Arts and Letters

Handicapped in childhood and youth by ill health and lack of a parental home, Edward Channing by force of character made himself a great historical scholar and substantially completed the work he had projected in early manhood. In Harvard College, where he graduated in 1878, and in the following years he came under the influence of Justin Winsor and Henry Adams from whom he derived methods that were of much use to him in his research and teaching. Before the end of his junior year he had decided to make the study of history his career, and by the time of graduation his interest had become centered in the history of this country. He therefore spent two years in working on the subject for the doctorate of philosophy, which had been established not long before. A year of travel in Europe was followed by the usual miscellaneous efforts, disappointments, and success, in securing a foothold in the teaching staff of the University. A succès d'estime he made early by a prize essay on Town and County Government in the North American Colonies, which brought his election to the Massachusetts Historical Society; and by 1887 he had worked his way up to an Assistant Professorship, leading ten years later to a permanent chair. Meanwhile he was gradually concentrating his teaching on his favorite field of American history.

As a teacher he was not less remarkable than as a writer, although in a somewhat different way. From Henry Adams, his earliest master in the field, he had acquired three methods of dealing with his students, waking them up by shocking their prejudices, giving them subjects to study and report upon, and looking up their ancestry to find topics in which they would be likely to take an hereditary interest.

The shocking was deliberate. In fact, Adams is reported to have said of one of his classes that he had ridden roughshod over all their prejudices but could not stir them up. Channing did the same,—in the case, for example, of Plymouth Rock and the Washington Elm—until he was regarded as an iconoclast who reveled in discrediting the revered traditions of our people. Although he did not object to that reputation, it was by no means justified, and much of his criticism of popular legends may be resolved into the meaning of words. The landing of the Pilgrims, or Washington's taking command of the army, implies in the common conception a ceremony such as would never take place save for publicity or posterity, which neither Bradford nor Washington had in mind.

The practice of assigning to both graduates and undergraduates topics to be worked up in the library and made the subject of a report began, so far as I am aware, with Henry Adams and was brought to a high state of perfection by Channing. In his undergraduate course there were two of these a year, carefully selected with regard to the probable interests of each student, with whom the assistant in the course had three conferences, before, during and at the completion of his study on the topic. This at least was the procedure at the turn of the century; and the result was more work by undergraduates in this course than in any other of its kind in the department.

The topic, as already noticed, was selected with special reference to the probable interest of each student. This was a matter to which Channing gave peculiar attention. All the men were required to fill out statements in regard to the antecedents of their families and these Channing and his assistant examined, spending several evenings assigning subjects that would be likely to have some hereditary or geographical attraction for the students to whom they were allotted. The plan was excellent and in many cases had a highly stimulating effect.

All this shows how keen an interest Channing took in his students, how much labor he expended upon them, and in fact the writer was always impressed with how well he knew so large a body and remembered them years afterwards.

As a lecturer he was highly successful, and at times very impressive. One of the persons present remembers in particular his lecture on Anne Hutchinson, to which the students listened with rapt attention and sat silent for an appreciable time after it was over. Yet these lectures were delivered in a quiet, discursive tone, without the slightest attempt at oratory; and indeed, Channing would not tolerate and sternly repressed on the part of his students any demonstrations such as were then too common in college courses. So much for Channing as a teacher. It was a kind of work that may leave a permanent impression and may develop—as in Channing's case—scholars who become eminent in the next generation, but which is often forgotten. Its effects are written in the minds of men, not on pages that are carefully preserved.

As a scholar he will be chiefly remembered by his History of the United States which as he tells us in the preface to the first volume, he designed should begin at the earliest discoveries and continue to the end of the nineteenth century. The labor of writing such a book from the sources was of course colossal, and it would have been still more difficult had he not made his researches and his teachings cover the same period. After he was fully established at Harvard, his two great courses for undergraduates and graduates covered the Colonial times until he had worked up all the material thereon for his book, and then he progressively took up one period after another, giving out to his students the result of his labor. Indeed, when the writing on his book had covered any period, he took little further interest in it, and did not care to discuss it.

Channing had a thoroughly independent mind. He belonged to no school or type of thought, and would have resented being classed as a conservative or a radical. He was himself first, last, and all the time, and it is hard to discover in his talk or his books a prevailing slant of thought in the direction of any philosophic current at the moment popular or otherwise. For that reason he made scholars but not a school. His own philosophy of history on this continent was that it was a progressive evolution, each condition giving rise to the next by a natural succession; civilization being a growth, not a series of shocks or fresh starts.

He was continually searching for facts, working up any trails that he came across, and he always had a new one in his mind which he brought out in conversation even more sharply than in his History, for he was quick to see the bearing of a significant fact on an obscure situation. An example of this was his search, in connection with the Trent affair, for the meaning of the request of the British Consul at Portland for leave to transmit officers’ baggage to Canada, and Seward's answer thereto. To determine what had been actually sent to Portland he examined the manifest of the ship and discovered, to his surprise, that she brought a large amount of cotton. This led him to examine the cargoes of other ships about that date, and he found that, far from being short of cotton, the British were sending it over in large quantities for sale in New England at a time when the Confederate States were relying on the lack of cotton in Europe as a motive for interference in the war.

An evening with Channing was a delight, for he always had something new that he had unearthed, about which he liked to tell and we liked to hear, and he told it in a more pungent way than he wrote it afterwards. Great as the volumes of his History are, from a scholarly point of view, they are not as interesting as his conversation was. That is partly, I think, because he felt that committing a thing to print was a serious matter, and that history should be written in a judicial attitude; with the result that his writing was more restrained, more carefully considered, than his talk, and thus lost some of the sparkle. Moreover, he entirely disapproved of the treatment of history as a form of literature. It was to him more nearly a science than an art, and he would have repudiated with scorn Macaulay's ambition to drive with his history the last novel from the lady's dressing table. Perhaps this was carried too far, for while its scholarly value would not have changed, his History might have had a wider and a longer popularity. For students it will always be essential, but the public likes bright colors.

Personally, Channing had a shell about him, and many people saw little else. They thought it hard and prickly, and so it was superficially; but some of those who came nearest to him thought it largely a protective envelope to shield a shy and sensitive nature, due, perhaps, to the lack of an early home. His mother had died when he was three months old and his father was a wanderer whom he scarcely saw. Evidently a lonely child, unwell, and near-sighted, he seemed to shrink from contact with the outer world and with other people; so he appeared to be encased in reticence and even gruffness. Yet he was very affectionate and indeed devoted to his friends. He thought about them when he was away. To one I know he never forgot to come on the morning of his birthday, and also brought him from abroad gifts that he knew would be appreciated. To the casual observer he appeared to be one who could live satisfied in his own household, without need for other people. He attended meetings of learned societies very little, and only when he had to speak. He tended to shun general society; but this was not true of the companionship of his intimate friends, whether they were working in the same lines as himself or not.

Apart from travel, his only recreation appeared to be in boats, and he was an excellent sailor, threading the mazes of the shoals of Cape Cod without touching keel or centerboard. He had a real love of the sea, and understood both it and the craft of seamen, a knowledge that helped him greatly in the maritime part of his History, especially in its early period. With rare fortune he lived to complete a great and very laborious work, that may be said to have occupied his whole life, for he carried his plan from the first discoveries through the Civil War. All that was unfinished of the original design were the last few years of the nineteenth century; and this would have left no natural place to stop. His History is a rounded whole, an achievement that in its scope and detailed study of the sources will never be repeated.