History Books

The Revolution of 1896 Spain maintained control of the Philippine Islands for more than three centuries and a half, during which period the tyranny, misconduct and abuses of the Friars and the Civil and Military Administration exhausted the patience of the natives and caused them to make a desperate effort to shake off the unbearable galling yoke on the 26th and 31st August, 1896, then commencing the... more...

I. During the session of Congress of 1849-1850, the peace of the Union was threatened by problems centering around slavery and the territory acquired as a result of the Mexican War: California's demand for admission with a constitution prohibiting slavery; the Wilmot Proviso excluding slavery from the rest of the Mexican acquisitions (Utah and New Mexico); the boundary dispute between Texas and... more...

Chapter I Childhood and Poverty William Booth was born in Nottingham, England, on April 10, 1829, and was left, at thirteen, the only son of a widowed and impoverished mother. His father had been one of those builders of houses who so rapidly rose in those days to wealth, but who, largely employing borrowed capital, often found themselves in any time of general scarcity reduced to poverty. I glory in... more...

CHAPTER I. A BOY ESCAPES A TYRANT AND PAYS A DEBT WITH A HORNET'S NEST—MEETS KIT CARSON AND BECOMES THE OWNER OF A PONY AND A GUN. The old saying that truth is stranger than fiction is emphasized in the life of every man whose career has been one of adventure and danger in the pursuit of a livelihood. Knowing nothing of the art of fiction and but little of any sort of literature; having been... more...

INTRODUCTION It will be very reasonably asked why I should consent, though upon a sort of challenge, to write even a popular essay in English history, who make no pretence to particular scholarship and am merely a member of the public. The answer is that I know just enough to know one thing: that a history from the standpoint of a member of the public has not been written. What we call the popular... more...

Chapter I. The Frontier In History The frontier! There is no word in the English language more stirring, more intimate, or more beloved. It has in it all the elan of the old French phrase, En avant! It carries all of the old Saxon command, Forward!! It means all that America ever meant. It means the old hope of a real personal liberty, and yet a real human advance in character and achievement. To a... more...

CHAPTER I. PRE-WAR MILITARY EXPENDITURE. The Great War, into the whirlpool of which Nation after Nation has been drawn, has entered on its fourth year. The rigid censorship which has been established makes it impossible for any outside the circle of Governments to forecast its duration, but to me, speaking for a moment not as a politician but as a student of spiritual laws, to me its end is sure. For... more...

CHAPTER I. THE NEUTRALITY OF THE UNITED STATES. The neutral attitude assumed by the United States was maintained throughout the war. With reference to any official recognition of the Transvaal as an independent State apart from the immediate purposes of war no action was taken. This view of the situation in South Africa was entirely consistent with the requirements of international law, and, in... more...

INTRODUCTION. The memory of no English sovereign has been so execrated as that of Mary Tudor. For generations after her death her name, with its horrid epithet clinging round it like the shirt of Nessus, was a bugbear in thousands of Protestant homes. It is true that nearly 300 persons were burnt at the stake in her short reign. But she herself was more inclined to mercy than almost any of her... more...

CHAPTER I. INDUSTRIAL AMERICA AT THE END OF THE CIVIL WAR A comprehensive survey of the United States, at the end of the Civil War, would reveal a state of society which bears little resemblance to that of today. Almost all those commonplace fundamentals of existence, the things that contribute to our bodily comfort while they vex us with economic and political problems, had not yet made their... more...