Ohio History Journal

ANNUAL MEETING OF THE BOARD OF TRUS-

TEES OF THE OHIO STATE ARCHAEO-

LOGICAL AND HISTORICAL SOCIETY.

 

Museum and Library Building,

April 25, 1933.

The Board of Trustees of the Ohio State Archaeo-

logical and Historical Society met in annual session in

their room in the Museum and Library Building of the

Society at 2 o'clock p. m., Tuesday, April 25, 1933. The

meeting was opened by President Arthur C. Johnson.

The following members were - present: President

Johnson, Dr. Thompson, Messrs. Florence, Miller, Spet-

nagel, Goodman, Miss Bareis and Mrs. Dryer. Director

Shetrone and Secretary Galbreath were also present.

On motion of Dr. Thompson, seconded by Mr. Mil-

ler, the reading of the minutes of the annual meeting of

the previous year was dispensed with, as that had been

included in the Secretary's report.

The election of officers and members of the staff

was declared in order. On motion of Dr. Thompson,

seconded by Mr. Spetnagel, the officers of the Society

were reelected for the coming year and the members of

the staff at salaries to be fixed within appropriations

available by the General Assembly.

The President called for the reports of two commit-

tees, one the Committee to Consider the Scope of the

Activities of the Society, of which Mr. Sater is chair-

man, and the other on Membership and Dues, of which

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Annual Meeting of the Board of Trustees  359

Miss Bareis is chairman. Miss Bareis reported briefly

in favor of postponing the report of her committee

because of the inability to have the views of one of the

members. In the absence of Mr. Sater, both committees

were continued.

Secretary Galbreath drew attention to a request from

Dr. Carter, Editor of the Territorial Papers in the De-

partment of State, Washington, D. C., asking for an

endorsement of the project in which that department is

engaged, namely, the publication of the Territorial Pa-

pers so far as they are available and unpublished. On

the suggestion of President Johnson, the preparation of

such a letter was entrusted to the Secretary of the

Society and he was authorized to write accordingly.

There being no further business the Board of Trus-

tees adjourned.

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AFTERNOON SESSION

President Johnson called the meeting to order at

2 o'clock. The audience was delightfully instructed and

entertained by Dr. George W. Rightmire, who delivered

the following timely address on the subject, THE HIS-

TORIAN AND HIS MATERIALS:

I should like to open my remarks with a quotation from an

Italian historian, Beccari. Long ago he wrote, "Happy is the

country without a history."

To him history meant military campaigns, political upheavals,

international intrigue and social unrest. And generally that is

what it had meant, and if, as he saw it, a community should have

none of these shaking experiences to chronicle it would have no

history, and therefore, must be happy.

But that conception of history is entirely inadequate; history

comprehends those occurrences but it means much more. Essen-

tially it is an attempt to recreate the past--the whole past, and it

goes on as a natural human endeavor.

Men in the sundown of life turn aside to recall and to recite

their own deeds and experiences which rise up vividly out of the

past; they desire their children to know what manner of men

they have been and they find a peculiar satisfaction in their own

achievements which, through the mists of time, seem imposing

and significant. There is also a half-expressed desire to instruct

those who come after and furnish them an example; what other

motive could probably have prompted Franklin in writing his

intimate biography, or Depew in his My Memories of Eighty

Years? Some such urge impels men to write also about others;

future generations should know of the exploits of an Alexander

or a Genghis Khan, the religious motivation of a Luther or a

Wesley, and the social transformations activated by a Florence

Nightingale or a Frances Willard--although the Caesars and the

Napoleons have held most of the stage!

As men have chronicled contemporary events or have recre-

ated the men and the deeds of a bygone age, they have, of course,

wanted to leave a personal memorial. They anticipated a feeling

of satisfaction in the association of their names with great men

or great movements. Hereafter men may often speak not of Wash-

ington, but of Weems's Life of Washington! Not of Lincoln, but

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of Nicolay and Hay's Lincoln! Not of the development of the

western country, but of Roosevelt's Winning of the West. Who

thinks of Greece without Grote, or Rome without Gibbon or

Mommsen, and so on with perhaps some illustrations closer home?

