The method of the editors can best be shown by noting the character of the illustrative material gathered by them upon several topics. For instance in Chapter I there is the sub-topic, “Colonial Constitutional Development, 1689-1763,” occupying 17 pages. Within this space we have quotations from the ordinance of 1696 creating the Board of Lords of Trade and Plantations, and from the additional instructions of 1752 respecting the board. There are as many as fourteen extracts showing the increased parliamentary regulation of colonial affairs in the period 1696 to 1751. These include parts of the navigation act of 1696, Edmund Burke’s account of the sugar act of 1733, extracts from the woolens act of 1699, the hat act of 1732, and the iron act of 1750; excerpts showing the bounties on naval stores, rice and indigo; and quotations from the act regulating colonial coinage (1707), the post-office act of 1710, the debt recovery act of 1732, the naturalization act of 1740, the land-bank act of 1741, and the paper money act of 1751. Next there are four quotations showing the desire of the English authorities to reduce all the colonies to one form of government; and the same number of extracts from plans for colonial union. Then follow three extracts showing the desire to establish an Anglican episcopate in the colonies, and the section closes with papers illustrating the “growing assertion of colonial rights.” Under the latter heading we have four extracts relating to conflicts between the governors and the assemblies; an account of the trial and acquittal of John Peter Zenger; John Adams’ account of James Otis’ speech against writs of assistance; and a report of Patrick Henry’s speech in the Parson’s Cause. Such an array of quotations shows not only wide reading and intensive knowledge of the documents, but it also implies a keen judgment as to their pedagogical value, and an ability to arrange the extracts into a working analysis.
In such a work one would naturally look for the treatment of Culturgeschichte, and indeed the editors have not neglected this side of their story. An interesting section is that describing the industrial, social, and religious condition of the country in 1840. The subject is analyzed minutely,—like all other parts of the work,—into such topics as “business characteristics,” “means of communication,” “the standard of living,” “democracy,” “the South,” and “American Morals.” The sources for quotation are almost exclusively the accounts of European—mainly English—travelers in the country at the period. These accounts are well known to students of the period, but it has been difficult heretofore for teachers to bring the flavor of these criticisms to the scholars of high school or even college classes. The editors of the “Source-history” have selected and arranged a series of accounts from Buckingham, Martineau, Chambers, Dickens, Grund, Lyell, de Tocqueville and others which will be of service in both college and secondary school classes.
The two sections here mentioned show the method of the editors. Not only have they selected their material with skill, but they have also arranged it under such a scheme of topics that it may be used by the tyro in the study of history. He does not need to dig the historical jewels out from the midst of documentary rubbish; that has been done for him. In addition the editors have placed extended series of questions upon the text at the close of each section, and references to the standard text-books. There is an analytical table of contents, but no index. There are some typographical errors in the book which should be corrected in a later edition. It is also to be hoped if we are to have any more of such collections, that a simpler typographical device may be invented to mark omitted matter.
The work is a valuable pedagogical device; it marks the climax of the source-method. It should very widely extend the knowledge of sources in our high schools and colleges. We shall watch its use with interest.
[A Source History of the United States from Discovery (1492) to End of Reconstruction (1877), by Howard Walter Caldwell and Clark Edmund Persinger, pp. xvi, 484. Chicago, Ainsworth & Co., price $1.25.] A. E. M.
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