enth
and eighteenth centuries, before the days of steam and electricity, and
their defensive alliance against the new, imperialistic England of
George III, are the special themes of his study. But here, as elsewhere
in our cooeperative undertaking, the object has been to portray only
those things which seem to have counted in the final make-up of the
Confederacy of 1783, and of the United States of to-day. Moreover, the
daily life of the people, amusements, manners, religious predilections,
and the everyday occupations of men and women have been accorded some of
the space which, from another view-point, might have been devoted to an
account of government and the arguments of jurists.

Thus Professor Becker has presented a true and entertaining picture of
the purposes of European capitalists interested in the plantations, of
the poor people who were packed off to America to serve the ends of
commerce, and of the energetic men of the eighteenth century who slowly
worked out for England the conquest of North America. The reading of
chapters III and V of the _Beginnings of the American People_ can
hardly fail to give one a new view of, and a new interest in, colonial
history.

Nor has Professor Johnson approached his theme, _Union and Democracy_,
in a different spirit. He is neither a champion of the wholesome
nationalism which gave the Federalists their place in history nor a
defender of the radical idealism which Professor Becker has shown to be
the mainspring of the Revolution of 1776, and which Jefferson called to
life again in his struggle to win control of the national machinery,
1796 to 1800. In treating the period 1783 to 1828, Professor Johnson had
the difficult task of tracing the important influences which culminated
in the Constitution of 1789, the Jeffersonian revolt of 1800, the
foreign complications of 1803 to 1815, and the so-called Era of Good
Feelings. Here again the popular prejudices, if one desires so to term
them, land speculations, and sectional likes, and dislikes receive
attention; but the formation of the Constitution, the organization of
the Federal Government, international quarrels about the rights of
neutral commerce, and finally the War of 1812 are naturally the main
topics.

The chapters which treat of the results of the second war with England,
the westward movement, and the national awakening, and especially the
one which analyzes the problems which underlay the great decisions of
Chief