Page:The North Carolina Historical Review - Volume 1, Number 1.pdf/9

Rh of Spain, are hopelessly intricate. It is in the United States alone that we have the clear and unlimited opportunity to write down the full story, from the beginning to the present time, of the making of a great nation; of the differentiated founding and growth of each of forty-eight States; of the continuous record of literally thousands of separate counties, townships, villages, and urban communities.

When I speak, therefore, of the vertical or intensive study of history, I mean, as you well understand, the examination of the foundation stones upon which each community is shaping the visible edifice of its own individual and social life today. It is manifestly impossible to separate the broad interpretations of history from the so-called narrow study of local backgrounds. The one is necessary to an understanding of the other. But the larger movements may be better understood by virtue of the study of localities than if approached by means of a general or philosophic survey. It is one of the great rewards of local research that it leads out, in so many unexpected ways, to a clear perception of what had been only dimly seen of causes and consequences, in the broader fields of history.

It is a fascinating thought that the territorial entities known by the names given to our forty-eight States are today by the most definite, secure, and permanent of all the self-governing and sovereign areas of the entire world. Thus the concept of "North Carolina" is as precise in the geographical sense as if the State were a detached area like Ireland or Cuba; while in the political sense North Carolina has attained a measure of stability—through centuries of experience and through assured prospects for the future—that is hardly equaled by that of any political entity in Europe, Asia, Africa, or the islands of the seven seas. Firmly established as I regard the unity of the American people in their great representative confederacy of democracies, I think that it would be admitted by every one that the States themselves have an individual permanence that is even better assured that that of the republic as a whole.

We have come into a view of citizenship and allegiance that has for most thoughtful minds quite removed the old bugbear of rivalry between the States themselves and the Union of