The Quarterly of the Oregon Historical Society Part 24

The _Western Expositor_ is the name of a new Democratic paper published in Independence. Editor, Robert G. Smart, Esq. It takes the place of the _Western Missourian_.

CORRECTION.

NOTE.--"William Marshal," on page 11 of the March QUARTERLY, should read "James Wilson Marshall."

THE QUARTERLY OF THE OREGON HISTORICAL SOCIETY.

VOLUME IV. DECEMBER, 1903 NUMBER 4

THE ORIGIN AND AUTHORSHIP OF THE BANCROFT PACIFIC STATES PUBLICATIONS: A HISTORY OF A HISTORY.--I.

By WILLIAM ALFRED MORRIS.

The true student of history, when confronted for the first time with a statement of what purports to be an historical fact, weighs at the outset, as all-important, the evidence of its accuracy. If there be at hand no means of verifying the statement, the only ground of a.s.surance is a knowledge of who is speaking, how likely he is to know the truth, and how well fitted he is to tell it; for to be a writer of accurate history one must not only know facts, but must also be truthful, and so far above bias upon his subject as to be able to treat it fairly, openly, and without false coloring of any part. It is therefore the first canon of historical criticism to accept as authority no statement unless it be known who is making that statement.

The greater our interest in a given subject, the more important to us becomes the question of the authority for all statements concerning that subject. As the field of history is narrowed down to a single state or to a single locality, where every man may to a certain extent be an historian, an anonymous written account, though excellent in itself, will still be viewed with suspicion. The fact that there is a good local knowledge of the subject by no means removes the necessity of determining authorship.

Fortunate it is for the Pacific States and Territories of the United States that data concerning their history from its beginning were collected during the lifetime of men who laid the foundations of these commonwealths. It is then a matter of the highest importance to the people of this vast empire to know who wove this material together, and wrote the only attempt at a full and connected history of the Pacific Coast which has ever been published.

The completion of the Bancroft series of Pacific Slope histories, to which reference is here made, marks an event unique in the annals of history writing. At no other time and in no other land has there been carried to completion a work of like character and magnitude. There had previously been written a few histories of Oregon and California covering a certain period, and designed chiefly to give a treatment of a certain inst.i.tution or political subject, but so far as the thorough working up of the whole ground was concerned, a virgin field presented itself.

Moreover, the undertaking was an unusually inspiring one. It was none other than that of tracing from the days when Europeans first trod the Pacific sh.o.r.es of America the sequence of events by which these lands were acquired and occupied by their present holders, political governments organized, and the development of resources entered upon; in short, it was the following up of the successive steps by which the inst.i.tutions and industries of a nineteenth century civilization were established in a western wilderness. When we remember that the greater part of this record could at the time of writing be made from information furnished directly by the men who made this history, and that the lack of material which so often embarra.s.ses the writer could not here be a cause of complaint, we may well conclude that such an opportunity had never before fallen to the lot of the historian.

Again, in the vast collection of historical sources into one place, as well as in the newness of the field and inspiring nature of the work, the undertaking presents a most remarkable feature. The projector of this enterprise was the first on the coast to undertake such a collection on a large scale. This fact, together with the recency of many of the events, which both rendered an unending number of eye-witnesses easily accessible for procuring personal narratives, and likewise caused those who possessed papers and books throwing light upon history, to set slight value upon them, enabled Mr. Bancroft to collect a library of material such as on the beginning and early chapters of Pacific Coast history in all probability can never again be equalled.

Finally, in the amount of material which it presents, and in the extent of ground which it covers, the Bancroft series has attained epoch-making proportions. So closely related is the history of the Pacific states and territories of the United States to that of the regions north and south, that to insure a complete understanding of it required the writing also of the History of Mexico, Texas, and Central America, as well as that of British Columbia and Alaska. When we learn that two thousand different authorities were consulted in writing the History of Central America, and ten thousand in arranging the material for the History of Mexico; that in taking out material for the History of California eight men were employed for six years; and that in merely indexing the material for the History of Mexico five men worked ten years, we are inclined to quote approvingly these words of Mr.

Bancroft:

"I say, then, without unpardonable boasting, that in my opinion there never in the history of literature was performed so consummate a feat as the gathering, abstracting, and arranging of the material for this History of the Pacific States": (Bancroft's Literary Industries, 581).

The history of no American locality would be considered without some account of its aborigines. The result, then, of this Bancroft plan has been the writing of the History of the Pacific slope of the continent from Bering Sea to Darien, with a History of the Native Races in five volumes as an introduction, and a half dozen volumes of sketches and essays by way of conclusion, in all thirty-nine octavo volumes.

