Chapter IV: Part 4

Reaching the line which divides colonial themes from those of the Revolution, we confront a writer who, in his capacity as historian, not only towers above all his contemporaries, but deals with themes which are both colonial and Revolutionary. This writer is the man so famous and so hated in his day as a Loyalist statesman and magistrate, Thomas Hutchinson, the last civilian who served as governor of Massachusetts under appointment by the king. That he deserves to be ranked as, upon the whole, the ablest historical writer produced in America prior to the nineteenth century, there is now substantial agreement among scholars. In writing the early history of Massachusetts, Thomas Hutchinson was in effect writing the history of his own ancestors, some of whom had been eminent, some of whom had been notorious, in the colony almost from the year of its foundation. He was born in Boston in 1711. From the age of twenty-six when he was elected to his first office, until the age of sixty-three when he resigned his last one, he was kept constantly and conspicuously in the public service. Before the outbreak of the great controversy between the colonies and the British government, no other man in America had, to so high a degree as Hutchinson, the confidence both of the British government on the one hand, and of his own countrymen on the other. Had his advice been taken in that controversy by either of the two parties who had so greatly confided in him, the war of the Revolution would have been averted. While the writing of history was for Hutchinson but the recreation and by-play of a life immersed in outward business, the study of history seems to have been a passion with him almost from his childhood. It should be added that Hutchinson had the scientific idea of the importance of primary documents. Through his great eminence in the community, and through his ceaseless zeal in the collection of such documents, he was enabled in the course of many years to bring together a multitude of manuscript materials of priceless value touching the history of New England. With such materials at his command, and using with diligence those fragments of time which his unflagging energy enabled him to pluck from business and from sleep, he was ready, in July, 1764, amid the first mutterings of that political storm which was to play havoc with these peaceful studies and to shatter the hopes of his lifetime, to send to the printer, in Boston, the first volume of _The History of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay_. He published his second volume in the early summer of the year 1767,--not far from the very day on which Parliament, by the passage of the Townshend Act, perpetrated the ineffable folly of plunging the empire into such tumults as led to its disruption. Notwithstanding the lurid and bitter incidents amid which it was written, the second volume of Hutchinson’s history of Massachusetts, like the first one, has the tone of moderation and of equanimity suggestive of a philosopher abstracted from outward cares, and devoted to the disinterested discovery and exposition of the truth.

From the time of the publication of the second instalment of his work, sixty-one years were to elapse before the public should receive ocular evidence that the author had had the fortitude, amid the calamities which overwhelmed his later years, to go on with his historical labours, and to complete a third and final volume, telling the story of Massachusetts from the year 1750 until the year 1774--the year in which he laid down his office as governor and departed for England. Borne down with sorrow, amazed and horror-stricken at the fury of the storm that was overturning his most prudent calculations, and was sweeping him and his party from all their moorings out into an unknown sea, he found some solace in resuming in England the historical task which he had left unfinished. In his diary for October 22, 1778, its completion is recorded in this modest note: “I finished the revisal of my History, to the end of my Administration, and laid it by.” Laid by certainly it was, and not until the year 1828 was it permitted to come forth to the light of day, and then, largely, through the magnanimous intervention of a group of noble-minded American scholars in the very city which, in his later lifetime, would not have permitted his return to it.

A great historian Hutchinson certainly was not, and, under the most favourable outward conditions, could not have been. He had the fundamental virtues of a great historian--love of truth, love of justice, diligence, the ability to master details and to narrate them with accuracy. Even in the exercise of these fundamental virtues, however, no historian in Hutchinson’s circumstances could fail to be hampered by the enormous preoccupation of official business, or to have his judgment warped and coloured by the prepossessions of his own political career. While Hutchinson was, indeed, a miracle of industry, it was only a small part of his industry that he was free to devote to historical research. However sincere may have been his purpose to tell the truth and to be fair to all, the literary product of such research was inevitably weakened, as can now be abundantly shown, by many serious oversights and by many glaring misrepresentations, apparently through his failure to make a thorough use of important sources of information then accessible to him, such as colonial pamphlets, colonial newspapers, the manuscripts of his own ancestors and of the Mathers, and especially the General Court records of the province in which he played so great a part. As to the rarer intellectual and spiritual endowments of a great historian,--breadth of vision, breadth of sympathy, the historic imagination, and the power of style,--these Hutchinson almost entirely lacked. That he had not the gift of historical divination, the vision and the faculty divine to see the inward meaning of men and events, and to express that meaning in gracious, noble, and fascinating speech--Hutchinson was himself partly conscious.