But writers of history have been chiefly actuated by these

purposes: they become impressed with the culture of an age or a

people and want their own and future generations to have this

inspiration for their guidance and improvement.

Also, they delight in dissecting human motives, in analyzing

human conduct, in probing the influences which, for one hundred

fifty years prompted men to venture their fortunes and their

lives in the Crusades, or for an equal period of time to push back

with an unbroken advance the line "Where the West begins" in

these United States!

Also, they have been absorbed in tracing the course of civili-

zation from its beginnings in the Orient through its spread over

the western world, and the checkered experiences which have

marked its development.

Also they have a curiosity about our status among the na-

tions, and a natural pride in showing that we are the deserving

beneficiaries of past improvements, are an outstanding people,

and are with intelligence and confidence passing on the torch of

human perfection.

These are all worthy purposes; they enable the present to

utilize the substance and to appropriate the culture of the past,

to promote confidence and inspire a vision of the future. As the

historian conducts our steps through these mazes of human ex-

perience he finds a horrible example of how it should not be done,

and for our advice he hangs a placard on Carthage bearing the

warning, "Cave Canem," or in the more modern fashion of cen-

tral Europe, "Wehrt Euch." On little Switzerland's career, he will

hang the tag, "Well Done"; on the Great Wars he will inscribe,

"Never Again"; mankind's failures and misfits he will decorate

with the wish, "Requiescant in Pace"; and all genuine efforts to

reach international good will and a spirit of mutual interest, he

will enthusiastically inscribe in illuminated letters, "Gloria in

Excelsis"!

How will the historian proceed in unrolling the past, in analyz-

ing its features and in organizing it into a truthful and moving

recital? Let the historian himself answer. Rene Fulop-Miller in

his recent single volume on the history of The Power and Secret

of the Jesuits uses an appendix of bibliography spread over

twenty-five pages, almost if not entirely composed of book titles.

Since the order has been in existence four centuries, and has had

the most profound influence all around the globe and has always

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Annual Meeting of the Board of Trustees      363

been militant, this array of authorities is not surprising. That

Miller should have been able to refer to so many volumes in

diverse languages written in widely separated periods, shows the

genius, the industry, and the good faith of the modern historian.

Gibbon in his monumental work cites all his authorities in his

footnotes, and what a wealth of historical material he discloses!

Source material consisting of public documents, official decrees

and communications, correspondence, speeches, literary works,

manuscripts, books, memorials, memorabilia brought together

from the countries stretching from the Indus River to the Atlantic

Ocean, and from the Upper Nile to Britain, reveal a degree of

scholarliness, industry, and devotion almost incredible. But in

Gibbon's time it was not fashionable to add an appendix of

authorities and so we must follow his search for information

through his six big volumes, page by page. If he had chosen to

group his materials in one place under the favorite, present-day

title, "Bibliography," I do not doubt it would cover fifty pages.

Gibbon devoted twenty years to this task.

A very modern writer, who deals with Rome in a manner to

be mentioned later, cites his authorities in his text and footnotes

but throws out this consoling hint, "I am aware that the bibliog-

raphy is far from complete. As a rule I have abstained from

piling up references to antiquated books and articles, but have

cited only those which I have carefully read and on which my own

information is based; those which did not help me are not quoted

as being unlikely to help my readers. ..  Most of my notes are

not of a bibliographical character. In those sections where I have

found no modern books to help me and where I have had to

collect and elucidate the evidence myself, I have generally inserted

some notes which are really short articles on various special points

and of the nature of excursions or appendices. Some of these

notes are long and overburdened with quotations; only specialists

are likely to read them in full."

Let me quote further for our enlightenment about the his-

torian's method: "The illustrations which I have added to the

text are not intended to amuse or to please the reader. They are

an essential part of the book, as essential, in fact, as the notes

and the quotations from literary or documentary sources. They

are drawn from the large store of archaeological evidence, which

for a student of social and economic life, is as important and as

indispensable as the written evidence. Some of my inferences and

conclusions are largely based on archaeological material."