But this work, the greatest of the kind, few if any of whose separate divisions have been superseded by later works has suffered greatly in the estimation of historians because they do not know who is authority for the statements contained in them. Justice to the people of any state or territory whose history appears in this series demands that they should know in whose words it is related. A compliance with the reasonable expectations of the pioneers who contributed books, narrations, and doc.u.ments to aid in the preparation of a standard history of their respective states calls for a public knowledge of the ident.i.ty of the writer to the end that the volume in which their chief interest centers be not stigmatized as anonymous. And above all, a conformity with usage, not to mention an observance of the principles of right, requires that the author of finished work published in this series, or any other, should receive public acknowledgment of his labors and whatever of praise or blame is his due.

Ten years ago it was shown in the California press that the Bancroft histories are not the works of the man who claims to be their author.

But to say that "The Works of Hubert Howe Bancroft" were written by any person other than Hubert Howe Bancroft is such a contradiction as to startle today the great majority both East and West whose attention have never been directed to the question. To determine the authorship of a work we are wont to consult its t.i.tle page, and the t.i.tle pages of these volumes all declare that they are "By Hubert Howe Bancroft."

The advertising matter sent out by the Bancroft publishing establishment refers to them as "the writings of Mr. Bancroft," with never a suggestion that any other person wrote a line. The same course was followed in the reviews of these volumes, which at the time of their publication were scattered by the press throughout the length and breadth of the leading countries of Europe, as well as in our land, although here we must remember that book reviews may be but another name for advertising matter prepared by the publisher and inserted at advertising rates. In his Literary Industries, the volume giving an account of his literary activities, Mr. Bancroft refers to himself as the author (Lit. Ind., 361, 661), and speaks of his own writing without a clear reference to that of others (Lit. Ind., 288, 568, 571, 653) in such terms as to give the impression that he was the only writer who prepared the ma.n.u.script as it went to the printer.

True, he mentions a.s.sistants, and we can easily see, as he tells us, that he must have had fifteen or twenty note takers, cataloguers, and other library aids (Lit. Ind., 582) in order to arrange so vast an amount of material. When a.s.sistants are mentioned it is usually in words which justify the reader in the inference that these aids are meant (see Central America I, preface, viii; Literary Industries, 584), and that, therefore, the a.s.sistants are in no sense authors.

By a careful reading of the Literary Industries, however, we find that there was a cla.s.s of a.s.sistants who are differentiated from ordinary library aids, by the statement that they were "more experienced and able," and whose work Mr. Bancroft describes as "the study and reduction of certain minor sections of the history which I employed in my writing after more or less condensation and change": (Lit. Ind., 568). But even this pa.s.sage seems to indicate that the material prepared by these writers was rewritten by Mr. Bancroft.

As a result, therefore, of the indication of the t.i.tle page of these works, of the recognition of the public press, of the statements of the Literary Industries, and of Mr. Bancroft's connection with the work widely known through personal means, it happens that today he is called the "Historian of the Pacific Coast." Furthermore, he is the only person to whom such a t.i.tle is given, being so recognized by newspapers, encyclopedias, and the people at large. In the minds of the great number, Hubert Howe Bancroft is the historian of the Pacific states for just the same reason that George Bancroft is the historian of the United States. Speaking in accord with this popular estimate of Mr. Bancroft's work, Wendell Phillips once called him "The Macaulay of the West."

Nowhere, however, can there be found a statement by this historian in which he lays an unequivocal claim to the authorship of the works which have been published under his name. By his own words quoted above he admits that the work was, at least in part, cooperative, and that he was a compiler of the work of his a.s.sistants. And for any one man to a.s.sert authorship of the Bancroft series of histories would be preposterous. According to actual computation, the mere work of arranging the material and writing the History of the Pacific States, after a small army of note-takers had concluded their operations, represents an equivalent to the labors of one man for a hundred years: (Frances Fuller Victor in _Salt Lake Tribune_, April 14, 1893.) Moreover, the use of quotations from foreign languages, of which Mr.

Bancroft had no knowledge, proves that parts of the work are not from his pen, while the different literary styles (see for example, the review of Oregon I in the _New York Tribune_, Nov. 26, 1886; in the _S. F. Argonaut_, Oct. 23, 1886; in the _Sacramento D. Record-Union_, Oct. 27, 1886; and in the _Portland Oregonian_, Oct. 28, 1886), and varying degrees of historical workmanship (Compare reviews of Oregon II in _N. Y. Tribune_, January, 1887; and in _S. F. Chronicle_, Jan.

13, 1887, with reviews of other Bancroft works) clearly reveal the work of a number of writers.

