3 Treatment of Historical Source

The Treatment of an Historical Source
Author(s): John D. Milligan

Source: History and Theory , May, 1979, Vol. 18, No. 2 (May, 1979), pp. 177-196
Published by: Wiley for Wesleyan University
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.com/stable/2504755
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THE TREATMENT OF AN HISTORICAL SOURCE
JOHN D. MILLIGAN
Every historian knows the special excitement that is derived form perusing
the documents, the primary sources that are the basic, if incomplete and
imperfect, evidence from which he seeks to re-create the past. Yet, im-
mersion in the sources can sometimes present the scholar with a dilemma.
On the one hand, manuscripts evidently written by persons long dead
exude a sacrosanctity which may make the historian reluctant to question
the veracity of their contents, let alone the authenticity of the manuscripts
themselves. Yet things can inhibit the historian's giving credence to the
substance of the documents, notwithstanding their apparent venerability. If
other scholars have already plumbed aspects of the historical subject to
which the particular documents refer and have arrived at conclusions seem-
ingly at odds with the testimony presented in those documents, the re-
searcher may hesitate to accept the new evidence at face value.
Some time past, in the course of my research, I came across a manu-
script letter which posed rather precisely the problem of the hallowed
document versus the accepted historical conclusion. The letter contained
charges against several of its writer's contemporaries, men whom histo-
rians have elevated to considerable prominence in the chronicles of Amer-
ican military and naval affairs. Indeed, the charges were so sensational, so
directly contradictory to established historical opinion, that my first im-
pulse was to dismiss them out of hand. Perhaps it was a reverence for
manuscripts which gave me pause; or perhaps it was a caution I had once
read in a classic work by Marc Bloch. The student of the past, Bloch
wrote, must forever be on the lookout for evidence which, though it may
not correspond to expectation, may still be valid in some respects. Oth-
erwise, historians would never uncover new and surprising facts. One
"could make a long list of facts which scholarly routine first denied be-
cause they were surprising."'
1. Marc Bloch, The Historian's Craft, transl. Peter Putnam (New York, 1953), 120-121.
Another French historian has similarly warned that if the historian "allows himself to be too
readily influenced by established tradition, he runs the risk of seeing the past through the
spectacles of others." See Henri-Iren&e Marrou, The Meaning of History, transl. Robert J.
Olsen (Baltimore, Md., 1966), 78.

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178 JOHN D. MILLIGAN
Dated February 28, 1863, the letter in question was apparently written
during the American Civil War by a Federal officer near Vicksburg, Mis-
sissippi. On the day designated, that Confederate-held stronghold on the
Mississippi River was being besieged by Northern troops commanded by
General Ulysses S. Grant and his chief lieutenant, General William T.
Sherman, and by Northern naval units commanded by Admiral David D.
Porter. The letter's accusatory sentences are brief and to the point.
I was over to see Porter today. Found Grant and Sherman with him. They are all
traitors. I heard Grant say myself that the Government at Washington must be
overthrown - the North revolutionized - etc. but that it was not yet quite time.
Porter said his interests were all with the South - that his best friend was Jeff
Davis etc. What are we coming to?2
Now, of course, anyone who is at all familiar with the events of the
period knows that no military coup d'etat occurred within the North, nor
have students of the Civil War uncovered any evidence of an attempted
coup. Yet, alerted by Bloch, might one not still ask the question: Is it
possible that these officers discussed, however briefly, the desirability or
possibility of executing a coup? It was in the hope of answering this query
that I put the document to the several tests suggested by the experts.
Interestingly, even surprisingly, when subjected to analysis, the letter does
meet certain of the accepted criteria of historical criticism.
A document must first of all measure up to the standards of what the

authorities call external criticism. Here the researcher asks the question
put by Lester Stephens: "Is the source authentic?" To answer this ques-
tion, he looks at the document from the perspective which G. J. Renier
calls the "outside." Rather than immediately concerning himself with the
ideas "inside" the document, he first wants to know when, where and by
whom the document was written. "Lacking this information," warns Ed-
ward Hulme, "we cannot be sure of the worth of a document." If the
document itself does not provide some or any of this information, the
historian, using prescribed methods, must seek to provide it. If, however,
as is the case with the document under scrutiny, the date, place, and name
of the author are all given, then the job of the external analyst becomes one
of establishing the authenticity of this information. According to Arthur
Marwick, the historian must determine that the document was written at
the time it says it was, at the place it says it was, and by the person it says
it was. In short, he engages in a negative exercise described by Renier "as
making sure that the alleged trace [document] is not a fake or a forgery."
This exercise may call upon a classicist or medievalist to be an expert in a
number of esoteric arts, but it demands less of the Americanist because of
the relative modernity of his subject. Thus, as V. H. Galbraith has with
2. Charles R. Ellet to Alfred W. Ellet, February 28, 1863, Ellet Family Papers (Transpor-
tation Library, University of Michigan).

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THE TREATMENT OF AN HISTORICAL SOURCE 179
only slight exaggeration remarked about the application of one of these arts:
"For the historian working in any period later than the sixteenth century,
the study of paleography involves little more than a certain low cunning-
quickly gained by practice - in deciphering bad writing."3
In truth, of course, there is something more to the exercise of distin-
guishing a fraud, even a recent one, from the genuine article than Gal-
braith's remark implies. The historian who would determine the genuine-
ness of a comparatively recent document can frequently apply "an argu-
ment from multiplicity." If the particular document is filed with other
documents apparently written by the same person, then, writes Renier,
each document, including the questionable one, "is vouched for by all
similar documents preserved with it. . . . As the number of documents of
the same nature grows, so does the probability that each of them is authen-
tic." In other words, the hypothesis that the letters are authentic is more
credible than the hypothesis that a conspiracy led to the forging of the
whole series of letters and the placing of them in the archive. To be certain
that his special document comports with the others in the series, John
Vincent advises the investigator to be "thoroughly saturated" with the
personal language, manner of expression and writing habits of the ascribed
author as they are manifested in the series as a whole.4 This familiarity will
not only enable him to check the authenticity of the author of the document
but of its date and place of record. Thus if the series of documents provides
information about when and where the author was, and if that information
is congruent with the time and location provided in the document being
studied, the researcher can also assume the probable authenticity of these
details.
The letter which accuses Grant, Sherman, and Porter of treason, when
submitted to external criticism, passes inspection. First of all, it reposes
with scores of other communications apparently written by the same author
and held by the Transportation Library of the University of Michigan, to
which institution they were bequeathed along with the whole of the writer's
family papers by a relative of the writer. Thus the document is, in Louis
Gottschalk's phrasing, "where it ought to be," and where it can be com-
pared with other documents by the same author. This comparison estab-
lishes that its form of presentation - its "diction, style, versification, [and]
3. Lester D. Stephens, Probing the Past: A Guide to the Study and Teaching qf History
(Boston, 1974), 37; G. J. Reiner, History. Its Purpose and Method (London, 1950), 162,
109-110; Edward Maslin Hulme, History and Its Neighbors (New York, 1942), 55; Arthur
Marwick, The Nature of History (London, 1970), 136-137; V. H. Galbraith, An Introduction
to the Studv of History (London, 1964), 22. The first use of the terms "external criticism"
and, as treated below, "internal criticism" is usually credited to the German historian, Ernst
Bernheim. See his Lehrbuch der historischen Methode (Leipzig, 1889).
4. Renier, History: Its Purpose and Method, 110, 162-163; John Martin Vincent, Historical
Research: An Outline of Theory and Practice (New York, 1911), 103.

