The story of the United States has frequently been told. It has been told in the spirit of boasting, as a marvel of local accomplishment. It has been told in the spirit of reverence, as the work of a chosen people under a special dispensation of Providence. Its glory has been ascribed now to one political party and now to another. Its success has been attributed to various statesmen and to different sections.

The Union has been viewed from one point as originally the creature of the States, whose powers it afterward ungratefully usurped and whose intent it wilfully perverted to its own aggrandisement. It has been regarded from another viewpoint as something inherent in the soil of a new world, manifest in various colonial functions, and brought fully to life and supremacy at the time of separation from England. An effort is made in this narrative to find truth in a medium ground; to trace the gradual evolution of a confederated republic under the laws of necessity; to acknowledge that radical departures have been made from first ideals as a result of progress; to take into constant consideration the underlying forces of heredity and environment. It will be necessary to omit many of the details commonly found in a history of the United States for the sake of considering only those centralising or decentralising factors which have aided or hindered the unification of the States. In brief, an attempt is made in these two volumes to tell the story of the United States; to show how the phrase "The United States is" has been slowly and unconsciously evolved in the process of time from the early practice of saying "The United States are."