Faithfulness to the truth of history involves far more than a research, however faithful and scrupulous, into special facts. Such facts may be detailed with the most minute exactness, and yet the narrative, taken as a whole, may be unmeaning or untrue. The narrator must seek to imbue himself with the life and spirit of the time. He must study events in their bearings near and remote; in the character, habits and manners of those who took part in them. He must himself be, as it were, a sharer or spectator of the action he escribes.
-- FRANCIS PARKMAN, 1865