History Books

Mr. Speaker, Mr. President, my colleagues in the Congress, our distinguished guests and my fellow Americans: To address a joint session of the Congress in this great Chamber in which I was once privileged to serve is an honor for which I am deeply grateful. The State of the Union Address is traditionally an occasion for a lengthy and detailed account by the President of what he has accomplished in the... more...

CHAPTER I.BRIEF HISTORY OF NEGRO SLAVERY.—ITS INEVITABLE EFFECT UPON ALL CONCERNED IN IT.The lot is wretched, the condition sad,Whether a pining discontent survive,And thirst for change; or habit hath subduedThe soul depressed; dejected—even to loveOf her dull tasks and close captivity.Wordsworth.My ear is pained,My soul is sick with every day's reportOf wrong and outrage, with which this... more...

The colony had been established many years before any successful attempt had been made to penetrate into the interior of the country, by crossing the range of hills, known to the colonists as the Blue Mountains: these mountains were considered as the boundary of the settlements westward, the country beyond them being deemed inaccessible. The year 1813 proving extremely dry, the grass was nearly all... more...

Outbreak of the Revolutionary War in 1792-Its immediate causes- Declaration of Pillnitz made and withdrawn-Agitation of the Priests and Emigrants-War Policy of the Gironde-Provocations offered to France by the Powers-State of Central Europe in 1792-The Holy Roman Empire- Austria-Rule of the Hapsburgs-The Reforms of Maria Theresa and Joseph II.-Policy of Leopold II.-Government and Foreign Policy of... more...

CAPTAIN RICHARD INGLE, THE MARYLAND “PIRATE AND REBEL.” In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the American colonies, from Massachusetts to South Carolina, were at intervals subject to visitations of pirates, who were wont to appear suddenly upon the coasts, to pillage a settlement or attack trading vessels and as suddenly to take flight to their strongholds. Captain Kidd was long celebrated... 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...

SOMETHING ABOUT "A STUDENT IN ARMS" "His life was a Romance of the most noble and beautiful kind." So says one who has known him from childhood, and into how many dull, hard and narrow lives has he not been the first to bring the element of Romance? He carried it about with him; it breathes through his writings, and this inevitable expression of it gives the saying of one of his... more...

Chapter I. I am a native of _____, in the United States of America. My ancestors migrated from England in the reign of Charles II.; and my grandfather was not undistinguished in the War of Independence. My family, therefore, enjoyed a somewhat high social position in right of birth; and being also opulent, they were considered disqualified for the public service. My father once ran for Congress, but... more...

Considering with my selfe, right Honorable and my singular good Lord, how redie (no doubt) manie will be to accuse me of vaine presumption, for enterprising to deale in this so weightie a worke, and so far aboue my reach to accomplish: I haue thought good to aduertise your Honour, by what occasion I was first induced to vndertake the same, although the cause that moued me thereto hath (in part) yer... more...