CHAPTER I.PAGE
The Discovery of America[13]
CHAPTER II.
Other Discoveries—Wet and Dry[23]
CHAPTER III.
The Thirteen Original Colonies[36]
CHAPTER IV.
The Plymouth Colony[47]
CHAPTER V.
Drawbacks of Being a Colonist[55]
CHAPTER VI.
The Episode of the Charter Oak[62]
CHAPTER VII.
The Discovery of New York[72]
CHAPTER VIII.
The Dutch at New Amsterdam[82]
CHAPTER IX.
Settlement of the Middle States[92]
CHAPTER X.
The Early Aristocracy[102]
CHAPTER XI.
Intercolonial and Indian Wars[110]
CHAPTER XII.
Personality of Washington[124]
CHAPTER XIII.
Contrasts With the Present Day[131]
CHAPTER XIV.
The Revolutionary War[142]
CHAPTER XV.
Benjamin Franklin, LL.D., PhG, F.R.S., etc.[152]
CHAPTER XVI.
The Critical Period[160]
CHAPTER XVII.
The Beginning of the End[170]
CHAPTER XVIII.
The Close of the Revolution[181]
CHAPTER XIX.
The First President[191]
CHAPTER XX.
The War With Canada[203]
CHAPTER XXI.
The Advance of the Republic[212]
CHAPTER XXII.
More Difficulties Straightened Out[222]
CHAPTER XXIII.
The Websters[233]
CHAPTER XXIV.
Befo' the Wah—causes Which Led To It—masterly Grasp Of the Subject Shown by the Author[243]
CHAPTER XXV.
Bull Run and Other Battles[252]
CHAPTER XXVI.
Some More Fratricidal Strife[263]
CHAPTER XXVII.
Still More Fraternal Bloodshed, on Principle—outing Features Disappear, and Give Place To Strained Relations Between Combatants, Who Begin To Mix Things[274]
CHAPTER XXVIII.
Last Year of the Disagreeable War[284]
CHAPTER XXIX.
Too Much Liberty in Places and Not Enough Elsewhere.—thoughts On the Late War—who Is the Bigger Ass, The Man Who Will Not Forgive and Forget, Or The Mawkish and Moist Eyed Sniveller Who Wants To Do That All the Time?[297]
CHAPTER XXX.
Reconstruction Without Pain—administrations of Johnson And Grant[305]
CHAPTER XXXI.
Closing Chronicles[317]
Appendix[329]

CHAPTER I.

THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA.

It was a beautiful evening at the close of a warm, luscious day in old Spain. It was such an evening as one would select for trysting purposes. The honeysuckle gave out the sweet announcement of its arrival on the summer breeze, and the bulbul sang in the dark vistas of olive-trees,—sang of his love and his hope, and of the victory he anticipated in the morrow's bulbul-fight, and the plaudits of the royal couple who would be there. The pink west paled away to the touch of twilight, and the soft zenith was sown with stars coming like celestial fire-flies on the breast of a mighty meadow.

Across the dusk, with bowed head, came a woman. Her air was one of proud humility. It was the air of royalty in the presence of an overruling power. It was Isabella. She was on her way to confession. She carried a large, beautifully-bound volume containing a memorandum of her sins for the day. Ever and anon she would refer to it, but the twilight had come on so fast that she could not read it.