THE PENNSYLVANIA MAGAZINE

OF HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY,

VOL. LVII. 1933 No. 1

JOHN BACH McMASTER 1852-1932 An Address delivered before The Historical Society of Pennsylvania November 14, 1932 By ELLIS PAXSON OBERHOLTZER, Ph.D., Litt.D. The end of a stirring and an industrious life which is filled with achievement should be marked by more en- during commemoration than any poor record that I may be able to press into the little address of this evening. My own recollections of John Bach McMaster, based throughout a large part of the time on intimate association with him, first as a teacher and afterward as my kind and valued mentor in a similar field of ac- tivity, and as one, I think, of his warmest friends, cover forty-five years. He had been in Philadelphia for but four years when I fell under his influences in the Uni- versity of Pennsylvania. He was a young man and I was a still younger one, when his meteoric success as a writer made his one of the first names among Ameri- can historians, and gave him a firm position in our world of letters. He was born in Brooklyn, New York, on June 29, 1852, in a fine old house built by his grandfather, Robert Bach, a native of Hereford, England, situated near the end of the present Brooklyn Bridge (the erection of which necessitated its destruction), and he died on May 24, 1932, on the eve of attaining the age of eighty years, in Darien, Connecticut, whither, in VOL. LVII.—1 1 2 John Bach McMaster broken health, he had gone a few months earlier to be near his son, Dr. Philip D. McMaster, of the Rocke- feller Institute, who was living temporarily in that place. His youth had been adventurous and in some ways hard, which may have been responsible for a cer- tain democracy of temperament and a kindly human sympathy which he felt and radiated throughout his life. The grandfather, Mr. Bach, was a prosperous mer- chant who married Margaret Cowan of Newry, Ireland. Their daughter, Julia Anna Matilda Bach (1816-1885) was first married to a promising young artist, Fred- erick W. Philip, who had studied in Rome with William Wetmore Story, later a sculptor and poet of note, and with Thomas Crawford, the sculptor of the figure called "Freedom" which crowns the dome of the Capitol at Washington. Mr. Philip lived for only four months. Five years later his widow married James McMaster (1803-1873), born at Ballston Spa, at the day a noted watering place and resort of fashion, near Saratoga Springs in New York state. James McMaster, John Bach McMaster's father, as the name would indicate, was of Scottish ancestry. As a young man he had travelled as a trader in Mexico and later, with a half brother, founded a banking house in New Orleans, from which he withdrew to purchase a plantation on the Mississippi River, twelve or fifteen miles below New Orleans, adjoining that of General P. G. T. Beauregard, later famous in the Civil War on the Southern side. Here he was engaged in the growth of sugar cane and the manufacture of sugar. Title to the property was swept away by the Civil War. John Bach McMaster's elder brother, Robert Bach McMaster, lived upon the plantation for a number of years; another brother, who was born there, died in infancy, but neither the his- torian nor his sister ever saw the place until long after the war. John Bach McMaster 3 When this catastrophe burst upon the country the McMaster family was living in Fourteenth Street near Second Avenue in New York, then a quiet, old-fash- ioned residential district, while in summer they occu- pied a country place, perhaps an acre in extent, at the corner of the present 120th Street and Second Avenue in Harlem. Our historian's mind was stored with memories of "little old New York." The contrasts be- tween the city of that day and this never ceased to amuse his reflections. The family, which had known prosperous days seems by this time to have suffered serious reverses, for in recalling the period, he speaks of rather hard experiences in ill-managed public schools, of shovelling snow from the sidewalks and of saving old newspapers for sale to the rag men. His father who had interested himself in an oil company had sustained heavy losses by its collapse. The Civil War period and its exciting events made a deep impression upon the boy. He cherished distinct recollections of the Lincoln campaigns, of the draft riots, the marching regiments with flying banners and rolling drums, and the rise and fall of Union hopes, as the armies moved back and forth on their sanguinary chess-board in the South. Once, if my memory is not at fault, he spoke of seeing Lincoln. He was taken by his father to the White House. They were standing in a line to greet the President. As they came up to him a sturdy Unionist from New York state in a linen duster, such as men then wore for railway journeys, had just said—"Up where I come from we think that God and Abraham Lincoln are going to save the coun- try." "My friend," Lincoln replied, "you are half right." The war had ended when McMaster, in 1865, was done with the grammar schools and ready to enter the ''Free Academy," which is now the College of the City of New York. He was still but thirteen years old and, 4 John Bach McMaster because of his youth, he was kept for a time in the "Introductory Class," where he displayed exceptional talent in free-hand drawing. The necessity, as it seemed to him, of contributing something to his own support, caused him to join a classmate in running a litho- graphic press for mimeographing or multigraphing, as these processes are called now. Their work was done mainly for the teachers in the college who were in need of such aid. But the labor of washing the litho- graphic stone and passing the sheets over it occupied so much of the young student's time that he was not graduated until July, 1872, when he was still, how- ever, but twenty years of age. He had been junior class orator in 1871, and, in his senior year, prize debater. He was president of his class in his graduation year and the Phi Beta Kappa man in it; and he won an appointment at once as Fellow in English in the college, with the job of teaching grammar at a salary of $500. a year, whereby he earned his A.M. in 1873. By this time he was one of the props of the family which had been obliged to remove to a small house on the outskirts of Brooklyn. In a few months, in April, 1873, his father died and still more was required of him and his brother with relation to their mother and sister. Even now McMaster's mind was engaged in reflec- tions bearing upon American history. He was asking himself many questions—Why had the South seceded? Why was reconstruction, now in its bitter progress, necessary? What had slavery to do with it? He read Greeley's American Conflict. From this he passed to Parkman to learn how France had come into the West; to Bancroft to discover how she had been divested of this empire by England; to Hildreth and others to find out how Spain had come into the picture and how France had regained the Mississippi Valley so that, in due time, she might sell it to us. So little was in exist- John Bach McMaster 5 ence touching the events crowded into the history of the country from the Revolution to the Civil War that the young man was filled with the aspiration to compile a narrative giving to others the information which he himself desired. In the library of an aunt, living at Ballston, he found a copy of Macaulay's History and