A Short History of the United States for School Use

Our children shall behold his fame, The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing man, Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame, New birth of our new soil, the first American. --LOWELL.
The aim of this little book is to tell in a simple and concise form the story of the founding and development of the United States. The study of the history of one's own country is a serious matter, and should be entered upon by the text-book writer, by the teacher, and by the pupil in a serious spirit, even to a greater extent than the study of language or of arithmetic. No effort has been made, therefore, to make out of this text-book a story book. It is a text-book pure and simple, and should be used as a text-book, to be studied diligently by the pupil and expounded carefully by the teacher.
Most of the pupils who use this book will never have another opportunity to study the history and institutions of their own country. It is highly desirable that they should use their time in studying the real history of the United States and not in learning by heart a mass of anecdotes,--often of very slight importance, and more often based on very insecure foundations. The author of this text-book, therefore, has boldly ventured to omit most of the traditional matter which is usually supposed to give life to a text-book and to inspire a love of history, --which too often means only a love of being amused. For instance, descriptions of the formation of the Constitution and of the struggle over the extension of slavery here occupy the space usually given to the adventures of Captain John Smith and to accounts of the institutions of the Red Men. The small number of pages available for the period before 1760 has necessitated the omission of pictures of colonial life, which cannot be briefly and at the same time accurately described. These and similar matters can easily be studied by the pupils in their topical work in such books as Higginson's Young Folks' History , Eggleston's United States and its People , and McMaster's School History . References to these books and to a limited number of other works have been given in the margins of this text-book. These citations also mention a few of the more accessible sources, which should be used solely for purposes of illustration.