Worthington Chauncey Ford

“ They know that family, censors, and state are unavailing against time, and that no cause has been without its evil features which cannot be suppressed and ought not to be forgotten. They know that no human agency can belie the character for which the man himself is responsible. The inevitableness of history lies before them in too many examples to be neglected. The editor deals with individuals, the historian with generals. The cultivation of a balanced and non-partizan spirit and utterance, no small accomplishment, brings its reward in confidence and clarity of vision. ”

“ It requires a greatness of character to stand the test, and there are few great characters. The majority babble, retail half-truths and vamp the worn and patched shreds until they have encased themselves in nothing but their own too transparent self-consciousness, still not undisturbed by doubts. Seeking to invest themselves with a cloudlike splendor and halo as the reward for upright conduct, they retire into the smoke-shield of their own creation, to emerge streaked with smudge. As a mode of defense autobiography is a failure ”

“ The human machine is self-advertising, for its wants are imperative and its acts come for judgment before an immediate tribunal—public opinion. Is not, then, the desire to write autobiography a confession that some explanation of conduct is to say the least expedient? The atmosphere of publicity in which a public character of to-day moves gives to surrounding objects and relations a certain distortion. The distortion becomes natural to him, and he wonders why others do not accept him as unquestioningly as formerly, why they adopt a critical attitude with a tendency to open opposition. ”

“ The word rebel as applied to the South is a survival; the bitterness has slowly turned into sweetness, and the glory of honorable conflict is shared between the two sections. Much of what parades as history to-day will fortunately sink into the forgetfulness of the future, to be exhumed at times as curious examples of misdirected energy and ill-exercised thought. What remains, clarified of its partizanship, may serve for real history. It will be two generations before the full publication of documents can begin, and then will be applied the tests of fair judgment—the real editing. ”

“ To pass upon the career of a public man immediately after his death involves no light task. The secretarial writer, of which Boswell is such a shining example, may be truthful and interesting; but if he is sincere and loyal he will not lightly relate what may tell against his employer. That appeal to prurient curiosity which finds a market in sensation, has been framed in many ways, and still attracts support. ”

“ They chatter of many things, but are reticent on those most important to the historian. As appeals to a simple faith, and as childlike murmurings of unrelated facts they awaken wonder without gratifying a reasonable curiosity. ”

“ Where papers have been destroyed in the hope that criticism would be ended, the ghosts of old controversies arise and the worst or opposition phases of character are remembered. Descendants who have nestled in self-confidence and wrapped themselves in forgetfulness are pained and shocked to have the old gossip and tradition of their ancestors served up highly spiced in modern journalese. They have only themselves to blame.
For nearly a century after the Declaration of Independence both biography and editing of original materials had not attained success. ”

“ Freedom came slowly, and such was the effect of the supervision of the press that under the Restoration the newspaper press was practically reduced to the London Gazette—an official and inspired organ. In two centuries and a half such interferences have been abolished. While Great Britain has, after its fashion, never rested the freedom of the press on law but on its unwritten constitution, the United States have gloried in its recognition in their bills of right, an essential part of their constitutions. ”

“ A Pepys holds up a personal mirror with the reflecting surface towards himself, and unconsciously gives material for judging others and his own times such as no serious-minded historian could give and such as no writer on Pepys's period can neglect. The little has become the important.
The United States has not been rich in self-written history, nor is the little it possesses, of startling moment. An explanation offered by some declares the lack of real interest in American history. ”

“ To approach such modern instances with due reverence is difficult. Conditions have altered, the standard of greatness has changed, and the demands as well as the responsibilities of biographer and editor are other than were accepted unquestioned a halfcentury ago. History is better written, and the subject is attracting the best; but autobiography lags behind, good-naturedly accepted for its defects rather than for its virtues. The charm of literary autobiography persists, but the unreliability of political autobiography has come to be a byword. ”

“ There has been no suggestion of general interference by the state to impose upon the people a single interpretation of policy outside of law. The opposition has been as free as the supporters of government, and the third or independent party, or the silent independent voter, tends to correct such an overwhelming drift as could be interpreted as an unrestricted mandate from the people to their representatives, or from the government to the people. ”

“ In the meanwhile we should cultivate, as far as possible, the editorial attitude, keeping our minds open, restraining our criticism lest it lead to injustice and persecution, avoiding personalities, and exercising the same patience and restraint under wrongs and violations of good faith as have placed our country with an unsoiled record at the front of a world movement. ”

“ Let us start with something definite. "Was it you", wrote an Englishman to Joseph Jefferson, the actor, "or was it your grandfather, who wrote the Declaration of Independence?" The inquirer and the question are always with us and one of the objects of writing and teaching history is to make both harmless, if not impossible. And the lowest round of the ladder of accomplishment is the editor. He assumes the existence of the anxious inquirer, he seeks to measure his wants, and he frames the answer on such a plane as to hit the average degree of ignorance. ”

“ The price paid is a confusion of tongues, a multiplicity of opinion which produces indigestion, and an absence of standards which permits the glorification of the seamy and the sordid as freely as of the great and the admirable. ”

“ Cables and mails are under a censorship which tends to become more rigid; discussion of governmental policy and execution is under a threatened interference by officials, who are wanting in experience and are fallible and extremely sensitive to currents of public opinion; and American opinion is subject to excitements, fitful and destructive of reputations. But unless a man sells his soul he can be heard and answered, or left to the certainties of time. It is all very well to speak of the sober second thought of the people ”

