The War of Independence | Page 2

once has nothing more to say.
In our introduction to this work, therefore, we propose to reverse the
common process of tracing the author's development upwards, and
instead, after stating the mere events of Mr. Fiske's life, to begin with
"The War of Independence" and to follow his work backwards,
attempting very briefly to show how each undertaking was built
naturally upon something before it, and that the original basis of the
structure was uncommonly broad and strong.
John Fiske was born in Hartford, Conn., 30th March, 1842, and spent
most of his life, before entering Harvard as a sophomore in 1860, with
his grandmother's family in Middletown, Conn. Two years after taking
his degree at Harvard, in 1863, he was graduated from the Harvard Law
School, but he cared so much more for writing than for the law that his
attempt to practice it in Boston was soon abandoned. In 1861 he made
his first important contribution to a magazine, and ever since has done
much work of the same sort. He has served Harvard College, as
University lecturer on philosophy, 1869-71, in 1870 as instructor in
history, and from 1872 to 1879 as assistant librarian. Since resigning
from that office he has been for two terms of six years each a member
of the board of overseers. In 1881 he began lecturing annually at
Washington University, St. Louis, on American history, and in 1884

was made a professor of the institution. Since 1871 he has devoted
much time to lecturing at large. He has been heard in most of the
principal cities of America, and abroad, in London and Edinburgh. All
this time his home has been in Cambridge, Mass.
So much for the simple outward circumstances of Mr. Fiske's life.
Turning to his studies and writings, one finds them reaching out into
almost every direction of human thought; and this book, from which
our backward course is to be taken, is but a page from the great body of
his work. It is especially as a student of philosophy, science, and
history that Mr. Fiske is known to the world; and at the present it is
particularly as an historian of America that his name is spoken. In no
other way more satisfactorily than in tracing the growth of his own
nation has he found it possible to study the laws of progress of the
human race, and from the first, through all the time of his most active
philosophical and scientific work, this study of human progress has
been the true interest of his life. With his historical works, then, let us
begin.
In 1879 he delivered a course of six lectures on American history, at
the Old South Meeting House in Boston. In previous years he had
written occasional essays on historical subjects in general, but the
impulse towards American history in particular was given by the
preparation for these lectures, which were concerned especially with
the colonial period. Of his own treatment of an historical subject he is
quoted as saying: "I look it up or investigate it, and then write an essay
or a lecture on the subject. That serves as a preliminary statement,
either of a large subject or of special points. It is a help to me to make a
statement of the kind--I mean in the lecture or essay form. In fact it
always assists me to try to state the case. I never publish anything after
this first statement, but generally keep it with me for, it may be, some
years, and possibly return to it again several times." Thus it may safely
be assumed that these Old South Lectures and the many others that
have followed them have found or will find a permanent place in the
series of Mr. Fiske's historical volumes.
The succession of these books has not been in the order of the periods

of which they treat; but from the similarity of their method and the fact
that they cover a series of important periods in American history, they
go towards making a complete, consecutive history of the country. The
periods which are not yet covered Mr. Fiske proposes to deal with in
time. One who has talked with him on the subject of his works reports
the following statement as coming from Mr. Fiske's own lips: "I am
now at work on a general history of the United States. When John
Richard Green was planning his 'Short History of the English People,'
and he and I were friends in London, I heard him telling about his
scheme. I thought it would be a very nice thing to do something of the
same sort for American history. But when I took it up I found myself,
instead of carrying it out in that way, dwelling upon