termination of the American Revolution, was prepared "by a society of gentlemen," and was published in Philadelphia in 1798, in two volumes, reaching a second edition in 1803.1

As early as 1773, John Adams had written to Mercy Warren, the sister of James Otis and wife of James Warren, that "the faithful historian delineates characters truly, let the censure fall where it will. The public is so interested in public characters that they have a right to know them, and it becomes the duty of every good citizen who happens to be acquainted with them to communicate his knowledge."2 At the time this was written Mrs. Warren was a woman ripe in the experience- she was forty-seven- of familiarity with the leading spirits in Massachusetts, and flattered by John Adams to believe that her powers were neglected only for the world's loss.3 In 1778 she seems to have been contemplating a history of the Revolution, in which she had known so intimately so many of its principal actors, and was sketching the characters of some of these actors to her correspondents. "As to portraits," says John Adams to her in reply, "I dare not try my hand as yet, but my design is to retire, like my friend [Mrs. Warren], and spend all my leisure hours in writing a history of this revolution." 5 From notes which during these years she had collected, and from a voluminous correspondence with those who had been foremost in the active scenes of the struggle, as well as from the papers of her husband and her own recollections, she wrote finally, and was at the advanced age of seventy-seven when she published, her History of the Rise, Progress and Termination of the American Revolution; interspersed with biographical, political, and moral observations (Boston, 1805).

It was a woman's vivacious yet dignified, and sharply drawn yet lightly touched narrative of events not yet faded from the personal memories of such as then survived of the makers of that revolution. She had been early and late a close friend of John Adams and his wife. The politics of the United States had by this time divided them, as newer differences of opinion during the later years had arisen. John Adams was now retired from political life, and under a load of calumny from the Jefferson party, with which the Warrens sympathized. He was quick to see present antagonisms in what she had said of him in her history, as respects his conduct of the earlier time, and, restraining little his passion, he addressed her a series of indignant and in some parts insolent letters. She replied with more dignity and hardly less vigor. An estrangement followed, only healed by the good offices of Elbridge Gerry in due time. This correspondence, barring some passages in the Adams part of it which merited oblivion, was printed in 1878 in the Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., vol. xliv.6

Bancroft in 1838 said,7 "Take it all for all, the Annals of Holmes constitute a work which in its kind has

A. Holmes.

never been equalled among us, and has few parallels anywhere;" and this judgment is as good to-day, the portion relating to the Revolution being of the general excellence of the rest of the volume, and strengthened by references to authorities.8

A work by Bernard Hubley, History of the American Revolution, including the most important events and resolutions of the Honourable Continental Congress during that period, and also the most interesting letters and orders of Washington, etc. (Northumberland, Penna., 1805), was never continued, - begun Oct. 9, 1775, only one volume being published.9

Another incompleted work was a History of the American Revolution, of which the first volume, and part one of a second, were printed at Charleston, S. C., in 1806.10

Benjamin Trumbull's General History of the U. S. (Boston, 1810) was necessarily in part concerned with the war.

A work which passes under the name of Paul Allen, who was the projector, was written in fact (vol. i.) by John Neal and (vol. ii.) Mr. Watkins,11 and is called A history of the American revolution. To which are added, the most important resolutions of the continental congress, and many of the most important letters of General Washington. It was published at Baltimore in 1819, and was reprinted in 1822.12 Adam Seybert's Statistical Annals of the United States, 1789-1818, was published at Philadelphia in

1818.

Alexander Garden's Anecdotes of the American Revolution appeared in a first series at Charleston, S. C., in 1822, and in a second in 1828.18 What is known as William Bailey's Records of Patriotism and Love of Country (Washington, 1826) is founded on, and in large part a reprint of, Garden's book, made in England and printed with an American title-page.14 Garden was honestly reprinted, in three volumes, with additional matter, under the editing of Thomas W. Field, as Anecdotes of the American Revolution, illustrative of Talents and Virtues of the Heroes of the Revolution (Brooklyn, 1865),15

1 Sabin, viii. no. 32,163.

2 Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., xliv. p. 329.

3 Adams's Works, ix. 356; also see p. 335.

• Adams's Works, ix. 369.

Ibid. ix. 475.

The originals are owned by Charles Francis Adams and
Winslow Warren. Cf. Duyckinck's Cyclop. of Amer.
Lit., i.; Mrs. Ellet's Women of the Revolution, i. 74.
7 No. Amer. Rev., April, 1838, p. 481.

