A Dusty Tomes Audio BookIn Cooperation with Spoken Realms
Preliminaries of the Revolution, 1763—1775 by George Eliot Howard, PhD, Professor of Institutional History at the University of Nebraska
Volume 8 of 27 in The American Nation: A History published by Harper Brothers (1904—1918). Edited by Albert Bushnell Hart, Professor of History at Harvard University.
In the Editor Introduction to the Series: That a new history of the United States is needed, extending from the discovery down to the present time hardly needs statement. No such comprehensive work by a competent writer is now in existence. Individual writers have treated only limited chronological fields. Meantime there, is a rapid increase of published sources and of serviceable monographs based on material hitherto unused. On the one side, there is a necessity for an intelligent summarizing of the present knowledge of American history by trained specialists; on the other hand, there is a need for a complete work, written in untechnical style, which shall serve for the instruction and the entertainment of the general reader.
From the Editor's Introduction to Volume Eight: Few periods of American history have been more written upon than the decade preceding the Revolution. Nevertheless, there is still room for a brief volume on the subject; all the world knows that the Revolution really began almost fifteen years before its beginning, because of the efforts of the British government to give greater unity and stiffness to its colonial system, both as to government and as to trade with other nations; but the real motives underlying the uneasiness of the colonies still need enlightenment... fresh study of the evidence results in a clearer view of the difficulties of the imperial problem and brings out in sharper relief the reasons for the apparent paradox that the freest people then on earth insisted on and deserved a larger freedom.
From the Author's Preface: The struggle between the English colonies and the parent state resulting in the recognition of a new and dominant nation in the western hemisphere is justly regarded as a revolution. Its preliminaries cover the twelve years between the peace of Paris in 1763 and the appeal to arms in 1775, but its causes are more remote. Up to the very beginning of hostilities, the colonists disclaimed any desire for independence; yet it seems clear to us that unconsciously they had long been preparing themselves for that event.
