THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION 1763-1783 BEING THE CHAPTERS AND PASSAGES RELATING BY WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY, M. P. AUTHOR OF THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN MORALS, DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY, ARRANGED AND EDITED WITH HISTORICAL BY JAMES ALBERT WOODBURN PROFESSOR OF AMERICAN HISTORY AND POLITICS IN INDIANA UNIVERSITY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, PUBLISHERS INTRODUCTION. THIS volume, as its title page indicates, consists of such parts of Mr. Lecky's work The History of England in the Eighteenth Century as relate to the English colonies in America, and the causes and progress of the American Revolution. The chapter on "America, 1763-1776," which is taken entire, contains Mr. Lecky's notable account of the colonial controversy with the mother country, which caused the dismemberment of the British Empire and made two nations of the English race. To this chapter have been added Mr. Lecky's discussions of the progress of our Revolutionary War, and of the peace negotiations which closed that war-the most important chapter in the history of American diplomacy. It is believed that this material, gathered from a voluminous work, constitutes a volume of unity and of logical and historical sequence, and one of great value as a contribution to American history. Mr. Lecky is one of the greatest of modern historians. The quality of his historical writing is too well known to need description here. He deals with movements and problems of history on large and lib |