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AN ADDRESS

AT THE DEDICATION OF THE BUILDING

^tate i^ijBftorical ^ocictp of H^iiefcon^in

AT MADISON, OCTOBER 19, 1900

BY

CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS, LL.D.

President of the Massachusetts Historical Society

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AN ADDRESS

AT THE DEDICATION OF THE BUILDING

^tate l^i^Bftorical ^ocietp of Wi^cm^in

AT MADISON, OCTOBER 19, 1900

BY

CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS, LL.D.

President of the Massachusetts Historical Society

" Mais qui se presente comme dans un tableau cette grande image
de nostre mere nature en son entiere maiest^ ; qui lit en son visage una
si generale et constante variety ; qui se remarque la dedans, et non
soy, mais tout un royaume, comme un traict d'une poincte tres deli-
cate, celuy Ik seul estime les choses selon leur iuste grandeur." — Essais
de Montaigne, livre i. chapitre xxv.

" But whoever shall represent to his fancy, as in a picture, that
great image of our mother Nature, in her full majesty and lustre,
whoever in her face shall read so general and so constant a variety,
whoever shall observe himself in that figure, and not himself but a
whole kingdom, no bigger than the least touch or prick of a pencil
in comparison of the whole, that man alone is able to value things ac-
cording to their true estimate and grandeur." — Hazlitt edition (1892)
of Cotton's Montaigne^ vol. i. p. 161.

I

6&I

/=73 54236

ADDRESS

"«Si,"„issrs„^

On occasions such as this, a text upon which to dis-
course is not usual ; I propose to venture an exception to
the rule. I shall, moreover, offer not one text only, but
two ; taken, the first, from a discourse prepared in the full
theological faith of the seventeenth century, the other
from the most far-reaching scientific publication of the
century now drawing to its close.

" God sifted a whole Nation that He might send choice
Grain over into this Wilderness," said William Stoughton
in the election sermon preached according to custom be-
fore the Great and General Court of Massachusetts in
April, 1668. To the same effect Charles Darwin wrote
in 1871 : " There is apparently much truth in the behef
that the wonderful progress of the United States, as well
as the character of the people, are the results of natural
selection ; for the more energetic, restless and courageous
men from all parts of Europe have emigrated during the
last ten or twelve generations to that great country and
have there succeeded best ; " and the quiet, epoch-mark-
ing, creed-shaking naturalist then goes on to express this
startHng judgment, which, uttered by an American, would
have been deemed the very superlative of national van-
ity : — " Looking to the distant future, I do not think
[it] an exaggerated view [to say that] all other series of
events — as that which resulted in the culture of mind in
Greece, and that which resulted in the Empire of Rome —
only appear to have purpose and value when viewed in
connection with, or rather as subsidiary to, the great
stream of Ang^lo-Saxon eraigfration to the West." ^

1 The Descent of Man (ed. 1874), vol. ii. pp. 218, 219.

Such are my texts; but, while I propose to preach
from them largely and to them in a degree, I am not
here to try to instruct you to-day in the history of your
own State of Wisconsin, or in the magic record relating
to the development of what we see fit to call the North-
west. Indeed I am not here as an individual at all ; nor
as one in any way specially quahfied to do justice to
the occasion. I am here simply as the head for the time
being of what is unquestionably the oldest historical
society in America, and, if reference is made to societies
organized exclusively for the preservation of historical
material and the furtherance of historical research, one
than which few indeed anywhere in existence are more
ancient of years. As the head of the Massachusetts His-
torical Society, I have been summoned to contribute what
I may in honor of the completion of this edifice, the
future home of a similar society, already no longer young ;
— a society gi-own up in a country which, when the
Massachusetts institution was formed, was yet the home
of aboriginal tribes, — a forest-clad region known only to
the frontiersman and explorer. Under such circumstances,
I did not feel that I had a rigrht not to answer the call.
It was as if in our older Massachusetts time the pastor of
the Plymouth, or of the Salem or Boston Church had
been invited to the sfatherinjr of some new brotherhood
in the Connecticut Valley, or the lighting of another
candle of the Lord on the Concord or the Nashua, there
to preach the sermon of ordination and extend the right
hand of fellowship.

And in this connection let mo here mention one some-
what recondite historical circumstance relatincr to this
locality. You liere may be more curiously informed, but
few indeed in Massachusetts are to-day knowing of the
fact tliat this portion of Wisconsin — Madison itself, and
all the adjoining comities — was once, territorially, a part
of the royally assigned limits of Massachusetts.' Yet

' See Appendix A, p. 51.

such was undisputably the fact ; and it lends a certain
propriety, not the less poetic because remote, to my accept-
ance of the part here to-day assigned me.

Accepting that part, I none the less, as I have said,
propose to break away from what is the usage in such
cases. That usage, if I may have recourse to an old
theological formula, is to improve the occasion histori-
cally. An address, erudite and bristHng with statistics,
would now be in order. An address in which the 2"rad-
ual growth of the community or the institution should
be developed, and its present condition set forth ; with
suitable reference to the days of small things, and a
tribute of gratitude to the founders, and those who pa-
tiently built their lives into the edifice, and made of it
their monument. The names of all such should, I agree,
be cut deep over its portico ; but this task, eminently
proper on such occasions, I, a stranger, shall not under-
take here and now to perform. For it others are far
better qualified. I do not, therefore, propose to tell you
of the St. Francis Xavier mission at Green Bay, or of
Nicollet ; of Jacques Cartier, of Marquette or of Radisson,
any more than of those two devoted benefactors and assidu-
ous secretaries of this institution, Lyman C. Draper and
Reuben G. Thwaites ; but, leaving them, and their deeds
and services, to be commemorated by those to the manner
born, and, consequently, in every respect better qualified
than I for the work, I propose to turn to more general
subjects and devote the time allotted me to generalities,
and to the future rather than to the past.

In an address delivered about eio^hteen months asfo
before the Massachusetts Historical Society, I discussed
in some detail the modern conception of history as com-
pared with that which formerly prevailed. I do not now
propose to repeat what I then said. It is sufficient for my
present purpose to call attention to what we of the new
school regard as the dividing line between us and the

historians of the old school, the first day of October,
1859, — the date of the publication of Darwin's " Origin
of Species ; " the book of his immediately preceding the
" Descent of Man," from which my text for to-day was
taken. On the first day of October, 1859, the Mosaic
cosmogony finally gave place to the Darwinian theory
of evolution. Under the new dispensation, based not on
chance or an assumed supernatural revelation, but on a
patient study of biology, that record of mankind known
as history, no longer a mere succession of traditions and
annals, has become a unified whole, — a vast scheme sys-
tematically developing to some result as yet not under-
stood. Closely allied to astronomy, geology and physics,
the study of modern history seeks a scientific basis from
which the rise and fall of races and dynasties will be
seen merely as phases of a consecutive process of evolu-
tion, — the evolution of man from his initial to his ulti-
mate state. When this conception was once reached,
history, ceasing to be a mere narrative, made up of dis-
connected ejDisodes having little or no bearing on each
other, became a connected whole. To each development,
each epoch, race and dynasty its proper place was to be
assigned ; and to assign that place was the function of
the historian. Formerly each episode was looked upon
as complete in itself ; and, being so, it had features more
or less dramatic or instructive, and, for tliat reason,
tempting to the historian, whether investigator or literary
artist, — a Freeman or a Fronde. Now, the first ques-
tion the historian must put to himself relates to the
])r()pf'r adjustment of his particular theme to the entire
plan, — ho is shaping the fragment of a vast mosaic.
The incomparably greater j)orti()n of history has, it is
needless to say, little value, — not much more than the
biography of the average individual; it is a record of
small acc'om})lishment, — in many instances a record of
no accomplishment at all, perhaps of retrogression ; —

for we cannot all be successful, nor even everlastingly
and effectively strenuous. Among nations in history,
as among men we know, the commonplace is the rule ;
but, whether ordinary or exceptional, — conspicuous or
obscure, — each has its proper place, and to it that place
should be assigned.

Having laid down this principle, I, eighteen months
ago, proceeded to apply it to the society I was then ad-
dressing, and to the history of the Commonwealth whose
name that society bears; and I gave my answer to it,
such as that answer was. The same question I now put
as concerns Wisconsin ; and to that also I propose to ven-
ture an answer. As my text has indicated, that answer,
also, will not in a sense be lacking in ambition. In the
history of Wisconsin I shall seek to find verification of
what Darwin suggested, — evidence of the truth of the
great law of natural selection as applied also to man.

Thus stated, the theme is a large one, and may be
approached in many ways ; and, in the first place, I pro-
pose to approach it in the way usual with modern his-
torical writers. I shall attempt to assign to Wisconsin
its place in the sequence of recent development; for
it is only during the last fifty years that Wisconsin has
exercised any, even the most imperceptible, influence on
what is conventionally agreed upon as history. That
this region before the year 1848 had an existence, we
know ; as we also know that, since the last glacial period
when the earth's surface hereabouts assumed its present
geographical form, — some five thousand, or, perhaps,
ten, or even twenty thousand years ago, — it has been
occupied by human beings, — fire-making, implement-
using, garment-wearing, habitation-dwelling. With these
we have now nothing to do. We, the historians, are con-
cerned only with what may be called the mere fringe of
Time's raiment, — the last half century of the fifty or
one hundred centuries ; the rest belong to the ethnologist

and the geologist, not to us. But the last fifty years,
again, so far as the evolution of man from a lower to a
higher stage of development is concerned, though a very
quickening period, has, after all, been but one stage, and
not the final stage, of a distinct phase of development.
That phase has now required four centuries in which to
work itself out to the point as yet reached ; for it harks
back to the discovery of America, and the movement to-
wards rehgious freedom which followed close upon that
discovery, though having no direct connection with it.
Martin Luther and Christopher Columbus had little in
common except that their -lives overlapped ; but those two
dates, 1492 and 1517, — the landfall at San Salvador, and
the theses nailed on the church door at Wittenberg, —
those two dates began a new chapter in human history,
the chapter in which is recounted the fierce struggle over
the establishment of the principles of civil and religious
liberty, and the recognition of the equality of men before
the law. For, speaking generally but with approximate
correctness, it may be asserted that, prior to the year
1500, the domestic political action and the foreign com-
plications of even the most advanced nations turned on
other issues, — dynastic, predatory, social ; but, since that
date, from the wars of Charles V., of Francis I., and of
Elizabeth, down to our own Confederate rebellion, almost
every great struggle or debate has either directly arisen
out of some religious dispute or some demand for in-
creased civil rights, or, if it had not there its origin, it
has invariably gravitated in that direction. Even Fred-
erick of Prussia, the so-called Great — that skeptical, irre-
ligious, cut-purse of the Empire, — the disciple and pro-
tector of Voltaire and the apotheosized of Thomas Carlyle,
— even Frederick figured as " the Protestant Hero ; "
wliile Francis I. was " the Eldest Son of the Church,"
and Henry VIII. received from Rome the title of " De-
fender of the Faith."

9

Since the year 1500, on the other hand, what is known
as modern history has been little more than a narrative
of the episodes in the struggle not yet closed against arbi-
trary rule, whether by a priesthood or through divine
right, or by the members of a caste or of a privileged
class, — whether ennobled, plutocratic or industrial. The
right of the individual man, no matter how ignorant or
how poor, to think, worship and do as seems to him best,
provided always in so doing he does not infringe upon
the rights of others, has through these four centuries
been, as it still is, the underlying issue in every conflict.
It seems likely, also, to continue to be the issue for a long
time to come, for it never was more firmly asserted or
sternly denied than now ; though to-day the opposition
comes, not, as heretofore, from above, but from below,
and finds its widest and most formidable expression in
the teachings of those socialists who preach a doctrine of
collectivism, or the complete suppression of the individual.

That proposition, however, does not concern us here
and now. Our business is with the middle period of the
nineteenth century, and not with the first half of the
twentieth ; and, no matter how closely we confine our-
selves to the subject in hand, space and time will scarcely
be found in which properly to develop the theme. Two
and fifty years ago, when, in the summer of 1848, Wis-
consin first took shape as a recognized political organiza-
tion, — a new factor in man's development, — human
evolution was laboring over two problems, — nationality
and slavery. Slavery — that is, the ownership of one man
or one class of men by another man or class of men —
had existed, and been accepted as a matter of course, from
the beginning. Historically the proposition did not admit
of doubt. In Great Britain, bondage had only recently
disappeared, and in Russia it was still the rule ; while
among the less advanced nations its rightfulness was
nowhere challenged, with us here in America it was a

10

question of race. The equality of whites before the law
was an article of political faith ; not so that of the blacks.
The Africans were distinctly an inferior order of being,
and, as such, not only in the Southern or slave States,
but throughout the North also, not entitled to the unre-
stricted pursuit on equal terms of Hfe, liberty and happi-
ness. Hence a fierce contention, — the phase as it
presented itself on the land discovered by Columbus in
1492, of the struggle inaugurated by Luther in 1517.
Its work was thus, so to speak, cut out for Wisconsin in
advance of its being, — its place in the design of the
great historical scheme prenatally assigned to it. How
then did it address itself to its task ? how perform the
work thus given it to do? Did it, standing in the front
rank of progress, help the great scheme along? Or,
identifying itself with that reactionist movement ever on
foot, did it strive with the stars in their courses?

Here, in the United States, the form in which the issue
of the future took shape between 1830, when it first pre-
sented itself, and 1848, when Wisconsin entered the
sisterhood of States, is even yet only partially understood,
in such occult ways did the forces of development interact
and exercise influence on each other. For reasons not
easy to explain, also, certain States came forward as the
more active exponents of antagonistic ideas, — on the one
side Massachusetts ; on the other, first, Virginia, and,
later, South Carolina. The great and long sustained
debate which closed in an appeal to force in the spring
of 1861 must now be conceded as something well-nigh
inevitable from fundamental conditions which dated from
the beginning. It was not a question of slavery ; it was
one of nationality. The issue had presented itself over
and over again, in various forms and in diiferent parts of
the country ever sinci^ tlie Constitution had been adopted,
— now in Pennsylvania ; now in Kentucky; now in New
England ; even here in Wisconsin ; but, in its most con-

11

Crete form, in South Carolina. It was a struggle for
mastery between centripetal and centrifugal forces. At
the close, slavery was, it is true, the immediate cause of
quarrel, but the seat of disturbance lay deeper. In
another country, and under other conditions, it was the
identical struggle which, in feudal times, went on in Great
Britain, in France and in Spain, and which, more recently,
and in our own day only, we have seen brought to a
close in Germany and in Italy, — the struggle of a rising
spirit of nationality to overcome the clannish instinct, —
the desire for local independence. In the beginning
Virginia stood forward as the exponent of State Sover-
eignty. Jefferson was its mouthpiece. It was he who
drew up the famous Kentucky resolutions of 1798-99,
and his election to the presidency in 1800 was the recog-
nized victory of the school of States' Rights over Federal-
ism. Later the parties changed sides, — as political parties
are wont to do. Possession of the government led to a
marked modification of views ; new issues were pre-
sented ; and, in 1807, the policy which took shape in
Jefferson's Embargo converted the Federalist into a dis-
union organization, which disappeared from existence in
the famous Hartford Convention of 1814-15. New Eng-
land was then the centre of the party of the centrifugal
force, and the issues were commercial. Fortunately, up
to 1815 the issue between the spirit of local sovereignty
and the ever-growing sense of nationality had not taken
shape over any matter of difference sufficiently great and
far-reaching to provoke an appeal to force. Not the less
for that was the danger of conflict there, — a sufficient
cause and suitable occasion only were wanting, and those
under ordinary conditions might be counted upon to pre-
sent themselves in due course of time. They did present
themselves in 1832, still under the economical guise.
But now the moral issue lurked behind, though the South
did not yet stand directly opposed to the advancing spirit

12

of the age. But Nullification — the logical outcome of
the theory of absolute State Sovereignty — was enun-
ciated by Calhoun, and South Carolina took from Virginia
the lead in the reactionary movement from nationality.
The danger once more passed away ; but it is obvious to
us now, and, it would seem, should have been plain to
any cool-headed observer then, that, when the issue next
presented itself, a trial of strength would be well-nigh
inevitable. The doctrine of State Sovereignty, having
assumed the shape of Nullification, would next develop
that of Secession, and the direct issue over Nationality
would be presented.

