COLLATERAL READING.
The following books may be recommended to the reader who wishes to get a general idea of the American Revolution:—
1. General Works. The most comprehensive and readable account is contained in Mr. Fiske's larger work, The American Revolution, in two volumes. The subject is best treated from the biographical point of view in Washington Irving's Life of Washington, vols. i.-iv. Mr. Fiske has abridged and condensed these four octavos into one stout duodecimo entitled Washington and his Country, Boston, Ginn & Co., 1887. Our young friends may find Frothingham's Rise of the Republic rather close reading, but one can hardly name a book that will more richly reward them for their study. Green's Historical View of the Revolution should be read by every one. Carrington's Battles of the Revolution makes the military operations quite clear with numerous maps. Very young readers find it interesting to begin with Coffin's Boys of Seventy-Six, or C. H. Woodman's Boys and Girls of the Revolution. The social life of the time is admirably portrayed in Scudder's Men and Manners in America One Hundred Years Ago. See also Thornton's Pulpit of the Revolution. Lossing's Field Book of the Revolution—two royal octavos profusely illustrated—is an excellent book to browse in. Lecky's England in the Eighteenth Century gives an admirable statement of England's position.
2. Biographies. Lodge's George Washington, 2 vols., Scudder's George Washington, Tyler's Patrick Henry, Tudor's Otis, Hosmer's Samuel Adams, Morse's John Adams, Frothingham's Warren, Quincy's Josiah Quincy, Parton's Franklin and Jefferson, Fonblanque's Burgoyne, Lossing's Schuyler, Riedesel's Memoirs, Stone's Brant, Arnold's Arnold, Sargent's André, Kapp's Steuben and Kalb, Greene's Greene, Amory's Sullivan, Graham's Morgan, Simms's Marion, Abbott's Paul Jones, John Adams's Letters to his Wife, Morse's Hamilton, Gay's Madison, Roosevelt's Gouverneur Morris, Russell's Fox, Albemarle's Rockingham, Fitzmaurice's Shelburne, MacKnight's Burke, Macaulay's essay on Chatham.
3. Fiction. Cooper's Chainbearer, Miss Sedgwick's Linwoods, Paulding's Old Continental, Mrs. Child's Rebels, Motley's Morton's Hope, Herman Melville's Israel Potter, Kennedy's Horse Shoe Robinson. There is an account of the battle of Bunker Hill in Cooper's Lionel Lincoln. Thompson's Green Mountain Boys gives interesting descriptions of many of the events in that region. The border warfare is treated in Grace Greenwood's Forest Tragedy and Hoffman's Greyslaer. Simms's Partisan and Mellichampe deal with events in South Carolina in 1780, and later events are covered in his Scout, Katharine Walford, Woodcraft, Forayers, and Eutaw. See also Miss Sedgwick's Walter Thornley, and Cooper's Pilot and Spy, and H. C. Watson's Camp Fires of the Revolution. The scenes of Paul and Persis, by Mary E. Brush, are laid in the Mohawk Valley.
For further references, see Justin Winsor's Reader's Handbook of the American Revolution, a book which is absolutely indispensable to every one who wishes to study the subject.