This is an illuminating portrait of the keen historical student

at work. As we read we recall other historians who do not seem

to be so discriminating in their array of sources. One is reminded

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of the maker of law books who states a principle of law and

refers to a footnote where numerous cases are cited and, when

they are studied individually, some of them are found not to touch

the principle, or to deny it. It is a trick of law writers to pick a

whole block of cases out of a brief in some Court report and adopt

them all without serious study. Thus they may make a showing

of profound learning which turns out to be a thin shadow. Some

of our historians are equally generous and undiscriminating.

Now, let us turn to a late history of the early period of our

political life, Jefferson and Hamilton, by Claude G. Bowers. In

dealing with these characters in a delightfully refreshing manner,

he finds his way through a six-page collection of historical ma-

terials including books, pamphlets, newspapers and magazines

which he says are "cited or consulted." The pamphlets and news-

papers are contemporary. I should like to state in his own words

how he uses the newspapers as source material:

"A liberal use has been made of the newspapers of the period;

not only the descriptions of actual events, but of the false rumors

and stories that entered into the creation of the prejudices that

always play their part in the affairs of men. In determining why

a given result was forced by public opinion, it is no more necessary

to know what the truth was than to know what the people who

formed that opinion thought it to be."

This statement embodies a great truth which we must daily

apply if we would understand public movements in our democracy.

To understand the political scene Bowers takes the reader into

struggles in Congress, the bickerings in the streets, coffee-houses

and taverns, mobs and mass-meetings, and behind the closed

doors and shuttered windows of "society." He says he is trying

to depict these two men and their associates as they really were

in the heat of controversy; "to paint them as men of flesh and

blood with passions, prejudices and human limitations; to show

them at close quarters wielding their weapons, and sometimes, in

the heat of the fight, stooping to conquer; and to uncover their

motives as they are clearly disclosed in the correspondence of

themselves and their friends. This has necessitated the abolish-

ment of some fashionable myths, when myths have obstructed the

view of truth." "The dignified steel engravings of the participants

with which we are familiar give no impression of the disheveled

figures seen by their contemporaries on the battle-field." The pur-

pose of the author is "to make the men of the steel engravings

flesh and blood."

If this discriminating probing is needed to present the true

history of men and events only a century and a quarter away in

a country where the press and the scholar have been uncensored,

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the problem undertaken by the historian of early colonial times,

or the Renaissance, or the late days of the Roman Republic when

men's passions were inflamed and intrigue ran riot, or the more

recent happenings in Russia, is almost bewildering.

The current newspaper is difficult material for the historian

of military and political events, but Bowers is a newspaper writer

and is endeavoring to translate familiar materials into historical

narrative, and no one will deny that he paints a fascinating picture.

He pursued the same methods with the same types of materials

in writing The Tragic Era or the Revolution After Lincoln, in

which he traced the course of reconstruction.

I mention this to introduce another kind of contemporary

material, in this instance used by no one before, but of rare value.

This is the diary of Representative George W. Julian of Indiana

which Bowers used in the unpublished manuscript. It sheds light

on motives and admits the reader to private conferences among

the great actors of the times. Generally though, there is no satis-

factory way of checking on the reliability of a diary since it is

made up of ex parte statements, and its use will depend upon the

judicial temper of the writer who appears somewhat in the role

of a private reporter.

I am mentioning Bowers at some length because he makes

conspicuous and, I think, successful use of voluminous newspaper

files for political history of the most moving sort. It is refractory

material for this purpose except in the hands of an expert such

as Bowers; we could cite some rather conspicuous instances of its

use where the resulting history of the United States is practically

a compilation of quotations treated as equally important and trust-

worthy! But for an economic or commercial or social history,

the newspaper has large possibilities. Professor Schlesinger cre-

ated a mild sensation among American historians twenty years

ago by presenting a thesis on the influence of commercial or busi-

ness relations and practices on the American Revolution, as shown

in contemporary newspapers. He was interested in dealing with

social factors as influencing political events and found them con-

tinuous and powerful.