His first volume seems to have been written under a consciousness that his subject was provincial, and even of a local interest altogether circumscribed. In the second volume, one perceives a more cheery and confident tone, due, probably, to the prompt recognition which his labours had then received not only in Massachusetts but in England. In the third volume are to be observed signs of increasing ease in composition, a more flowing and copious style, not a few felicities of expression. That, in all these volumes, he intended to tell the truth, and to practise fairness, is also plain; to say that he did not entirely succeed, is to say that he was human. Of course, the supreme test of historical fairness was reached when he came to the writing of his third volume,--which was, in fact, the history not only of his contemporaries but of himself, and of himself in deep and angry disagreement with many of them. It is much to his praise to say that, throughout this third volume, the prevailing tone is calm, moderate, just, with only occasional efforts at pleading his own cause, with only occasional flickers of personal or political enmity. But no one should approach the reading of Hutchinson’s _History of Massachusetts Bay_ with the expectation of finding in it either brilliant writing or an entertaining story. From beginning to end, there are few passages that can be called even salient--but almost everywhere an even flow of statesmanlike narrative; severe in form; rather dull, probably, to all who have not the preparation of a previous interest in the matters discussed; but always pertinent, vigorous, and full of pith. Notwithstanding Hutchinson’s modest opinion of his own ability in the drawing of historical portraits, it is probable that in such portraits of distinguished characters, both among his contemporaries and among his predecessors, the general reader will be likely to find himself the most interested.

_Samuel Peters._--Somewhere in the debatable land between history, fiction, and burlesque, there wanders a notorious book, first published anonymously in London in 1781, and entitled _A General History of Connecticut_. Though the authorship of this book was never acknowledged by the man who wrote it, there is no doubt that it was the work of Samuel Peters, an Anglican clergyman and a Loyalist, a man of commanding personal presence, uncommon intellectual resources, powerful will, and ill-balanced character. He opposed with frank and bitter aggressiveness the Revolutionary politics then rampant. He sailed for England in October, 1774. There he abode until his return to America in 1805. During the five or six years immediately following his arrival in England, he seems to have had congenial employment in composing his _General History of Connecticut_, as a means apparently of wreaking an undying vengeance upon the sober little commonwealth in which he was born and from which he had been ignominiously cast out. The result of this long labour of hate was a production, calling itself historical, which was characterised by a contemporary English journal--_The Monthly Review_--as having “so many marks of party spleen and idle credulity” as to be “altogether unworthy of the public attention.” In spite, however, of such censure both then and since then, this alleged _History_ has had, now for more than a hundred years, not only a vast amount of public attention, but very considerable success in a form that seems to have been dear to its author’s heart--that of spreading through the English-speaking world a multitude of ludicrous impressions to the dishonour of the people of whom it treats. It cannot be denied that for such a service it was most admirably framed; since its grotesque fabrications in disparagement of a community of Puritan dissenters seem to have proved a convenient quarry for ready-made calumnies upon that sort of people there and elsewhere.

_Jonathan Carver._--In the year 1763, at the close of that famous war which resulted in the acquisition of Canada by the English, there was in New England an enterprising young American soldier, named Jonathan Carver, stranded as it were amid the threatened inanities of peace and civilisation, and confronting a prospect that was for him altogether insipid through its lack of adventure, and especially of barbaric restlessness and discomfort. “I began to consider,” so he wrote a few years afterward, “having rendered my country some services during the war, how I might continue still serviceable, and contribute, as much as lay in my power, to make that vast acquisition of territory gained by Great Britain in North America, advantageous to it. To this purpose, I determined to explore the most unknown parts of them.” The project thus clearly wrought out in 1763 by this obscure provincial captain in New England anticipated by forty years the American statesmanship which, under President Jefferson, sent Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to penetrate the passes of the Rocky Mountains and to pitch their tents by the mouth of the Columbia River; even as it anticipated by a hundred years the Canadian statesmanship which, under Sir John Macdonald, has in our time beaten out an iron way across the continent at its greatest breadth.

It seems to have taken Carver about three years to complete his preparations for the tremendous enterprise which then inspired him. Not until June, 1766,--in the political lull occasioned by the repeal of the Stamp Act--was he able to start. After passing Albany, he plunged at once into the wilderness which then stretched its rough dominion over the uncomputed spaces to the western sea. In June, 1768, he began his journey homeward. In the October following, he reached Boston, “having,” as he says, “been absent from it on this expedition two years and five months, and during that time travelled near seven thousand miles. From thence, as soon as I had properly digested my journal and charts, I set out for England, to communicate the discoveries I had made, and to render them beneficial to the kingdom.” In 1778, nine years after his arrival there, he succeeded in bringing out his noble and fascinating book of _Travels through the Interior Parts of North America_. It was in consequence of the publication, soon after his death, in the year 1780, of the tale of Carver’s career as an explorer in America, and especially of the struggles and the miseries he encountered as an American man of letters in London, that, for the relief in future of deserving men of letters there, the foundation was laid for that munificent endowment, now so celebrated under the name of “The Royal Literary Fund.” His best monument is his book. As a contribution to the history of inland discovery upon this continent, and especially to our materials for true and precise information concerning the “manners, customs, religion, and language of the Indians,” Carver’s book of _Travels_ is of unsurpassed value. Besides its worth for instruction, is its worth for delight; we have no other “Indian book” more captivating than this. Here is the charm of a sincere, powerful, and gentle personality--the charm of novel and significant facts, of noble ideas, of humane sentiments, all uttered in English well-ordered and pure. In evidence, also, of the European celebrity acquired by his book, may be cited the fact that it seems to have had a strong fascination for Schiller, as, indeed, might have been expected; and Carver’s report of a harangue by a Nadowessian chief over the dead body of one of their great warriors--being itself a piece of true poetry in prose--was turned into verse by the German poet, and became famous as his _Nadowessiers Totenlied_,--a dirge which pleased Goethe so much that he declared it to be among the best of Schiller’s poems in that vein, and wished that his friend had written a dozen such.[2]

