TEACHER

This section is not only the most important but the most difficult of
any so far considered. Its successful teaching requires more preparation
than any earlier section. The teacher is advised carefully to peruse
Channing's _Students' History_, ch. iv, and to state in simple, clear
language, the difference between the ideas on representation which
prevailed in England and in the colonies. Another point to make clear is
the legal supremacy of Parliament. The outbreak was hastened by the
stupid use of legal rights which the supremacy of Parliament placed in
the hands of Britain's rulers, who acted often in defiance of the real
public opinion of the mass of the inhabitants of Great Britain.

V

THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE,
1775-1783

Books for Study and Reading

References.--Fiske's _War of Independence;_ Higginson's _Larger
History_, 249-293; McMaster's _With the Fathers._

Home Readings.--Scudder's _Washington_; Holmes's _Grandmother's Story of
Bunker Hill;_ Cooper's _Lionel Lincoln_ (Bunker Hill); Cooper's _Spy_
(campaigns around New York); Cooper's _Pilot_ (the war on the sea);
Drake's _Burgoyne's Invasion; _Coffin's _Boys of '76_; Abbot's _Blue
Jackets of '76_; Abbot's _Paul Jones_, Lossing's _Two Spies._

CHAPTER 14

BUNKER HILL TO TRENTON

[Sidenote: Advantages of the British.]

133. Advantages of the British.--At first sight it seems as if the
Americans were very foolish to fight the British. There were five or six
times as many people in the British Isles as there were in the
continental colonies. The British government had a great standing army.
The Americans had no regular army. The British government had a great
navy. The Americans had no navy. The British government had quantities
of powder, guns, and clothing, while the Americans had scarcely any
military stores of any kind. Indeed, there were so few guns in the
colonies that one British officer thought if the few colonial gunsmiths
could be bribed to go away, the Americans would have no guns to fight
with after a few months of warfare.

[Illustration: GRAND UNION FLAG. Hoisted at Cambridge, January, 1776.
The British Union and thirteen stripes,]

[Sidenote: Advantages of the Americans.]

134. Advantages of the Americans.--All these things were clearly
against the Americans. But they had some advantages on their side. In
the first place, America was a long way off from Europe. It was very
difficult and very costly to s