his eyes fell upon that fascinating and justly famous chapter on the state of England in 1685. This descrip- tion of the life of the people in elegant prose moved our future American historian to a resolution. "Why," this ambitious boy asked himself, "may I not write of the life of the American people in a similar way ?'' and boy-like, as he has told us in his Reminiscences (to which I shall now and again refer), he said "I will." As a lad of twenty the great undertaking of life was formulated in his mind, though he dared not utter his wish and, though obstacles, of which he then did not dream, would bar his way and make the daring object a distant end. He began his work in the Astor Library during idle afternoon hours. The first chapter would be a descrip- tion of the state of the country, more particularly the state of the people of the country, at the end of the Revolutionary War. While engaged in assembling this material he was appointed chief clerk and civil assis- tant to Major George L. Gillespie of the Engineer Corps of the United States Army. General Sheridan was one of the three popular military heroes with whom the war had provided the people of the North. Nothing was denied Grant, Sherman or Sheridan by Congress and, as Sheridan wished to write his mem- oirs, public money was voted for a topographical sur- vey of his battle fields. Nine years had passed. The Shenandoah Valley was still strewn with the wreckage of the war. Trees full of bullets lay on the ground. Fragments of shell, belts, cartridges, caps and human bones were scattered everywhere. Young McMaster 6 John Bach McMaster picked up some relics and sent them home. One day as we sat near each other at tables which we occupied for many years in an upper room of the Library of The Historical Society of Pennsylvania, while using Sheri- dan's book, I carried it to McMaster to show him a map of the battlefield at Waynesboro, Virginia, on which, at the bottom, was a line—" Surveyed by John Bach McMaster, Civil Assistant." He had forgotten it, but he remembered Sheridan himself, while acting as chief (and only) clerk of the expedition at the General's headquarters in Chicago, where the material was classi- fied and the maps were drawn. There in the "Western Union Telegraph Building, at the corner of Washing- ton and LaSalte Streets, McMaster copied Major Gillespie's letters in long hand in a letter book, filed incoming letters and at quarterly intervals made re- turns of government property in the office to be for- warded to the Chief of Engineers. While admitting that Sheridan was "a good fighter and a fine cavalry officer," McMaster, who was in a position to form a judgment, has set this judgment down in his Reminis- censes in terse language. The description is docu- mented in the approved manner. Sheridan was, our historian says, with not much reserve,'' a hot-tempered, ugly-faced, long-armed little Irishman". Map making was at an end in the spring of 1874, and all hands were discharged. The panic of 1873 had prostrated business and the young man, after his ad- venture, returned to New York. He found employment presently as a private tutor. For the next three years his mornings were occupied in coaching the sons of James Roosevelt in mathematics, that they might enter Harvard, two sons and a daughter of Abram S. Hewitt and the rising scions of other well-known families, of which employment he would speak in later years with pleasant amusement. In the afternoons, for two years, he was occupied at work in the office of General Viele, John Bach McMaster 7 an engineer who laid out Central Park. Here he drew a topographical map of the state of New York. "While he was unjustly not paid for this laborious service he may have acquired useful experience, for engineering now bade fair to be his career. He received a degree of C.E. from the College of the City of New York in 1875 and was looking forward to advancement in his profession. But teaching strongly attracted him and in a short while he was appointed instructor in engi- neering in the new John C. Green School of Science at Princeton College, through the recommendation of a friend, Professor Burr of the Eensellaer Polytechnic Institute, who himself had been offered, but declined, an appointment as professor in the school. All the while McMaster retained his urgent impulse to write. He sent articles to Van Nostrand's Engineer- ing Magazine, the Scientific American and other periodicals, and he published two booklets, "Bridge and Tunnel Centres" (New York, 1875) and "High Masonry Dams" (New York, 1876). At the same time he was working diligently in another field. He had read Buckle's "History of Civilization." He would write a book which he would calli c The Struggle of Man with Nature." As no publisher thought his magnum opus, when it was finished, worthy of acceptance, he himself, after a while, put less value upon it and he destroyed the manuscript. Meantime he returned to the project of writing a history of the United States, which he had never abandoned, with a view to informing himself, and of letting others know, about the creation and growth of the American republic. When he came to Princeton College in January, 1877, the town was celebrating the 100th anniversary of the battle of Princeton. There he was to remain for six years, teaching and living in Witherspoon Hall, where at night he kept a watchful eye upon the students who had bedrooms in his part of the building. His subject, 8 John Bach McMaster civil engineering, kept him out of doors. The boys under his care were engaged in fair weather in making sur- veys of various kinds in the country round about, bringing back the data for maps and topographical drawing, for use when the days were wet, or snow covered the ground. The young instructor looked for- ward eagerly, all the while, to the long summer va- cations when he might go forward with historical research. But interruption would soon come again, for in the summer of 1878 a little expedition, which included Henry Fairfield Osborn, a young man who was to have a brilliant future and who had just been graduated from Princeton; Andrew McCosh, a son of James McCosh, president of the college, and instructor of engineering McMaster, set out for the West to collect fossils for the E. M. Museum of Princeton. They visited Wyoming, then a complete wilderness, but reputed to be "a great cemetery of extinct animal re- mains.'7 Much interesting material was found, packed, conveyed to the line of the Union Pacific Eailroad and shipped back to Princeton. Before their return the explorers visited Salt Lake City, and had, throughout their visit to the West, such adventures as were likely never to be forgotten by young men. McMaster fre- quently, in an idle hour in later life, would give reminis- cences of the trip to his friends, and it contributed to an enlargement of his interest in the life of that part of the people of our country who dwelt upon the Plains and in the Eocky Mountains, which in his historical work he has in many places so graphically described. He contributed to Mr. Osborn's published memoir covering the discoveries of the summer, "A Strati- graphical Report of the Bridger Beds in Washakie Basin", and wrote an article on the "Fossil Remains of the Bad Lands of Wyoming" for the Journal of the American Geographical Society of New York. John Bach McMaster 9 In the following summer and, whenever leisure ad- mitted of it, he was to be found