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handwriting," to cite Gilbert Garraghan's criteria - is consistent with that

used by the author. So the rule of there being safety in numbers would here
seem to apply. Further, the author's correspondence reveals that he was
near Vicksburg on February 28, 1863, the place and the day the accusatory
letter was dated. In fine, there seems to be no reason to doubt that the
apparent origin of the letter, respecting who, where, and when, is its true
origin. It should be added that the determination of the authenticity of a
document in the file of a library or archive is not, of course, the sole
responsibility of the historian. Allan Nevins has noted that custodians of
such repositories "usually take every precaution to exclude spurious docu-
ments. " 5
There still remains a final step in the process of criticizing the external
characteristics of an historical source: "is it," asks Allen Johnson, "an
original or a secondary source of information?" Does the source express
ideas that originated with its author or ideas that he derived from what
Garraghan labels "pre-existing material," that is, another source or
sources?6 This question might in other circumstances require considerable
attention, but in the case under consideration it would seem to have al-
ready been answered. Since no period in American history has been stud-
ied more closely than that of the Civil War, and since no students of the
period have reported other sources (nor have any come to hand) that in any
sense duplicate the charges contained in the present document, the histo-
rian can probably assume that they are peculiar to that document and not
derivative. In truth, since the author of the document claimed that he was
an eyewitness to the event and heard the traitorous pronouncements with
his own ears, the question really becomes whether the man was actually an
eyewitness or whether he derived his ideas from someone else who was an
eyewitness. This question will be considered below as part of the process
of internal criticism.
To the extent, then, that external criticism can determine genuineness,
the document under inspection is in all probability authentic. Significant in
this context is the word probability. In analyzing historical documents
there is no absolute certainty. In each step of the procedure thus far exam-
ined and still to be examined, "the judgment," in the dictum of the authors
5. Louis Gottschalk, Understanding History: A Primer of Historical Method (2nd ed.,

New Yoik, 1969), 123; Gilbert J. Garraghan, A Guide to Historical Method, ed. Jean
Delanglez (New York, 1946), 177; Allan Nevins, The Gateway to History (rev. ed., New
York, 1962), 140.
6. Allen Johnson, The Historian and Historical Evidence (New York, 1926), 61; Gar-
raghan, A Guide to Historical Method, 168. Garraghan (p. 206) explains the process of
analysis: "When two or more sources (witnesses) report the same fact or series of facts in the
same way, the sources are mutually related. If the sources are two in number, one is derived
from the other, or both are derived in common from a third. If the sources are more than two,
various relationships of dependence may exist between [sic] them."

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of the volume edited by Robert Shafer, "is one of varying degrees of

probability - probably true, probably accurate, probably untrue, probably
inaccurate."7
So the investigator has convinced himself of the probable authenticity of
the Civil War letter; he must next address himself to the probable credibil-
ity of its content. "Is it reliable?" is Stephens' question. W. H. Walsh
observes that the historian now "has to decide whether or not to believe it
[the document], or again how much of it to believe"; because, as the
Shafer volume warns, authenticity is not a measure of credibility. An au-
thenticated document "may lie or mislead, intentionally or unintention-
ally." To probe this possibility, say Norman Cantor and Richard
Schneider, the source "must be explained and analyzed in terms of valid-
ity, accuracy, and point of view." Benedetto Croce explains the problem in
more detail. Though there is a tendency to assume that simply because the
authenticated document "has been written down it answers to the truth,"
this assumption, he writes,
may turn out to be false in fact, owing to the note having been made in a moment of
distraction or of hallucination, or too late, when the memory of the fact was already
imprecise and lacking in certainty, or because it was capriciously made or made
with the object of deceiving others. But just for this reason, written evidence is not
usually accepted with closed eyes; its verisimilitude is examined and we confront it
with other written evidence, we investigate the probity and accuracy of the writer
or witness.8
The "other written evidence" to which Croce refers is subsumed under

those standards that the researcher applies to determine the credibility of a
document and which, taken together, authorities call internal criticism. The
process of internal criticism, as contrasted with external, looks at the
document, in Renier's word, from the "inside." Further, Renier points
out, whereas external criticism applies an argument from multiplicity, in-
ternal criticism "is individual in its method." The credibility of each
document "has to be assessed on its own merit."9
Charles Langlois and Charles Seignobos have suggested that the histo-
rian begin his internal analysis by asking, what exactly do the words in the
document mean? This may seem an elementary question, but the inves-
tigator must take care not to read into the written statement more than its
maker intended to say. To guard against this eventuality, Langlois and
Seignobos advise the critic to divide the question into two parts. First he
7. A Guide to Historical Method, ed. Robert Jones Shafer (rev. ed., Homewood, Ill.,
1974), 41.
8. Stephens, Probing the Past, 37; W. H. Walsh, An Introduction to Philosophy of History
(3rd ed., Atlantic Highlands, N.J., 1976), 20; Shafer, Guide, 141; Norman F. Cantor and
Richard I. Schneider, How to Study History (New York, 1967), 33; Benedetto Croce, His-
tory, Its Theory and Practice, transl. Douglas Anslie (New York, 1921), 137.
9. Renier, History: Its Purpose and Method, 162-163.

