A history of the American nation

Preface

American history has been making at a very rapid rate in these early years of the twentieth century; events of importance have followed one another in quick succession; new views of social duty and new ideas concerning obligations in industrial relationships have come so quickly that it has been hard to keep pace with new conditions or to appreciate the principles of action. All of these developments have in some degree changed our attitude toward the past. The writer of history, if true to his faith and loyal to his science, will not allow his statements of fact and of social change to be colored or distorted by his hopes for the future or by his judgments of the present; it is his duty to tell his story — entertainingly if he can — but as calmly and truthfully as the facts and his grasp of them permit.

And yet we are always getting new points of view, new angles of vision, new turning points in the onward road, from which to look back upon the past; and things which loomed large at one time or to one generation of history students are reduced to smaller dimensions; and, on the other hand, things that once seemed small and comparatively unimportant appear large and full of meaning when judged by later experience. As the present is the product of infinite factors working in the past, we must ever get, as we go on and as life changes about us, new glimpses of forces that have made us what we are.

The main events of American history cannot be changed, and must be learned, as far as we can now see, by successive generations of boys and girls; the planting of the English colonies on the edge of the new continent and their development in political capacity and self -sufficiency; the estrangement from the mother country; the war and independence; the formation of the federal vi HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN NATION

Union; the expansion of the republic till it reached across the continent and beyond; the ideals of democratic government influenced by the experiences of the frontier; the growth of slavery and of anti-slavery sentiment; the gradual separation of the sections until the South sought to sever the bonds of union; the declaration of the Civil War that there must be one nation, and that, as a house divided against itself will surely fall and a nation cannot exist half slave and half free, the nation should be wholly free; the gradual reconstruction, economic and political, after the struggle between the sections. But there are other things, too, and these to-day mean more to us than they did only a few years ago; the development of party machinery, the tasks of democratic government in a changing social order, the using — and sometimes the mis-using — of the natural resources of the country, the growth of cities and the multiplying of factories; — in fact, the new conditions which are the product of the manufacturing regime and which have brought their demands for legislation and political action. Every passing year seems to add significance to the important general phases of industrial growth during the last fifty years, while the relations of government to industry and to tasks of social betterment are more and more the subject for discussion. This does not mean that history should be written from the point of view of industrial growth alone; on the contrary, perhaps never before was there such need for understanding political history and knowing the development or change of political principles, and for this reason, because political society, the state, the government, and law are now closely involved in every problem of industrial control, in every plan for general social regeneration.

With some such ideas as this in mind, the present edition of this book has been prepared. The text of previous editions has all been carefully reexamined; portions of it have been rearranged; the colonial period has been reduced to allow more space for the treatment of more recent history; considerable

PREFACE vii

portions have been rewritten. Some alterations have been made here and there or an explanation has been added where the experience of teachers, who have used the book in the class room, indicated that alteration might make a statement more lucid or telling. Marked addition has been made to the story of the last forty years and an attempt has been made to bring out with distinctness the main characteristics of the period.

Acknowledgment is due to the following for some of the illustrations that have been used: the Houghton Mifflin Company, Ginn and Company, the Magazine of American History, the New York Historical Society, the New York Public Library, the Boston Public Library, the Grolier Club, and Mr. R. T. Haines Halsey.

The book in its older form has been used for some years in many class rooms, and, if I may judge from words of commendation that have come to me and for which I am grateful, it has been helpful to teachers in their task of making real to pupils the great and essential facts of American history. It is offered in this new form with considerable confidence that it will prove no less useful. It is, I may venture to hope, if not entirely free from error, in most respects abreast of modern scholarship in the field; to hope less would be to disparage the attention and thought given to the revision.

Andrew C. McLaughlin.

April lo, 1913.

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Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. — Discovery and Exploration i

II. — The Southern Colonies — 1607-1700 19