HISTORY, AND SOCIAL AND POLITICAL SCIENCE. Handbook of Dates. By HENRY CLINTON BROWN. 12 mo. Cloth. viii+182 pp. Price..... ....... Arranged alphabetically and chronologically, comprising all the important events from the earliest ages to within the present decade. The Honors of the Empire State in the War of the Rebellion. 12 mo. Cloth. viii+298 pp. Price... It advocates the adoption and maintenance of an economic system suited to American conditions, while at the same time recognizing at their full value commercial and industrial relations with foreign nations. The principles advanced are re-enforced by citations from our national history. The Eight Hours Day. BY SIDNEY WEBB and HAROLD Cox. 12 mo. viii+280 pp. Paper covers. Price....... .... ......... The question is discussed in its historical, economic, and social aspects, and contains a bibliography for further research. Civics for Young Americans. By WM. M. GIFFIN. Large 12 mo. 132 pp. With an illustration. Cloth. Price.... ..... The author shows in a strikingly novel and interesting way, and in language intelligible to a ten-year-old boy, the necessity of government, the different forms of government and the advantages of our government over all others. Civil Government. By R. E. CLEMENT. 12 mo. Cloth. xiv+ 232 pp. Price...... A brief and lucid treatise on the Federal Constitution, and the Colonial, Revolutionary and Confederate Governments which preceded it. 75 50 50 84 English Political Orations from Wentworth to Macaulay. Edited, with Introduction, by WILLIAM CLARKE, 12 mo. xvi+312 pp. Cloth, uncut, price, 40 cents; red roan, $1.25; half morc., g. t..I 50 Great speeches on great themes by famous English statesmen. The selection covers a period from 1576 to 1831. For sale by all booksellers, or sent by mail, postpaid, on receipt of the price. A. LOVELL & CO., PUBLISHERS, 521 Wabash Ave., Chicago. 8 East 14th Street, New York. In a previous issue of the American History Leaflets (No. 18) have been reprinted in full Lincoln's first Inaugural and the Message of July 4, 1861. The extracts below show how far he carried out the principles set forth in those two great documents. Those portions of the later annual messages and other state papers have been selected, which bear on the questions of the civil war and the status of the Union. The numerous and important papers on slavery are (except as the subject comes in incidentally) reserved for a future number. The contemporary official texts of the documents are usually to be found in the Congressional Globe and in the Senate Executive Documents and House Executive Documents. They are reprinted in the newspapers of the time, in the American Annual Cyclopedia and in many other LENOX places. They will appear in James D. Richardson's Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents. The texts here used are all taken from the more authoritative publication, John G. Nicolay and John Hay, Abraham Lincoln, Complete Works. The historical background of the period may be learned from the numerous biographies of Lincoln, especially those by Nicolay and Hay, Carl Schurz, John T. Morse, Jr., W. II. Herndon, H. J. Ray. mond, and J. N. Arnold; and the reminiscences of Gideon Welles, Hugh McCullough, L. E. Chittenden, Frank Carpenter, Noah Brooks, A. K. McClure, and John Sherman. The principal histories of the period are: J. F. Rhodes, United States since 1850, III.; J. C. Ropes, Story of the Civil War; J. W. Draper, Civil War; Horace Greeley, American Conflict; James G. Blaine, Twenty Years of Congress; Jefferson Davis, Confederate Government. Briefer accounts in Edward Channing, The United States, 1765-1865, Ch. x.; Woodrow Gibson, Division and Reunion, Ch. ix. ; Alexander Johnston, American Politics, Ch. xx.; Goldwin Smith, United States, Ch. xx. The bibliography of the period is summarized in W. E. Foster, References to Presidential Administrations, 45-49; and in Channing and Hart, Guide to the Study of American History, §§ 208-214. 1-1861, Dec. 3. Annual Message to Congress. Fellow-citizens of the Senate and House of Representatives : In the midst of unprecedented political troubles we have cause of great gratitude to God for unusual good health and most abundant harvests. You will not be surprised to learn that, in the peculiar exigencies of the times our intercourse with foreign nations. has been attended with profound solicitude, chiefly turning upon our own domestic affairs. A disloyal portion of the American people have, during the whole year, been engaged in an attempt to divide and destroy the Union. A nation which endures factious domestic division is exposed to disrespect abroad; and one party, if not both, is sure, sooner or later, to invoke foreign intervention. Nations thus tempted to interfere are not always able to resist the counsels of seeming expediency and ungenerous ambition, although measures adopted under such influences seldom fail to be unfortunate and injurious to those adopting them. The disloyal citizens of the United States who have offered the ruin of our country in return for the aid and comfort which they have invoked abroad, have received less patronage and encouragement than they probably expected. If it were just to suppose, as the insurgents have seemed to assume, that foreign nations in this case, discarding all moral, social, and treaty obligations, would act solely and selfishly for the most speedy restoration of commerce, including, especially, the acquisition of cotton, those nations appear as yet not to have seen their way to their object more directly or clearly through the destruction than through the preservation of the Union. If we could dare to believe that foreign nations are actuated by no higher principle than this, I am quite sure a sound argument could be made to show them that they can reach their aim more readily and easily by aiding to crush this rebellion than by giving encouragement to it. The principal lever relied on by the insurgents for exciting foreign nations to hostility against us, as already intimated, is the embarrassment of commerce. Those nations, however, not improbably saw from the first that it was the Union which made as well our foreign as our domestic commerce. They can scarcely have failed to perceive that the effort for disunion produces the existing difficulty; and that one strong nation promises more durable peace and a more extensive, valuable, and reliable commerce than can the same nation broken in hostile fragments. I deem it of importance that the loyal regions of East Tennessee and western North Carolina should be connected with Kentucky and other faithful parts of the Union by railroad. I therefore recommend as a military measure that Congress provide for the construction of such road as speedily as possible. Kentucky, no doubt, will coöperate, and, through her Legislature, make the most judicious selection of a line. The northern terminus must connect with some existing railroad; and whether the route shall be from Lexington or Nicholasville to the Cumberland Gap, or from Lebanon to the Tennessee line, in the direction of Knoxville, or on some still different line, can easily be determined. Kentucky and the General Government coöperating, the work can be completed in a very short time; and when done it will be not only of vast present usefulness, but also a valuable permanent improvement, worth its cost in all the future. If any good reason exists why we should persevere longer in withholding our recognition of the independence and sovereignty of Hayti and Liberia, I am unable to discern it. |