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COPYRIGHT @ 2004, t992, t977 byJacques Barzun and Henry F. GraffCOPYRIGIIT O 1985 renewed by JacquesBarzun and Henry F. GraffCOPYRIGIIT @ 1985, 1970 by HarcourtBrace Jovanovich, Inc.COPYRIGI{T @ 1957 by Jacques Barzun

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l18 pRrNcrpLES AND METHoDS oF RESEARCH

prominence.r But as everyone knows, the bulk of what is com-monly handled and offered as historical evidence is in written form.

Written evidence again falls into several subgroups: m.rnu-script and printed, private and public, intentional andunpremeditated. The last distinction has diagnostic importancefor arriving at truth. Intentional pieces of written evidence are

such things as affidavits, court testimony, letters and diaries,and secret or published memoirs. The author of any of thesemeant to record a sequence of events and opinions, having pre-sumably an interest in furthering his view of the facts.

By contrast, a receipt for the sale of a slave, jotted down inthe second century on a bit of papyrus, is no premeditated pieceof historical writing. Its sole intended use was commercial, andit is only as "unconscious evidence" that it becomes part of anhistorical narrative. The laws of states, ordinances of cities, char-ters of corporations, and the like are similarly unpremeditatedevidence-as are the account books of a modern corporation orof a Florentine banker of the fifteenth century.

Yet, important as this difference is, the assumption that uncon-scious evidence is always sounder is by no means warranted; forwith the widespread consciousness of history to which we drewattention earlier, there has been a general tendency to inject pur-poseful "historicity" irto apparently unpremeditated documents.State papers nowadays frequently attempt to say more than is need-

ed for their immediate use. They address the world and posterity.2

lln Oral History centers such as the first established, at ColumbiaUniversity, the remarks of important persons who might not write memoirsare recorded electronically. The written word is still so compelling, however,that these recordings are transcribed and the typescdpts filed like books.Catalogues of the available materials are published periodically.

2Consider the publication Polish Acts of Atrocity against the German Minority in

Poland, issued by the German Library of Information, New York, 1940, 259 pp.Its internal terminology and arrangement are those of an historical monograph,but its apparent record of fact is but disguised argument. More deceptive

because more roundabout are the carefully "planted" documents left by publicfigures; for instance, the so-called posterity letters that Theodore Roosevelt

wrote to various correspondents. For examples see Elting E. Morison, ed., The

Letters of Theodore Roosevelt (8 vols., Cambridge, MA, f 95f-1954).

FIGURE II T'

l. Chronicles, ann2. Memoirs, diarit3. Certain kinds o

4. Ballads, anecdc5. Recordings il r

6. Portraits, histor7. Certain kinds c

8. Human remajnrcertain kinds o:

9. Language, custr10. Tools and other

*Adapted from Joh

And even busicontain statemeda. In other w-c

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f20 pRrNcrplEs AND METHoDs oF REsEARCH

researcher's mind according to the rules of the critical method.To appreciate this requirement, consider the taped interviewthat the cassette recorder has made so popular with biogra-phers. They often seem to think that they have caught the livingtruth before it vanished. But the interview, whether for a newsarticle or an archive of oral history, is a particularly treacheroussource. The interviewer's questions no less than the answers hegets can introduce bias, purposely or not; and unlike the pub-lished reminiscence, the tape eludes the criticism-possibly theoutcry- of other witnesses.s

When, therefore, a searcher for truth is faced with a piece ofevidence in any form, the critical mind goes to work with theaid of a systematic interrogatory:

Is this object or piece of writing genuine?Is its message trustworthy?How do I know?

This leads to an unfolding series of subordinate questions:

l. What does it state or imply?2. Who is its author or maker?

3. What is the relation in time and space between the authorand the information, overt or implied, that is conveyed bythe item?

4. How does the statement compare with other statements onthe same point?

5. What do we know independently about the author and hiscredibility?

The point of these questions is readily grasped:

l. It is essential to ascertain, separately, what the documentstates and what may be inferred from it.

lFor the theory and practice of safeguards in use among sociologists, seeRobert K. Merton, The Focused Interview: A Manual of problems and procedures

(2nd ed., New York, f 990).

2.

3.

If the document o

has no value as eris obviously assis

The value of a piportion to the ne;

ness and the evenhas a good chan<

distant from thechance than one t

the Year 1000 in (

A single witnessif independent. ir

fallibility. If a dodiscovered is colan effort to resolstrengthen or dr

debates about tht

What can be learnto make up our ju

we know his lifeHad he the experby partisan intere

The principles cr

researcher's mind al:

sor. Its operation be

president's inaugur;unlikely that the orr

requiring familiaritr

4The truth or unml*to convict the forger, orforgeries of Vermeer pait

5This rule was doub'in a comparison of Fler

advantage of being alive

4.

5.

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122 pRrNcIpLEs AND METHoDS oF RESEARcH

teaches the technique of testing and dating documents, chieflymedieval. This takes special study of period penmanship, andmuch practice under tutelage, as does the reading of Greekpapyri or the analysis of archaeological finds. If a point requir-ing such knowledge arises in your research, consult an expert,just as you would if you suspected forgery.6 On ordinary print-ed matter no one can be critical for you. If you are so by nature,it can be guaranteed that this mental faculty will find muchscope even when its exercise is limited to print.

