Historical record

“ The general idea of providing a permanent record of historical events in the nation’s history is worthy of universal encouragement, and also of making these records easily accessible for public enlightenment. ”

“ It is presumed that a record of achievements in war,—victories so complete and surprising, gained by our countrymen, our brothers, [vii] our fellow-citizens in arms,—a record which revives the memory of the brave, and brings their gallant deeds before us, will certainly prove acceptable to the public. ”

“ From hence does history derive its utility; for being, when truly written, a faithful record of the transactions of mankind, and the consequences that flowed from them, we are thence furnished with the means of judging what will be the probable effect of transactions, similar among ourselves. ”

“ Doubtless it is impossible for any one journal to make a complete record of all the books and articles that appear in the field of history, but I believe the record could be made much more complete than it now is ”

“ When we remember that nature leaves a complete record of her march onward, without recourse to any of these artificial helps, we then realize that the immense book of history of pre- ceding ages is only closed because we do not know how to read, rather than because no record is left. ”

“ We now turn to the historical ages of each of the principal countries, to review what advance has been made even where a basis of written record has come down to us, equally accessible in all recent times. ”

“ We possess, for example, many and excellent histories, embracing every period of our domestic annals;—biographies, general and particular, which appear to have placed on record the name of every private individual justly entitled to such commemoration;—and numerous and extensive collections of original letters, state-papers and other historical and antiquarian documents;—whilst our comparative penury is remarkable in royal lives, in court histories, and especially in that class which forms the glory of French literature,—memoir. ”

“ It requires rare gifts indeed to make such a record—a keenness of eye, a skill of hand, and a transparent honesty of purpose that do not often occur to this degree. The record is indeed so well made that it will always be legible, and what is to be read therein will have an ever increasing historical interest. ”

“ There is no fixed time for the record. It is sometimes quite early, as, for instance, the examples which come to us from historians; it is generally quite late, namely, the great mass of examples which, during the past century or so, have been collected directly from the lips or observances of the people, sometimes by the curious traveller or antiquary, lately by the professed folklorist.
The consideration of the relationship of history and folklore has cleared the ground for definitions and method. ”

“ Contemporary writers make themselves the judges of what is important to record; documents preserved in public or private archives relate only to such events as need or command the written record or instrument, or to those which have interested some of the actors and their families. ”

“ The latest conclusions of modern science show that uninterrupted historical records, confirmed by contemporary monuments, carry history back at least 1000 years before the supposed Creation of Man, and 2500 years before the date of the Deluge, and show then no trace of a commencement; but populous cities, celebrated temples, great engineering works, and a high state of the arts and of civilization, already existing. ”

“ In that moment of time that is covered by historical records we have abundant evidence that each generation has believed itself wiser and better than any of its predecessors; that each people has believed itself to have the secret of national perpetuity. ”

“ There must be no juggling with the record, no emendations such as students of early literary work are so fond of attempting. Whatever the record, it must be accepted. The original account of every custom and belief is a corpus, not to be tampered with except for the purpose of scientific analysis, and then after that purpose has been effected all the parts must be put together again, and the original restored to its form. ”

“ Books which record the history of the past are the infallible and unerring prophets of the future."
"History is the grandest study in the world." My College President, Dr. Julius H. Seelye, was right. There is no art or [81] science comparable to it, for it embraces the whole experience of man in organized society. History takes hold of all the past and points the way to all the future. The French historian, Guizot, in his "History of My Time" (III. 162) says: "Religion opens the future and places us in the presence of eternity. ”

“ We have never adequately supported our own writers. We have added to the tragedy of nations by allowing Poe to die the death of an outcast; Timrod to break his heart, without a crust to eat or a penny to buy food; Lanier not to have time to record the strains that were demanding utterance, in order to spend his wasting strength seeking support for wife and children; Russell broken in courage and in fortune to find not even a resting-place in the soil of his native State. Before the war the Southern library shelves were weighed down with Fielding, Smollett, Addison, Johnson, Scott and Dickens. ”

“ Then, too, historical investigation is even today far more accurate and scientific than when Dickens wrote. But David Copperfield, which the critics have never called an historical novel, has an historical element that time cannot take away, for it is the record of what an accurate observer saw and felt and heard in the first half of the nineteenth century. The historical novel, therefore, in the current acceptation of the term, contributes nothing to the sources of historical study, though it does popularize history and thus help to prepare an audience for the scientific historian. ”

“ The method of investigation as to the importance and significance of these earliest historical records must be anthropological. They are in point of fact so much anthropological data relating to Britain. It is no use calling them history, and then defining that history as bad history simply because as history the recorded facts do not appear to be credible. As a matter of fact they belong to the prehistory period of Britain, and to test their value scientific methods are required. ”