Almost before the last indications of danger over the
economical question had disappeared. Slavery loomed
ominously up. They did not realize it at the time, but
it was now an angry wrangle over a step in the progres-
sive evolution of the human race. The equality of man
before the law and his Maker was insisted upon, and
was denied. It was a portentous issue, for in it human
destiny was challenged. The desperate risk the Southern
States then took is plain enough now. They entered
upon a distinctly reactionary movement against two of
the foremost growing forces of human development, the
tendency to nationality and the humanitarian spirit.
Though they knew it not, they were arraying themselves
against the very stars in their courses.

Under these circumstances the secession-slavery move-
ment between 1835 and 1860 was a predestined failure.
Because of fortuitous events — the chances of the battle-
field, the ini])ulse of individual genius, tlie exigencies of
trade or the bhmders of diplomats — it might easily
have had an apparent and momentary triumpli ; l)ut the
result upon which the Slave Power, as such, was intent,
— ili(! cr(!ati()n al)out the; Gulf of Mexico and in the An-
tilles of a great 8emi-tro])ical nationality, based on African
servitude and a monojiolized cotton production, — this

13

result was in ditect conflict with the irresistible tendencies
of mankind in its present stage of development. A
movement in all its aspects radically reactionary, it could
at most have resulted only in a passing anomaly.

While the Southern, or Jamestown, column of Darwin's
great Anglo-Saxon migration was thus following to their
legitimate conclusions the teachings of Jefferson and Cal-
houn,— the Virginia and South Carolina schools of
State Sovereignty, Slavery and Secession, — the distinc-
tively Northern column, — that entering through the
Plymouth and Boston portals, — instinctively adhering
to those principles of Church and State in the contention
over which it originated, — found its way along the
southern shores of the Great Lakes, through northern
Ohio, southern Michigan, and northern Illinois, and then,
turning north and west, spread itself over the vast region
beyond the great lakes, and towards the upper waters of
the Mississippi. But it is very noteworthy how the lead
and inspiration in this movement still came from the
original source. While in the South it passed from Vir-
ginia to Carolina ; in the North it remained in Massachu-
setts. Three men then came forward there, voicing more
clearly than any or all others what was in the mind of
the community in the way of aspiration, whether moral
or pohtical. Those three were : William Lloyd Garrison,
Daniel Webster and John Quincy Adams ; they were the
prophetic voices of that phase of American political evo-
lution then in process. Their messages, too, were curi-
ously divergent ; and yet, apparently contradictory, they
were, in reality, supplementary to each other. Garrison
developed the purely moral side of the coming issue.
Webster preached nationality, under the guise of love of
the Union. Adams, combining the two, pointed out a
way to the establishment of the rights of man under the
Constitution and within the Union. While, in a general
way, much historical interest attaches to the utterances

14

and educational influence of those three men during the
period under discussion, the future political attitude of
Wisconsin, then nascent, was deeply affected by them.
To this subject, therefore, I propose to devote some space ;
for, deserving attention, I am not aware that it has here-
tofore received it. In doing so I cannot ignore the fact
of my own descent from one of the three I have named ;
but I may say in my own extenuation that John Quincy
Adams was indisputably a considerable public character
in his time, and when I, a descendant of his, undertake
to speak of that time historically, I must, when he comes
into the field of discussion, deal with him as best I may,
assigning to him, as to his contemporaries, the place which,
as I see it, is properly his or theirs. INIoreover, I will
freely acknowledge that an hereditary affiliation, if I may
so express it, was not absent from the feeHng which im-
pelled me to accept your call. However much others had
forgotten it, I well remembered that more than half a
century ago, in the days of small things, it was in this
region, as in central New York and the Western Reserve,
that the seed cast by one from whom I claim descent fell
in the good ground where it bore fruit an hundred fold.
Recurring, then, to the three men I have named as
voicing systematically a message of special significance
in connection with the phase of political evohition, or of
development if that word is preferred, then going on, —
Garrison's message was distinctly moral and humani-
tarian. In a sense, it was reactionary, and violently so.
In it there was no appeal to patriotism, no recognition
even of nationaHty. On the contrary, in tlie lofty atmo-
sphere of humanitarianism in which he had his being,
I doubt if Garrison ever inhaled a distinctively patriotic
breath ; while he certainly denounced the Constitution
and assailed the Union. He saw only the moral wrong
of slavery, its absolute denial of the fundamental princi-
ple of the equality of men before the law and before God,

15

and the world became his, — where freedom was, there
was his country. To arouse the dormant conscience of
the community by the fierce and unceasing denunciation
of a great wrong was his mission ; and he fulfilled it :
but, curiously enough, the end he labored for came in
the way he least foresaw, and through the very instru-
mentality he had most vehemently denounced, — it came
within that Union which he had described as a compact
with death, and under that Constitution which he had
arraigned as a covenant with Hell. Yet Garrison was
undeniably a prophet, voicing the gospel as he saw it
fearlessly and without pause. As such he contributed
potently to the final result.

Next, Webster. It was the mission of Daniel Webster
to preach nationality. In doing so he spoke in words of
massive eloquence in direct harmony with the most pro-
nounced aspiration of his time, — that aspiration which
has asserted itself and worked the most manifest results
of the nineteenth century in both hemispheres, — in
Spain and Prussia during the Napoleonic war, in Russia
during the long Sclavonic upheaval, again more recently
in Germany and in Italy, and finally in the United States.
The names of Stein, of Cavour and of Bismarck are
scarcely more associated with this great instinctive move-
ment of the century than is that of Daniel Webster. His
mission it was to preach to this people Union, one and
indivisible ; and he delivered his message.

The mission of J. Q. Adams during his best and latest
years, while a combination of that of the two others, was
different from either. His message, carefully thought
out, long retained, and at last distinctly enunciated, was
his answer to the Jeffersonian theory of State Sovereignty,
and Calhoun's doctrine of Nullification and its logical out-
come. Secession. With both theory and doctrine, and
their results, he had during his long political career been
confronted ; on both he had reflected much. It was dur-

16

ing the administration of Jefferson and on the question
of Union that he had, in 1807, broken with his party and
resigned from the Senate ; and with Calhoun he had been
closely associated in the cabinet of Monroe. Calhoun
also had occupied the vice-presidential chair during his
own administration. He now met Calhoun face to face
on the slavery issue, prophetically proclaiming a remedy
for the moral wrong and the vindication of the rights of
man, within the Union and under the Constitution, through
the exercise of inherent war powers, whenever an issue
between the sections should assume the insurrectionary
shape. In other words, Garrison's moral result was to
be secured, not through the agencies Garrison advocated,
but by force of that nationality which Webster pro-
claimed. This solution of the issue, J. Q. Adams never
wearied of enunciating, early and late, by act, speech and
letter ; and his view prevailed in the end. Lincoln's
proclamation of January, 1863, was but the formal de-
claration of the policy enunciated by J. Q. Adams on the
floor of Congress in 1836, and again in 1841, and yet
ag-ain in gTeater detail in 1842.^ It was he who thus
brought the abstract moral doctrines of Garrison into
unison of movement with the nationality of Webster.

The time now drew near when Wisconsin was to take
her place in the Union, and exert her share of influence
on the national polity, and through that polity on a phase
of political evolution. South Carolina, by the voice of
Calhoun, was preaching reaction, througli slavery and in
defiance of nationality : Massachusetts, tlirough Garrison
and Webster, was proclaiming the moral idea and nation-
ality as abstractions ; while J. Q. Adams confronted
Calhoun with the ominous contention that, the instant he
or his had recourse to force, that instant the moral wrong
could be made good by the sword wielded in defence of
Nationality and in the name of the Constitution.

* See Appendix B, p. 53.

17

As 1848 waxed old, the debate grew angry. J. Q.
Adams died in the early months of that memorable year;
but his death in no way affected the course of events.
The leadership in the anti-slavery struggle on the floor of
Congress and within the limits of the Constitution had
passed from him four years before. He was too old
longer to bear the weight of armor, or to wield weapons
once familiar ; but the effect of his teachings remained,
and were living realities wherever the New England
column had penetrated, — throughout central New York,
in " the Western Reserve," and especially in the region
which bordered on Lake Michigan. Garrison still de-
claimed against the Union as an unholy alliance with sin ;
while, in the mind of Webster, his sense of the wrong of
slavery was fast being overweighted by apprehension for
nationality. In the mean time, a war of criminal aggres-
sion against Mexico in behalf of Calhoun's reactionary
movement had been brought to a close, and the question
was as to the partition of plunder. On that great issues
hinged, and over it was fought, the presidential election
of 1848. A little more than fifty years ago, that was
the first election in which Wisconsin participated. The
number of those who now retain a distinct recollection of
the canvass of 1848 and the questions then so earnestly
debated are not many ; I chance to be one of those few.
I recall one trifling incident connected, not with the
canvass but with the events of that year, which, for some
reason, made an impression upon me, and now illustrates
curiously the remoteness of the time. I have said that
J. Q. Adams died in February, 1848. Carried back with
much funereal state from the Capitol at Washington to
Massachusetts, he was in March buried at Quincy. An
eloquent discourse was there delivered over his grave by
the minister of the church of which the ex-President had
been a member. He who delivered it was a scholar, as
well as a natural orator of high order j and, in the course

18

of what he said he had occasion to refer to this remote
region, then not yet admitted to statehood, and he did so
under the name of " the Ouisconsin." That discourse
was deUvered on the 11th of March, 1848 ; and, on the
29th of the following May, Wisconsin became a State.

Returning now to the presidential election of 1848, it
will be found that Wisconsin, the youngest community
in the Union, came at once to the front as the banner
State of the West in support of the principles on which
the Union was established, and the maintenance and
vindication of those fundamental principles within the
Union and through the Constitution. In that canvass
the great issues of the future were distinctly brought to
the front. The old party organizations then still con-
fronted each other, — the Henry Clay Whigs were over
against the Jacksonian Democracy ; but in that election
Lewis Cass, the legitimate candidate of the Democracy, —
a Northern man with Southern principles, — so far as
African slavery was concerned a distinct reactionist from
the principles of the great Declaration of 1776, — Lewis
Cass, of Michigan, was opposed to General Zachary
Taylor, of Louisiana, himself a slaveholder, and nomi-
nated by a party which in presenting his name carefully
abstained from any enunciation of political principles.
He was an unknown political quantity ; and no less a
public character than Daniel Webster characterized his
nomination as one not fit to be made. It yet remained
to ])e seen that, practically, the plain, blunt, honest, well-
meaning old soldier made an excellent President, whose
premature loss was deeply and with reason deplored. His
nomination, liowever, immediately after that of Cass,
proved tin; signal for revolt. For the disciples of J. Q.
Adams in both political camps it was as if the cry had
again gone forth, "To your tents, 0 Israel!" — and
a first fierce blast of the coming storm then swept across
the land. In August the dissentients met in conference

19

at Buffalo, and there first enunciated the principles of the
American political party of the future, — that party
which, permeated by the sentiment of Nationality, was
destined to do away with slavery through the war power,
and to incorporate into the Constitution the principle of
the equality of man before the law, irrespective of color
or of race. Now, more than half a century after the
event, it may fairly be said of those concerned in the
Buffalo movement of 1848 that they were destined to
earn in the fulness of time the rare distinction of carry-
ing mankind forward one distinct stage in the long pro-
cess of evolution. In support of that movement Wis-
consin was, as I have already said, the banner western
State. In its action it simply responded to its early im-
pulse received from New England and western New
York. Thus the seed fell in fertile places and produced
fruit an hundred fold. The law of natural selection,
though not yet formulated, was at work.

The election returns of 1848 tell the story. They are
still eloquent. The heart of the movement of that year
lay in Massachusetts and Vermont. In those two States,
taken together, the party of the future polled, in 1848, a
little over 28 per cent, of the aggregate vote cast. In
Wisconsin it polled close upon 27 per cent. ; and this 27
per cent, in Wisconsin is to be compared with 15 per
cent, in Michigan, 12 per cent, in Illinois, less than 11
per cent, in Ohio, and not 4 per cent, in the adjoining
State of Iowa. In the three neig-hborino^ States of Michi-
gan, Illinois and Iowa, taken together, the new move-
ment gathered into itself 12 per cent, of the total voting
constituency, while in Wisconsin it counted, as I have
said, over 26 per cent. Thus, in 1848, Wisconsin was
the Vermont of the West ; sending to Congress as one
of its three representatives Charles Durkee, a son of
Vermont, the first distinctively anti-slavery man from the
Northwest. Wisconsin remained the Vermont of the

20

West. From its very origin not the smallest doubt
attached to its attitude. It emphasized it in words when
in 1849 it instructed one of its Senators at Washingfton
" to immediately resign his seat " because he had " out-
raged the feelings of the people " by dalliance with the
demands of the Slave Power ; it emphasized it by action
w^hen five years later its highest judicial tribunal did not
hesitate to declare the Fuo;itive Slave Law of 1850
" unconstitutional and void." At the momentous election
of 1860, Wisconsin threw 56 per cent, of its vote in
favor of the ticket bearing the name of Abraham
Lincoln ; nor did the convictions of the State weaken
under the test of war. In 1864, when Wisconsin had
sent into the field over 90,000 enlisted men to maintain
the Union, and to make effective the most extreme
doctrine of war powers under the Constitution, — even
then, in the fourth year of severest stress, Wisconsin
again threw 55 per cent, of its popular vote for the
reelection of Lincoln. A year later the struggle ended.
Throuofhout the ordeal Wisconsin never faltered.

