that the contrast between the United States, with a population quite
freed from the demands of militarism, and the continent of Europe, with
its enormous armaments useless for productive purposes, could not long
be maintained; that American competition would soon come to press so
severely upon Europe as to compel a disarmament, and in this way the
swords would get beaten into ploughshares. American competition is less
effective than it might be, owing to our absurd tariffs and vicious
currency, but its tendency has undoubtedly been in the direction
indicated. I suspect, however, that the process will be less simple.
Within the last twenty years the operations of production and
distribution have been assuming colossal proportions. Syndicates,
trusts, and other huge combinations of capital have begun carrying on
business upon a scale heretofore unprecedented. Already we see symptoms
that such combinations are to include partners in various parts of the
earth. Business, in short, is becoming more and more international; and
under such circumstances the era of general disarmament is likely to be
hastened. In the long run, peace has no other friend so powerful as
commerce.
While every successful resort to arbitration is to be welcomed as a step
toward facilitating disarmament, it seems probable that institutions of
somewhat broader scope than courts of arbitration will be required for
the settlement of many complex international questions. In the European
congresses which have assembled from time to time to deal with peculiar
exigencies, we have the precedent for such more regular and permanent
institutions. An example of what is meant was furnished by the Congress
of Paris in 1856, when it dealt summarily with the whole group of vexed
questions relating to the rights and duties of neutrals and belligerents
upon the ocean, and put an end to the chaos of two centuries by
establishing an international code relating to piracy, blockades, and
seizures in times of naval war. This code has been respected by maritime
powers and enforced by the world's public opinion, and its establishment
was a memorable incident in the advance of civilization. Now, such work
as the Congress of Paris did can be done in future by other congresses,
but it is work of broader scope than has hitherto been undertaken by
courts of arbitration. I am inclined to think that both these
institutions--the International Congress and the Tribunal of
Arbitration--are destined to survive, with very considerable increase in
power and dignity, in the political society of the future, long after
disarmament has become an accomplished fact.
About the time that a small party of Englishmen at Jamestown were laying
the first foundation stones of the United States, one of the greatest
kings and one of the greatest ministers of modern times were deeply
engaged in what they called the Great Design, a scheme for a European
Confederation. The plan of Henry IV. of France and the Duke of Sully
contemplated a federal republic of Christendom, comprising six
hereditary crowns (France, England, Spain, Sweden, Denmark, Lombardy),
five elective crowns (the Empire, the Papacy, Bohemia, Hungary, Poland),
and four republics (Venice, the small Italian states, Switzerland, and
the Netherlands). There was to be a federal government in three
branches, legislative, executive, judicial; a federal army of about
three hundred thousand men, and a powerful federal fleet. The purpose of
the federation was to put an end once and forever to wars, both civil
and international. Probably the two great statesmen were not sanguine as
to the immediate success of their Great Design, and doubtless none knew
better than they that it would cost at least one mighty war to establish
it. But there is a largeness of view about the scheme that is refreshing
to meet in a world of arid and narrow commonplaces. With all their
breadth of vision, however, Henry and Sully would surely have been
amazed had they been told that the handful of half-starved Englishmen at
Jamestown were inaugurating a political and social development that in
course of time would contribute powerfully toward the success of
something like their Great Design.
In human affairs a period of three centuries is a brief one, and the
progress already made in the direction toward which the two great
Frenchmen were looking is significant and prophetic. The vast armaments
now maintained on the continent of Europe cannot possibly endure.
Economic necessities will put an end to them before many years. But
disarmament, apparently, can only proceed _pari passu_ with the
establishment of peaceful methods of settling international questions.
The machinery for this will probably be found in the further development
of two institutions that have already come into existence, the
International Congress and the Court of Arbitration. The existence of
these institutions, which is now occasional, will tend to become
permanent: the former will deal preferably with the establishment of
general principles, the latter with their judicial application to
special cases. As European congresses meet now upon extraordinary
occasions, so once it was with the congresses of the American colonies,
such as the New York Congress of 1690 and the Albany Congress of 1754
for concerting measures against New France, and the New York Congress of
1765 for protesting against the Stamp Act. Then came the Continental
Congress of 1774, which circumstances kept in existence for fifteen
years, until a political revolution reached its consummation in
replacing it by a completely organized federal government. In 1754 the
possibility of a permanent federation of American states was derided as
an idle dream of Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Hutchinson. Very little
love was lost between the people of different colonies; and when the
crisis came on, after 1783, the majority hated and dreaded a permanent
Federal Union, and accepted it _only as the alternative to something
worse_, namely, anarchy and civil war. In like manner, it may be
surmised as not improbable that in course of time the occasions for
summoning European congresses will recur with increasing frequency until
the functions which they are called upon to discharge will convert them
into a permanent institution. Such a development, combined with the
increased employment of arbitration, must ultimately tend toward the
creation of a Federal Union in Europe. The fact that such a result will
be hated and dreaded by many people, perhaps by the great majority, need
not prevent its being accepted and acquiesced in _as the alternative to
something worse_, namely, the indefinite continuance of the system of
vast armaments.
