- est sources on, 174 ff. ; lives of, 174 n. ; aims, 175-181; character, 187-189; donations, 185 ; activities, 187.
Hermann, G., 247, 266.
Hines, Rev. H. K., on Whitman legend in 1868 and 1899, 33.
Hinman, A., on Spalding, 28 n.
History, influence, on 19th century thought, 245 ; opportunity in, for American writers, 277 ; essentials of sound method in, 255.
Home Missionari/, The, correspondence in, from Oregon, 23 n.
Hudson's Bay Company, possessory rights of, 26-27 ; charged with insti- gating Whitman Massacre, 31.
Humboldt, A. von, on location of De- marcation Line, 204, 216; misinter- prets Seneca, 223 ; on Ranke, 258.
Irving, W., 278, 280, 281, 287.
J
Jefferson, his Notes on Virginia, 119. Juan, J,, on Demarcation Line, 213 n. Julius II., Bull of, 203.
K
Kent, Chancellor, 121, 130, 144-145, 151. Kiesselbach, W., on The Federalist, 162.
Lamb, Martha J., 41 n.
Lane, Joseph, territorial delegate from
Or., on Whitman, 20. Laurie, T., 38, 64. Leo X., Bull of, 195 n., 203.
Leo H., 256-257.
Lincoln, J. L., 266 n.
Lodge, H. C, on authorship of. The
Federalist, 113-115. Lovejoy, A. L., 12, 17, on Whitman's
journey, 76-77, 106-109.
M
McMaster, J. B., 7 n., 48 n.
Macaulay, 257-258; his popularity in Germany, 259.
Madison, J., his account of the writing of Nos. 18, 19, and 20, of The Feder- alist, claims No. 54 ; made a citizen of France, 160 ; studies in Federal Government, 165-169.
Magellan, origin of his voyage, 206- 207 ; profits of, 208.
Marshall, W. L, 8 n., 32 n. ; his efforts to arrest the spread of the Whitman Legend, 51 ; 103.
Martin V., Pope, alleged Bull of, 194 n.
Mexico, proposed absorption of, strength of movement, 235 ff.
Missionari/ Herald, The, 3, 37.
Moluccas, the, 210-211.
" Monitory," Madison's use of, 133.
Montgomery, D. H., 44, 51.
Morris, C, 48.
Motley, J. L., 278, 280, 287.
Mowry, W. A., his Marcus Whitman, 49-50 ; his text-book, 48 ; 54; 71, 86 ; ignores adverse evidence, 50, 96.
Muller, J. v., 251, 256.
Munoz, 250 n.
N
Newman, J. H., 292.
Nicolas v., Bull of, 178-179.
Niebuhr, B. G., 247, 277.
Nixon, O. W., his How Marcus Whit- man Saved Oregon, 46-47 ; his la- bors to spread the story, 47 ; arts, in Chicago Inter-Ocean, 54 n.
o
Old Testament, historical criticism of,
250 n., 256. Order of Christ, The, 182 n. Oregon Territory, no crisis in fate of, in
302
INDEX
1842 or 1843, 68 ; not in danger of be- ing ceded to England, 78-79 ; public opinion on, in 1842-43, ibid.', public not ignorant of, 84-85.
Oregon Trail, TAe, Parknian's, 281,282.
Outlook, The, 52.
Palmer, Joel, his account of Whitman in 1845, 18.
Parker, H. W., 18 n., 54 n.
Parker, S., 3, 85.
Parkman, F., early life and tastes, 289 ; his preparation, 280-282; ill-health, 282-283 ; his aim as an historian, 284; characteristics, 285-286; his works, 282-287 ; his fame abroad, 286-287; permanence of his fame, 287.
Pattison, M., 266 n.
Payne, E. J., 223.
Penrose, President, relies on J. R. Wil- son's mistranslation of Saint- Amant, 22 n. ; his efforts to diffuse the Whit- man legend, 51 ; efforts to save it, 54 n.
Philippines, The, retained by Spain, 211 ; part of Spanish America, 211 ; transferred to Eastern Hemisphere, 211-212.
Polk, President, diary of, 230; brings on Mexican War, 229; his policy, 230-242.
Polybius, 143 n., 166.
Poore, B. P., 81 n.
Portuguese Discoveries, Beazley on, 174 n.
Prescott, W. H., 278, 287.
Price, W., 260 n.
Prudential Committee of the American Board, 56.
R
Ranke, L. V., 245-274; bibliography of, 260 n. ; centenary of, 245 ; early interests, 246 ; first teaching, 248 ; as a teacher, 253-255 ; his intellectual attitude, 258 ; methods of criticism, 250 ; on principles of history. 255 ; his exploration of sources, 250-251 ;
History of the Popes, why popular in England, 259 n. ; his chief works, 259 ; History of the World, 260 ; his seminary, first announcement of, 268 ; his account of it, 269-273 ; von Sybel on, 273 ; his disciples, 259 ; Waitz on, 273-274.
Raumer, K. von, suggests practical courses in history, 254, 268.
Recollections as a source of history, 71 and note.
Red River Colony in Oregon, placed in the wrong year in Whitman Legend, 60-61.
Roscher, W., 258.
S
Sabliere, Trudaine de la, translator of I'he Federalist, 159 ; death of, 161 n.
Sagres, supposed School of, 1 85.
Saint-Amant, de, mentions Whitman in 1854, 21-22 ; passage translated, 106 ; his account probably based on Brouil- let, 22.