Of the record made by Wisconsin in the Civil War, I
am not here to speak. That field has been sufficiently
covered, and covered by those far better qualified than I
to work in it. I will only say, in often quoted words, that,
none then died more freely or in greater glory than those
Wisconsin sent into the field, though then many died,
and there was much glory. When figures so speak, com-
ment weakens. Look at the record : — Fifty-seven regi-
ments and thirteen batteries in tlie field ; a death roll
exceeding 12,000; a Wisconsin regiment (2d) first in
that roll of lionor wliicli tells off' the regiments of the
Union which sulVerod most, and two other Wisconsin regi-
ments (7th and 26th), together, fifth ; while a brigade
made up three (piarters of Wisconsin battalions shows the
hoaviost aggregate loss sustained during the war hy any
similar connnand, and is hence known in the history of the

21

struggle as the "Iron Brigade." Thirteen Wisconsin
regiments participated in Grant's briUiant movement on
Vicksburg ; five were with Thomas at Chickamauga ; seven
with Sherman at Mission Ridge ; and, finally, eleven
marched with him to the sea, while four remained behind
to strike with Thomas at Nashville. Thus it may truly
be said that wherever, between the 13th of April, 1861,
and the 26th of April, 1865, death was reaping its heavi-
est harvest, — whether in Pennsylvania, in Virginia, in
Tennessee, in Mississippi, in Georgia, — at Shiloh, at Cor-
inth, at Antietam, at Gettysburg, in the salient at Spott-
sylvania, in the death-trap at Petersburg, or in the Penin-
sula slaughter-pen, — wherever during those awful years
the dead lay thickest, there the men from Wisconsin were
freely laying down their lives.

It is, however, no part of my present purpose to set
forth here your sacrifices in the contest of 1861-65.
What I have undertaken to do is to assio^n to Wisconsin
its proper and relative place as a factor in one of the
great evolutionary movements of man. As the twig was
bent, the tree inclined. The sacrifices of Wisconsin life
and treasure between 1861 and 1865 were but the fulfil-
ment of the promise given by Wisconsin in 1848. The
State, it is true, at no time during that momentous
struggle rose to a position of unchallenged leadership
either in the field or the council chamber. Among its
representatives it did not number a Lincoln or a Sherman ;
but it did supply in marked degree that greatest and
most necessary of all essentials in every evolutionary
crisis, a well-developed and thoroughly distributed popu-
lar backbone.

This racial characteristic, also, I take to be the one
great essential to the success of our American experiment.
In every emergency which arises there is always the cry
raised for a strong hand at the helm, — the ship of state
is invariably declared to be hopelessly drifting. But it

22

is in just those times of crisis that a widely diffused
individuality proves the greatest possible safeguard, —
the only reliable public safeguard. It is then with the
State as it is with a strong, seaworthy ship manned by a
hardy and experienced crew, in no way dependent on the
one pilot who may chance to be at the wheel. In any
stress of storm, the ship's company will prove equal to
the occasion, and somehow provide for its own salvation.
Under similar political conditions, a community asserts,
in the long run, its superiority to the accidents of fortune,
— the aberrations due to the influence of individual gen-
ius, those winning numbers in the lottery of fate, — and
evinces that staying power, which, no less now and here
than in Rome and Great Britain, is the only safe rock of
empire. The race thus educated and endowed is the
masterful race, — the master of its own destiny, it is
master of the destiny of others ; and of that crowning
republican quality, Wisconsin, during our period of
national trial, showed herself markedly possessed. While
individuals were not exceptional, the average was unmis-
takably high.

And this I hold to be the higfhest tribute which can
be paid to a political community. It implies all else.
Unless I greatly err, tins characteristic has, in the case
of Wisconsin, a profound and scientific significance of
the most far-reaching character ; and so I find myself
brought back to my text. As I have already more than
once said, others are in every way better qualified than I
to speak intoHigently of the Wisconsin stock, — of the
elements which enter into the brain and bone and sinew
of the race now liolding as its abiding-])laco and breeding-
iifround tlu; re<rl(>n lyinji' ])etween Lake INIichijian and the
waters of the upper Mississippi, — between the State of
IlHnois on the south and Lake Superior on the north. I
speak cliiefly from impression, and always subject to cor-
rection ; but my understanding is that tliis region was in

2S

the main peopled by men and women representing in their
persons what there was of the more enterprising, adven-
turous and energetic of three of the most thoroughly
virile and, withal, moral and intellectual branches of the
human family, — I refer to the Anglo-Saxon of New
England descent, and to the Teutonic and the Scandi-
navian families. Tough of fibre and tenacious of prin-
ciple, the mixed descendants from those races were well
calculated to illustrate the operation of a natural law;
and I have quite failed in my purpose if I have not
improved this occasion to point out how in the outset of
their political life as a community they illustrated the
force of Stoughton's utterance and the truth of Darwin's
remarkable generalization. By their attitude and action,
at once intelligent and decided, they left their imprint
on that particular phase of human evolution which then
presented itself. They, in so doing, assigned to Wiscon-
sin its special place and work in the great scheme of
development, and forecast its mission in the future.

I have propounded an historical theory ; it is for
others, better advised, having passed upon it, to confirm
or reject.

There are many other topics which might here and now
be discussed, perhaps advantageously, — topics closely
connected with this edifice and with the occasion, —
topics relating to libraries, the accumulation of historical
material, and methods of work in connection with it ; but
space and time alike forbid. A selection must be made ;
and, in making my selection, I go back to the fact that,
representing one historical society, I am here at the
behest of another historical society ; and matters relating
to what we call " history " are, therefore, those most ger-
mane to the day. Coming, then, here from the East to
a point which, in the great future of our American
development, — a century, or, perchance, two or three

24

centuries hence, — may not unreasonably look forward
to being the seat of other methods and a higher learning,
I propose to pass over the more obvious and, possibly,
the more useful, even if more modest, subjects of discus-
sion, and to try my hand at one which, even if it chal-
lenges controversy, is indisputably suggestive. I refer
to certain of the more marked of those tendencies which
characterize the historical work of the day. Having
dealt with the sifted grain, I naturally come to speak of
those who have told the tale of the sifting. Looking
back, from the standpoint of 1900, over the harvested
sheaves which stud the fields we have traversed, the
retrospect is not to me altogether satisfactory. In fact,
taken as a whole, our histories — I speak of those written
by the dead only — have not, I submit, so far as we
are concerned, fully met the requirements of time and
place. Literary masterpieces, scientific treatises, philo-
sophical disquisitions, sometimes one element predomi-
nates, sometimes another ; but in them all something is
wanting. That something I take to be an adequately
developed literary sense.

In dealing with this subject, I am well aware my criti-
cism miffht take a wider ranjje. I need not confine
myself to history, inasmuch as, in the matter of literary
sense, the shortcomings, or the excesses rather, of the
American writer, are manifest. In the Greek, and in the
Greek alone, this sense seems to have been instinctive.
He revealed it, and he revealed it at once, in poetry, in
architecture and in art, as he revealed it in the composi-
tion of history. Of Homer we cannot speak; but Hero-
dotus and Pliidias died within six years of each other,
each a father in his calling. With us Americans that
intuitive literary sense, resulting in the perfection of
literary form, seems not less conspicuous for its absence
than it was conspicuous for its presence among the Greeks.
In literature the American seems to exist in a medium of

26

stenographers and typewriters, and with a public printer
at his beck and call. To such a degree is this the ease
that the expression I have just used — literary form —
has, to many, and those not the least cultured, ceased to
carry a meaning. Literary form they take to mean what
they know as style ; while style is, with them, but another
term for word-painting. Accordingly, with altogether
too many of our American writers, to be voluminous and
verbose is to be great. They would conquer by force of
numbers — the number of words they use. I, the other
day, chanced across a curious illustration of this in the
diary of my father. Returning from his long residence
in England at the time of the Civil War, he attended
some ceremonies held in Boston in honor of a public
character who had died shortly before. " The eulogy,"
he wrote, " was good, but altogether too long. There is
in all the American style of composition a tendency to
diffuseness, and the repetition of the same ideas, which
materially impairs the force of what is said. I see it the
more clearly from having been so long out of the atmos-
phere."

The failing is national ; nor in this respect does the
American seem to profit by experience. Take, for in-
stance, the most important of our public documents, the
inaugurals of our Presidents. We are a busy people ;
yet our newly elected Presidents regularly inflict on us
small volumes of information, and this, too, notwithstand-
ing the fact that in the long line of inaugural common-
places but one utterance stands out in memory, and that
one the shortest of all, — the immortal second of Lincoln.
Our present chief magistrate found himself unable to do
justice to the occasion, in his last annual message, in less
than eighteen thousand words ; and in the Congress to
which this message was addressed, two Senators, in dis-
cussing the " paramount " issue of the day, did so, the
one in a speech of sixty-five thousand words ; the other

26

in a speech of fifty-five thousand. Webster replied to
Hayne in thirty-five thousand ; and Webster then did
not err on the side of brevity. So in the presidential
canvass now in progress. Mr. Bryan accepted his nomi-
nation in a comparatively brief speech of nine thousand
words ; and this speech was followed by a letter of five
thousand, covering omissions because of previous brevity.
President McKinley, in his turn, then accepted a renom-
ination in a letter of twelve thousand words, — a letter
actually terse when compared with his last annual mes-
sage ; but which Mr. Carl Schurz subsequently proceeded
to comment on in a vigorous address of fourteen thousand
words. Leviathans in language, we Americans need to
be Methuselabs in years. It was not always so. The
contrast is, indeed, noticeable. Washington's first inau-
gural numbered twenty-three hundred words. Including
that now in progress, my memory covers fourteen presi-
dential canvasses ; and by far the most generally applauded
and effective letter of acceptance put forth by any candi-
date during all those canvasses was that of General Grant
in 1868. Including address and signature, it was com-
prised in exactly two hundred and thirty words. With a
brevity truly commendable, even if military, he used one
word where his civilian successor found occasion for fifty-
two. As to the opponent of that civilian successor, he sets
computation at defiance. Indeed, speaking of Mr. Bryan
purely from the historical standpoint, I seriously doubt
whether, in all human experience, any man ever before
gave utterance to an equal number of words in the same
space of time.

Leaving illustration, however, and returning to my
theme, I will now say that in the whole long and memo-
rable list of distinctively American literary men, — autliors,
orators, poets and story-tellers, — I recall but three who
seem to me to have been endowed with a sense of form,
at once innate and Greek; those three were Daniel

27

Webster, Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne.
Yet, unless moulded by that instinctive sense of form,
nothing can be permanent in literature any more than in
sculpture, in painting or in architecture. Not size, nor
solidity, nor fidelity of work, nor knowledge of detail,
will preserve the printed volume any more than they will
preserve the canvas or the edifice ; and this I hold to be
just as true of history as of the oration, the poem or the
drama.

Surely, then, our histories need not all, of necessity, be
designed for students and scholars exclusively ; and yet
it is a noteworthy fact that even to-day, after scholars and
story-tellers have been steadily at work upon it for nearly
a century and a half, — ever since David Hume and Oliver
Goldsmith brought forth their classic renderings, — the
chief popular knowledge of over three centuries of Eng-
lish history between John Plantagenet (1200) and Eliza-
beth Tudor (1536) is derived from the pages of Shake-
speare. There is also a curious theory now apparently in
vogue in our University circles, that, in some inscrutable
way, accuracy as to fact and a judicial temperament are
inconsistent with a highly developed literary sense. Eru-
dition and fairness are the quahties in vogue, while form
and brilliancy are viewed askance. Addressing now an
assembly made up, to an unusual extent, of those engaged
in the work of instruction in history, I wish to suggest
that this marked tendency of the day is in itself a passing
fashion, and merely a reactionary movement against the
influence of two great literary masters of the last genera-
tion,— Macaulay and Carlyle. That the reaction had
reason, I would by no means deny ; but, like most decided
reactions, has it not gone too far ? Because men weary
of brilliant colors, and mere imitators try to wield the
master's brush, it by no means follows that art does not
find its highest expression in Titian and Tintoretto, Rem-
brandt, Claude and Turner. It is the same with history.

28

Profound scholars, patient investigators, men of a judicial
turn of mind, subtile philosophers and accurate annalists
empty forth upon a patient, because somewhat indifferent,
reading public volume after volume ; but the great masters
of literary form, in history as in poetry, alone retain their
hold. Thucydides, Tacitus and Gibbon are always there,
on a level with the eye ; while those of their would-be
successors who find themselves unable to tell us what
they know, in a way in which we care to hear it, or within
limits consistent with human life, are quietly relegated to
the oblivion of the topmost shelf.

I fear that I am myself in danger of sinning somewhat
flagrantly against the canons I have laid down. Exceed-
ing my allotted space, I am conscious of disregarding any
correct rule of form by my attempt at dealing with more
subjects than it is possible on one occasion adequately to
discuss. None the less I cannot resist the temptation, —
I am proving myself an American ; and having gone
thus far, I will now go on to the end, even though alone.
There are, I hold, three elements which enter into the
make-up of the ideal historian, whether him of the past
or him of the future; — these three are learning, judg-
ment and the literary sense. A perfect history, like a
perfect poem, must have a beginning, a middle and an
end ; and the well proportioned parts should be kept in
strict subservience to the whole. The dress, also, should
be in keeping with the substance; and both subordinated
to the conception. Attempting no display of erudition,
pass the great liistorical literatures and names in rapid re-
view, and see in how few instances all these canons were
observed. And first, the Hebrew. While the Jew cer-
tainly was not endowed with the Greek's sense of form in
sculpture, in painting or in architecture, in })oetry and
music lie was, and has since been, preeminent. His
j)hilos()j)hy and his history found their natural expression
through his aptitudes. The result illustrates the supreme

29

intellectual power exercised by art. Of learning and judg-
ment there is only pretence ; but imagination and power
are there : and, even to this day, the Hebrew historical
writings are a distinct literature, — we call them " The
Sacred Books." We have passed from under that super-
stition ; and yet it still holds a traditional sway. The
books of Moses are merely a first tentative effort on the
road subsequently trodden by Herodotus, Livy and
Voltaire ; but their author was so instinct with imagi-
nation and such a master of form that to this day his
narrative is read and accepted as history by more human
beings than are all the other historical works in existence
combined in one mass. No scholar or man of reflection
now believes that Moses was any more inspired than
Homer, Julius Caesar or Thomas Carlyle ; but the imagi-
nation and intellectual force of the man, combined with
his instinct for literary form, sufficed to secure for what
he wrote a unique mastery only in our day shaken.^

The Greek follows hard upon the Jew ; and of the
Greek I have already said enough. He had a natural
sense of art in all its shapes ; and, when it came to writ-
ing history, Herodotus, Thucydides and Xenophon seemed
mere evolutions. Of the three, Thucydides alone com-
bined in perfection the quaHties of erudition, judgment
and form ; but to the last-named element, their literary
form, it is that all three owe their immortality.

It is the same with the Romans, — Livy, Sallust,
Tacitus. The Roman had not that artistic instinct so
noticeable in the Greek. He was, on the contrary, essen-
tially a soldier, a ruler and organizer ; and a literary
imitator. Yet now and again even in art he attained a
proficiency which challenged his models. Cicero has held
his own with Demosthenes ; and Virgil, Horace and
Juvenal survive, each through a mastery of form. Taci-
tus, it is needless to say, is the Latin Thucydides. In

1 See Appendix C, p. 58.

30

him again, five centuries after Thueydides, the three
essentials are combined in the highest degree. The
orbs of the great historical constellation are wide apart,
— the interval that divided Tacitus from Thucydides is
the same as that which divided Matthew Paris from
Edward Gibbon ; — twice that which divides Shakespeare
from Tennyson.

