The History of the United States of America: Colonial, 1497-1688

These three volumes, thus revised, present, I be lieve, a pretty correct outline, so far as existing materials admit, of the history of British America for a period of nearly three centuries, down to the organization of the political system of the United States on its existing basis of the Federal Constitution. Through the first following generation, and down to the year 1821, the narrative has been continued in a Second Series of three volumes, already published.

The undress portraits I have presented of our colonial progenitors, though made up chiefly of traits delineated by themselves; my presumption in bursting the thin, shining bubble so assiduously blown up by so many windy mouths, of a colonial golden age of fabulous purity and virtue, have given very serious offense, especially in New England, region of set formality and hereditary grimace, where a careful editorial toning down, to prepare them for being printed, of the letters of even so cautious a person as Washington, has been thought to be demanded alike by decorum toward him, and by propriety toward the public.

Yet my reception, on the part of less critical readers, as well in New England as beyond it, has been such as to afford me very gratifying proof, in the face of croaking prophecies of feeble-minded or faint-hearted friends, that, unsustained by any party, sect, or class interest; independent of every body; worshiping neither the setting, the midday, nor the rising sun; too proud to bask in the

sunshine of national vanity, however large and respectable the company to be found there; too much an admirer of artistic unity, as well as too sturdy a patriot, to overlay and belittle our simple annals by any gaudy fringes borrowed from the history of Europe; content to let our own performers act out our own drama, on our own stage, uneclipsed by stars dragged in from abroad; detesting all kinds of cant, especially the so fashionable twin cants of a spasmodic, wordy rhetoric and a transcendental philosophy; despising all fripperies and clap-traps; relating plain facts in plain English; with no interest but justice, and no aim. but truth-an American, writing for Americans, may hope to find among his countrymen, especially the younger part of them (little credit as we have abroad for philosophical introspection or simplicity of taste), sympathizing and appreciating readers.

Indeed, I am encouraged to entert in the idea of bringing down my narrative of American affairs, in a Third Series of two additional volumes, to the end of the presidential term which has just closed-no doubt, a difficult and delicate undertaking. Yet the extreme publicity of all our political transactions, and the speedy disclosure among us of all political secrets, afford many facilities not elsewhere to be had for the writing of cotemporary history; while, by keeping aloof from all personal party strifes, and by rising above the mere temporary interests of the moment, a position may

be reached sufficiently elevated for obtaining a pretty correct idea of the real proportions and actual relations of events, and, by retrospect over the recent past, facilitating something of forecast as to the more immediate future.

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