In recent years there has been a pronounced trend toward

social history as distinguished from political or military or con-

stitutional history. This calls for a searching of all the influences

which make the life of a people what it is at any given time--the

state of the arts, of business, of industry, of the amusements and

dissipations of a people, of its luxuries, of its facilities for trans-

portation and communication--the live historian will utilize them

all and he must find them in the schools, in the factories, in the

stores, the libraries, the homes, the museums, and the archives.

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Verily, to write a good history, the historian must be a genius as

well as an honest and industrious man!

Every historian should become familiar with these materials

existing in the period studied, for the sake at least of perspective;

he should appreciate the influences at work whether he purposes

writing about them all or not. He may choose a thesis as Adams

does in The Epic of America and in The March of Democracy,

and as Parrington does in his unfinished social history entitled,

Main Currents in American Thought. Adams sets out to show

the effect upon our national development of the American dream

of equality of individual opportunity--the doctrine of the equal

chance for all--and in tracing the fortunes of this philosophy he

finds the existence of the frontier a dominating physical and social

factor, and its non-existence for the past third of a century a like-

wise powerful factor in creating the very different social condi-

tions we are living in today. He must recognize unlimited freedom

of operation to every social influence in the community in select-

ing his materials and in grouping them about his thesis; he be-

comes a philosopher of history, and therefore, exercises a type of

discrimination in the choosing and evaluating of materials and a

quality of thought in developing his thesis not needed by the

narrative historian, or by one who is attempting to present a gen-

eral outlook. The historian who ventures into this type of his-

torical writing is dealing with the composition of forces and is in

grave danger of overstatement.

Now let us glance at some of the reasons why the history

of a period is written and rewritten. Historical materials are not

always on tap, sometimes they are by the will of the owner not

to be opened for a number of years, as in the case of private let-

ters, documents and diaries. After the World War an eminent

English actor therein died leaving a large collection of such

sources of information about his times and his activities and the

actions of contemporaries, but his will provided that they should

not be opened for fifty years. Doubtless other important papers

will not be released for years; and although we today think we

know all about the Great War, yet of its real causes and the

significance of many of its movements, our remote descendants

will know much more than we. Possibly we do not envy them that

larger information. As the archives are opened and new letters

and documents are revealed the history of that cataclysm will be

written and rewritten, each time with a more complete conception

possible.

We recall Bowers' experience with Julian's diary sixty years

after the events of reconstruction. I know some of the diffi-

culties with which earlier students of this period struggled; the

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University, thirty-five years ago, very generously gave me the

Master's degree for studies relating to the XIVth Amendment.

I had access to the State Library and the University Library and

exhausted the materials so far as I could locate them--practically

all in Congressional records and government documents such as

the investigations and official reports of Carl Schurz and General

Howard. It was a thorny and unsatisfactory field. A student of

that subject today would find a wealth of material made available

all through the South and in newspaper files and studies and in

released writings and documents. I don't know that I could do

any better with the subject today, but a real historian would find

his way made easy by the materials uncovered since that time!

The American conception of our Revolutionary War has un-

dergone a radical change in the last thirty years. I believe the

needed enlightenment came first through Trevelyan's study of

that era. We know that a dominant political minority in England

overrode the best thought of the time about the colonies and

blundered into and through the Revolution. For a century the

jingo could always get a local response by twisting the lion's tail

and we passed through a long period of rabid chauvinism. But

the discovery of much source materials and its analysis and spread

have removed old misunderstandings. We have called this opera-

tion "debunking" history and there is pretty general agreement

that the "debunked" history is better.

Further, in the light of rather recent discoveries and

studies, we wonder how Thaddeus Stevens rose to the dictator-

ship in post Civil War affairs; we wonder whether we have ever

understood President Grant; we have begun to look upon Andrew

Johnson as a capable but much persecuted and misrepresented

man. It has taken over sixty years to clear the murky atmos-

phere that hung over the land for a dozen years after the death

of Lincoln. And the constant search and probing into historical

materials by historical students hunting the truth have brought us

into an era of enlightenment about the rebellion and its terrible

political aftermath.