Coming rapidly down to modern times, of the three
great languages fruitful in historical work, — the French,
English and German, — those writing in the first have
alone approached the aptitude for form natural to the
Greeks ; but in Gibbon only of those who have, in the three
tongues, devoted themselves to historical work, were all
the cardinal elements of historical greatness found united
in such a degree as to command general assent to his pre-
eminence. The Germans are remarkable for erudition,
and have won respect for their judgment ; but their dis-
regard of form has been innate, — indicative either of a
lack of perception or of contempt.^ Their work accord-
ingly will hardly prove enduring. The French, from
Voltaire down, have evinced a keener perception of
form, nor have they been lacking in erudition. Critical
and quick to perceive, they have still failed in any one
instance to combine the three areat attributes each in its
highest degree. Accordingly, in the historical firmament
they count no star of the first magnitude. Their lights
have been meteoric rather than permanent.

In the case of Great Britain it is interesting to follow
the familiar names, noting the shortcoming of each. The
roll scarcely extends beyond the century, — Hume, Robert-

1 " Not only does a German writer possess, as a rule, a full measure of
tlie piitiont industry which is rofpiirorl for thinkinp cvorythinp that may be
thi>iif;lit al)()ut liis tluMno, and knowing; what otlicrs liavc llioiif^ht ; he alone,
it sccnns, wIhmi he comes to write a hook ahout it, is inihiicd with llic belief
that that hook ought necessarily to Im; a complete comjtendiMm of every-
thinfj tliat has h«'en so ilionpht, whether by himself or others." — 'J'fie Athe'
tKcnm, September 8, 1900, ji. 303.

31

son and Gibbon constituting the solitary remembered
exceptions. Of Gibbon, I have already spoken. He
combined in highest degree all the elements of the
historian, — in as great a degree as Thucydides or
Tacitus. He was an orb of the first order ; and it was
his misfortune that he was born and wrote before Darwin
gave to history unity and a scheme. Hume was a subtle
philosopher, and his instinctive mastery of form has alone
caused his history to survive. He was not an investi-
gator in the modern sense of the term, nor was he gifted
with an intuitive historical instinct. Robertson had fair
judgment and a well-developed though in no way remark-
able sense of form ; but he lacked erudition, and, as com-
pared with Gibbon, for example, was content to accept
his knowledge at second hand. Telling his story well,
he was never master of his subject.

Coming down to our own century, and speaking only
of the dead, a series of familiar names at once suggest
themselves, — Mitf ord, Grote and Thirlwall ; Arnold and
Merivale ; Milman, Lingard, Hallam, Macaulay, Carlyle,
Buckle, Froude, Freeman and Green, — naming only the
more conspicuous. Mitford was no historian at all ;
merely an historical pamphleteer. His judgment was in-
ferior to his erudition even, and he had no sense of form.
Grote was erudite, but he wrote in accordance with his
political affinities, and what is called the spirit of the time
and place ; and that time and place were not Greece, nor
the third and fourth centuries before Christ. He had,
moreover, no sense of literary form, for he put what he
knew into twelve volumes, when human patience did not
suffice for six. Thirlwall was erudite in a way, and a
thinker and writer of unquestionable force ; but his
work on Greece was written to order, and is what is
known as a " standard history." Correct, but devoid of
inspiration, it is slightly suggestive of a second-class epic.
Arnold is typical of scholarship and insight ; his judg-

32

ment is excellent : but of literary art, so conspicuous in
his son, there is no trace. Merivale is scholarly and
academic. Milman was hampered by his church training,
■which fettered his judgment ; learned, as learning went
in those days, there is in his writings nothing that would
attract readers or students of a period later than his own.
Lingard was another church historian. A correct writer,
he tells England's story from the point of view of Rome.
Hallam is deeply read, and judicial ; but the literary
sense is conspicuously absent. His volumes are well-nigh
unreadable. Freeman is the typical modern historian of
the original-material-and-monograph school. He writes
irrespective of readers. Learned beyond compare, he
cumbers the shelves of our libraries with an accumulatioH
of volumes which are not literature.

Of Henry Thomas Buckle and of John Richard Green I
will speak together, and with respectful admiration. Both
were prematurely cut off, almost in what with historical
writers is the period of promise ; for, while Green at the
time of his death was forty-seven. Buckle was not yet
forty-one. What they did, therefore, — and they both
did much, — was indicative only of what they might have
done. Judged by that, — ex pede Ilerculem, — I hold
that they come nearer to the ideal of what a twentieth
century historian sliould be than any other writers in
our modern English tongue. That Buckle was crude,
im])ulsive, hasty in generalization and paradoxical in
judgment is not to be gainsaid; — but lie wrote before
Darwin ; and, when he published his history, lie was but
thirty-six. What miglit he not have become had lie been
favored with liealth, and lived to sixty. Very different
in organization, lie and Green alike possessed in high
degree the spirit of investigation and tlie historical
insight, combined with a wcill-dcveloped literary sense.
Men of untiring research, they had the faculty of ex-
pression. Artists as well as scholars, they inspired.

33

Their early death was in my judgment an irreparable loss
to Eng'lish historical lore and the best historical treat-
ment.

I come now to Macaulay, Carlyle and Froude, the three
literary masters of the century who have dealt with history
in the English tongue ; and I shall treat of them briefly,
and in the inverse order. Froude is redeemed by a sense
of literary form ; as an historian he was learned, but
inaccurate, and his judgment was fatally defective. He
was essentially an artist. Carlyle was a poet rather than
an historian. A student, with the insight of a seer and a
prophet's voice, his judgment was fatally biased. A won-
derful master of form, his writings will endure ; but rather
as epics in prose than as historical monuments. Macaulay
came, in my judgment, nearer than any other English
writer of the century to the great historical stature ; but
he failed to attain it. The cause of his failure is an
instructive as well as an interesting study.

Thomas Babington Macaulay is unquestionably the
most popular historian that ever wrote. His history,
when it appeared, was the literary sensation of the day,
and its circulation increased with each succeedino^ vol-
ume. Among historical works, it alone has in its vogue
thrown into the shade the most successful novels of the
century, — those of Scott, Thackeray and Dickens, Jane
Eyre, Robert Elsmere, and even Richard Carvel, the last
ephemeral sensation ; but, of the three great attributes
of the historian, Macaulay was endowed with only one.
He was a man of vast erudition ; and, moreover, he was
gifted with a phenomenal memory, which seemed to put
at his immediate disposal the entire accumulation of his
omnivorous reading. His judgment was, however, defec-
tive ; for he was, from the very ardor of his nature,^ more

^ " It is well to realize that this greatest history of modern times was writ-
ten by one in whom a distrust in enthusiasm was deeply rooted. This
cynicism was not inconsistent with partiality, with definite prepossessions,
with a certain spite. The coavictiou that enthusiasm is inconsistent with

34

or less of a partisan, while the wealth of his imagination
and the exuberance of his rhetoric were fatal to his sense
of form. He was incomparably the greatest of historical
raconteurs, but the fascination of the story overcame his
sense of proportion, and he was buried under his own
riches. For it is a great mistake to suppose, as so many
do, that what is called style, no matter how brilliant, or
how correct and clear, constitutes in itself literary form ;
it is a large and indispensable element in literary form,
but neither the whole, nor indeed the greatest part of it.
The entire scheme, the proportion of the several parts to
the whole and to each other, the grouping and the pre-
sentation, the background and the accessories constitute
literary form ; the style of the author is merely the
drapery of presentation. Here was where Macaulay
failed ; and he failed on a point which the average
historical writer, and the average historical instructor still
more, does not as a rule even take into consideration.
Macaulay's general conception of his scheme was so
imperfect as to be practically impossible ; and this he
himself, when too late, sadly recognized. His interest
in his subject and the warmth of his imagination swept
him away, — they were too strong for his sense of pro-
portion. Take, for instance, two such wonderful bits as
his account of the trial of the seven bishops, and his nar-
rative of tlie siege of Londonderry. They are master-
pieces ; but they should be monographs. Tliey are in
their imagery and detail out of all proportion to any
general liistorical ])lan. They imply a whole wliicli would
be in itself an historical library rather than a liistory.
On tlie matter of judgment it is not necessary to dwell.
Macaulay's work is unquestionably history, and history

intellectual balance was engrained in his mental constitution, and confirmed
by Htudy and experience. It mipjlit be reasonably maintained that zeal for
men or eauscs is an liistorian's undoing, and that ' roserve synijiathy ' — the
principle of Thncydides — is the first lesson he has to learn." .J. B. Bury,
Introduction to bis edition (18%) of Gibbon, vol. i. pp. Ixvii.-lxviii.

35

on a panoramic scale ; but the pigments he used are
indisputably Whig. Yet his method was instinctively
correct. He had his models and his scheme, — he made-
his preliminary studies, — he saw his subject as a whole,
and in its several parts ; but he labored under two dis-
advantages:— In the first place, like Gibbon, he was born
and wrote before the discoveries of Darwin had given its
whole great unity to history ; and, in the second place,
he had not thought his plan fully out, subordinating
severely to it both his imagination and his rhetoric.
Accordingly, so far as literary form was concerned, his
history, which in that respect above all should, with his
classic training, have been an entire and perfect chryso-
lite, was in fact a monumental failure. It was not even
a whole ; it was only a fragment.

Coming now to our own American experience, and
still speaking exclusively of the writings of the dead, it
is not unsafe to say that there is as yet no American his-
torical work which can call even for mention among those
of the first class. The list can speedily be passed in
review, — Marshall, Irving, Prescott, Hildreth, Bancroft,
Motley, Palfrey and Parkman. Except those yet living,
I do not recall any others who would challenge consider-
ation. That Marshall was endowed with a calm, clear
judgment, no reader of his judicial opinions would deny ;
but he had no other attribute of an historian. He
certainly was not historically learned, and there is no
evidence that he was gifted with any sense of literary
proportion. Irving was a born man of letters. With a
charming style and a keen sense of humor, he was as an
historical writer defective in judgment. Not a profound
or accurate investigator, as became apparent in his
Columbus and his Washington, his excellent natural
literary sense was but partially developed. Perhaps he
was born before his time ; perhaps his education did not
lead him to the study of the best models ; but, however

36

it came about, he failed, and failed indisputably, in form.
Preseott was a species of historical pioneer, — an adven-
turer in a new field of research and of letters. Not only
was he, like Macaulay and the rest, born before Darwin
and the other great scientific lights of the century had
assigned to human history its unity, limits and signifi-
cance, but Preseott was not a profound scholar, nor yet
a thorough investigator ; his judgment was by no means
either incisive or robust, and his style was elegant, as the
phrase goes, rather than tersely vigorous. He wrote,
moreover, of that which he never saw, or made himself
thoroughly part of even in imagination. Laboring
under great disadvantages, his course was infinitely
creditable ; but his portrait in the gallery of historians is
not on the eye line. Of Hildreth, it is hardly necessary
to speak. Laborious and persevering, his investigation
was not thorough ; indeed he had not taken in the
fundamental conditions of modern historical research.
With a fatally defective judgment, he did not know
what form was.

George Bancroft was in certain ways unique, and,
among writers and students, his name cannot be men-
tioned without respect. He was by nature an hivesti-
gator. His learning and philosophy cannot be called
sound, and his earlier manner was something to be for-
ever avoided ; l)ut he was indefatigable as a collector,
and his patience knew no bounds. He devoted his life
to his subject ; and his life came to a close while he was
still (Iwelhng on the preliminaries to his theme. A par-
tisan, and writing in support of a ])reconceivcd theory,
his judgment was necessarily biased; wliile, as respects
literary form, tliough he always tended to what was
better, he never even approximately reached what is best.
He, too, like Macaulay, failed to grasp the wide and
fundamental distinction between a jn-oportioned and
complete history and a thorough historical monograph.

37

His monumental work, therefore, is neither the one nor
the other. As a collection of monographs, it is too con-
densed and imperfect; as a history, it is cumbersome,
and enters into unnecessary detail.

From a literary point of view Motley is unquestionably
the most brilhant of American historical writers. He
reminds the reader of Froude. Not naturally a patient
or profound investigator, he yet forced himself to make
a thorough study of his great subject, and he was gifted
with a remarkable descriptive power. A man of intense
personahty, he was, however, defective in judgment, if
not devoid of the faculty. He lacked calmness and method.
He could describe a sieo^e or a battle with a vividness
which, while it revealed the master, revealed also the
historian's limitations. With a distinct sense of literary
form, he was unable to resist the temptations of imagi-
nation and sympathy. His taste was not severe ; his tem-
per the reverse of serene. His defects as an historian
are consequently as apparent as are his merits as a writer.

Of Palfrey, the historian, I would speak with the deep
personal respect I entertained for the man. A typical
New Englander, a victim almost of that " terrible New
England conscience," he wrote the history of New Eng-
land. A scholar in his way, and the most patient of
investigators, he had, as an historian, been brought up in
a radically wrong school, that of New England theology.
There was in him not a trace of the skeptic ; not a sugges-
tion of the humorist or easy-going philosopher. He wrote
of New England from the inside, and in close sympathy
with it. Thus, as respects learning, care and accuracy,
he was in no way deficient, while he was painstaking and
conscientious in extreme. His training and mental char-
acteristics, however, impaired his judgment, and he was
quite devoid of any sense of form. The investigator will
always have recourse to his work ; but, as a guide, its
value will pass away with the traditions of the New Eng-

38

land theological period. From the literary point of view
the absence of all idea of proportion renders the bulk of
what he wrote impossible for the reader.

Of those I have mentioned, Parkman alone remains ;
perhaps the most individual of all our American histori-
ans, the one tasting most racily of the soil. Parkman did
what Prescott failed to do, what it was not in Prescott
ever to do. He wrote from the basis of a personal know-
ledge of the localities in which what he had to narrate
occurred, and the characteristics of those with whom he
undertook to deal. To his theme he devoted his entire
life, working under difficulties even greater than those
which so cruelly hampered Prescott. His patience under
suffering was infinite ; his research was indefatigable. In
this respect, he left nothing to be desired. While his
historical judgment was better than his literary taste, his
appreciation of form was radically defective. Indeed he
seemed almost devoid of any true sense of proportion.
The result is that he has left behind him a succession of
monographs of more or less historical value or literary
interest, but no complete, thoroughly designed and care-
fully proportioned historical unit. Like all the others,
his work lacks form and finish.

The historical writers of more than an hundred years
have thus been passed in hasty review, nor has any nine-
teenth century compeer of Thucydides, Tacitus and Gib-
bon been found among those who have exjircsscd them-
selves in the English tongue. Nor do I think that any
such could be found in other tongues ; unless, perchance,
among the Germans, Tlieodor Mommsen might challenge
consideration. Of Mommsen's learning there can be no
(picstion. I do not think there can l)e much of his insight
and judgment. The sole (juestion would be as to his
literary form ; nor, in that respect, judging by the recol-
lection of thirty years, do I think that, so far as his his-
tory of Rome is concerned, judgment can be lightly

39

passed against him. But, on this point, the verdict of
time only is final. Before that verdict is in his case ren-
dered, another half century of probation must elapse.^

There is still something to be taken into consideration.
I have as yet dealt only with the writers ; the readers
remain. During the century now ending, what changes
have here come about ? For one, I frankly confess myself
a strong advocate of what is sometimes rather contemptu-
ously referred to as the popularization of history. I have
but a limited sympathy with those who, from the ethereal-
ized atmosphere of the cloister, whether monkish or col-

^ " C'est sous ces deux aspects — qui sont en r^alite les deux faces de
I'esprit de Mommseu, le savant et le politique — qu'il convient d'dtudier cet
ouvrage.

