CHAPTER VI.

HISTORY AT THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY.1

I.

GRADUATE DEPARTMENT.

THE HISTORICAL SEMINARY IN BALTIMORE.

In 1876 the Johns Hopkins University was opened in Baltimore for the promotion of science and of college education. There was no intention of establishing in this country a German university, or of slavishly following foreign methods. The institution was to be preeminently American, but it did not hesitate to adapt the best results of European experience to American educational wants. The system of fellowships, which secured at once a company of advanced students for scientific work, was, from the very outset, radically different from that of England, or from the German system of Privatdocenten. It was a peculiarly American system for the encouragement of original research.. The historical seminary, which was instituted as soon as university life in Baltimore began, was founded upon a purely American basis, and devoted itself strictly to American history. The director of this seminary, Dr. Austin Scott, was then associated with Mr. Geroge Bancroft in Washington in preparing materials for the history of the formative period of the American Constitution, upon which Mr. Bancroft was then engaged. Dr. Scott, who spent most of his time in original research in the library of the State Department and with Mr. Bancroft in his own study, came to Baltimore once a week to conduct a session of the historical seminary, which met Saturday mornings.

The same course of constitutional studies, which Mr. Bancroft and Dr. Scott had pursued together, was now reviewed by six or eight university students under Dr. Scott's instructive guidance. The seminary had the feeling that they had been admitted to Mr. Bancroft's workshop, and

This chapter was first published in the Johns Hopkins University Studies for January and February, 1884. The writer would have been glad to revise it more thoroughly and to add the results of three years' further development, but the pressure of other educational studies has prevented. The appended list of" University Studies in Historical and Political Science" will, however, illustrate the work of the department since the time when this chapter was written.

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that, by the examination of his materials and his methods, they were being taught the art of constructing history. The very manuscripts which Dr. Scott had prepared, while collecting and sifting facts for Mr. Bancroft, were shown to the seminary. Questions still unsolved were submitted to Johns Hopkins students for their consideration in company with their instructor. Books from Mr. Bancroft's private library supplemented the resources of Baltimore. Original papers were prepared by various members of the seminary, and written words of encouragement for work like this came from the historian himself. The feeling was thus engendered that, in some slight ways, the seminary was contributing to the great volume of United States history. Between such creative methods of historical study and the old passive methods of reliance upon standard authorities and text-books, there was felt to be a vast difference. And yet the new methods were very simple. Instead of each man buying an expensive work of constitutional history, a set of the journals of the old Congress, the Madison Papers, Elliot's Debates, the writings of Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, and a few other sources of information contemporary with the formation of the Constitution were brought together upon a long table in the library of the Maryland Historical Society, where seminary sessions were held, and where special facilities were afforded for original research. Around this common board garnered the seminary, which was composed originally of six or eight men, four of them "fellows" of the university. The director sat at the head of the board, and usually gave a short lecture or informal "talk," introductory to the discussion of specifictopics which had been assigned for research during the previous week. Reports were made, papers were read, and general interest was awakened in special questions touching the origin and growth of the American Constitution. The relation of the States at the close of the Revolutionary war, economic questions, commercial problems, the Western lands, the influence of the Army, the question of revenue, the efforts of statesmen, the origin and history of the great conventions, the constitutional platforms proposed, the course and results of debate, the adop tion of the Constitution by the various States, the administration of Washington, the rise of parties, all of these questions and many more were studied in detail by members of the historical seminary.

Dr. Scott's weekly seminary was continued, at convenient intervals, during a period of five years. The best results of this period of study were presented to the university by Dr. Scott in the form of ten public lectures, delivered in January, 1882, upon the development of the American Constitution, under the special topics of nationalism and local selfgovernment; the federative principle; self-assertion of the national idea; reaction; transition; power of the masses; economic questions; socialism; revolution. Various original papers were prepared in connection with this seminary, and a few have found their way into print. A monograph, by the writer of this report, upon "Maryland's Influence

in founding a National Commonwealth," with two minor papers upon "Washington's Land Speculations," and "Washington's Influence in opening a Channel of Trade between the East and West," was published in 1877 by the Maryland Historical Society (Fund Publication, No. XI). An article by W. T. Brantly, of the Baltimore bar, upon "The Influence of European Speculation in the Formation of the Federal Constitution," was published in the Southern Law Review (Saint Louis) August and September, 1880. In 1881 Mr. Bancroft's great work was published in two large volumes, and seminary work in this attractive field was brought to a close. But attention was now being directed towards the field of American local institutions, the earliest germs of our colonial, state, and national life.

