Alfred Thayer Mahan

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Rear-Admiral Mahan is the best example we have had in the United States of a man who wrote history successfully for propaganda. He wished to show that a nation that would play a large rôle in the world must have a great navy. He won immediate fame in Great Britain, where his books served to strengthen the naval policy of the government. They were also greatly appreciated in Germany, and it is said that they opened the eyes of the German government to the need of a great navy. In his own country he was highly esteemed as an historian, but he never had the satisfaction of seeing the government adopt a great naval policy.

While Mahan was a scholarly historian, he cannot be pronounced a man of research. With a thesis to prove it was not necessary to go to the sources to prove it. His early books were written entirely from secondary materials; but he used sources in his later work, particularly in the book on the War of 1812, of which he said: "It is by far the most thorough work I have done." Something of his mental character may be seen in the following statement in reference to a book which most students find uninteresting: "Though not a lawyer, nor a student of constitutions, I found Stubbs's Constitutional History of England fascinating. I have not analyzed my pleasure, but I believe it to have been due to arrangement of data by a man exceptionally gifted for vivid presentation, who had so lived with his subject that it had realized itself to him as a living whole, which he successfully conveyed to his readers.'

Three sons of Charles Francis Adams, grandsons of John Quincy Adams, became historians, and two of them, Charles Francis Adams, Jr. (1835-1915) and Henry Adams (18381918), fall within the limits assigned to this chapter. Both of them had the Puritan mind, so strong in their ancestry, as well as that independent Adams spirit which put the family, from John Adams to Henry, out of touch with the dominant thought of Boston. Turning to history, both of them became able critics of conventional views and won high respect from an age turning towards cosmopolitan ideals. The elder of the two, however, did not go all the way in revolt. New Englander he remained to the last. He loved Boston, although he rapped its knuckles at times, and he sought to reform its intellectual life. The younger clung to Boston for many years,

giving himself to a phase of our history in which the town had a deep interest; but finally, having reached a stage of disillusionment, as he considered it, he broke local ties, turned toward the unanchored spaces of the remote past, and became a master in the realm of detached thinking.

After serving in the army until 1865 Charles Francis Adams, Jr., gave himself to the study of the railroad situation, writing and publishing articles that led to his appointment on the Massachusetts railroad commission in 1869. In the same year he published a remarkable essay, A Chapter in Erie, exposing the methods by which some of the leading railroad directors manipulated the stocks of their roads for their own benefit. He became a government director of the Union Pacific Railroad in 1882 and served as its president from 1884 to 1890. Retiring from this position he gave the remainder of his life to history. The results of his labours appeared in many books and pamphlets, the most important of which were Chapters of Erie and Other Essays-in collaboration with Henry Adams (1871), Railroads, their Origin and Problems (1878), Notes on Railroad Accidents (1879), The New English Canaan of Thomas Morton (new edition with introduction, 1883), Richard Henry Dana, a Biography (2 vols., 1890), History of Quincy (1891), History of Braintree (1891), Three Episodes of Massachusetts History (2 vols., 1892), Massachusetts, its Historians and History (1893), Charles Francis Adams, the First (1900), Three Phi Beta Kappa Addresses (1907), Studies, Military and Diplomatic (1911), Trans-Atlantic Historical Solidarity (1913), and Charles Francis Adams, an Autobiography (1916).

He was not content to be merely an historian but did many things to promote historical interests. He was in constant demand for historical addresses. Several of his discourses were made in the South, where his appreciation of Southern character was warmly received, and his words did much to promote good feeling between the two sections. As vice-president and president of the Massachusetts Historical Society he was the leader of an important group of historians. It was in these extraliterary activities that he served history best.

The historical career of Henry Adams falls into two periods. One of them began with his return from London in 1868, where he had been private secretary to his father, then minister to

Great Britain, and continued until 1892, when he turned his back on all he had been doing and began again what he termed his "education." The second extended from that change of purpose to his death. The editorship of The North American Review (1869–76) and an assistant-professorship in history at Harvard (1870-77) ushered in the first period. Teaching did not suit him and he resigned because he felt that his efforts were failures. His mind was too original to go through life in the routine of college instruction. He now turned to American history, producing by much industry in fourteen years the following books: Documents Relating to New England Federalism (1877) Life of Albert Gallatin (1879), Writings of Albert Gallatin (1879), John Randolph (1882), History of the United States during the Administrations of Jefferson and Madison (9 vols., 1889-91), and Historical Essays (1891). The best scholarship and excellent literary form characterize all these books. better historical work has been done in this country. Yet the books were little read and the author became discouraged. He concluded that what he had been doing was without value to the world, since it was not noticed by the world.

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Then began the second period of his literary life. Settling down to a quiet life of study, and following his taste, he delved long and patiently in the Middle Ages. The result appeared in Mont Saint Michel and Chartres (1904, 1913), probably the best expression of the spirit of the Middle Ages yet published in the English language. It was followed by Essays in Anglo-Saxon Law (1905), The Education of Henry Adams (1906, 1918), A Letter to American Teachers of History (1910), and Life of George Cabot (1911). Two of these books, the Mont Saint Michel and the Education, deserve to rank among the best American books that have yet been written. The first is a model of literary construction and a fine illustration of how a skilled writer may use the history of a small piece of activity as a means of interpreting a great phase of human life. Through the Education runs a note of futility, not entirely counterbalanced by the brilliant character-sketching and wise observations upon the times. But the Mont Saint Michel redeems this fault. It shows us Henry Adams at his best, and under its charm we are prepared to overlook the aloofness which limited his interests while it depressed his spirits.

In the Education Henry Adams defined history in these words: "To historians the single interest is the law of reaction between force and force-between mind and nature-the law of progress." He thus announced in his maturity his allegiance to the most modern concept of history. In his early historical writings he dealt with the relations of men with men, as Parkman, Lea, Mahan, and many others dealt. In his revised opinions he conceived that the story of man's progress as affected by natural forces was the true task of the historian. It is a concept to which the best modern thinkers have been slowly moving. Adams grasped it with the greatest boldness and in the Mont Saint Michel gave future historians an example of how to realize it in actual literature.

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CHAPTER XVI

Later Theology

MERICAN theology since the Civil War represents an

age of transition, of much fortunate silence, of expectant waiting, as on a threshold. But there are one or two sturdy souls, like William G. T. Shedd (1820-94) and Charles Hodge (1797-1878), who gathered up the olden time with a disdain of the new. Yet perhaps disdain is scarcely the word to associate with Charles Hodge. His three huge volumes on Systematic Theology (1873) are found now mostly in public libraries and in the attic chambers of aging parsons. Theology is out of vogue, and his volumes represent a system which is less and less widely held as the years go by. But Charles Hodge had a genuine religious experience. Disdain certainly fades from the lips of any tolerant modern man as he browses in these books. The table of contents is schematical, wooden. The first volume, after an introduction, deals with "Theology Proper," the second volume is devoted to "Anthropology," and the third is divided between "Soteriology" and "Eschatology." But though "Evolution" is in the air-and indeed in the first volume there is no apologetic explanation of the division. Hodge is not ashamed of the tenets of past ages. He does not write for the public but to the public. But he writes with transparent sincerity. There is no evasion. There is neither condescension nor cringing. There is nothing left at loose ends. There is no sparing of thought. His weighty opponents are fairly treated and his words are devoid of sarcasm-the weapon of conscious and obtrusive superiority. He does not pretend to understand God nor those who seem to him to claim that they do. He only claims to apprehend the Word of God. In his introduction he reaches, on what he regards as rational