American Historical Editors before Jared Sparks: "they will plant a forest..."

HE history of American historical editing from slight beginnings in the early eighteenth century into the first quarter of the nineteenth may be said to end with the advent of Jared Sparks. His work after i825 points toward a new era in accessibility of historical sources and in scholarship based upon them. Because he occupied an eminent and transitional position in this development, he became a controversial figure in his own day, refuting his critics but suffering a sullied reputation which professional historians during the next century, with few exceptions, confirmed without research and therefore without reservations