JUDGE COOLEY'S SEMINARY.

Before considering the newer phases of the historical seminary in Baltimore, it is fitting to say a word concerning the seminary of constitutional law, instituted by Judge T. M. Cooley, during his lectureship in Baltimore, 1877-'79, at the request of members of Dr. Scott's historical seminary. This other seminary was conducted for the special purpose of expounding the text of the Constitution of the United States and of comparing its provisions with the unwritten constitution of England. These exercises, which occurred once a week, consisted chiefly of comment by Judge Cooley, with questions and discussion by the class. Each member had a copy of Paschal's Annotated Constitution and of Baldwin's text, with references to constitutional decisions. The exercises were made especially profitable to students of history in consequence of the legal turn given to the discussions of the seminary by its lawyer members and by Judge Cooley. Decisions of the Supreme Court, modifying or interpreting the text of the Constitution, were frequently cited, and the conception of our constitutional law as an organic growth instead of a machine, was thereby strengthened and deepened.

A NEW DEPARTURE.

In the autumn of 1880 had already begun a new departure in historical instruction at the Johns Hopkins University in the introduction of American institutional history as a distinct branch of historical study. The idea was the outgrowth of a special interest in municipal history, first quickened in a seminary at Heidelberg, thence transplanted to Baltimore, where it was fostered by the reading of the writings of Sir Henry Maine, in connection with those of Carl Hegel, Maurer, Nasse, Waitz, Stubbs, and of the Harvard school of Anglo-Saxon law. The continuity of the Germanic village community in New England had been originally suggested to Sir Henry Maine by an article in The Nation, communicated by Professor W. F. Allen, of the University of Wisconsin. It was determined as early as 1877, after consultation with Professor Henry Adams, then and now living in Washington, to apply this

principle of continuity to the town institutions of New England. Spring sojourns for four terms, beginning in 1878, at Smith College, Northampton, Mass., and summer vacations spent in old towns along the New England coast made it possible to attempt this study, the first fruit of which was presented in 1880 to a mixed class of graduate and undergraduate students at the Johns Hopkins University, in a course of lectures, one hour a week, for one semester, upon the History of Plymouth Plantations, a course based upon an original study of the colonial and town records of Plymouth. The only work required of the class in this connection was an examination upon Sir Henry Maine's lectures on "Village Communities in the East and West." The next year, 1881, a similar course was given to advanced students only, upon "Salem Plantations," based upon vacation studies in Massachusetts.

By this time, kindred researches in the colonial and local records of other States were in progress among college graduates from various parts of the Union. A student from South Carolina was investigating the parish system of his native State. Maryland men were studying Maryland institutions. But, while advantage was thus taken of local environments, even of summer residence, these were not the only considerations which governed the allotment of territory. A New England man was encouraged to investigate the origin and development of the municipal government of New York City. Another graduate from the northeast section of the Union began to study the local government of Michigan and the Northwest, and the results of his work were read at the general meeting of the American Social Science Association in 1882, and afterwards published in their proceedings for that year. The arti cle was republished in the Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science, first series, number 5.

It was a part of the new seminary plan to have its studies published in the proceedings of learned societies, in historical magazines, and in other ways suited to the propaganda of American institutional history. Especially was it desired to obtain local recognition for local work. A paper on local government in Pennsylvania was read before the Pennsylvania Historical Society and published in the Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography. It was also intended that these local publications should ultimately be brought together again in a regular uni versity series. The American Antiquarian Society, the New England Historic, Genealogical Society, the Essex Institute, the secretary of the American Social Science Association, and editors of magazines kindly co-operated in furthering this aim of the seminary; and the trus tees of the Johns Hopkins University, in the autumn of 1882, enabled the project to be carried out in the shape of a monthly periodical devoted to "Studies in Historical and Political Science," five volumes of which are now complete.

The new historical seminary of graduate students began its Saturday mid-day sessions in the autumn of 1881, in a small lecture-room of the