" Dans I'expos^ scientifique de VHistoire romaine on ne sait ce qu'on doit
le plus admirer, ou de la science colossale de I'auteur ou de I'art avec la-
quelle elle est raise en ceuvre.

" C'^tait une entreprise colossale que celle de rdsumer tous les travaux
sur la matiere depuis Niebuhr. Mommsen lui-meme avait contribu^ k ce
travail par la quantite fabuleuse de m^moires qu'il avait ecrits sur les
points les plus sp^ciaux du droit remain, de I'archdologie ou de I'histoire.
Or tout cela est assimil^ d'une maniere merveilleuse dans une narration his-
torique qui est un des chefs-d'oeuvre de I'historiographie. L'histoire romaine
est une ceuvre extraordinaire dans sa condensation, comme il n'en existe
nulle autre au monde, enfermant dans des dimensions si restreintes (3
volumes in 8°) tant de choses et de si bonnes choses. Mommsen raconte
d'une maniere si attrayante que des les premieres lignes vous etes entraind.
Ses grands tableaux sur les premieres migrations des peuples en Italic, sur
les d(^buts de Rome, sur les Etrusques, sur la domination des Hellenes en
Italic ; ses chapitres sur les institutions romaines, le droit, la religion,
I'arm^e et I'art ; sur la vie dcononiique, I'agriculture, I'industrie et le com-
merce ; sur le d^veloppement int^rieur de la politique romaine ; sur les
Celtes et sur Carthage ; sur les pdrip^ties de la Revolution romaine depuis
les Gracques h Jules Cesar ; sur I'Orient grec, la Macddoine ; sur la sou-
mission de la Gaule : tout cela forme un ensemble admirable.

" Comme peintre de grands tableaux historiques, je ne vois parmi les
historiens contemporains qu'un homme qui puisse etre compare <i Mommsen,
c'est Ernest Renan : c'est la meme touche large, le meme sens des propor-
tions, le meme art de faire voir et de faire comprendre, de rendre vivantes
les choses par les details typiques qui se gravent pour toujours dans la m^-
moire." Guilland, L'Allemagne Nouvelle et ses Historiens (1900), pp. 121-
22.

40

legiate, seek truth's essence and pure learning only,
regardless of utility, of sympathy or of applause. The
great historical writer, fully to accomplish his mission,
must, I hold, be in very close touch with the generation
he addresses. In other words, to do its most useful work,
historical thought must be made to permeate what we
are pleased to call the mass ; it must be infiltrated through
that great body of the community which, moving slowly
and subject to all sorts of influences, in the end shapes
national destinies. The true historian, — he who most
sympathetically, as well as correctly, reads to the present
the lessons to be derived from the experience of the past,
— I hold to be the only latter-day prophet. That man
has a message to deliver ; but, to deliver it effectively, he
must, like every successful preacher, understand his audi-
ence ; and, to understand it, he must either be instinc-
tively in sympathy with it, or he must have made a study
of it. Of those instinctively in sympathy, I do not speak.
That constitutes genius, and genius is a law unto itself ;
but I do maintain that instructors in history and histori-
cal writers who ignore the prevailing literary and educa-
tional conditions, therein make a great mistake. He fails
fatally who fails to conform to his environment ; and this
is no less true of the historian than of the novelist or
politician.

In otlier words, what have we to say of those wlio read ?
What do we know of them? Not much, I fancy. In
spite of our public libraries, and in spite of tlie immensely
increased diffusion of j)rinted matter througli tlie agency
of tliose Hbraries and of the press, what those who com-
pose tlie great mass of tin; community are reading, what
enters into their intellectual nutriment, and thence passes
into the secretions of tlie body politic, — this, I imagine,
is a subject chiefly of surmise. The field is one upon
which I do not now propose to enter. Too large, it is
also a pathless wilderness. I would, however, earnestly

41

commend it to some more competent treatment at an early
convention of librarians or publishers. To-day we must
confine ourselves to history. For what, in the way of
history, is the demand ? Who are at present the popular
historical writers? How can the lessons of the past be
most readily and most effectually brought home to the
mind and thoughts of the great reading public, vastly
greater and more intelligent now than ever before ?

This is something upon which the census throws no
light. There is a widespread impression among those
more or less qualified to form an opinion that the general
capacity for sustained reading and thinking has not in-
creased or been strengthened with the passage of the
years. On the contrary, the indications, it is currently
sup2)0sed, are rather of emasculation. Everything must
now be made easy and short. There is a constant demand
felt, especially by our periodical press, for information on
all sorts of subjects, — historical, philosophical, scientific,
— but it must be set forth in what is known as a popular
style, that is introduced into the reader in a species of
sugared capsule, and without lea\ang any annoying taste
on the intellectual palate. The average reader, it is said,
wants to know something concerning all the topics of
the day ; but, while it is highly desirable he should be
gratified in this laudable, though languid, craving, he
must not be fatigued in the effort of acquisition, and he
will not submit to be bored. It is then further argued
that this was not the case formerly ; that in what are
commonly alluded to as " the good old times," — always
the times of the grandparents, — people had fewer books,
and fewer people read ; but those who did read, deterred
neither by number of pages nor by dryness of treatment,
were equal to the feat of reading. To-day, on the con-
trary, almost no one rises to more than a magazine article ;
a volume appalls.

This is an extremely interesting subject of inquiry,

42

■were the real facts only attainable. Unfortunately they
are not. We are forced to deal with impressions ; and
impressions, always vague, are usually deceptive. At the
same time, when glimpses of a more or less remote past
do now and again reach us, they seem to indicate mental
conditions calculated to excite our special wonder. We
do know, for instance, that in the olden days, — before
public libraries and periodicals, and the modern cheap
press and the Sunday newspaper were devised, — when
books were rarities, and reading a somewhat rare accom-
plishment,— the Bible, Shakespeare, Paradise Lost, the
Pilgrim's Progress and Robinson Crusoe, the Specta-
tor and Tatler, Barrows' Sermons and Hume's History
of England were the standard household and family
literature ; and the Bible was read and reread until its
slightest allusions passed into familiar speech. Indeed,
the Bible, in King James's version, may be said to have
been for the great mass of the community, — those who
now have recourse to the Sunday paper, — the sum and
substance of English literature. In this respect it is
fairly open to question whether the course of evolution
has tended altogether toward improvement. Now and
again, however, we get one of these retrospective glimpses
which is simply bewildering ; and, while indulging in it,
one cannot help pondering over the mental conditions
which once apparently prevailed. The question suggests
itself, wore there giants in tliose days? — or did the
reader ask for bread, and did they give him a stone ? We
know, for instance, what the public library and circulat-
ing library of to-day are. We know, to a certain extent,
wliut th(! reading demand is, and wlio tlie ])()pnlar authors
arc. We know that, while history must content itself
with a poor one in twenty, the call for works of fiction is
more tlian a lliird of tlie wliolc, while nearly eighty per
cent, of the ordinarv circulation is made up of novels,
story books for children, and periodicals. It is the

43

lightest form of pabulum. This, in 1900. Now, let us
get a glimpse of " the good old times."

In the year 1790, a humorous rascal named Burroughs
— once widely known as " the notorious Stephen Bur-
roughs" — found himself stranded in a town on Long
Island, New York, a refugee from a Massachusetts gaol
and whipping-post, the penalties incurred in or at both of
which he had richly merited. In the place of his refuge,
Burroughs served as the village schoolmaster ; and, being
of an observant turn of mind, he did not fail presently to
note that the people of the place were " very illiterate,"
and almost entirely destitute of books of any kind, " except
schoolbooks and bibles." Finding among the younger
people of the community many " possessing bright abilities
and a strong thirst for information," Burroughs asserts
that he bestirred liimself to secure the funds necessary
to found the nucleus of a public library. Having in a
measure succeeded, a meeting of "the proprietors" was
called " for the purpose of selecting a catalogue of
books ; " and presently the different members presented
lists " peculiar to their own tastes." Prior to this meet-
ing it had been alleged that the people generally antici-
pated that the books would be selected by the clergyman
of the church, and would " consist of books of divinity,
and dry metaphysical writings ; whereas, should they be
assured that histories and books of information would
be procured," they would have felt very differently. And
now, when the lists were submitted, " Deacon Hodges
brought forward ^Essays on the Divine Authority for
Infant Baptism,' ' Terms of Church Communion,' ^ The
Careful Watchman,' ' Age of Grace,' etc. ; Deacon Cook's
collection was 'History of Martyrs,' ^Rights of Con-
science,' ' Modern Pharisees,' ' Defence of Separates ; ' Mr.
Woolworth exhibited ' Edwards against Chauncy,' ' His-
tory of Redemption,' ' Jennings's Views,' etc. ; Judge
Hui-lbut concurred in the same ; Dr. Rose exhibited ' Gay's

44

Fables/ ' Pleasing Companion,' ^ Tui-ldsh Spy/ while I/'
wrote BuiTOuglis, " for the third time recommended
* Hmue's History/ ^ Voltaii'e's Histories/ ' RoUin's An-
cient History/ * Plutarch's Lives/ etc."

It would be difficult to mark more strikingly the devel-
opment of a centui-y, than by thus presenting Hume's
History and RoUin as tjpical of what was deemed light
and popular reading at one end of it, and the Sunday
newspaper at the other. As I have ah-eady intunated,
they were either giants in those days, or husks supphed
milk for babes. Recui-ring, however, to present con-
ditions, the popular demand for historical hterature is
undoubtedly vastly larger than it was a centuiy ago ; nor
is it by any means so clear as is usually assumed that the
solid reathng and thinking power of the community has
at all deteriorated. That yet remains to be proved. A
century ago, it is to be borne in mind, there were no
pubhc libraries at all, and the private collections of books
were comparatively few and small. It is safe, probably,
to assume that there are a hundred, or even a thousand,
readers now to one then. On this head nothing even
approximating to what would be deemed conclusive evi-
dence is attainable ; but the fair assumption is that, while
the light and ephemeral, knowledge-made-easy reading is
a development of these latter years, it has in no way dis-
placed the more sustained reading and severe thought
of the earlier time. On the contrary, that also has had
its share of increase. Take Gibbon, for instance. A
few years ago, an acute and })()})ular English critic, in
sjx'aklng of tlie newly pul)lishcd " Memoirs " of Gibbon,
used tliis language: — '^ All readers of the 'Decline and
Fall/ — that is to say, all men and women of a sound
education," etc. If Mr. Frederic Harrison was correct
in his generalization in 189(), certainly more conld not
have been said in 179G ; and, during the intervening
hundred years, the class of those who have received " a

45

sound education " has undergone a prodigious increase.
Take Harvard College, for instance ; in 179G it gradu-
ated thirty-three students, and in 1896 it graduated four
hundred and eight, — an increase of more than twelve-
fold. In 1796, also, there were not a tenth part of
the institutions of advanced education in the country
which now exist. The statistics of the publishing houses
and the shelves of the bookseUing establishments all
point to the same conclusion. Of course, it does not
follow that because a book is bought it is also read ; but
it is not unsafe to say that twenty copies of Gibbon's
"Dechne and Fall" are called for in the bookstores of
to-day to one that was called for in 1800.

On this subject, however, very instructive Hght may be
derived from another quarter. I refer to the Public
Library. While discussing the question eighteen months
ago, I ventured to state that, " in the case of one Public
Library in a considerable Massachusetts city I had been
led to conclude, as the result of examination and some-
what careful inquiry, that the copy of the ' Decline and
Fall ' on its shelves, had, in over thirty years, not once
been consecutively read through by a single individual."
I have since made further and more careful inquiry on
this point from other, and larger, though similar institu-
tions, and the inference I then drew has been confirmed
and generalized. I have also sought information as to
the demand for historical literature, and the tendency and
character of the reading so far as it could be ascertained,
or approximately inferred. I have submitted my list of
historical writers, and inquired as to the call for them.
Suggestive in all respects, the results have, in some, been
little less than startling. Take for instance popularity,
and let me recur to Macaulay and Carlyle. I have spoken
of the two as great masters in historical composition, —
comparing them in their field to Turner and Millet in the
field of art. Like Turner and Millet, they influenced to

46

a marked extent a whole generation of workers that en-
sued. To such an extent did they influence it that a
scholastic reaction against them set in, — a reaction as
distinct as it was strong. Nevertheless, in spite of that
reaction, to what extent did the master retain his popular
hold ? I admit that my astonishment was great when I
learned that between 1880, more than twenty years after
his death, and 1900, besides innumerable editions issued
on both sides of the Atlantic, the authorized London
publishers of Macaulay had sold in two shapes only, —
and they appear in many other shapes, — 80,000 copies
of his History and 90,000 of his Miscellanies. Of
Carlyle and the call for his writings I could gather no
such specific particulars ; but, in reply to my inquiries, I
was generally advised that, while tlie English demand had
been large, there was no considerable American publish-
ing house which had not brought out partial or complete
editions of his works. They also were referred to as
" innumerable." ^ In other words, wdien a generation that
knew them not had passed away, the works of the two
great masters of historical literary form in our day sold
beyond all compare with the productions of any of the
living writers most in vogue ; and this while the profes-
sorial dry-as-dust reaction against those masters Avas in
fullest swing.

With a vast amount of material unused,^ and much still

' At least twenty (20) American publishing houses have broun^ht out
(•(iiiij>lcti' editions of Maeaulny, both his Miscellanies and the History of
7Mif,Maiid. Many of these editions have becMi exjiensive, and they seem
iiiiifoiinly to have met with a ready demand. Almost every American
pulilishinfj house of any note lias broujj^ht out editions of some of the
KssayH. Tlic same is, to a less extent, true of Carlyle. Seven (7) houses
have brought out comjdete editions of his works ; while three (^) others
have put on the market imported editions, bearing an American imprint.
Separate editions of the more popular of his writings — some cheap, others
(If luxe — have been brought out by nearly every American publishing con-
cern.

' See Appendix 1), p. .W.

