Recent American History

OF all peoples in the world, Americans have the most right to be interested in historical studies ; for, without pressing Mr. Freeman’s aphorism too far, a people that constantly is required to express itself in political terms scarcely can fail to feel a lively interest in that deposit of political thought and action which is to be found in history. It was said after the last general election that there were at least twenty-five thousand voters in the city of New York who did not care a rap who was elected President, provided they and their friends could keep their noses in the public crib ; but every thoughtful person receives such a statement as an additional evidence of the need of such moral and political education of the voter as shall lift him out of this degraded condition. Nor is it without meaning that this indifference to great politics belongs to those who are not Americans of the soil. There never has been a time, from the organization of the people in a civil and political order till now, when Americans have not been ardently interested in politics ; and if any change has come over them, it is not in the direction of indifference, but of a wider conception of the meaning of the term “ politics.” Once there was but a loose connection between politics and history ; the history of politics itself was scarcely more than the history of party, but there are many indications that both in the study and in the field the subjects of immediate policy are to be tried more emphatically by the tests applied by history.

Not only so, but the conception of what lies within the scope of historical research is widening. A comparison, for example, of recent school text-books in American history with those of a generation ago will disclose the fact that school-boys and school-girls are taught not only the narrative of history, but the development of society, the meaning of civil polity, and, above all, the evolution of political institutions. Every step is in the direction of a firmer hold upon American ideas, by a clearer perception of the relation which America has held and now holds to Europe, and a more definite knowledge of the genesis and growth of those principles which underlie national life. It is a mark of the earlier text-books that they contented themselves with such a treatment of history as made the United States an isolated community, built upon the false bottom of the Constitution, and under the control of the dominant political party ; the more rational text-books of the day seek to give the young student some notion of the organic growth of the nation, its inheritance from other times and peoples, and the conflicting forces which have been involved in the historical development.

A just proportion of all these elements, however, is very hard to secure, and each writer, especially if he be not a schoolmaster, is likely to allow his own taste and interest to govern him in his work. Here, for example, is the latest candidate for favor in Dr. Eggleston’s school history, the very title ¹ of which intimates the discrimination which lies in the author’s mind, and the line on which he has especially departed from conventional text-books. It is rich in textual and pictorial illustration of the social development of the people who settled on our shores, and of the manners and customs of the aboriginal inhabitants. These are subjects to which Dr. Eggleston had already given close attention, and in making a book for schools he has availed himself of the rich stores which he has gathered more industriously than other historians. The chapters on How the Indians Lived, Traits of War with the Indians, Life in the Colonial Times, Farming and Shipping in the Colonies, Laws and Usages in the Colonies, Home and Society in Washington’s Time, The Steamboat, The Railroad and the Telegraph, and similar portions are crowded with interesting matter. No teacher can afford to dispense with a book which brings together so abundant and delightful illustrative material. For, after all, that is what it is ; it is not the substance of history, and in the desire to make historical study interesting one may easily exaggerate its importance.

We think Dr. Eggleston has thus exaggerated it, and, while making his book a most serviceable one to teachers, has not succeeded in comprehending within its pages the essentials of American history. The feature which characterizes his work and gives it distinct value has been secured at the expense of more vital matter. It is a little singular that, with his clear perception of the picturesque elements of social life, he should have treated so lightly the more radical questions of society ; that he should, for example, have analyzed slavery mainly in its political aspects, and have given the young student very little clue to those social, economical, and ethical considerations which were involved in the struggle between slavery and freedom.

His method, also, of neglecting a strict chronological order, that, he may give topics in their entirety, is of questionable utility. An historian who has his subject well in hand will not lightly abandon the close sequence of time, since the very interruptions to special lines of thought sometimes will serve to throw light upon them ; and the danger of a partial interpretation of history is in a measure avoided if the writer is compelled, by an adherence to the succession of events, to take into account all contemporaneous movements. Is it not better that the young student, as well as the old, should extricate the special topics from the general order by his own cunning ? The opportunities for investigation among school boys and girls are, of course, of the simplest sort only, and is it wise to throw away so convenient a resource as that which a general, careful chronological arrangement of events offers for rearrangement under special heads ?

