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Title: Union and Democracy

Author: Allen Johnson

Release Date: August 30, 2007 [eBook #22461]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

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UNION AND DEMOCRACY

by

ALLEN JOHNSON

Professor of American History
Yale University

[Illustration: From the original portrait by Stuart, at Bowdoin College.

Th. Jefferson [Handwritten]]

[Illustration]

Houghton Mifflin Company
Boston New York Chicago

The Riverside Press Cambridge

Copyright, 1915, by Allen Johnson
All Rights Reserved

The Riverside Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts
U. S. A.

PREFACE

The title of this volume must be regarded as suggestive rather than as
strictly accurate, for the beginnings of union are to be found farther
back than 1783, and democracy in its largest sense has even yet been
only imperfectly realized. At the close of the Revolution, union was but
a name. What Metternich said of the Italy of his day might have been
said of the United States in 1783: it was only a geographical
expression. The formation of the new federal union under the
Constitution is properly the main, though not the sole, theme of this
volume. Behind the thirteen Atlantic communities lay a vast region which
almost at once invited the colonizing activities of the people. The rise
of this western world is a movement of immense significance. Out of the
bosom of the West emerged the new democracy which transformed the face
of society in the old States. Whether viewed economically or
politically, this forms the second theme in any history of the times.
Around these two