47

unsaid, I propose, in concluding, to trespass still further
on your patience while I draw a lesson to which the
first portion of my discourse will contribute not less
than the second. A great, as well as a very volumi-
nous, recent historical writer has coined the apothegm,
— " History is past politics, and politics are present
History." The proposition is one I do not now pro-
pose to discuss, except to suggest that, however it may
have been heretofore, what is known as politics will be
but a part, and by no means the most important part, of
the history of the future. The historian will look deeper.
It was President Lincoln who said in one of the few im-
mortal utterances of the century, — an utterance, be it
also observed, hmited to two hundred and fifty words, —
that this, our, nation was " conceived in liberty, and
dedicated to the proposition that all men are created
equal;" and that it was for us highly to resolve "that
government of the people, by the people, for the people,
should not perish from the earth." It was James Russell
Lowell, who, when asked in Paris by the historian Guizot
many years since, how long the Republic of the United
States might reasonably be expected to endure, happily
replied, — " So long as the ideas of its founders continue
dominant." In the first place, I hold it not unsafe to
say that, looking forward into a future not now remote,
the mission of the Republic and the ideas of the founders
will more especially rest in the hands of those agricultural
communities of the Northwest, where great aggregations
of a civic populace are few, and the principles of natural
selection have had the fullest and the freest play in the
formation of the race. Such is Wisconsin ; such Iowa ;
such Minnesota. In their hands, and in the hands of
communities like them, ^vill rest the ark of our covenant.
In the next place, for the use and future behoof of
those communities I hold that the careful and intelligent
reading of the historical lessons of the past is all im-

48

portant. Without that reading, and a constant emphasis
laid upon its lessons, the nature of that mission and those
ideas to which Lincoln and Lowell alluded cannot be
kept fi'esh in mind. This institution I accordingly regard
as the most precious of all Wisconsin's endowments of
education. It should be the sheet anchor by which,
amid the storms and turbulence of a tempestuous future,
the ship of State will be anchored to the firm holding-
ground of tradition. It is to further this result that
I to-day make appeal to the historian of the future.
His, in this community, is a great and important mis-
sion ; a mission which he will not fulfil unless he to a
large extent frees himself from the trammels of the
past, and rises to an equality with the occasion. He
must be a prophet and a poet, as well as an investigator
and an annalist. He must cut loose from many of the
models and most of the precedents of the immediate past,
and the educational precepts now so commonly in vogue.
He must perplex the modern college professor by assert-
ing that soundness is not always and of necessity dull,
and that even intellectual sobriety may be carried to an
excess. Not only is it possible for a writer to combine
learning and accuracy with vivacity, but to be read and
to be popular should not in the eyes of the judicious be
a species of stigma. Historical research may, on the
other hand, result in a more lumber of learning ; and,
even in the portrayal of the sequence of events, it is to
a man's credit that he should strive to see thing's from
the point of view of an artist, rather than, looking with
the dull eye of a mechanic, seek to measure tluMu with
the mechanic's twelve-inch rule. I confess myself Aveary
of those reactionary influences amid which of late we
have lived. 1 distinctly look back with regret to that
more spiritual and more confident time when we of the
generation now ]>assing from the stage drew our inspi-
ration from prophets, and not from laboratories. So

49

to-day I make bold to maintain that the greatest bene-
factor America could have — far more immediately influ-
ential than any possible President or Senator or peripa-
tetic political practitioner, as well as infinitely more so
in a remote future — would be some historical writer,
occupying perhaps a chair here at Madison, who would
in speech and book explain and expound, as they could
be explained and expounded, the lessons of American
history and the fundamental principles of American his-
torical faith.

It was Macaulay who made his boast that, disregard-
ing the traditions which constituted what he contemptu-
ously termed " the dignity of history," he would set forth
England's story in so attractive a form that his volumes
should displace the last novel from the work-table of the
London society girl. And he did it. It is but the other
day that an American naval officer suddenly appeared in
the field of historical literature, and, by two volumes,
sensibly modified the policy of nations. Here are pre-
cept and example. To accomplish similar results should,
I hold, be the ambition of the American historian.
Popularity he should court as a necessary means to an
end ; and that he should attain popularity, he must
study the art of presentation as much and as thought-
fully as he delves amid the original material of history.
Becoming more of an artist, rhetorician and philosopher
than he now is, he must be less of a pedant and color-
less investigator. In a word, going back to Moses,
Thucydides and Herodotus ; Tacitus, Gibbon and Vol-
taire ; Niebuhr, Macaulay, Carlyle, Buckle, Green,
Mommsen and Froude, he must study their systems, and,
avoiding the mistakes into which they fell, thoughtfully
accommodating himself to the conditions of the present,
he must prepare to fulfil the mission before him. He
will then in time devise what is so greatly needed for our
political life, the distinctively American historical method

60

o£ the future. 0£ this we have as yet had hardly the
promise, and that only recently through the pages of
Fiske and Mahan ; and I cannot help surmising that it is
to some Eastern seed planted here in the freer environ-
ment of the more fruitful West that we must look for its
ultimate realization.

APPENDIX.

A.

The fact that the southern portion of the State of Wisconsin was
formerly, in a certain sense at least, a portion of Massachusetts, is,
even historically, more curious than interesting or valuable. In re-
gard to it the following extracts are from a Report of its Council
made to the American Antiquarian Society at Worcester, October 21,
1890,^ by Samuel A. Green, than whom, on a matter of this sort con-
nected with Massachusetts history, there is no higher Uving authority.

" The Colonial Charter of Massachusetts Bay, granted by Charles
I., under date of March 4, 1628-9, gave to the Governor and other
representatives of the Massachusetts Company, on certain conditions,
all the teiTitory lying between an easterly and westerly line running
three miles north of any part of the Merrimack River, and extending
from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific, and a similar parallel hue run-
ning south of any part of the Charles River."

The exact words of the original instrument, bearing on the matter
under discussion, were : —

" All that parte of Newe England in America which lyes and ex-
tendes betweene a great river there coiuonlie called Monomack river,
alias Merrimack river, and a certen other river there called Charles
river, being in the bottome of a certen bay there coiuonlie called Mas-
sachusetts, alias Mattachusetts, aUas Massatusetts bay : . . . And also
all those lands and hereditaments whatsoever which lye and be within
the space of three EngHsh myles to the northward of the saide river
called Monomack, aUas Merrymack, or to the norward of any and
every parte thereof, and aU landes and hereditaments whatsoever, lye-
ing within the lymitts aforesaide, north and south, in latitude and
bredth, and in length and longitude, of and within all the bredth
aforesaide, tliroughout the mayne landes there from the Atlantick and
westerne sea and ocean on the east parte, to the south sea on the west
parte : "

" Without attempting to trace in detail, from the time of the Cabots
to the days of the Charter, the continuity of the English title to this
transcontinental strip of territory, it is enough to know that the pre-
cedents and usages of that period gave to Great Britain, in theory at
^ Proceedings (New Series), voL viL pp. 11-32.

62

least, undisputed sway over the region, and forged every link in the
chain of authority and sovereignty'."

" At that time it was supposed that America was a narrow strip of
land, — j)erhaps an arm of the continent of Asia, — and that the dis-
tance across from ocean to ocean was comparatively short. It was
then known that the Isthmus of Darien was narrow, and it was there-
fore incorrectly presumed that the whole continent also was narrow."

" By later explorations this strip of territory has heen lengthened
out into a helt three thousand miles long. It crosses a continent, and
includes within its limits various large towns of the United States.
The cities of Albany, Syracuse, Rochester, Buffalo, Detroit, and Mil-
waukee all lie within the zone. There have been many social and
commercial ties between the capital of New England and these sev-
eral municipalities, but in comparison with another bond they are of
recent date, as the ground on which they stand was granted to the
Massachusetts Company by the Charter of Charles I., moret han two
hundred and sixty years ago."

" After the lapse of some years the settlers took steps to find out the
territorial boundaries of the Colony on the north in order to estabUsh
the limits of their jurisdictional authority. To this end at an early
day a Conamission was api)ointcd by the General Court, com])osed of
Captain Simon Wilhird and Ca])tain Edward Johnson, two of the
foremost men in the Colony at that time."

" It will be seen that the Commissioners were empowered, under the
order, to engage ' sucli Artists & other Assistants,' as were needed
for tlie jjurpose. In e.arly days a surveyor was called an artist, and in
oM records the word is often found with that meaning. Under the
autliority thus given, the Connnissioners emi)loycd Sergeant John
Sbcrman, of Watcrtown, and Jonathan Incc. of Cand)ridge, to join
tlie jmrty and do the scientific; work of the exj)edition."

"In October, 1(552, the Commissioners ma<h' a return to the Gen-
eral Court, giving the resuh, of tlieir hibors, and including the allida-
vits of the two surveyors. According to this repoit ihey lixed upon a
place then called by the Indians Aciuedahtan as the bead (»f the Merri-
mack river. By due observation they found tbc latitude of this spot
to be 4'.V' 40' 12"; and tbe nortbeni limit of tbc jjatent was three
miles north of this jtoinl. "

An extension of tlie noithcrn limit thus indicated would, crossing

63

Lake Michigan, run west, from a point about three miles south of
Sheboygan, througli Fond du Lac, Green Lake and Marquette coun-
ties, some six miles north of their southern boundaries, thus bisecting
Wisconsin.

B.

The full record of J. Q. Adams's utterances on this most important
subject has never been made up. (See Works of Charles Sumner,
vol. vi. pp. 19-23 ; vol. vii. p. 142.) Historically speaking, it is of
exceptional significance: and, accordingly, for convenience of refer-
ence, a partial record is here presented.

In 1836, Mr. Adams represented in Congress what was then the
Massachusetts " Plymouth " district. In April of that year the issue,
which, just twenty-five years later, was to result in overt civil war,
was fast assuming shape ; for, on the 21st of the month, the battle of
San Jacinto was fought, resulting immediately in the independence
of Texas, and more remotely in its annexation to the United States
and the consequent war of spoliation (1846-48) with Mexico. At the
same time petitions in great number were pouring into Congress from
the Northern States asking for the abolition of slavery, and the prohi-
bition of the domestic slave trade, in the District of Columbia ; the
admission into the Union of Arkansas, with a constitution recognizing
slavery, was also under consideration. In the course of a long per-
sonal letter dated April 4th, 1836, wi'itten to the Hon. Solomon Lin-
coln, of Hingham, a prominent constituent of his, Mr. Adams made
the following incidental reference to the whole subject, indicative of
the degree to which the question of martial law as a possible factor
in the solution of the problem then occupied his mind : —

" The new pretensions of the Slave representation in Congress, of
a right to refuse to receive Petitions, and that Congress have no Con-
stitutional power to abolish slavery or the slave trade in the District
of Columbia forced upon me so much of tlie discussion as I did take
upon me, but in which you are well aware I did not and could not
speak a tenth part of my mind. I did not, for example, start the
question whether by the Law of God and of Nature man can hold
property, hereditary property in man — I did not start the question
whether in the event of a servile insurrection and War, Congress
would not have complete, unlimited control over the whole subject of
slavery even to the emancipation of all the slaves in the State where
such insurrection should break out, and for the suppression of which
the freemen of Plymouth and Norfolk Counties, Massachusetts, should
be called by Acts of Congress to pour out their treasures and to shed
their blood. Had I spoken my mind on those two points the sturdi-
est of the abolitionists would have disavowed the sentiments of their
champion."

54

A little more than seven weeks after thus writing, Mr. Adams made
the following entries in liis diary : —

3Iay 25th. — '' At the House, the motion of Robertson, to recommit
Pinckneys slavery report, ^\'ith instructions to report a resolution de-
claring that Congress has no constitutional authority to ahoUsh slavery
in the District of Columbia, as an amendment to the motion for print-
ing an extra number of the report, Avas first considered. Robertson
finished his speech, which was vehement. . . .

" Immediately after the conclusion of Robertson's speech I ad-
dressed the Speaker, but he gave the floor to Owens, of Georgia, one
of the signing members of the committee, who moved the previous
question, and refused to withdraw it. It was seconded and carried,
by yeas and nays. . . .

" The hour of one came, and the order of the day was called — a
joint resolution from the Senate, authorizing the President to cause
rations to be furnished to suffering fugitives from Indian hostilities in
Alabama and Georgia. Committee of the whole on the Union, and a
debate of five hours, in which I made a speech of about an hour,
wherein I opened the whole subject of the Mexican, Indian, negro, and
English war."

It was in the course of this speech that Mr. Adams firet enunciated
the principle of emancipation through martial law, exercised under the
Constitution in time of war. He did so in the following passage : —

" Mr. Chairman, are you ready for all these wars ? A Mexican
war. A war with Great Britain if not with France ? A general In-
dian war ? A servile war ? And, as an inevitable consequence of
them all, a civil war ? For it must ultimately terminate in a war of
colors as well as of races. And do you imagine that, while with your
cyos o])en you are wilfully kindling, and then closing your eyes and
l>lindly rushing into them ; do you imagine that while in the very na-
ture of things, your own Southern and Southwestern States nuist be
the Flanders of these (•(imjdicated wars, the battlefield on which tlie last
great battle must be fouglit between slavery and emancipation ; do you
imagine tbat your Congress will have no constitutional authority to in-
terfere with the institution of slavery in any way in the SUites of this
Confederacy ? Sir, they nuist and will interfere with it — perhaps to
sustain it by war ; ])erba])s to abnlisli it l)y treaties of ])eace ; and they
will not only possess the const it ntional ]tower so to interf»'re, but they
will be lionml in diitv to do it !)>■ tbe express ])rovisions of the Consti-
tution itsell. Kruni tbe instant that your slavebolding St^ites become
the theatre of war, civil, servile or foreign, from that instant tbe war
powers of Congrc^ss extend to interference with the institution of slav-
(!ry in every way in which it can be interfered with, from a claim of
indemnity for slaves taken or destroyed, to the cession of the State
bnrdeneil witli slavery to a foreign power."

55

The following references to this speech are then found in the
diary : —

May 29th. — "I was occupied all the leisure of the day and even-
ing in writing out for publication my speech made last Wednesday in
the House of Representatives — one of the most hazardous that I ever
made, and the reception of which, even by the people of my own dis-
trict and State, is altogether uncertain."

June 2d. — " My speech on the disti'ibution of rations to the fugi-
tives from Indian hostilities in Alabama and Georgia was published
in the National Intelligencer of this morning, and a subscription paper
was circulated in the House for printing it in a pamphlet, for which
Gales told me there were twenty-five hundred copies ordered. Several
members of the House of both parties spoke of it to me, some with
strong dissent."

Jtme 19th. — " My speech on the rations comes back with echoes
of thundering vitujjeration from the South and West, and with one
universal shout of applause from the North and East. This is a cause
upon which I am entering at the last stage of life, and with the cer-
tainty that I cannot advance in it far ; my career must close, leaving
the cause at the tlu'eshold. To open the way for others is aU that I
can do. The cause is good and great."

So far as the record goes, the doctrine was not again propounded
by Mr. Adams until 1841. On the 7th of June of that year he made
a speech in the House of Representatives in support of a motion for the
repeal of the Twenty-first Rule of the House, commonly known as
" the Atherton Gag." Of this speech, no report exists ; but in the
course of it he again enunciated the Martial Law theory of Emancipa-
tion. The next day he was followed in debate by C. J. Ingersoll, of
Pennsylvania, Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, who
took occasion to declare that what he had heard the day previous had
made his " blood curdle with horror : " —

" Mr. Adams here rose in explanation, and said he did not say that
in the event of a servile war of insurrection of slaves, the Constitution
of the United States would be at an end. What he did say was this,
that in the event of a servile war or insurrection of slaves, if the peo-
ple of the fi*ee States were called upon to suppress the insurrection,
and to spend their blood and treasure in putting an end to the war
— a war in wliich the distinguished Virginian, the author of the De-
claration of Independence, had said that ' God has no attribute in
favor of the master ' — then he would not say that Congress might
not interfere with the institution of slavery in the States, and that,
through the treaty-^Tiaking power, universal emancipation might not
be the result."