8 The first edition (1805) was succeeded by a second

(1829). See the present History, Vol. V. p. 619, for an estimate of Holmes.

9 Sabin, viii. no. 32,156.

10 Sparks, no. 1291; Brinley, no. 4034.

11 Kettell, Amer. Poets, ii. 186.

12 The Brinley Catal. (no. 3933) dates the first edition in 1817.

13 Sabin, vii. nos. 26,597, 26,598.

14 Brinley, no. 3968.

15 Sabin, vii. no. 26,599.

A popular book fifty years ago was Jedidiah Morse's Annals of the American Revolution, or a record of the cause and events, which produced and terminated in the establishment and independence of the American Republic (Hartford, 1824).

Timothy Pitkin 1 published in 1828 a Political and Civil History of the United States, 1773-1797, in two volumes, which Sparks calls a first attempt to disconnect political events from the military record.

Samuel Perkins's Historical Sketches of the United States, 1815-1830, was printed at New York in 1830.

"The great merit of Mr. Sparks," wrote Bancroft in 1838,2 "giving him the first rank among the critical students of our history, consists in his candor and his completeness." Mention is made elsewhere of Sparks's eminent assistance in giving an orderly presentation of the great mass of material illustrating the Revolution, by his editions of the Writings of Washington and Franklin, and by his Diplomatic Correspondence of the Revolution, and of the Letters addressed to Washington. His other contributions to the history of the Revolution and later times consist of his Life of Gouverneur Morris, with selections from his correspondence and miscellaneous papers (Boston, 1832, in three volumes), and the lives contributed by himself - those of Charles Lee, Pulaski, Ethan Allen, and Benedict Arnold, to say nothing of those of an earlier period- to his Library of American Biography,4

Sparks had formed the intention—as early as 1840-of writing the history of the American Revolution, or of the period between the Peace of Paris in 1763 and the adoption of the Federal Constitution.5 When he learned that Bancroft was intending to continue his narrative to the peace of 1783, he abandoned the more general purpose for devoting himself to the history of the foreign relations of the United States during the Revolutionary period, and upon this theme he was engaged to the last.6

Bancroft began what he called the History of the American Revolution with the fourth volume of his History of the United States, treating as a first epoch the overthrow of the European colonial system, between the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748 and the Peace of Paris in 1763, -a space covered by the preceding volume of the present History. Not until he undertook his fifth and sixth volumes did he reach the more commonly reckoned preliminaries of the Revolution in the story of the growing estrangement of the colonies from 1763 to 1774, closing the narrative of the causes of that political struggle with the penal acts of 1774 which dissolved the moral connection and began the civil war.

1 There is a portrait of Pitkin in the Pitkin Family of America, Hartford, 1887, p. 50. Cf. C. K. Adams' Man. of Hist. Lit., p. 574.

2 No. Am. Rev., April, 1838, p. 483.

-

It was in 1852 that he published his fifth volume; and his tenth, ending with the peace, appeared in 1875. For nearly twenty-five years his narrative of the Revolution was in progress. In the sixth and ninth volumes he has told of his facilities, and they were more extensive than any other writer on our Anglo-American history has enjoyed, and can only be approached by those of Sparks. Of collections of printed books he names, beside his private library, those of Harvard College, the Boston Athenæum, -rich in pamphlets, — and the British Museum as having been his chief dependence. It is, however, in respect to manuscript sources that man; N. Bacon, by W. Ware; J. Mason, by G. E. Ellis. xiv., R. Williams, by W. Gammell; T. Dwight, by W. B. Sprague; Count Pulaski, by J. Sparks; xv., B. Thompson, Count of Rumford, by J. Renwick; Z. M. Pike, by H. Whiting: S. Gorton, by J. M. Mackie. xvi., E. Stiles, by J. L. Kingsley; J. Fitch, by C. Whittlesey; A. Hutchinson, by G. E Ellis. xvii., J. Ribault, by J. Sparks; S. Rale, by C. Francis; W. Palfrey, by J. G. Palfrey. xviii., C. Lee, by J. Sparks; J. Reed, by H. Reed. xix., L. Calvert, by G. W. Burnap; S. Ward, by W. Gammell; T. Posey, by J. Hall. xx., N. Greene, by G. W. Greene. xxi., S. Decatur, by A. S. Mackenzie. xxii., E. Preble, by L. Sabine; W. Penn, by G. E. Ellis. xxiii., D. Boone, by J. M. Peck; B. Lincoln, by F. Bowen. xxiv., J. Ledyard, by J. Sparks. xxv., W. R. Davie, by F. M. Hubbard; S. Kirkland, by S. K. Lothrop.