We are less concerned to find fault with what we conceive to be the defects of Dr. Eggleston’s interesting book than to congratulate teachers upon the addition to their apparatus of so suggestive and helpful a work. It is one further aid toward the release of teachers and pupils in our schools from the mechanical habits of teaching and studying United States history which have prevailed, and the accession of a scholar and writer like Dr. Eggleston to the ranks of text-book makers is an agreeable indication of a healthier condition of our educational system. It is not a solitary indication, and it must be remembered that the enrichment of textbook literature in American history is a far easier matter to-day than it was when the pioneers in this field were at work. Dr. Eggleston’s own work, for instance, in his papers on colonial manners and customs, affords a great amount of illustrative material never before so accessible ; and yet that is only one of many contributions toward an abundant knowledge of cis-Atlantic life, which are at the service of those who would make compendiums for the use of schools. It is beginning to be perceived that the hand-book for the teacher and pupil, when at its best, is not a crowded, indigestible array of names, dates, and incidents, to be amplified by the teacher, but a suggestive, stimulating, fruitful presentation of the great movement of history ; and the men who are to make such hand-books are not Dr. Dryasdust and his school, but those prophets of literature who can make the dry bones live.

Now the work for such writers has been enormously economized by the publication of special bibliographies, directing attention to the scattered literature of the subject, but by no single book has the work of text-book makers been rendered at once so formidable and so promising as by the great Narrative and Critical History of America, of which the seventh volume, devoted to the history of the United States since the War for Independence has lately appeared.² When noticing the first volume published, we called attention to the importance of the work as a treasure-house for historical writers. “ It is not from such a work as this,” we said, “that popular ideas as to history are directly formed, but from the school-books, the magazine articles, and general histories. The writers of these will use Mr. Winsor’s book without any acknowledgment, but it will be for most of them the final authority ; and we trust, therefore, that in completing his plan the editor will not allow himself to be swayed by any temporary considerations from making the work as exact as patient scholarship will permit.”

The volume before us shows the work near its completion ; the eighth is to be devoted to South America, and the first to prehistoric America. It is plain, however, that the sixth and seventh volumes, which cover the century closing at 1850, and are devoted to the thirteen colonies and their successors, will be the most used, and will have the most important influence on American historical studies. That period must remain as the most vitally interesting for a long time to come ; only when the expansion of our national life, which began with the new epoch dating from 1861, shall have introduced new historical processes will it be possible to divert the main attention of students from a consideration of the foundations of our organic condition as a nation. Of all the subjects suggested by the period, there is none which so grows in relative importance as that which pertains to the political determination of the United States, the gradual crystallization of the fluent political ideas, the compacting of the Union out of the looser confederation, and as involved in that the confirmation of the independence of the nation through diplomatic dealings with European states.

Mr. Winsor has planned wisely, therefore in making this great subject control quite half of his volume, and he has done a very great service to students, and to historical writers in especial, by providing the extraordinarily full and discriminating body of notes which constitutes the critical portion of the work. Mr. Edward J. Lowell writes the first chapter, on The Political Struggles and Relations with Europe, 1775-1782 ; but the most important chapter is the masterly one by Mr. John Jay on The Peace Negotiations of 1782-1783, a subject which is partly treated, later on, by Dr. Angell in his chapter on The Diplomacy of the United States. Mr. Winsor himself sketches the political character of the Confederation, and Mr. G. T. Curtis reviews the work of the convention which formally constructed the Constitution. Mr. Johnston carries the subject forward in the earlier part of his chapter on The History of Political Parties, and the chapters by Mr. Soley on The Wars of the United States and by the editor and Dr. Channing on the Territorial Acquisitions incidentally bear upon the same general theme.

In other words, the contribution which the young republic was making to political philosophy, both in the abstract and by concrete action, both consciously and unconsciously, was so tremendous that it is only as we draw off from the period and see it in perspective, only as the lines both of American and of European political thought are seen to converge toward it, that we begin to perceive how great this contribution was. The men of that day who were most formative are constantly growing more majestic in proportion ; the events in diplomacy and convention become fraught with greater consequence, and we think there can be no question that future historians and philosophers will find this theme overshadowing that of the contest between freedom and slavery. The latter, momentous as it was, has its greatest import in the relation which it bears to the preservation of the Union, and to the enlargement and enrichment of those political ideas which were imbedded in the foundation of the United States. Speaking in a large way, the slavery contest was a local issue, but the establishment of the republic was a world issue.

