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                         HISTORY

                          OF THE

                       UNITED STATES


                       [Illustration]


                 NEW YORK CINCINNATI CHICAGO

                    AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY

                           1891

          COPYRIGHT, 1891, BY AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY.




PREFACE.


To the American youth the history of our country is more important than
any other branch of education. A fair degree of knowledge respecting
the progress of the American people from the discovery of the New World
to the present is almost essential to that citizenship into which our
youth are soon expected to enter. In a government of the people, for
the people and by the people, a familiar acquaintance with the course
of events, with the movements of society in peace and war, is the great
prerequisite to the exercise of those rights and duties which the
American citizen must assume if he would hold his true place in the
Nation.

Fortunately, the means for studying the history of our country are
abundant and easy. American boys and girls have little cause any longer
to complain that the writers and teachers have put beyond their reach
the story of their native land. Great pains have been taken, on the
contrary, to gather out of our annals as a people and nation the most
important and romantic parts, and to recite in pleasing style, and with
the aid of happy illustrations, the lessons of the past.

The author of the present volume has tried in every particular to put
himself in the place of the student. He has endeavored to bring to the
pupils of our great Common Schools a brief and easy narrative of all
the better parts of our country's history. It has been his aim to tell
the story as a lover of his native land should recite for others that
which is dearest and best to memory and affection. He has sought to
bring the careful results of historical research into the schoolroom
without any of the superfluous rubbish and scaffolding of obtrusive
scholarship and erudition.

Another aim in the present text-book for our youth has been to consider
the events of our country's history somewhat from our own point of
view--not to despise the history of civilization in the Mississippi
Valley, or to seek wholly for examples of heroism and greatness in
the older States of the Union. Perhaps no part of our country is more
favorably situated for taking such a view of our progress as a nation
than is that magnificent region, constituting as it does the most
fertile and populous portion of the continent. In the present History
of the United States the author has not hesitated to make emphatic
those paragraphs which relate to the development and progress of this
region.

For the rest the author has followed the usual channel of narration
from the aboriginal times to the colonization of our Atlantic coast
by the peoples of Western Europe; from that event by way of the Old
Thirteen Colonies to Independence; from Independence to regeneration
by war; and from our second birth to the present epoch of greatness
and promise. He cherishes the hope that his work in the hands of the
boys and girls of our public schools may pass into their memories and
hearts; that its lessons may enter into union with their lives, and
conduce in some measure to their development into men and women worthy
of their age and country.


                              CONTENTS.


                                                                 PAGE

  PREFACE                                                         3

  CONTENTS                                                        5

  INTRODUCTION                                                    8


                               PART I.

                         PRIMITIVE AMERICA.

  CHAPTER

  I.--The Aborigines                                             11


                               PART II.

                        VOYAGE AND DISCOVERY.

  II.--The Norsemen in America                                   21

  III.--Spanish Discoveries in America                           24

  IV.--Spanish Discoveries in America.--Continued                28

  V.--The French in America                                      35

  VI.--English Discoveries and Settlements                       41

  VII.--English Discoveries and Settlements.--Continued          47

  VIII.--Voyages and Settlements of the Dutch                    53


                               PART III.

                           COLONIAL HISTORY.

  IX.--Virginia.--The First Charter                              57

  X.--Charter Government.--Continued                             65

  XI.--Virginia.--The Royal Government                           70

  XII.--Massachusetts.--Settlement and Union                     76

  XIII.--Massachusetts.--War and Witchcraft                      84

  XIV.--New York.--Settlement and Administration of Stuyvesant   94

  XV.--New York under the English                               100

  XVI.--Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire            106

  XVII.--New Jersey and Pennsylvania                            115

  XVIII.--Maryland and North Carolina                           122

  XIX.--South Carolina and Georgia                              128

  XX.--French and