184 HISTORY OF AMERICA 



would revolutionize our study and obviate the necessity of rewriting 

 a great mass of our history. We are now using incomplete material 

 when rich stores of documents casting new light upon our problems 

 remain. The American historian is, I think, continually impressed 

 with the unwisdom of reliance upon a partial collection of documents, 

 although they may be examined with the minute and critical methods 

 of the trained historical critic, when an abundance of material exists. 

 In illustration I may suggest that a large part of our early diplo- 

 matic history has been written from American printed material 

 without the use of the archives of England, France, and Spain, and 

 that speculation has too frequently taken the place of discussion 

 of evidence actually in existence. This problem of materials is 

 presented also in the neglect of our growing and practical people 

 more interested in making than in preserving history to accumu- 

 late the records of its developments. In how few libraries are to be 

 found complete collections of the early session laws of the various 

 states, and particularly those of the group west of the Alleghanies! 

 Indeed, how few of these states have themselves collected complete 

 sets of their own public documents and newspapers. A wjiole era is 

 thus becoming increasingly difficult to understand and to record. 

 These problems of the preservation and organization of material are 

 among the most pressing. Traveling missionaries of history who 

 should explore the South and West, for example, listing and copying 

 or bringing into secure and accessible libraries the materials in the 

 form of newspapers, pamphlets, journals, correspondence, business 

 records, etc., would do a work that posterity would recognize with 

 gratitude. 



Passing from this preliminary problem of the accumulation and 

 listing of material, I desire next to raise the question, What is the 

 special significance of American history? This should afford a test 

 for determining the grand strategy of an attack upon its fundamental 

 problems. 



The especial contributions which students of American history are 

 capable of making to the study of history in general are determined, 

 it seems to me, by the peculiar importance of American history for 

 understanding the processes of social development. Here we have 

 a vast continent, originally a wilderness, at first very sparsely occu- 

 pied by primitive peoples, opened by discovery to settlement by 

 Europeans, who carry their institutions and ideas from the Old 

 World to America. They are compelled to adjust old institutions 

 to their new environment; to create new institutions to meet the 

 new conditions; to evolve new ideas of life and new ethnic and 

 social types by contact under these conditions; to rise steadily 

 through successive stages of economic, political, and social develop- 

 ment to a highly organized civilization; to become themselves 



