culiar
appreciation that I read the dedication of this first book: "To my
Father and Mother." I may add in this connection that while pursuing his
indefatigable labors for the support of his large family, his father's
sickness and death overtaxed his strength, and the breakdown followed.
At Yale during his graduate work he won the Foote scholarship; he was
instructor in history there from 1886 to 1888, then took a similar
position at Adelbert College, Cleveland, becoming Professor of History
in 1890. This post he held until 1895, when he was called to Yale
University as Professor of History, a position that he held at the time
of his death.
Besides the doctor's thesis, Bourne published two books, the first of
which was "Essays in Historical Criticism," one of the Yale bicentennial
publications, the most notable essay in which is that on Marcus Whitman.
A paper read at the Ann Arbor session of the American Historical meeting
in Detroit and later published in the _American Historical Review_ is
here amplified into a long and exhaustive treatment of the subject. The
original paper gained Bourne some celebrity and subjected him to some
harsh criticism, both of which, I think, he thoroughly enjoyed. Feeling
sure of his facts and ground, he delighted in his final word to support
the contention which he had read with emphasis and pleasure to an
attentive audience in one of the halls of the University of Michigan.
The final paragraph sums up what he set out to prove with undoubted
success:
That Marcus Whitman was a devoted and heroic missionary who braved
every hardship and imperilled his life for the cause of Christian
missions and Christian civilization in the far Northwest and finally
died at his post, a sacrifice to the cause, will not be gainsaid.
That he deserves grateful commemoration in Oregon and Washington is
beyond dispute. But that he is a national figure in American
history, or that he "saved" Oregon, must be rejected as a fiction
[p. 100].
Bourne had a good knowledge of American history, and he specialized on
the Discoveries period, to which he gave close and continuous attention.
He was indebted to Professor Hart's ambitious and excellent cooperative
history, "The American Nation," for the opportunity to obtain a hearing
on his favorite subject. His "Spain in America," his third published
book, is the book of a scholar. While the conditions of his narrative
allowed only fo
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