AND A SKETCH OF THE LEADING EVENTS CONNECTED WITH THI THE ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION. AND OF THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION. BY B. J. LOSSING, AUTHOR OF "SEVENTEEN HUNDRED AND SEVENTY-SIX," "LIVES OF THE ILLUSTRATED BY FIFTY PORTRAITS AND OTHER ENGRAVINGS NEW YORK: DERBY & JACKSON, 119 NASSAU STREET. 1858. At Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1848, BY GEO. F. COOLEDGE & BROTHER, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, in and fu the Southern District of New York. PREFACE. IALE are lessons of deep, abiding interest, and of inestimable value, to be learned in studying the lives of the men who perilled their all to secure the blessed inheritance of free institutions which we now enjoy. We do not learn merely the dignity and sacredness of pure patriotism, by following them in their career amid the storms of the Revolution, but all the virtues which adorn humanity are presented in such bold relief, in the private and public actions of that venerated company, that when we rise from a perusal of a narrative of their lives, we feel as if all the noble qualities of our common manhood had been passing before us in review, and challenging our profound reverence. The biography of a great man, is an history of his own times; and when we have perused the record of the actions of the men of our Revolution, we have imbibed a general knowledge of the great events of that struggle for Freedom. If this proposition is true, then we feel that this volume has a claim to the public regard, for we have endeavored to comprise within as small a compass as a perspicuous view of the subject would allow, the chief events in the lives of the men who stood sponsors at the baptism in blood of our Infant Republic. The memoirs are illustrated by copious notes explanatory of events alluded to in the course of the biographical narrative, and these, we believe, will be found a highly useful feature of the work. |