THE EUROPEAN BEGINNINGS OF AMERICAN HISTORY AN INTRODUCTION TO THE HISTORY OF THE COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY ALICE M. ATKINSON ENTERED AT STATIONERS' HALL ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 719.5 HARVARD COLLEGE LIGRARY JAMES HARDY ROPES DEC 2 1980 The Athenæum Press EDITOR'S PREFACE This volume is designed as an introduction to American history. There is nothing in it, I trust, that the student cannot understand, and nothing that it is not important for him to know. I hope, too, that there is nothing in it which would not be regarded as true by modern historical students. The book has cost its author a great deal of honest and patient toil. She has not only read widely in standard treatises but has had constant recourse to the more fundamental sources. The volume was undertaken at the suggestion of my colleague, Professor Henry Johnson, and myself, at the time when the Committee of Eight of the American Historical Association were first plotting out their excellent course of study for the elementary schools. While Miss Atkinson has followed a somewhat different plan from that finally adopted and published by the committee, she has produced a volume which, I am confident, will meet the needs which they had most closely at heart. She has adopted the expedient of making English history the basis of her narrative, without, however, writing a history of England, except incidentally. England may, of course, be dealt with chiefly from the standpoint of its peculiarities; or, on the other hand, it may be regarded as a convenient mirror in which we can see successively reflected the whole development of the Western world, from the old stone men of Kent with their fist hatchets to the discovery and settlement of North |