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should ask, what does the statement say, literally? Here the statement
being investigated would seem to contain little or no ambiguity. It accuses
of contemplating treasonable acts two men who would later become the
North's most successful generals, and a third, who would become its sec-
ond most successful admiral. It specifically attributes to Grant the
statement that, though the time was not yet propitious, the government in
Washington had to be overthrown. Further, in remarking on Porter's stated
sympathies for the South, it implies that in such a revolution the objective
of the admiral, at least, would have been to aid the Confederacy.
The second part of the question that Langlois and Seignobos would have
the historian ask of the document to clarify its sense is, what is its real
meaning? As Homer Hockett points out, "there is often a difference be-
tween the literal and real meanings." The reader will recognize that the
experts are not yet concerned with whether or not the statement in the
document is true but rather whether, in Hockett's words, it "is intended to
be taken literally or in an oblique sense." 1Hulme explains: "Sometimes the
real meaning of a writer is expressed in jest, sarcasm, or allegory."' 0 Here
again the wording of the statement is so explicit, that it is difficult to
conceive of its maker intending it in anything but the most literal sense.
Moreover, as the reader will learn below, its maker was a most direct
person, not given to ambiguity or obliquity, nor to jokes, irony, or fables to
make a point.
Convinced of what the document means and that its author meant what
he wrote, the historian must get down to the business of determining its
credibility. The authorities suggest several ways to approach the problem.
Hockett writes, for example, that "the critic must inquire whether a state-
ment under scrutiny is based on the observation of the maker or someone
else." As noted above, the writer of the letter apparently did not obtain his
ideas from other written sources. Now the question becomes, did he obtain
them by actually witnessing the events he described or was he merely
passing on hearsay? Respecting this point, there seems scant reason to
doubt that the witness was actually present at a meeting with Grant, Sher-
man, and Porter. To be sure, warns Hockett, the scholar must be chary of
the self-proclaimed witness who "betrays vanity, by habitual ascription to
himself of a conspicuous share in important actions or events, [or an]
intimacy with prominent personages."' 1 Thorough research indicates,
however, that, as a full colonel who headed what was in effect a separate,
if not independent, command, the witness frequently consulted with the
10. Ch[arles] V. Langlois and Ch[arles] Seignobos, Introduction to the Study of History,
transl. G. G. Berry (New York, 1925), 145-146; Homer Carey Hockett, The Critical Method
in Historical Research and Writing (rev. ed., New York, 1955), 43; Hulme, History and Its
Neighbors, 71.
11. Hockett, The Critical Method in Historical Research and Writing, 50, 58.

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admiral and at times with the two generals. In fact, the colonel had only
just returned from an expedition which he had undertaken with the admi-
ral's approval. A close inspection of the records also reveals that all four
officers were in the vicinity of Vicksburg on or about February 28, and
hence had the opportunity to confer.12
The man's rank and authority would also seem to answer, if only in part,
another question that the historian addresses to his witness. Even suppos-
ing "the witness was in a position to know what he was talking about," did
he, ask Oscar Handlin and his associates, have "the skill and competence
to observe accurately"?"3 The credentials of the witness in this instance
seem to warrant that he at least be given a respectful hearing.
If the witness were close to the event in space, it is also important, note
Jacques Barzun and Henry Graff, that his testimony about what he saw
and heard be given close to it in time. To be sure, as Daniel Aaron
notes, "no writer enjoys total recall . . . every recollection is suspect."
Nevertheless, the freshness of testimony is important for two reasons.
Gottschalk explains the first. "There are three steps in historical tes-
timony: observation, recollection, and recording. . . . At each of these
steps something of the possible testimony may be lost." In a word, other
things being equal, the sooner the witness transcribes his recollections, the
greater is likely to be their veracity. A second reason for suspecting be-
latedly recorded testimony is aptly if sardonically stated by Aaron, himself.
[W]hat a person was or did or thought thirty years ago is past and dead, even if that
person is technically alive. The living relic is his own ancestor; and feeling a deep
familial piety for his defunct historical self, he indulges in ancestor worship, tidies
up embarrassing disorders of his dead past, reverently conceals his own skeleton in
a hidden closet.14
12. These statements are based on my research for John D. Milligan, Gunboats Down the
Mississippi (Annapolis, Md., 1965); and on Charles R. Ellet to Alfred W. Ellet, February 28,
1863, Ellet Papers; David D. Porter to Gideon Welles, February 28, 1863, Letters Received
by the Secretary of the Navy from Commanding Officers of Squadrons: Mississippi, 1861-
1865 (National Archives, Record Group 45, hereafter cited as Mississippi Squadron Letters);
Ulysses S. Grant to Henry W. Halleck, February 18 and March 1, 1863, and Special Orders
of U. S. Grant, March 1, 1863, U. S. War Department, The War of the Rebellion: A
Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, 130 vols. (Wash-
ington, 1880-1901), Series I, Vol. XXIV, Part I, 18, and Vol. LII, Part I, 337 (hereafter cited
as O.R.A.); and William T. Sherman, February 26, 1863, Home Letters of General Sherman,
ed. M. A. DeWolfe Howe (New York, 1909), 239-242.
13. Oscar Handlin et al., Harvard Guide to American History (Cambridge, Mass., 1954),
24.
14. Jacques Barzun and Henry F. Graff, The Modern Researcher (3rd ed., New York,
1977), 128; Daniel Aaron, "The Treachery of Recollection: the Inner and the Outer History"
in Essays oil History and Literature, ed. Robert H. Bremner ([Columbus] 1966). 10, 18;
Gottschalk, Understanding History, 151. Though Aaron is referring specifically to oral tes-
timony given long after the event testified about, obviously written testimony belatedly given
raises similar problems of fidelity of memory.

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When the questionable document is put to the test of the proximity of its
testimony to the event testified to, it bears up well; the event described was
witnessed, recalled, and recorded all on the same day, Febraury 28, 1863.
Another criterion which the historian applies in his investigation of the
reliability of a document inquires for whom was the testimony of the wit-
ness intended? Clearly, it makes a difference. Marwick believes "that a
primary source is most valuable when the purpose for which it was com-
piled is at the furthest remove from the purpose of the historian," that
is, when the primary source was not compiled for posterity. In the same
spirit, Hockett advises researchers to be wary of testimony "colored by
the desire to please hearers or readers." A statement made to advance
one's interests or to win public approbation or to secure one's niche in
history would have less credibility than a statement made privately to a
close associate or relative. Gottschalk puts the matter this way: "Because
the effort, on the one hand, to palliate the truth or, on the other, to decorate
it with literary, rhetorical, or dramatic flourishes tends to increase as the
expected audience increases, in general the fewer the number for whose
eyes the document was meant (i.e., the greater its confidential nature), the
more 'naked' its contents are likely to be." 15 In this connection, the tes-
timony being evaluated once again appears to have substance. It was given
in a personal letter to an uncle with whom the writer was on intimate and
affectionate terms.
To this point the historical source has apparently passed inspection. Its
authenticity, date, and place of inception appear valid. Its meaning seems
unmistakable. The individual whose testimony it presents evidently was an
actual witness to the event he sought to describe, had sufficient experience
to observe accurately, recorded his recollections immediately subsequent
to the event, and meant them solely for the eyes of a person whom he
would seem to have had no reason to deceive. All well and good; and yet
by now the reader is undoubtedly aware that, while I have ostensibly
played the part of detective, carefully and objectively assaying the evi-
dence, I have in fact worn "the mantle of Guardian," have presented in
defense of the proclaimed witness to the historical event a lawyer's brief
which reveals only that evidence that supports the credibility of his tes-
timony.
Now, of course, the reader knows not only that no military coup oc-
curred or was attempted in the Civil War North; if he be a student of the
period, he must also know that the particular charges contained in the
document under study are not corroborated by the testimony of other
witnesses. As a matter of fact, this point was admitted when it was argued
15. Marwick, The Nature of History, 136; Hockett, The Critical Method in Historical
Research and Writing, 58; Gottschalkj Understanding History, 90.

