St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1891-01-19
HISTORIES.

GEORGE BANCROFT had a literary OPP
portunity which few men have ever
found open, and he took advantage of
it in a fashion and with a success which
will never be possible again. He found
the beginningof the history of the great
est people on the earth unwritten, and
everybody eager to read the story. He
took the vast mass of ~undigested, OBJ
scure and unreliable material which was
hidden here and there, and collated it
for the first time into a long series of
noble volumes, full of consecutive mar
rative and clothed in literary style, a
little overweighted perhaps with figures
of rhetoric, but very pleasing to the
general fancy. Nobody in the present
generation would think of undertaking
such a work. Contemporary historians
are given to the close investigation of
brief periods of time. The scientific
student would feel it entirely out of the
question to cover in a life Of effort the
achievements of a race for 200 years.
But BANCROFT did it, and seems to have
done it once for all.
The periods of American history
since the adoption of the constitution
have only begun nov IN the last ten
years to be treated as BANCROFT treated
colonial history. Fifteen years ago the
books available to the generally intelli-
gent investigator in this line were ex-
ceedingly limited. For the administra-
tons of the early presidents HILL
DRETH's work was practically the only
authority. This vas a dreary thing.
full of fulsome eulogy of the Federalist
party, and utterly unfair and untruth-
full in its picture of that greatest of men,
THOMAS JEFFERSON. and his friends.
For the administrations after the
Younger ADAMS the ordinary student
who did not feel called upon to investi-
gate original sources had no refuge eX-
eept in books Of biography end memoirs
of one kind and another. There were a
great many of these, covering the years
down to the late ~forties, and from the
outbreak of the civil war EDWARDS.
But for the great middle ages of our.
national history, the dark days of
chicanery and dishonor, the time when
the little lei like POLK and PIERCE
the HAYES and the HARRIsoNs of an
earlier date-were in the a%scendency,
and treason's plot was Matching, for
this time there was practically nothing
which was adequate or satisfactory.
BRYANT's Popular History put into
accessible shape a great deal OF material
for all these periods, and, while not in
tended to be profound, is accurate, in
teresting and complete. SHOULDERS
history, following this in date OF publ
cation, covers a long stretch in a more
scientific way. The writings of HENRY
ADAMS, which are still issuing and in
complete, have supplanted HILDRETH,
and if continued, as we hope they will
be, to tue time of the Civil War, will
fill the great gap which still exists.
Even now the reader has to rely on Won
HoLsT's book for a large portion of our
a%nte-bellum history. This is a great
work. and still. considering Its purpose,
a great failure. 1t was an attempt to
trace the growth Of the constitution of
the United States, and yet it omitted
the tale of what the supreme court, the
one great creator of the constitution,
has done. A constitutional history of
our country is still to be written which
will trace the growth of the greatest
fabric of the world in the writings O