APPENDICES I-II-III-IV
The appearance of this work, more than a year after Mr. Parkman’s death, calls for a few words of explanation. While writing it, I fully expected that my statements would meet his eye, and, possibly, be challenged by him. At the time of his death my manuscript was almost complete. There being then no reason for haste, and my health having suffered from excessive application, I went to spend five months in California. Since my return from Los Angeles, I have been busy making arrangements and providing ways and means for the publication of these volumes, throughout which I have preserved, in referring to Mr. Parkman, the expressions I used when I thought they might be read by him.
Mr. Parkman’s death, depriving me of part of the object I had in view, came upon me with the suddenness of an unexpected shock and the keenness of a great disappointment.
Much praise has been indulged in by his many admirers since his death, and more particularly by the Rev. Julius Ward in McClure’s Magazine of January, 1894. Mr. Parkman had the wise foresight to present to the Massachusetts Historical Society an oaken cabinet containing his manuscript volumes and the documents which he followed. His object, so says Mr. Ward, was to enable critics to estimate the correctness of his writing, and probably, also, to allow his friends to defend him.
Mr. Ward, moreover, informs us that Mr. Parkman was so accurate, so trustworthy, so impartial, so careful in all details, that history as written by him is final. Such an assertion is, to put it mildly, rash. All this praise, some of it well deserved, can have no effect on one who, like myself, has found him out ; it is the obvious result of Parkman’s plausibility and unparalleled astuteness.
Now may have come the opportunity for the oaken cabinet. For my part, I have endeavored to dispense with any such collection, by giving room to my
