PREFACE. THE following pages tell the story of United States history from the days when this land was tenanted only by beasts and barbarians to the present year. The intention and endeavor of the author have been to omit no important fact, no incident that marked or assisted the development of the nation during the whole of this time. To accomplish this result within the moderate compass of a single volume, it was necessary that no superfluous words or flights of fancy should be indulged in. Hence this book will be found a plain presentation of the facts. It need hardly be said that great care has been exercised to obtain exact statements of fact. In the earlier and more obscure portions of our history and concerning troublous and confused times, such as the Civil War, considerable divergence is found among the authorities as to dates and figures. In such cases the author has given the preference to the most consistent and reasonable statements, but where the truth has been accessible to search he has endeavored to find it. To write an impartial history of any country is a difficult task; to write without prejudice of one's own country is well-nigh impossible. Political strife, religious animosities, sectional differences, all combine to prevent the historian from writing the colorless truth and also to prevent the reader from agreeing with his statements. Nevertheless, the author of this book has honestly endeavored to give facts as they are without bending them to any purpose of his own. In the account of the slavery agitation and of the great Civil War which was the outcome of that controversy, he has been especially careful to give the prominent facts on both sides of the question, concealing nothing on the one side and setting down naught in malice against the other. That deadly struggle is too recent in our minds and raised too many bitter feelings in this land to be recounted impartially without the strictest control of the pen. While it has been the main purpose of the author to give the facts without attempting to enforce his own interpretation of them, he has by no means neglected the sequence of events and the philosophy of history. The causes and results of wars and other great crises have been carefully pointed out, and the story of our country has been given in orderly succession from beginning to end. The six periods of this book are those into which our history naturally divides itself, and they need no further explanation than that which they receive in the following pages. Every help for ready reference has been furnished to the reader in the outline of contents which heads each chapter and in the carefully prepared index. The author now submits his work to the public with the hope that it will be found as he intended it— a straightforward, complete, accurate, concise, and impartial history of a great and a free people. E. B. |