History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution: In Two Volumes

Editor's Note

HistRevolV1_i-xliv.indd 32 3/16/12 11:38 AM Editor's Note This edition of Mercy Otis Warren's History of the Rise, Progress and Termination of the American Revolution. Interspersed with Biographical, Political and Moral Observations reprints the first edition of the work published in Boston by Manning and Loring in 1805. To produce a new edition ofthe text, designed for general readers as well as scholars, we have made several concessions to modernity. First, and most important, whereas the History originally appeared in three volumes, the present edition is in two. To help the reader make an easy correspondence between this edition and the first, we have used three devices: we have noted the original volume number in the running head; we have (following Manning and Loring's original) numbered the chapters consecutively through the volumes and (again like Manning and Loring) placed the chapter number in the margin of each page; and we have inserted the original page numbers in brackets in the text to mark page breaks. By noting the volume, chapter, and page numbers of the original edition on each page of this one, the reader can tell at a glance exactly how the two correspond. Dates in the margins, intended to remind the reader which year is being discussed, are also preserved from the original. Second, Manning and Loring's typography has been modernized. The long "s" has been replaced by the less elegant but more readable standard "s." Also, where Manning and Loring placed quotation marks down the left margin as well as at the end of lengthy quotations, we have opted to place quotation marks only immediately before and after all quoted passages, except when they were best displayed as extracts, according to standard modern practice, without the marks. We have, in addition, silently corrected obvious misprints. We thought it unnecessary to announce such corrections-inserting a missing "i" in "reconciliation," for example-when reproducing the original typographical error would bear no significance to a modern reader. We have not, however, altered Warren's orthography. We have preserved, for example, such spellings as "manoeuvre" and "connexion ," and such abbreviations as the military title "gen." or the clerical title "rev." More important, Warren herself abandoned the "u" m xxxii HistRevolV1_i-xliv.indd 33 3/16/12 11:38 AM VOLUME ONE xxxiii "all words of Latin origin, such as honor, error &c. and [chose] to retain it only in words of Saxon origin, such as endeavour." 1 She rejected the extraneous "u" deliberately to repudiate a symbol of English cultural dominance and to announce that her work was America11. Noah Webster, lexicographer, historian, and commentator on culture, called for precisely such a change in orthography in a ringing plea for an American national culture based upon a national language.2 Third, Warren's "Notes," contained in appendices at the end of each of her three volumes, have been divided for the sake of convenience. This division affects only the notes appearing in the original volume II, over half of which now appear at the end of the present first volume, the remainder falling at the end of the present second volume. The notes are keyed to the pages in both the original and the present edition. Warren's original index, corresponding to the pagination of the 1805 edition, is reprinted here in facsimile. A new index, designed to support modern inquiries, is also provided. Warren's References Warren read widely all her life. Rev. Jonathan Russell introduced her to Sir Walter Raleigh's The History of the World (1614) when she was a youth, and she continued to read history avidly. She knew her native New England through the works ofCotton Mather and Thomas Prince as well as those of later writers, and she was knowledgeable about the history of the other colonies as well. Though she was 1 James Freeman to MOW, January 17, 1806, MOWP, 1790--1807. 2 Webster asked rhetorically: "[Olught the Americans to retain these faults in [English orthography] which produce innumerable inconveniencies in the acquisition and use of the language, or ought they at once to reform these abuses, and imroduce order and regulariry into the orthography of the AMERICAN ToNGUE?" Webster's project clearly went beyond the mere spelling of words. He characterized his aim as the quest for an American national language, for "a national language is a band of national union. Every engine should be employed to render the people of this country national; to call...