1 62 Reviews of Books establishment of a New England Confederacy, possibly allied with Eng- land, " would seem to have been inevitable " had news of the failure of Jackson at New Orleans or of the peace negotiations at Ghent been received. Dr. Babcock underestimates the strength of the war party in New England and apparently forgets that Massachusetts furnished more recruits for the war than any other state. An error (p. 165) is noted in the account of the Hartford Convention. The commissioners to Wash- ington are stated to have been appointed by the Hartford Convention ; as a matter of fact they were sent by the legislatures of Massachusetts and Connecticut as representatives of those states. In the remaining third of the volume President Babcock ably de- scribes the manifestations of the new spirit of nationality, which the war evoked, in the chartering of the second bank, in the adoption of a policy of tariff and internal improvements, in the westward expansion, in the aggressive foreign policy which brought Florida under the American flag and finally in the formulation of the law of Nationalism in the great decisions of the Supreme Court delivered by Marshall or by associates inspired by him. Slight defects, only, mar the high character of this part of the book; the chapter dealing with the acquisition of Florida being exceptionally good. Considering the limitations imposed by the nature of the task assigned to them, the credit of fully maintaining the high standard set in the pre- ceding volumes of the American Nation series and of closely approxi- mating the ideal standard for works of this class must be accorded both to Professor Channing and to President Babcock. Marshall S. Brown. The American Nation: A History. Edited by Albert Bushnell H..RT. Volume 14. Rise of the New West, 181Q-1829. By Frederick Jackson Turner, Ph.D., Professor of American History in the University of Wisconsin. (New York and Lon- don: Harper and Brothers. 1906. Pp. xviii, 366.) The book is written in an attractive style in which few errors of literary taste occur and is pleasing in appearance, like the others in the series. The text seems free from mistakes ; but the foot-notes contain some which are troublesome. The frontispiece is a reproduction " from the original life-mask " of Clay by Browere. There are nine outline maps illustrative of the text. An introductory chapter on the competing national and sectional tendencies of American life in the decade under review is followed by three chapters in which the characteristic sectional traits and differences of New England, the Middle States, and the South respectively are set forth with much cleverness and discrimination: and it is pointed out frankly that the several sections are not entirely homogeneous in respect of even the traits that are considered most characteristic. There arc