_St. John Crèvecœur_.--In 1782, there was published in London an American book written with a sweetness of tone and, likewise, with a literary grace and a power of fascination then quite unexpected from the western side of the Atlantic. It presented itself to the public behind this ample title-page:--“Letters from an American Farmer, describing certain provincial situations, manners, and customs, not generally known, and conveying some idea of the late and present interior circumstances of the British Colonies in North America: written for the information of a friend in England, by J. Hector St. John, a farmer in Pennsylvania.” The name of the author as thus given upon his title-page, was not his name in full, but only the baptismal portion of it. By omitting from the book his surname, which was Crèvecœur, he had chosen to disguise to the English public the fact--which could hardly have added to his welcome among them--that though he was an American, he was not an English American, but a French one,--having been born in Normandy, and of a noble family there, in 1731. While really an American farmer, Crèvecœur was a man of education, of refinement, of varied experience in the world. When but a lad of sixteen, he had removed from France to England; when but twenty-three, he had emigrated to America.

As an account of the American colonies, this book makes no pretension either to system or to completeness; and yet it does attain to a sort of breadth of treatment by seizing upon certain representative traits of the three great groups of colonies,--the northern, the middle, and the southern. There are in this book two distinct notes--one of great peace, another of great pain. The earlier and larger portion of the book gives forth this note of peace: it is a prose pastoral of life in the New World, as that life must have revealed itself to a well-appointed American farmer of poetic and optimistic temper, in the final stage of our colonial era, and just before the influx of the riot and bitterness of the great disruption. This note of peace holds undisturbed through the first half of the book, and more. Not until, in the latter half of it, the author comes to describe slavery in the Far South, likewise the harsh relations between the colonists and the Indians, finally the outbreak of the tempest of civil war, does his book give out its second note--the note of pain. By its inclusion of these sombre and agonising aspects of life in America, the book gains, as is most obvious, both in authenticity and literary strength. It is not hard to understand why, at such a time, a book like this should soon have made its way into the languages of Europe, particularly those of France, Germany, and Holland; nor why it should have fascinated multitudes of readers in all parts of the Continent, even beguiling many of them--too many of them, perhaps--to try their fortunes in that blithe and hospitable portion of the planet where the struggle for existence seemed almost a thing unknown. In England, likewise, the book won for itself, as was natural, a wide and a gracious consideration; its praises lasted among English men of letters as long, at least, as until the time of Hazlitt and Charles Lamb; while its idealised treatment of rural life in America wrought quite traceable effects upon the imagination of Campbell, Byron, Southey, and Coleridge, and furnished not a few materials for such captivating and airy schemes of literary colonisation in America as that of “Pantisocracy.”

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

I. THE HISTORIANS

=Early Dearth of Good Writers.=--Among the consciously useful forms of literature there is none in which, by common consent, American men of letters have so uniformly distinguished themselves as in history. Bradford and Winthrop in the seventeenth century are as conspicuous among their countrymen and as respectable before the world as Prescott and Parkman in the nineteenth. Prince and Stith are as minutely conscientious--and almost as dull--as the most scientific of modern students; and Hutchinson, when judged by the prevailing standards of his own times, will be found not less diligent or judicious than Adams and Rhodes are thought to-day. Indeed, there is in our literature but one period destitute of historians of merit, and that period falls in the years immediately after the Revolution, precisely in the years when we should most expect historical writing to flourish; for those last years of the eighteenth century seem, as we look back upon them, to be full of encouragement for national pride. In 1781, Lord Cornwallis had surrendered at Yorktown. In 1783, King George acknowledged the independence of his rebellious subjects in America. Under a constitution since renowned, they soon instituted for themselves a federal government upon a continental scale. The prediction of Jefferson’s Declaration seemed to be justified. The United States were ready “to assume among the powers of the earth that separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them.”

Popular revolutions such as this have often been followed by a period of great literary fruitfulness, particularly in history. So it proved in Holland, in France, in Italy. But in America nothing of the sort occurred. The twenty-five years after Yorktown, barren in literature of every kind, are exceptionally devoid of historical writers who deal with large subjects in a large way. There were, of course, narratives of the war by participants and panegyrists. Such were David Ramsay’s “History of the American Revolution” (1789), Mrs. Mercy Warren’s “Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution” (1805), and the “History of the American Revolution” which appeared in 1819 under the name of Paul Allen. But none of these works shows largeness of view, and none is distinguished by literary qualities. They serve a good purpose, however, in reflecting the feeling of the Revolution. This is particularly true of Mrs. Warren’s book. She was a sister of James Otis, whose argument against the writs of assistance in 1761 marks the beginning of the Revolutionary agitation, and the wife of General Joseph Warren, who fell on Bunker Hill; and her intimacy with these and other New England patriots lends a certain representative value to her forgotten discursiveness. A similar value attaches also to the more readable, but not less bitter “Life of James Otis, containing Notices of Contemporary Characters and Events,” written by William Tudor; likewise, though in a less degree, to several other early biographies of Revolutionary worthies, among which the most weighty is the “Life of George Washington,” in five volumes (1804-1807), based upon his original papers and compiled by his fellow-Virginian John Marshall, afterwards famous as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. For students of American history, this is a useful book, such as a man of Marshall’s ability could not fail to produce when dealing with subjects with which he was thoroughly familiar and in which he was deeply interested. But it is hastily written, far too long, and, save for its partisanship, altogether colourless. Nevertheless, it occupies a relatively high rank among its coevals, for, taken all in all, American writers on national history in the years 1780-1820 are few and weak.