“ A State historical society as the center of State historical activities must, therefore, be provided with a library of research, and must maintain meetings from which the largest benefits of association are derived. That largest source of historical records, the legislative and administrative archives of the commonwealth, comes in for special care from a State historical society. ”

“ We understand by history a record of events that are past, and that it embraces chronology, biography, manners and customs, statistics, governments, and the rise and fall of kingdoms, nations and empires. ”

“ Another remark is, that these authentic records of early history only begin to appear when civilization is so far advanced as to have established powerful dynasties and priestly organizations. The history of a nation is at first the history of its kings, and its records are 9 enumerations of their genealogies, successive reigns, foundation or repair of temples, great industrial works, and warlike exploits. These are made and preserved by special castes of priestly colleges and learned scribes, and they are to a great extent precise in date and accurate in fact. ”

“ They are no more matter of historical tradition than any of the thousand other legendary genealogies which men delighted to recall to memory at the periodical festivals of their gens, their deme, or their village. ”

“ Over and over again, in the local records, are examples to be found where history is in close contact with tradition, and I am far more inclined to question the evidence which proves the falseness of any authenticated tradition than I am to trust all the statements which do duty for history. ”

“ Now that data are affixed to our brief historical period, and the occurrences of yesterday, in comparison with the actual history of our land, have settled down into a succession of well-known events, it becomes us to look back into those of long-lost time, and to inquire into the memorials of our country's antiquity ”

“ History, if we define it as the mere transcription of the written records of former generations, can go no farther back than the time such records were first made, no farther than the art of writing. But now that we have come to recognize the great earth itself as a story-book, as a keeper of records buried one beneath the other, confused and half obliterated, yet not wholly beyond our comprehension, now the historian may fairly be allowed to speak of a far earlier day. ”

“ Then for later periods, no country of the Western world possesses such magnificent materials for history as our own. In the vast quantity of public and private documents which are gradually being made accessible to the student there exists material for the illustration and elucidation of almost every side and every period of national life, and no branch of historical research is more fruitful of results than the comparison of the records of the professed historian with the documents which have not come from the historian's hands. ”

“ Diplomatic history and the more secret springs of political history can only be fully disclosed when the archives relating to them have been explored and when the confidential correspondence of the chief actors in them has been published. The biographical element in history is always the most uncertain. ”

“ One or two generations measure the beginning of real settlement even though the discovery may have reached back a century or more. What is usually regarded as history, is, therefore, within the memory of many now living, and the collection of much of the historical material is easy and more valuable because of the fullness of information obtainable. ”

“ The evidence of historic events which enter into tradition relates principally to the earliest periods, but much of it relates to periods well within the domain of history and yet reveals facts which history has either hopelessly neglected or misinterpreted. ”

“ In a few years men will understand why, in this country, as well as in England, people are hunting up their genealogy, and by tradition, history, and heraldry, trying to ascertain of what family they are. ”

“ As, however, the earlier civilization lies very much out of the beaten track of history, the place of direct records has to be supplied in great measure by indirect evidence, such as Antiquities, Language, and Mythology. This makes it generally difficult to get a sound historical basis to work on, but there happens to be a quantity of material easily obtainable, which bears on the development of some of the more common and useful arts. ”

“ The abundance of original records, of monographs and works of detail, that have been published within the last fifty years, surpasses by far the grasp of a single mind. To work up their results into a uniform whole demands the application of the cooperative principle—a principle to which we already owe such notable achievements of historical research as the Monumenta Germaniae Historica, our own Rolls Series, and the Dictionary of National Biography. ”

“ Indeed, a very high authority as good as told the writer in the war records office in Washington that no man's memory is as good as the published record, or entitled to any weight at all when not in entire harmony therewith. ”

“ The several departments of history that are distinguished as biography, civil and ecclesiastical annals, moral and physical surveys of mankind, comparative philology, archeology, chronology, mythology, &c. All combine to instruct and amuse, to record the past and present, and to lead to better future actions, an improved social order. The nations often forget the wise lessons of time and experience ”

“ In the eye of the true historian those earliest and those latest records, and the records of the long ages which passed between them, all have, perhaps not all an equal value, but at least value enough to stamp them all as alike parts of the history of the city, all alike entitled to respect and veneration from every one in whose eyes the history of the city is precious. ”

“ In the meantime it is well to bear in mind that there is one important department of history which has always been frankly and unhesitatingly accepted as history and yet which has no stronger foundation than tradition, and tradition of the most formal kind. I allude to the early laws of most of the peoples who have become possessed of an historic civilisation. ”