The present work is designed to be read and studied by the higher classes in our Common Schools. It has been pre pared ih compliance with a suggestion made to me, that such a work was a desideratum in the common course of the education of American youth. The deserved success of the excellent Class Books of Mr. William Sullivan, which do so much honor to him as a statesman, a scholar, and a moralist, have encouraged me to hope, that the task thus performed, may not be without some public utility. If it shall tend to awaken in the bosoms Of American youth a more warm and devoted attachment to the National Union, and a more deep and firm love of the National Constitution, it will afford me a very sincere gratification, and be an ample compensation for the time, which has necessarily been withdrawn from other pressing avocations, in order to complete it. The plan is the same, which I have adopted in my larger Commentaries. But it became indispensable to write nearly all the work anew, so much was required to give simplicity.