in the Library of Con- gress at Washington, which was still in the Capitol and "resembled nothing so much," he said, "as an old-fashioned second-hand book shop." Volumes were heaped upon long tables and piled shoulder high upon the floor. He visited the rooms of the American Anti- quarian Society at Worcester which abounds in files of old Gazettes, Packets and Advertisers; the Histori- cal Society of Pennsylvania where Frederick D. Stone in the little building on the grounds of the Pennsyl- vania Hospital gave the young historian every en- couragement; the New Jersey Historical Society in Newark, where, as the librarian, a gouty old gentleman, lived at home, he was presented with the key with in- structions to admit no one—at the end of the day he should hide it under the mat outside the door; the New York Historical Society where he was denied admit- tance on the ground that he was not a member. Nothing daunted he went to Trenton and got a letter of introduc- tion to the librarian from General George B. Mc- Clellan, then the governor of New Jersey, one of the members of the society, who commended him to John Austin Stevens. That gentleman had been the librarian at one time but, upon presenting the letter, our young historian was informed that he no longer held the office. However, since the letter was addressed to the librarian it was opened. More disappointment followed —the seeker after knowledge was told that the intro- duction was good for but one day, whereupon Mc- Master started his work, and, at noon, hearing the librarian's watch snapping ominously, he bethought himself of their common need of luncheon. After eat- ing and drinking as much as he liked, at McMaster ?s expense, the custodian of archives assumed a mellower air. The young investigator was permitted to return to his books that day and for many days thereafter. The 10 John Bach McMaster Massachusetts Historical Society received Mm, cour- teously indeed, but limited the use of its facilities, say- ing that they were at his service in so far as what they had could not be found elsewhere. These were some of the obstacles in the pathway of historical research in this country a half century ago. They, one and all, were surmounted. It was the author's design to write con- cerning the period of nearly eighty years from the close of the Revolution to the election of Lincoln and the beginning of the Civil War. The Constitution of the United States begins—"We, the people of the United States.'' The history should be "A History of the People of the United States." In 1881, the first volume was finished and was ready for the press. It was not without misgivings that the author offered the manuscript to the publishers who had looked so coldly on "The Struggle of Man with Nature." The typewriter was still in its experimental phases and readers of the works of young authors had not yet made it their rule to reject all writing which had not passed through the printing machine. Only one copy of the chapters existed and that was in Mc- Master's own hand, plain and flowing, though, with its notes, likely to vex the seekers of genius who at this day are attached to the staffs of book publishers. They had, however, the same resource which is familiar to v the arbiter of the destinies of the unknown writer of this later time. They could return the manuscript without reading it, saying that it was unavailable for their use, adding, perhaps, some reason for their opin- ion, which often might well have not been given. It was always with a chuckle that McMaster, whose en- joyment of the world through which he passed was un- usually shrewd, spoke of the excuse made by a house which shall be unnamed. They could not entertain a proposal for the publication of the work because the field had been taken by Bancroft, who, unluckily for John Bach McMaster 11 them, had left off his studies where McMaster's began. Indeed only one publisher expressed an interest in what the young civil engineer of Princeton had wrought in his stolen leisure hours throughout several years, and that was Mr. Appleton. One summer day, in 1881, McMaster visited the office in New York with the manuscript under his arm. The readers had rather unanimously disapproved it, when Mr. Appleton re- solved to look at it himself, carried it home and found it so fascinating that he asked his family to gather around him and listen to the narrative. The next day the author was invited to come in and sign a contract. In March, 1883 the book made its appearance to achieve instantaneous success. The Centennial Exposition of 1876 in Philadelphia and other Eevolutionary anniver- saries had given the people a keen appetite for more knowledge of their history than was accessible to them, the style of the new writer was vivid and dramatic and the book was instantly a subject of popular conversa- tion wherever men spoke of books at all. Ladies dipped into it and enjoyed its color and vitality. Three edi- tions were called for in the course of a few weeks. Many subscribed for the entire work, which the pub- lishers at the time announced would be kept within five volumes, though eight were needed before the task was done. Writers in leading newspapers and magazines, which need not be named, said that seldom had a book in " which matter of so substantial a value had been so happily united to attractiveness of form, been offered by an American author to his fellow citizens," its "entertaining quality" being "conspicuous beyond that of any work of its kind;" that the volume was "one of the most fascinating that the literature of this country was enriched with,"—its "brilliant grouping of details, patiently and laboriously gathered, an ad- mirable sense of proportion, a power of generalization 12 John Bach McMaster and a literary style, concise, vigorous, picturesque and eminently readable," put it "at a bound among the first histories in our language," and much more in a like strain. It is difficult to believe that it can have been so, but up to the time when a chapter had been shown to Wil- liam M. Sloane, McMaster's friend at Princeton, no mortal soul, not even his brother with whom there was the most affectionate intimacy, had the slightest idea of what he was doing. Princeton was astonished that the young man who, at the head of parties of students, had been triangulating the farms, river courses and rail- roads of the surrounding country was, under the sur- face, a writer of charming historical prose. When the praise began to fill the newspapers old Dr. McCosh called his young instructor in engineering to him and exclaimed "Well, Mr. McMaster, why did na ye tell us that ye were a great mon ?'' At the age of thirty-one when many are still at work earning their doctorates McMaster, as Dunning one time said, had "burst into the historiographical firma- ment as a star of the first magnitude.'' In Princeton he was not to remain much longer. Dr. William Pepper had become the provost of the Univer- sity of Pennsylvania. A school had been endowed at the University by Joseph Wharton. Albert S. Bolles had been appointed its director. It was designed to train young men, who would inherit wealth, in modern languages, English, political economy, government, finance and the history of the country. I do not know that this is its purpose today, but this was its initial object and McMaster was asked to come to Philadel- phia, and to take a new chair of American history in the faculty of the