The original book has 144 margin notes. In this eBook they are headers to theparagraph in which they originally appeared.
The Riverside Literature Series THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE BY JOHN FISKE WITH MAPS, INDEX, AND A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY Boston: 4 Park Street; New York: 85 Fifth Avenue Chicago: 378-388 Wabash Avenue The Riverside Press, Cambridge |
COPYRIGHT, 1889 BY JOHN FISKE COPYRIGHT, 1894 BY HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED |
PREFACE.
This little book does not contain the substance of the lectures on theAmerican Revolution which I have delivered in so many parts of theUnited States since 1883. Those lectures, when completed and published,will make quite a detailed narrative; this book is but a sketch. It ishoped that it may prove useful to the higher classes in schools, as wellas to teachers. When I was a boy I should have been glad to get hold ofa brief account of the War for Independence that would have suggestedanswers to some of the questions that used to vex me. Was the conduct ofthe British government, in driving the Americans into rebellion, merelywanton aggression, or was it not rather a bungling attempt to solve apolitical problem which really needed to be solved? Why were New Jerseyand the Hudson river so important? Why did the British armies make SouthCarolina their chief objective point after New[iv] York? Or how didCornwallis happen to be at Yorktown when Washington made such a longleap and pounced upon him there? And so on. Such ques