OF THE UNITED STATES, FROM THE DISCOVERY OF THE AMERICAN CONTINENT TO THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. BY GEORGE BANCROFT, FORMERLY AMBASSADOR AT THE COURT OF ST. JAMES'S. IN SEVEN VOLUMES. VOL. VI. A New Edition. LONDON: ROUTLEDGE, WARNE, & ROUTLEDGE, FARRINGDON STREET. 1861. PREFACE. THE period of the American Revolution, of which a portion is here treated, divides itself into two epochs; the first extending to the Declaration of Independence; the second, to the acknowledgment of that Independence by Great Britain. In preparing the volume, there has been no parsimony of labour; but marginal references to the documents out of which it has mainly been constructed are omitted. This is done not from an unwillingness to subject every statement of fact, even in its minutest details, to the severest scrutiny; but from the variety and multitude of the papers which have been used, and which could not be intelligibly cited, without burdening the pages with a disproportionate commentary. From the very voluminous manuscripts which I have brought together, I hope at some not very distant day to cull out for publication such letters as may at once confirm my narrative and possess an intrinsic and general interest by illustrating the character and sentiments of the people during the ten or twelve years preceding the 4th of July, 1776. At the close of the sixth volume of this work, some imperfect acknowledgment was made to those from whom |
