Intelligent Use of Sources

THE use of sources as school material has been discussed above: that sources vivify the study of history and tend to fix in the memory the principles best worth remembering, seems established by the experience of schools that have tried it.

Teachers will naturally wish to have and to use the full text of some of the authorities which are represented in this volume in brief extract; but from the pieces here printed they can probably enrich their stock of illustrations and cogent facts.

The ordinary literature of the Civil War is in many ways less available to school children than that of earlier periods; perhaps this volume may therefore be especially helpful for that critical epoch in the topical work which now forms so large a part of the training in history in many schools; the Contemporaries is also meant to form a body of suitable parallel reading in connection with text-books.

Little space has been given in the head-notes to a criticism of the writers from whom extracts have been taken. It is assumed that those who use the book are aware of the necessity of considering how far it is the interest and intention of the source-writers to speak the truth. Unless there is a distinct caution to the contrary, it will be understood that the editor selected the extracts because worthy of credit. It must not, however, be inferred that pieces are chosen simply because they express laudable sentiments: it is quite as important to know what were the arguments against a policy as to know those in favor of it. On contested questions both sides have a hearing throughout this series.