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that the ideas in the testimony were original to the document. And this
admission could be telling. "[I]n most instances," Nevins emphasizes,
"guilt cannot be hcJd conclusively established save by corroborative evi-
dence from at least one independent source." In the present case, the
historian is left with a single witness; and the testimony of a single witness,
warns Nevins, is "the most difficult form of evidence to test," because the
witness "may be affected by a hundred forms of personal bias." This,
however, does not mean, Barzun and Graff stress, that a single witness
cannot "be quite accurate"; and, as a devotee of the truth, the reader may
perhaps admit that the brief drawn above, as obviously one-sided as it is,
does raise some questions that merit answers.16
Before considering the case against the witness, the reader might also
wish to ask himself, what if the evidence thus far presented were all that
had survived? At Gottschalk writes, "only a part of what was observed in
the past was remembered by those who observed it; only a part of what
was remembered was recorded; [and] only a part of what was recorded has
survived."17 This truth presents an especially thorny problem for the his-
torian of ancient or medieval times, in which eras fewer people were liter-
ate and from which eras fewer documents survive; but it can also on
occasion pose difficulty for the historian of more recent times. Suppose
for a moment that the accusatory document provided the only source of
information about its author, because it was the only item by or about him
that had survived. The scholar, in that case, would have no direct evidence
by which to weigh the author's credibility. And suppose that the surviving
documents by and about the accused men were not sufficiently informative
to exonerate them from the charges. Might not historians in that situation
be justified in speculating that certain high-ranking Federal officers may at
least have discussed the possibility of carrying out a revolution?
Happily, of course, since all kinds of evidence about both accuser and
accused have survived from the period of the Civil War, the historian can
in this instance test the credibility of the single witness by additional
means. Indeed, historians through surviving documents have studied the
three accused officers so thoroughly, have written in such detail about the
impulses which drove them, the objectives which beckoned them and the
events which informed their lives, that, unless the testimony against them
were unimpeachable, there would be no justification for probing and
evaluating again their biographical sources.18 Without further equivocating,
16. Nevins, The Gateway to History, 196, 214; Barzun and Graff, The Modern Re-
searcher, 128. The term "the mantle of Guardian" is Robin Winks's. See The Historian as
Detective: Essays on Evidence, ed. Robin W. Winks (New York, 1969), 177.
17. Gottschalk, Understanding History, 45.
18. For listings of biographical works on Grant, Sherman, and Porter see the comprehen-
sive bibliography in J. G. Randall and David Donald, The Civil War and Reconstruction (rev.
ed., Boston, 1969).

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therefore, let it be stated that the testimony of the accuser can be discred-
ited to the point that no further investigation into the lives of the accused
seems warranted. This is not to say that the document which makes the
charges is a forgery; it has, after all. withstood the tests of external criti-
cism. Nor is it to say that the witness's testimony was an intentional lie; it
has, after all, withstood certain of the tests of internal criticism; and no
evidence has been uncovered to suggest that the witness purposely sought
to deceive. It is rather to say that by completing the process of internal
criticism, the historian can cast so much doubt upon the ability of the
witness to tell the truth about the particular conference in question that his
testimony can safely be characterized as unreliable. The difficulty, writes
Sir Charles Oman, is often one "in which the author [witness] is not
intentionally falsifying the progress of events, but practically doing so,
owing to bad information, personal bias, or sometimes mere stupidity." J.
A. Passmore puts the matter even more pointedly when he observes that it
is the endless ability of men to deceive themselves "rather than the risk of
lying, [that] is the principal reason for regarding their testimony with sus-
picion. ' 19
If the reader now knows that the witness was the culprit, that is, knows
the solution to the game of detective being played by the historian, he may
still discover that the final moves by which the researcher arrived at the
solution have a certain interest of their own. Beyond recognizing that the
evidence thus far presented is favorable to the witness, the reader may
have also noted that it is for the most part circumstantial in nature. It
implies mainly from attendant spatial and temporal circumstances that the
witness was present at the event, was competent to observe it, and re-
corded his recollections of it under conditions favorable to credibility.
Apart from the fact that he was a colonel in command, however, the reader
knows almost nothing about the witness himself. If he knows that spatial
and temporal circumstances were generally conducive to the witness's re-
porting accurately, he does not know that psychological and emotional
circumstances were conducive to it.
As the critic studies his witness, Gottschalk and the contributors to the
Shafer volume advise him to concentrate on whether the witness was able
to tell the truth. The latter writers divide the question of the witness's
ability to tell the truth into (1) his "Social ability [which] . . . concerns the
familiarity of the witness with the subject matter, and his willingness [with-
out inhibition or prejudice] to observe to the best of his ability," and (2) his
"Physical ability [which] . . . includes the condition of the witness, and
19. Sir Charles Oman, On the Writing of History (London, 1939), 28; J. A. Passmore,
"The Objectivity of History" in Philosophical Analysis and History, ed. William H. Dray
(New York, 1966), 79.