I want to emphasize the point that the discovery of new his-

torical materials or the changed view-points with reference to the

meaning of known materials, concerning a period of time, pre-

sents the history of that time in new aspects; indeed it makes it

appear like a different history. But I do not want to dwell upon

this point unduly. However, some further illustrations come to

mind which will show how uncertain historical conclusions must

always be.

Lamb's recent volumes on the Crusades have brought forward

some Islamic sources of the history of that prolonged movement

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and we get a different understanding of some of its later develop-

ments. To go still further back, I suppose we have generally

thought that the history of the Roman Empire was completely

told by Gibbon. Not much fault has been found with this history

in the century and a half since he wrote it, but in recent times we

have been learning that there were sources which he did not use

and about which he probably did not know, and it may be of

whose importance he was not convinced.

But recently the Russian scholar, Rostovtzeff, professor at

Yale University, has written the Social and Economic History

of the Roman Empire; he says these phases of Roman life have

not been adequately treated in other histories which deal pri-

marily with military and political Rome. There is a good deal

of the economic and social in Gibbon's Rome, but nothing com-

parable with Rostovtzeff's treatment. He was impressed with

the knowledge to be gained from the study of memorials, mosaics,

friezes, stelai, coins, antiquities in many museums, and the find-

ings in numerous widely separated excavations. From these

materials, records and manuscripts he recreated the commerce

of the times, the trade routes, the industries of many communi-

ties, domestic customs and business practices. These bear heav-

ily upon political and military events and international relations,

and at that point he fills the picture of Roman life. He sheds

a brilliant illumination upon the character and significance of

antiquities; no age seems too remote for further study in the

light of museum treasures, excavations, and manuscripts lately

discovered. We recall distinctly the significance of the late dis-

coveries in the tomb of Tutankhamen and the wealth of materials

brought back a few years ago from Egypt by the exploring

parties from the Metropolitan Museum.

May I give a further illustration bearing upon this same

thought, that no age can write its own history, and it may be

many ages before the complete history of any period may be

written? In 1265 the Englishman, Bracton, completed a very

great book on the customs and laws of England written in the

Latin language. Sundry attempts were made to translate that

work and the one which obtained the widest circulation was that

by Sir Travers Twiss about 1860. Lawyers and students felt

that Twiss had made many mistakes because of misunderstand-

ing Bracton's statements and their import, yet they were not able

to correct them with any assurance. About 1885 a young Rus-

sian student, Vinogradoff, came to England to make a special

study of the feudal age in England. He was interested in the

system of land-holding and cultivation there in the twelfth and

thirteenth centuries because he believed that these might very

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closely resemble the system of land-holding in Russia of his

time. He wanted to get the historical background, if there was

one, and he made some very penetrating studies of land tenure

in England through the use of the ancient documents.  His

ability to find and translate these documents was so remarkable

that he attracted the attention of the preeminent legal scholar,

Maitland, who was devoting himself to a study of the old year-

books and other early legal documents in English history.

Through Maitland's influence Vinogradoff became interested in

these legal documents and one day while rummaging about in

the British Museum he came upon a bundle of law cases of the

thirteenth century and at once believed that he had fallen upon

Bracton's notebook. Nobody had ever seen this document, at

least had ever identified it, and so Vinogradoff made a very

remarkable discovery of notes on the cases which Bracton had

discussed in his monumental law book of 1265, and this threw

a flood of light upon Bracton's text which had not hitherto been

possible. Thus was a very important phase of the life of the

thirteenth century revealed six centuries later, and the legal his-

tory of that time has since been written with a higher degree of

knowledge and intelligence than was ever before attainable.