A little knowledge on this point has proved a dangerous thing for the reputation of the histories. Some of the newspapers of the coast have learned that Mr. Bancroft did not do all the writing and have even published the names of other authors of the series with statements more or less conjectural as to the writing done by them. In some cases, wild speculations as to the authorship of the works have been published. Many are under the impression that those who went about taking statements of pioneers and in other ways collecting material were themselves writing the ma.n.u.script which was published, and that consequently much of the history is no more critically written than an ordinary newspaper article, and as little known about its authorship.

Furthermore, it is believed in some quarters that those who prepared narrations for Mr. Bancroft were writing history for him to publish, and that persons not connected with the Bancroft library were authors of parts of the work. In accordance with this idea, it has been claimed that a certain tone favorable to the Mormons which runs through the History of Utah is to be accounted for by the theory that the volume was written by some one connected with the Mormon church, whereas the truth is that, although the historian of that church prepared some data for Mr. Bancroft's use, the work was prepared in the library by Mr. Bancroft and one of his a.s.sistants from the annals in his possession (Frances Fuller Victor in _Salt Lake Tribune_, April 14, 1893).

In some instances, the histories have lost standing because of the a.s.sumption that Mr. Bancroft was their author. Thus statements in the History of California supposed to be, but now known not to be from his pen, have been singled out as reckless, and argument has been made upon the principle "false in one thing, false in all," that the seven whole volumes of California history are unworthy of credence (pamphlet proceedings of the Society of California Pioneers in reference to the histories of Hubert Howe Bancroft, page 10). Following this lead an attempt has been made to discredit Bancroft's Oregon on the ground that his California is said to be unreliable.

Had Mr. Bancroft made public the fact that three persons besides himself wrote the History of California, that he was in reality the author of but sixty pages in the entire seven volumes of that set, that he had not the least claim to the authorship of the History of Oregon, and that the histories of the two states were in the main written by different persons, the fallacy of this argument would have been clear, estimates of the collections of matter in these volumes would have been made on their own intrinsic merit, and their value would not have been impaired by false a.s.sumptions concerning their authorship.

A third result of this neglect of Mr. Bancroft to make public acknowledgment of the extent of the writings of his a.s.sistants has been the accusation "that he is a purloiner of other peoples' brains,"

(_Salt Lake Tribune_, Feb. 16, 1893) and that he has made a reputation as an author at the expense of his a.s.sistants. Concerning this charge, the most remarkable ever made in the annals of American historical writing, the reader must be the judge after weighing all the facts.

The writer's apology for this article is his desire to give such facts as he has in the hope that they will do something to clear up mistaken ideas concerning the authorship of these histories, that they may aid somewhat in forming a correct estimate of the series, and that they may secure for the other authors as well as for Mr. Bancroft whatever credit is rightfully theirs. To these ends it is to be hoped that those who have any additional facts will make them public. The late Frances Fuller Victor, one of the Bancroft corps of writers, had long collected material on the authorship of the histories. In preparing this paper, the writer has depended largely upon information furnished by her correspondence and papers, and by explanations given by her in conversation.

The statement of Mr. Bancroft in the Literary Industries to the effect that his "a.s.sistants" merely wrote up minor topics which he then used in his own writing, must be taken as applying to the work as projected rather than as actually carried out. In a letter written in 1878 before the final division of labor was made, Mr. Bancroft said, "When all the material I have is gone over and notes taken according to the general plan, I shall give one person one thing or one part to write, and another person another part": (Letter to Mrs. Victor of August 1, 1878.) Here, it will be observed, the plan is for the "a.s.sistants" to do the actual work of writing history and not to prepare material for their chief to use in his writing. And it will shortly appear that it was the "a.s.sistants" who wrote the work and Mr. Bancroft who wrote the minor parts. To understand why the intended order was thus reversed, it is necessary to study the growth of the history project and to enter into the steps through which it was evolved.

Hubert Howe Bancroft, with whose name these works are linked, and who has been widely credited as their author, is a native of Granville, Ohio, where he was born May 5, 1832, a descendent of old New England families through both the paternal and maternal lines. In his own account of his life (Literary Industries, 47-244), he tells us that when but three years old he could read the New Testament without having to spell many of the words. At the school age, however, he found it difficult to learn, and after a winter at the brick schoolhouse under the tutelage of a brother of his mother, the latter became satisfied that he was not treated judiciously and fairly took him out of school.