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external conditions that affect his observational powers."20 Concerning the

social ability of the witness to tell the truth, it has been established that he
was a colonel exercising command responsibility, and this information is
doubtless important; but it may be even more important to know that at the
time he made his accusations his total military experience spanned exactly
nine months and that he was nineteen years old, surely one of the youngest
colonels in the Union Army. Specifically, the young officer, who charged
Grant, Sherman, and Porter with treason, was Charles Rivers Ellet, com-
mander of the Mississippi Ram Fleet.
That a youth with so little experience had attained such high rank and
heavy responsibility is partly explained by the fact that the amazingly rapid
expansion of the armed forces during the Civil War resulted in many young
men attaining rank and responsibility. Still, the phenomenal advancement
of this particular young man was not typical even of those times; before
being promoted colonel, the only rank Ellet had held had been the lowly
one of medical cadet and assistant to an army surgeon. A second and
more important factor explains his sudden elevation and bears directly on
the credibility of his later testimony. The ram fleet which he commanded
was originally the brainchild of his father, the well-known civil engineer,
Charles Ellet, Jr. Long an advocate of resurrecting the tactic of ramming in
naval warfare, when the USS Merrimac (alias CSS Virginia) rammed and
sank a United States sloop-of-war in Hampton Roads, Virginia, the elder
Ellet had persuaded the War Department, which controlled Federal naval
operations on the inland rivers, to send him into the Mississippi Valley.
His mission was to convert river steamers into rams to cooperate with
Union gunboats already operating against the Confederate River Defense
Fleet. The engineer not only created a ram fleet; as its first commander he
secured a colonel's commission and gathered about him a daring band of
boats' crews and marines, among whom were a number of his relatives,
including three nephews; his younger brother, Alfred, who transferred
from the infantry to accept the rank of lieutenant colonel and the position
of second in command of the rams; and his only son, Charles Rivers, who
left his medical studies in Washington, D. C. to enter the service as ap-
prentice to the fleet surgeon.21
In a sense, the older Ellet made the ram fleet into a family enterprise, a
circumstance which was to have a profound effect upon his son. The Ellet
20. Gottschalk, Understanding History, 150-155; Shafer, Guide, 145-146.

21. For information on the Ellets see the Ellet Papers; U. S. Navy Department, Official
Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion, 30 vols. (Washing-
ton, 1894-1914), Series I, Vols. XXIII and XXIV (hereafter cited as O.R.N.); G. D. Lewis,
Charles Ellet, Jr.: The Engineer as Individualist, 1810-1862 (Urbana, Ill., 1968); "Charles
Rivers Ellet" in The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography (New York, 1897), IV,
360-361; and John D. Milligan, ' Charles Ellet, Naval Architect: A Study in Nineteenth-
Century Professionalism," The American Neptune 31 (1971), 52-72.

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family, itself, personified the stereotypic nineteenth-century clan. Charles,

Jr., a genuinely self-made man, was the patriarch not merely of his im-
mediate family but of his brothers' families, too; and, having shaped the
ram fleet, he proceeded to preside over it and its personnel just as he did
his extended family. All looked to him, until he was struck down.
On June 1, 1862, his nineteenth birthday, Charles Rivers joined the fleet.
Five days later, his father was mortally wounded while leading two of his
rams in battle. The command passed to the boy's Uncle Alfred, who gave
his nephew charge of a ram. In the autumn, when his uncle was promoted
to brigadier general and sent north to recruit a special counter-guerrilla
marine brigade, young Ellet, who in his short military career had served
with daring and imagination, was made colonel and succeeded to the com-
mand of the ram fleet. So it was that this youth of undoubted courage but
limited experience, taking as it were the helm fashioned by his father's
hand and with it the obligation to continue the family enterprise and to
protect its reputation, commanded for a time the organization which em-
bodied both the obligation and the reputation. He hoped, he had written to
his sister just before receiving his colonel's eagles, to "crown my father's
head with the laurels which are his due.'22
As if this responsibility were not enough, the new colonel was burdened
with the fear that his trust was threatened, not simply by the enemy but by
the very Federal officers with whom he was expected to cooperate. The
Northern squadron of wooden and ironclad gunboats, which had been
operating on the interior waters when his father had brought his rams into
action, was like the ram fleet administered by the War Department; but,
whereas the rams were commanded by recently commissioned army
officers without military education, the gunboats were for the most part
commanded by professional naval officers. The existence of these two
independent water-borne organizations was obviously not calculated to
allay jealousy and friction; and, in fact, while they had directed ram opera-
tions, the elder Ellets seemed intentionally to encourage the rivalry. In
mid-summer the gunboats were officially transferred to Navy Department
jurisdiction, but because of a technicality -- the rams were not defined as
gunboats - the Ellet flotilla remained under War Department auspices,
and the rivalry continued, only in exacerbated form. Writing in his diary,
Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles later correctly assessed the situation:
"there cannot be two distinct commands on the river, under different or-
ders from different Departments without endangering collision.' '23
The October succession of Admiral Porter to the command of the gun-
22. C. R. Ellet to Mary Ellet, November 4, 1862, Ellet Papers.

23. Entry (or November 4, 1862, Diary of Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy Under
Lincoln and Johnson, ed. Howard K. Beale, 3 vols. (New York, 1960), I, 180.

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boat squadron had done nothing to span the breech. Believing with reason
that all naval operations should be under one director, he put pressure on
the Navy Department to have the rams transferred to his command. In the
meantime, it was at his suggestion, he later claimed, that the troublesome
Alfred Ellet was sent off to recruit. Perhaps Porter assumed young Charles
Rivers would be more tractable; if so, he was wrong. With his model a
father who had pursued his ambitions relentlessly, and defined his rights
broadly and guarded them zealously, the new chief of the ram fleet was no
less suspicious of the motives of the professionals than had been its two
former commanders. He gave himself over to paroxysms of anxiety that
the navy, and Porter especially, were plotting to rob him and his charge of
their independence.24 Letters from his uncle did much to fuel his suspicions
that a conspiracy was afoot.
Called to Washington to consult with Secretary of War Edwin M. Stan-
ton about the special marine brigade he was to raise, General Ellet kept
Charles apprised of the contest going on between War and Navy Depart-
ment officials as to who should control the ram fleet and, once it was
operational, the marine brigade. In the end, after a protracted and bitter
cabinet session, the President imposed a compromise. Although the rams
and the brigade would remain under the War Department, by Lincoln's
order of November 7 the Ellets would "report to Rear Admiral Porter for
instructions, and act under his direction until otherwise ordered by the War
Department." Needless to add, neither side to the dispute was happy with
this settlement. Even before learning the outcome, the general was com-
municating to his nephew: "We are going to have most powerful enemies
to contend with in Porter and his naval associates.... these naval officers
with guilt [sic] stripes around their sleeves seem to feel that God Almighty
holds but a small command compared to what they exercise"; and again on
the day after Lincoln's order went out: "I can assure you that we have a
tremendous hostility to contend against in the navy.' '25
Ironically, even as the uncle was nourishing his nephew's distrust of the
naval commander at Vicksburg, the latter and his military counterparts
were admitting the younger Ellet to their councils, a fact which could only
24. Porter tells of his role in Alfred Ellet's recruiting activities in his "Journal," I, 410-411,
David D. Porter Papers (Library of Congress). For Colonel Ellet's suspicions respecting the
navy's machinations, see his letters to Mary Ellet, November 18, 1862, and January 8, Feb-
ruary 6, and March 9, 1863, Ellet Papers.
25. Lincoln's order of November 7, 1862, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed.
Roy P. Basler, 9 vols. (New Brunswick, N. J., 1953-55), V, 490; Edwin M. Stanton to Alfred
Ellet, November 8, 1862, and Alfred Ellet to C. R. Ellet, November 3 and 8, 1862, Ellet
Papers. For the Navy's dissatisfaction with the compromise see Gustavus V. Fox to Porter,
November 8, 1862, Confidential Correspondence of Gustavus Vasa Fox, Assistant Secretary
of the Navy, 1861-1865, ed. Robert M. Thompson and Richard Wainwright, 2 vols. (New
York, 1920), II, 147-148.

