Page:History vs. the Whitman saved Oregon story.djvu/56

50 reader will find printed verbatim in the reprint from the Transactions of the American Historical Association for 1900, herewith, pages 229-30.

Having before him in my pamphlet reprint from Transactions of the American Historical Association, 1900, this letter of Dr. Fiske, as well as letters from Dr. Edward Eggleston, Professor John B. McMaster and several other historians, endorsing the correctness of my conclusions, and well knowing that very few of his readers would ever have a chance to know anything about these letters except what he might choose to state in his "Reply," how does our candid author, seeking for the "truth of history wherever found" treat this matter? He nowhere gives his readers any intimation that anybody had changed his opinions about the Whitman Saved Oregon story as the result of my labors, nor that any historian except Professor Fiske had written any kind of a letter to me about my MSS., and, quoting from my discussion in December, 1900, of Professor Bourne's paper, seven phrases, aggregating thirtysix words, entirely disconnected from their contexts, he says (p. 7): "Was it strange that Professor Fiske wrote him, *I think the force of your arguments would be enhanced if your style of expression were now and then a little less vehement?' "Concerning this, it only need be said that Professor Fiske's kindly criticism, not of any errors of fact or of quotation, but only of my style of expression, had no reference to anything in the pamphlet to which Mr. Eells refers, (and from which he picks out thirty-six words only, and dares not quote any sentence in which they exist), because Professor Fiske was not present to hear that discussion at Detroit, and was dead before the volume of Tranactions for that year was printed, so that he never either heard or read one sentence of this to which our candid (?) author applies Professor Fiske's criticism, nor is there the least reason to suppose that Professor Fiske would have criticised my style in that discussion as too vehement, since it was entirely acceptable to the Publication Committee of the American Historical Association, without whose approval it could not have been printed in the Transactions.

I wrote Professor Fiske immediately on receipt of his letter, thanking him for his kindly criticism, but explaining to him that the MSS. sent him were not intended for publication without careful revision, but that they were criticisms, copies of which had been sent directly to the authors of the school histories criticised, and that I had made some of them extremely sarcastic, because the parties criticised had been exceedingly discourteous to me when, some years before, I had written them very courteous letters warning them (some of them before their books were published) of the wholly fictitious nature of the Whitman Saved Oregon story, and imploring