Volume 11 of the Chronicles of America Series ∴ Allen Johnson, Editor Assistant Editors Gerhard R. Lomer Charles W. Jefferys Abraham Lincoln Edition New Haven: Yale University Press Toronto: Glasgow, Brook & Co. London: Humphrey Milford Oxford University Press 1918 Copyright, 1918 by Yale University Press...

In this brief sketch I have chiefly endeavored to convey to the reader, not a record of what men did, but a sense of how they thought and felt about what they did. To give the quality and texture of the state of mind and feeling of an individual or class, to create for the reader the illusion (not delusion , O able Critic!) of the intellectual atmosphere of past times, I have as a matter of course introduced many quotations; but I have also ventured to resort frequently to the literary device (t

His Majesty’s reign … I predict will be happy and truly glorious.— Benjamin Franklin . The 29th of January, 1757, was a notable day in the life of Ben Franklin of Philadelphia, well known in the metropolis of America as printer and politician, and famous abroad as a scientist and Friend of the Human Race. It was on that day that the Assembly of Pennsylvania commissioned him as its agent to repair to London in support of its petition against the Proprietors of the Province, who were charged with

Nothing of note in Parliament, except one slight day on the American taxes.— Horace Walpole . There were plenty of men in England, any time before 1763, who found that an excellent arrangement which permitted them to hold office in the colonies while continuing to reside in London. They were thereby enabled to make debts, and sometimes even to pay them, without troubling much about their duties; and one may easily think of them, over their claret, as Mr. Trevelyan says, lamenting the cruelty of

British subjects, by removing to America, cultivating a wilderness, extending the domain, and increasing the wealth, commerce, and power of the mother country, at the hazard of their lives and fortunes, ought not, and in fact do not thereby lose their native rights.— Benjamin Franklin . It was the misfortune of Grenville that this “interweaving,” as Pownall described it, should have been undertaken at a most inopportune time, when the very conditions which made Englishmen conscious of the burden

A pepper-corn, in acknowledgement of the right, is of more value than millions without it.— George Grenville. A perpetual jealousy respecting liberty, is absolutely requisite in all free states.— John Dickinson . Good Americans everywhere celebrated the repeal of the Stamp Act with much festivity and joyful noises in the streets, and with “genteel entertainments” in taverns, where innumerable toasts were drunk to Liberty and to its English defenders. Before his house on Beacon Hill, Mr. John Han

It has been his [Thomas Hutchinson’s] principle from a boy that mankind are to be governed by the discerning few, and it has been ever since his ambition to be the hero of the few.— Samuel Adams . We have not been so quiet these five years.… If it were not for two or three Adamses, we should do well enough.— Thomas Hutchinson . In December, 1771, Horace Walpole, a persistent if not an infallible political prophet, was of opinion that all the storms that for a decade had distressed the Empire wer

The die is now cast; the colonies must either submit or triumph.— George III . We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.— Thomas Jefferson . Two months and ten days after Mr. Hutchinson embarked for England, John Adams, the Hon. Thomas Cushing, Mr. Samuel Adams, and Robert Treat Paine set out “from Boston, from Mr. Cushing’s hous

Contemporary Writings; Many of the most important documents for this period are in the following brief collections: W. Macdonald, Select Charters and Other Documents, 1906; H. W. Preston, Documents Illustrative of American History, 5th ed., 1900; H. Niles, Principles and Acts of the Revolution in America, 1822; J. Almon, Collection of Papers Relative to the Dispute between Great Britain and America, 1777 (commonly cited as Prior Documents ). The spirit of the times is best seen in the contempora

The Chronicles of America Series has two similar editions of each volume in the series. One version is the Abraham Lincoln edition of the series, a premium version which includes pictures. A textbook edition was also produced, which does not contain the pictures and captions associated with the pictures, but is otherwise the same book. This book was produced to match the textbook edition of the book. We have retained the original punctuation and spelling in the book, but there are a few exceptio