SOURCE: "Carl Becker: The Historian as a Literary Craftsman," in The William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. IX, July, 1952, pp. 291-316.

In the following essay, Smith shows Becker to have been a writer whose concerns were as much literary as they were historical and philosophical.

If it be said that politics has nothing to do with literature, or that the form of a document can be appreciated without reference to its content, I do not agree. On the contrary, it is a favorite notion of mine that in literary discourse form and content are but two aspects of the same thing. [Becker, The Declation of Independence]

If what Becker said about historical method was unpalatable to many other historians, the way he said it could arouse only admiration and envy. His philosophy of history might be heresy, his research dangerously submerged, but his gift for writing was everywhere acknowledged...