testimony; and if the work is not more accurate than its predecessors, it is believed to be equally so with the most reliable. Free use has been made of the available labors of others in the same department of literature, always accrediting the source from whence facts were derived. I have aimed to view men and events with an impartial eye, censuring friends when they deserved censure, and commending enemies when truth and justice demanded the tribute. The historical events recorded were those of a family quarrel concerning vital principles in jurisprudence; and wisely did a sagacious English statesman console himself, at the close of the war, with the reflection, "We have been subdued, it is true, but, thank Heaven, the brain and the muscle which achieved the victory were nurtured by English blood; Old England, upon the Island of Great Britain, has been beaten only by Young England, in America."
In the pictorial department, special care has been observed to make faithful delineations of fact. If a relic of the Revolution was not susceptible of picturesque effect in a drawing, without a departure from truth, it has been left in its plainness, for my chief object was to illustrate the subject, not merely to embellish the book. I have endeavored to present the features of things as I found them, whether homely or charming, and have sought to delineate all that fell in my way worthy of preservation. To do this, it was necessary to make the engravings numerous, and no larger than perspicuity demanded, else the work would be filled with pictures to the exclusion of essential reading matter.
The plans of military movements have been drawn chiefly from British sources, for very few were made by the engineers in the Continental service. These appear to be generally pretty correct, so far as they represent the immediate movements of the armies in actual conflict; but the general topographical knowledge possessed by those engineers, was quite defective. I have endeavored to detect and correct their inaccuracies, either in the drawings or in the illustrative descriptions.
With these general remarks respecting the origin and construction of the work, it is submitted to the reading public. If a perusal of its pages shall afford as much pleasure and profitable knowledge as were derived from the journey and in the arrangement of the materials for the press, the effort has not been unfruitful of good results. With an ardent desire that it may prove a useful worker in the maintenance and growth of true patriotism,