Wharton School. There was at the time, I believe, a professor of American history in only one college or university and he was Moses Coit Tyler whom Andrew D. White had brought in 1881 to John Bach McMaster 13 Cornell. Albert Bushnell Hart in 1883 was appointed to an instructorship in American history at Harvard. Tyler, McMaster and Hart, therefore, were the pio- neers. In every university the subject now employs the talents of a large staff of teachers. Normal schools, high schools and young ladies' seminaries have their professors of American history. But in 1883, if it were taught at all, it was a side issue. In the best cases an instructor covered the whole field of his- tory, ancient and modern, European and American. Again, and usually, the professor of English, or of rhetoric, or of religion conducted the American history classes. Such a one was on the ground when Mc- Master took up his duties at the University of Penn- sylvania. Only a few days ago a Philadelphian, whose name you all would know were I to mention it, recalled to me the small, rather shy, self-effacing figure of the new professor of American history. This subject had been a favorite with the students of that day at the University. The text-book which was in use was not too surreptitiously kept open while the questions went around the class. The first day the young, and by this time famous author of the "History of the People of the United States," appeared he was viewed with no particular misgiving, and it was believed that the old regime might continue. But his character had not been correctly plumbed. He asked gentlemen to close their books—as they did not do so he said—' i Those who are not gentlemen will now close their books," and it was understood that a new day had dawned. Dr. Pepper's reorganization of the University was in progress and his intelligent designs with reference to an educational foundation which needed an improv- ing hand, if it were to hold place at all among in- stitutions of higher learning, made association with it a new pleasure. The Wharton School began at once to attract to its courses students who were interested in 14 John Bach McMaster history, politics and public law. It was a time when young men in our colleges were viewed as the hope of our democracy, and not a few dreamed of a day when this school might take a place of leadership in putting impress upon American citizenship and in giving the nation a loftier view of public service. I was one of the number. Another was the late Pro- fessor John L. Stewart. McMaster, Stewart has truly said, was one of three men, Edmund J. James and Simon N. Patten (while he was under James's guid- ance) the others, who were "the making of an in- tellectual centre that gave to the University and to Philadelphia a most unique distinction, a distinction recognized in the world of scholarship and practical life far beyond the city's limits." As Matthew Arnold said of Oxford, so we could say—"Voices were in the air there which haunt my memory still. Happy the man who in that susceptible season of youth hears such voices. They are a possession to him forever." McMaster in due time drew around him for post- graduate work men whom it would be invidious to name singly. But a half dozen of them, I shall venture to say, are among the first historians of the last forty years in this country. His assiduity in research, his honesty in the sifting of material and the presentation of facts, his kindliness as a teacher and a friend gave encourage- ment and inspiration to a host of young men, many of whom joined the teaching staffs of other colleges and universities to bear aloft and carry on the torch of historical learning. McMaster's canny powers of ob- servation protected him from deception. He hated sham and snobbery in men as in their spoken and written judgments, and held before all who came under his influence high scholarly ideals. As the years passed and new tendencies appeared in university education no one deplored more heartily than he the contamination of the idea of learning. His John Bach McMaster 15 quiet and characteristic allusions to courses in dish- washing, dress-making, optometry and journalism were heard with joy by his friends, comment which he could renew and extend in the hearing of his intimates shortly before his death under the impulse of Flexner's pungent indictment of recent developments in univer- sity administration in the United States. McMaster's patience and indulgence were so great, his modesty so plain to see that he was in danger of being misunderstood. But no one who was ever near enough to him to know him could fail to comprehend the firmness and decision which lay under a placid surface. And he had bravery. This trait had just found illustration. Few writers have ever suffered such mis- fortune as befell him in the preparation of the second volume. Material had been painstakingly assembled at "Worcester and in other store houses of historical lore. Two chapters were practically completed. They were in a satchel with a quantity of memoranda which also represented much labor, and, while he went down to midday dinner, the author left it in his bed-room in a cheap, ill-kept hotel in Worcester in which he was lodging. When he returned it was gone. Some one had entered by a transom, or a window, carried away the satchel with its precious contents and nothing was ever afterward heard of it, or of the thief. It was a bitter experience. The young author must start anew, a most repellent task, and no light one, especially in the case of one of the chapters to be written, as may be confirmed by turning to that finally put in its stead, Chapter XII, entitled "Town and Country Life in 1800", an intricate mass of information about our social civiliza- tion at the beginning of the new century. In spite of this unhappy adventure the second volume of the History was published in 1885. The third did not appear until 1892, the fourth in 1895, the fifth, after another long interval, in 1904, the sixth in 1906, 16 John Bach McMaster the seventh in 1910 and the eighth, and final volume in 1913. Thirty years had elapsed since the first had been published and forty since the task of describing the events, social, political and military, of eight crucial decades in the history of this country had been formulated. The author's friends in a literary circle in Philadel- phia, I remember, fell upon him and surprised him in his home in March, 1908, on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the publication of the first volume. I had said many times that, when the work was done, he should have a dinner in honor of the event. A group of three or four friends in the Franklin Inn Club acted as a committee. The hosts were twenty or thirty prominent gentlemen, mostly resident in Philadelphia. Invitations were issued to historians throughout this country and Europe; to President Wilson, ex-Presidents Eoosevelt and Taft, all three of whom sent their warmest greet- ings ; to college presidents, editors and intelligent men of affairs. It was a representative company which on a Saturday night, November 22, 1913, gathered in the hall of The Historical Society of Pennsylvania. On the Eeception Committee were Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, who presided; James Ford Ehodes, Governor Pennypacker, president of The Historical Society of Pennsylvania; ex-Provost Harrison of the University of Pennsyl- vania, Provost