Probability the Guide

When caution has been sustained and all safeguards taken,the historical method ascertains the truth by means of com-mon sense. Systematically applied, common sense becomes astronger and sharper instrument than what goes by that namein daily life. It shows the closest attention to detail and thetightest grip on consecutiveness and order. It includes bothwhat is usually known by the well-educated and all the spe-cial information relevant to the question being studied; and tothese bodies of fact and ideas it brings the habit of comparingand judging with a qtizzical eye.

This point about informed common sense is most obvious inthe writing of biography. The narrator of a life must becomefamiliar with all the subject's activities and concerns, some ofwhich may be special; and the common sense of these mattersis not simply the ordinary knowledge we have of them today,

6Reading the Osbornes' Questioned Document problems and Weller,s Drc

fakchenundfingiertenDruckorte (onpretendedpublishingplaces) is, however, aninsftuctive and entertaining use of spare time; valuable too is Hanna F. sulner,Disputed Documents: New Methods for Examining euestioned Documents (1966). Andpersons interested will want to look up the methods of dating and testing bytechnical means-carbon 14 or the thorium-uranium technique, infrared andreflected light rays, aspartic acid racemization, and dendrology (interpretingtree rings).

but also the state ofof Caesar presuppos.weapons in the firstawareness of inconsup erstitio n, g r atita,i.

All these distinctWhat is often ill uncof this high commorplace but are not so,

in the newspaper arin their reading of I

Commission RePonmany persons haveorate works based c

several of these boo

was also trained as

here. It has no be'

Report; its bearingunfortunatelY are lar

shows what the den

will accord belief: tlnesses. Yet, as he re

Every lawYer knober of points maY vet

tial one. EverY lan-recontradict themselvesand others' motivescredibility. Fi-nt

plicated case there is

able, inexplicable fao

that the chances w'ere

it presupposes: m;rn\they happen.T

TJohn Sparron'. A-l-n

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I24 PRINcIPLES AND METHoDS oF RESEARCH

Such is the higher common sense at work upon evidencewhen it comes from ordinary testimony, that is, the declarationsof persons who are not expert, but who, by chance, witnesssome important event or part of an event.

sparrow takes us still further along the road that historianand lawyer tread together when he says: ,,To make up its mind,if it can, what must have happened, in spite of incidentalimprobabilities-that is the task of a Commission of Inquiry.,,8The historian is in himself such a Commission, and when hehas done his work it is no refutation of it to say that he hasselected his facts to suit his case. Mr. sparrow gives us the rightview of that tiresome clich6 also:

what else should an investigator do? It is for the critics to show thatthey themselves have evaluated all the evidence, and can make a selec-tion from it as reliable as lthe other], and base upon that selection con-clusions lhat compel acceptance. . e

So much for the lawyer's wisdom. There is a further step thatthe historian must often take, which is to seek expert opinion ontechnical matters. In the same attacks on the officiar view of themurder of President Kennedy, authors infer from the bulletwounds the number of assassins and the places where they stood.The fact is that rifle bullets do the most unexpected things, con-ftary to "common sense." Thus ,,if a high-velocity bullet is firedinto soft clay it does not, as one might expect, pass through it.After tunneling in for a few inches it suddenly produces a cavitymany times its own diameter, and quite frequently the bullet itselfis smashed into fragments." The writer, long a medico-legal expertin Egypt and scotland, goes on to give an account of the shootingof an official by a nervous sentry. The bullet passed through a carwindow and struck the victim on the chin, causing faciar woundsof which he subsequently died. And when the car was examined,

not one but a number of bullet marks were found. There were twoholes in the license holder and the wind-screen under it, each of which

8rbid., 14.elbid., 15.

looked as if it had bee

the left traffic-indicatoother marks apparentJ

On the back seat a Pcraluminum tip and thenumber of shots hadalone, it seemed thatHowever, all the eYe-

and one cartridge case

bullets, the remainingstruction of the affairthan one bullet had sn

It is in such cases

ignorant skepticisnsense": bullets fly il

To supply their I

to divine the wellsmentary evidence i.t

plausible motives, teral satisfaction an(

doubt of this sort al

war on the United !the German chancelafter the Japanese a

and dismay of eve

against the United :

Acting alone, htweek that his mighbeing hurled backGeneral Rommel'sdesert. Did Hitler fr

uation by Japan'shonor" demandedtook place in 2000-

rosir Sydney Smith

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L26 PRINCIPLES AND METHoDS oF RESEARCH

by the society of Historians of American Foreign Relations. onecontributor elrgues that the Frihrer had a remarkable tendency toseek self-destruction. whenever he faced reverses he immedi-ately chose to go on the offensive regardless of cost.rr Anotherhistorian insists that Hitler's action was simply in keeping withthe man's irrational behavior generally.12