Schouler, J., 229 n.
Schurz, C, 43 n.
Scott, Sir Walter, 249, 277.
Scudder, H. E., 40, 42.
Seminaries, historical, origin of, 265- 268.
Seminaries, philological, 266-267.
Seneca, misinterpretation of, by Roger Bacon, 201 ; by others, 222-224 ; his prophecy, 224.
Simpson, Sir George, his negotiations in Washington, according to Spalding in 1843, 14; in fact, in 1853, 84; re- lation to the Whitman Legend, 74, 82 ; genesis of the fiction, 82-84.
Slavery, African, sanctioned by Nicolas v., 194-19.5.
Slave Trade, early Portuguese, 188, 195 u.
Souza Holstein, Marquis de, 174 n,, 175 n., 185 n.
Spalding, Rev. H. H., goes as mission- ary to Oregon Indians, 3 ; recalled ; characterized, 28 ; charges Whitman Massacre to Jesuits and Hudson's Bay Co., 28-29 ; his story of Whit- man's ride first told in 1864, 101-103 ;
INDEX
303
as first published by him in The Facijic, 1865, 9-15; proofs that it was new in 1864, 15-23, 102; makes no reference to Whitman's having "saved" Oregon before 1864, 17; unaware in 1846 that Oregon had been "saved," 18-19; garbles docu- ments, 61-62; proofs of his untruth- fulness, 62-63; his memorial to Congress, 100-101.
Sparks, E. E., 49.
Sparks, J., 252 n.
"Sphere, enlarge the," Madison's use of, 136,
Stanyan, J., 167.
Stenzel, 248, 272.
Stern, A., 259 n.
Stevens, I. I., Gov. of Washington Ter- ritory, on Whitman, 20.
Stockton, R., his list of authors of The Federalist, 128 n.
Stubbs, 259.
Strauss, D. F., on Ranke, 257 n.
Stuckenberg, 255 n.
Sybel, Von, on Ranke's Seminary, 273.
" Syllabus of The Federalist," 154-156.
Temple, Sir W., 116, 167.
Thierry, Aug., 245 n., 278.
Thomas, A, C, 48.
Thompson, D. P., reports Lovejoy's
account of Whitman, 108-109. Thornton, J. Quinn, 35 n. Tordesillas, Treaty of, 202. Transylvanus, Max., on Magellan's
voyage, 206. Treat, S. B., Secretary of the A. B. C.
F. M., on C. Eells' letter and on
Whitman's journey, 25 ; tells the
Spalding story at the meeting of the
Am. Board in 1866, 26. Trist, N. P., 229 ; recalled, 230 ; makes
treaty, 237. Tyler, L. G., 43 ; on Whitman, 80.
u
Ulloa, A. de, on Demarcation Line, 213.
Vassal Moi-ton, Parkman's novel, 279,
283. Venetian Relations, 251 ff.; influence
of, on Ranke's style, 252. Victor, Mrs. F. F., 36 n. ; quoted, 28,
34; interview with H. H. Spalding,
36 n., 37 ; on Spalding's appeal to Dr.
Craighead, 81 n. ; contributions to
Bancroft's History of the Facijic
States, 36 n. Von Hoist, 35.
W
Waitz, G., 270 ; on historical semina- ries, 265 n. ; on Ranke's, 273-274.
Walker, E., 19, 23 ; diary and letter of, on Whitman's journey, 56-58 ; on Spalding's falsehood, 63 n.
Webster, Daniel, fictitious interview of, with Whitman, first printed in 1864, 15 ; earliest version, 101-103 ; account of, in Spalding's arts., 13, 14; ficti- tious character proved, 82-84 ; alleged tribute to Whitman, 82 n.
Weed, G. L., 53.
White, Elijah, M.D., letters garbled by Spalding, 61-62 ; his commission, 67 ; conducts emigration of 1 842, 67 ; 75 ; confused with Whitman, 96-97.
Whitinan, John, Descendants of, 43 n.
Whitman, Marcus, M. D., enlists as missionary to Oregon Indians, 3 ; legend of, summary of, 6-7 ; true history of, 99,-100 ; narratives of Spalding and Gray, 9-15; alleged causes of his journey examined, 67- 68 ; real cause, 55 ; his real errand in Washington, 77-78 ; was without significance or results, 78-79 ; silence of contemporaries, 79-81 ; why he went there first, 98-99 ; his own ac- count of his journey, 86 ; of his plans, 87 ; his subsequent views of what he accomplished, 97-98 ; his fictitious interview with Webster, first pub- li.shed in 1864, 15, 102-103; vouched for by Gray under oath, 32 n. ; rela- tion to the emigration of 1843, 89- 97 ; confused with Dr. White, 96-97 ; obituary sketch of, in Missionary
304
INDEX
Herald in 1 848, 3 ; vote for, in Hall of Fame, 4.
Whitman, Mrs., letters on Whitman's journey, 59-60.
Whitman, P. B., 37, 43 u. ; his account of Whitman's journey, 65-66.
Whitman, The Legend of Marcus, criti- cisms of, 54 n.
Whitman College, relation of Whitman storv to its endowment, 52 n.
Whitman Day celebrated, 52-53.
Wilken, 253 n., 265 n.
Wilson, J. R., distorts meaning of Saint-
Amant, 21 n , 22 n. Wolf F. A, 250 n., 266, 277>^
Zachrey, J., letter on Whitman, 93- 94 ; interpolated by Spalding, 94-95.
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