who would read her history aright must often take his stand upon the European shore." But there are two other considerations which have grown to be still weightier in my mind during the past decade. One is the momentous importance of a clear conception in the minds of pupils in our schools to-day of the vital connection between the present and the past. The other is the equally important need of an interchange of acquaintance between the different parts of the nation. As the vigorous Scripture has it: "Now hath God set the members each one of them in the body, even as it pleased him. And if they were all one member, where were the body? But now they are many members, but one body. And the eye cannot say to the hand, I have no need of thee; or again, the head to the feet, I have no need of you." Therefore it has been of the greatest interest to me to try to give the students of American history in the East some notion of the great expansion of life in the West; to give to Western students a clear intelligence of the beginnings of the nation in the East; to reconcile the minds of the North and the South by a fair disclosure of the underlying conditions which led to the rupture, now happily closed; above all, to show that institutions of free government are not born in a day to be overthrown in a night, but that they are the slowly developed results of struggle and toil and sacrifice, not to be lightly swept aside as if they were mere fashions of an hour. I have written in the thought that our country is a land which was reserved until the new birth of Europe; that it was peopled by men and women who crossed the seas in faith; that its foundations have been laid deep in a divine order; that the nation has been trusted with liberty. A trust carries with it grave duties; the enlargement of liberty and justice is in the victory of the people over the forces of evil. So I bid Godspeed to all teachers of those who are to receive the trust of citizenship. CAMBRIDGE, MASS., Patriots' Day, 1897. H. E. S. Book F. PAGE English and French Possessions in North America at the Time of the The New England States during the War for Independence The Middle States during the War for Independence. The Southern States during the War for Independence Territorial Acquisitions of the United States |