TABLE OF CONTENTS. BOOK FIRST. SUMMARY-Opinions, manners, customs, and inclinations of the inhabitants of the BOOK SECOND SUMMARY.-Troubles in America on account of the stamp duty. Violent tumult a BOOK THIRD. SUMMARY.-Extreme joy of the colonists on hearing of the repeal of the stamp act. BOOK FOURTH SUMMARY.-Confidence of the Americans in the general congress. Dispositions of SUMMARY.-Situation of Boston. State of the two armies. The provinces make preparation for war. Taking of Ticonderoga. Siege of Boston. Battle of Breed's Hill. New congress in Philadelphia. George Washington elected captain-general. Repairs to the camp of Boston. The congress make new regulations for the army. Eulogy of doctor Warren. The congress take up the subject of finances. Endeavor to secure the Indians. Their manifesto. Religious solemnities to move the people. Address of the congress to the British nation. Another to the king. Another to the Irish people. Letter to the Canadians. Events in Canada. Resolutions of congress relative to the conciliatory proposition of lord North. Articles of union between the provinces proposed by the congress. The royal governors oppose the designs of the popular governors. Serious altercations which result from it. Massachusetts begins to labor for independence. The other provinces discover repugnance to initate the exam- ple. Military operations near Boston. Painful embarrassments in which Washington finds himself. General Gage succeeded by sir William Howe, in the chief command of the English troops. Boldness of the Americans upon the sea. Difficulties experienced by Howe. Invasion of Canada. Magnanimity of Montgomery. Montreal taken. Surprising enterprise executed by Arnold. Assault of Quebec. Death of Mont- SUMMARY.-State of parties in England. Discontent of the people. The ministers BOOK SEVENTH. SUMMARY.-Immense preparations of the British for the reduction of America. Con- ference for an arrangement. The Americans lose the battle of Brooklyn. New con- ferences. The troops of the king take possession of New York. Forts Washington and Lee fall into their power. The English victoriously overrun New Jersey. Danger of Philadelphia. The royal army pause at the Delaware. General Lee is made pris- oner. War with the Indians. Campaign of Canada. Firmness of Washington and of congress in adverse fortune; and their deliberations to re-establish it. Dictatorial power granted to Washington; in what manner he uses it. Overtures of congress to the court of France. Franklin sent thither. His character. The fortune of America regains at Trenton. Prudence and intrepidity of Washington. Howe, after various movements, abandons New Jersey. Embarks at New York to carry the war into SUMMARY-Designs of the British ministry. Expedition of Burgoyne. Assembly HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN WAR. BOOK FIRST AMERICA, and especially some parts of it, having been discovered by the genius and intrepidity of Italians, received, at various times, as into a place of asylum, the men whom political or religious disturbances had driven from their own countries in Europe. The security which these distant and desert regions presented to their minds, appeared to them preferable even to the endearments of country and of their natal air. Here they exerted themselves with admirable industry and fortitude, according to the custom of those whom the fervor of opinion agitates and stimulates, in subduing the wild beasts, dispersing or destroying pernicious or importunate animals, repressing or subjecting the barbarous and savage nations that inhabited this New World, draining the marshes, controlling the course of rivers, clearing the forests, furrowing a virgin soil, and committing to its bosom new and unaccustomed seeds; and thus prepared themselves a climate less rude and hostile to human nature, more secure and more commo dious habitations, more salubrious food, and a part of the conveniences and enjoyments proper to civilized life. This multitude of emigrants, departing principally from England, in the time of the last Stuarts, landed in that part of North America which extends from the thirty-second to the forty-fifth degree of north latitude; and there founded the colonies of New-Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island, which took the general name of New England. To these colonies were afterwards joined those of Virginia, New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey, Maryland, the two Carolinas, and Georgia. Nor must it be understood, that in departing from the land in which they were born, to seek in foreign regions a better condition of life, they abandoned their country on terms of enmity, dissolving every tie of early attachment. Far from this, besides the customs, the habits, the usages and manners of their common country, they took with them privileges, granted by the royal authority, whereby their laws were constituted upon the model of those of England, and more or less conformed to a free government, or to a more absolute system, according to the characcer or authority of the prince