Page:The North Carolina Historical Review - Volume 1, Number 1.pdf/6

4 ages such as the greatest scholars of the last century did not enjoy. Thus we find a growing approval of the scholarly methods that are producing for us entire new libraries of books pertaining to history at large. As never before, it has become possible to follow the outline of the story of mankind as a connected whole. Yet there is another field of historical research, less highly appreciated, that seems to me to be not less vital or fruitful than these broader inquiries which, of course, I am in no sense disparaging. I have in mind what I may call the vertical or intensive, as contrasted with the horizontal or extensive researches into the truth of the periods that underlie our present schemes of life and society.

We have now a background of three hundred years of the European races as colonists on the continent of North America. At every moment of historical time during those three centuries, these transplanted communities have had to deal with changing conditions. Each generation has been absorbed in its own struggles and occupations, its private concerns and its public relationships and vicissitudes. If these people of successive generations on our soil had been told that the study of their own history was important for them, not only as a matter of knowledge for its own sake but also a help in the rearing of their permanent structure of institutions, they would have given scanty attention to advice so seemingly unrelated to their thoughts and affairs.

They would have thought of history as concerned with certain movements and persons of remote rather than immediate concern. The controversies of the Protestant Reformation were still resounding in their ears from many a pulpit; and the principles of constitutional liberty as asserted by our forefathers were glorified from every political platform. But the application of these glittering generalities to the actual progress and upbuilding of our American communities as not made apparent to their understandings.

We are nowadays coming much nearer the truth of history through the discovery that our own humble, everyday experiences are the worthy object of research. We can best understand the times in which we live by the study of the history of ordinary families and ordinary communities. We Americans