_Causes of this Inferiority._--In explanation of this circumstance various conjectures have been advanced. Indubitably, the proscription of the Loyalists after the war deprived the thirteen States of wealth and intelligence which might otherwise have afforded to American literature an American support. But the effect upon letters of that social loss is easily exaggerated. The promptness with which serious English books were reprinted in America, even in the years when, as Goodrich discovered, it was “positively injurious to the commercial credit of a bookseller to undertake American works,” proves sufficiently that a reading public still remained. Another reason why, in the earlier years of our national life, there were few historians, may be found in the exaggerated value which most Americans then set upon certain abstract and therefore absolute theories in politics. Among the leaders of the Anti-Federalist or Democratic party, especially, a sort of political orthodoxy grew up. Theirs became a party with a creed, but without a programme. In the Southern States, they developed, in defence of their principles, an extensive literature of political and economic theory, far surpassing in variety of argument, subtlety of reasoning, and clearness of exposition anything that the North could show. But throughout it all, they appealed for support to the unchanging text of written constitutions, or to the immemorial prescriptions of natural law; upon history they looked as a tedious tale of ignorance and error. The Federalists, on the other hand, like the Whigs and the Republicans who succeeded them, were a party rather of measures than of principles. For their practical aims, a knowledge of human experience was serviceable. They inclined, therefore, to historical studies, and it is in New England, where their hold had been strongest, that the most significant of American historians at length appear. But even the stoutest Federalist among the contemporaries of Jefferson could discern in the recent experience of the nation at large little to stimulate patriotic ardour. In the estimation of men as yet unaccustomed to “think continentally,” the new government had brought few blessings: its burdens seemed innumerable. Taxes were high. Money was bad, and scarce as well. The Revolution had loosened the bonds of traditional authority, and internal disorder was rife. The mutual obligations assumed by England and by the United States at the Peace of 1783 were disregarded on both sides; and a new treaty, whose stipulations the vast majority of Americans deemed humiliating to themselves and dishonourable towards their French allies, served chiefly to prolong internal dissensions by introducing as an unwelcome issue in American politics the conflicting sympathies of the Federalists with England and of the Democrats with France. What wonder, then, that those who concerned themselves with the history of America at all turned from the Union to their several States, each of which, in their view, had been made separately sovereign by the events of the Revolution. Their temper is well expressed by the title of David Ramsay’s “History of the Revolution of South Carolina from a British Province to an Independent State” (1785). Ramsay’s “South Carolina” was soon followed by Belknap’s “New Hampshire” (1784-92), Proud’s “Pennsylvania” (1797), Minot’s “Continuation of the History [Hutchinson’s] of Massachusetts” (1798), Burke’s “Virginia” (1804), Williamson’s “North Carolina” (1812), and Trumbull’s “Connecticut” (1818). Among these books, Belknap’s justly holds the highest rank. Its style is vigorous and flexible, and in the opinion of de Tocqueville, “the reader of Belknap will find more general ideas and more strength of thought than are to be met with in other American historians” of the same period.

_Washington Irving._--The life of Washington Irving as a man of letters is followed elsewhere in this volume; but no account of American historical writers, however slight, can omit his name. In the more laborious paths of the historian’s vocation he seldom walked. Research was foreign to his temperament, and in his histories references to authorities are few. He makes no pretence of disclosing new facts, or even of suggesting new theories concerning facts already known. But “the picturesque distances of earth’s space and the romantic remoteness of history” kindled his imagination, and his travels, which were extended for an American of his day, produced enduring results in a series of books dealing with the countries, and in part with the history of the countries, which he visited. One reason for his assuming the duties, not over-serious, of an _attaché_ of the American legation in Madrid was Minister Everett’s suggestion that he make an English version of the matter relating to America in Navarrete’s work on the voyages and discoveries of the Spanish at the end of the fifteenth century, which had then been recently published. This project presently expanded into Irving’s “Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus, to which are added Those of his Companions” (1828). It was followed in the next year by “The Conquest of Granada,” and in 1832 by “Tales of the Alhambra.” Returning to America, Irving travelled extensively west of the Mississippi, and presently published his “Astoria” (1836) and “The Adventures of Captain Bonneville” (1837). Of these books, which, with an unimportant “Life of Mahomet and his Successors” (1849) and a five-volume “Life of Washington” (1855-59), constitute Irving’s historical writings, the “Columbus” is justly the most esteemed. It gained for its author the gold medal of the Royal Society of Literature and the Oxford degree of D.C.L. And not without reason, for it embodies, in a skilful narrative, not merely the substance of Navarrete’s documents, which Irving rendered with fidelity into excellent English, but also the results of other studies which were, for him, exceptionally thorough. Modern criticism has been very busy with the life of Columbus since Irving wrote. The narratives of Ferdinand Columbus and of Las Casas, upon which he largely relied, have been somewhat discredited, and the character of the discoverer himself has not altogether escaped. Nor can it be denied that Irving’s lively fancy led him to embellish his account of certain dramatic passages in the life of Columbus with details which, while not improbable in themselves, are unsupported by documentary or other direct evidence. But the attempt of some subsequent writers, and notably of Irving’s countryman Winsor, to discredit him on that account has been carried beyond reason. Irving’s narrative of facts in the “Columbus” is conscientiously based upon primary sources; and his judgments, though occasionally over-indulgent of his hero, are in general sound. Columbus may not have been in all respects such a man as Irving represents him, but it is, at least, ennobling for the reader to believe that he was such a man.

