Excerpt from The History of North America, Vol. 1: Discovery and Exploration

The statement that we have quoted in our opening para graph but voiced the need that was appreciated throughout the scholastic world. All students desired*a comprehen sive history of America. The stimulus given to historical writing by the lack of such a work found result in the activity of many authors, but, curiously enough, not in at tempts to produce the work needed, but to supply mate rials from which it might be constructed. For example, the last quarter of the nineteenth century was prolific in historical monographs and treatises. Hundreds of well equipped students with valuable resources at their command collected and gave to the world the product of their re search - the data buried in source material. These mono graphic publications, usually written in the form of theses, were of a nature to preclude their wide circulation; they were strictly academic in style and were of no interest to the general reader and, because of their restricted field, of comparatively narrow value to the historian. Yet this monographic literature must not be underestimated, for it was of great value to the limited number of historians seeking information upon the particular subject treated by the monographist. But the theses did not go far toward solving the problem of the production of a comprehensive history. The treatises were a step further in that direction. They were, it is true, limited in scope, but that limitation was not so destructive to their popularity as in the case of the thesis literature, for they were broader in treatment and had more or less perspective. The majority of such publi cations were accurate and had in them elements of interest.

Textbooks were published in abundance, but from their nature they cannot be included among comprehensive his tories, nor can those standard and scholarly works upon limited historical periods, which have at infrequent intervals during the last twenty-five years been welcomed by students.

During the period under consideration a few general his tories have been published. These are confessedly sketchy, and, with only two exceptions, they have not been written by men of standing among scholars. In these two in stances, the authors have been handicapped by the limits of space and by the fact that no one man is able to write from his own knowledge of the details of American history in the whole, and within the limits imposed by the com mercial necessities of publication produce by his own re search a comprehensive history of the United States, to say nothing of that of North America. A writer undertaking the task must depend on secondary authorities; and, as a rule, he incorporates most of their errors along with their correct statements of fact. No more glaring example of this fallibility of historical writers attempting a task too large can be found than in a recent pretentious general his tory in the compilation of which the author was obliged by the circumstances of production to depend largely on secondary authorities, with the result that more than five hundred errors have been discovered in a single volume.

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