Mississippi Historical Society

“ But written history often becomes shot-riddled by criticism and is set away, at last, like battle-flags, after many honorable campaigns, in some museums of relics or some temple of fame. Unless such trophies continue to awaken in the living present a sort of enthusiasm and a sense of unity with the past experience of our race, then are our historic standards but antiquarian rubbish, indeed, as useless and unmeaning as the banners and symbols of heraldry.
The subject of History is the self-conscious development of the human race, the Ego of Humanity. ”

“ Let us remember that History is a constant knowing and learning, the self-knowledge and communion of reflecting spirits in all ages and a perpetual "Know Thyself" to advancing time. There is something indescribably solemn in the historic pausing of Man before the temple of the unknown future and seeking to realize in himself the gnothi seauton or "Know Thyself" of Humanity. He glances backward through the long vista he has traversed and as far as the eye can see, his pathway is cumbered with ruins. ”

“ The poet is in fact the maker in large measure of the history of the world. Through his entrancing and inspiring voice the aspirations of humanity have been elevated, ideals lofty in thought and deed have been constantly upheld, and will to dare and do the utmost in the cause of liberty and righteousness has been imparted in the hour of need. In the poet's verse we read, as nowhere else, the inner throbbing life of man. ”

“ But let no student or teacher believe for one moment that historical biography is the full equivalent of History. Not all the biographies that have ever been written could possibly contain the world's great life. As the poet Tennyson truly says: "The individual withers, but the world is more and more." There must be great men in Church and State, to lead society forward, but there must be unnumbered thousands, yea millions, of good men and true, and of faithful, devoted women, in order [78] to support good leadership and carry humanity forward from generation to generation. ”

“ As the heavens are reflected in a single drop of dew, so in the thoughts of the individual human mind we may sometimes behold a reflection of the self-knowledge of Humanity. For the individual is sometimes the very best expression of the whole with which it stands in connection. The onward march of world-history seems to have concentrated itself in the development of individual peoples like the Jews, Greeks, Romans, and the Germanic peoples. ”

“ While I still believe in Local History and in limited subjects of student research, I now recognize more fully than I used to do, the importance of General History, especially for college students and college graduates in the early part of their course. After all, the great fact in History, as well as in Geography, is that the world is round. You must recognize all human experience on this globe as parts of one great whole, just as you recognize that the continents and outlying islands are but related parts of one vast geographical system. ”

“ It will but be in accord with what has taken place in the past, if a student who sets to work along lines I have suggested, who accumulates material, who immerses himself in the history and traditions of his state—it will be but natural, I say, if such an one have his heart set on fire by the enthusiasm engendered by his work and be transformed from a journeyman toiling over his tasks of accumulator into literary wizard who by the incantations of his genius may call forth the spirit of his time. ”

“ But even after we have insisted on this wider definition of literature, Mississippi has few grounds for boasting. The list of Mississippi books is not long; the average quality is not high. Of pure literature, of the real literature of power, we have contributed scarcely fifty pages to the world's store. We may deceive ourselves and gratify our state pride by wild claims, but after the joy of self-glorification is over we shall be forced to the conclusion that our place in literary history is an humble one. ”

“ Not man alone, but man in organized society, is the subject of History. Man in his relation to his fellows, man as a military, political, social, intellectual, and religious being may become historic. Dr. Thomas Arnold sometimes defined History as the biography of nations. This is a large and noble conception, although not the largest, and it may be profitably emphasized, like human biography in the study and teaching of History. It is the duty of every school and college to lay great stress upon the history of England and of the United States in addition to General History. ”

“ Much has been said of late years to the effect that the grant of the right to vote on the negroes by the fifteenth amendment to the constitution of the United States was a mistake; perhaps the adoption of that amendment was an error in statecraft; certainly it proved a party mistake to the Republican party. But every thoughtful and candid man will doubt the proposition that the grant of suffrage to the negro was a mistake when viewed from the standpoint of the negro's welfare. Would his rights as a citizen have been as soon respected had he remained deprived of political power? ”

“ Let us then regard the study of History, not as something wholly objective but as an unfolding panorama of the human self-consciousness, for history is merely the reflecting spirit of mankind in which we ourselves may have an immediate share, which we all may help to perpetuate and in some way enlarge. ”

“ May Mississippi see not another Scott but a literary man who under new conditions and with new material may create for Mississippi a new literature which may have like place in the world's literature with the immortal contributions of the great Scotchman. ”

“ As these nations best typify historic progress and certain world-historic ideas, so the historic thought of manhood may be most fully realized by individual minds. For example, a single historian, like Thucydides, may reflect the self-consciousness of his age, and a single mind, in our own day, may realize, in some measure, at least through the works of history, the self-knowledge, the Ego of Humanity. It should be the aim of every student of History thus to realize in his own consciousness the historic thought of mankind. ”

“ We sometimes speak of written history and of its standard works as though the essence of that science consisted in books and not in knowledge. "There are no standards of history," said Droysen, a German professor to an American student who had asked his advice respecting the choice of standard works for an historical library. In this caustic saying there lies a profound truth. History is a living, self-developed science, not a collection of fossils. ”

“ Children are always gifted with imagination. They rejoice in the thought of lands that are far off, of men who lived in olden times. They take the greatest pleasure in heroic tales of Cyrus and of Hannibal, of Horatius and of the great twin brethren, Castor and Pollux. Mythology, minstrelsy, Bible stories, and lives of great wariors, explorers, discoverers, inventors, these are of supreme interest to boys and girls. American History should be taught to American youth, but chiefly the heroic, the romantic, the biographical, in short the more human sides of our colonel and national life. ”

