Letter on Fugitive Slaves, by Charles Carroll, 1826 Extracts from the final Proclamation of Emancipation, by Abraham Source Book of American History PRACTICAL INTRODUCTIONS I. The Use of Sources ITH the use which investigators make of sources, as a basis for elaborate historical writing, this book has nothing to do, except to suggest that upon such materials, vast in amount and bewildering in variety, rest all that we really know about the history of times earlier than the memory of living men. Even the investigator nowadays does not necessarily examine for himself every record of the events with which he deals: he may accept, and almost always does accept, some statements of facts gathered for him by other writers who have themselves examined the ground. It is not the conception of the editor that young and inexperienced boys and girls can find in this book material broad enough to serve as the sole basis for generalizations; or that they can construct a complete narrative for themselves out of any amount of material: the Source Book is meant to supplement, not to supplant the text-book. In schools, and even in most college classes, the sources have a very different office: they are to act as adjuncts to historical narrative, by illustrating it, and making it vivid; as by analyzing a few flowers the young student of botany learns some plant structure, and accepts the rest from the text-book, so the student of history by intimate acquaintance with a few writers of contemporary books finds his reading in secondary works easier to understand. Upon the subject of source-study in schools there is as yet little in print. Charles W. Colby, in the Introduction to his Selections from the Sources of English History (1899), very suggestively discusses the uses of sources. In the Report of the Madison Conference, included in the Report of the Committee [of Ten] on Secondary School Studies (1893), §§ 15, 33, sources are treated incidentally in connection with topical study. In the American History Studies, issued by the University of Nebraska, are hints and suggestions. The University of Pennsylvania - issues a little tract, The Use of Original Sources in the Teaching of History, which has helpful suggestions and includes a brief list of collections available for schools in various fields of history. The editor of this book has prefixed an essay on this subject to each of the volumes of American History told by Contemporaries. Almost the only general discussion of the subject is in one of the appendices to The Study of History in Schools, Report of the Committee of Seven (1899), printed also in Report of the American Historical Association for 1898. subject is taken up in connection with other topics in the printed proceedings of the two Associations of Colleges and Preparatory Schools— that of New England, and that of the Middle States; and also in the proceedings of the New England History Teachers' Association for 1898 and 1899, and of the American Historical Association for 1897. The The use of sources in secondary and normal schools is described below by experts; it is therefore necessary here only to allude to some of the general advantages of sources, and to suggest some cautions in their use. First of all, as reading matter, even brief sources have the advantage of lively narratives on interesting subjects; and one cannot read extracts from men like John Evelyn, Captain John Smith, Cotton Mather, Whittier, or Lincoln, without desiring to know more about them and their times; but so much depends upon a writer's character, his truthfulness, his opportunities, his prejudices, that it is not safe to take sources at haphazard, without some one to vouch for them. The use of sources enforces on the mind what ought to be familiar to any pupil in history: that the text-book grows out of such material, directly or at second hand; and that the knowledge of the writer of history goes no farther than the sum of his sources. On the Revolution, for instance, the pupil must realize that the books quote only a few out of hundreds of sources, and that generalization from narrow bases is dangerous. Sources may very well furnish sufficient types of oft-repeated experience for instance, from the text-book the pupil gets the impression of the number of voyages of discovery, and of the cross-relations of the Spanish, Portuguese, French, English, Dutch, and Swedes in the new world during two centuries. But the general aim and results of those voyages are well enough set forth in the seventeen pages of Chapter I, which includes one Spanish voyage and one Spanish land exploration, two English sea-voyages and one land exploration, and one French. exploration. Since it is a common experience that the illustration fixes the principle in mind, and not the principle the illustration, it is fair to expect that these illustrative voyages will serve to make vivid the consecutive narrative of explorations in general. In the same way, colonial life has many phases, and it would take years of study in a large library of sources to get an idea of how our forefathers lived and thought; but the illustrative extracts in Chapter V, below, show in detail something of a few phases of social life, of church services, of witchcraft delusions, of trade, and of slave life; and they will serve to explain the general and necessarily sweeping statements of text-books. History has two functions: to tell us what has happened, and to tell us why the men of old time let it so happen. Perhaps the most diffi- ' cult problem for the teacher is to bring home to the minds of pupils how differently other people have looked at things. Our own slavery contest is an example: freedom seems to us normal, and we can understand neither the South nor the North unless we let people who lived in the midst of slavery speak for themselves. One has only to take a succession of statements of facts about the slavery contest out of the best text-books, and then state the same thing out of the narratives of fugitives and the apologies of slave-holders, to see whether secondary `narrative or source leaves the deeper impression on the mind. A combination of the two makes it possible to see more clearly both the significance and the relation of events. This book is not prepared with reference to any particular text-book; wherever a good, straightforward, accurate, narrative history is used, which deals with what is really important in the history of the nation, the extracts in this volume may be brought in to supplement the accounts of special episodes, and to furnish a background of reality and personal character. |