TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE PILGRIMS FOR FREEDOM ., … . 11 THE FIRST FIGHT .24 THE FREEMAN S CHARTER … .38 FOLLOWING THE BEAVER S TRAIL … . 50 AT THE GATE OF OLD HARVARD … .64 THE WHITE MAN S FOOT j J . ., amplt .. 77 GOING TO LONDON TO VISIT THE KING … 82 RINGING IN THE FOURTH OF JULY . . KEEPING CHRISTMAS WITH GENERAL WASHINGTON … 97 106 THE GHOST THAT HAUNTED WALL STREET .,119 THE ROAD THAT WENT OUT WEST .… 131 IN THE WAKE OF THE FIRST STEAMBOAT… 144 CUTTING THE WORLD S BREAD … . 154 WHEN JOHNNY BULL AND BROTHER JONATHAN SHOOK HANDS . -V … …164 A SLAVE AMONG SLAVES … . . 176 ONE FLAG, OR Two … … 186 UNCLE REMUS AT THE WHITE HOUSE …198 UNCLE SAM S BIRTHDAY PARTY … 210 THE SHIP THE GIANTS LAUNCHED … .219 THE TOWN NAMED AFTER HIM … . 230 THE LAST FIGHT 231 A PROCLAMATION 241 PREFACE I have written this book because I believe that the story of the American people as it is embodied in the history of our United States supplies the most important material for character building in the entire field of elementary education, and should be offered to children in a new, humanitarian way as a means of helping them to understand the present. The plan of the book is to present the development of our nation, not as asummary of unrelated facts and a confusion of dates, but as one of the most vivid panoramas the world has ever known, its first scene laid on Plymouth Rock and its last the flight of an American aviator winging his way over a battlefield in Europe. The historical episodes that make this panorama are selectedand pre sented in such away as to show boys and girls that our present position as a great people is the result offollowing the road of freedom we have been building steadily ever since the landing of the Pilgrims, and that real de mocracy can be really efficient, not only in the case ofourown nation, but in our relations to the other peoples of the world. My method of presenting these historical epochs is different from the average story in American history in that it makes a direct to conduct and to life. appeal Each story has a central character from history as its hero who played a part, begin as a ningoftenwith youth, in our development free country. The children who read the stories will feel and understand our history as the men who made it did. Through this appeal to the imagination, boys and girls of today are inspired to follow lines of right conduct and to achieve as our ancestors did. They are helped to understand the drama of present national events in terms of our valiant historical past. They feel an urge to be, themselves, a part of our history tomorrow…
