The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 59, July 1955 - April, 1956 Page: 123

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Book Reviews

bears reading and rereading, not only by faculty members but by
administrative and legislative officials.
The last address in the book carries the title, "The Obligation
of the Historian," a Phi Beta Kappa address at Rice Institute on
April 13, 1940. The obligation of the historian, in Dr. Barker's
own words, "is to tell the truth about the particular phase of the
past that he is discussing, and as much of the truth as he can."
To meet this obligation the historian encounters the difficulty
of collecting evidence. Then he has "to rid his mind of bias-
personal, emotional, social, economic, sectional, national"-an-
other difficulty. The third difficulty is to acquire the art of nar-
ration. Those historians who also teach face one other problem,
namely, that of deciding how to make the subject have "a func-
tional value in education."
The other essays, speeches, and responses between this alpha
and omega all will challenge the reader's close attention, and the
foresight and interest which provided the two funds under which
this book was published deserve great commendation.
RUDOLPH L. BIESELE
The University of Texas
Beyond the Cross Timbers: The Travels of Randolph B. Marcy,
1812-1887. By W. Eugene Hollon. Norman (University of
Oklahoma Press), 1955. Pp. xiii+270. Illustrations, bibli-
ographical notes, index. $4.00.
This is the narrative of the long and checkered career of an
army officer and his family. Twenty-one-year-old Lieutenant Ran-
dolph B. Marcy, West Point class of 1832, accompanied by his
vivacious eighteen-year-old bride, went on his initial army assign-
ment to Fort Howard, Wisconsin, in 1833. President Hayes ac-
cepted the retirement, nearly fifty years later, of Brigadier Gen-
eral Marcy as inspector general. The army was unspecialized but
frontier-bound in those years and Marcy's tours touched such
noted outposts as Forts Arbuckle, Armstrong, Belknap, Dearborn,
Gibson, McIntosh, Phantom Hill, Ringgold, Sill (site suggested
by him), Smith, Snelling, Towson, and Washita. His military
meanderings were from Fort Gratoit, Michigan, to Fort Myers,
Florida, and from Fort Bridger, Wyoming, to Fort Brown, Texas,

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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 59, July 1955 - April, 1956, periodical, 1956; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101162/m1/141/ocr/: accessed March 28, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.

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