number of American people as not substantiated, who would perhaps claim that their position was supported by the testimony of a majority of the writers on the subject. With the latter claim it is not my purpose to take issue. Yet the first part of the proposition is more lacking in substantiation than the second. For, while it is apparent that the natural spirit of self-assertion, so early manifested by the descendants of the English Puritans, has foundexpression in a lengthy series of recitals of the doings and virtues of New England men, it is no less evident that these portrayals are largely of restricted application, and, for the most part, can only be considered as contributions to that portion of American history which is called local. That these writings have ever been taken as national history arises perhaps from a conjunction of two causes, or conditions. The first of these, and one that naturally would have been ineffective without the other, is the marked tendency on the part of many New England writers to ignore or belittle the presence of any element not within the range of their own immediate horizon. In this they are peculiarly English, and exhibit that trait which has become so characteristic of the native English as to take its name from their geographical situation, namely-insularity. The second cause, which will be more fully adverted to hereafter, arises from the comparative dearth of historical writings originating outside of the Puritan colonies.

The New England fathers came to a strange coast and found stretching back from the shore a forbidding wilderness, to them of such unknown depth that it was not until after a slow and gradual pushing forward of the frontier line for a period extending over a century and a half that their children found this wilderness was unsubdued only as far west as the Hudson River; and fully another century elapsed before many of them were willing to acknowledge this, to be the case. To the fathers, accordingly, New England meant America, and to some of the sons who stayed at home it is not unnatural that the western boundary line of America should seem to be fixed at the point where the early Dutch settlements began.

In the examination of the contributions of the New England writers to the "history of America," therefore, it is only necessary to bear in mind the restricted sense in which so many of them use this term, and to observe their superficial treatment of men and affairs not within their own provincial boundaries, to enable us to accept these contributions at their true value. Hence we can take pride with the New Englanders in the noble deeds which they narrate of their fathers and of the good these fathers wrought for their own communities, and can thus understand the nature and extent of New England's contribution to the good of our country as a whole.

It is, however, this inevitable disposition on the part of New England writers in their treatment of American history to magnify local at the expense of national affairs, to which may be attributed so much of the present adverse criticism of their authority. If it be said that this tendency is only a natural manifestation of the dominating Anglo-Saxon spirit, which brooks

no rivalry and sees no good in anything foreign to itself, it may properly be answered that the page of impartial history is no place for such display." The share of New England in making American history is great; but it is perhaps not so great as its chroniclers would have us believe. Neither can it be said by any fair-minded student that the events which took place on the soil of New England are of chief interest or importance in connection with the progress and success of the American War of Independence, and the foundation of our present system of government subsequent thereto, even though the record of those events forms the substance of a majority of the books which have been called American history.

A notable instance of this one-sided treatment of our country's history, if not of its actual perversion, on the part of all but the most recent writers, treating the subject from a New England standpoint, is that furnished by certain tables purporting to give the numbers of troops supplied by the different colonies in the Revolutionary War. These tables have appeared in whole or in part a great many times during the past sixty years, and until recently have been quite generally cited to show the superior patriotism of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut over that of the other colonies, and to sustain the claim, repeatedly made, that New England furnished more than half the soldiers in that struggle. The tables first appeared in the Collections of the New Hampshire Historical Society for 1824, vol. i., p. 236; then in the American Almanac for 1830, p. 187, and for 1831, p. 112; in Niles's Register for July 31, 1830; in Sabine's Loyalists of the Revolution, in 1847, p. 31; in Lossing's Field Book of the Revolution, vol. ii., p. 837; in Hildreth's History of the United States, vol. iii., p. 441; in Barry's Massachusetts, vol. ii., p. 304; in Greene's Historical View of the American Revolution, p. 455; etc.' They are supposed to be founded on a report made to Congress, May 11, 1790, by Henry Knox, then Secretary of War; but they contain only a portion of the figures given in that report, and utterly ignore and omit the part relating to the enlistment and service of certain southern troops composing, perhaps, one fourth of the entire army. The compilers of the tables also attempt to summarize the portion given, by adding up the aggregates of the various enlistment rolls for the whole Revolutionary period (many of which in the early part of the war were duplicated more than four times in a single year, the same names appearing at every ninety-days' re-enlistment), and then claiming that the results reached give the total number of Regulars furnished by the different colonies in the struggle. This erroneous summary appears as follows:

The report on which these tables are said to be founded is published in the American State Papers, vol. i., pp. 14-19, of the series relating to Military Affairs; and in order to show the falsity of the statements based upon the garbled and incomplete extract made from it in the aforesaid tables, the report is here given in full and the figures accompanying the same appear in tabulated form on the opposite page. This tabulation, it may be remarked, shows the form in which the incomplete statement appears, as well as the full report, the figures here printed in heavy-faced type being omitted from all of the former tables since the first report of Knox.