“ The student of policies and of institutions must needs seek the help of him whose care is to trace literary currents and together they must labor by painstaking study of the writings of Mississippians to conjure up by some verbal necromancy, the literary genius and spirit of the people of the State. We are not going too far, then, in asserting that all written monuments that in any way reflect and set forth the intellectual life of the people are rightly to be enumerated in the lists of Mississippi literature. ”

“ We all need to know the lives of our own people as well as the lives of great Englishmen like Pitt and Gladstone, and great Americans like Washington and Lincoln. We should teach and study the histories of those nations which are nearest our mother country—Scotland, France, Germany, and Italy. As Germany is now the great seat of culture and of university life for American students who go abroad, so was Italy for wandering English students in the days of the Renaissance. ”

“ The humble collector of this material may not win much of fame for self—except so far as that the humbler work well done does not need to be done again and therefore wins the reward due to honest endeavor—But if he gains no reward he may rejoice in the consciousness that he is making possible the day when Mississippi may stand as a peer with other Southern States, delight to honor her own Lanier, her own Harris, her own Cable, her own Murfree, and her own Allen. ”

“ All the bygone ages are with us, and we look on the face of the infancy of the world. We see the first dawning of thought in man. We are present at the beginnings of cities, states, and nations; and can trace the growth and development of governments, policies, and laws. ”

“ With similar parsimony of words, if we are willing to adopt one of the almost universally accepted definitions in which beauty and permanence and universality are made the final tests of literature—if we are willing to accept so narrow a definition we may find ourselves able to write the history of Mississippi literature in one sentence. Such a history would be—in the brutal directness of Horrebow's phrase: There is no literature to be met with throughout the whole State. ”

“ On the other hand, let an individual mingle with his fellows; a race or community enters into political or commercial relation with its neighbors, the divine sparks struck off by the attrition of mind with mind kindle the fires which illumine the spiritual in man and sets in motion the machinery of human progress. What student of history fails to recognize the influence of Phoenician letters and Egyptian thought upon Greek civilization; of Greek literature and ideals upon Roman character and development ”

“ History begins and ends with Man. Biographical approaches to the world's life are the oldest, and best beaten paths for youth to follow. Carlyle and Froude are among the champions of the biographical method of studying and teaching History. When Froude succeeded Freeman at Oxford the biographical idea was at once brought to the front. Froude quoted Carlyle as saying: "The history of mankind is the history of its great men; to find out these, clean the dirt from them, and place them on their proper pedestals, is the true function of the historian." ”

“ Turning our attention to student-work, I may as well express my opinion that we have no noble specimens of literary art to which the student may turn to make critical examination of the method and purposes of literary interpretation. We have little that may claim place even in the ranks of third and fourth rate productions. With the single exception of the poems of Irvin Russell, Mississippi has produced nothing which literary men have been willing to accord a place in the literature of America. ”

“ Crumbling monuments and fallen columns reveal the wreck of all material greatness, while the distant pyramids but remind him of the more than Egyptian darkness out of which Humanity has been mysteriously led unto this mountain of light which we call the Present or that Living Age. ”

“ Literature has a wider meaning than is given to it in this esthetic definition, a definition which must exclude everything written by Mississippi authors. There ought to be general agreement to the commonplace that literature is life embodied in the pages of books. "Good literature is" therefore "an open door into the life and mode of thought of the time and place where it originated." On this side of our work the departments of literature and of history are one and inseparable. ”

“ Being under the conviction that everything which sets forth Mississippi life is worthy of consideration, we may conclude that every Mississippi book has a right to be included in the subject matter worthy of the attention of a Mississippi student. Justin Winsor learned by experience that every printed document was worthy of preservation in the great library of Harvard University and we shall find that no contribution of a Mississippi pen is unworthy of our care. ”

“ Preference for the hustlings and the madding crowds rather than for the desk and its quiet enthusiasms must be accepted as a fact, let him who will account for it. Nor is this the place to argue that a local literature is a contradiction in terms. Our desire is to see the day when Mississippi shall have writers whom succeeding generations will delight to number among those who have contributed to the world's best thoughts, adequately expressed. ”

“ The facts of human experience become suddenly transfigured in the light of a divine principle, namely the self-consciousness of reason, that God-given spirit which recognizes the purpose of History to be the increasing self-knowledge of Man. ”

“ All elections in Mississippi since 1821 have been by ballot, and this is now the constitutional rule; we have here the Australian or secret ballot system very much as it is found in a number of states of the Union, and it accomplishes in its practical operation the primary objects of the system; first, the absolute prevention of bribery, for no man will bribe a voter if the only evidence of the delivery of the contracted-for vote be the word of the bribe taker, and, second, the prevention of intimidation of voters, which is practically impossible. ”

“ It will be impossible to stop investigation and the historian must ever keep in mind the fact that sooner or later his work will be tested by others and his errors brought to light. The value and permanence of all historical work, therefore, is quite in proportion to the amount of truth it contains. "Particularly must he," says one, "guard against careless or incorrect statements about the dead who cannot defend themselves." Every assertion should be susceptible of proof and exact references should be made in foot-notes to the authority upon which a statement is based. ”

“ It is often the biography of some plain man or self-sacrificing woman that affords the greatest encouragement and incentive to ordinary humanity. But we must remember that no man, no woman is worthy of biographical or historical record, unless in some way he or she has contributed to the welfare of society and the progress of the world. ”

“ The first work, then, to which I should assign my student is the compilation of a bibliography of Mississippi literature. So far as I know there is no man who knows how many books have been written by our own authors. A confessedly incomplete list of my own compilation reveals the name of many a work the Mississippian of average intelligence has never so much as heard of. ”