A Pioneer in Historical Literature

THE two substantial volumes which record the life and labors of Jared Sparks ¹ have much of the character of Sparks’s own editorial work. They are scarcely for current reading; they are rather what, in Sparks’s day, would have been called “ repositories replete with facts,” by the aid of which, it is to be hoped, some one will in the future prepare a short biography of the distinguished pioneer in the field of historical research. The student may now, however, draw from these full records, by a judicious process of selection, a pretty clear notion of the character Sparks, the indefatigable zeal which he showed his occupation as historical writer and editor. What the close student or the busy one may complain of is that Dr. Adams, despite his industry in compiling, has failed to do all the work which the reader is likely to demand. For example, Mr. Sparks was the first systematically to procure information respecting the historical papers scattered in private and public collections. He did this by journeys and by correspondence. We wish Dr. Adams had been possessed by a like spirit to make the reader of to-day acquainted with the fate of these several collections. In one respect we think he has done more than the reader demands. His defense of Mr. Sparks’s method of editorial work, in the introduction, and his just indignation at the manner in which those who have criticised Mr. Sparks have helped themselves to his text and notes, are written with too heavy a pencil; and his long discourse, with frequent returns by the way to the same subject, tends to exaggerate the situation, and thereby to weaken a perfectly tenable position. He doth protest too much, and we suspect that many readers, even though in sympathy with the editor, will leave the work with an uneasy sense that perhaps they must hear the counsel for the plaintiff. Aside from these general reflections, we can heartily thank Dr. Adams for making it possible, by means of his liberal extracts from Mr. Sparks’s journals and letters, to know well both the man and the conditions under which he worked. Of the wealth of this material we can give no better idea than by using it to make a miniature from the full - length portrait of Mr. Sparks as drawn by Dr. Adams.

Sparks was born May 10, 1789, at Willington, a little town on the banks of the Willimantic River, in Connecticut. His parents were people of scanty means, and when six years old Jared went to live with a childless aunt. The fever for western emigration, “ terramania,” as the wits named it, was then raging through all New England, and the husband of the aunt, a genuine specimen of that type of man who does all things easily, and none well, caught the fever, and went to live in the frontier hamlet of Camden, Salem County, New York. There he was by turns a farmer, builder, tavern-keeper, grist-miller, and saw-miller, and spent not a little of his time roving over the State in search of a better place for settlement. That life with such an uncle did much to teach Sparks independence and self-reliance, accustomed him to hardship, and gave him a certain kind of versatility may all be true. But he was a bookish lad from the start, and his parents did well when, in 1805, they called him home and put him regularly to school. At Willington he soon learned all the master could teach, and in 1807 himself became a teacher in the neighboring college of Tolland, where he boarded round in the families of the scholars, and was paid eight dollars a month for his services. His success as a teacher and the wandering tastes acquired from his uncle led him, when the school season ended, to tramp three hundred miles on foot overall eastern New York in search of employment. No school was secured, and he passed the winter of 1808 at Arlington, in Vermont, working as a carpenter. In the spring of 1809 he walked back to Willington, got another school, taught for twelve weeks at ten dollars per month, and when the session closed found that in thirteen months he had earned one hundred and twenty-two dollars, and had spent fifty.

Sparks, now feeling enough to give a little time to study, took up algebra and Latin with the minister settled at Willington, paid one dollar a week for the instruction, and discharged part of the debt by helping the parson shingle his barn. Such was the progress made with Latin that in eight weeks he attracted the attention of the Rev. Abiel Abbott, then visiting at Willington. The Rev. Abiel Abbott was a cousin of the Rev. Benjamin Abbott, head of Phillips Academy. Exeter, and undertook to secure a scholarship for Jared. So sure was this new friend of success that a few weeks later, when he set off to visit his cousin, a box containing the clothes of Jared was lashed under the body and between the wheels of the parson’s chaise. Young Sparks followed on foot, and covered the one hundred and twenty miles between Willington and Exeter in four days.

From Phillips, Exeter, he went two years later to Harvard, through which he paid his way by teaching, and left behind him so high a reputation for ability that in 1817. one year after graduating, he was called back as tutor. About the same time his friends in the Anthology Club thrust upon him tile editorship of the North American Review, then two years old. Dr. Adams has made this the occasion for a very brief sketch of some of the forerunners of the North American, which he might easily have made fuller and better. The opening years of this century were the golden age of periodical literature. Everywhere magazines sprang up, and flourished exceedingly. Yet of such as belong to Boston, Dr. Adams makes no mention of the Cabinet, nor of the Columbian Phoenix, nor of the Boston Magazine, nor of the Polyanthus, nor of the Emerald, nor of a host of others long ago forgotten.

But neither teaching nor magazine editing satisfied Sparks. His life work had not yet been found, and, while casting about for something better, his thought turned to theology. With him the thought was quickly followed by the act, and in 1819 lie was installed pastor of the Unitarian Church at Baltimore. After a short trial even this proved not to his liking, and in 1823 lie resigned his charge, and once more became editor of the North American. And now it was that a seemingly trivial incident started him on his career.

