| Note: | Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive. See http://www.archive.org/details/contamerihist00bearrich |
In teaching American government and politics, I constantly meet largenumbers of students who have no knowledge of the most elementary factsof American history since the Civil War. When they are taken to task fortheir neglect, they reply that there is no textbook dealing with theperiod, and that the smaller histories are sadly deficient in theirtreatment of our age.
It is to supply the student and general reader with a handy guide tocontemporary history that I have undertaken this volume. I have made noattempt to present an "artistically balanced" account of the lastthirty-five years, but have sought rather to furnish a background forthe leading issues of current politics and to enlist the interest of thestudent in the history of the most wonderful period in Americandevelopment. The book is necessarily somewhat "impressionistic" and inpart it is based upon materials which have not been adequately siftedand evaluated. Nevertheless, I have endeavored to be accurate and fair,and at the same time to invite on the part of the student some of thatfree play of the mind which Matthew Arnold has shown to be so helpful inliterary criticism.
Although the volume has been designed, in a way, as a textbook, I havethrown aside the methods of the almanac and chronicle, and, at the riskof displeasing the reader who expects a little about everything(including the Sioux war and the San Francisco earthquake), I have[Pg vi]omitted with a light heart many of the staples of history in order totreat more fully the matters which seem important from the modern pointof view. I have also refused to mar the pages with black type, paragraphnumbers, and other "apparatus" which tradition has prescribed for"manuals." Detailed election statistics and the guide to additionalreading I have placed in an appendix.
In the preparation of the book, I have made extensive use of the volumesby Professors Dunning, Sparks, Dewey, and Latané, in the American NationSeries, and I wish to acknowledge once for all my deep debt to them. Mycolleague, Mr. B. B. Kendrick, read all o