PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS, 1915 
SOME TENDENCIES IN HISTORY 
DANA CARLTON MUNRO 
In this Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters it has been 
very exceptional that the president should be other than a 
scientist; and no presidential address has ever been delivered 
by an historian. Professor W. F. Allen was president, but 
died during his term of office. It is a matter of regret that 
he did not have occasion, from the fruits of his ripe wisdom, 
to make such an address. Except for the fact that there are 
so many here who knew Professor Allen intimately, while I 
have only admired him from a distance, I should feel it a 
privilege this evening to appraise his work and show the 
extent of our indebtedness to him. If the department of 
history at Wisconsin has won for itself an enviable place in 
this country it is very largely due to Professor W. F. Allen. 
A generation ago probably history was nowhere in America 
better taught than here. Frederick Jackson Turner, Pro¬ 
fessor Allen’s favorite student, acquired from him the in¬ 
spiration which has resulted in noteworthy contributions to 
history. In this, a valedictory, the temptation is strong to 
laud the work of each of the three historians whose achieve¬ 
ment and reputation brought me to Wisconsin, W. F. Allen, 
F. J. Turner, and Reuben Gold Thwaites. But the second 
has written in felicitous phrases of the last, and I feel my 
own inability. The thought of the work done by these men, 
each one a pioneer in his field, has led me to choose as my 
subject Some Tendencies in the Study of History. Not that 
all of these tendencies are new; many of them are old; but 
a survey of the field will bring out the present day point of 
view, which may be interesting to this audience of men 
working mainly in other fields. 
In any discussion of modern historiography, we naturally 
begin with Edward Gibbon. At the centenary of his death, 
