The aim of this book will be as Macaulay expressed it to make the past present, to bring the present near, to invest with the reality of human ?esh and blood beings whom we are too much inclined to consider as personified qualities, rather than to rob history of its human element by a cataloguing of facts without effort to read their meaning. With Lord Acton, the sanest historic authority, we believe that History is the con science oi mankind, and have therefore set out thousands of facts as a potent in?uence in showing what the pioneers really did — their modus operandi — their hopes, joys and sorrows, asparts of an experience we are interested to know and from which we may one and all draw general lessons of moral and political wisdom.