As the centuries pass away documents become scattered or

destroyed or lost, and this was especially likely to happen before

the age of printing. From various statements gleaned here and

there through legal writings, it was believed that we did not have

all of Bracton's manuscripts and we had some reasons to be-

lieve also that, as they had become scattered, the best manu-

scripts of Bracton had not come down to us. Careful searches

had been made through the British Museum and through the

private libraries of various members of the English nobility, but

yet inquiring minds in the twentieth century were not satisfied

with the results.

Professor George Woodbine of Yale University became inter-

ested in the sources of Bracton's materials and for twenty years

he has been going to England to study available manuscripts

and has unearthed a few in the old mansion-houses of the an-

cient nobility. Several most important manuscripts have thus

been brought to light and have been photographed and brought

back to this country where Woodbine has given them critical

study. The result is that he has already issued two volumes of

a proposed six-volume compilation of the texts of Bracton,

with a reconciliation so far as possible of the aberrant texts, and

a translation based upon all these sources of information is

forthcoming--all of which promise to make Woodbine's work

of the greatest historical value. What he is doing is, through

Vol. XLII--24

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recent discoveries of ancient documents, to shed the light of mod-

ern research, scholarship and devotion upon the legal practices

and conditions of a time six centuries remote. These illustra-

tions might be repeated almost indefinitely.

And now let me show how the age in which the historian

writes and the age about which he writes are both reflected in

his writing. The historian is always put to it to determine which

is the best material available, and usually the materials are in

quantity. Which should he use? This depends upon which ma-

terial he thinks reflects the life of the times and its political and

military activities most effectively, and in making this decision

he will operate upon principles of relativity. He may not know,

there may be nothing to show clearly, what forces were the

most powerful in shaping the period about which he is to write,

or what elements entered into the composition of these influential

forces. He must, therefore, select, and to do so must put his

own appraisement upon the materials at hand. His appraisement

will be colored by the thinking of his times, by his training, by

the evaluation of social and political forces current in his own

experience. The genius and culture of his own age, therefore,

enter, and it may be without formal purpose on his part, into

his study and selection of the materials of the past age, and it

is easily conceivable that much may be neglected which a writer

of a different type, or of another age, might regard as of ex-

treme importance. That is another reason why history is writ-

ten and re-written. A history of Rome in 1933 would be done

very differently from a history of Rome in 1774 or any time be-

tween now and then. We are bent now upon digging into the

social forces and manifestations of a period, and these are often

hard to come at, but we find them so far as possible and they

color our historical writings. We may misconstrue them when

we tinge them with the color of our own period, its culture and

genius; but willy-nilly they must be forced into the compass of

our historical perceptions and conceptions, and the reader, a

hundred years ago, of a history of a past period, got a very

different picture of that time from one impressed upon the

reader of today by a writer of today. Therefore, the elements

of personality, of contemporaneous cultural ideas and of indi-

vidualism in the choice and determination of importance of ma-

terials are all in the problem, and we are never sure that we can

get a correct picture of any past age. The emphasis will be here

in one age and there in another; it will be at one point with one

author and at a different point with another even though they

be contemporary; so we must despair of a complete picture of

the times as they were seen and appreciated by the people living

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in those times. The best we can do is an approximation; whether

it is close or remote will depend upon the current conception

of historical writings, the capacity of the writer to be appreci-

ative and sympathetic, his ability to select the materials adapted

to his purpose, and his ability to color with his own personality

and with the culture of his age in a truly reproductive fashion the

masses of materials which lie at hand for the study of almost

any past age which has left a large impress upon the world's

history.

The materials for almost any period of the world's history

are vast and varied. There is only one historian who has had the

fortitude to undertake by himself the whole long history of

English Law, from Anglo-Saxon times down to George the Fifth.

The writers of the social, or political, or military history of

England--and it is of course customary to treat them together--

usually choose a period or a phase. As Macaulay says in his

Preface, "I purpose to write the history of England from the

accession of King James the Second down to a time which is

within the memory of men still living."

