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The Present State of 
 
 Historical Writing 
 
 in America 
 
 BY 
 
 EDWARD CHANNING 
 
 Reprinted from the Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Societt 
 FOB October, 1910 
 
 WORCESTER. MASSACHUSETTS 
 
 THE DAVIS PRESS 
 
 1910 
 

 IN EXCHAN«K 
 
 lit 1 B l-'l* 
 
THE PRESENT STATE OF HISTORICAL 
 WRITING IN AMERICA. 
 
 BY EDWARD CHANNING. 
 
 History is a mode of thought and expression. His- 
 torical writing is the application of the historical method 
 to expression with pen and ink. Historical labor finds 
 its activities in many directions. It may be grouped 
 under three heads: (1) the collecting and printing of 
 original sources; (2) the reporting on masses of material 
 or on specific topics; (3) historical writing. The first 
 two of these groups represent craftsmanship; the third 
 division represents art. It is necessary for the eluci- 
 dation of the ages to gather documents into storehouses 
 and to make them accessible by various modes of arrange- 
 ment, by convenient calendars and lists of one kind 
 or another. Some of this material is in printed books; 
 another part is composed of original manuscripts. 
 Between these two divisions is a series of limited dupli- 
 cations by means of transcripts which are made by hand, 
 or by the typewriter, or, in a more limited form, by 
 photography. Of these the photograph is the best and, 
 in view of the great improvements that are being made 
 in photography, it might not be amiss to suggest that it 
 would be well to postpone or to restrict the duphcation 
 of manuscripts until the time comes when they can be 
 reproduced by the camera. The task of making accessi- 
 ble the tools of the historical writer is a necessary part 
 of historical labor and those who engage in it deserve 
 appreciation and recogmtion, — they are the altruists of 
 the profession, in that they cut themselves off from the 
 reputation-making forms of historical endeavor. 
 
 The second class of historical labor presents itself 
 to the mind under the words reports, theses, and doctoral 
 dissertations. Hundreds and thousands of young men 
 and old ones, as well as the middle-aged, all over the 
 country are devoting themselves, with the greatest 
 assiduity, to the making of extracts and abstracts of 
 original sources, arranging them under appropriate 
 
headings, and translating them into twentieth century 
 English, as ordinarily used in .\menca These mono- 
 graphs, reports, and dissertations, thus laboriously com- 
 piled, are issued in the printed form by umversities, 
 some of which do not confine themselves to the printing 
 of works produced within their walls, but take what 
 they can get; others are issued by learned societies under 
 the names of transactions, pubhcations, proceedings 
 or collections. Given an adequate amount of material 
 and a sufficiency of time, he must be a mediocre nian 
 indeed or one whose brain has become mdm-ated, who 
 cannot produce a monograph or volume, or even a series 
 of volumes of this type. 
 
 Of recent years, the output of doctoral dissertations 
 has greatly increased, owing in part to the establishment 
 of a large number of fellowships which are ofteiitimes 
 designated as being for research. The ultimate aim 
 of nearly every one of the seekers for doctorates is to 
 engage in the teaching of history in a university, a 
 coUege, a normal school, or perchance, in a high school 
 The importance of providing a constant stream of 
 youthful, weU trained pedagogues is recogmzed by aU 
 and justifies the founding and giving of scho arships 
 and fellowships. But we should realize that the pro- 
 duction of pedagogues is not the same thing as the brmging 
 forth of scholars, much less is it the making of historical 
 writers or historians. Professor Jameson has remarked 
 upon the barrenness of our doctors. L too as a teacher 
 o youth, a conductor of doctoral candidates, a guider 
 in the eWution of theses, have become conscious o 
 the pertinacity with which writers of essays and theses 
 in our colleges and universities, whether they get doc- 
 torardegree! or not, stop with the work they do und 
 direction Get them out of the umversity, get them 
 away ?rom professorial stimulus, make them teachers 
 make them librarians, and their original work « ops^ It is 
 the most heart-rending thing that university teachers o 
 history have to face at the present time. As incitements 
 to individualistic, original research, pecumary aid has 
 
not as yet proved effective. The man who is going to be 
 a great seeker after truth and a fruitful setter-forth 
 of the facts of human history to his fellowmen cannot 
 be a recluse, living on the scanty bounty of fellowships 
 as they have been and are administered by American 
 universities. The historical seeker and writer must 
 have interests that will compel him to come into con- 
 tact with other hiunan beings. The names that occur 
 to us of great historical writers, Gibbon, Macaulay, 
 Trevelj^au, and Lecky in England, Bancroft, Parkman, 
 Irving, Prescott, Motley, and Palfrey in America, are 
 not those of closeted students, living on the bounties 
 of others. They were all active in pursuits, other than 
 those in which they won their fame. In saying this, 
 I am referring solely to the production of writers of 
 history. Scholarships and fellowships have their justi- 
 fication in producing teachers, catalogue-makers and 
 other craftsmen; but the artist is not to be thus made. 
 The man who has it in hun to write a great book will 
 do it and do it better if he has to earn his own living, 
 and is thereby forced into contact with his fellowmen, 
 even if he half starves in the midst of his career. 
 