Yet another scholar takes a different tack, arguing that onDecember l2th, the day after Hitler,s declaration, Germany offi-cially denied it was at war with the united states, thus nullify-ing his words. And it is true that president Roosevelt did notregard them as the ground taken for American action againstGermany. But according to this scholar, Roosevelt saw theassault on Pearl Harbor as due to Germany, Japan being one ofGerman's "chessmen" moved by the mastet.r3

Two prominent historians had earlier dealt with the subject;one of them, Ian Kershaw, a noted biographer of Hitler, pointedout that on November 22nd the German foreign minister,Ribbentrop, had laid down German policy: in the event of warbetween the united states and either Germany or Japan, the othercountry would not sign a separate peace; furthermore, it was aforegone conclusion that if Japan went to war against the unitedStates, Germany would, as a matter of course, declare war. ,,No

agreement compelled it."r4 Ribbentrop had simply proclaimed:"A great power doesn't let itself have war declared upon it, itdeclares war itself." Ttrat the United States was a great power,Hitler had acknowledged in a book which he dictated in l92g butnever published.r4u rn it he praises the united states for its

rrHarvey Asher, "Hitler's Decision to Declare war on the united statesRevisited," http//www.shafr.history.ohio-state.edu.Newslettet/2ooo/sF-p/asher.html

r2letter from Michael Jonas, ibid. 200 f /MAR /letters.htmlr3Richard Hill, "Hitler's Misunderstood Declaration of war on the u.s.,,

ibid. 2002 /JuN/hill.hrmlralan Kershaw, Hitler: 1936-45. Nemesis (New york, Norton, 2000),

pp.445-6.rault was published in an English translation in 196l as Hitlerb Secret Book

and has come to public notice again through a new translation by KristaSmith to appear (Enigma Books) in October 2003.

"racial" unity and forFirst World War. Witlnot specifY anY objec

The other histori;of German diPlomasurlrrise, even to thtarmy, that he was ruto the ArmY Chief ol

take this job just likrdo." This conver$Ribbentrop's defiantout plans for evenrCraig's view was tlfriendship to JaPan

States would be so tGermans had defeatto challenge the fatlthe most powerful r

After looking intIf one supposes tha

then one is likelY tomarionette handler.factors determine a

Hitler's step is the dinterpretations. Cer

life, wide reading, a

to form views thatpoints in evidence a

cases one reaches P

CIio and the Docta

But that result er

expert evidence, es

the ballistics labor;psychiatrists and

l5Gordon A. Crail

pp.73r-2.

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f 28 pRrNcrpLES AND METr{oDs oF RESEARCH

issues, those among them who make an avocation of ,,diagnos-

ing" contemporary and historical persons are credited withknowledge about things well outside the consulting room.Their evidence is usually slight, or confused, and sometimes thereasoning is circular"

For example, did the Romantic composer Robert Schumann,smental disorder come from syphilis? Recently examined, a sam-ple of his hair showed traces of mercury, the substance used in hisday to treat that disease" Yes, Lrut (it is argued) his mental symp-toms began in early youth, before sexual maturity. And at thevery end of his life he produced well-conceived and well-craftedmusic. No, says another, the rnusic is much inferior to his best, asit was bound to be in the third stage of syphilis. Ah, but rernem-ber: Schumann was a confirmed wearer of felt hats and thesewere commonly "blocked"-shaped and reshaped-with mer-cury. Let the reader decide a point of rather academic interest.

A case on which rnore important conclusions depend is thatof Woodrow Wilson. IIis catastrophic stroke during the struggleover the ratification of the Treaty of versailles in 1919 appearsLo have profoundly affected his effort to promote the League ofNations. Was his collapse a sudden "accident,, or was it only theclimar of a series of episodes long influential on his personalityand public performance? In particula.r, was his fierce strugglewith senator Lodge over the Treaty foreshadowed earlier in hisstormy encounter with Dean west at Princeton over a universityissue? These events have become part of presidential historyand are taken as signs of a stubborn man's devotion to principle,his refusal to yield to expediency. If, on the contrary, they areinterpreted as morbid symptoms of a recurrent affliction, thestubbornness appeiils in another light.

In l9Bl, Edwin A. Weinstein, a distinguished neuroiogist,published the result of many years, search into WoodrowWilson's medical history.r6 Weinstein concluded that Wilson

t6Woodrow Wilson: A Medical and psychological Biography (princeton, lggf ).He had foreshadowed his findings in an article in the Journal of AmericanHktory (57, Septemb er t97 A, 324-i5t).

had suflfcred a sct -'productive |€drs 1,,

earlier. Partial i,r. 'another str<lkc, ctt . 'Wilson wds gor t-:l'.House years. \\ r'response to each r'" -, -

his resolve that rl-.Nor docs \\ci -.-.

grew Llp suflerirt- -

impaired abilitr :

about young \\ il.Step by step, the 1'r

thing "good" con.-States emerges irsands of Amet'i.-rr.

