back
many hundreds of years and not only cross the ocean to the England of
King Alfred, but keep on still further to the ancient market-places of
Rome and Athens, and even to the pyramids of Egypt; and in all this long
journey through the ages we should not be merely gratifying an idle
curiosity, but at every step of the way could gather sound practical
lessons, useful in helping us to vote intelligently at the next election
for mayor of the city in which we live or for president of the United
States.

[Sidenote: The half-way station in American History]

We are not now, however, about to start on any such long journey. It is
a much nearer and narrower view of the American Revolution that we wish
to get. There are many points from which we might start, but we must at
any rate choose a point several years earlier than the Declaration of
Independence. People are very apt to leave out of sight the "good old
colony times" and speak of our country as scarcely more than a hundred
years old. Sometimes we hear the presidency of George Washington spoken
of as part of "early American history;" but we ought not to forget that
when Washington was born the commonwealth of Virginia was already one
hundred and twenty-five years old. The first governor of Massachusetts
was born three centuries ago, in 1588, the year of the Spanish Armada.
Suppose we take the period of 282 years between the English settlement
of Virginia and the inauguration of President Benjamin Harrison, and
divide it in the middle. That gives us the year 1748 as the half-way
station in the history of the American people. There were just as many
years of continuous American history before 1748 as there have been
since that date. That year was famous for the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle,
which put an end to a war between England and France that had lasted
five years. That war had been waged in America as well as in Europe, and
American troops had played a brilliant part in it. There was now a brief
lull, soon to be followed by another and greater war between the two
mighty rivals, and it was in the course of this latter war that some of
the questions were raised which presently led to the American
Revolution. Let us take the occasion of this lull in the storm to look
over the American world and see what were the circumstances likely to
lead to the throwing off of the British government by the thirteen
colonies, and to their union under a federal government of their o