Edgar F. Smith, General James H. Wilson and Professor Edward P. Cheyney. Dean West spoke for Princeton, Provost Smith for the University of Pennsylvania and a representative of the College of the City of New York for that school. Feeling words were said and the guest of the night made appropriate response. Upon coming to Philadelphia McMaster found a home for a time within the accepted social precincts of the city. After his marriage, in 1887, to Miss Gertrude Stevenson, a daughter of Dr. Eichard Wilson Steven- John Bach McMaster 17 son of Morristown, New Jersey, he lived on Highland Avenue in Chestnut Hill, then for a time at 2119 De- Lancey Street, again within good social boundaries, and subsequently in West Philadelphia at 3805 Locust Street, until he purchased the house at 2109 DeLancey Street where he remained until his death. A stranger he may have been, but he came to know his Philadelphia. When he returned to DeLancey Street, after living for a few years beyond the Schuyl- kill River, he would be accosted, he would say with a humorous light in his eye, as though he had just come from a foreign land. People who formerly had known him had passed him on the street; now again, so he said, they recognized him and stopped to bid him "good-morning." His summers were spent at Ken- nebunkport in Maine where he was the owner of two houses on the cliffs. He was, some men believed, unsocial; his absorption in his studies and the meditations which are the earned dividends of a ripe life spent in reading and the ac- quisition of knowledge caused him to shun fellowship. Yet here again he could be, and was often, utterly mis- judged, for he was the soul of friendliness in congenial surroundings. In Philadelphia he was early chosen to be a member of the Mahogany Tree, a group of gentlemen assembled by Dr. Pepper, each representing a principal and in- fluential phase of social life in the city, who dined to- gether from time to time. He was a member of the Triplets, a dining club which drew into its fold John Foster Kirk, L. Clarke Davis, the brothers Horace Howard and Frank Furness, Victor Guillou and other wits and raconteurs; and the Contemporary Club, of which for a time he was president. At Wistar Parties he was the welcome guest of Henry C. Lea and other hosts who formed a choice circle for the management of these historic entertainments. He was one of the VOL. LVIL—2 18 John Bach McMaster founders of the Franklin Inn Club, but he had never entered the club house. One day when we were together at our work I asked him to come to luncheon with me in its little room, then in Chancellor Street. Thereafter, when he was in the city, daily until his death, a period of about thirty years, he was to be found at the long table, often loitering after luncheon for conversation with four or five men who had won a warm place in his heart as he had in theirs. At Dr. Weir Mitchell's death, in 1914, Professor McMaster was elected president of the club, a post which he held until near the end of his life. He was then made honorary president. His friends may describe him, as I am sure that he would like to be remembered, in the words of Moses Coit Tyler, who set them down after spending an eve- ning with the historian in Philadelphia—"I am greatly attracted by McMaster. He is refined, modest, cour- teous, genuine, with the air of abstractedness and of scholastic unworldliness. He makes no flourishes, but is very kind.'' Invitations to edit and write other books, to lecture, to prepare articles for newspapers and magazines came to him thick and fast. His name was repeatedly seen on the title pages of the Atlantic Monthly, the Forum, the Century, the Outlook, Harper's and other periodi- cal publications. He contributed the Benjamin Frank- lin to the "American Men of Letters'' series edited by Charles Dudley Warner, a book which was the subject of much original investigation. It has had a long life and still finds buyers in the book stores. With Fred- erick D. Stone, the librarian of The Historical Society of Pennsylvania, at the time of the celebration of the centennial of the ratification of the Constitution of the United States by Pennsylvania, he prepared a huge volume of 800 pages on that subject. It was entitled "Pennsylvania and the Federal Constitution." Many of his magazine articles were brought together in a John Bach McMaster 19 volume called "With the Fathers." A volume of essays on Daniel Webster which had appeared as articles in the Century Magazine was published in 1902. At the request of the editor he contributed three chapters to the "Cambridge Modern History" projected by Lord Acton. Later publications included a series of lectures delivered in 1903 at Western Eeserve University, en- titled "The Acquisition of the Political, Social and In- dustrial Eights of Man in America;'' a Life of Stephen Girard in two volumes, founded upon the letters and other papers of the Philadelphia merchant and pre- pared at the invitation of the Board of City Trusts which manages his great estate; "United States in the World War," a two volume record of passing events for the convenient use of those who needed docu- mentary information in a confused time, and, in the last years, at the importunity of the publishers, a sup- plementary, or ninth, volume of the History, treating of the Civil War, and the life of the people while it was in progress in the loyal as in the seceded states, or, as he called it, "A History of the People of the United States during Lincoln's Administration." This ninth volume fell upon a changed world. The publication of it seemed in some degree anti-climax. Public interest in the war between the North and South, which for forty years had been regarded by Americans as the greatest event in history, had been dwarfed by a mili- tary cataclysm which embraced the world. Having reached the age of sixty-eight, McMaster, in 1920, had been retired from his professorship at the University of Pennsylvania after continuous service at the post for thirty-seven years, and the writing of the volume for the Civil War period gave pleasure to a hand which could not be idle. "There," he said, as he handed me a copy of the book, "I have come up to you," alluding to my History since the Civil War of which three volumes had then appeared. "It is for you to go on." 20 John Bach McMaster Among the historian's minor products as a writer was an essay on the history of the country to serve as a preface for Baedeker's United States; an article on Garfield for the tenth edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica; a history of the Johnstown flood and the relief work done at the time by a Citizens' Committee of which Eobert C. Ogden was the chairman, a gentle- man who later for a number of years occupied one of Professor McMaster's houses at Kennebunkport; a brief illustrated history of the University of Pennsyl- vania, in its colors, red and blue, and an oration for President McKinley to deliver on the occasion of the annually recurring Washington Birthday celebration in the Academy of Music in Philadelphia, under the auspices of the University of Pennsylvania. Provost Harrison had invited the President to make the address and Mr. McKinley said that he would do so if it were prepared for him. The task of writing it was committed to the University's Professor of American History, and it left the lips of the President of the United States as it had fallen on paper from McMaster's