The Project Gutenberg EBook of The War of Independence, by John Fiske

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Title: The War of Independence

Author: John Fiske

Release Date: March 13, 2007 [EBook #20803]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE ***

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Number 62

(_Double Number_)

RIVERSIDE LITERATURE SERIES

THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
BY JOHN FISKE

WITH MAPS, INDEX AND A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY BOSTON, NEW YORK, AND CHICAGO

The Riverside Press Cambridge

Price, paper 30 cents; linen, 40 cents

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The Riverside Literature Series

THE
WAR OF INDEPENDENCE

BY
JOHN FISKE

WITH MAPS, INDEX, AND A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

[Decoration]

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

Boston: 4 Park Street; New York: 85 Fifth Avenue
Chicago: 378-388 Wabash Avenue

The Riverside Press, Cambridge

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COPYRIGHT, 1889
BY JOHN FISKE

COPYRIGHT, 1894
BY HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

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PREFACE.

This little book does not contain the substance of the lectures on the
American Revolution which I have delivered in so many parts of the
United States since 1883. Those lectures, when completed and published,
will make quite a detailed narrative; this book is but a sketch. It is
hoped that it may prove useful to the higher classes in schools, as well
as to teachers. When I was a boy I should have been glad to get hold of
a brief account of the War for Independence that would have suggested
answers to some of the questions that used to vex me. Was the conduct of
the British government, in driving the Americans into rebellion, merely
wanton aggression, or was it not rather a bungling attempt to solve a
political problem which really needed to be solved? Why were New Jersey
and the Hudson river so important? Why did the British armies make South
Carolina thei