Page:American Historical Review, Volume 12.djvu/195

Conununicatioiis 185 demonstrated, was read into it, wilfully or carelessly, I have not been unjust. Either view is open to a reviewer's conscientious conviction; but the conviction, when stated, should be in reference to what I have said, and not to what I have not said. The matter is of consequence because, if I am right, the whole corre- spondence throws light on Madison's characteristics, confirming impres- sions which his other diplomatic letters produce: because the examination of the phraseology which I gave I have found nowhere else, and by it the diplomatic incident is essentially transformed: and, finally, because the character of the American Historical Review demands on the part of its reviewers more exactness in stating the position of an author, when they charge him with injustice. A. T. Mahan. If Captain Mahan had ever seen the instructions which the American Historical Review sends its reviewers he would have known that they are discouraged from sacrificing space to argumentative criticism. He is probably aware that they are always strictly limited to the matter of space. To review Captain Mahan's volumes in a thousand words seemed to me a task which could not under any arrangement of ideas be satisfactorily performed, and I thought it advisable to merely express a dissent to his treatment of the Jackson incident without setting forth the treatment and an argument to show wherein it is unjust, which would have taken all my space. It is the very thing I wanted to do, but I do not believe my readers would have liked it. I believe Captain Mahan to be in error in thinking he has discovered a meaning, or an absence of meaning, in Jackson's most insolent letter to Madison, which no one (not even Madison) ever discovered before: and I hope to show it on an occasion in the near future. As for the sentence about Lake Champlain and New Orleans it is obviously too sweeping, being a mistake which I was carelessly led into by the following passage of Captain Mahan's : " For these reasons, whatever transactions took place in this quarter [Lake Champlain] up to the summer of 1814 were in characteristic simply episodes ; an epithet which applies accurately to the more formid- able, but brief, operations here in 1814, as also to those in Louisiana. Whatever intention underlay either attempt, they were in matter of fact almost without any relations of antecedent or consequent. They stood by themselves, and not only may, but should, be so considered. Prior to them, contemporary reference to Lake Champlain, or to Louis- iana, is both rare and casual. For this reason, mention of earlier occur- rences in either of these quarters has heretofore been deferred, as irrel- evant and intrusive if introduced among other events, with which they coincided in time, but had no further connection." (Vol. II., p. 357.) Gaillard Hunt.