The following year the contention was again discussed in the course

56

of the memorable debate on the " Haverhill Petition." Mr. Adams
was then bitterly assailed by Henry A. Wise, of Virginia, and Thomas
F. Marshall, of Kentucky. Mr. Adams at the time did not reply to
them on this head ; but, on the 14th of the following April, occasion
offered, and he then once more laid down the law on the subject, as
he understood it, and as it was subsequently put in force : —

'• I would leave that institution to the exclusive consideration and
management of the States more peculiarly interested in it, just as long
as they can keep within their own bounds. So far I admit that Con-
gress has no power to meddle with it. As long as they do not step out
of their own bounds, and do not put the question to the peojjle of the
United States, whose peace, welfare and happiness are all at stake,
so long I will agree to leave them to themselves. But when a member
from a free State brings forward certain resolutions, for which, in-
stead of reasoning to disprove his positions, you vote a censure upon
him, and that without hearing, it is quite another affair. At the time
this was done I said that, as far as I could understand the resolutions
proposed by the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Giddings), there were
some of them for which I was ready to vote, and some which I nuist
vote against ; and I will now tell this House, my constituents, and the
world of mankind, that the resolution against which I should have
voted was that in which he declares that what are called the slave
States have the exclusive right of consultation on the subject of slav-
ery. For that resolution I never would vote, because I believe that it
is not just, and does not contain constitutional doctrine. I believe that
so long as the slave States are able to sustain their institutions with-
out going abroad or calling u})on other parts of the Union to aid them
or act on the subject, so long I will consent never to interfere.

" I have said thi.s, and I rejjcat it ; but if they come to the free States
and say to them you must help us to keep down our slaves, you must
aid us in an insurrection and a civil war, then I say that with that
call conieH a full and ])lenai";y' jxnver to this House and to the Senate
over tlie whole suliject. It is a war power. I say it is a war j)ower,
and when your country is actually in war, whether it be a war of in-
vasion or a war of insurrection, Congress has power to carry on the
war, and must carry it on according to the laws of war ; and by the
laws of war an invaded country has all its laws and numicipal institu-
tions Hwei)t by the board, and niailial law takes tin- place of them.
This power in Congress has, perliaps, never been called into exercise
under tlie present Constitution of the United States. But when the
laws of war are in force, what, I ask, is one of those laws ? It is this :
that when a country is invaded, and two liostile armies are set in mar-
tial array, tlie commanders of both armies have power to emancijiate
all the slaves in the invaded territory. Nor is this a mere theoretic

57

statement. The history of South America shows that the doctrine
has been carried into practical execution within the last thirty years.
Slavery was abolished in Colombia, first, by the Spanish General, Mo-
rillo, and, secondly, by the American General, Bolivar. It was abol-
ished by virtue of a militaiy command given at the head of the army,
and its abolition continues to be law to this day. It was abolished by
the laws of war, and not by municipal enactments ; the power was
exercised by military commanders, under instructions, of course, from
their respective Governments. And here I recur again to the ex-
ample of General Jackson. What are you now about in Congress ?
You are passing a grant to refund to General Jackson the amount of
a certain fine imposed upon him by a Judge under the laws of the
State of Louisiana. You are going to refund him the money, with
interest ; and this you are going to do because the imposition of the
fine was mijust. And why was it unjust ? Because General Jackson
was acting under the laws of war, and because the moment you place
a military commander in a district wliich is the theatre of war, the
laws of war apply to that district. . . .

" I might furnish a thousand proofs to show that the pretensions of
gentlemen to the sanctity of their municipal institutions under a state
of actual invasion and of actual war, whether servile, civil, or foreign,
is wholly unfounded, and that the laws of war do, in all such cases, take
the precedence. I lay this down as the law of nations. I say that the
military authority takes for the time the place of all municipal insti-
tutions, and slavery among the rest ; and that, under that state of
things, so far from its being true that the States where slavery exists
have the exclusive management of the subject, not only the President
of the United States but the commander of the army has power to
order the universal emancipation of the slaves. I have given here more
in detail a principle which I have asserted on this floor before now,
and of wliich I have no more doubt, than that you. Sir, occupy that
Chair. I give it in its development, in order that any gentleman from
any part of the Union may, if he tliinks proper, deny the truth of the
position, and may maintain his denial ; not by indignation, not by pas-
sion and fury, but by sound and sober reasoning from the laws of na-
tions and the laws of war. And if my position can be answered and
refuted, I shall receive the refutation with pleasure ; I shall be glad
to listen to reason, aside, as I say, from indignation and passion. And
if, by the force of reasoning, my understanding can be convinced, I
here pledge myself to recant what I have asserted.

" Let my position be answered ; let me be told, let my constituents
be told, the people of my State be told, — a State whose soil tolerates
not the foot of a slave, — that they are bound by the Constitution to a
long and toilsome march under burning summer suns and a deadly

58

Southern clime for the suppression of a servile war ; that they are
bound to leave their bodies to rot upon the sands of Cai'olina, to leave
their wives and their children orphans ; that those who cannot march
are bound to pour out their treasures while their sons or brothers are
pouring out their blood to suppress a servile, combined with a civil or
a foreign war, and yet that there exists no power beyond the limits of
the slave State where such war is raging to emancipate the slaves. I
say, let this be proved — I am open to conviction ; but till that convic-
tion comes I put it forth not as a dictate of feeling, but as a settled
maxim of the laws of nations, that in such a case the military super-
sedes the civil power."

The only comment on this utterance made by Mr. Adams in his
diary was the following : — " My speech of tliis day stung the slave-
ocracy to madness."

Here the proposition rested until 1861, when the course of events
brought into forcible application the principles abstractly enunciated
twenty years before by Mr. Adams.

C.

Owing to the hold which the Hebrew theology has obtained on all
modern thought, the standards of judgment usually a])plied to histori-
cal characters have not been applied to Moses. He has been treated
as exceptional. Meanwhile, judged by those standards, it may not
unfairly be questioned whether Moses was not the most many-sided
liuinan being of whom any record exists, and the one whose influence
on the history of the race has been most far-reaching. He constitutes
almost a class by himself, in that he seems to have been equally great
as a philosoplier, a law-giver, a theologist, a poet, a soldier, an executive
magistrate and an historian. Conqiare him, for instance, with Julius
Caesar, also a niany-Kided man, wliose influence over human events is
j)erceptible even to the present time. A consummate military com-
mander and political organizer, Ciesar wrote his Commentaries. As
a strategist lie may have been su])erior to Moses ; and yet it is very
(|iU'stionabI(' wlictbcr he ever executed a more brilliant or successful
movement than the march out of Egyj^t or the j)assage of the Red
Sea. The campaigns ()f the Israelites seem to have been uniformly
botli ]ilanncd aixl carried out in a very masterly way. On the other
liand, as a literary ])ro(hict tlie I)e Hello (lallico is in no way conq)ar-
able to ExoduH. As a ])hiloso])her, the authority of l»im who wrote
the book of Genesis was undisjHited until well into the present century,
and is even now inqilicitly acre]»ted by the great mass of those call-
ing theniHclves Christiaiis. The l)in(ling character i»f the decalogue is
still recognized, and it lies at the basis of modern legislation. As a

59

poet, Homer distinctly pales before the Israelite ; while both Dante
and Milton drew from him their inspiration. There is no epic which
in sublimity of movement as weU as human interest compares with the
books of Moses. As a chief magistrate, the Hebrew moulded, or at
least left his imprint, on a race which has proved the most marked
and persistent in type the earth has yet produced. Jesus Christ was
of it. Finally, as an historian, while the learning and judgment of
Moses would not stand the test of modern criticism, his narrative was
accepted as incontrovertible until within the memory of those now Uv-
ing, and has passed into common speech.

What other man in all recorded liistory presents such a singular and
varied record ?

D.

In the address delivered at the opening of the Fenway Building of
the Massachusetts Historical Society, in April, 1899, occurred the
following : —

" It would be very interesting to know how many young persons now
read Gibbon through as he was read by our fathers, or even by ourselves
who grew up in 'the fifties.' Accurate information on such a point is not
attainable ; but in the ease of one public library in a considerable Massa-
chusetts city I have been led to conclude as the result of examination and
somewhat careful inquiry, that the copy of the ' Decline and Fall ' on its
shelves has, in over thirty years, not once been consecutively read through
by a single individual. That it is bought as one of those ' books no gentle-
man's library should be without,' I know, not only from personal acquaint-
ance with many such, but because new editions from time to time appear,
and the booksellers always have it ' in stock ; ' that it is dipped into here
and there, and more or less, I do not doubt ; but that it is now largely or
systematically read by young people of the coming generation, I greatly
question."

This passage was at the time remarked upon, and subsequently led
to a considerable correspondence. In the course of that correspond-
ence, as occasion offered, I endeavored fui'ther to inform myself,
tlirough publishers, booksellers, librarians, instructors and students.
To reach any really valuable results such an inquiry would, of course,
have to cover a broad field and be systematically conducted. This
was out of my power. None the less the questions involved are of
moment, and a thorough investigation by a competent and unpreju-
diced person, with abundance of time at his disposal, could hardly
fail to be suggestive, and, not improbably, might reveal some quite
unexpected conditions, educational as well as popular. Wliile the cor-
respondence carried on by me was desultory, as well as limited, some
of the points developed by it are more or less noteworthy and may

60

incite others to a better arranged inquiry. I, therefore, give space to
them.

From publishing firms and booksellers not much of value could be
obtained. The former are, not unnaturally, more or less reticent on
matters connected with their business ; while the booksellers not only
rvm into special lines, but their trade is subject to local conditions.
With both, also, the question of copyright has to be taken into con-
sideration. So far as conclusions could be drawn from information
derived from these sources, they would seem generally to be that the
demand for books of an liistorical character has increased largely and
is still increasing, and that for both the more expensive and the cheaper
editions ; but there is nothing indicative of a special or disproportion-
ate increase in the case of history as compared with other branches of
literature. Among what may be called the standard English and
American writers, the demand is for the writings of Gibbon, Macau-
lay, Carlyle and Green ; and for those of Prescott, Motley and Fiske.
In Boston it seems of late to be somewhat in the following propor-
tions : Green 150, Macaulay 100, Carlyle and Gibbon 75, Prescott
50, Motley 30. Text-books and what may be called the ephemeral
historical ^\Titings are not taken into consideration. Taking the Eng-
lish-speaking ])ublic in all parts of the world as a whole, ]\Iacaulay
and Carlyle would seem to be the two standard historical writers in-
comparably most in vogue. Even in America there have been numer-
ous editions of the works of both of these writers to single editions of
American works of a similar diaracter. For Gibbon alone of the
older writers does there seem to be any active demand. One feature
in the demand is noticeable. The readers of liistory seem largely to
buy and own the copies they use. The public libraries will alone ab-
sorb full editions of any new work ; but, of the standard writers, they
as a rule buy the l)etter and more expensive impressions, while the great
mass of cheaj) reprints and second-hand copies is absorbed by a vast
reading ])u1»lic, wliich formerly did not exist at all and of which little
is now known. Its demand is, liowever, on the lines indicated.

Tlie fact just referred to, that what may be termed the sustained
readers of history, or those equal to continuous liistorical reading,
j)refer to own their own copies of the books they read, and to a large
extent contrive to do so either through tlie bargain-stand or the cheap
rejM'int, has a very close bearing on the inferences to he drawn from
the statistics and ex])erience of the public libraries. These agencies
are all modern, and their influence has not yet had time in which fully
to asHf^rt itnelf. A development of the last half century, they are yet
in the fornuitive, or plastic, state. As regards them and their influ-
ence on the reading of hist(jrical works, further iixjuiry and corre-
spondence have led to a revisal of first impressions. As respects his-

61

torical reading and study now going on, I gravely doubt whether any
safe inferences can be drawn from this source. As a rule about five
(5) per cent, of the books called for at the desks of our public libra-
ries are classified as liistorical ; but, on the other hand, further inves-
tigation leads me to infer that those who resort to the public libraries
for books of this sort do so as a rule either educationally, that is, in
connection with school studies, or they are ephemeral readers. Tliis
appears clearly on examination in a public library of almost any his-
torical work in several volumes. The first wiU almost invariably bear
marks of heavy handling, and will probably have been sent to the
binder ; the succeeding volumes wiU show fewer and fewer signs of
use ; while the closing volumes, except the index volume, will be quite
fresh. People who read such works thi'ough with profit or pleasure
probably own them. Observation from the Pubhc Library point of
view is, therefore, on this subject, apt to be deceptive.

For instance, an official of one of the largest and most extensively
used public libraries in the country writes me, speaking of Gibbon,
" It is my opinion that a fair percentage of those who undertake Gib-
bon put the job through. You can draw about any inference you
please on the relative place Gibbon now holds." Another, almost
equally well jilaced from the same point of observation, has written to
me, " There is no doubt that the fact [you observe] as to the con-
dition of the several volumes of Gibbon on the shelves of the Public
Library of Quincy could be verified by observation in tlus library,
and, in all probability, in most other public libraries in this country."
My own inference now is that the people who read " The Decline
and Fall," — and they are many, — own it. The copies in the public
libraries are used for experimental purposes, or for topical reference.

On the general subject, I find many suggestive paragraphs in my
Public Librarian correspondence. The following for instance : —

" The fact of the matter is that very few people nowadays have the
time and patience to read a prolix history through by course, or even to
wade through the novels which were constructed with so great elaboration
of exciting incident for the edification of our grandfathers. It is our ex-
perience that Gibbon and Hallam and Lingard and Hume and Bancroft are
never read entire. It may be said that the attempt is seldom if ever made
to do so. There is sometimes an effort to master Maeaiday, or Carlyle, or
Motley, or Preseott ; but it is evident that this is too often witli Hagging
interest. The historical writings of Francis Parkman and John Fiske are
in great popular demand. Tliese are so broken up into separate topics that
the task set before the reader does not appear formidable, and when he has
read up on one topic he is quite likely to be hired by the interesting narrative
and the fascinating style into a continuance through other works of the same
author. Captain Mahan's books are much read, as are also Green's shorter
history and McCarthy's ' History of our own Times,' and the recent his-
tories of Schouler and Rhodes.

62

" Though there is less reading by course of voluminous histories than for-
merly, the study of history was never more popular. The tendency of the
times is toward condensation. We want our facts in a nutshell ; we cannot
spend time over unimportant details ; the historian is expected to separate
the chaff from the grain. So we have numerous condensed histories and
biographies, some of which are excellent, though some show too clearly the
characteristic of having been made-to-order at the expense of the publisher.
But the fact that the publishers find them profitable is good evidence that
such books are the kind which many persons are buying.

" Much of the historical reading with which we come into contact in this
library is by topic, under the guidance of clubs and instructors, and therefore
systematic."