These asscrL-.questioned. AnMichael F. Marni :

in early years \\ irtis. The temPot,t:'.nosed as a "maj,-'' r

"interocular lr c"'cl"ranges in pert -

personality lr itlment of demcnri.that there is liLLI.down in 1919 ttt '-University of Pe nr--the fray. He arg.

lT"wilson, Strok..August 26, 1982, 5):-="The Eyes o[ Woodr ".came an exchang. ' .'Juliette George, ort ,

in the Journal of Ant.

lf'*Jl

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I3O PRINCIPLES AND METHoDS oF RESEARCH

wrong/ that Wilson was a victim of "small-vessel lacunarinfarctions," which produced progressive dementia over along period of time, evidenced in the president,s marked per-sonality changes. rs

Which expert to believe? The historian who reads the recordof Wilson's cordial and irnaginative relations with Congressover his legislative program in 19l3 asks himself whether thesame personality was at work in the struggle over the Treatyand the League in 1919. The contrast makes Wilson's initabilityand stubbornness seem excessive, quite apart from ,,principle,,

and the strains of conducting the First World War. Meanwhile,a close study by each of two independent German historians ofWilson's negotiations of the Treaty in Paris, against the masterstrategists Lloyd George and Clemenceau, shows Wilson asflexible, expedient, not at all a stubborn idealist.le

The physical well-being of presidents as a factor in their per-formance increasingly draws the attention not only of the generalpublic but aiso of historians. Noteworthy are Robert H. Ferrell,stwo books, Ill-advised: Presidential Health and public Trust (t992)and The Dying President: Frankl.in D. Roosevelt, 1944-1945 (199g), andRobert Dallek, An IJnfinished Life: John F. IQnnedy, tgIT-1963 (2003).

Of course, the mystery of human personality remains. Andin any case-which means in every case-explanations by

tsThe Impact of Illness on world Leaders (philadelphi a, t986). consult in vol-ume 64 (published in 1991) of Link's monumental papers of woodrow wilson(Princeton, L966-1994,69 vols.). Park's evaluation of all the reported symp-toms (p. 506). I(enneth Crispell, a professor emeritus of medicine at theuniversity of virginia, and carlos F. Gomez in their Hidden Illness in the whiteHouse (Durham, NC, 1988) accept the Weinstein-Link thesis and do not citePark's book. For the latest and most balanced one-volume account of wilson,scharacter and lifelong modes of behavior, see August Heckscher, woodrowWilsoru (New York, r99l).

reThe principal one is I(laus Schwabe, Deutsche Revolution und WilsonFrieden: die Amerikanische und deutsche Friedens-strategie zwischen Ideologie undMachtpolitik, 1918-19 (Diisseldorf, l97tl; trans. by Rita and Robert I(imber asRevolutionary Germany and Peacemaking: 1918-19 (Chapel Hill, f 9B5). See alsothe Journal of Modern History (45, September t973, 536f).

means of a single c"

distrusted, if not on

of acts, motives :described bY the in:see Wilson or an\before his breakdt",'defective circulat t'r''were all the morc i;

Asserlion vcrsLIS 'At no time sht'Lt t.:

Fine scholars solll-.scorn [o accePl. a> ,

that shows the inl:of protecting ollc:tions o[ lhe goss I

suggeslioll ol Prrrcr'

turn il graduallr '-

in an English bi,'':that the Poe[ marr -

sister. Nowhert i:-,

that of the well- L '

ter and solne d'-'t ""truth" rests soltlr"undoubtedly," ar:;a definitive Parag:-:

If Mr. Batcso' -

attachmenl to hcr - -

that she was Prt'l .

that she and her t':tual and illicit citsl:.ly improbable a: .'

hypothesis brll a( : --

20Raymond \1 :. -'

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I32 PRINCIPLEs AND METHoDS oF RESEARCH

Inexcusable it is, because the rule of ,,Give evidence,, is imper-ative. No matter how possible or plausible an author,s conjec-ture, it cannot be accepted as truth if he has only his hunch tosupport it.

When a hypothesis is deliberately offered as such, anothercommon error is to think it proved when it appears consistentwith the facts gathered. Proof demands decisive evidence, whichmeans evidence that not only confirms one view but also excludes itsrivals. Consistency is not enough. Neither is plausibility, forboth can apply to a wide variety of hypotheses. This command-ment about decisiveness leads to a second fundamental rule:truth rests not on possibility nzr 0n plausibility but on probabitity.

Frobability is used here in a strict sense. rt means the baranceof chances that, given such and such evidence, the event it recordshappened in a certain way; or, in other cases, that a supposedevent did not in fact take place. This balance is not computable infigures unless statistical evidence, also reliable, supplies them;but it can be no less reliably weighed and judged. Judgment isthe historian's form of genius, and he himself is judged by theamount of it he can muster. The grounds on which he passesjudgment are, again, the common grounds derived from life: gen-eral truths, personal and vicarious experience (which includes aknowledge of previous history), and emy other kind of special orparticular knowledge that may be relevant.