We have no quarrel, then, with Mr. Winsor for suffering this theme to dominate his volume. It must be remembered that he closes his work with the middle of the century ; hence he is excused from the full treatment of some themes upon which a work brought to date, or even to 1861, would necessarily enlarge. The constitutional period draws events toward itself ; it is only when the Pacific coast is reached that new subjects, subjects of the future, so to speak, draw history forward. The time may come, for example, when Perry’s expedition to Japan will have more significance in the eyes of historians than the other Perry’s victory on Lake Erie ; but that time has not yet come, and it is not the business of historians to take up an imaginary base of triangulation.

At the same time, and with all allowance for the limits of space into which Mr. Winsor was forced, we wish he could have sketched, in outline at least, some of those movements other than political which have so marked a bearing upon the course of national development. We should have liked, for instance, to have had such subjects specifically treated as the movement of population westward, the changes in industrial conditions, the rapid expansion of the inventive genius, the growth of religious bodies, the gradual unification of the educational systems. We are aware that these subjects have somewhat vague outlines, and that they lack the organic form which constitutional, political, territorial, and military subjects possess. Nevertheless, there is a growing tendency, as we have already intimated, to enlarge the scope of the conception of history, and to require historical writers, it they essay general treatment, to take into account other forces than those which are represented by political parties, treaties, congresses, and armies and navies. Especially is it demanded of the historian of the modern republic that he shall discover the operations of those mighty forces which have been given a vast accession of power just because of their release from formal identification with the governing body. No history of England can avoid a constant reference to the Church of England ; no history of the United States ought to neglect a consideration of the same great religious power, merely because it is no longer part and parcel of political history, viewed in its restricted sense. It is more than ever part and parcel of national life, when it springs out of the voluntary action of the people of the nation, and represents a spontaneity of growth, not an imposition from without.

Even if such subjects as we have suggested could not have been brought within the compass of the narrative portion of the work, we think they might have been provided for, even if briefly, in the critical portion. We do not know what we should have been willing to Spare, — certainly no entire excursus, unless it be the one on The Portraits of Washington, which, admirable as it is, and apparently exhaustive, yet strikes us as comparatively unessential ; but if this subject and others bearing upon the multifarious conditions of society in the United States, had been formally presented, the very introduction would have been a hint to students and historical writers ; and if the bibliographical aid had been anything like as considerable as that given to students in the political history, the whole work would have had a greatly increased value.

For, as we have said before, the enduring worth of this great work rests most largely upon the critical essays. the industry and comprehensive genius of the editor and his co-laborers are beyond praise. They have swept in their material from an extraordinary variety of quarters. It would have been much to register the titles of books and articles dealing directly with the subjects treated, but they have ransacked the publications of societies, they have unearthed single chapters from obscure local histories and limited biographies, they have disclosed resources of manuscript collections ; and in doing all this they have indicated with admirable impartiality the relative value of the material thus made serviceable. The work is not merely a necessity to any reader who would go beyond the merest superficial acquaintance with his country’s history ; it is of singular value to the special student, who will find here the way cleared for him in a masterly fashion.

As an illustration of this point, it is interesting to observe the references to the volume which Mr. Fiske makes in his own special contribution to our history.³ He appends a useful bibliographical note, introducing it with the words,

