A Response to Anna Brickhouse

I think the three points Anna Brickhouse makes at the end of her article are all well taken. Given the possible political relevance, I agree it's better to do scholarship than simply reflect on it—too much Hamlet-like anxiety isn't healthy. And even though it might be difficult, it seems possible (at least in principle) to separate literature and history as genres. In some instances, this can be a bit iffy: witness the speeches in Thucydides, which he gives verbatim even though he typically wasn't there. Given his palpable concern with testimony and reliable sources, it's hard to believe he means to pass off his recreation of a speech as accurate down to the last detail. But if not, the obvious alternative would be to see that recreation as more or less literary. Finally, I agree that scholarly duplicity is—or could become—a serious issue. However difficult historical accuracy may be to achieve, mendacity is different (regardless of how we treat intentionality). Yet even if we take all these points into account, my sense is that what we would then have is still something other than historical objectivity.

As an example of what we would have, I suggest we consider one of the great historical works of the nineteenth century: Henry Adams's History of the United States during the Administrations of Jefferson and Madison. First published in nine volumes from 1889 to 1891 (and more recently in a complete but compact two-volume edition from the Library of America), it's unquestionably the finest work produced by nineteenth-century American historical scholarship. For its composition, Adams had unparalleled access to archival sources: all the secret State Department papers of the US, England, France, and Spain, made available exclusively to him (it helps to have the right connections, and Adams had more of these than anybody). As a history, moreover, the work is particularly apt for hemispheric American studies and more largely for any transnational inquiry, since its subject is the emergence of an American empire out of the four-way power struggle between the US, England, France, and Spain. So while George Bancroft tried to narrate a history of the spread of American democracy, Adams distinctly viewed his history as one of empire. Nor did he rely a lot on vague summary and paraphrase. Instead, the History is studded with exact transcriptions of texts: documents, letters, dispatches.

Nonetheless, in at least two ways this history was quite distinctive. Taken together, they strongly suggest that what Adams thought he was after might amount to something other than historical objectivity. On the micro-level, scattered throughout the History, we find instances of what might be called factual discrepancy. As an example, take the three dispatches sent by General William Henry Harrison, US commander, each of which gives a different time for the commencement of the battle of Tippecanoe. As commander of US forces, he obviously was in a better position to know than anybody else. And since all three dispatches were sent shortly after the engagement, there's no question of distortion produced by memory loss over time. But if it isn't possible to explain the discrepancy by any significant time-lag in reportage, it's not clear how we can explain it. Under such circumstances, the typical move would be to talk about the reliability of different sources. But, since all three reports come from the same source, and since all were produced at virtually the same time, we don't go anywhere with that. Nor can we go behind Harrison to any better sources. As US commander, he's the only one who knew where all his people were. No subordinate officer, no ordinary soldier would presumably have had any better vantage point from which to report on the scene. What we can't get from Harrison, then, we can't expect to get anywhere.

On the macro-level, a very different but equally significant aspect of the History emerges. In terms of its structure, this massive work can in fact be described quite simply: a lengthy introduction that portrays the...