TROOPS, INCLUDING MILITIA, FURNISHED BY THE SEVERAL STATES
DURING THE WAR OF THE REVOLUTION.

Communicated to the House of Representatives, May 11, 1790.

WAR OFFICE OF THE UNITED STATES, May 10, 1790.

In obedience to the order of the House of Representatives, the Secretary of War submits the statement hereunto annexed of the troops and militia furnished from time to time by the several States, towards the support of the late war.

The numbers of the regular troops having been stated from the official returns deposited in the War Office, may be depended upon; and in all cases where the numbers of militia are stated from the returns, the same confidence may be observed.

But in some years of the greatest exertions of the Southern States there are no returns whatever of the militia employed. In this case recourse has been had to letters of the commanding officer, and to well informed individuals, in order to form a proper estimate of the numbers of the militia in service; and although the accuracy of the estimate cannot be relied on, yet it is the best information which the Secretary of War can at present obtain. When the accounts of the militia service of the several States shall be adjusted it is probable that the numbers will be better ascertained.

There are not any documents in the War Office from which accurate returns could be made of the ordnance stores furnished by the several States during the late war. The charges made by the several States against the United States, which have been presented by the commissioners of accounts, are, probably, the only evidence which can be obtained on the subject. All of which is humbly submitted to the House of Representatives. H. KNOX, Secretary of War.

It should be observed that the column of aggregate footings which appears at the right side of the table is not to be found in the original report of General Knox. This column gives the erroneous summary of the successive enlistment rolls, already referred to; but these rolls cannot be added together for the purpose of showing the number of troops furnished with any more propriety than we can add the population of Massachusetts in 1776 to that of the same State in 1777, 1778, 1779, 1780, and 1781 for the purpose of finding out the number of people who lived there during the Revolution. We might attempt to make an approximation of the average number of troops from each State by dividing the aggregates of the complete returns by the total number of years, but this would only afford a conjectural average upon which no reliance could be placed; for besides the fact that Knox's militia returns are mainly estimated, many of the early Continental enlistments, as has been already stated, were made for only three months at a time, and either renewed at the expiration of the term by re-enlistment, or the ranks filled by fresh levies; or, as was more generally the case during 1775 and 1776, the Continental ranks were so frequently depleted by desertions that to ascribe an average service of one month to each man enlisted therein during the first eighteen months of the war would perhaps be nearer a true statement of the fact than to set the service of each individual at from three to twelve months. The militia estimates, however, as General Knox states, approximate the numbers actually serving, and are not, as in the case of the Continentals, merely records of enlistments. It will also be noticed that these militia reports do not refer to the minutemen or militiamen who did not serve, but the estimates are of those who were actually called out and saw service in the field. In the South this service was perhaps harder and more fataland relatively much more effective-than that of the Continental line in the North, for the reason that the patriots of the South had to contend not only with the invading armies from abroad, but also with the armed forces of their Tory neighbors at home, whose numbers often exceeded their own, and the cruelty and brutality of whose attacks were surpassed only by the savage atrocities of another of Great Britain's hired auxiliaries-the native Indians."

The fact is that these tables of Knox, as they now exist, are of little or no value whatever in giving a correct idea of the proportionate number of troops furnished by the different colonies. We know that Pennsylvania, for instance, had more than twenty thousand men in the Flying Camp, who saw service about New York, in 1776; yet Knox's tables show from Pennsylvania but little more than half that number, including both Continentals and militia. And that almost as many as twenty-five thousand were under arms in that State the year before is apparent from the testimony of Richard Penn given before Parliament in 1775.°

The following letter, received by the writer from the War Department at Washington in response to an inquiry for some explanation of Knox's figures, will serve to show how little reliance can be placed upon them :