In writing his “Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada from the MSS. of Fray Antonio Agapida,” Irving recurred to a device which he had already employed with success. Fray Antonio is no less mythical than the “small elderly gentleman, dressed in an old black coat and cocked hat, by the name of Knickerbocker,” who was supposed to have left behind him, in his rooms at the Independent Columbian Hotel, that “very curious kind of a written book in his own handwriting” which, being presently printed “to pay off the bill for his board and lodging,” brought to its real author his first popularity. Nor can the “Granada” lay much stronger claim to be considered authentic history than Irving’s burlesque account of New York “from the beginning of the world to the end of the Dutch dynasty.” It is not, of course, predominantly humorous; but it is, in reality, merely a historical romance, adorned with bits from old chroniclers. In it Irving gave his imagination loose rein; and for that reason it is the most readable of his Spanish books.

His writings upon American history are less sympathetic. The matter of “Captain Bonneville” was fine in its facts, but it contained too little of the last to stimulate Irving’s romantic imagination, and it remained cold and almost crude under his shaping hand. In the founding of the settlement by which a butcher’s boy from Waldorf hoped to seize the mighty river of the West, there was also the stuff “of Romance,” and Irving’s “Astoria, or Anecdotes of Enterprise beyond the Rocky Mountains,” should transport the reader to

the continuous woods
Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound
Save his own dashings.

In fact it continually brings his mind back to the ledgers of a too prosperous counting-house. Into the “Life of Washington” Irving was never able to put his heart. The book was the task-work of his declining years. It was undertaken at the suggestion of enterprising publishers, to whom he listened the more readily because the number of those dependent upon him had increased as the income from his earlier works declined. Its composition dragged from the outset. When at length the volumes appeared, they achieved a pronounced _succès d’estime_; but the work shows neither the firm grip of its subject nor the sustained vigour of treatment which might rank it among great biographies. It is rather a history of the United States during the latter half of the eighteenth century. There are entertaining anecdotes in it, vivid descriptions of battles, and sturdy American feeling. But of Washington himself there is only a pale shadow.

Irving’s position in American historiography is a peculiar one. He was not primarily a historian. In a sense he stands outside the main currents of our historical writing. Nevertheless, he had a strong influence in determining their course. His “Knickerbocker History of New York,” essentially a work of humour, was taken seriously by various of his fellow-townsmen, who were thus incited, much to Irving’s amusement, to undertake extensive studies in local history for the purpose of clearing their Dutch progenitors from his ridicule. He was the earliest among American men of letters to choose historical subjects for the exercise of his craft, and thus became the founder of the “picturesque school” of American historians, in which Prescott, Motley, and Parkman are his followers. And he was the first to feel the fascination which the power of Spain, in the Old World and in the New, has not ceased to exercise upon American writers of history ever since.

=The New England School.=--When the events of 1814, which promised a prolonged peace to Europe, had put an end likewise to the second war between Great Britain and her former colonists, the people of the United States, freed at last from their long subserviency to the inherited animosities of Europe, turned with confident elation to face the future problems of America. For the next half-century, while the frontier was advancing from the Ohio to the Mississippi, to the Missouri, to the “Great Stony Mountains,” and beyond them to the shores of the Pacific, the Western man was too much engrossed in the bustling business of making an empire to find time for writing its annals. It was, therefore, only in New England, in the section of the country farthest removed from the course of that breathless rush across the continent, that there existed the leisure as well as the wealth necessary for the study of historical books and documents. To wealth and leisure we must add, moreover,--as important conditions underlying the historical productiveness of New England--literary and political traditions, the possession of documents and other instruments of research, and, finally, the general intellectual tone of the extreme Eastern States--that part of the country most strongly affected by the civilisation of Europe. As Tyler points out, the earliest development of New England letters had taken place in those fields of half-literary effort which seek to provide the instruments or to record the acts of statesmen, in oratory and in history. And when, at the close of the Napoleonic wars, the intellectual influence of Europe upon America began to revive, and those forces which were to produce upon the Continent the Revolution of 1830 helped, on this side of the Atlantic, to excite the democratic turmoil of the Jacksonian era, it is not surprising that the new literary strivings, which manifested themselves somewhat widely in fiction and poetry, should take on in New England the form of historical narrative. The manner of this new historical movement was, in large measure, determined by the influence of German scholarship. It was from Göttingen that George Ticknor, afterward the historian of Spanish literature, wrote to his father in 1815, lamenting the “mortifying distance there is between an European and an American scholar. We do not know,” said he, “what a Greek scholar is; we do not even know the process by which a man is to be made one.” And it was in those bare halls of the old Georgia Augusta, at the feet of Heeren and Eichhorn and Dissen and Blumenbach, that other grateful New Englanders--among them George Bancroft and Edward Everett in Ticknor’s time, and Longfellow and Motley at a later day--learned something of the spirit of Continental scholarship. In this spirit the New England School of historians attempted, on the whole, to work. They were somewhat swerved, no doubt, by the esteem in which their countrymen still held the elaborate formalism of such orators as Webster and Everett, and, also, more to their advantage, by their own admiration for the picturesqueness of Irving, whose example encouraged them to treat by preference of foreign subjects. Still they stood firmly upon their native soil. Born among a people whose temperament, though shot through with a strain of idealism and even dashed at times with a touch of imagination, was still fundamentally sober, they were predisposed to honest care in inquiry and, save when the temptations of rhetoric seduced them, to accuracy of statement.

