Excerpt from School History of the United States Probably in no other civilized land are the intelligent classes so unfamiliar with the history of their country as in the United States. Why are we not a nation of history readers? The answer lies partially, no doubt, in the fact that our school histories too often have been written with such mathematical precision as to render them dry and insipid. Too often they repel rather than attract, and the pupil learns to dislike the study of history. The defect is a difficult one to overcome, owing to the necessity of condensing and of leaving out so many interesting inci dents. The fault has in part been corrected, as attested by various excellent school histories now in use, and my belief that it could be corrected in a greater degree has led to the writing of the present volume. From beginning to end I have used the greatest care to make the book interesting as well as instructive to the pupil. My object has been twofold: first, to tell the great story of our coun try, with all its leading facts and their meaning; and, second, to lead the pupil to love history. 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.