Here, for example, is an improbable set of facts that arenonetheless not to be doubted, the local records and testimonybeing evidence of the most solid kind. In Liverpool, nearly acentury ago, a long unsolved murder took place in a small andshabby back street never before brought by any event to theworld's attention. Thirty-four small red-brick houses made upthe whole of Wolverton Street, yet the frequency of suddendeath along that double row exceeds plausibility and invitesdisbelief, though the facts are on record: within about a year,three persons had committed suicide and five other residentswere widows of men who had just died in unusual circum-stances. Then came the killing of Julia wallace, the inoffensive

wife of an insurancestrange puzzle of he

interest lasting to thito go before it drawtional ideas of what

At many points, I

student will coincidethis difference, thathand; it will not be ijudgment. Anyone vtions prevailing in t

public official, suchmisrepresented toand character. To0playing on public fimisrepresentation-likely in fifteenth<renabled a nunrber othe murderer of his Idepicted in Shakesptention, for decisivefor it because it is rcould blacken Ritr,a

Note Qualifiers in

The point here is nr

tion. The point is t

known situation mr

2rJonathan Goodmia later edition of the wctigation a cast-iron Protidentification of the mu

22For the latest rwir(New York, f956); andRichard.IZ (London, 19(

Josephine Tey's detecivr

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L34 pRINcrpLEs AND METHoDs oF RESEARCH

a scientific test is applied.23 A recent instance in which the pub-lic at large took sides is that of Thomas Jefferson: was he thefather of a child with one of his slaves, Sally Hemings? Thequestion is important, because upon the answer rests the repu-tation for candor and rectitude of a Founding Father of theRepublic, who is the author of the Declaration of Independence.

The question is asked because historians studying Jefferson,stime have re-awakened attention to a political journalist, James T.Callender, who had once been an ally of Jefferson's and whoturned against him in anger for the president's failing to appointhim Postmaster of Richmond, Virginia. In revenge, Callender in1802 placed a piece in the Richmond Record, a newspaper ofwhich he was co-owner, reporting "facts" he knew would beembarrassing: for many years Jefferson had "kept as his concu-bine, one of his own slayss"-211d fathered "several children."Callender added the buttressing detail: "her n€rme is Sally.,,In thetight-knit Virginia planter aristocracy, everyone knew that thewoman in question was the attractive Sally Hemings. She was ahalf-sister of Jefferson's wife, now deceased. To this "revelation,,,Jefferson made no reply, even when the Federalist newspaperssupporting his opponent for the presidency made the most of thecharge during the campaign of 1804. Jefferson's dignified silencerepaid: he was reelected.

The Jefferson-Hemings story continued to be whispered about,not only among Sally Hemings's descendants, but also in aboli-tionist circles in America and among critics of democracy else-where, the behavior of monarchs being conveniently forgotten.Most historians, however, dismissed the notion of Jefferson,s liai-son as unlikely.

A generation after the appearance of the,,definitive,, biographyby Dumas Malone,2a the advent of DNA testing made possible a

2rSee Richard D. Altick, "The Scholar and the Scientist,,, Chapter 7 of TheScholar Adventurers (New York, l95l), and Altick's The Art of Literary Research(4th ed., 1993). Consult also James L. Harner, Literary Research Guide (4th ed.,New York, Modern Language Association of America, 2OO2).

2afffirson and His Time (6 vols., 1948-81).

technical answer tl

again. Using Y-chrteam of geneticistbetween the Jeffenlater, a newly-fougroup that includaa biophysicist. The

afresh. Its rePort,paternity "is by no

Faced with thisof their inquiry anhis job cut out for l

is scientific. Of cr

Callender is hardllJefferson. But witlcare must also beascertain by wharthat their sPecializrests on a comPari:microbiologists eq

If possible, threview of it in th,

field; the news ittauthority and it la

else, the press rqomit the precise r

Thus the DNA finrber of the Jeffersa

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York Times Magazine, Jt

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136 pRTNCTpLES AND METHoDs oF REsEARcH

whose present descendants may claim that offspring as .rnces-tor. But not having taken in the exact wording, and encouragedby partisan propaganda, the public at large is doubtless con-vinced that Thomas is that ancestor. A few writers to the presshave pointed out that he had a brother who would also quatifyas father and is perhaps the more plausible candidate for therole, because he had a roving disposition. There is in fact no rea-son to choose one brother or the other.

What is the lesson here beyond resting in doubt? theresearcher must bear in mind that scientific reports as such arenot necessarily decisive. All must be judged by criteria thatvary in each instance. Only a few years ago, a scientist (nowdeceased), who had served as medical examiner in two or threelarge cities, was found to have reported test results that werewrong or false in a number of criminal cases. Careless or fraud-ulent laboratory work comes to light from time to time, just likeplagiarism and mendacity-and neglect of facts in the press.

We have repeatedly referred to "the situation." Some puzzlesmay be resolved by seeking well beyond the boundaries of atight-knit story, enlarging "the situation" and finding in itspurlieus resolving elements. Recourse to this device will onoccasion uncover a puzzle where all seemed an open-and-shutaffair resting on the solid base of a plain and genuine document.These words apply, for example, to the significance ofDr. Johnson's famous letter to Lord Chesterfield. The theme andstyle of the epistle .rre so splendid that even though it is anattack on Chesterfield, he himself relished it, and showed it toall his friends with evident admiration.

Now what the letter plainly says is that Chesterfieldpromised Johnson support in his enterprise of making a dictio-nary of the English language, failed to give that help, and nowthat the work is done is "encumbering" Johnson with publicpraise. So unmistakable is the statement that one might wellthink it a complete account of what happened, especially sinceChesterfield did not rebut the charge and the well-wishers ofeach man kept silent. On the surface it is a clear-cut case of lordlyindifference followed by an officious gestrre of approval.