from whom they emanated. They were also modified by the influence which the people, by means of their organ, the parliament, were found to possess. For, it then being the epoch of those civil and religious dissensions which caused English blood to flow in torrents, the changes were extreme and rapid. Each province, each colony, had an elective assembly, which, under certain limitations, was invested with the authority of parliament; and a governor, who, representing the king to the eyes of the colonists, exercised also a certain portion of his power. To this was added the trial, which is called by jury, not only in criminal matters, but also in civil causes; an institution highly important, and corresponding entirely with the judicial system of England. But, in point of religion, the colonists enjoyed even greater latitude than in their parent country itself; they had not preserved that ecclesiastical hierarchy, against which they had combated so strenuously, and which they did not cease to abhor, as the primary cause of the long and perilous expatriation to which they had been constrained to resort. It can, therefore, excite no surprise, if this generation of men not only had their minds imbued with the principles that form the basis of the English constitution, but even if they aspired to a mode of government less rigid, and a liberty more entire; in a word, if they were inflamed with the fervor which is naturally kindled in the hearts of men by obstacles which oppose their religious and political opinions, and still increased by the privations and persecutions they have suffered on their account. And how should this ardor, this excitement of exasperated minds, have been appeased in the vast solitudes of America, where the amusements of Europe were unknown, where assiduity in manual toils must have hardened their bodies, and increased the asperity of their characters? If in England they had shown themselves averse to the prerogative of the crown, how, as to this, should their opinions have been changed in America, where scarcely a vestige was seen of the royal authority and splendor? where the same occupation being common to all, that of cultivating the earth, must have created in all the opinion and the love of a gene ral equality? They had encountered exile, at the epoch when the war raged most fiercely in their native country, between the king and the people; at the epoch when the armed subjects contended for the right of resisting the will of the prince, when he usurps their liberty; and even, if the public good require it, of transferring the crown from one head to another. The colonists had supported these principles; and how should they have renounced them? they who, out of the reach of royal authority, and, though still in the infancy of a scarcely yet organized society, enjoyed already, in their new country, a peaceful and happy life? the laws observed, justice administered, the magistrates respected, offences rare or unknown; persons, property and honor, protected from all violation? 6 They believed it the unalienable right of every English subject, whether freeman or freeholder, not to give his property without his own consent; that the house of commons only, as the representative of the English people, had the right to grant its money to the crown; that taxes are free gifts of the people to those who govern; and that princes are bound to exercise their authority, and employ the public treasure, for the sole benefit and use of the community. These privileges,' said the colonists, we have brought with us; distance, or change of climate, cannot have deprived us of English prerogatives; we departed from the kingdom with the consent and under the guarantee of the sovereign authority; the right not to contribute with our money without our own consent, has been solemnly recognized by the government in the charters it has granted to many of the colonies. It is for this purpose that assemblies or courts have been established in each colony, and that they have been invested with authority to investigate and superintend the employment of the public money.' And how, in fact, should the colonists have relinquished such a right; they who derived their subsistence from the American soil, not given or granted by others, but acquired and possessed by themselves; which they had first occupied, and which their toils had rendered productive? Every thing, on the contrary, in English America, tended to favor and develop civil liberty, every thing appeared to lead towards national independence. The Americans, for the most part, were not only Protestants, but Protestants against Protestantism itself, and sided with those who in England are called Dissenters; for, besides, as Protestants, not acknowledging any authority in the affair of religion, whose decision, without other examination, is a rule of faith, claiming to be of themselves, by the light of natural reason alone, sufficient judges of religious dogmas, they had rejected the ecclesiastical hierarchy, and abolished even the names of its dignities; they had. in short, divested |