ilosophical
Society, April 1, 1917.

THE JOURNAL

OF

NEGRO HISTORY

VOL. II--OCTOBER, 1917--NO. 4

SOME HISTORICAL ERRORS OF JAMES FORD RHODES

While on a visit to Cleveland, Ohio, some time ago, the guest of my
good friend George A. Myers, my attention was called to Rhodes'
History of the United States. This was due, no doubt, to the fact that
Mr. Myers had been in correspondence with Mr. Rhodes relative to
certain points in the career of the late M. A. Hanna, brought out by
Mr. Rhodes, which, in the opinion of Mr. Myers, were not accurate. In
glancing over one of the volumes, I came across the chapters giving
information about what took place in the State of Mississippi during
the period of Reconstruction. I detected so many statements and
representations which to my own knowledge were absolutely groundless
that I decided to read carefully the entire work. I regret to say
that, so far as the Reconstruction period is concerned, it is not only
inaccurate and unreliable but it is the most biased, partisan and
prejudiced historical work I have ever read. In his preface to volume
six, the author was frank enough to use the following language:
"Nineteen years' almost exclusive devotion to the study of one period
of American history has had the tendency to narrow my field of
vision." Without doing the slightest violence to the truth, he could
have appropriately added these words: "And since the sources of my
information touching the Reconstruction period were partial, partisan
and prejudiced, my field of vision has not only been narrowed, but my
mind has been poisoned, my judgment has been warped, my decisions and
deductions have been biased and my opinions have been so influenced
that my alleged facts have not only been exaggerated, but my comments,
arguments, inferences and deductions based upon them, can have very
little if any value for historical purposes."

Many of his alleged facts were so magnified and others so minimized as
to make them harmonize with what the author thought the facts should
be rather than what they actually were. In the first place, the very
name of his work is a misnomer: "History of the United States from the
Compromise of 1850 _to the Final Restoration of Home Rule at the South
in 1877_." I have emphasized the words "to the final restoration of
home rule at the South in 1877" because those are the words that
constitute the misnomer. If home rule were finally restored to