cture of the life of a
people this must be, in addition to the news columns.

No one, of course, will go to newspapers for facts if he can find those
facts in better-attested documents. The haste with which the daily
records of the world's doings are made up precludes sifting and
revision. Yet in the decade between 1850 and 1860 you will find facts in
the newspapers which are nowhere else set down. Public men of commanding
position were fond of writing letters to the journals with a view to
influencing public sentiment. These letters in the newspapers are as
valuable historical material as if they were carefully collected,
edited, and published in the form of books. Speeches were made which
must be read, and which will be found nowhere but in the journals. The
immortal debates of Lincoln and Douglas in 1858 were never put into a
book until 1860, existing previously only in newspaper print. Newspapers
are sometimes important in fixing a date and in establishing the
whereabouts of a man. If, for example, a writer draws a fruitful
inference from the alleged fact that President Lincoln went to see Edwin
Booth play Hamlet in Washington in February, 1863, and if one finds by a
consultation of the newspaper theatrical advertisements that Edwin Booth
did not visit Washington during that month, the significance of the
inference is destroyed. Lincoln paid General Scott a memorable visit at
West Point in June, 1862. You may, if I remember correctly, search the
books in vain to get at the exact date of this visit; but turn to the
newspaper files and you find that the President left Washington at such
an hour on such a day, arrived at Jersey City at a stated time, and made
the transfer to the other railroad which took him to the station
opposite West Point. The time of his leaving West Point and the hour of
his return to Washington are also given.

The value of newspapers as an indication of public sentiment is
sometimes questioned, but it can hardly be doubted that the average man
will read the newspaper with the sentiments of which he agrees. "I
inquired about newspaper opinion," said Joseph Chamberlain in the House
of Commons last May. "I knew no other way of getting at popular
opinion." During the years between 1854 and 1860 the daily journals were
a pretty good reflection of public sentiment in the United States.
Wherever, for instance, you found the _New York Weekly Tribune_ largely
read, Republican majorities were sure to be