democracies have more resemblances than diversities. The
newspaper that caters to the "masses" will never suit the "classes," and
the necessity for a large circulation induces it to furnish the sheet
which the greatest number of readers desire.

But this does not concern the historian. He does not make his materials.
He has to take them as they are. It would undoubtedly render his task
easier if all men spoke and wrote everywhere with accuracy and
sincerity; but his work would lose much of its interest. Take the
newspaper for what it is, a hasty gatherer of facts, a hurried
commentator on the same, and it may well constitute a part of historical
evidence.

When, in 1887, I began the critical study of the History of the United
States from 1850 to 1860, I was struck with the paucity of material
which would serve the purpose of an animated narrative. The main facts
were to be had in the state papers, the Statutes, the _Congressional
Globe_ and documents, the records of national conventions and platforms,
and the tabulated results of elections. But there was much less private
correspondence than is available for the early history of our country;
and, compared with the period of the Civil War and later, a scarcity of
biographies and reminiscences, containing personal letters of high
historical value. Since I wrote my first two volumes, much new matter
concerning the decade of 1850 to 1860 has been published. The work of
the American Historical Association, and of many historical societies,
the monographs of advanced university students, have thrown light upon
this, as they have upon other periods, with the result that future
delvers in this field can hardly be so much struck with the paucity of
material as I was twenty-one years ago.

Boy though I was during the decade of 1850 to 1860, I had a vivid
remembrance of the part that the newspaper played in politics, and the
thought came to me that the best way to arrive at the spirit of the
times was to steep my mind in journalistic material; that there was the
secret of living over again that decade, as the Abolitionist, the
Republican, the Whig, and the Democrat had actually lived in it. In the
critical use of such sources, I was helped by the example of von Holst,
who employed them freely in his volumes covering the same period, and by
the counsel and collaboration of my friend Edward G. Bourne, whose
training was in the modern school. For whatever training I had beyond
tha