A member of a Cambridge publishing house desiring to publish a full set of the Writings of Washington applied to Sparks for information as to where the papers could be found. Sparks immediately wrote to Bushrod Washington, who civilly refused all aid. This rebuff ended the matter so far as the publisher was concerned. But it served to arouse Sparks. He would make a collection and publish it, if possible, without the help of Judge Washington, and at once he began a systematic search for such papers as were not at Mount Vernon. In this, the friends he had made on his travels and the place he held as editor of the Review assisted him much. Appeals were made to the public men he had known when in Baltimore and Washington, to writers for the North American, to secretaries of the thirteen States that founded the republic, to the families of generals and officers of the Continental army,—to any man, in short, who he had the least reason to believe knew aught of Washington’s correspondence. The call revealed the existence of such a mass of perishing letters that, early in 1826, Sparks again wrote to Judge Washington, told him what he had done, announced his own desire to edit the papers, sketched a plan of arrangement, and asked for the Mount Vernon letters. Once more the judge refused, and once more Sparks determined to go on. With as little delay as possible, he started off in the summer of 1826 on a tour through the Middle, Southern, and Eastern States, in search of Washington letters, only to be astonished at the quantity of material at hand. On his return, therefore, Sparks for the third time appealed to Bushrod Washington, declared his intention to print what could be secured, and for the third time asked for the Mount Vernon papers, and made the judge a plain business proposition. This was accepted, and in December, 1826, Sparks went to Washington and examined the papers there on file in the departments.

While so engaged, he happened, one day in January, 1827. to enter the room in the Department of State where the papers of the Old Congress were kept, and there beheld the thirty odd volumes of Diplomatic Correspondence of the Revolution. He was told that in 1818 Congress had authorized the President to publish such parts of it as he thought fit. But as no money had been voted to pay the cost of arranging, and as the labor of editing was too great to be done by the Secretary of State, the letters had not been printed. Instantly the idea suggested itself to Sparks to undertake the task. Application was accordingly made to Adams and to Clay. Leave was gladly granted, and before Sparks left Washington it was agreed that he should edit the Correspondence from 1774 to 1783. For this labor he was to receive $400 for each volume when ready for the press; $2.12 for each of the 1000 copies of each volume supplied to Congress ; and all he could make by selling the books in the market.

This new venture arranged for, Sparks went seriously to work on the W ashington papers, spent the better part of a year at Mount Vernon, visited Europe, searched the archives of England and France, and in May, 1829, was back again in Boston. But five years slipped by before the letters of Washington began to be published, and during these years he prepared the Life and Writings of another of “ the fathers.”

In the winter of 1830, Sparks, still in search of Washington papers, rode out to Morrisania to ask permission to examine the papers of Gouverneur Morris. Mrs. Morris was loath to have them used for historical purposes, but was willing, even desirous, that he should edit them and write a life of her husband. Nothing was farther from his wishes, for he had then on hand the Letters of Washington and the Diplomatic Correspondence. But it was the price of examining the papers. He paid it, and in 1832 published the Life and Letters of Gouverneur Morris. Hie book did not take. The edition was not exhausted, and Sparks, convinced that the publishers had made nothing, gave up all claim to copyright.

On the publication of the Morris papers Sparks seems to have feared that he might soon be idle, and, while looking about for work to do, he hit upon the idea of the Library of American Biography. No such thing then existed, there were Biographical and Historical Dictionaries ; there was a Repository of the Lives and Portraits of Distinguished Americans, Sanderson’s Lives of the • Signers, and Knapp’s Sketches of Eminent Lawyers, Statesmen, and Men of Letters ; but no series of books covering the lives of great men from the first settlement of the country, so arranged as to form at the same time a history of the country, and with each life written by a thoroughly competent hand. The mere mention of such a series to the public men of 1832 was received with hearty approbation, and in 1834 the first volume was issued. It is interesting to note that each contributor was paid seventy cents a page for his work, and that this was accepted by such men as Edward Everett and William H. Prescott. For his life of Stark, Dr. Adams informs us, Everett received $81.20, while Prescott, for the life of Charles Brockden Brown, was given $44.80. The third volume is the Life and Treason of Benedict Arnold, by Sparks, and for this he received $1.50 per page. But in consideration of this high rate the publishers were at liberty to print 3000 copies. With the fifth volume, so great had been the success of the series, a new contract was made, by which writers were to be given one dollar a page, and the editor $650 for 2500 impressions from his own stereotype plates. A poor bargain it proved to be ; for when the fifth volume was published, the writer received $360. the plates cost $275.50, which left Sparks as his share $14.50. On the seventh he lost $44 outright, and on the tenth $83. This ended the series, and he now sold copyright and plates to his publisher for $2400. Some time afterwards, when ownership of the series had passed from the original publishers to the Harpers, Sparks was persuaded to continue the Library till it numbered twenty-five volumes.

It would indeed be pleasant to follow the career of Sparks to the end, and to say something of his Life of Ledyard something of the publication of the Washington papers, and of the bitter controversy which, ten years later, was waged over them by "Friar Lubin,” Lord Mahon, William B. Reed, and the editor; something of the edition of Franklin’s writing; something of Sparks’s record as president of Harvard, and of his connection with the discovery of the famous Red-Line Map. But it is enough to say that all of this and more is told fully and completely by Dr. Adams.

Sparks died in 1866. Time enough, therefore, has sped by to enable this generation to form an estimate of the value of his writing, and to pronounce the verdict. And surely that verdict is that his works are enduring and will stand. The assaults made by later editors on his methods and his texts are of no consequence. If Washington in his old age saw fit to rewrite his youthful letters, and send down to posterity as the productions of a young man letters really the productions of an old man, then his regard for truth at the end of his life was by no means so great as on the memorable day when he hewed down his father’s cherry-tree. That Sparks has followed these does not matter in the slightest. The language, the spelling, the felicity of expression, are nothing. The facts and the information the letters contain are everything : and these things the work of Sparks has made accessible to us all. Indeed, it is not too much to say that but for his patient, unflagging search for material the history of the Revolution would to-day be unwritten. The service which he rendered is immense, and Dr. Adams is to be thanked for putting on record the details of a life which is another splendid illustration of what can be achieved by the man who does his chosen work with all his heart, and with all his soul, and with all his strength.