PREFACE.
We now submit to the People of the United States, the first fruits of our long and arduous labours. We offer the present Volume as a specimen of the manner in which our Work will be accomplished. The undertaking in which we have embarked is, emphatically, a National one: National in its scope and object, its end and aim.
The tendency of the present age has been justly and philosophically designated as historick. At no former period of the world has this characteristick been so strikingly manifested. The learning, the industry, and the sagacity of the most profound intellects have been devoted in exploring the deepest recesses, and in gathering the most widely scattered rays, for the purpose of pouring their concentrated lights upon the history of the past. The Annals of the remotest ages, and the most distant countries, have been examined with equal diligence and learning, and new and valuable lights have been thrown even upon the antiquities of Egypt, of Greece, and of Rome.
The same tendency has been exhibited in developing the early history of existing Nations. Ancient records have been disinterred from the dust of ages, the most obscure receptacles of historick materials have been explored, almost obliterated records have been restored, scattered documents have been collected, and forgotten writers have been republished. A combined and vigorous effort appears to be making, throughout the civilized world, together, to preserve and to scrutinize all the memorials which can rescue the history of the past from the obscurity in which time has enveloped them.
Nor has this important subject been allowed to depend, exclusively, upon individual means and private enterprise. In England, and in France especially, the Government has long since perceived and recognized the truth, that the national character and the national interests, are intimately connected with the success of these undertakings. The Publick Offices have been laid open and their rich treasures submitted to the inspection of the inquirer after historick truth. With a liberality deserving of the highest commendation, this privilege has been extended as well to foreigners as to natives, and Brequigny and Von Reaumer are not the only instances in which the records of one Nation have been employed by the historian of another. This liberty has, in several instances, been accorded to our own citizens, and the Publick Offices in London have been opened, and Documents allowed to be transcribed, for the purpose of verifying the general history of the United States.
Nor has this publick interest been confined within these limits. Large pecuniary expenditures have been made with the view to promote these objects, and to aid in publications for the completion of which the resources of individuals were inadequate. In some instances Governments have, themselves, undertaken the work, and by the instrumentality of their own agents, and the employment of their own means, have laboured in the dissemination of such information as was calculated to illustrate their past history. The Record Commission of England, and that organized in France, under the supervision of the Minister of Publick Instruction, in conformity with the recommendation of M. Guizot, are too well known to require more than this general allusion to them.
If in Europe there exist sufficient motives to prompt to such undertakings, how infinitely more weighty and more efficient ought they to be among us. These inquiries, originating in the liberal and inquisitive character of the age, may be expected to be most zealously pursued in those countries where freedom prevails. Designed, as they are, to exhibit the fundamental principles of government, they might naturally be expected to be the most warmly cherished, where free institutions exist. Independently of this, all our historical memorials are of comparatively recent date, they are written in a language familiar to all, they tend to illustrate existing institutions, and a history which still retains all its personal interest. A complete collection of the materials for a history of this country would not only be a proud monument to the memory of our ancestors, whose deeds they commemorate and whose opinions they embody, but would serve as an invaluable guide to us and to our posterity, by exhibiting the vital spirit which has pervaded the past, the