A sister had married George H. Derby, a bookseller of Geneva, New York, subsequently of Buffalo, and at about the age of fifteen, the boy was offered the choice of preparing for college or entering the Buffalo bookstore. He at first chose the former course and spent a year in the academy of his town, but becoming discouraged in his study, entered the employ of Derby in August, 1848. Discharged from the store in six months, he returned to Ohio and acted as a sales agent for his brother-in-law's goods with such success that he was invited back to the store and became a clerk with the beginning of the year 1850. His father, influenced by the gold excitement, decided to go to California in February of that year, and with George L. Kenny, his closest friend, he was sent by Derby to handle books in the land of gold, setting out in December, 1851.

After their arrival in San Francisco, Sacramento was determined upon as a place of business, and young Bancroft worked in the mines until arrangements could be made with his brother-in-law. But Derby's death in the meantime ended the plan, and in 1853, he set out to try his fortune at the newly-boomed mining town of Crescent City. Here he was employed as bookkeeper and bookseller, and made six or eight thousand dollars, most of which he subsequently lost through investing in Crescent City property. In 1855, Mr. Bancroft made a visit to his old home in the East, and his sister, in return for his a.s.sistance in recovering the amount of Derby's California investment, let him have the sum, amounting to $5,500, with which to begin business. Obtaining credit in New York he shipped a ten thousand dollar stock of goods for San Francisco, and with Kenny organized the firm of H. H. Bancroft and Company about December 1, 1856.

From the first, Mr. Bancroft tells us, he had a taste for publishing, and it was but three years until the inception of what grew into the historical project. In 1859, Wm. H. Knight, manager of the Bancroft publishing department, while employed in preparing the Hand Book Almanac for the next year, asked for the books necessary to carry on the work. It occurred to the head of the firm that he would again have occasion to refer to books on the coast states, and he accordingly transferred to Mr. Knight a copy of each of the fifty or seventy-five books in stock that had reference to the country. Later he added to the number by purchases in second-hand stores, and when in the East secured from the bookstores of New York, Boston, and Philadelphia, volumes which fell under his observation. By 1862, he had a thousand volumes, and upon a visit to London and Paris in that year, learned that much more remained to be done. In 1866, he started on a search throughout Europe, which resulted in increasing his collection to ten thousand volumes. As to the field covered by these works, he says:

"Gradually and almost imperceptibly had the area of my efforts enlarged. From Oregon it was but a step to British Columbia and Alaska; and as I was obliged from California to go to Mexico and Spain, it finally became settled in my mind to make the western half of North America my field": (Lit. Ind. 180). He now began the collection of Mexican works and the purchase of private libraries in the United States. In 1869, after ten years' collecting, the library numbered sixteen thousand volumes, about half of which were pamphlets.

In May of the next year, these were placed on one floor of the Bancroft building on Market Street, and a young New Englander named Henry L. Oak, lately editor of a religious journal published by the firm, was installed as librarian.

(The main facts of Oak's life, as learned by Mrs. Victor, are as follows: Henry Labbeus Oak was born at Garland, Maine, in 1844. His ancestry--including the family names of Oak, Merriam, Hastings, Hill, and Smith--was entirely American from a period preceding the Revolutionary War, being originally English and Welsh. He was educated at the public and private schools of his native town until, in 1861, he entered Bowdoin College, and was graduated at Dartmouth in the cla.s.s of 1865. During his college course, he taught in the public and high schools of different towns in Maine; and after graduation, for a year in an academy at Morristown, New Jersey.

Mr. Oak came to California by steamer in 1866, and, after some attempts at commercial life, broken by a long illness, again became a teacher. A year was spent as princ.i.p.al of the public school at Haywards, and as instructor in the collegiate inst.i.tute at Napa, and in the spring of 1868, he became office editor of the _Occident_, a Presbyterian paper which the Bancroft house was then publishing for an a.s.sociation. According to Mr. Bancroft (Lit. Ind. 219), "the whole burden of the journal gradually fell on him." But when, owing to a disagreement with the religious a.s.sociation, the firm declined to publish the paper any longer, the young editor was left without employment. In the meantime a somewhat erratic Englishman named Bosquetti had succeeded Knight as custodian of the Bancroft library, and Oak was appointed to a.s.sist him. Upon his decamping a few months later, at the end of 1868, Mr. Oak was appointed to the position.)

The beginning of a cla.s.sification of the material in the library had been made by Mr. Knight, who saved clippings and arranged them in sc.r.a.p-books and boxes. It now became Oak's duty to superintend the extraction of material from the volumes in his custody and to catalogue new books as they came in. In May, 1871, he prepared for publication by the firm, two guide-books for tourists. It was at the same time that Mr. Bancroft took another step toward the history plan.