Yet a few iChesterfield, buspatronage, hadJohnson and hisappearance of tlChesterfield for ;

ailing, Chesterfirsincere praise inwidely reprinted

ThereuPon, Jbecause of the lcthe common lotthe misleading e

Plan of. the Dictithat the ProjetChesterfield prabe that Johnsorlast. Yet in theappear, Johnsonburden unaidetrequired by so

was confirmedhad written a Phe might den-v I

The happy P

dying Chesterfigiveness. After l

behaved magnanever letting a

though many athe general oPil

26James H. Sler

S5-f04). But old st

scholarly book bv .

1^990), the simPle t

ed in three places,

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I38 PRINCIPLEs AND METHoDS oF RESEARCH

How soon biographies and reference-book entries about thetwo great characters will catch up with this rehabilitation, it isimpossible to say. Meanwhile, the story contains anotherinjunction for biographers. Their duty is not to their main sub-ject alone; the lesser figures must also be represented in theproper light, and this may entail verification-and research.A striking instance that affected George Washington and thefuture government of the states is that concerning an immigrantand adventurer, Lewis Nicola.

A native of France, he came to Philadelphia around f 76g byway of Ireland, where he had been educated. Being in favor ofAmerican independence and a professional soldier, he soughtservice and in 1777, aged sixty, he was made colonel of an"invalid regiment," a unit of men still useful though not fit forcombat. Ingratiating himself with Washington-so the storyhas run for over two centuries-he wrote to the general thatafter the war the country would thrive best under a monarchy.And he urged that Washington wear the crown. If there wassome public sentiment in support of such a coup d,6tat, it wasnot widely shared. In the event, "as everybody knows,,,Washington vehemently brushed aside the suggestion, andNicola apologized abjectly for his wicked idea.

The scholar who not long ago re-examined the documentsfound that Nicola was far from being a monarchist.2T What heintended was to allay the continental Army,s increasing discon-tent with their treatment by the congress. He feared the situa-tion would end in violence. Ilence, his proposal to create a newstate in the west for the benefit of ex-soldiers who could beinduced to settle there. Nicola's goal was the precise opposite ofmonarchy: the removal of a threat to republican government.

He acknowledged his carelessness to Washington, sayingthat it owed more to "weakness of judgment than corruption of

2TRobert F. Haggard, "The Nicola Affair: Lewis Nicola, George Washington,and American Military Discontent during the Revolutionary war" (proceedings ofthe American Philosophical Society,Yol. 146, No. 2, June 20O2, pp. lj9-68).

heart." And still trotgeneral, he sent him

"your thinking me c

Skepticism under t

The tale of misundeproduced it. But nwhen a set of evenl

several independenrecapitulate the twrmentary evidence,a high probabilitY"but you were not I

tell you-in memvaunted evidences.riously bad observr

there is no such thitrust any casual Pais what happened.'

ExcePt for the tis correct. But in itsThe keY sentences

such thing as a Perstatements, what fthere, there wouldness on the scene.

recollectiott, our innesses would still

To put it differtdoubtless containqand these two Parbe, ate all the knwould have perfetit really hapPenedevent has no inde"repository of the

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140 pRINcrpLEs AND METHoDS oF REsEARcH

American historian of the civil war and Reconstruction, williamA. Dunning, was convinced that what the contemporaries of anevent believed it to be is truer-more genuinely ,,the past,,-than anything discovered later that the contemporaries did notknow. Their views had consequences, whereas ours about theirtimes played no part in the web of thought and action.28

In any case/ comparisons with absolute knowledge or thesubstitution of a divine mind for the human ones that remem-ber and write up the past are irrelevant. Far from disproving thetruth of history, they lead to the conclusion that a capableresearcher can know more about the past than did those con-temporary with it, which is one reason why under the histori-an's hand the known past changes and grows clearer.

A typical illustration will show how. The story of D-Day,June 6, L944, still fascinates historians no less than the generalpublic, one of the debatable questions being the heavy pound-ing that some American troops experienced upon their landing.Eisenhower explained it by writing: ,,In the Omaha sector analert enemy division, the 352d, which prisoners stated had beenin the area on maneuvers and defense exercises, accounted forsome of the intense fighting in that locality.,,zs Writing morecasually, winston churchill offered a slightly different explana-tion: "By an unlucky chance the enemy defences in this sectorhad recently been taken over by a complete German division infull strength and on the alert."jo

28'Tluth in History," in the volume of that name (New york, 1937), 3-2O.For example, as Admiral Hyman G. Rickover has persuasively shown, if theunited States had believed in 1898 that the Maine in Havana harbor hadblown up "by an internal explosion or that the ship was destroyed by causesunknown . . war might have been avoided." How the Battleship Maine wasDestroyed (Washington, DC, 1976), 104-105.