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have strengthened his aspirations and, given his uncle's missives, increased
his sense of familial obligation. Thomas Jerome stresses how influential are
the memberships the witness holds in a class, church, clique, and, not least
in this case, family. In "all of these relations he is virtually obliged to see
things as they are not, and to speak that which is false." As he watched
Admiral Porter working hand in glove with army commander Grant and his
lieutenant, Sherman, Charles may also have become mistrustful of the
generals' motives. Moreover, something else his uncle had written could
have preyed on his mind and caused him to be on the lookout for the least
sign of confimation. "I think before the next twelve months roll around,"
General Ellet, without attribution, specificity, or elaboration, prophesied
darkly, "that he who then holds the army will have great oportunity [sic]
for good or evil in his hands[.] A great revolution is in progress aside from
the present rebelion [sic], that will shake the pillars of government to their
very foundations if it does not overthrow them." Whatever motives or
whatever events, real or fancied, may have prompted Alfred Ellet to write
these words, it seems no travesty of the law of cause and effect to specu-
late that he may have planted one of the seeds which several months later
would sprout in his nephew's charges of treason. Gottschalk emphasizes
the importance of the witness's expectations or anticipations; "so that,"
says the Shafer volume, "the eye apparently beholds and the ear ap-
prehends what the mind wishes them to report.26 In fine, the witness can
become a prisoner of his own perceptions. With all of the pressures he
bore, with his uncle fostering his misgivings, how could young Ellet be
expected accurately to interpret what went on in those top-level sessions?
If all this were not sufficient, the historian can define yet another cir-
cumstance which most probably worked against the social ability of this
witness to tell the truth. Vincent suggests that in addition to the witness's
"relations to superiors," the researcher should consider "the line of
promotion which lies open to such an official, or what may be his personal
ambitions." Charles was no doubt deeply concerned to protect the honor
of his family's reputation, to which he referred often, and perhaps too, the
existence of the Union, though he referred to it seldom if ever; but how
does one separate family honor or patriotism from personal ambition? No
sooner had Ellet learned of his promotion to colonel than he was writing:
"So you see, Sister, the eagles have perched on my shoulders at last. ...
Now for the stars!" There were, he continued, but two steps between him
and a major generalship, the highest military rank the Federal Government
was then conferring. Given the right opportunities, his next birthday could
26. Thomas Spencer Jerome, Aspects of the Study of Roman History (New York, 1923), 48;
Alfred Ellet to C. R. Ellet, November 3, 1862, Ellet Papers; Gottschalk, Understanding
History, 160; Shafer, Guide, 146.

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see him, "well, much higher than boys of nineteen usually get.... There is
a tide in the affairs of men, and I think that the present one will roll me
either very high up or very low down. And I would have it so. Gold and
power or the grave."27 Yet, his great ambition to the contrary notwith-
standing, when young Colonel Ellet attended that critical meeting of Feb-
ruary 28, his military future was already under a cloud; he had just returned
from an expedition which his seniors pronounced a failure.
The sortie had begun auspiciously enough. Although they had failed to
sink a Confederate steamer tied at the Vicksburg levee, Ellet and a bold
crew had, under Porter's orders, successfully taken one of the rams down
the Mississippi, directly but safely through the fire of the city's riverside
batteries. Their objective was to establish a blockade of the Red River,
which, flowing through Louisiana into the Mississippi 190 miles south of
Vicksburg, provided a highway over which the enemy was sending vital
supplies to Vicksburg and the eastern Confederacy. With Grant and Por-
ter's campaign stalled for the time being, the young colonel may have felt
compelled to do something decisive. When the regular navy had seemed
balked in the past, his father and uncle, as if to emphasize the caution of
the professionals, had taken it upon themselves to press downriver on
daring missions of their own. Porter, being reluctant to risk one of his
ironclads, seemed delighted when Ellet had volunteered. He later insisted
that the idea, although not the failure, was all his. General Grant, himself,
appeared convinced that Ellet's ram by itself could shut off the Red River,
and for a time he was right.28
In quick succession, the ram colonel captured and destroyed several Con-
federate supply boats which he intercepted on the Mississippi. He must
have felt that he was more than advancing whatever causes impelled him.
Then, impetuosity got the better of him. Ignoring Porter's orders to remain
at the mouth of the Red River, he steamed up that stream, only to have to
abandon his vessel when she grounded under heavy fire from the guns of a
Confederate shore battery. The details of the affair are not important to the
present context. To appreciate the state of Ellet's mind by the time he had
returned to Vicksburg, it is enough to know that he and some of his surviv-
ing crewmen had floated down the Red River on cotton bales, fled pursuing
Confederate vessels in an auxiliary steamer until she lost her rudders,
continued their flight up the Mississippi in a captured Confederate steamer,
and were only assured of escape when they ran in with the USS Indianola,
an ironclad gunboat that Porter had belatedly dispatched past Vicksburg.
The Confederates meanwhile had repaired the captured Federal ram and
27. Vincent, Historical Research, 130; C. R. Ellet to Mary Ellet, November 4, 1862, Ellet
Papers.
28. Porter to Welles, February 22 and 27, 1863, Mississippi Squadron Letters; Grant to
Henry W. Halleck, February 3, 1863, Ulysses S. Grant Letter Books (Library of Congress).

