OF THE UNITED STATES. FROM THE DISCOVERY OF THE AMERICAN CONTINENT. BY GEORGE BANCROFT. VOL. VII. BOSTON: LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY. 1858. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1858, by GEORGE BANCROFT, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York. PREFACE. THE period of the American Revolution of which a portion is here treated, divides itself into two epochs; the first extending to the Declaration of Independence; the second, to the acknowledgment of that Independence by Great Britain. In preparing the volume, there has been no parsimony of labor; but marginal references to the documents out of which it has mainly been constructed are omitted. This is done not from an unwillingness to subject every statement of fact, even in its minutest details, to the severest scrutiny; but from the variety and multitude of the papers which have been used, and which could not be intelligibly cited, without burdening the pages with a disproportionate commentary. From the very voluminous manuscripts which I have brought together, I hope at some not very distant day to cull out for publication such letters as may at once confirm my narrative and possess an intrinsic and general |