Excerpt from History of the United States of America, Under the Constitution, Vol. 5: 1847-1861 Whether the pleasant labor of these many years be well or ill performed, I may claim without inordinate vanity that the first era of our national and independent exist ence has been traced out for the first time, and the long intervening chasm bridged from the Revolution to the Civil War, with historical painstaking, in the five volumes of the present work. Others may have undertaken the task, but they have not (so far as I am aware) performed it; nor have I profited in any way by their investigations, whether conducted before or after me. Something of careful, consecutive research for fulk three quarters of a century is required to bring the two grand revolutions of American annals into their fit correlation. I now lay down the historical pen, not meaning to take it up again; though, if full vigor and Opportunity were spared, I should be glad to add one more volume so as to bring the narrative to 1865; but the literature of the Civil War is already very great, and I am admonished, at my time of life, not to attempt to add to it. History is a tale never ended; and the narrator is wise who knows when he has reached his resting-place. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.