By the time when such a result comes clearly within sight, it will very
likely have been made evident that the policy of isolation which our
country has wisely pursued for the century past cannot be maintained
perpetually. When Washington wrote his Farewell Address, the danger of
our getting dragged into the mighty struggle then raging in Europe was a
real and serious danger, against which we needed to be solemnly warned.
Since then times have changed, and they are changing still. From a
nation scarcely stronger than Portugal we have become equal to the
strongest. Railways, telegraphs, and international industries are making
every part of the world the neighbour of every other part. To preserve a
policy of isolation will not always be possible, nor will it be
desirable. Situations will arise (if they have not already arisen) in
which such moral weight as the United States can exert will be called
for. The pacification of Europe, therefore, is not an affair that is
foreign to our interests. In that, as in every other aspect of the
Christian policy of "peace on earth and good will to men," we are most
deeply concerned; and every incident, like the present Arbitration
Treaty, that promises to advance us even by one step toward the sublime
result, it is our solemn duty to welcome and encourage by all the means
within our power.
_February, 1897._
VIII
FRANCIS PARKMAN[25]
In the summer of 1865 I had occasion almost daily to pass by the
pleasant windows of Little, Brown & Co., in Boston, and it was not an
easy thing to do without stopping for a moment to look in upon their
ample treasures. Among the freshest novelties there displayed were to be
seen Lord Derby's translation of the Iliad, Forsyth's Life of Cicero,
Colonel Higginson's Epictetus, a new edition of Edmund Burke's writings,
and the tasteful reprint of Froude's History of England, just in from
the Riverside Press. One day, in the midst of such time-honoured
classics and new books on well-worn themes, there appeared a stranger
that claimed attention and aroused curiosity. It was a modest crown
octavo, clad in sombre garb, and bearing the title "Pioneers of France
in the New World." The author's name was not familiar to me, but
presently I remembered having seen it upon a stouter volume labelled
"The Conspiracy of Pontiac," of which many copies used to stand in a row
far back in the inner and dusky regions of the shop. This older book I
had once taken down from its shelf, just to quiet a lazy doubt as to
whether Pontiac might be the name of a man or a place. Had that
conspiracy been an event in Merovingian Gaul or in Borgia's Italy, I
should have felt a twinge of conscience at not knowing about it; but the
deeds of feathered and painted red men on the Great Lakes and the
Alleghanies, only a century old, seemed remote and trivial. Indeed, with
the old-fashioned study of the humanities, which tended to keep the
Mediterranean too exclusively in the centre of one's field of vision, it
was not always easy to get one's historical perspective correctly
adjusted. Scenes and events that come within the direct line of our
spiritual ancestry, which until yesterday was all in the Old World, thus
become unduly magnified, so as to deaden our sense of the interest and
importance of the things that have happened since our forefathers went
forth from their homesteads to grapple with the terrors of an outlying
wilderness. We find no difficulty in realizing the historic significance
of Marathon and Chalons, of the barons at Runnymede or Luther at
Wittenberg; and scarcely a hill or a meadow in the Romans Europe but
blooms for us with flowers of romance. Literature and philosophy, art
and song, have expended their richest treasures in adding to the
witchery of Old World spots and Old World themes.
But as we learn to broaden our horizon, the perspective becomes somewhat
shifted. It begins to dawn upon us that in New World events, also, there
is a rare and potent fascination. Not only is there the interest of
their present importance, which nobody would be likely to deny, but
there is the charm of a historic past as full of romance as any chapter
whatever in the annals of mankind. The Alleghanies as well as the
Apennines have looked down upon great causes lost and won, and the
Mohawk Valley is classic ground no less than the banks of the Rhine. To
appreciate these things thirty years ago required the vision of a master
in the field of history; and when I carried home and read the "Pioneers
of France," I saw at once that in Francis Parkman we had found such a
master. The reading of the book was for me, as doubtless for many
others, a pioneer experience in this New World. It was a delightful
experience, repeated and prolonged for many a year, as those glorious
volumes came one after another from the press, until the story of the
struggle between France and England for the possession of North America
was at last completed. It was an experience of which the full
significance required study in many and apparently diverse fields to
realize. By step after step one would alight upon new ways of regarding
America and its place in universal history.