“ The bibliography of the period covered in this book is most copiously and thoroughly treated in the seventh volume of Winsor’s Narrative and Critical History of America,” and he singles out Mr. Jay’s and Dr. Ellis’s contributions to the volume as new and valuable monographs on the subjects discussed by them. Mr. Fiske is one of those writers to whom Mr. Winsor’s history must be of exceptional value. It is not only the school text-book makers, like Dr. Eggleston, who will have it for their esto mecum (it would be a serious matter to take these eight ponderous volumes on a walk), but the class of men of letters who find in our history a fruitful and attractive theme. There are historical scholars who take a broad, philosophical view of their special studies, but there are also historical scholars who are specialists only, and whose admirable work can be regarded only as an unrelated part of some larger whole. There are men of letters with a philosophical bent, who indulge themselves in generalizations from such loose-lying facts as they can easily help themselves to ; but there are also men of letters who have the historical sense, who are not special investigators, but know how to avail themselves of the results of such students, who are interpreters of history, and whose first and foremost desire is to possess themselves of the best attested facts, their next to discover the broad relations of these facts, their significance in the general movement of human life. Mr. Fiske belongs to this class, and the volume in hand is an admirable expression of his genius as an interpreter of history. He does not have a theory to which he fits such facts as he can reach without difficulty, but he collects his particulars with care, and then induces their general meaning. We shall not dwell upon the contents of this volume in detail, for a considerable portion ot it has already appeared in the shape of separate articles in this magazine ; but we doubt if any will read the book with greater pleasure than those who have already enjoyed the individual papers ; for it is in the marshaling of his successive subjects, in his almost dramatic handling of his material, so as to reach a climax, that Mr. Fiske shows his great skill. That is to say, he sees history as a drama of human thought, not merely as affording occasional spectacles of the drama of human action ; and his power is in so holding up the selected incidents as to reveal to the reader the real movement that is in progress. The very titles of his chapters disclose these separate acts in the drama : Results of Yorktown, in which he sets forth with great clearness the superb diplomacy of Jay, Adams, and Franklin, and also with an effect of real novelty the result of the peace in English political life ; The Thirteen Commonwealths, which emphasizes the individualism of the several parts of the country, and shows the germ of social development ; The League of Friendship, which is a happy term by which to characterize the relation of the several States to each other, and under which heading he gives a brief but luminous statement of the real nature of the so-called sovereignty of the States ; Drifting Toward Anarchy ; Germs of National Sovereignty, with a rapid sketch of the treatment of Western lands, the ordinance of 1787, and the spontaneous political activity of the nascent Union ; The Federal Convention ; and finally, Crowning the Work, or the slow wheeling into line of all the States after the new Constitution had been submitted to them for ratification.

Mr. Fiske justifies the title of his work. He is by no means the first to discover the grave importance of the period in question, but by his masterly grouping of events, his projection of the period upon a large scale, and his comprehensive study of the movements which determined the course of affairs, he has set the whole subject in the clearest possible light, and by so doing has made a contribution to our historical literature of no mean value. The charm of his style is seen to great advantage in a work which borrows little from an appeal to the senses. The story of the war for independence permits him to be more graphic, but the great moral and political issues involved in the period following the war afford him a finer opportunity for those clear presentations of questions at issue which are in themselves more than half solutions of the questions.

Mr. Fiske had a great subject to deal with in the making of a nation, when all the elements of that nation were in solution, ready to be precipitated. It is another task, similar in general terms, but very dissimilar in the methods involved, which has been taken up by Mr. Phelan in his History of Tennessee.⁴ The sub-title of his work denotes the intention with which he gave himself to it ; and the process is so fascinating to him that he pursues his subject through all its phases with untiring zeal. The book is, quite unconsciously, we think, an admirable illustration of that conception of the commonwealth which has found its most unalloyed expression in the sentiments of Southern political writers. To Mr. Phelan Tennessee is all but a nation. We owe to this sentiment a minuteness of detail in the treatment, which we should greatly regret to have missed in all those passages which bring before us an isolated community. Thus the chapter on The Founding of the Household is a graphic and altogether admirable picture of life on the frontier. The chapters, also, on the State of Franklin form almost a monograph of one of the most interesting of those phenomena the whole significance of which Mr. Fiske has treated of so well in his chapter on Germs of National Sovereignty. Again, the chapters on Manners, Customs, and Mode of Life, and those which follow the admission of Tennessee to the Union, are models of what a state history should contain. It is when we come to the last fourth of the book that we ask ourselves the question, Who are the readers for whom Mr. Phelan is writing ? Are they all who may be interested in United States history, or are they merely those whose fortune it has been to be born and to be living in the great State of Tennessee ?

The question is not an idle one, for it relates to the attitude of the historian toward his subject. Take, for example, the detailed history of political party warfare in the State. We can conceive that to a Tennesseean this may be one of the most interesting portions of the book. To the reader who regards party politics in a State chiefly in its relation to the history of American politics, the matter will be wholly out of proportion, and his interest will centre mainly upon the glimpses given of characteristic local methods in political warfare. To Mr. Phelan the figures who crowd his canvas here are “ large as life and twice ns natural ; ” to the general reader they are, with few exceptions, tiresome nonentities. In a word, we conceive that no history of a State in the American Union does real justice to the State which does not so set it in its relation to the Union at large as to make the story of its development of unflagging interest to members of other States. We can cordially recommend Mr. Phelan’s book as, for the most part, a brilliant picture of Southwestern history and civilization, but he has missed making a great book of it by suffering the interest to die away in the multitudinous details of a history which has no climax, and, viewed apart from federal relations, little importance.