but the example of their determination to enjoy it, founding institutions to which mankind may look for hope, for encouragement and light. He will see the arts of peace-commerce, agriculture, manufactures, jurisprudence, letters now languishing beneath a civil polity inadequate and incompetent, and now expanding through a continent with an energy and force unexampled in the history of our subduing the farthest recesses of nature, and filling the wilderness with the beneficent fruits of civilization and Christianity. race, Surveying all this,-looking back to the period which is removed from him only by the span of one mortal life, and looking around and before him, he will see, that among the causes of this unequalled growth stands prominent and decisive, far over all other human agencies, the great code of civil government which the fathers of our republic wrought out from the very perils by which they were surrounded. It is for the purpose of tracing the history of the period in which those perils were encountered and overcome, that I have written this work. But in doing it, I have sought to write as an American. For it is, I trust, impossible to study the history of the Constitution which has made us what we are, by making us one nation, without feeling how unworthy of the subject—how unworthy of the dignity of History would be any attempt to claim more than their just share of merit and renown for names or places endeared to us by local feeling or traditionary attachment. Historical writing that is not just, that is not impartial, that is not fearless, looking beyond the interests of neighborhood, the claims of party, or the solicitations of pride, is worse than useless to mankind. BOSTON, July, 1854. CONTETNS OF VOLUME FIRST. BOOK I. THE CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES FROM THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE REVOLUTION TO THE ADOPTION OF THE ARTICLES OF CONFEDERA. TION. CHAPTER I. ORGANIZATION OF THE FIRST CONTINENTAL CONGRESS.ORIGIN OF THE UNION. SITUATION OF THE COLONIES BEFORE THE REVOLUTION. Power of the Colonies to unite, asserted by the Revolution. Reasons why they were enabled to effect the Union Another Congress proposed Royal Government terminated in Massachusetts. Provincial Congress of Massachusetts Battle of Lexington . 25 CONTINUANCE OF THE REVOLUTIONARY GOVERNMENT. - DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. - PREPARATIONS FOR A NEW GOVERNMENT.. |