PREFACE

The "History of the American Revolution" has been received with a degree of favour greatly surpassing the expectations of the writer. Americans, especially, have learned with pleasure the brotherly feelings entertained towards the colonists, from the beginning to the end of the controversy, by a very large section of the British people. The author has received assurances to that effect from historical students and writers, and from statesmen at Washington of the highest authority, in private letters which it would not be becoming to print; and the same view has been developed by many leading newspapers in the States. One passage, from a well-known New York journal, may be extracted as a fair specimen of a very great number of these opinions. "We have been able to reproduce only a small part of the evidence brought forward by Sir George Trevelyan to show that the majority of the British people were opposed to the attempt to coerce the American Colonies. In our opinion, all candid readers of the two volumes will acknowledge that he has proved his case. It would not be easy to over­estimate the effect which such a demonstration ought to have, and doubtless will have, on the feeling with which Americans will hereafter regard Great Britain. It is manifest that most of our school histories of the United States will have to be rewritten, for the major part of them fail to recognize the momentous truth which the work before us must be held to have established"

The only return for such indulgence, which the author can make, is to do his best to deserve it. He commenced the book mainly for the personal pleasure of writing about events which had always attracted and moved him; and he is conscious that the First Part, which was published in 1899, made its appearance originally in a defective form. That First Part has now been completely re-arranged and somewhat re­written, and henceforward will stand as the First Volume of the "History of the American Revolution." A small amount of irrelevant matter has been expunged, and some important, (and it is hoped not uninteresting,) touches have been added. The chapters are consecutively numbered throughout the volumes, which form a continuous and sustained history of the period whereof they treat.

Something has been said in both countries about the absence of a printed list of the authorities consulted; but reflection will show that the composition of such a list would be undesirable and, indeed, impossible. No one could aspire to write a history of the American Revolution who had not read, and re-read, many scores of books from cover to cover; who had not examined and indexed several hundreds of other volumes; and who had not looked into, or through, an innumerable multitude of memoirs, pamphlets, newspapers, magazines, poems, and collections of printed and unprinted documents. The material for such a work is everywhere; and the collection of that material has been to the author at first the unconscious, and of late the conscious, occupation and delight of a lifetime. To print a list of those books from which something has been taken, — and those which have been turned over with no result except to find the confirmation of what had been learned already, — might well be regarded as ostentatious; and most readers will excuse, and probably applaud, the omission. Wherever specially important assistance has been derived from any author, whether living or dead, full and grateful recognition is expressed in the notes throughout the volumes.

Welcombe, Stratford-on-Avon,