First and most obvious, plainly visible from the threshold of the
subject, was its extreme picturesqueness. It is a widespread notion that
American history is commonplace and dull; and as for the American red
man, he is often thought to be finally disposed of when we have
stigmatized him as a bloodthirsty demon and grovelling beast. It is safe
to say that those who entertain such notions have never read Mr.
Parkman. In the theme which occupied him his poet's eye saw nothing that
was dull or commonplace. To bring him vividly before us, I will quote
his own words from one of the introductory pages of his opening
volume:--
"The French dominion is a memory of the past; and when we evoke its
departed shades, they rise upon us from their graves in strange romantic
guise. Again their ghostly camp fires seem to burn, and the fitful
light is cast around on lord and vassal and black-robed priest, mingled
with wild forms of savage warriors, knit in close fellowship on the same
stern errand. A boundless vision grows upon us: an untamed continent;
vast wastes of forest verdure; mountains silent in primeval sleep;
river, lake, and glimmering pool; wilderness oceans mingling with the
sky. Such was the domain which France conquered for civilization. Plumed
helmets gleamed in the shade of its forests, priestly vestments in its
dens and fastnesses of ancient barbarism. Men steeped in antique
learning, pale with the close breath of the cloister, here spent the
noon and evening of their lives, ruled savage hordes with a mild
parental sway, and stood serene before the direst shapes of death. Men
of courtly nurture, heirs to the polish of a far-reaching ancestry, here
with their dauntless hardihood put to shame the boldest sons of toil."
When a writer in sentences that are mere generalizations gives us such
pictures as these, one has much to expect from his detailed narrative,
glowing with sympathy and crowded with incident. In Parkman's books such
expectations are never disappointed. What was an uncouth and howling
wilderness in the world of literature he has taken for his own domain,
and peopled it forever with living figures, dainty and winsome, or grim
and terrible, or sprightly and gay. Never shall be forgotten the
beautiful earnestness, the devout serenity, the blithe courage, of
Champlain; never can we forget the saintly Marie de l'Incarnation, the
delicate and long-suffering Lalemant, the lionlike Brébeuf, the
chivalrous Maisonneuve, the grim and wily Pontiac, or that man against
whom fate sickened of contending, the mighty and masterful La Salle.
These, with many a comrade and foe, have now their place in literature
as permanent and sure as Tancred or St. Boniface, as the Cid or Robert
Bruce. As the wand of Scott revealed unsuspected depths of human
interest in Border castle and Highland glen, so it seems that North
America was but awaiting the magician's touch that should invest its
rivers and hillsides with memories of great days gone by. Parkman's
sweep has been a wide one, and many are the spots that his wand has
touched, from the cliffs of the Saguenay to the Texas coast, and from
Acadia to the western slopes of the Rocky Mountains.
I do not forget that earlier writers than Parkman had felt something of
the picturesqueness and the elements of dramatic force in the history of
the conquest of our continent. In particular, the characteristics of the
red men and the incidents of forest life had long ago been made the
theme of novels and poems, such as they were; I wonder how many people
of to-day remember even the names of such books as "Yonnondio" or
"Kabaosa"? All such work was thrown into the shade by that of Fenimore
Cooper, whose genius, though limited, was undeniable. But when we
mention Cooper we are brought at once by contrast to the secret of
Parkman's power. It has long been recognized that Cooper's Indians are
more or less unreal; just such creatures never existed anywhere. When
Corneille and Racine put ancient Greeks or Romans on the stage they
dressed them in velvet and gold lace, flowing wigs and high buckled
shoes, and made them talk like Louis XIV.'s courtiers; in
seventeenth-century dramatists the historical sense was lacking. In the
next age it was not much better. When Rousseau had occasion to
philosophize about men in a state of nature he invented the Noble
Savage, an insufferable creature whom any real savage would justly
loathe and despise. The noble savage has figured extensively in modern
literature, and has left his mark upon Cooper's pleasant pages as well
as upon many a chapter of serious history. But you cannot introduce
unreal Indians as factors in the development of a narrative without
throwing a shimmer of unreality about the whole story. It is like
bringing in ghosts or goblins among live men and women: it instantly
converts sober narrative into fairy tale; the two worlds will no more
mix than oil and water. The ancient and mediæval minds did not find it
so, as the numberless histories encumbered with the supernatural
testify; but the modern mind does find it so. The modern mind has taken
a little draught, the prelude to deeper draughts, at the healing and
purifying well of science; and it has begun to be dissatisfied with
anything short of exact truth. When any unsound element enters into a
narrative, the taint is quickly tasted, and its flavour spoils the
whole.