pen. No writing, as rapidly as one followed another, usually at the urgent solicitation of editors, met with the wide circulation of the school histories. Three of these, beginning in 1897, were compiled for primary, grammar and high school use respectively. For twenty or thirty years they successfully ran the gauntlet of objectors in labor unions, patriotic societies and in other nooks and crannies of our democracy, on the eager outlook for the image-breaker in American his- tory. It was as a highly amused onlooker that Profes- sor McMaster noted the difficulties of other writers of American school histories with 100 per cent, nation- alist associations and with the Boeotians, restless under their dignities, who sit upon our village boards of education. More than a million and a half copies of McMaster's school histories were sold before the John Bach McMaster 21 Mayor of Chicago and the American Federation of Labor, found that new books were necessary, if our national life were to be kept at a spiritual level worthy of the American name. Committees waited upon him to ask him to accept the presidency of colleges, but he could not be enticed from teaching and authorship. He quite realized, he has told me, the uncongeniality of, if not his own un- fitness for, large administrative tasks. Quay, the in- fluential "boss" in Pennsylvania and long one of the state's senators in Congress, came to him to ask that he write a history of Pennsylvania. He might be, if he liked, state librarian. His native talent for taking care of himself in the midst of the world's temptations, which was highly developed, kept him from yielding to this importunity. His attitude toward the society of other men, I think, was, as I have said, not aversion. Proof of the delight which he found in intimate communication with a few friends they hold and remember. But he had the pre- occupation of a scholar—an uncommonly effective and industrious one. His duties as a teacher, which were conscientiously performed, left him too few hours for the research and writing which he loved, though he extended the day far into the night. Only those social events which genuinely attracted him were honored by his presence. The business of reviewing for periodicals the books of his associates and rivals he avoided, an excellent rule which the rest of us might well follow. He discouraged mention of his name in the daily news- papers. The reporter who was sent forth to interview historians in regard to the new discoveries of Eevolu- tionary graveyards, of cannon and round shot, allega- tions that "Washington cursed and swore or that John Adams was a thief found him out of their reach. He would be at a table among his books on an upper floor of the Library of The Historical Society of Pennsyl- 22 John Bach McMaster vania, in a nook in the University Library, or at the Franklin Inn until the excitement had subsided, and it was safe again to go into the street. Such unruffled in- difference to the petty disturbances of the world was a defense which made for accomplishment. I have heard him say, in the midst of great popular turbulence, that it would "pass;" in stormy Presidential contests, that the republic would survive no matter what befell. While others pointed with pride and viewed with alarm he kept on in even mind. He had his own opinions and they were definite. He voted in the manner that he would be expected to vote in a ward of the city inhabited, except for a fringe of houses in which gentle- men dwelt, by ignorance and controlled by a boss. His ballot fell on the side of order and right but he was forearmed no matter what the result. '' The country is saved again," he would observe quizzically and humorously. "The people, you think, are sound at the core." His mind ran back over more Presidential elections, more ruin, more salvation, more depressions, panics, crises and popular upheavals than anyone in his presence could comprehend and he could not, if he were willing to do so, detach incidents from the whole history of the country, and give them the em- phasis which seemed to be put upon them by other men. His friends said that he would not write letters— one of the most intimate and esteemed lately told me that, to cover an acquaintance of more than fifty years, he had in his possession probably not a half dozen. I have heard McMaster say that if letters were allowed to rest for a time they would require no answer— an obvious truth with regard to many of them. He was overwhelmed with the most trivial and exas- perating inquiries about historical and supposedly his- torical points, of no interest except to the man, woman or child who propounded them. Such intrusion no one John Bach McMaster 23 bent upon service and accomplishment can easily brook, and silence is often suitable reply. " If lie were to ask me a question worth an answer," I have heard Mc- Master say when men spoke of his neglect, "he should receive it.'' Even familiars who would take him to task in banter for a foible, for which he was rather famous, were not too certain that he would not return in language better than was given. For as democratic as were his sympathies, as simple as were his tastes and interests he was not without dignity. Honors came to him in spite of his neglect of the methods which lead to public recognition of deeds well done. He was president of the American His- torical Association in 1904-5. He followed Goldwin Smith in this office, and was succeeded by Simeon E. Baldwin. For several years he was an associate editor of the American Historical Review and, in the affairs of the association, he continued to have an interested part until those whom he held dear disappeared from its management. He was a member of the American Antiquarian Society of Worcester, Massachusetts, of whose unexampled collections of early American news- papers, he had made so much diligent use—he at the time of his death was its oldest member. He was a member of the Massachusetts, Delaware and Minne- sota Historical Societies and of our Historical Society of Pennsylvania, of which he was corresponding secre- tary from 1901 to 1928, after which time he was an honorary vice-president. Nowhere was he a more familiar, or a more respected and revered figure than in the Library of this Society to which he came for more than fifty years. He was a member for a time of the committee to award the Pulitzer prize for the best book of the year upon the history of the United States. The University of Pennsylvania conferred upon him the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters in 1894. He held degrees of Doctor of Laws from Princeton Uni- 24 John Bach McMaster versity, Washington and Jefferson College in Pennsyl- vania and from the University of Toronto. He often made no response to suggestions that he accept election to membership in clubs and associations. He ignored an invitation, I believe, to join the American Philo- sophical Society. I do not know by what weight of im- portunity he was brought into the National Institute of Arts and Letters. His method as a historian calls for no attempt at learned critical analysis. He himself applied none to it and was not greatly concerned with history as a science, if it be one. His own statement of how he came to his work explains what his studies meant to him and what he hoped that they might mean to others. His investigations were founded on a desire to gain the facts about a country which he loved. At