as wont to call it--became the
ruling purpose of his life. He was to run the career of a man of
letters, and in a country hardly ripe for literary production. American
history was to be his occupation; all things else became subservient to
this great purpose. He had conceived the project of collecting the
correspondence of Washington, and of gathering all the accessible
documents in this country and Europe necessary for an authentic life of
the great chief. On his first application for the Washington
manuscripts, which Mr. Justice Bushrod Washington had intended to edit,
Mr. Sparks was told, much as he was respected, he could by no means
have them. Yet, his journal of that date has no complaining, despondent
mention of the rebuff, for, on that very day he set forth from the city
of Washington on his journey to the South, in quest of other
materials; and, with a light, confident, indefatigable spirit, went on
patiently collecting them from public and private sources, everywhere
finding profitable work, and, with marvellous keenness and sagacity,
choosing and appropriating whatever he should want for the great task
which it was his destiny to accomplish. Our archives at Annapolis,
scant and neglected as they unfortunately are, still bear marks of his
diligence; and, years after his task was completed in our State House,
I have found, among our documents, the frequent traces of his minute
and accurate labors. This, I am told, was a life-long trait of his
preparation, for he always provided himself with every species of
preliminary information which could lead to what he did not possess, in
case, at some future day, it might become useful or necessary. His
memorandums, therefore, were copious and explicit. Indeed, he became so
familiar with the archives of the several States, that from his study
in Massachusetts, he could readily, without a fresh journey, command
the desired documents, and always indicate the department, and,
generally, the shelf, book, or bundle in which the coveted manuscript
was to be found by his correspondents. And, so he went on cheerily from
state to state and family to family, increasing his national
treasures, until, at last, the richest of the American collections was
yielded to him by the Washington family and the government. The
manuscripts at Mount Vernon--the entire correspondence of Washington
and his papers--arranged by him in more than two hundred folio volumes;
the state papers of the "old