Excerpt from The Middle Group of American Historians

The end of the period, as I understand it, lies where the scientific spirit secures domination over the patri otic school that had ruled for several decades. Pos sibly the organization of the American Historical Association in 1884 would be a convenient date to mark the beginning of a new period. On the other hand the Association was in some respects the result rather than the herald of a new school. From 1865 to 1884, however, history in the United States was written in the afterglow of the civil war, and it was not scientific. Keeping in mind both sides of this dilemma, we may say that the new spirit existed funda mentally in the minds of scholars about the middle of the century and that it was. Not revealed to public view until the cloud of sectional feeling lifted. In this View the year 1884 may well be taken as the dividing point between two - periods of historical endeavor in our country.

For my purposes I have chosen to assign Parkman to the new school. While he wrote with that fine appreciation of style which was characteristic of Ban croft and the literary historians, his industry, his research among documents, and especially his detach ment seem to place him among the men of to-day. On the whole, the assignment of Parkman to the new school is satisfactory to me, although other persons may not hold the same Opinion of it.

Each of the sketches of individuals here submitted is necessarily a unit in itself. But each man had some thing to do with another of the group. To give an account of each career, therefore, has made some repe tition necessary. I hope a charitable reader will believe that I have sought to reduce it to the lowest terms in keeping with lucid and informing narrative.

The substance of the second, third, and fourth chap ters was given in three lectures before the Institute of Arts and Sciences of Columbia University, in October, 1916; and a large part of the fifth chapter was read in the same month before the Massachusetts Historical Society. None of this matter, however, is published elsewhere than in these pages.

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