Thus even those historians of the New England School who had not enjoyed the advantage of European study preserved most of the traits of those who had. If Jared Sparks, a home-bred scholar who successfully conducted _The North American Review_ in its earlier days (1817-18, 1823-30) and lived to become professor of history (1839-49) and president (1849-53) of Harvard University, had better understood the standards of Ranke and the “Monumenta Germaniæ Historica,” he might, indeed, have allowed himself less latitude than he actually took in editing the “Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution” (1829-30, 12 volumes), the “Works of Benjamin Franklin” (1836-40, 10 volumes), and especially the “Life and Writings of George Washington” (1834-37, 12 volumes). But the extent of his fault was greatly exaggerated by certain of his critics, and not even the most rigorous training could have enhanced the diligence with which he preserved these and other less important sources of our Revolutionary history. Mention of Sparks naturally suggests the name of Peter Force (1790-1868), another diligent compiler of facts. Force’s “American Archives ... a Documentary History” etc. (1837-53, 9 volumes, left incomplete) was published by Congress.

When we pass to the more illustrious writers of what has been called the classical period of historical writing in America, we discover two tolerably distinct tendencies. The one tendency appears in those men who were led to write by the spirit of the time and the place, and who wrote of America out of an ardent interest and a profound belief in the country and its political and social institutions. Foremost among these men stands George Bancroft. The other tendency appears in Prescott, Motley, and Parkman, who, though trained in the same atmosphere, were first men of letters and afterward Americans. They sought, not national and political, but picturesque and dramatic subjects, and these subjects lay, in large part, outside the history of their own country.

_George Bancroft._--Bancroft spent the greater part of his long life (1800-91) upon his monumental history of the United States, a work that has occupied a high position among historical writings upon America. It was his ambition, as he announces in the Preface to his first volume (1834), to write “a history of the United States from the discovery of the American continent to the present time.” Although he anticipated years of work in the completion of the task, he could not have foreseen either that it was to consume more than half a century of his industrious life, or that the history itself was to end near the real beginning of the Republic. Bancroft was a writer inspired by his theme and exalted by the conception of his undertaking. Witness the opening sentences:

The United States of America constitute an essential portion of
a great political system, embracing all the civilised nations of
the earth. At a period when the force of moral opinion is rapidly
increasing, they have the precedence in the practice and the
defence of the equal rights of man. The sovereignty of the people
is here a conceded axiom, and the laws, established upon that
basis, are cherished with faithful patriotism. While the nations
of Europe aspire after change, our constitution engages the fond
admiration of the people, by which it has been established....

The rhetorical flavour of the passage is characteristic. Critics have been inclined to regard the style of the “History” as extravagant and perfervid. They have, perhaps, tended to overlook the influence of the sincere enthusiasm and robust patriotism of the early days of national organisation and growth. The book was undoubtedly suited to the spirit and the national ideals of the period. Note the tenor of contemporary opinion. Bancroft’s friend, Edward Everett, devoured the first volume as it fell from the press and hastened to congratulate the author (October 5, 1834): “I think that you have written a work which will last while the memory of America lasts; and which will instantly take its place among the classics of our language.... I could almost envy you to have found so noble a theme, while yet so young.” On the score of method, the “History” was generously applauded for its “exceedingly scrupulous care” by A. H. L. Heeren, the German historian and Bancroft’s earlier teacher at Göttingen. It was inevitable, however, that the patriotic fervour and sanguine tone of the book should suggest to wise heads a danger and a source of weakness. “Let me entreat you,” writes Gov. John Davis, the author’s brother-in-law, “not to let the partisan creep into the work. Do not imbue it with any present feeling or sentiment of the moment which may give impulse to your mind.... The historian is the recorder of truth and not of his own abstract opinions.” In still plainer speech did Thomas Carlyle complain that Bancroft was too didactic, going “too much into the origin of things generally known, into the praise of things only partially praisable, only slightly important.” And at a later time (1852) Henry Hallam wrote: “I do not go along with all your strictures on English statesmen and on England, either in substance, or, still more, in tone.... Faults there were, but I do not think that all were on one side. At all events, a more moderate tone would carry more weight. An historian has the high office of holding the scales.” In the midst of public affairs and political duties, the great labour of the “History” progressed. A second volume appeared in 1837, and a third in 1840. These volumes covered the colonial period down to 1748. Their conspicuous success contributed to Bancroft’s appointment, in 1846, as Minister to England; and there, as subsequently in Germany, his official position, added to his established reputation, opened to him unusual stores of historical material. He writes from England to Prescott, his “brother antiquary”: “I am getting superb materials, and had as lief a hundred should treat the same subject as not. If they do it with more heart than I, don’t you see that as a good citizen of the Republic I must applaud and rejoice in being outdone?” Under the circumstances, the democratic humility of the man is perhaps slightly overdone; although the unusual riches laid under contribution might well have offered a temptation to pride, for both public and private collections of great value were placed absolutely at his disposal. An unrivalled collection of historical manuscripts (now in the Lenox Library, New York City) bears testimony to his thoroughness and his wisdom in the use of extraordinary advantages.

