tee of the same year. However the impression as to that recommendation arose or was made on the mind of any member of the Board of Education or anybody else, we are prepared to prove by the text, and by a recent report of the same committee, that they recommended only two books—the Jones and Lee histories.
The second book to be noticed, also erroneously supposed to have been recommended by the committee for 1898, is the Cooper and Estill history, "Our Country." The effective detailed criticism of that work also is handed you in the able report of Rev. S. Taylor Martin. Like the last, this needs only a general criticism as a basis for the resolution we shall offer for your adoption. If you will read the "Introduction" you will see that the author proposes to write such a book as will serve to cultivate a large patriotism and eradicate sectionalism. This is doubtless a worthy motive. But a preconceived purpose in writing is the bane of the historian. The great Scripture models indicate no purpose; they simply tell the naked truth. Reading the so-called history these gentlemen have given us in the light of their own announced intention, we shall find that it has led them again and again so to present incidents antagonistic to their purpose that the real truth is not told. Many paragraphs in support of this statement may readily be selected. We respect their purpose, but it has far misled the authors; so that, to put it briefly, the book is simply not a history of the country.
CAUSE OF STRIFE
The preconceived purpose to write a book that will cultivate a large patriotism has led these authors so to deal with the elements of strife between the North and South as to make it appear that no guilt or blame attached to either party; that all differences arose naturally and innocently; that the war itself was the logical outcome of circumstances of growth and development for which the parties engaged were not responsible; and that it was not the result of any such hostile feeling on the one side as any principle required the other to return in kind. The preface, to which allusion has been especially made, and such paragraphs as 416, 519, etc., for example, sufficiently illustrate our meaning. The book is clearly
