Robert Greenhow's name does not appear in any of the standard histories of American historical writing, although he was a historical investigator and writer of considerable skill and large output whose career reflects an interesting aspect of historical study in his day. For many years, also, he was an important secondary figure in the small American foreign-relations establishment, but his name is as absent from the standard histories of American diplomacy as it is from those of historical writing.

The reasons for Greenhow's relative obscurity are several. First, he died in the middle of the nineteenth century in frontier California, a long way from the centers of American culture where authors were eulogized and remembered, and the documentary evidence on his career, other than his published writings, is sparse. Second, the writing that he did was largely occasioned by particular events in American foreign relations. It tended to...