But Bancroft, once established in London, soon found his literary labours pushed into the background. He confesses in 1849: “Here in London, to write is impossible.... Mr. Macaulay says, one man can do but one thing well at a time.... I am of his opinion, now in my approaching old age.” The eighteen years of private life at home that followed the ministry to England (1846-49) were much more productive. Between 1849 and 1867 six more volumes (iv. to ix.) of the “History” were brought out, a volume of “Literary and Historical Miscellanies” (1855), and the official eulogy pronounced upon Abraham Lincoln in the House of Representatives (1866). A passage from the “Miscellanies” on the conception of history displays Bancroft’s style in his more oratorical vein:

But history, as she reclines in the lap of eternity, sees
the mind of humanity itself engaged in formative efforts,
constructing sciences, promulgating laws, organising commonwealths,
and displaying its energies in the visible movement of its
intelligence. Of all pursuits that require analysis, history,
therefore, stands first. It is equal to philosophy; for as
certainly as the actual bodies forth the ideal, so certainly
does history contain philosophy. It is grander than the natural
sciences; for its study is man, the last work of creation, and the
most perfect in its relations with the Infinite.

It was with gratification that Bancroft accepted in 1867 and held until 1874 the ministerial post at Berlin. The honour may have come as Bancroft’s reward for writing President Johnson’s first annual message (1865). At the close of the ministry appeared the tenth volume of the History: “The American Revolution. Epoch Fourth Continued. Peace between America and Great Britain, 1778-82” (1874). This at seventy-four years of age!

It was impossible, of course, that Bancroft should, at his advanced age, carry his work, as originally planned, through the nineteenth century. He determined, instead, to write the history of the organisation of the Federal Government. In 1882 came, accordingly, his “History of the Formation of the Constitution of the United States of America” (2 volumes). Thus, at eighty-two, he had set forth in twelve generous volumes what may be called an introduction to the history of the country. It is indeed more than that, for, as the author himself somewhere remarks, the history of the United States begins with the united resistance of the colonies to Great Britain.

As an historical writer, Bancroft belongs to the period of his first volumes and not to that of his last. His interpretation of men and events rests upon his political philosophy, and his political philosophy was a heritage of the times of Andrew Jackson. To this philosophy he was faithful. Ranke, the German historian, once said to him, “Your history is the best book ever written from the democratic point of view.” Bancroft was aware of his democratic bias; but he would have denied with vehemence that this bias infused a subjective taint into his candour or laid a tinge of partiality upon his judgment. The “History” has been called an “epic of liberty.” It is philosophical, at times rhapsodical--not scientific--history. It treats an heroic theme in an heroic manner. Recent criticism of his method and political theories tends to obscure the brilliancy of his services to American historiography. Over and above the serious spirit in which he set about his task, the exacting search among contemporary sources, the unceasing devotion to truth, and an unsparing and prodigious industry, the broad and national character of the whole achievement calls for grateful recognition. Bancroft raised the history of America above the plane of provincialism and local interests, and set forth both the total march of internal events incident to national development and the manifold relations of the United States to the history of Europe. This wide perspective of events and causes would hardly have been possible except for years of residence, both as student and diplomat, in the capitals of Germany and Great Britain. In the matter of method also, Bancroft’s services to historical research must not be overlooked. He presented to Americans an object-lesson in the collection, criticism, and use of scattered materials. His distinction, then, as the founder of a new American school rests upon a double basis: his wide conception of a national history and his improved methodology in research. He reaped abundant success, both in the popular enthusiasm with which his books were hailed and in the extraordinary personal honours bestowed upon him until the time of his death. And it is no disparagement of his services to say that his great popularity rests rather upon a genius for catching up and reflecting the youthful spirit of genuine and uncritical Americanism than upon a capacity for setting down without passion and for interpreting without prejudice the human events of an inspiring epoch.

