Nebraska State Historical Society
Date of this Version
1885
Abstract
There is no portion of the history of the past which is not largely obscured, distorted, or absolutely falsified through the omission of unwritten portions.
We are prone to forget or fail to realize how intense the interest of the future may be in the doings of to-day. Or if we feel the importance of leaving a record we are apt to note only the fading and vanishing items of the past. To make a record of transactions and happenings of to-day, of that which everyone knows all about, seems uncalled for and useless labor.
Through this neglect important springs of action and leading incidents to even revolutionary acts die out of memory, and are thus lost to the historian, who, for lack of the real causes, founds upon false ones, if any. That truthful history, especially of partisan transactions, cannot be written in present time, is most unquestionably true. Partisan feeling, more or less active, will unconsciously color and distort the views of the' most impartial. Still a record Of the facts of the present may save the future historian much labor and from great error.
Comments
Published in Transactions and Reports of the Nebraska State Historical Society, Volume I (Lincoln, NE 1885).