Review of "The American Nation"

The American Nation: A History in 27 Volumes. Edited by Albert Bushnell Hart '80. 1904-1905. Harpers. $2.00 per volume.

The principle of co-operative production has in recent years obtained recognition in the domain of historical writing alike in Europe and in America. So enormous has become the store of materials now available to the historian and so insistent the demand that no important part of this shall be disregarded, that an individual writer who nowadays aspires to deal in authoritative fashion with all the phases and periods of the nation's history may indeed be accounted unduly ambitious. The historical student of our day and generation may well find in the mastery of a single period or a single phase the profitable employment of an industrious lifetime. Hence it has appeared to be only through the employment of some form of co-operation among several specialists that the production of a general history adequately comprehensive in scope and sufficiently scholarly in method can be successfully undertaken.

The publication of The American Nation, -- a monumental work in twenty seven stout octavo volumes, --under the general editorship of Professor Hart, marks the first very serious attempt to apply the principle of the division of labor to a narrative of the annals of the American people. Despite the elaborate scale on which the undertaking was projected, the whole series has been issued from the press within the comparatively short space of less than four years, an unusual achievement for an enterprise of its kind. Upon the general editor has devolved the task of delimiting the scope of the various numbers and determining the different phases of the subject upon which greater or less stress should be placed; of selecting more than a score of authors to whom the compilation of the individual volumes has been entrusted; and of coordinating the whole into a homogeneous unit. Efforts to fuse together the handiwork of several literary craftsmen have not as a rule been wholly satisfactory: the outcome has too often been an encyclopoedic production, abounding in gaps and marred by glaring unevenness in quality. In The American Nation, however, Professor Hart has made it his editorial duty to have the various links of the chain wrought with some approach to uniformity and properly welded end to end. It is of course true that in a series of twenty-seven volumes by authors of widely differing attainments and experience there must of necessity be some variations in intrinsic value; but with one or two possible exceptions a high standard alike of matter and literary quality has been maintained throughout. The average of excellence is indeed quite on a parity with that afforded by recent German, French, and English enterprises of similar scope and method, while many of the volumes will no doubt take permanent place as notable contributions to the general equipment of the teacher of American history. To this outcome the judgment, enthusiasm, and persistent industry of the general editor have been not the least among the contributing factors.

Among the volumes of the series are the following numbers by Harvard men: Provincial America, by E. B. Greene '90; The Jeffersonian System, by E. Channing '78; The Rise of American Nationality, by K. C. Babcock '95; The Jacksonian Democracy, by W. Macdonald '92; Slavery and Abolition, by A. B. Hart '90; Parties and Slavery, by T. C. Smith '92; The Appeal to Arms, and Outcome of the Civil War, by J. K. Hosmer '55; National Ideals Historically Traced, by A. B. Hart '80; Index to the Series, by D. M. Matteson '92.