_Contemporaries of Bancroft._--The writers of American history who came nearest to rivalling Bancroft in his own day were Richard Hildreth (1807-65), a vigorous New England leader writer and anti-slavery pamphleteer, and George Tucker (1775-1861), a Southern lawyer, who served for twenty years as professor of philosophy and political economy in the University of Virginia. Hildreth’s “History of the United States” (1849-52, 6 volumes) comes down to 1821, Tucker’s (1856-58, 4 volumes) to 1841. Both did careful work, though both have been criticised for their partisan leanings. Each gives a relatively large space to the Colonial and Revolutionary history of his own section. In the constitutional period, Hildreth commonly accepts the view of events most favourable to the Federalist party, whereas Tucker inclines to side even more strongly with the Democrats, of whose leader, Jefferson, he had published, in 1837, a sympathetic life. In connection with this branch of the New England School should be mentioned John Gorham Palfrey’s illustrious “History of New England” (1858-75, 4 volumes; a supplemental volume, edited by F. W. Palfrey, 1890). Palfrey was a graduate of Harvard and for several years the editor of _The North American Review_. His work is commonly regarded as the best of the colonial histories of New England; it occupies besides a secure place in American literature.

_William Hickling Prescott._--Eminent among the men of the “classical” period who wrote picturesque and romantic histories, stands Prescott (1796-1859), author of “The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic” (1838), “The History of the Conquest of Mexico with a Preliminary View of the Ancient Mexican Civilization and the Life of the Conqueror Hernando Cortés” (1843), “The History of the Conquest of Peru, with a Preliminary View of the Civilization of the Incas” (1847), “The History of the Reign of Philip the Second, King of Spain” (1855-58), and other historical and literary works. “The Reign of Philip” was not finished, as Prescott suffered, during its preparation (1858), a shock of apoplexy, and died the following year. After working for ten years--so quietly that but few of his friends knew of the undertaking--upon his “Ferdinand and Isabella,” Prescott, upon its publication, found himself suddenly famous. “Love of the author gave the first impulse,” declared the author’s friend, Gardiner; “the extraordinary merits of the work did all the rest.” The American demand for the “History” was unparalleled, and all Europe sent liberal and judicious praise. Translations were called for in Russia, France, Spain, Italy, and Germany.

A bodily affliction, the partial loss of sight in early manhood, has lent a peculiar personal interest to Prescott’s heroic performances. He has been called, with but little exaggeration, “the blind historian.” During his junior year at Harvard, an accident destroyed the sight of one eye, and not long afterward the uninjured eye became permanently affected. A career in the practice of law had to be abandoned. Much of his subsequent life was spent in the dark. A great part of his historical labours had to be done with the aid of readers and secretaries. The task of mastering a language (he began Spanish at twenty-eight) and of collecting materials from libraries and archives would have seemed to be impossible. Nevertheless it was accomplished. The histories bear but little evidence of the writer’s physical infirmities. They are renowned for their accuracy and thoroughness. Recent ethnological discovery and advancement in historical method have, it is true, necessitated revision in certain statements of fact (_e. g._, regarding the social and private life of the Aztecs); but that is an accident of time. His thoroughness is attested by Jared Sparks, who knew of no historian, “in any age or language, whose researches into the materials with which he was to work have been so extensive, thorough, and profound as those of Mr. Prescott.” But the wide popularity of Prescott’s historical writings rests first upon their literary merits. He wrote in a clear, graceful, and dignified style upon epochs and personages that were surrounded by charm and romance. His power for pictorial representation was great. The admirable qualities of his books strongly suggest the author himself. He was cheerful, amiable, spontaneous, warm-hearted, and much beloved. At forty-five, Sumner said of him that he possessed the “freedom and warmth and frolic of a boy.” At the same time, Prescott’s capacity for self-criticism and for rigorous discipline was unusual. Without these qualities, he would hardly have succeeded in the face of painful disabilities. For many years it was his custom to analyse his powers and weaknesses, and to formulate exacting rules for his own guidance. At twenty-eight he wrote in his journal: “To the end of my life I trust I shall be more avaricious of time and _never_ put up with a smaller average than seven hours’ intellectual occupation per diem.” About this time he wrote down a list of “rules for composition.” Among them are to be found these: “Rely upon myself for estimation and criticism of my composition;” “write what I think without affectation upon subjects I have examined;” “never introduce what is irrelevant or superfluous or unconnected for the sake of crowding in more facts.” He was early attracted toward historical writing, although he devoted much time to biography and critical reviews. The interest in Spanish history seems to have come from Ticknor’s lectures on Spanish literature, which Prescott heard at Harvard. The Ferdinand and Isabella theme first came to him in 1826. “The age of Ferdinand,” he remarks at this time, “is most important as containing the germs of the modern system of European politics.... It is in every respect an interesting and momentous period of history; the materials ample, authentic,--I will chew upon this matter, and decide this week.” The decision came, however, only after two years of further consideration. With Irving, Ticknor, and Motley, Prescott stands as one of the men who gave to the English-speaking world a clear and brilliant account of the history and literature of Spain. It is, however, a fact of still greater moment to American letters that Prescott should have embodied in permanent form a series of histories of great men and great events that is the common possession of the Old World and the New, and that marks the advancement of American historical writing beyond the limits of national feeling and national interest.