Chapter Chapter 6 of Index by Simonds History of American Literature

F. Parkman, 1823-1893.

Francis Parkman, the youngest of the group, and thoroughly modern in his method of investigation and presentation, was of Boston birth. His father was a clergyman; his grandfather, a prosperous merchant, had established the family fortunes upon a basis which gave the family financial independence. A love of outdoor life was early bred in the boy, whose health was delicate and who on that account allowed unusual freedom. He lived much in the open air and conducted youthful explorations in the surrounding woods.

Preparation.

During his student days at Harvard, Parkman was seized with the desire to write the history of the French and Indian War, and he determined to study the life of the Indian at first hand. Two years after graduation, he started from St. Louis, in 1846, upon the emigrant trail for the Dakota country. The summer that followed was replete with adventure, and productive of hardship from the effects of which the historian never recovered. But Parkman had lived among trappers and Indians; he had traversed the plains, hunted the buffalo, dwelt for weeks in the lodges of a tribe of Sioux, and gained by rough experience the knowledge that he sought. The narrative of his adventure is told in a fascinating volume, The California and Oregon Trail (1849).

France in the New World.

The Conspiracy of Pontiac (1851) was the first of Parkman's historical volumes to appear, although it describes the culmination rather than the opening of the epoch which he chronicles. It was fourteen years before his Pioneers of France in the New World (1865) really began the story of the struggle between France and England for the possession of America. The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century (1867), La Salle; or the Discovery of the Great West (1869), The Old Régime (1874), Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV (1877), Montcalm and Wolfe (1884), and a supplementary volume, A Half-Century of Conflict (1892), constitute the impressive series of his works. Parkman's style does not fall below that of Prescott in picturesqueness and realism. His accuracy may be safely assumed. Copyists were constantly at work for him over manuscript records of the past, and he himself visited Europe five times to gather material. The localities he described were usually traversed in person.

The Man.

The difficulties which Parkman overcame in the accomplishment of his purpose were strikingly similar to those which had confronted the historian of Ferdinand and Isabella. With vision sadly impaired by some obscure trouble of the brain which affected also the action of the heart and the control of the limbs, he was terribly handicapped. His working time was frequently reduced to less than half an hour a day and there were long periods of utter helplessness. He was noted for his cheerful, sunny disposition. At his pleasant home on the shore of Jamaica Pond, he found recreation in the culture of roses, a pursuit of which he was extremely fond. He published a Book of Roses in 1866; for two years he held the chair of horticulture in Harvard.

Histories of the Nation.

With this record of our more famous literary historians there should be some account of those who have dealt most effectively with the theme of our national life. The most notable of these writers is George Bancroft (1800-1891), another Massachusetts scholar, who after graduation from Harvard studied at Göttingen and there received his doctor's degree in 1820. For a time he conducted a private school in Boston. The first volume of his History of the United States was published in 1834, the second in 1837. The author was then drawn into political life and served successively as collector of the port of Boston, Secretary of the Navy, minister to England, minister to Prussia, and then to Germany. The volumes of his history appeared at intervals until the tenth, in 1874, brought the narrative down to the close of the Revolution. Two later volumes (1882) were added to include the formation of the Constitution. In