We are then brought, I say, to the secret of Parkman's power. His
Indians are true to the life. In his pages Pontiac is a man of warm
flesh and blood, as much so as Montcalm or Israel Putnam. This solid
reality in the Indians makes the whole work real and convincing. Here is
the great contrast between Parkman's work and that of Prescott, in so
far as the latter dealt with American themes. In reading Prescott's
account of the conquest of Mexico, one feels one's self in the world of
the "Arabian Nights;" indeed, the author himself, in occasional
comments, lets us see that he is unable to get rid of just such a
feeling.
His story moves on in a region that is unreal to him, and therefore
tantalizing to the reader; his Montezuma is a personality like none that
ever existed beneath the moon. This is because Prescott simply followed
his Spanish authorities not only in their statements of physical fact,
but in their inevitable misconceptions of the strange Aztec society
which they encountered; the Aztecs in his story are unreal, and this
false note vitiates it all. In his Peruvian story Prescott followed
safer leaders in Garcilasso de la Vega and Cieza de Leon, and made a
much truer picture; but he lacked the ethnological knowledge needful for
coming into touch with that ancient society, and one often feels this as
the weak spot in a narrative of marvellous power and beauty.
Now it was Parkman's good fortune at an early age to realize that in
order to do his work it was first of all necessary to know the Indian by
personal fellowship and contact. It was also his good fortune that the
right sort of Indians were still accessible. What would not Prescott
have given, what would not any student of human evolution give, for a
chance to pass a week or even a day in such a community as the Tlascala
of Xicotencatl or the Mexico of Montezuma! That phase of social
development has long since disappeared. But fifty years ago, on our
great western plains and among the Rocky Mountains, there still
prevailed a state of society essentially similar to that which greeted
the eyes of Champlain upon the St. Lawrence and of John Smith upon the
Chickahominy. In those days the Oregon Trail had changed but little
since the memorable journey of Lewis and Clark in the beginning of the
present century. In 1846, two years after taking his bachelor degree at
Harvard, young Parkman had a taste of the excitements of savage life in
that primeval wilderness. He was accompanied by his kinsman, Mr. Quincy
Shaw. They joined a roving tribe of Sioux Indians, at a time when to do
such a thing was to take their lives in their hands, and they spent a
wild summer among the Black Hills of Dakota and in the vast moorland
solitudes through which the Platte River winds its interminable length.
In the chase and in the wigwam, in watching the sorcery of which their
religion chiefly consisted, or in listening to primitive folk tales by
the evening camp fire, Parkman learned to understand the red man, to
interpret his motives and his moods. With his naturalist's keen and
accurate eye and his quick poetic apprehension, that youthful
experience formed a safe foundation for all his future work. From that
time forth he was fitted to absorb the records and memorials of the
early explorers, and to make their strange experiences his own.
The next step was to gather these early records from government
archives, and from libraries public and private, on both sides of the
Atlantic,--a task, as Parkman himself called it, "abundantly irksome and
laborious." It extended over many years and involved several visits to
Europe. It was performed with a thoroughness approaching finality.
Already in the preface to the "Pioneers" the author was able to say that
he had gained access to all the published materials in existence. Of his
research among manuscript sources a notable monument exists in a cabinet
now standing in the library of the Massachusetts Historical Society,
containing nearly two hundred folio volumes of documents copied from the
originals by expert copyists. Ability to incur heavy expense is, of
course, a prerequisite for all undertakings of this sort, and herein our
historian was favoured by fortune. Against this chiefest among
advantages were to be offset the hardships entailed by delicate health
and inability to use the eyes for reading and writing. Parkman always
dictated instead of holding the pen, and his huge mass of documents had
to be read aloud to him. The heroism shown year after year in contending
with physical ailments was the index of a character fit to be mated, for
its pertinacious courage, with the heroes that live in those shining
pages.
The progress in working up materials was slow and sure. "The Conspiracy
of Pontiac," which forms the sequel and conclusion of Parkman's work,
was first published in 1851, only five years after the summer spent with
the Indians; fourteen years then elapsed before the "Pioneers" made its
appearance in Little, Brown & Co.'s window; and then there were yet
seven-and-twenty years more before the final volumes came out in 1892.
Altogether, about half a century was required for the building of this
grand literary monument. Nowhere can we find a better illustration of
the French critic's definition of a great life,--a thought conceived in
youth, and realized in later years.
This elaborateness of preparation had its share in producing the intense
vividness of Parkman's descriptions. Profusion of detail makes them seem
like the accounts of an eye-witness. The realism is so strong that the
author seems to have come in person fresh from the scenes he describes,
with the smoke of the battle hovering about him and its fierce light
glowing in his eyes. Such realism is usually the prerogative of the
novelist rather than of the historian, and in one of his prefaces
Parkman recognizes that the reader may feel this and suspect him. "If at
times," he says, "it may seem that range has been allowed to fancy, it
is so in appearance only, since the minutest details of narrative or
description rest on authentic documents or on personal observation."