Excerpt from The Present State of Historical Writing in America
What is the quantity and what the quality of our output of historical monographs? What is upon the average the mental calibre and what the training of those who make them? How do we stand with respect to the publication of histories of a higher order, marked by literary sense or the effort to generalize? How deep or how copious is American thought on the theoretical or philosophical aspects of history? How largely have our historical workers pursued, or appreciated, or been affected by, the advances made in the many other sciences to which history is more or less related? What are the present purposes, nature, and effects of American historical teaching, elementary, secondary, collegiate, or university, which after all represents far more than nine-tenths of the total effort expended on history in this country? In our universities, what is the status of research? How are our historical societies and journals performing their functions? What is the character of those books of history which most hold the public attention - so far as the public attention can be said to be held by any books whatever? What sort or quality of history is presented to the popular mind in the ten-cent magazines and the newspapers, which now constitute almost the sole reading-matter of American mankind?
Not one of these questions is easy to answer, yet all must be answered before we can adequately picture to ourselves the present state of historical writing in the United States. It is vain to make any attempt this morning to pursue them all, but it may not be vain to have enumerated them; for if then we perforce narrow the scope of the present paper to a consideration of a manageable portion of the whole field, we shall nevertheless do this with some consciousness of the relation which that portion bears to the whole unmanageable total.
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