paper. Even before McMaster had placed so great a reliance on
newspapers as a source for his work , von Holst had shown some thing of the possibilities inherent in this class of material and had made effective use of it, though in a limited way , in his
Constitutional and Political History of the United States. Since
that time historians have come to accept the latent serviceable ness of the newspaper to the fraternity . In 1908 an entire session of the annual meeting of the American Historical Association was given to the discussion of the use of the newspaper by historians, and there are everywhere evidences of an increasing appreciation of the important place the newspaper occupies in
the equipment of the historian. Yet there are still misgivings in the minds of many, citations from
the press are made with a
semi-apology, and the newspaper as an historical source still needs the support of distinguished historians like James Ford
Rhodes to convince the rank and file of students of history that it holds an honorable place in the study of the past . As long as the historian must concern himself primarily with the question of evidence, with testing the truth of statements made, with determining the authoritativeness of all the material that he
uses, he feels that hemust reject in large part the newspaper as a source for his work . Such use as he makes of the press is con fined to those portions of it that will lend color and vivacity to the past and aid him in giving a graphic description of society and especially of the external manoeuvres of political society .
Before the historian is ready to admit the newspaper into the
inner circle of his friends and allies, he must have unimpeachable assurance of its veracity and trustworthiness . What grounds of
confidence can be given the student of the past that the greater part of the newspaper can be taken at its face value, what tests can be applied that will enable him to separate the wheat from the chaff, what principles can be deduced that will qualify him
to detect falsehood and discern truth , what guarantees can be given that will absolve him from the necessity of testing the accuracy of every statementmade, — these and similar questions
must be answered before the historian is justified in accepting 1 “ Newspapers as Historical Sources,” Atlantic Monthly, May, 1909, 103 :
650-657; reprinted in Historical Essays, chap. IV .