$ A French version by Augustin Gaudais was published in Paris in 1842. Sparks worked from Morris's papers, which were carefully preserved, after his mission to Europe. C. F. Adams thinks that Sparks "fell short of giving the full history and character" of Gouverneur Morris (Mcm. of 7. Q. Adams, i. 137). There is a characterization of Morris by H. T. Tuckerman in his Biog. Essays.

4 This publication was begun in Boston in 1830, the first series growing to ten volumes, and the second to fifteen. The twenty-five volumes cover the following lives:

Contents. Vol. i., John Stark, by E. Everett; C. B. Brown, by W. H. Prescott; R. Montgomery, by J. Armstrong; E. Allen, by J. Sparks. ii., A. Wilson, by W. B. O. Peabody; Capt. J. Smith, by G. S. Hillard. iii.. Life and treason of B. Arnold, by J. Sparks. iv., A. Wayne, by J. Armstrong; H. Vane, by C. W. Upham. v., J. Eliot, the apostle to the Indians, by C. Francis. vi., W. Pinkney, by H. Wheaton; W. Ellery, by E. T. Channing; C. Mather, by W. B. O. Peabody. vii., Sır W. Phips, by F. Bowen; I. Putnam, by O. W. B. Peabody; Memoir of L. M. Davidson, by C. M. Sedgwick; D. Rittenhouse, by J. Renwick. viii., J. Edwards, by S. Miller; D. Brainerd, by W. B. O. Peabody. ix., Baron Steuben, by F. Bowen; S. Cabot, by C. Hayward, Jr.; W. Eaton, by C. C. Felton. x., R. Fulton, by J. Renwick; J. Warren, by A. H. Everett; H. Hudson, by H. R. Cleveland; Father Marquette, by J. Sparks. xi., R. C. de la Salle, by J. Sparks; P. Henry, by A. H. Everett. xii., J. Otis, by F. Bowen; J. Oglethorpe, by W. B. O. Peabody. xiii., J. Sullivan, by O. W. B. Peabody; J. Leisler, by C. F. Hoff

See Madison Letters, iii. 582-583.

6 His library, having been kept for a few years after his death (1866), was catalogued, and in 1871 a Catalogue of it was printed at Cambridge under the supervision of Mr. Chas. A. Cutter of the Boston Athenæum. The volume contained also a record of his collection of bound historical manuscripts, which under his will and by the consent of his son were soon transferred to the library of Harvard College, where they now are, and of them that library has printed a somewhat particular calendar. The printed books and the collection of maps were purchased for Cornell University, where they now are. His correspondence and journals were retained by the family, and have lately been entrusted to Professor Herbert B. Adams for editing and publishing some parts of them.

7 The course of opinion regarding his labors can be traced through Poole's Inaex, p. 1350.

8 The Ebeling collection gave the college library its

After a photograph, which Mr. Bancroft considers on the whole the best picture of his most vigorous years. Cf. another engraving in J. C. Fremont's Memoirs of my Life, i. 414. The large-paper edition of his original edition, published in 1861, has a photograph of a few years later. The copy of this edition in Harvard College library bears the following inscription:

The final volume of his last revision has an engraving, not altogether satisfactory, of the superb painting of him made in Berlin during his term as American minister there, and which now hangs in his house in Washington, as a pendant to the large portrait of the Emperor of Germany. (Cf. B. G. Lovejoy on " Bancroft at Home" in The Critic, vi. 67.)

his opportunities have been most remarkable. Nothing was refused him in the English State-Paper Office nor at the Treasury. The manuscripts of the British Museum and the Royal Institution, such of the Chatham Papers as had not been printed, the Shelburne Papers, including the letters of Shelburne and the king, an autobiography of the third Duke of Grafton, a journal of the Earl of Dartmouth, the letters which passed from the king to Lord North,1 not to mention others of lesser importance, were placed at his disposal. In France the archives were thrown open to his search without restraint, and the treasures of the Marine and War Department were largely drawn upon. On the negotiations for the peace, the French archives offered him the richest material. From Germany his acquisitions were more peculiarly valuable, as Sparks had scarcely reaped anything from that field. He found the archives of Hesse-Cassel closed to him as to others, but through the instrumentality of Friedrich Kapp and others he secured possession of private journals and reports of the Hessian officers, and caused searches to be made in the wide field of the contemporary publications in Germany for letters and criticisms on the part of the German auxiliaries in the war, which he considers "in the main the most important of all that have been preserved." 2 From Berlin he got the reports made to the Duke of Brunswick by his officers, which have finally found a lodgment in the Russian archives; and he also secured the collections which Max von Eelking, the writer on the Hessian story, had amassed in his studies. He likewise obtained copies of the correspondence of Frederick the Great with his foreign ministers, so far as it touched upon the affairs of America. From Moscow and Vienna, from Holland and from Spain, other documents came to swell the records, which have enabled him to make his account of the foreign relations of the Confederacy the best by far which has been prepared.3