The plan of publishing a Pacific Coast encyclopedia had been under consideration for a year or two, and was now adopted. Mr. Bancroft began to look for contributors. John S. Hittell, publisher of the Commerce and Industries of the Pacific Coast, prepared a list of the princ.i.p.al subjects to be treated, and Oak began to gather statements from pioneers and contributors of every sort by issuing circulars and writing letters. For about a year the preparations continued. During the first half of 1872 Ora Oak, a younger brother of the librarian, together with others, extracted material on Pacific Coast voyages and travels. Walter M. Fisher, an educated young Englishman who came to the library early in the year, wrote out such travels as those of Bryant, Bayard Taylor, and Humboldt. The librarian, finding inadequate the system of indexing the library then in use, set to work to devise a more practical one, and spent three months in bringing it to perfection. This was apparently the only part of the year's work which proved abiding.

That the material in the Bancroft library was better adapted to the preparation of a history than of an encyclopedia gradually appeared to those who came in contact with it. (Walter M. Fisher was born in Ulster in 1849, and was the son of a Presbyterian clergyman, a member of an English and Scotch colony. He was educated at Queen's College, Belfast. Nemos remembered him as "a handsome fellow, a great eater, and a hard worker." Together with Harcourt, he left Bancroft's employ in 1874 to accept the editorship of the _Overland Monthly_. Returning to London in 1875, he published a clever work ent.i.tled the _Californians_. Subsequently he became a physician). After several years of suggestion, discussion, and change, Mr. Bancroft decided to reshape the entire plan of work accordingly. The history of the Pacific slope of the continent was to be written, beginning at the Isthmus of Panama with the first appearance of the Spaniards, and then taking up the successive regions to the north as their history had its beginning. This work, embracing an account of all the various republics, provinces, states, and territories along the Pacific, it was decided to designate as The History of the Pacific States.

Heretofore, Mr. Bancroft had been known only as bookseller and publisher, and manager of one of San Francisco's large business houses. His experience in writing had been limited to the preparation of some material for the proposed encyclopedia. But now, when he had reached the age of forty years, practically all of them except the first sixteen, spent in the world of business, the head of the firm of H. H. Bancroft and Company made his first venture as a literary man, writing himself and rewriting the work of others. He began by preparing what he considered a suitable introduction to the history.

The task was not easy, especially for one unaccustomed to write. In fourteen weeks he had taken out material from which he wrote three hundred pages of introduction to the History of Central America which he subsequently reduced to seventy-five pages. This seems to have been the only part of the work that he considered as exclusively his own theme: (Lit. Ind., 291). But this matter subsequently had to be rewritten.

While writing on this volume, Mr. Bancroft became convinced that the history could not be complete without an account of the original inhabitants of the coast. To quote his own words, "I did not fancy them, I would gladly have avoided them. I was no archaeologist, ethnologist, or antiquary, and I had no desire to become such. My tastes in the matter, however, did not dispose of the subject. The savages were there, and there was no help for me; I must write them up to get rid of them." To compile information concerning the manners and customs, the mythology, the language, and the antiquities of these aborigines, Mr. Bancroft estimated that two volumes would be required: (Lit. Ind., 301). The Native Races as completed is a work of five volumes. So much of an expansion in all of the early historical plan was necessary.

Mr. Bancroft, wrote but two hundred and seventy out of the four thousand pages of the Native Races, devoting his time while that series was in preparation largely to a rewriting of the first volume of Central America, to a continuation of a summary of early voyages for other volumes, and to a perfection of the plan and a collecting of material for the histories. His relation to this work may be likened to that of a managing editor. He decided upon the division of labor as suggested by Oak or others, and required changes in the ma.n.u.script as completed if he considered them necessary, either for the sake of treatment or style, but the extent of his writing as printed in this work certainly falls far short of that necessary to substantiate the claim which he has made to its authorship. The chapter which he wrote was that on the Hyperboreans. As to this work, he tells us in the Literary Industries that during the first half of the year 1873 he "was writing on northern Indian matter, giving out the notes on the southern division to go over the field again and take out additional notes": (Lit. Ind. 571). As to his further connection with the work, he says that in December of the same year he became convinced that the plan of treating Indian languages adopted by Goldschmidt was not the proper one, and that the latter was "obliged to go over the entire field again and re-arrange and add to the subject matter before I would attempt the writing of it." (Lit. Ind., 573.) This pa.s.sage ascribes the actual preparation of the volume to Goldschmidt, and the writing referred to here must have been largely in the nature of editorial work. It is hardly to be presumed that a man of Mr.

Bancroft's education and slight literary experience would have attempted at this time anything so ambitious as the complete preparation of a treatise on Indian languages.