Feelings in History: Ancient and Modern

We can apply to our reading of history the same powers of mind that we bring to novels. That is the idea of the book, to enrich our understanding of motivation -- the Why of history. Ancient writers knew this. That can be shown in detail. Modern psychology supports the idea. And the idea can be illustrated out of modern historians. An example: how a specific big event, abolition, developed out of feelings which any reader must share and, sharing, must understand better.