the dinner which we gave him in this room in honor of the com- pletion of his great literary undertaking I remember that he feelingly alluded to his good fortune in having a country with a history to write. He believed that the formative years of our national existence were un- studied. His inquiries preceded Schouler's, whose first volume, indeed, was published before McMaster's— anyhow that work was pursued in a different spirit. McMaster entered the field to satisfy his own curiosity and, that he might bring the results within the reach of others, he adopted a manner in writing, which he fortunately could command, calculated to win public attention. "A master of style," James Bryce has said, "may be a worthless historian. A skilful investigator and sound reasoner may be unreadable. The conjunc- tion of fine gifts for investigation with fine gifts for exposition," Bryce continues, "is a rare conjunction which cannot be prized too highly, for, while it ad- vances historical science, it brings historical methods as well as historical facts within the horizon of the ordinary reader." So it was in McMaster's case. He John Bach McMaster 25 read Macaulay and, whether he imitated that master or not, he caught some of the spirit of such a narrative, adding to it a salty flavor of a later age and of a new hemisphere. What he wrote, therefore, had a fresh and an individual character. The author's view of his duty was to find facts and bring them from the cover under which they long had lain. His idea of history was simply a description of past events. He would not confine himself to the elec- tion of Presidents, declarations of war, the fighting of battles, the making of treaties, about which more or less was known, but the thoughts, feelings, interests, movements of the people year by year, and make these explain events. He turned to the old newspapers. His critics have said that he attributed too much impor- tance to the information which came from such sources. It is certain that he was a pioneer in the use of authori- ties which writers before him had neglected. The use of the newspaper gave his narrative an order of sequence, a verbal swing and a nearness to the life of the people which neither he, nor anyone else, could have gained by a mere study of Presidents' messages, Congressional reports and the letters and diaries which alone are often held to be worthy of consultation. He tested his facts coming from the newspapers by turning to other sources, and gave us his references at the foot of the page. One day in Washington, soon after his first volume appeared, he was asked to visit George Bancroft. "I see, sir," said the Nestor of American historians, "that you have many footnotes in your book. That is a mistake. At the cost of great labor you have un- earthed certain facts, and you tell your readers where to find them. Some of them will use them and give you no credit." McMaster replied that, as an unknown author in the historical field, it had seemed to him necessary to give his authority for his statements. 26 John Bach McMaster " You make a book," Bancroft continued, "upon which anyone who chooses may climb. All the trouble I have ever had with my books came from the notes. I am now revising them and in the new edition there will be none." And there were none, though McMaster, it is needless to add, followed the method in this regard which scholars will not soon, I surmise, cease to em- ploy. Many "climbed" upon his History. Stone of The Historical Society of Pennsylvania used to say when a new volume by McMaster appeared—"Now we shall soon have something from John Fiske." It has been said that McMaster found in Green as well as Macaulay an inspirational source, that there was in Green's "Short History of the English People" a suggestion, not only for the title but for the sub- stance of the "History of the People of the United States." I think that the idea was never welcomed by our American historian, who surely felt that he had not received impulse from that direction. His plans were laid before Green's notable book appeared, though it was published in 1874, and it was not his intention to write a "short history", though his work, like Green's, would have to do with the people. Green in his preface said that he should "pass lightly and briefly over the details of foreign wars and diplomacies and dwell at length on the incidents of that constitutional, intel- lectual and social advance in which we read the history of the nation itself." McMaster expressed a similar thought in a rather better way. "In the course of this narrative," he wrote, as he set forth on his adventure, "much indeed must be written of wars, conspiracies and rebellions, of presidents, of congresses, of em- bassies, of treaties, of the ambition of political leaders in the senate house, and of the rise of great parties in the nation, yet the history of the people shall be the chief theme.'' These measures, if in point of style they are after anyone, speak of the reading of Macaulay rather than Green, though there may have been an John Bach McMaster 27 unconscious development of McMaster's aspirations in the sight of the instantaneous and really impressive success of Green's book. It has been said, I believe, that McMaster set down few statements which could be held to be personal judgments. The facts were made to stand forth and speak for themselves. He had no heroes, as Macaulay found one, for example, in William of Orange, and no villains. He would now and again throw in an adjective, as when he spoke of the "black-hearted" Charles Lee, the "insolence" of John Eandolph, the "rants" of Patrick Henry who gave "such reasons for hating the Constitution as were hiccoughed out in the taverns," the "childish" talk about paper money, the "fllthiness and nastiness" of the private life of Tom Paine. But in the main his narrative was kept on so even a keel of impartiality that it was difficult to detect his sympathies. He had disciplined himself in some degree, perhaps, to have none. I used to think as a boy in col- lege, eager for quick conclusions and definite opinions, that he was an exasperating writer in this one regard. I respond rather warmly to Schouler's defence of his method as a historian. He hoped that he had stated his conclusions "candidly," said he, and "upon an ample exposition of the facts." It was not in his na- ture, however, to be "impartial as between right and wrong, honorable and dishonorable conduct.'' From the point of view of those with feelings like Schouler's there has been an impression that Mc- Master 's detachment may have been carried to a con- siderable length. What was my surprise, therefore, to hear sometime since a statement that his history was one long, skillful contrivance to make a great man of Alexander Hamilton and to justify the Hamiltonian system. Such an opinion I should think not that of a man competent to form one, or to present it with any idea that it would be accepted by sagacious persons. It is very true that McMaster thought and wrote 28 John Bach McMaster upon the assumption that the Constitution of the United States was a good thing, a belief which a while ago was rather generally entertained. That was a starting point, and it is difficult to think of the history of a country with no background of respect for the fundamental institutions which explain its very existence. It is usual, I believe, to trace historical schools back to Thucydides and