GLORY CROWNS THE BRAVE. MERICA, grand in her splendid isolation, no less than in her incomparable resources and militant mightiness, has felt so secure of her supremacy in the Western hemisphere that the energies, the talents, and the ambitions of our people have been devoted to those peaceful pursuits which have for their aim personal advancement, national prestige, and a wide dissemination of those principles upon which human liberty and the peaceful development of the world are founded. Our conquests have never been made by sword; our growth as a nation has not been by accretions wasted from weaker powers; our strength is not derived from the blood of victims, and our conscience is not harrowed by spectres of hate and oppression. Thus, content in our national exclusiveness, and punctilious in our sense of justice and humanity, we have been facetiously designated, by Cæsars of militarism, as a nation of shopkeepers and as devotees of commercialism, who, mindful only of dollars, recoil at any suggestion of gunpowder. We have been patient in the face of contumely, self-possessed under painful. provocation, but never indifferent to the cry of distress, nor deaf to appeals of the suffering. Other nations, drunk with ambition, glorying in aggrandizement, cannot comprehend the great American Republic, and thus characteristically misjudge our purposes, and condemn the administration of our Government. Our war with Spain has served to disillusion the statesmen of Europe, to quicken their slow intelligence, to flood their darkened understanding, and to give them an appreciation of the magnitude of our capabilities as a nation and our patriotism as a people. It has shown them that while we love money, and are devoted to building up our fortunes, to increasing our benefits, and to enriching our minds, we are more deeply attached to our homes, and that our love of country is equaled only by our sympathies for those struggling in the grip of tyrants. If Americans have any one thing to regret, it is the fact that we are not fully appreciative of our own history, having failed to study it as the subject deserves. This is natural to a people whose peace has been so seldom disturbed that it is hard to realize that perils have been experienced and great victories won. Notwithstanding we are a youthful republic, we may justly exult in the truth that we are, historically considered, the most picturesque nation of the globe, and unique not only for being the most powerful government ever instituted by man, but because our unexampled greatness has been attained in a single century, and that in our several wars we have never once been defeated. The more thoroughly we study the history of our country the better citizens we become, because the tendency is to intensify our patriotism by giving us a higher conception of the domestic blessings that we possess as sovereigns. How very few of us even know that since the War of the Revolution America has been engaged in no less than seventeen different conflicts, much less realize their causes and results; and yet each one has been a distinct step in the work of founding and developing the nation. History is not so impressively taught by narration as by pictures; the artist is more graphic than the writer, because the eye comprehends quicker than the intelligence, while the pleasure is more acute and lasting. For this all-sufficient reason the publishers of this volume, dedicated to acts of patriotic daring, have wisely determined to interest and instruct Americans in the history of our beloved country, by splendidly illustrating and presenting in graphic detail stories of the most thrilling and valorous deeds performed by the brave men who have carried our flag to victory on land and sea, and thus glorified the nation. A higher purpose cannot be conceived, since its fulfillment presents in the most lucid, authentic and impressive manner the heroic incidents that have punctuated and exalted our history as the grandest, liberty-loving and freedom-insuring republic of any age. J. W. BUEL. |