" I don't see how you can hope to induce the average person of moderate
intelligence to do more than read the newspapers and a few monthly maga-
zines in these days. History does not come to him any longer througli the
volume ; it comes to him through the morning paper, as it never did before.
Historians are still a little too much inclined to write histories in the old
style ; even John Fiske does, it would seem. Whereas entirely new condi-
tions of life and knowledge would seem to call for a new kind of history,
\(rhat kind I cannot tell you."

"I doubt if ten undergraduates at Yale have read Gibbon during the past
five years ; many, however, have read Carlyle's ' Frederick,' and more his
• French Revolution.' "

" I find myself more and more astonished at the narrowing range of read-
ing. It may be that I don't see the whole thing or tliat I form wrong esti-
mates, but I am in accord with the more observing of my associates when I
tell you that the reading habits of the ' average ' reader are not desultory —
I wish they were — but sharply defined and within most contracted limits.
Let me specify in the matter of United States History. When I was a
youngster we used to have large plans for reading Bancroft, or Ilildretli,
or the biographies of famous Americans. To-day it is noticeable that the
generation recently graduated from the Public Schools seems to liave im-
bibed no general taste for reading — and does not seek to expand its small
acquirements beyond a given jjoint. For several years, off and on, 1 have
been the civil service examiner for this Library, and I can assert that tlie
only knowledge of American History, or worse, of American historical
writings, is confined to the work of one Montgomery, of whom, I dare say,
you never heard. Very rarely a young reader knows of Fiske, more rarely
of Hig^inson — once in a while of Harnes, a new name to you, I fancy. But
of tlie iMijJortant names, simply nothing. Wliat is true in these examina-
tion ])a])erH, is triu; also of the ])0(»plo who come to read. Tliey largely
confiiu' tlicmscdvf'H to this sort of liistorical reading.

" In the past few years tlierc lias also been a gradual restriction of the
limits of literary tjistes. Children, in our sdiools, and I suppo.se the ten-
<lency comes from the West, are fed on very limited ])ap. Longfellow,
Whittier, and a few others are the only names known to them — and there
seenis to be no encouragement of a general taste. So f;ir a,s we then are

63

able to discern, everything is ' patriotic ' — patriotic speeches, poems, his-
tory, one might hazard the statement that in the ' nature studies ' so popular
now, — what we used to call ' natural history ' — the bugs, beetles, butter-
flies and flowers must be patriotic too. This all may seem exaggerated
and fanciful, but I assure you that it is not to us. We trace it to a sort of
spurious conception of specialization among teachers and especially among
school committees. Whatever the cause, I submit to you that it is a de-
pressing fact that children should grow up with a particular knowledge of
Longfellow and Mr. Montgomery's history, and not the least acquaintance
with the general works of literature and history, at least of America and
England. This is one reason why Gibbon is not read more — nobody hears
about him to-day — or of Grote, or Mommsen, — though Macaulay still has
his readers."

The truth seems to be that, so far as the general public is concerned,
— that largest portion of thebody politic which is finally influenced by
its secretions, — no conclusions are reliable the inductions to which do
not include the Sunday newspaper and the periodical. These circu-
late by the miUion, and are most carefully shaped to meet the demand
of the day. They all give much space to historical topics, deahng
with them in popular form. Formerly, neither the medium nor the
method existed. Their function and influence have never been ade-
quately investigated. As a literature, besides creating a new field of
enormous size, the periodical and the Sunday paper have, as leisure
reading, largely superseded the Bible, Pilgrim's Progress, Robinson
Crusoe and all literatm-e of that class.

Turning now to the educational institutions, — especially those of
the more advanced grade, — and the student class, it would, I think,
be found that a great change has taken place in recent years. Not
only have new methods been introduced, but a branch of education
has been called into being. Formerly, — that is prior to tliirty years
ago, — history was taught in our colleges merely as a subject concern-
ing the authors and leading facts of wliich a so-called educated man
should have some knowledge ; it is now taught as, at once, a science
and a philosophy. Approached in this way by a newly created race
of instructors, it naturally and almost necessarily runs into vagaries, —
what may best be described as educational " fads." The original re-
search, topical, period and realistic methods seem to be those now most
in vogue. As intimated in the text, the artistic side is in disrepute,
while little or no attention is paid to history as literature. It has the
aspect of a revival on a more scientific basis of Carlyle's Dr. Dryasdust
dispensation, and can hardly be considered inspiring. The following
extracts from letters I have received throw light on this subject : —

" I have nowadays xmder my instruction only such seniors and graduates
of and as elect my courses, perhaps sixty or seventy individ-

64

uals each year. Among these I should suspect that perhaps one in ten
might have read Carlyle's * Revolution.' I should be astonished to find
that one in twenty had read even half of Macaulay or Gibbon, or one in fifty
Bancroft. As for ' Frederick the Great,' that would be as rarely perused
as Augustine's ' City of God.' One in five might know something of Park-
man, Fiske and Mahan, on account of their general popularity, however,
rather than any stimulus due to college work. Green's book enjoys a
greater popularity, I should presume, than any of the others.

" I will venture to add the following reflections in extenuation of what
you appear to deem an indication of a reluctance on the part of the present
generation to apply themselves patiently to prolonged and serious tasks. It
is undoubtedly true that the methods of instruction in our more conspicuous
institutions of learning militate against ' the habit of steady, or " course " his-
torical reading,' but I should be verj^ loath to add, as you do, ' and sustained
thought,' among our students. There is indeed little encouragement to read
long works through, and certainly there is little tendency to extol any writer
as a prophet. But it is not impossible that the causes of the discredit into
which the older method has fallen may indicate after all increasing insight
and disci'imination. These causes appear to me to be, first, a growing ten-
dency to a broader and more sympathetic method of dealing witli the past.
We are no longer chiefly interested in political events, nor are the best writ-
ers of to-day guilty of the Tendenz so apparent in the partisan treatments
of Gibbon, Hume, Prescott, Macaulay and Motley.

" The broader conception of history leads, secondly, to a topical treatment
of the subject ; students turn to special rather than general works of refer-
ence. An advanced student is taught to turn often to a monograph or the
most recent edition of a technical encyclopaedia rather than to so-called
'standard ' general treatments."

" Personally, I feel that we shall be able sometime to combine the advan-
tages both of form and readableness with the requirements of scientific truth
and relevancy."

" I should say that the studious habit of the men runs rather to topical
than to course reading ; and tliat, outside tlic range of tlicir fixed studies,
they take their pleasure from ]><)otry and fiction rather tlian from the histo-
rians. I should say that such gonenil historicil reading as I remember to
have been the (leliglit of my own undergraduate (lS75-0)days is now less
common tli:in it used to be.

" TIic tendency is decidedly towards ' other and more recent methods.'
Macaulay and Carlyle are too much decried in the classroom. Even (Jreen
is looked upon luskancc as a bit too * literary,' I suspect ; and tlie men who
would be scholar.s are sternly bidden to the n)ethods of colorless investi-
gators. L(!t us pray that we sliall some day come to a sane bal.tnce in (lieso
matters, and not start young historians copying false staiulards of either
extreme."

"lam nearly certain that the average undergraduate wlio lias anything
to do with lii.storical clectives in the more important colleges now reads in a
yftir more history tlian did llie average undergraduate of a gi-neration ago.

65

But the methods of instruction now employed make it likely that he reads
chapters or portions of books, reads with a view to getting various lights
upon particular transactions or episodes of history, rather than to read con-
secutively through works comprising several volumes each.

" I am sure that the average undergraduate has not less patience or grit
than the average undergraduate of my time. I think he works more ; but
he works in a different manner. I have taken counsel chiefly, in respect to
your questions, of our assistant librarian, who remembers pretty well what
books are taken out from the library. He knows no recent instance of a
student having read through Gibbon's ' Decline and Fall.' Carlyle's ' Fred-
erick the Great ' has recently been attempted by one or two, but not com-
pleted. Carlyle's 'French Revolution ' has been a good deal read. Of a
consecutive reading of Bancroft he remembers no instance. Some have
read through Motley's ' Dutch Republic' Probably no one has also gone
through his ' History of the United Netherlands.' John Fiske's writings
are much in demand.

" I believe you would find very few college libraries in which the last
volume of Gibbon showed signs of having been much used at any period,
though Vol. I. is often worn out.

" It is not the first time that the question has arisen in my mind whether
our students ought not to-day to be given the opportunity to do more read-
ing that is not positively required. But I presume that I shall answer the
question, as I have always answered it before, by concluding that it is a
better plan to make sure that all the students do enough work and, toward
that end, to fill up the time of all, even of those who, without constraint,
would read enough."

" The habit of reading practised by university students in history to-day
is that of topical comparison — or at least (if the student or the references
be at fault) topical cumulation. Thus in the last decade a considerable num-
ber of pamphlets of references on American history have been published,
doing on a small scale what the ' Guide ' of Professors Channing and Hart
does on a larger one. Judging from these guides, and my own experience
and observation, I should say that this method of topical analysis and refer-
ences is the method used at present not only in universities but in colleges
and larger high schools. A generation ago, doubtless, a student was thrown
upon the text-book, recitation system ; but if he were ambitious, then he
would obtain his comparative view of history by reading — independent or
required — in the classic works. To-day the comparative study is made
easy, and is more or less required ; but it is applied peaeemeal, not broadly:
to individual topics, narrow points. The student reads his authors ' in little *
on each phase of a movement. In this way he rounds out each whole while
details are fresh in mind — however he may lose in other respects. Now
the fact is, that the topical reading is so exacting that a student has little
time for the more generous reading of his authors. In other words, so far
as his university courses are concerned, the chapter and page system is very
largely forced upon a student. In view of such tendencies — which I have
reason to believe are general and dominant — it would seem unlikely that
the consecutive reading through of classics will again become more common.
It could scarcely become less common."

njsJTVKRSTTY OF CALIFORNIA

66

" The modern method of setting men to work to answer problems or draw
conclusions from various writers in a report or essay leads men to use a book
for a purpose, and such part of it, therefore, as they want, rather than to sit
down and read consecutively a single author until they have finished him.
In addition, doubtless, the hurry, the scattered interests in things athletic
and public, in college contests and exhibitions, in social ' functions,' the gen-
eral lack of repose and of steady application also contribute to explain the
situation. These latter excesses are lamentable ; but the modern method
of historical study is in my opinion the right one, even were it not the oulj'
feasible one under modern conditions."

" My experience and observation goes to show that steady or course his-
torical reading among the undergraduates of the present day is avoided as
far as possible. No more reading is done than is absolutely essential to
satisfy the requirements of the instructor in the written weekly papers, and
in the mid-year and final examinations. Furthermore, the amount of re-
quired reading which the students actually do is regulated by their ambi-
tions to obtain high, medium, or low grades in their history courses. Of
course there are exceptions in the students who do far more than the re-
quired reading simply because they are greatly interested in the subject-mat-
ter itself, but, in my opinion, the average student of to-day does no more
than he really has to."

" I should say students of to-day read widely in history, but not with very
great steadiness : the greatest bursts are nearest the examination periods."

Finally a recently graduated Harvard student, and an undergrad-
uate, to whom in my curiosity on the subject I was led to apj)ly for in-
formation as to the reading tendencies among the younger generation
so far as history from a literary point of view was concerned, kindly
rejdied to my queries as follows : —

" In general my answer to your (piestions is decidedly that there is very
little reading done by imdergraduates in the older .and more solid authors.
Tlie general tendency seems to be towards newer and abridged works like
M. Uuruy's ' Middle Ages and INIodern Times.' What little reading is
done in books like (Jibbon, Carlyle, Ilallam, etc., is done in little 'dabs':
there is no thouglit of a consecutive study of them. Esi)ci'ially is this true
in the case of CJibbou. I had almost said tliat the ' Decline and Fall ' is as
little known here now, as in tlio days wlion its use was forbidden as ' unor-
thodox.' It was one of the books out of which tlie froshmen in History were
advised to read a hundred pages, and though I told all my boys that they
ought at least to look into it and know who (Jibbon was, the general ten-
dency was to fight shy of so wciglity a work, and rather to read in books
like Professor JOincrton's ' Introduction to the IMiddle Ages.' The ordi-
nary unilergraduate is too niuc.li scared by Macaulay's !illusivcn('ss to get
very far witli him. I Ihitik I am <'orrect in stating Miat 1 attended a (!ourse
in which ten or fifteen lectun-s were devoted to t\u) Frendi Revolution, and
Carlyle was not mentioned. Sorel and Von Siel)el and Rose seem to have
displaced him. (Jreen is read a iittlf! more, 1 think.

" Of course it is the exception rather than the rule for tlie ordinary under-
graduate to read solid books which are not recommended in his courses. I

67

don't think there is any great difference between the present undergraduate
methods and those of the undergraduates of my day."

" I think that most undergraduates do very little steady reading in his-
tory, the general tendency being to keep very near the minimum amount of
prescribed reading in courses. Many men make sincere resolves to read
more, and begin to read long works, but those who read from beginning to
end are few indeed. A great deal of historical information is gained indi-
rectly through indiscriminate magazine reading, especially in regard to cur-
rent events. I have found that most of my acquaintances are usually famil-
iar with So-and-So's article in this or that magazine, from month to mouth.

" I have myself read the whole of Gibbon several times from beginning
to end, but I have never known of another undergraduate who had ever
read so much as one volume tlirough. Of eleven men to whom I addressed
the question this morning none had read Gibbon through, three had never
read a page of his writings, and eight had read ' a few chapters,' these chap-
ters having been required in a freshman course (History 1). None had
ever read him voluntarily.

" I like the style of Macaulay best, but it is more because of his English
than because of his historical methods. Nine of the eleven men questioned
also favored Macaulaj', and for the same reason, I fancy. Most undergrad-
uates learn to admire him in English A, and in answering your question the
men did not seem to discriminate between his English style and his historic
cal methods. None seemed to have any opinion as to the merits of the
methods of the different writers, not ever having given any thought to the
question.

" I have myself read Hume, Gibbon, Macaulay, Ridpath, Fiske, Bancroft,
Prescott, Irving, much biography and many Memoirs, especially of American
statesmen and of the Napoleonic era, because I like them ; but I think very
few men do this. Of the men questioned, eight had read Bryce's ' American
Commonwealth,' which is required in one of Professor Mac Vane's Govern-
ment courses here. Two had read a part of McMaster's ' United States,'
in connection with Professor Hart's History 13, and one man, inspired by
work done in Professor MacVane's History 12, had read May's ' Consti-
tutional History of England ' from beginning to end. Most men here have
read Bryce.

" In the sense implied in your question, no, or very few, undergraduates
read the long works nowadays. INIost of the men I questioned looked at
me rather quizzically when I asked them this question, as much as to say,
* What do you take us for ? ' "

The infei'ence from all of which is obvious. In our institutions of
advanced education, literary form as an element in good historical
work, when not actually discountenanced, is now whoUy ignored.
The method in vogue is suggestive of that pursued by the critic of the
Eatanswill Gazette, in his admired review of the work on Cliinese
metaphysics. The student is expected to improve himself in litera-
ture in the English Department, and in history and the historical
methods in the Historical Department ; and, subsequently, combine
his information.

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