Schouler's History of the United States. NEW AND REVISED EDITION. VOL. I. 1783-1801. RULE OF FEDERALISM. VOL. II. 1801-1817. Jefferson RepuBLICANS. VOL. III. 1817-1831. Era of GOOD FEELING. VOL. IV. 1831-1847. WHIGS And Democrats. VOL. V. 1847-1861. FREE SOIL CONTROVERSY. VOL. VI. 1861-1865. THE CIVIL WAR. VOL. VII. 1865-1877. THE RECONSTRUCTION PERIOD. By the Same Author: THOMAS JEFFERSON (in the "Makers of America" series). HISTORICAL BRIEFS, WITH BIOGRAPHY. CONSTITUTIONAL STUDIES, STate and Federal. EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION. AMERICANS OF 1776. HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA UNDER THE CONSTITUTION BY JAMES SCHOULER VOL. VII. 1865-1877 NEW YORK DODD, MEAD & COMPANY PUBLISHERS 362517 F83 E PREFACE. I seem to have been borne onward by some invisible current, where I had repeatedly thought myself in port. Good general health, abundant leisure, an active mind and confirmed habits of industry, conjoined with a special physical infirmity whose gradual increase drives me into social seclusion-this must be my explanation for taking up again after a long interval the historical pen twice laid aside. In the preface to my sixth volume I stated my reasons for issuing a narrative of the Civil War. And now, at the lapse of fourteen more years, I add a seventh volume to cover the Reconstruction Period, meaning that this publication shall be the last. Its composition came about quite casually. When President Johnson's posthumous manuscripts were placed in the Library of Congress, about eight years ago, I made a careful study of them, stating the general results in published articles. The conviction I then gained that injustice had been done to Johnson in the popular estimate of his official career was strongly confirmed when, in 1910-11, the Diary of Secretary Welles relating to that Executive term appeared in print in the Atlantic Monthly. I now carefully studied the whole record of that term for myself, and as a result felt deeply that this much maligned President needed a vindication, as against other historical writers; and furthermore, that the vindicator ought to be myself. Hence was prepared a course of lectures which I gave recently at the Johns Hopkins and Harvard Universities; and from those lectures developed the present narrative of the Johnson administration. To add the tale of President Grant's two terms, with which I was already familiar, has not been difficult; and here I have relied greatly upon the judicious and accurate iii |