A complete classified list of the volumes of THE HOME UNIVERSITY LIBRARY already published will be found at the back of this book. PREFACE To tell in brief compass, but with accuracy and clearness, the history of the United States in the eventful period from 1815 to 1860, necessitates the exclusion of nearly everything that relates mainly to the development of particular States, and of some topics which concern the growth of the nation as a whole. The present volume, accordingly, has been restricted chiefly to the exposition of three lines of development, namely, constitutional growth, the rise and progress of political parties, and-slavery. Side by side with these dominating interests run the birth and expansion of a new sense of democracy; and of this, too, in the field of its political expression, I have sought to give a view. To the long list of writers who have traversed this period, in whole or in part, every succeeding narrator is deeply beholden. To three of them, however, I gratefully acknowledge special indebtedness: to Mr. James Ford Rhodes, whose monumental History must long remain the definitive account of the period subsequent to 1850; and to Professor Theodore Clark Smith and the late Professor George P. Garrison, whose volumes in the American Nation series are works of notable insight. PROVIDENCE, R. I. March, 1913. WILLIAM MACDONALD. |