“ Except in great crises the American conception of liberty of speech has been maintained, and in the severe crises, as Rhodes says of the War of Secession, the great principles of liberty have not been invalidated by the exercise of extraordinary powers, although the arbitrary exercise of those powers was to be condemned. Even against the government the citizen can invoke the protection of the courts.
Self-editing finds expression in autobiography, and the one great example of American autobiography is that of Franklin, written, be it remembered, late in life, and never finished. ”

“ Public archives have been made accessible, a generous freedom of use accorded by private owners of papers; and pride of ancestry has contributed its share to the ever increasing quantity of product. If only certain possessors of material could appreciate how far they are like the ostrich, and what damage their aloofness is working on their pet admirations! ”

“ It is not Scottish, for they are too canny to waste even emotion without some definite return. The Irish have a humor that saves them from ridicule, though it does not endow them with the needed balance-wheel of wisdom. The sentiment of Germany overruns proper bounds, but is not reflected in the leading examples of American self-written biography. The American expression is peculiar, a proper accompaniment of a territory almost without limits. ”

“ An editor is restricted to the written record; the memories of oldest inhabitants and the tradition of generations have no attraction for him. His purpose is to give all that may be of service to our host of anxious inquirers and the ever-increasing number of writers of history, and to give it unvarnished, as the documents contain it. ”

“ Fourteen years later, in 1818, Wirt's Life of Patrick Henry, necessarily largely based on tradition, carried into biography the oratorical flowers of Independence Day, and succeeded so far as to make its transplanted garden a desert place in comparison to a later and saner cultivation. It is something to have manufactured a good book, yet an example that is to be avoided—otherwise the sense of relation would be weakened. ”

“ The editor is a source of information and a measure of quantity suited to a dose. A physician selects his remedies on case practice, on a range of experience which has eliminated every factor of doubt but the personal equation of the subject. The giver of information has few rules based on experience for his guidance, and has a double personal equation to meet—that of his subject and that of his questioner. No wonder the failures are many. ”

“ Is man so little influenced by circumstances and so greatly moulded by his own will that he can consciously assume to be master of his own fortunes? The self-made man is subject to attacks of assurance which awaken in him an anxiety to tell others how he accomplished it—it referring to any achievement from making a large fortune to writing a popular song. ”

“ For three years the country has been under a stress which has tested its people and its government. In the mass of interested discussion and propaganda, licit and illicit, it has been difficult not to take a position and express the faith that is in us. ”

“ The art is comparatively new, for it arose out of myth and fable and is still painfully groping towards truth. Evolutionists tell us that the development of moral concepts has been as gradual and certain as the development of physical characteristics, and some would lay down a rule of thumb to show how the ideas of truth, right, and justice have been evolved from moral nescience. What would the writer of history not give for such a standard or measure! ”

“ Success is the worst judge of itself, and some other tribunal should take cognizance and, if possible, commit such budding sprouts to safe quarters where they may interchange their confidences without making an undue exhibition of themselves. ”

“ The foreign visitor, in the rawest period of our growth, has not failed in picturesque, even lurid contrast, and has not found us inarticulate on ourselves or bashful of suggesting our merits. If the tone has been one of bluster rather than of philosophic analysis, it is genuine and not assumed, even to the wincing at the reflection returned by the not too faultless mirror. ”

“ The question of an interference by the British government is not one which need delay us in passing. That government and that people have not shown strong inclinations to edit their expressions on America and its history, least of all at the time the Franklin volumes appeared. Jefferson intimated that William Temple Franklin may have been "an accomplice in the parricide of the memory of his immortal grandfather", but the result of the publication gave proof of the incapacity of the grandson. ”

“ He sees through their eyes, and re-enacts their deeds, with a wider vision and a knowledge of consequences not vouchsafed to them. Whatever reserve is imposed arises out of a sense of decency; all else may safely be left to the judgment of history. ”

“ The supposed necessity of party supplied the newspapers with abuse of individuals, and the pamphlets of the day could match the newspapers in directness and scurrility of language. History and biography should rise to a higher level, and in style attain to some merit. ”

“ The extremist is beyond change, and among these extremists on both sides are some historians. Their honesty of conviction is not to be questioned, but their violence of expression is to be regretted. Exaggeration in language is not confined to the newspaper. ”

“ And he gratified his vanity in so doing, believing that vanity is "often productive of good to the possessor, and to others that are within his sphere of action; and therefore, in many cases, it would not be altogether absurd if a man were to thank God for his vanity among the other comforts of life". ”

“ If he is pushed out from a public career, and gains time for reflection and self-examination, the injustice and unreason of his former constituency appear large and to him are based upon misconception. ”

“ They constitute a necessary item in the social history of the time, a crude form of the third degree, by which it was hoped a corner of the curtain of the soul, the token of immortal man, would be raised. The diaries, chiefly kept in interleaved almanacs by the ministers, were never intended for the public eye, and rarely rise above the level of a record of church ministration, with items of farm and household of a singularly bald nature. Once in a great while some one has the itch of putting all his thoughts and feelings on paper, and in seeking to imitate St. ”

“ Another explanation is that its people have been too occupied in opening territory to settlement and development to expend much energy on recording and explaining the course of events, much less the participation in the struggle where the overscrupulous were doomed to defeat. A third would say that a democracy is against good history, for it means a slow vulgarizing of the best. ”