The making of modern law, legal treatises 1800-1926

Reproduction of original from Harvard Law School Library.

hard, brown maybe leatherback book

The purpose of this book is to assist in the discovery and proof of the facts in any investigation, or legal inquiry, involving the genuineness of a document. Definite instructions are given regarding the investigation of the several classes of questioned documents. Since the first edition of this book was issued eighteen years ago there has been a revolution in many American courts in the methods and procedure relating to the proof of the facts in disputed document cases. It can hardly be believed now that less than fifteen years ago no standard of comparison, no genuine writing whatever, could be introduced, either to prove genuineness or forgery, in the United States federal courts, or in the state courts of many states. In the great majority of courts, however, there is now a helpful and receptive attitude that tends to make a trial at law involving a disputed document, as it should be, a legally supervised scientific investigation. Courts are more and more distinguishing between mere opinions and clear, demonstrative evidence; between honest and competent witnesses and dishonest and incompetent fakirs and pretenders. A hope is again expressed that this new and enlarged work will aid in promoting justice.

In the passing of a character so unique as Dr. Booker T. Washington, many of us, his friends, were anxious that his biography should be written by those best qualified to do so. It is therefore a source of gratification to us of his own race to have an account of Dr. Washington's career set forth in a form at once accurate and readable, such as will inspire unborn generations of Negroes and others to love and appreciate all mankind of whatever race or color. It is especially gratifying that this biography has been prepared by the two people in all America best fitted, by antecedents and by intimate acquaintance and association with Dr. Washington, to undertake it. Mr. Lyman Beecher Stowe is the grandson of Harriet Beecher Stowe, whose "Uncle Tom's Cabin" had a very direct influence on the abolition of slavery, and Mr. Emmett J. Scott was Dr. Washington's loyal and trusted secretary for eighteen years. This is not a biography in the ordinary sense. The exhaustive "Life and Letters of Booker T. Washington" remains still to be compiled. In this more modest work we have simply sought to present and interpret the chief phases of the life of this man who rose from a slave boy to be the leader of ten millions of people and to take his place for all time among America's great men. In fact, we have not even touched upon his childhood, early training and education, because we felt the story of those early strug gles and privations had been ultimately well told in his own words in "Up from Slavery." This autobiography, however, published as it was fifteen years before his death, brings the story of his life only to the threshold of his greatest achievements. In this book we seek to give the full fruition of his life's work. Each chapter is complete in itself. Each presents a complete, although by no means exhaustive, picture of some phase of his life. We take no small satisfaction in the fact that we were personally selected by Booker Washington himself for this task. He considered us qualified to produce what he wanted: namely, a record of his struggles and achievements at once accurate and readable, put in permanent form for the information of the public. He believed that such a record could best be furnished by his confidential associate, working in collaboration with a trained and experienced writer, sympathetically interested in the welfare of the Negro race. This, then, is what we have tried to do and the way we have tried to do it. - Foreword.