Project Gutenberg's Beginnings of the American People, by Carl Lotus Becker

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Title: Beginnings of the American People

Author: Carl Lotus Becker

Editor: William E. Dodd

Release Date: May 16, 2007 [EBook #21501]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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[Illustration: Benj. Franklin. From the portrait by Duplessis, in the
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BEGINNINGS OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE

BY
CARL LOTUS BECKER

PROFESSOR OF EUROPEAN HISTORY
UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO
The Riverside Press Cambridge

COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY CARL LOTUS BECKER
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Riverside Press
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
U.S.A.

THE RIVERSIDE HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES

EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION

In the following volumes the authors seek to present a brief account of
the beginnings, development, and final unity of the people of the United
States. There are many histories of the country, many biographies which
are in large measure histories; but these are exhaustive works
traversing minutely certain periods, like Rhodes's _History of the
United States from 1850 to 1877_, or Nicolay and Hay's _Abraham Lincoln:
A History_; or they are shorter "patriotic" accounts which seek to prove
something, or which fail to tell the whole story. Important as these
classes of historical literature are, they hardly suffice for the
teachers of advanced college classes, or for business and professional
men who would like to know how the isolated European plantations or
corporations in North America became in so short a time the great and
wealthy nation of to-day.

To meet these needs, that is, to describe in proper proportion and with
due emphasis, but in the brief space of four short volumes, the forces,
influences, and masterful personalities which have made the country what
it is, has not been an easy task. For, contrary to the view of European