2eDwight D. Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe (New york, lg4g), 253.30Winston S. Churchill, The Second Woild War: Triumph and Tragedy

(New York, 1953),4. Similarly, on the Michelin map of the whole theater,issued in 1946 and reissued for the commemoration of 19g4, the Englishtranslation does not match, on this key situation, the French explanatory text.

How does oneCommander four Yof Britain, himselfseven years? The rthe ground commafirmation of Eisen]352d had been mtdefense exercise.-l

ObviouslY, one

dent probed furtheligence had still Plamiles awaY" from t

asserts that some tiIthat the 352nd I

area below the elbdence . . circulaAmerican Plannenwhat Eisenhower iing, which had ottof battle, failed at

even when not st

competent witnessthem. Later-comertive and multiPlici

3romal N. Bradle32Cornelius Ryan

maps accompaflYinl(Washington,DC, 19'

lsMax Hastings, t

York, 1984), 67. Anunnoticed German n

invasion, Eisenhawer:3aThe supposedll

was on the contrarY ,

essay answering EIor

skepticism and a ridI(ehl, 1785, 27:9-lO

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142 pRINcIpLES AND METT{oDS oF RESEARcH

To the justly skeptical and comparing mind, history at itsbest is no more uncertain than the descriptive earth scienceswhose assertions most people seem willing to take on faith.35Large parts of man's history are thoroughly well known andbeyond dispute. True, the interpretations and the meaningsattached to the parts are and will continue open to debate. Butwho has settled the interpretation or meaning of human life?

Subjective and Objective: The Right Meanings

our cumulative reasons for trusting history are now four: wehave documents; they are critically tested; the rule governingjudgment is Probability; and the notion of an absolute past,which we might know if only writers did not produce faultycopies, is a delusion. Within the history we possess we can, ofcourse, distinguish good and bad witnesses, good and badjudges of events. This conclusion brings up a question-or,rather, a usage often found in discussions of the present topic:on our own showing, all history, all reports, rest on ,,subjective(i.e. individual) impressions." All accounts of events must thenbe akin to images in a real reflection but all askew.

This is to mistake the meaning of ,,subjective.,, It is not thes;rme as "biased i' for which see the next chapter. ,,Subjective,,

originally was a technical term in a special brand of philosophy.It has come into the marketplace, where it often serves tomean: "this is only your opinion,,, probably mistaken; whereas"objective" is taken to mean ,,what everybody agrees on,,, thecorrect view.36

35The public is also docile about accepting radical revisions in the hugespans of time that geologists assign to the periods of prehistory including theage of man on earth. Note also the frequent changes in the reports of astro-physicists about the age, the components, and the curent doings of the cos-mos. On Revisionism in history see the next chapter.

l6rn colleges and universities the misusage has probably been enco'r-aged by the term "objective examinations," vrhich is a misnomer to describemultiple-choice questions. See Banesh Hoffmann's pioneering work, TheTyranny of Terting (New York, 1962).

"subjective" a.n(

and opinions but tr

that is, everY livingsensations. But sonothers of himsel{' o:

jective because it oc

an object in the we

The tooth that theremoval goes Your I

While the Painonly the tooth is robject is somehow'lic, than a PurelY nare known onlY bY

clear-cut, much les

the ordinary facultthe jargon use of "t'trrte" and "false--testing in all waYs Po.

a correct knowledge q

One more Pointence, and not ma!Iucinations that dr

into a researcherlwriters yy[6 kneunovelist's aPPearilr

to him as either sonly one entrancetten down, with thr

as James sPoke it.

3TAnother exanpJ

they may be objectivediseased condition ofyoru ears-purelY su

taining the absence oj

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sEttt

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,purm

L44 PRINCIPLEs AND METHoDS oF RESEARCH

not stammering or fumbling for words at all, but repeating him-self in various emphatic ways as he went along, or-to quotehis interprsfs1-//fn5tinctively bringing out the perfect sentencethe first time; repeating it [in bits] more deliberately to testevery word the second time; accepting it as satisfactory the thirdtime, and triumphantly sending it forth as produced by HenryJames."38 This extraordinary mode of speech needed an extra-ordinary witness to record it for posterity. Against her objectivejudgment and manifest competence, no ,,majority,, of inattentiveor inexact comments can prevail.

I{nowledge of Fact and Knlwledge of Causes

The wish to give an intelligible account of what happened,whether last week or l0O0 years ago, poses the problem of cau-sation. whole libraries have been written about causation.only a sketch of the question can be given here. The chief diffi-culty lies in what is meant by cause. rn the mid-eighteenth cen-tury, the philosopher David Hume showed that the conceptionof cause as a compelling push that produces an effect is an illu-sion. Man has no direct sense of the necessity that makes onebilliard ball propel another after striking it; he has only anexpectation of the event, an expectation bred by habitual expe-rience. Ever since l{ume, all that has been agreed upon is thatwhere cause is, there is Effect, but all we observe is Regularity.

When we speak of causes in human affairs we are usuallyconcerned with a cluster of elements that stand at different dis-tances from the observed effect. If a man kills himself sixteendays, five hours, and twenty-three minutes after receiving apiece of bad news, on what basis do we assign the cause of hissuicide? We may say: "The idea of disgrace gradually becametoo much for him"; or if we know when he did the deed:'A man's vitality is lowest in the small hours,,, or ,A man of

3sElizabeth Jordan, quored in s. Nowell-smith, The Legend of the Master(New York, L948), 16.