But in these times no one really feels sufficiently familiar

with the great store of historical materials to venture on the

writing of England's entire history. When this is desired a

number of historical students collaborate, each taking the period

with which he is most familiar. Accordingly a few years ago

a seven-volume history came out. Oman, the well-known Ox-

ford professor, brought it down to the Norman Conquest; Davis

took it through the Normans and Angevins down to Edward

First, the English Justinian in 1272; Vickers went on through

the late Middle Ages ending where Richard the Third ended--

at Bosworth Field in 1485; Innes then carried on through the

Tudors ending with Queen Elizabeth who, as everybody remem-

bers, died in 1603; the famous Trevelyan then went on through

the Stuarts, which dynasty ended with Queen Anne in 1714;

Robertson picked up the thread at that point and traced the

fortunes of the German kings from Hanover up to Waterloo,

while Marriott brought it from there on. A rather remarkable

history of England, the materials--and they are voluminous--

in each period being treated by the expert according to his best

judgment. But, you will say, here are really seven histories, not

one; and the answer must be that if you want a continuous his-

tory of England from Caesar to McDonald that is the only way

to get it!

We have several times pursued the same plan in producing

a History of the United States; we turn loose the expert on his

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period. The Yale History, the Schlesinger Social History, and

others, are examples of this type of history making.

We are going in that direction rapidly in some of our states,

although Ohio will not need that plan for some years; with the

fine volumes of Randall and Ryan and the able and sympathetic

writing of Galbreath, we shall be able to get the history of Ohio

from a single historian's viewpoint for many years, and no

tandem series on the mound builders will be needed so long as

Shetrone's volume endures!

As we stand in the presence of the many volumes of a sin-

gle historian, like George Bancroft, or Von I lost, or Lamartine,

or Hume, or the magnificently written volumes of Green, we are

filled with an immense respect and appreciation, especially if we

have tried to write some small volumes ourselves! This respect

rises to praise and almost to wonder in the case of an English-

speaking historian who ventures into foreign fields where he

faces the language difficulty in the use of sources--such as

Motley with his Rise of the Dutch Republic, Irving with his

Conquest of Granada, Prescott with his Conquest of Mexico, and

Gibbon with his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

Finally, why should we be busy in our time in accumulating

materials which a historian of some future time may utilize in

portraying our lives and civilization to his people? Of what

importance is it to us whether we accumulate any historical

material or not? Merely this: we know our intense curiosity

about the peoples of the past, our ancestors, or at least our pre-

decessors; we deplore the fact that printing was not always

known and could not, therefore, always have left publications

which would be the foundation of our studies today to satisfy

our historical curiosity. We are prompted to write, to print, to

accumulate, by something which is a distinct attribute of the

human being. We preserve our records in many ways; we want

to pass ourselves on to posterity in the most complete and fa-

vorable light possible. We cannot escape these emotions, these

attitudes, these driving tendencies.  Somehow we want to be

understood by the people who come after. Therefore, we are

willing to spend money and time and the highest intelligence upon

the accumulation, the organization, the preservation of all types

of materials which show the character and quality of our time.

We do this sometimes at enormous personal inconvenience and

personal efforts but it is well that we do so. We are merely

satisfying one of the most powerful innate characteristics of the

human being.

We are enthusiastic about our historical monuments; we are

solicitous about our historical manuscripts, and records and me-

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Annual Meeting of the Board of Trustees     373 morials; we study, almost with bated breath, the relics of a bygone people turned up in our field excavations, and we bring all these materials together in an orderly exhibit completely cata- logued and identified in our museums. We carefully preserve also the evidences of our own domestic life, our industrial pro- cesses and our culture. We organize historical societies to pro- mote and to perpetuate our historical collections and monuments and to enrich the treasures by which a future generation may judge us sympathetically.  Financial support for the societies and the museums will wax and wane but it will always be forth- coming. The archives which we build and the antiquities which we store will be in the workshop of the future historian. We trust that the high character of our records may have a shaping and invigorating effect upon the life, and above all upon the thought of future generations. Dr. Rightmire's address was heard with unusual interest and appreciation and heartily applauded at its conclusion.

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