 The qualifications of the historian are multitudinous. 
 He must have training in research, must be able to 
 handle material in manuscript and in printed form, and 
 to sift the truth from the falsehood. He must have 
 the faculty of using the work of others, of recognizing 
 first-class monographs at a glance, almost. The ma- 
 terials of American history are so vast that the historian, 
 even of a fairly limited period, can hardly hope himself 
 to read all the original sources. He must use the work 
 of others; but he himself must also constantly be using 
 original materials; otherwise he will lose the faculty 
 of recognition; and he will miss that local color and 
 flavor which make historical writing tolerable. The 
 task of the historical writer is on all fours with that of 
 the person who works with colors, — the historian seeks 
 to reproduce with the pen the impression his research 
 and reading have made on his mind, as the artist seeks 
 
6 
 
 to reproduce mental impressions with the brush. The 
 task of the man who endeavors to state the truth in 
 an attractive manner in words is far more difficult than 
 that of the novelist or the poet. For the one is hampered 
 in every line by the necessity of speaking the truth, 
 the other is not. The task of the historian is construc- 
 tive, by reproduction to place in public view the record 
 of the bygone times. 
 
 With the worker in colors, the novelist, and the poet, 
 the historian must possess imagination. He must be 
 able to picture to himself in broad outline, the condition 
 of a people at a given time, to see the march of armies, 
 to recognize the inter-action of economic forces, and 
 then to reproduce these impressions with a lightness 
 of touch that will make them readable and with a 
 heaviness of detail that will make them convincing. 
 In his presentation, he must seek to produce a truthful 
 unpression upon his reader. Oftentunes, to do this he 
 must sacrifice absolute accuracy in detail and in per- 
 spective. If the unpression produced upon his reader 
 is truthful, it matters little whether all his dates are 
 correct, all his names are properly spelled, or if all 
 his facts are accurate. Indeed, his dates may every 
 one of them be correct, his names may all be properly 
 spelled, his facts may be absolutely accurate, and the 
 impression left upon his reader be entirely false. 
 
 The historian must be a person of broad sympathies; 
 to be an antiquarian is not enough. He must have some 
 sympathy with the ways of the economist and must 
 regard the march of fact in the fight of the laws of 
 human development. Professor MacMaster has rightly 
 termed the older historians "dramatic writers." They 
 attributed the Revolution to the Adamses, to Washing- 
 ton, to Henry, to Otis, and to the other great men of 
 that epoch. Approaching the problem from a more 
 modern standpoint, it becomes increasingly evident 
 that the separation from England was largely due to 
 the play of economic forces. At the same time, there is 
 no such thing as economic history; all history is economic. 
 
All historical development is founded upon industry, 
 upon the necessity of supporting life, and the way in 
 which it is done. It is impossible to separate economic 
 history from political history. None the less, the his- 
 torian owes a debt of deepest gratitude to the economist 
 for rescuing his subject from the abyss of dramatism. 
 The historian must also have enough of training in 
 law to be conscious of the way in which lawyers look 
 at affairs. He must reahze the meaning of the word, 
 of the phrase, "the law." It is true that the historian's 
 business and the lawyer's business are very different. 
 The qualities of the mind that make a successful his- 
 torian are not those that make a successful lawyer; 
 but lack of the feeling or the knowledge of how lawyers 
 look at certain problems is fatal to the best historical 
 production. Similarly, he must have some acquaint- 
 ance with that which is termed science; he must under- 
 stand the scientific temperament; and must know some- 
 thing of the results of scientific inquiry. 
 
 The historical writer must be a master of perspective ; 
 he must see events and men in their true relations. He 
 must not exalt one period unduly, or give too heavy a 
 weight to one set of events; he must not dilate too much 
 on the influence of men and omit to set forth with equal 
 skill the influence of underlying forces. This is not 
 saying that an historical writer cannot treat a limited 
 period or a limited topic or that biography may not be 
 one form of historical writing; but within his field, the 
 historical writer must see the perspective truly. This 
 is one of the most difficult of all aclaievements for the 
 historian, because in his researches, he is likely to come 
 upon new material relating to some one part of his studies 
 that no one else has ever seen, or rather that no one 
 else has ever understood. The temptation is great to 
 apportion his space according to the importance of 
 his materials, not according to the importance of the 
 events or the men. 
 
