IN preparing this History of the United States, the author has endeavored to meet the wants of our Common Schools as expressed to him by many of the prominent educators in this country, and as suggested by his own experience as a teacher. Some teachers instruct their pupils, when pre paring a history lesson for recitation, not to com mit the whole of the text to memory, but to (extract the meaning from it and to express that meaning in sentences of their own. When this is done, the pupils, except it be in some of the higher classes of our Academies and Universi ties, often neglect the events which are important and study those which are unimportant. They also frequently express what they do learn in ungrammatical sentences, or in sentences giving a very imperfect idea of the meaning intended. In order to obviate these difficulties, most teachers require their pupils to commit the text to mem.