may be given by my portrait of Charles
Sumner. I cannot help it. I do not think that between his admirers and
myself there is any real difference as to the kind of man he was. It is
a kind that some people revere. It is a kind that I detest--absolutely
leprous scoundrels excepted--more than I can bring myself to detest any
other of God's creatures.

CECIL CHESTERTON.

SOMEWHERE IN FRANCE,
_May 1st, 1918._

CONTENTS

CHAP. PAGE

I. THE ENGLISH COLONIES 1

II. ARMS AND THE RIGHTS OF MAN 14

III. "WE, THE PEOPLE" 36

IV. THE MANTLE OF WASHINGTON 51

V. THE VIRGINIAN DYNASTY 65

VI. THE JACKSONIAN REVOLUTION 90

VII. THE SPOILS OF MEXICO 110

VIII. THE SLAVERY QUESTION 129

IX. SECESSION AND CIVIL WAR 156

X. "THE BLACK TERROR" 203

XI. THE NEW PROBLEMS 227

INDEX 241

A HISTORY
OF THE UNITED STATES

CHAPTER I

THE ENGLISH COLONIES

In the year of Our Lord 1492, thirty-nine years after the taking of
Constantinople by the Turks and eighteen years after the establishment
of Caxton's printing press, one Christopher Columbus, an Italian sailor,
set sail from Spain with the laudable object of converting the Khan of
Tartary to the Christian Faith, and on his way discovered the continent
of America. The islands on which Columbus first landed and the adjacent
stretch of mainland from Mexico to Patagonia which the Spaniards who
followed him colonized lay outside the territory which is now known as
the United States. Nevertheless the instinct of the American democracy
has always looked back to him as a sort of ancestor, and popular
American tradition conceives of him as in some shadowy fashion a
founder. A