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eventually with her and two other craft sank Porter's ironclad. The admiral
can probably be excused for being exasperated with his impetuous subor-
dinate.29
The point, however, is that Ellet's general suspicions concerning Porter
and his military colleagues were now reinforced by considerations of self-
interest, because Ellet was rapidly coming to the conclusion that he con-
fronted an effort to place entire responsibility for the losses of the ram and
ironclad squarely on his shoulders. Several days before attending the meet-
ing of the 28th, he wrote as much to his uncle, and in a postscript to the
very letter in which he accused his superiors of treason, he added these
words: "I would not be surprised if they tried to throw all the blame of this
upon me." Though he concluded this sentence with a martyred, "but I
can stand it," one strongly suspects that, in fact, he could not. Apart from
a momentary lapse, when he admitted that before going up the Red River
he should perhaps have waited for Porter to send down the Indianola, he
gave every evidence of wanting to shift the blame to the admiral. To his
uncle he pointed out correctly that Porter's orders had not promised rein-
forcement; they had merely said not to be surprised to see the ironclad.
Ellet claimed that many army officers sided with him in wanting to know
why Porter had not in the first place ordered the ironclad to accompany the
ram. "The Indianola was ready and Capt. [George] Brown anxious to go
long before Porter would consent."30
All this is by way of saying that there were many "social" influences
operating to impede Charles Ellet's ability to tell the truth. Even had he
been in the best of emotional and physical health, the various stresses on
one so inexperienced would most likely have warped the way he perceived
the men he accused. In point of truth, Ellet9s health was not good, and this
raises the second set of factors which Shafer et al. advise the internal critic
to ponder concerning the witness: Did he have the physical ability to tell
the truth? In answer, the reader knows that Ellet had only just returned
from an expedition which if nothing else had left him physically exhausted
and stretched his nerves taut. The reader does not know, however, that
Ellet, who like his father had never been robust of physique, was appar-
ently ill. Porter described him so when, after the younger man's return
from Red River, he had been unable to report immediately to the admiral.
Ellet, himself, wrote to his uncle that he was suffering from "chills," which
may have been symptomatic of a mild case of the malaria or typhoid which
29. Details of Ellet's expedition can be found in Ellet Papers; Mississippi Squadron Let-
ters; O.R.N., Series I, Vol. XXIV; and O.R.A., Series I, Vol. XXIV, Part I. For the
account of newspaper reporter Albert Bodman, who accompanied Ellet, see Chicago Tribune,
March 1 and 3, 1863.
30. C. R. Ellet to Alfred Ellet, February [2]5 and 28, 1863, Ellet Papers; Porter to C. R.
Ellet, February 10 [1863], O.R.N., Series I, Vol. XXIV, 370.

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commonly infected the men of the river navies. Finally, Ellet was a chronic
victim of migraine, from which he sought relief in laudanum, a tincture of
the addictive drug, opium. Given this bill of physical particulars, Marc
Bloch's warning note concerning a circumstance which can "impair the
accuracy of perception of even the most gifted person,' would seem to
apply: it "depends upon the condition of the observer at the time --- such
for example as his fatigue or emotion."31
To sum up, a nineteen-year-old youth, exhausted, feverish, and possibly
drugged, went to that meeting of February 28 freighted with emotions and
suspicions born of filial devotion to his father's memory; of familial loyalty
to the Ellet clan; of concern to uphold the reputation of the ram fleet, a
reputation which the youth may have already tarnished and which ap-
peared to him threatened by superiors; and, perhaps not least, of an unease
that his own reputation was at stake. His judgment in the circumstances
could hardly have helped being prejudiced. True, immediately afterward he
described the meeting in a private letter, but this fact does little to enhance
credibility; without a lapse of time, the identical social and physical dis-
tractions still obtained. Furthermore, the writer knew that the recipient
would be a kindred spirit, nursing many of the same emotions and suspi-
cions.
Is the historian, then, justified in rejecting Colonel Ellet's charges against
the two generals and the admiral? The answer is almost surely, yes. Possi-
bly these officers, as servicemen even in high echelons no doubt are
sometimes wont to do, may simply have been indulging their frustrations by
criticizing the Federal Government and its conduct of the war; and possi-
bly Ellet, given his state of mind and body, may have misconstrued their
gripings as evidence of sinister intent; but, without corroborating witnesses
and in light of the sole witness's bias and emotional instability, it seems a
certainty that as nearly as historical truth can be established these men
were not plotting the overthrow of the government.
Of course, recalling the impossibility of judging with absolute certainty
the authenticity of an historical document, the reader may well ask, with
how much certitude can historical truth be established? As Bloch poses the
question: "To what extent, however, are we [historians] justified in mouth-
ing this glorious word 'certainty'?" That an historical event was impossi-
ble, he continues, can never be a certainty. There is always a chance,
however remote, that the event did occur. Walsh makes the same point:
"the contrary of every matter-of-fact statement, even one about which we
31. Shafer, Guide, 146; Porter to Welles, February 22, 1863, Mississippi Squadron Letters;
C. R. Ellet to Alfred Ellet, February 28, 1863, Ellet Papers; Bloch, The Historian's Craft,
101 On October 1, 1864, Colonel Charles Rivers Ellet died in his sleep, apparently from an
overdose of opiate. See J. T. Headley, F-arra gut and Our Naval Commanders (New York,
1867), 222-223.

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are supremely confident, is always logically possible. No such statement,

whether in history or elsewhere, can be raised to the status of a logically
necessary truth." And Bloch quotes Cournot: "The impossible physical
event is nothing but an event whose probability is infinitely small."32
Having submitted Charles R. Ellet's accusations to the standards of inter-

nal historical criticism and finding the probability of their being true
infinitely small, the researcher deduces that they should not be incorpo-
rated into the corpus of accepted historical facts. The tug between the
apparently sacred document and the traditional interpretation laid down by
established historians ends in victory for the latter; the historical reputa-
tions of Grant, Sherman, and Porter remain as they are, not because of
piety but because the document which accuses them is found wanting.
Does this fact mean, nevertheless, that the document is worthless to the
historian? Vincent answers, yes. If internal criticism cannot establish the
trustworthiness or at least the probability of the statement in a document,
the document should be discarded, "the whole cast out as worthless." R.
G. Collingwood, on the other hand, answers the question with a resound-
ing, no! He believes that the historian should ask a more profound question
of the historical statement than simply whether it be true or false: what
significance attaches to its having been uttered? This does not mean that
the historian is freed from the limits imposed by the document. He still,
Frederick Teggart writes, "cannot arrive at any fuller information of what
occurred than is contained in the documents which have survived."
Rather, it means that the historian, in order not to miss any of its nuances,
should examine the document with peripheral vision.33
From a document, or a "trace" of the past, as Renier refers to it, the
historian infers an event or events. The obvious event to be inferred from
the trace left by Ellet, the event he wanted inferred, was that certain
officers had articulated treasonable designs. Yet historical criticism indi-
cates that the inferred event did not occur or was misinterpreted. The
question remains, however, are there not other events which can be infer-
red from the same trace? At the very least there is the seemingly indubita-
ble historical fact that Ellet recorded the charge. Where the conventional
"scissors-and-paste historian" is interested in no more than the contents of
statements, the "scientific historian," argues Collingwood, "is interested
in the fact that they are made." Paul Weiss reaffirms the premise when he
writes that "any occurrence has possible significance for the historian. This
fact is missed by those who view history from the perspective of some
32. Bloch, The Historian's Craft, 133; Walsh, An Introduction to Philosophy of History,
87. Bloch (p. 133) quotes Cournot.
33. Vincent, Historical Research, 20; Collingwood, The Idea of History (London, 1946),
259, 275; Frederick J. Teggart, Theory and Processes of History (Berkeley, Calif., 1962), 32.