 The difference between the tasks of those whom I 
 have termed historical craftsmen and those whom I 
 
8 
 
 have called historical writers lies in the amount of think- 
 ing necessary for the best production in their respective 
 fields. The searching for documents, the copying of 
 them accurately, the verifying of texts, and the seeing 
 them accurately printed is a work that demands time, 
 labor, and patience. The writing of reports or theses 
 likewise demands prolonged labor in searching out 
 facts, some skill in ascertaining the truth of them, and 
 some facihty in putting them together. The object 
 of these productions, however, is not so much to stim- 
 ulate and interest large numbers of readers as to pro- 
 vide accurate and painstaking statements of fact for 
 the use of university professors and historical writers. 
 It is not expected of the monographer that he shall be 
 interesting or stimulating, he can be as dry and detailed 
 as he pleases. The object of the historian is very 
 different and his mode of procedure must be quite unlike 
 that of the purveyor of transcripts, the editor of original 
 documents, or the writer of monographs. 
 
 The first thing that the historian must do, after he has 
 looked over his field carefully, from one end to the other, 
 and acquired some knowledge of relative values and 
 perspective, is to familiarize himself with the facts. 
 It is not enough for him to note down this, that, or the 
 other on paper and then from these notes make up his 
 text. He must pass all this matter through his brain; 
 he must make it a part of himself. To accomplish this, 
 he must become very familiar with his facts ; he must be 
 saturated with detail. He must be on speaking terms, 
 so to say, with the men and women who take any leading 
 part in his story. He must know, not merely a critical 
 year or so, in their lives, he must be acquainted with 
 their enviromnent, with their upbringing, with their 
 mental and moral qualities. In treating of economic 
 problems, he cannot array a mass of facts on paper, he 
 must make the facts part of himself; he must ponder 
 them carefully, day after day, month after month, possibly 
 year after year, until their true relation and interaction 
 come to be revealed to him. It is only after this pro- 
 
9 
 
 longed research, this saturation of self with facts, after 
 having gone through these long mental processes, often 
 fraught with serious misgivings, that the historian is 
 prepared to put pen to paper and try to reveal to others 
 that which the past has revealed to him. In writing 
 he seeks to tell the story in such a way that his readers 
 will become convinced without being aware that they 
 are being argued with. In his statements he must be 
 careful not to arouse opposition, but to produce the 
 efTect he desires by the employment of lights and shadows 
 precisely as does the artist. He must weigh every 
 sentence, nearly every word, with a view to euphony, 
 to form, and even to grammar. In all this, he must 
 put his own soul into his work and let it shine forth. 
 The labor and risk involved in producing even a small 
 piece of historical writing is very great. Sometimes, 
 the author feels that it would be advisable to stop. It 
 is absolutely impossible to write a definitive history. 
 Every historian misses or has not access to many, many 
 facts and papers. At any moment a document may 
 come to Ught to destroy all statements as to some one 
 fact or series of facts; the next historical writer must 
 revise the dicta of centuries. An author is always 
 prejudiced by his environment; he is limited by the span 
 of hmnan existence. He must therefore apportion his 
 time so that his chosen task stands a fair chance of 
 accomplishment. Nor can he be blamed for closing 
 his research and beginning the arrangement of his facts, 
 for there is scarcely a field within the purview of the 
 writer on American history that would not yield to 
 research, if carried on for many, many years, or indefi- 
 nitely. The time comes when the historian must begin 
 to inake up his mind. In doing this it is not at all 
 necessary that he should have read every bit of evidence. 
 Take the countless diaries and journals of the blockade 
 of Boston, or simply those dealing with Bunker Hill; 
 there are differences between them, no doubt, but in 
 essentials they teach the same truths. These will be 
 patent to the man of historical genius when he has read 
 
10 
 
 three or four of them, and will never become visible to 
 him whose mind works in another way, no matter how 
 many he may read. 
 
 In looking about for writers of history in this country 
 at the present moment, the seeker is met with greater 
 discouragement than would befall him in almost any 
 other path of original research. The American people 
 are in the midst of a cycle of commercialism. There 
 has not been a time for many years, at any rate, when 
 scholarship has been so hghtly valued in the United 
 States as it is at the present moment. In talking with 
 students, in viewing the books that are printed, one is 
 driven to this conclusion, lamentable though it is. 
 Scholarship is momentarily at a very low ebb, because 
 it is not valued throughout the country at large. Now- 
 adays the size of the output and not the quality of the 
 production is what attracts attention. The standard- 
 ization of education, not the making of scholars, is the 
 cry. Let anyone turn the matter over in his own mind 
 and see if he cannot count the really first-class works 
 of American historical writers within the last twenty- 
 five years, on his fingers ; and yet conceive of the num- 
 ber of persons engaged in historical pursuits and the 
 number of books constantly published under the guise 
 of history! Some day the wheel will turn around; 
 scholarship will again be valued as a national asset; 
 and a new Parkman will arise! Possibly, he may 
 produce only one volume, but if that volume shall be 
 of the quality of the "Pioneers of France," it will do 
 more for the cause of educating the plain people and the 
 building up of his own reputation than the printing 
 of documents by the ton or the publication of mono- 
 graphs by the dozen. 
 

 
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