The topic numbered XVIII, in Course VIII, is "Constitutionality of the Legal Tender Issues," and the references:

Bolles, III, chapter I.

Knox, United States Notes, chapter XI.

Bancroft, A Plea for the Constitution.

For the decisions of the court, and dissenting opinions:

Hepburn v. Grisworld, 8 Wallace, 603; Banker's Magazine, March, 1870; Knox v. Lee, 12 Wallace, 457; Banker's Magazine, April, 1872; Juillard v. Greenman, 110 United States, 421; Knox, 193.

Madison's Notes, Elliot's Debates, V, 435.

Webster's Opinion, Works, IV, 270.

Gallatin's Opinion, Works, III, 235.

Secretary Chase's Letters, in Spaulding's Legal-Tender Paper, 27, 46, 59, &c.

The object of the financial courses is to give training in the use of debates, reports, and especially statutes-indeed, to train the student to the use of authorities rather than to the reading of a text-book. The oldfashioned text-book methods have disappeared from the great universities, and are only found in those college courses that are strictly elementary. The opportunities for graduate work in American history and economics at Harvard are numerous, rich, and attractive. The university, by the foundation of fellowships and scholarships, offers to its own graduates, and to those of other colleges, ample opportunities for the "attainment of a higher, broader, and more thorough scholarship in sound literature and learning." The system of electives at the university operates to the highest advantage of those who are pursuing such a specialty as American history, or who are pursuing it as a part of a general course. The class of students who from a large number select this subject will, cæteris paribus, bring to the study of it minds eager to know and spirits willing to be directed by eminent men. The elective system tends to the survival of the fittest.

GENERAL STATUS OF AMERICAN HISTORY.

Cambridge, Philadelphia, New York, and Baltimore, afford peculiar facilities for the study of American history. In the various libraries in these cities may be found the greater part of the authorities here out. lined. It cannot be said that at the present time any one of the universities in the country offers exclusive privileges in American history, because not one of them is fully equipped in that department. Such an equipment would place in the library of the university all the authorities needed in the prosecution of the work. Those authorities would fully set forth the life of the nation politically and economically. Our history is not in Congress alone; that is, indeed, a very small part of it. Our discoveries, our inventions, our agrarian interests, our settlements westward, our educational affairs, the work of the church, the organization of charities, the growth of corporations, the conflict of

9

races and for races, at times in our history, are all sources for research; but in addition to an exhaustive library is needed the man who can and will use it; he may be teacher or the taught; if the teacher, then one who by long training has prepared himself for the task; if the taught, then he who is inspired with the love of country, of American institutions, and, above all, of truth, however it may change accepted notions. An adequate foundation for the prosecution of studies in Amerian institutions can be made only at the university. It is not called for in schools below that rank. History has become a technical study, and it must be pursued as such. The course in our higher institutions must accommodate two classes of students, those who intend to make a special study of history and those who pursue it as a portion of a liberal course of training for good citizenship. The universities must make provision for the training of teachers and for the training of those who are not to become teachers of history. The respective courses for these two classes must differ from each other.

In providing a course in American history in the lower schools, chief attention must be given to the study of our economic history. Of the text-books now used in these schools, Johnston's, called the History of the United States, or Scudder's, are by far the best. It is the opinion of the professors of history at Columbia, Cornell, and Pennsylvania that all instruction in American history for those intending to enter college should be omitted in the common schools. The professors at Harvard and at Johns Hopkins favor the retention of the study in these schools for all. It cannot be doubted that careful training in Johnston's Outlines, or its equivalent, would be a gain for those colleges which have courses in American history; such training in the preparatory school would save at least one year at college and would be a fit introduction to the extended college course.

The universities which offer courses in American history differ widely in the amount offered. For instance, Harvard offers historical courses for 1886-'87, amounting to forty-six hours weekly, of which eighteen are in American history; Pennsylvania offers fourteen hours in American history; Yale, three hours; Columbia, five; Wisconsin, three; Cornell, eight; Johns Hopkins, four. This is exclusive of the courses in American economics, which at Yale cover three hours per week; at Columbia, six hours; at Johns Hopkins, four hours; at Michigan, four and one-half; at Pennsylvania, twelve; and at Harvard, of the eighteen and one-half hours given in courses in political economy, five hours are in American economics. Both at Harvard and at Pennsylvania opportunity is afforded for special advanced study and research in American economics. These privileges are given also at Yale, Cornell, Columbia, and Johns Hopkins.

