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A DISCOURSE

DELIVERED BEFORE THE

HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF LOUISIANA,

JANUARY 13, 1836.

BY

HENRY A. BULLARD,

PRESIDENT OF THE SOCIETY.

GENTLEMEN:

Ar our preliminary meeting you were pleased to request me to read to you, at this time, a paper upon the expediency and utility of establishing a Historical Society in this State. The same causes which kept me from the discharge of public duties during the last summer and autumn, prevented my making any adequate preparation for this occasion, and the few remarks which I have to offer, are intended to evince my zeal in the cause which has called us together, and my ready obedience to your call, rather than as at all worthy of the subject or the occasion.

To minds exclusively devoted to the pursuit of wealth, and bending all their energies to that single purpose, it would seem a startling proposition, that there could be anything either of interest or utility in inquiries into the history of the first discovery and settlement of Louisiana by Europeans; in rescuing from threatened oblivion the records of its first colonization; in efforts to bring to light and to perpetuate, by means of the press, all such documents as would form the elements of an authentic history of our multiform population,

and the successive changes in the forms of colonial government, and the progress of its settlement under the different sovereigns who have successively ruled this country. But the time has arrived, I trust, when pursuits of a character purely literary, will have their value among us; when those who engage in researches, having only truth for their object, although barren of immediate results, will be regarded as contributing in some measure to the public good, by adding something to the stock of our national literature. As contemporary history is liable to be discolored by interest, by prejudice and passion, each generation, as it passes away, is under obligations to its successors to furnish them those authentic materials for which alone its true character can be known to posterity, and to perpetuate the public documents and correspondence which accompany and explain every public transaction. But we, who are enjoying the fruits of the labors, and fatigues, and sufferings of our predecessors, owe it also to their memory, to snatch from oblivion the record of their actions, and no longer to leave their fame to rest on the loose, and garbled, and exaggerated narrations of contemporary writers, or catch-penny authors of what the world calls history. History, Gentlemen, as it is generally written, is at best but an approximation to truth, I had almost said, an approximation to probability. It is true the exaggerated and marvellous statements of travellers, or discoverers and settlers, as to physical features and productions of a new country, and the characters of its aboriginal inhabitants, may easily be corrected by subsequent observation and experience. The width of the Mississippi, for example, below this capital, had dwindled from a league to less than a mile; St. Louis is no longer in latitude 45 north, and 276 longitude; quarries of emeralds, silver mines and gold dust, are nowhere found in Louisiana. But the narratives of events and transactions, by real or pretended eye-witnesses, or by the authors of histories and memoirs, can only be tested by reference to authentic records, or by their own intrinsic evidence of their falsity or truth. This latter test is not always to be relied on, for the true is not always probable. Tradition, ornamented and colored by fiction, has always proved, from the earliest records

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