Herodotus, just as philosophy is either Platonic or Aristotelian. There is appearance of profundity of knowledge in such reference of the sub- ject to old roots. Thucydides is pointed to as the first of the philosophical and critical historians, while Herodotus is viewed as the stem from which those who make use of imaginative and picturesque detail are descended. "While Thucydides concerned himself prin- cipally with politics, the other explored a wider field. Green is held to have been a Herodotean, giving in his work an impression of picturesqueness and vividity. So, too, we must think that McMaster would have pre- ferred to own such a master. He had the quality of reckoning nothing, however small or apparently remote from the main story, to be "trivial or unfruitful." We have together spoken of Ehodes, and his well-known practice of employing other men to glean the facts. Whatever may be thought of this method on other grounds it was very plain, as McMaster would observe, that by not himself making the investigations neces- sary for his writing, Ehodes missed facts, and impres- sions regarding facts, outside the immediate range of his inquiry. His canvass, therefore, was smaller than it should have been and he gives his reader but a limited and, I am bound to think, an undramatic view of the events of the period which he has aimed to illuminate. The discussion of historical method by the younger men who are now teaching history and who are writing it in monographic form, usually rather awkwardly, John Bach McMaster 29 may or may not be referrable to anything that I have preferred to say to this text in this appraisal of Mc- Master 's services. To them, so I gather from their argument, history is factual or interpretative, or is the word interpretive in the lexicon of our termin- ologists ? The factual is regarded, if my observation is not entirely at fault, with rather pronounced disappro- bation. Even the school history must "interpret" his- tory in this way or that. The historian tends, therefore, to become a critical essayist. He presents his own opin- ions, usually pursuing, at a greater or less distance, that enchantress of our day, called "Social Justice." The varied product, I may say confidently, did not meet with the liking or endorsement of McMaster, and, in so far as it has been held up to us as history, it is, per- haps, the most disquieting development in the whole progress of the idea of history as a branch of scholar- ship. Surely no such writing, whatever its nature, can proceed except upon the facts which the historian of an elder school may bring forth. I, one day, not long since—it was in England—took up a copy of a recent History of the United States. In the bibliography ap- pended I noted an allusion to my effort to continue the story of the United States for the period after the Civil "War. It is, said the author, "in the McMaster style," which is not wholly true I think, he meaning, as others have done when they have linked our names, to disparage us singly and together. The movement to put opinion into history has gone far. To the extent that history has gained a new char- acter McMaster, and those who follow in his way, have been told that they are out of accord with the spirit of the time, no one more plainly, I suppose, than Mc- Master himself upon the appearance of his supple- mentary volume for the Civil War period. It was is- sued in 1927, forty-four years after the first volume of 1883. While the first was instantly acclaimed, the other, exactly similar in treatment, was received in silence, 30 John Bach McMaster when not with complete disfavor, as in the case of a leading review which found space in its columns for a criticism by a young modern writer, who seemed to have endured every form of suffering while reading or attempting to read the book. The truth may be that history under this name is not serving a practical present need, proof of which may be seen in the devices which are employed to dis- guise it when it is published at all. Instead of a history we have a "romance," or an "epic," called this in the hope that it may be swallowed, or at any rate half put down the throat, before the unwilling reader can dis- cover the nature of the dose. McMaster ?s side—I shall say our side—of the case would seem to be in strong hands—nothing less, I should think, than the application of the rule of reason. History, based on a few facts gained at second-hand and interpreted by one man for himself, or for a group of men, and colored by his personal notions for labor unions, "Sons of America," the Huguenots, the Quak- ers or the Pilgrim Fathers, histories of Brown Dec- ades, Mauve Decades, Dreadful Decades, Tragic Eras, Fiery Epochs and the like will find their rightful places and the scholar who dedicates five or six years to the intensive, sane and unselfish study of a decade of his nation's life will some day have that value set upon his labor which is his due. He may lean heavily, as I think McMaster did, to the side of impartiality, or his conscious sense of right and wrong may intrude—that sense of which Schouler has spoken;—he will in any event have been a historian rather than an author of what the Germans call a Tendenziverk—a historian rather than a controversialist and a mere vender of his own views. A historical scholar, yes, and a brave and loyal spirit. He carried himself with courage even under distress, which came to him as to other men—in the death of his mother in 1885, to whose memory he dedi- John Bach McMaster 31 cated the second and the later volumes of his History; of his brother; of his son Bach (John Bach McMaster, Jr.), in 1915, who had studied law, a youth of marked promise, and in 1922 of his wife, his companion of thirty years, a woman of uncommon charm. These sorrows left him still with the resources of a well- stored and philosophic mind. He was what could be fairly called an omnivorous reader. His early interest in engineering survived. Biography, fiction, and current books generally, did not escape his attention. The newspapers were read daily and his mind, with its fund of historical knowl- edge, was brought to play upon passing affairs. Few men around him followed the course of current politi- cal events more closely, or so intelligently. His sense of humor was keen and his friends treasure jest, anec- dote and story bearing the stamp of his personality. An hour of leisure after lunch or dinner brought them forth one upon another. His memory was the wonder, I think, of all who knew him; a head of unusual height marked by a broad forehead, was the outward proof of a remarkable brain. He regularly attended orchestra concerts and was a frequent visitor to the theatre. His love of "travel talks" with their pictures drew him to such entertainments, though lectures as such he sedulously shunned. His moral sense was of a high order and, though the gentility of his manner and the charity with which he mantled the actions of others prevented his doing affront to those around him, his revulsion of feeling in the face of dishonorable behavior, or manifestations of the vulgar side of the world generally, met with the protest of his entire nature. Those who knew his name, but not more, will say that a historian has been lost to the nation whose annals he so memorably recorded; —those who knew him as a friend, as a daily com- panion, will say that there has gone from our city, and our land, one of God's true noblemen.