110.54.137.102 on Mon, 31 Aug 2020 07:11:12 UTC
limited standpoint."' Passmore elucidates further: "the historian is not

quite at the mercy of the chronicler; . . he can discover important facts
from [the primary source] . . . which the chronicler had no intention what-
ever of recording." He can, in Collingwood's phrase, "get out of his 'au-
thorities' the answer to a question which they did not expect a reader to
ask. '"34
Truly, once the historian begins asking of the Ellet document questions
other than those concerning the truth of its author's accusations, he opens
new areas for investigation, the more so if he also directs his questions to
the other documents in the context of which the questionable one is found.
This exercise calls for powers of imagination, conceptualization, and in-
genuity; because, as Paul Conkin and Roland Stromberg assert, "neither
musty manuscripts nor arts of detection" alone do history make. Rather,
the investigator begins what Bernard Bailyn describes as "this kind of
creative process, a process in which the student, his radar wide open,
probes the data with his mind, searching for patterns, for relevance, for
significance. Often in the process the investigation becomes trans-
formed."' 35
No matter, then, that Charles R. Ellet was young, inexperienced,
weighed down with responsibility, biased, ambitious, emotionally over-
wrought, and ill; the fact that he made his charges at all could be sig-
nificant. Without going into a subject, which, just to plumb its possibilities,
would require a separate essay, one can see that simply by exploring the
reliability of Ellet's letter one has already uncovered a number of sugges-
tive leads, some of which may confirm or contradict existing historical
conclusions, some of which may be novel. There are possible military
leads, for example. Ellet's letter reveals intra- and interservice friction
among the Union forces besieging Vicksburg and raises the question why
there was no unified command. It also brings to mind the topic of the
relationship between amateur and professional soldiers and sailors in Civil
War times, and whether resulting strains compromised operations. With
respect to technology, the student might wonder whether the amateurs,
with little or no vested interest or loyalty to the military or naval status
quo, were not readier than the professionals to experiment with new or
different technology and tactics.36 Might the conservative naval establish-
34. Renier, History: Its Purpose and Method, 156; Collingwood, The Idea of History, 275;
Paul Weiss, History: Written and Lived (Carbondale, Ill., 1962), 67; Passmore, "The Objec-
tivity of History" in Philosophical Analysis and History, ed. Dray, 80; R. G. Collingwood,
An Autobiography (London, 1939), 133.
35. Paul K. Conkin and Roland N. Stromberg, The Heritage and the Challenge of Histoty
(New York, 1971), 225; Bernard Bailyn, "The Problems of the Working Historian: A Com-
ment" in The Craft of American History: Selected Essays, ed. A. S. Eisenstadt, 2 vols. (New
York, 1966), II, 205.
36. This generalization, to which the exploits of the Ellets lend credence, is convincingly

110.54.137.102 on Mon, 31 Aug 2020 07:11:12 UTC
ment have felt threatened by the Ellets' insistence that the ram was the
ultimate naval weapon? The senior Charles Ellet had boasted that steam
rams could easily sink conventional warships, and the Merrirmac had
seemed to substantiate his claim. That the success of naval rams would be
short-lived was not obvious at the time. In fact, before the Ellet craft had
come to the Mississippi, Confederate rams operating on that river had sunk
two Federal gunboats.
Young Ellet's letter and its contextual environment also say something
about personal ambition in wartime. The writer was concerned to protect
his military reputation, not to mention the reputations of his father, uncle,
and cousins; and this concern, most broadly construed, suggests to what
extent the Civil War, or for that matter any war, was exploited by partici-
pants to further their own interests.
If Ellet's correspondence suggests topics having to do with the military
and war, a little more thought reveals that it further suggests related politi-
cal and social topics. For example, the probable falsity of his charges
against senior military and naval officers notwithstanding, they do raise
questions about the wartime efficiency of a political system in which the
commander-in-chief of the armed services is a civilian. And these questions
lead rather naturally to the fact that even during a civil war the American
military apparently gave no concerted thought to executing a coup. The
professionals would seem to have been far more conservative than the
Ellets believed they were. To be sure, professional soldiers and sailors of
Southern origin followed their states out of the Union, but the key word is
followed. Can one generalize that American democracy fosters in civilians,
such as the Ellets, who were no more than civilians in military uniform,
suspicion and skepticism toward officialdom but obedience and respect in
career military and naval men? Finally, still further afield, the respon-
sibilities which Charles R. Ellet inherited bring to mind the subjects of the
role of the patriarch and the practice of nepotism in America.
Additional thought would lead the researcher to additional possibilities,
but the point is not to identify every subject suggested or implied by the
Ellet manuscript. It is rather to be alerted to alternative ways in which the
historian can comprehend and interpret such material. As Henri-Irenee
Marrou reminds the scholar, "there is an unlimited number of different
questions to which the documents can provide the answers, provided that
the questioning is properly done."37
State University of New York

Buffalo
developed in a recently completed dissertation. See Rowena Reed, "Combined Operation

the Civil War" (doctoral dissertation, Department of History, Queen's University at Kin
ston, 1976).
37. Marrou, The Meaning of History, 76-77; emphasis added.

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3 Treatment of Historical Source

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The Treatment of an Historical Source

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A document must first of all measure up to the standards of what the

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handwriting," to cite Gilbert Garraghan's criteria - is consistent with that

5. Louis Gottschalk, Understanding History: A Primer of Historical Method (2nd ed.,

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of the volume edited by Robert Shafer, "is one of varying degrees of

The "other written evidence" to which Croce refers is subsumed under

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external conditions that affect his observational powers."20 Concerning the

20. Gottschalk, Understanding History, 150-155; Shafer, Guide, 145-146.

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family, itself, personified the stereotypic nineteenth-century clan. Charles,

22. C. R. Ellet to Mary Ellet, November 4, 1862, Ellet Papers.

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are supremely confident, is always logically possible. No such statement,

Having submitted Charles R. Ellet's accusations to the standards of inter-

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limited standpoint."' Passmore elucidates further: "the historian is not

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State University of New York

developed in a recently completed dissertation. See Rowena Reed, "Combined Operation

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