His wealth of American papers is probably for their scope unsurpassed in private hands. He had of course at his command the resources of the government archives and those of the original States; he could examine the papers of the Revolution gathered in public libraries, and in the cabinets of historical societies; and besides these, he had his own gatherings: the correspondence of the agents of the various colonies in London prior to the outbreak of actual war, like Bollan, Jasper Mauduit, Richard Jackson, Arthur Lee, Franklin, W. S. Johnson, and others; the papers, more or less extensive, of Hutchinson, Israel Mauduit, Pownall, Hollis, Mayhew, Andrew Eliot, Colden, Bernard; and above all the papers of Samuel Adams, which passed into Mr. Bancroft's hands some years ago.

He speaks also of two volumes of papers of Greene, and the papers of Anthony Wayne, which were submitted to his inspection.

In volume vii. Bancroft departed from the plan which he had pursued in earlier volumes, and began to omit all notes, whether of reference or explanation, which he has explained in the original edition of 1858. During the course of the three remaining volumes, while he is not constant in withholding these helps, and seems to return at times to their use in a somewhat irregular way, the text is left in the main to stand on its own merits, though there is a tendency towards the end to revert to the earlier habit. The original octavo edition was hardly completed for the period of the war when their author gave, as he says, a solid year to a revision, which appeared in a smaller size, called the Centenary Edition, of which vols. iii. to vi., issued in 1879, constitute the history of the Revolution. He made the revision in the light of later developments, and carried it much farther than he had been able to do from time to time, in such alterations as could be made in the plates of the original editions, which can be readily traced in the earlier volumes by the change in the cut of the type employed. "A few statements disappear," he says, "some new ones find their place." He omits the older prefaces, and retains scarcely any of the notes, the absence of which has rendered the original edition for scholarly use generally more acceptable than the revision; and the same reason is in some degrees also to affect the comparative value of his final revision, from which the notes are perhaps still more rigidly excluded. This final edition was issued between 1883 and 1885, restored to the octavo shape, and condensing in six volumes the matter of the original twelve (including two on the History of the Constitution, — his last contribution), and coming down to the organization of the federal government under the Constitution. The process of this "author's last revision," as he calls it, has been a chastening one. The changes in arrangement and subdivisions are considerable, and all tend to a better ordering of the narrative. The language is toned to a riper quality; repetitions and redundancies are removed; there are frequent omissions and condensations, while the story is more nearly a pure narrative, in which the historian is content, as he should be, to leave events, as they sweep onward, to speak their own condemnation or praise." The history of the Revolution begins in the middle of the second volume. It is apparent that these final changes have better fitted the historian's labors for permanent favor. His learning and the extraordinary resources of his material are likely to make his work necessary for the student till another with equal or better facilities shall compass the subject in a way to gain wider sympathy. The opposition which some of his views have met thus far may indicate that political affiliations and cherished beliefs may continue at times to be crossed by his judgments and strained by his sympathies. Lecky, in his England in the Eighteenth Century (vol. iii. 369), speaks of the "violent partisanship which so greatly impairs the value of Bancroft's very learned history." An incisive way, even if devoid of advocacies, is sure to invite such criticism.5

66

1 These have since Been published, edited by Donne.

2 Cf. Critical Essay to Edw. J. Lowell's chapter i. of Vol.

VII. of the present History.

3 Cf. J. C. Derby, Fifty Years among Authors, p. 323, for Mr. Bancroft's conversations on the subject.

Cf. on the original edition C. K. Adams's Manual of Historical Literature, p. 530.

5 Cf. references in Allibone, i. 110; and in Poole's Index, P. 1350.

Some of the principal arraignments of Bancroft's judg

Alden Bradford, of Massachusetts, published a History of the Federal Government, 1789–1839, at Boston in 1840. Bradford was a busy compiler, and this work has little distinctive merit.