The prevailing course found in American colleges in American his. tory and economics is hardly more than two hours a week for one term of three months.

present status of this study for undergraduates in American sds is not high. The public schools, conducted at great cost, in ** sections of the country, do almost nothing in teaching American . In the colleges this subject is attached somewhat curiously to Nr studies. Thus we find history and Latin, history and mathemat& Aistory and literature, history and a modern language, history and e of the sciences taught by the same professor. It is evident that best work in the department of history is to be expected only when that department is under the direction of a trained mind. It must ave a recognized place among the departments. So long as history Das not attained this place in our educational institutions, it is premature to ask that history itself should be subdivided into its own departments. For the present, and perhaps for many years to come, it is

the larger and richer universities that will endow chairs of Amercan history. The other colleges will doubtless unite history and polit cal science into one department. But as the country increases in wealth the friends of university education will found chairs of Amer fean history. In that direction lies the future of our educational courses to this extent, that all the training for citizenship that can be obtained at college must be found in this department. This is its just claim for introduction as a college course, that it trains for intelligent citizenship. Not that we do not have more or less of such citizenship now; but of our ten millions of voters, how small the number who are qualified to fill the offices to which they elect others. That is an ideal citizenzenship which, like the Athenian, can fill any office within its own gift.

Now that we are at last a nation we cannot escape the responsibilities of nationality. We are a problem unto ourselves. Life is no longer a colonial existence. Our national difficulties resemble those of other nations. We have land and labor questions to solve and that quickly. We have questions of race and of race privilege of great magnitude. Shall the nation educate the nation's own? Shall the nation put the great corporations under Federal control? Does the right to regulate interstate commerce reach interstate railroads? We, a nation, inherit both good and evil; and if we let the evil prevail, then "after us the deluge."

For the technical training in history there are needed in our universities both scholarships and fellowships, the income of which will permit men of special aptitude to pursue advanced studies. Technical work in American institutions must proceed like technical work in law or in medicine. There are at present about fifty fellowships at American universities. In the effort to introduce a reform in the study of Ameri can institutions, the work must begin in the higher schools and work down into the lower. All reforms have proceeded in that way. When the universities can offer advanced courses in such subjects as American history and economics, then the undergraduate courses will be of relative value and extent.

AMERICAN HISTORY NOT A SUFFICIENT BASIS.

In the training for teaching history we cannot base our work upon American institutions as our leading study. American history is only the part of a whole. It cannot be made to take the place of the history of Europe. As a subject for philosophical investigation, American history cannot yet compare with that of Greece or Rome. It is from those nations that have run a course, that have completed a system, that we must obtain our philosophy of history; and our own history can be made only to supplement the teachings of that philosophy. Therefore, the technical student of history must study the world as the nation of nations, and view citizenship from the vantage ground of the universal citizen. He must rise to that moral elevation which enables him to see man as brother of man, and his interests, not as those of the American nor of the Roman, but as of man himself. The history of American institutions has its beginnings far up towards the sources of the stream of time. The end of historical investigation that purposes to give the power to direct others to understand their institutions from a national point of view, is to see man in his ultimate interests as man, and yet to view him as an individual and simple factor in the moral force of the world. Thus the study of history at the university requires for the best results such an equipment of the historical department as not one. of our universities can afford at present. But we are moving towards this consummation; and in the universities whose courses we have attempted to outline, so far as they are in American institutions, will cer tainly be found, in time, ample provision for the prosecution of history as a science.

CONCLUSIONS.

From this brief review of the status of the study of American his tory in our schools, we conclude:

I. The course of study in the public schools should afford and require the study of American institutions for at least one-fourth of the time the child is in school. Economic, social, and industrial history should be taught as well as political history. The aim of the instruction should be to acquaint the child with accurate knowledge of the nature of American citizenship and of the duties he must assume as a part of the State. The instruction should develop in the child's mind the historic growth of the nation.

II. In the public schools there should be special teachers of American History and Economics. The colleges and the normal schools should train such teachers.

III. The text-books in the public schools should treat chiefly of the history of the United States so far as they treat of American history. The nation should be the great theme. There should be accessible in these schools a selection of historical and economic materials-documents, treatises, reports, reviews, maps, newspapers, books of travel— for the use of teachers and students.

IV. Every college should offer an undergraduate course in American History and Economics of at least two years, three hours a week. The great universities of the country should afford opportunities for the technical study of American history. They should offer a limited number of scholarships and fellowships for the benefit of men who are qualified and desire to make a technical study of our own institutions, and who otherwise are unable to pursue such investigations. It is to the great universities that we look for complete courses and adequate instruction in American history as well as in European history, general and special. In justice to the nation the youth of our land should become familiar with the story of popular government in this western world. From a careful study of our own institutions we may understand the nature of our national life, may learn the sacrifice by which it has been preserved, may learn with what watchful care it can be sustained, and, above all, learn, as a people, to avoid the commission of those errors which of old have proven the rocks upon which nations are wrecked.

The study of American History and Economics will not of itself prove the panacea for the ills incident to nationality. The great Republic needs and will ever need men, "right minded men; men who their duty know, and knowing, will obey." The presentation of these facts in this paper is our plea for the elevation of the study of our country into that place in the Higher Education to which by intrinsic merits it has right. Other studies have an equal place; it is only just that American History and American Economics occupy their share of the time in the limited college and university courses. So long as man is by nature a political being he must by nature have political training; the technical study of American History and Economics is an essential part of that training.

TABULAR VIEW OF HOURS.

The following table is an estimate of the work now doing in American history and economics in the institutions named in this paper. The statement of hours is based upon letters from the professors named and the catalogue of the institution. The economics for which time is stated is for American economics only.