By a combination of ability and good fortune all the remaining obstacles, by no means contemptible were swept away, the will of the two nations was executed; and before long it was generally realized that their union was expedient, logical, and practically inevitable. For a variety of reasons, however-chiefly natural prejudices and equally natural want of information and the fact that certain gifted opponents of annexation enjoyed great prestige in quarters where much attention has been paid to historical writing-some inaccurate views regarding the matter have unavoidably prevailed. (Justin H. Smith. The Annexation of Texas. 469)
How much of what we study as American History was shaped by the New England historians of the mid to late nineteenth century? How much of that bias still affects us today? I am writing of the gentleman historians of Boston and New York, those writers with the time to write history as they saw it, at their leisure, historians who predate Henry Adams. Justin Smith wrote this nearly a century ago. He dedicated his work to George Garrison, another early professional historian. The work of Smith demonstrates definitely the influence of Ranke in his obsession with the original materials and his documentation of the same. Here, in the concluding sentences of his massive The Annexation of Texas, Smith is taking a swipe at his predecessors by claiming that they allowed sectional prejudice to color their writings. We can see in this work the transition from the amateur historian to the professional. How successful was Smith? To write anything about this event, his work cannot be ignored.
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