A History Of The United States

A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES - CONTENTS PACE --INTRODUCTIO A N N D EDITORIALN OTE by D. W. Brogan. . . ix BIOGRAPHICANLO TE ON THE AUTHORb y G. K. Chesterton . . xxv CHAPTER I. The English Colonies . . I 39 11. Arms and the Rights of Man . 16, , 111. We, the People . 40, , IV. The Mantle of Washington . 56, , V. The Virginian Dynasty. . 7I, , VI. The Jacksonian Revolution . 98, , VII. The Spoils of Mexico . . 120, , VIII. The Slavery Question . . 142, , IX. Secession and Civil War . . I71 9, X. The Black Terror . . 224, , XI. The New Problems . . 250 APPENDIXI. Chronological Table of Events, 1918-39 . 295 APPENDIXI I . Documents and Speeches The Declaration of Independence . 297 The . Constitution of the United States of America 301 vii ... vm CONTENTS APPENDIX I I --continued PAGE George Washingtons Farewell Address . . 322 Abraham Lincolns Second Inaugural Address . 339 Abraham Lincolns Gettysburg Address . 340 Woodrow Wilsons Speech on Americas Entry into War . 341 APPENDI 1 X 1 1. Bibliography . 351 EDITOR S -- INTRODUCTION -- THERE are several useful tvves of short histories. The best. and the rarest, is the woriof a great scholar who is also a great or, at any rate, a talented writer. If such a man unbends to give the main results of his researches, the fruit of his reflections. in a brief compass we have then what the French call high vulgarization, a clear and popular version of a complicated story which does not secure either clarity or popularity by any sacrifice of accuracy or proportion. Such books are rare, because men combining the gifts of a scholar and an artist as among English historians Maitland did are rare, and still rarer also are the men possessed of thesequalities who have the courage necessary to abandon the armour of learned apparatus. Much more common is the popular version of a complicated historical story that is the work of a sound. run of the mill. academic historian. Such books have the merit of saying nothing preposterous, of digesting a mass of literature, of enabling the patient reader to construct the wood, the writer having provided the trees. But they are usually very dull and, as narratives, they are static. Against the professors there are set the professional popularizers whose main asset is literary or journalistic. These popularizers at least understand that their business is to tell a story their strength lies in that their weakness in their inadequate grasp of the materials from which the story has to be constructed. The professors suffer from the faults of the railwav time-table. the storv-tellers from the faults of I, film scenario writers. The first class of popularizers vroduce books which will not positively mislead, b t which ill keep no one, young or old, from play or the chimney corner. The second do, indeed, produce books that read like novels, usually in proportion as they are novels. Both classes serve a purpose, but both have grave weaknesses and both are bound to be short-lived. For the academic dieest di ee st of current scholarship, lacking literary salt or the preservative of an illuminating point of view, ceases to be nourishing as scholarship advances, while the work of the competent story-teller dies as the taste in stories to which he catered changes-and V that taste changes very fast...