Charles Carleton Coffin: War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman

by William Elliot Griffis

The critic quickly notices, however, that Carleton is not so successful in his pictures of city life as those of the country. Nevertheless, in modern days, when the population of Boston consists not of people born there, but chiefly of newcomers from the country, from Canada, or from Europe, Carleton was all the more a helper. An American who has mastered French, even though not perfect in pronunciation, may be a better teacher of it than a native.

Bertha Wayland's success in society, and her Boston life, made a very attractive portion of the book to a large number of readers at rural firesides. For who in New England, and still young, does not hope some day to live in sight of the golden dome? In later years, "Caleb Krinkle" was republished, with some revision and in much handsomer form, as "Dan of Millbrook," by Estes and Lauriat, of Boston.

His next work, which still remains the most popular of all, the one least likely to suffer by the lapse of time, and the last probably to reach oblivion, because it appeals to young Americans in the whole nation, is his "Boys of '76." The first lore to which Carleton listened after his infant lips had learned prayer, and "line upon line, and precept upon precept," from the Bible, was from his soldier grandfathers. These around the open fireplace told the story of Revolutionary marches, and camps, and battles. Nothing could be more real to the open-eyed little boy than the narratives related by the actors themselves, especially when he could ask questions, and get full light and explanation.

For an author who would write on the beginnings of the Revolution, no part of our country is so rich in historic sites, and so superbly equipped with libraries, museums, relics, and memorials, as the valley of the Charles River, in Massachusetts. In this region lies Boston, where not the first, though nearly the first, blood of the Revolution was shed; where were hung for Paul Revere the lantern-beacons; which was first the base of operations against Bunker Hill; and which afterward suffered siege, and served as the outlet for the Tories to Canada, when Howe and his fleet sailed away. Across the river is the battle-road to Lexington, now nobly marked with monumental stones and tablets, and, further on, Lexington itself, with its blood-consecrated green and inscribed boulder, its museum, and its well-marked historic spots. Beyond is Concord, with its bridge, well-site, and bronze minuteman. From the crest of the green mound on Bunker Hill, at Charlestown, rises the granite monument seen from all the country round. Near to Boston, is Cambridge with its university, Washington's elm, and manifold Revolutionary memories; while on the southeast, on the rising ground close at hand, and now part of the municipality itself, are Dorchester Heights, once fortified and bristling with cannon. Within easy reach by rail, water, or wheel, are places already magnetic to the tourist and traveller, because their reputations have been richly enlarged by poet, artist, romancer, and historian. Along the coast, or slightly inland, stood the humble homes of the ancestors of Grant and Lincoln, and but a little further to the southeast is the "holy ground" of Plymouth.

Even more important to the historiographer are the amazing treasures of books and records gathered in the twin cities on the Charles, making a wealth of material for American history, unique in the United States. What wonder, then, that the overwhelming majority of American writers of history have wrought here? Nor need we be surprised that, both in their general tone and in the bulk of their writing, they have portrayed less the real history of the United States than the history of New England,—with a glance at parts adjacent and an occasional distant view of regions beyond.

Graphic, powerful, and popular as are Carleton's books, he does not wholly escape the limitations of his heredity and environment. Generous as he is, and means to be, to other States, nationalities, and sections in the United States, beyond those in the six Eastern States, the student more familiar with the great constructive forces of the Middle, the Southern, and the Western States, who knows the power of Princeton as well as of Harvard, of Dutch as well as of Yankee, without necessarily contesting Carleton's statements of fact, is inclined to discern larger streams of influence, and to give greater credit to sources and developments of power, and to men and institutions west and south of the Hudson River, than does Carleton in his books.

Yet to the millions of his readers, history seemed to be written in a new way. It was different from anything to which they had been accustomed. Peter Parley had, indeed, in his time, created a fresh style of historical narration, which captivated unnumbered readers by its simple and direct method of presenting subjects known in their general outline, but not made of sufficient human or present interest. These works had suited exactly the stage of culture which the majority of young people in our country had reached when the Parley books were written. It is doubtful, however, whether those same works would have achieved a like success in the last three decades of this century. Education had been so much improved, schools were so much more general, the development of the press and cheap reading matter was so great, that in the enlargement of view consequent upon the successful issue of the great civil war, a higher order of historical narration was a necessity. He who would win the new generation needed to be neither a professional scholar, a man of research, nor a genius, but he must know human nature well, and be familiar with great national movements, the causes and the channels of power. This equipment, together with a style fashioned, indeed, in the newspaper office, but deepened and enriched by the study of language, of rhetoric, and of masterly literary methods, as seen in the best English prose, made Carleton the elect historian for the new generation, and the educator of the youth of our own and the coming century.

Carleton is a maker of pictures. He turns types into prismatics, and paragraphs into paintings. He lifts the past into the present. The event is seen as though it happened yesterday, and the persons, be they kings or plough-boys, appear as if living to-day. Their hearts, affections, motives, thoughts, are just like those of men and women in our time. Their clothing and way of living may be different, but they are the sort of human beings with which we are acquainted. Better yet, it is not only the men with crowns on their heads, or the women who wear jewelled and embroidered robes, or riders locked up in steel, or men under tonsure or tiara, that did great things and made the world move. Carleton shows how the milk-maid, the wagoner, the blacksmith, the spinster with the distaff, the rower of the boat, the common soldier on foot, the student in his cell, and the peddler with his pack, all had a part in working out the wonderful story.

Had a part, did I say? No, in Carleton's story he has a part. No writer more frequently and with keener effect uses the historical present. Compare Carleton's straightforward narration and marching chapters with the average British writer of history, and at once we see the difference between chroniclers,—who give such enormous space to kings, queens and ecclesiastical and military figureheads, almost to the extent (in the eye of the philosophic student, at least) of caricature,—and this modern scribe, to whom every true man is a sovereign, while a king is no more than a man. While well able to measure personalities and forces, to divine causes, and to discern and emphasize in the foreground of his pictures, even as an artist does, the important figure, yet Carleton is never at a loss to do this because the real hero may be of humble birth or in modest apparel.

In travelling, the little child from the car window will notice many things in the landscape and about the houses passed, belonging to his lowly world of experience, no higher than the top of a yardstick, to which the average adult is blind. Carleton looked with the child's eye over history's field. He brings before the front lights of his stage what will at once catch the attention of the young people, to whom the deeper things of life may be invisible mystery. Yet, Carleton's books are always enjoyable to the mature man, for he discerns beneath the vivid picturing and simple rhetoric, so pleasing to the child, a practical knowledge and a philosophic depth which shows that the writer is a master of the art of reading men and events as well as of interpreting history.