John's character cou

ascribe his death eil

cal process, or to a Fare not likelY to tlsc

cause does not interGeneralizing frc

what haPPened do

antecedents) of anY

ing its emergence- l

cannot properlY deif Cleopatra's nose

the face of the worling out that Personthat CleoPatra's n0Mark Antony's defconditions. In givupon those Pointsconcerns and Previbrought out we sa'

The thought ol

down ffte cause ifof events, saY, auta

that mechanical fimanY, and intoxiasurement be exter

clear that althouglare enough alike t

suggest regularititence deals, thouglcal situation: nodesigned to be so.

leFor a subtle ant

physical science and i

includes all that is no

l96I), esp. l9l-2l4.

'VIZ-I6I'dsa '(1961

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-u4q 8ul1eadar tnq 1

146 pRINcrpLEs AND METHoDS oF RESEARCH

universe and follow the same material "laws" as the objects ofscience. Living beings are subject to gravitation and decay,statesmen in transit a.re no different from other moving bodies,and what is most important, human minds work upon histori-cal data with the same perceptions and logical rules as they doin science.

But a difference remains. one cannot pare down events andreproduce them at will under the controlled conditions that wecall experiment. Nor, as we saw above, can the historian sort outhis materials into independent units that will enabre him tomeasure and relate them as constants and variables.ao Evenwhen we count automobile accidents we pursue our practicalinterest at the expense of strict causal analysis. The immediatemistake that caused the drunken driver's accident interests usno more than the remote cause that led him to drink-and thenearest "cause" of death may have been a thin skull.at

On Cause and Measurement

Every attempt to formalize causal description by assigning one"paramount" cause and several ',contributoty,, causes ends in adeceptive kind of exactitude. For if, as Edward Lucas white oncecontended,a2 it took malaria-bearing mosquitoes and the spreadof christianity to undo the Roman Empire, the mosquitoes

a'we can of course achieve this relation intuitively through historicaljudgment, as Garrett Mattingly, the astute historian of early modern times,pointed out: "conscious that every human situation contains certain elementsof uniformity and certain elements of uniqueness, we scrutinize each newone and comp.ue it with everything we can find out about similar situationsin the past, seeking to assign values to constants and to isolate the variables,to decide which factors are significant, what choices are actually present, andwhat the probable consequences are of choosing course A and rejecting B.,,

arFor a trenchant discussion ofthe logic ofhistorical analysis, see an articleunder that title by Emest Nagel in Scientifu Monthly (74, March t952, 162-69).

+zln Why Rome FeIl (New York, Lg27).

were as necessary ir!

the other.a3

The rePorter of '

tinction about cau:

philosophers and sdifference betweenevents of various kAn example of the I

of the sun to edrth r

ple putting on coatl

refuge under a frerThis chain of "catunpredictable, notoccurs outside anY

physics laboratorYstrains goes througa single definite dfollows that of theregarded as its con

The distinctivethere is no restricrir

ed. It is oPen to tlthat belong to theand his audience-narrative is intellirace, and useful ilThe "single cause"

tions can distort- I

Nothing could tman's religious, aesd

a3see a recent '

"Downfall of Indus C

1966)' And, reverting

cause have suggested

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148 pRINCIpLES AND METHoDS oF REsEARCH

properties. These may be studied, each by itself, with advantage,but specialization would lead to the most absurd results if there werenot someone to study the process as a whole; and that someone isthe historian.a

Such is the view properly called pragmatic.45 Its concern isnot with causes but with variously relevant conditions. In thislight, the objection that historians select their facts to suit them-selves is seen to be no objection but a necessity. They mustthink and choose, and they are judged by the intelligence andhonesty with which they do both. Again, the objection thar his-tory cannot be true because it has to be rewritten every thirtyyears appears as a sign of the usefulness of history. The succes-sive revisions of the past do not cancel each other out, they areadditive: we know more and more about the past, as we knowmore and more about nature, eliminating untenable views aswe go. Finally, the need to choose among conditions in order todelineate events points to the truth that history, like all narra-tive, must present a pattern to the mind, must have form. Anunsorted pile of names and events is unintelligible and useless.It is organization that makes the past valuable, just as it is theorganization of phenomena in scientific formulas that makes thestudy of nature valuable.

The ultimate question for the historian therefore is: Whatpattern?

aJames Harvey Robinson, The New History (New York, l9l3), 66.a5"Pragmatic" is here used in its technical, Jamesian sense; it does not

mean "convenient" or "practical," but "tested by consequences rather thanantecedents"- the pragmatic test.

ParrERN,AND REVI

The Reason of His

When six historianto select bY waYevents in U.S. histtagreed unanimous

Few historianswould gladlY haalthough the answa misapprehensiorothers the forrnatitan intellectual imF

for an understandiBias, and SYstem.

EverYbodY can :

The human mind r

not present or sug{

a table and look at

random, yet You $one corner, a son (

left. The constellinevitable penchal

tLife Special RePort: