Cambridge History of American Literature: volume 3
Trent, William Peterfield, 1862-1939., Erskine, John, 1879-1951., Sherman, Stuart Pratt, 1881-1926., Van Doren, Carl, 1885-1950., Ed.

Rear-Admiral Mahan is the best example we have had in the United States of a man who wrote history successfully for propaganda. He wished to show that a nation that would play a large role in the world must have a great navy. He won immediate fame in Great Britain, where his books served to strengthen the naval policy of the government. They were also greatly appreciated in Germany, and it is said that they opened the eyes of the German government to the need of a great navy. In his own country he was highly esteemed as an historian, but he never had the satisfaction of seeing the government adopt a great naval policy.

While Mahan was a scholarly historian, he cannot be pronounced a man of research. With a thesis to prove it was not necessary to go to the sources to prove it. His early books were written entirely from secondary materials; but he used sources in his later work, particularly in the book on the War of 1812, of which he said: ‘It is by far the most thorough work I have done.’ Something of his mental character may be seen in the following statement in reference to a book which most students find uninteresting: ‘Though not a lawyer, nor a student of constitutions, I found Stubbs's Constitutional history of England fascinating. I have not analyzed my pleasure, but I believe it to have been due to arrangement of data by a man exceptionally gifted for vivid presentation, who had so lived with his subject that it had realized itself to him as a living whole, which he successfully conveyed to his readers.’

Three sons of Charles Francis Adams, grandsons of John Quincy Adams, became historians, and two of them, Charles Francis Adams, Jr. (1835-1915) and Henry Adams (1838– 1918), fall within the limits assigned to this chapter. Both of them had the Puritan mind, so strong in their ancestry, as well as that independent Adams spirit which put the family, from John Adams to Henry, out of touch with the dominant thought of Boston. Turning to history, both of them became able critics of conventional views and won high respect from an age turning towards cosmopolitan ideals. The elder of the two, however, did not go all the way in revolt. New Englander he remained to the last. He loved Boston, although he rapped its knuckles at times, and he sought to reform its intellectual life. The younger clung to Boston for many years,