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1、【英文读物】Decisive Battles of AmericaINTRODUCTIONAmerica was discovered in a search for trade routes, but our country has been in larger part maintained and transmitted to us directly or indirectly as the result of war. Almost from the outset there were conflicting claims on the part of Spain, France, a
2、nd England, and also Holland. The struggles against hostile native tribes along the Atlantic seaboard were followed by war against the aggressions of the French, who would have kept the English-speaking colonies east of the Alleghanies. That long period of strife was followed by two conflicts with E
3、ngland, the first gaining America for Americans as an independent nation, the second confirming it as an independent nationality. While the great Louisiana Purchase was a peaceful acquisition, Napoleons willingness to cede this territory was intermingled with his military plans. California and the e
4、xtreme Southwest came out of conflict with Mexico. The Civil War preserved the integrity of the country which Americans had gained. Hawaii was added through a revolution fortunately bloodless. As a result of the war with Spain, Porto Rico and the Philippines were included within the limits of our au
5、thority.Since war is a last resort, a brutal expression of failure to arrive at an agreement, the series of political events which have preceded war and the manifold aspects of civil life have seemed very justly to modern historians more important than the descriptions of war itself. The older write
6、rs were fond of dwelling upon all the pomp and circumstances and all the dramatic accompanimentsxii of battle. Modern history is written differently, so differently, in fact, that we are apt to find battles summarized in paragraphs by scientific historians. Thus the pendulum has swung from one extre
7、me to another, until it has become a difficult matter to find in the newest shorter histories accounts of significant military events which approach completeness. Take, for example, the battle of Bunker Hill. No name in our own military history is more familiar, and yet in many of the books most rea
8、dily available for older as well as younger readers this battle appears as a brief summary of facts. As to the Mexican War, such remarkable military events as Taylors victory at Buena Vista over a force five times as large, or the series of desperate battles which won the City of Mexico for Scott, a
9、re practically little more than obscure names for readers of to-day. It is not strange that Mr. Charles Francis Adams once inaugurated his presidency of the American Historical Association with an earnest plea for military history.In the present volume, which is a companion to Harper & Brothers new
10、edition of Sir Edward Creasys Decisive Battles of the World, the editor has kept in mind the importance of preserving historical relations and continuity. The concise chronology of leading events in American history which runs through from beginning to end is not entirely limited to the military sid
11、e of history. The introductory chapter sketches world relations from the fifteenth century. The second chapter affords a broad view of the relations of the early colonists to the Indians, and there is also specific reference to Champlains alliance with the Algonquins and the consequent hostility of
12、the Iroquois. For the rest, the conditions and causes leading up to conflict are set forth wherever necessary in order to furnish a perspective, and to afford a narrative in some degree consecutive. As to the question of selection, there is obvious justice in Creasys dictum that the importance of ba
13、ttles is to be measured by their significance,xiii and not by the number of men engaged or by carnage. To New Englanders in the seventeenth century the struggles with the Pequots and with King Philip were for the time being a fight for existence as well as for possession of the country. They were bu
14、t small affairs, measured by modern standards; but much history would have been written differently had the early New England settlers encountered the fate of the lost colony of Roanoke.The battle on the Plains of Abraham, which ended French rule on this continent, was fought by Englishmen with only
15、 slight American aid, but its consequences to Americans were assuredly momentous. As compared with Gettysburg, or Sedan, or Mukden, Bunker Hill was a mere skirmish, yet its fame is well founded, for it was the first formal stand against the British by an organized American soldiery, and in this and
16、in the fact of American initiative in seizing and fortifying Breeds Hill, it differed from the hasty gathering of patriots at Lexington and from the brief conflict at Concord Bridge. In the light of modern experience, again, the naval battles of Lake Erie and Lake Champlain seem small engagements, b
17、ut the one safe-guarded our northern frontier and the other repelled an invasion aimed at the very vitals of our country. On the other hand, the dramatic battle of New Orleans, fought after peace was made, would have had but slight political consequences had the outcome been different.As to the war
18、with Mexico, a certain chastening of the American conscience has perhaps led us to forget the extraordinary gallantry of a volunteer as well as a regular soldiery in a foreign country, repeatedly pitted against great odds. The story of the more significant battles in those campaigns is entitled to b
19、etter acquaintance, and Taylors final victory on the north and the series of desperate attacks by which Scott reached the heart of Mexico are therefore set forth in some detail.Mention of our Civil War calls up a long roll of hard-fought battles, but Sir Edward Creasys point may bexiv reiterated tha
20、t it is not numbers or bloodshed that constitute the significance of a battle. Fort Sumter was a small affair; Antietam, Shiloh, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Chickamauga, and other hard-fought battles were great conflicts. Yet influential as they were, they were not decisive; while Sumter repre
21、sented the first open attack on the Flag and the instant call to arms.The fight of the Monitor brought a revolution in naval warfare. The blockade of the South, which can be only touched upon here, represented that decisive influence of sea power which has been so eloquently expounded by Captain Mah
22、an. This influence was illustrated more concretely in Farraguts capture of New Orleans, which was as necessary as Grants conquest of Vicksburg to clear the Mississippi and cut the Confederacy in two. In spite of the military importance of Shermans march to the sea, the fact that, like Grants ceasele
23、ss battering in Virginia, it was a campaign rather than an event, renders any adequate description impossible in the limits of a book dealing, for the most part, with crises or facts of immediately significant consequence. On the other hand, Gettysburg, which destroyed once and for all the possibili
24、ty of a successful invasion of the North, is a historical landmark in concrete form. It is described in this volume by a historian who is also a veteran of the Civil War.Insignificant as was the war with Spain in comparison with the great struggle of 1861-65, it is assuredly of historical consequenc
25、e that the battles of Santiago de Cuba destroyed the last vestiges of a Spanish rule in the Western Hemisphere which had lasted nearly four hundred years. Out of this came freedom at last for Cuba, and its grave responsibilities. Earlier in the same year Deweys guns drove the Spanish flag from the P
26、acific, and gave us a not wholly welcome partnership in the vexed questions of the Orient.Fortunately, our Temple of Janus is closedlet us trust, never to be reopened. But there are momentous lessonsxv of patriotism and self-sacrifice to be read in these accounts of deeds which have preserved our co
27、untry and helped to make it great. The eminent historians whose works have furnished these chapters have been moved by no desire to glorify war in itselfrather the reverse; but they have dealt with phases of history so vital and of such supreme interest that this story of these events will help gene
28、ral readers, old and young, to an ampler knowledge of our history.I TERRITORIAL CONCEPTSEuropean Contests Affecting America, and a Summary of American ExpansionThe settlers task of conquering the wilderness might have been simpler had they not spent so much energy in conquering one another; for side
29、 by side with the advance of the frontier goes a process of territorial rivalry of which the end is not yet. Along with a contest with the aborigines for the face of the country went a nominal subdivision of the continent among the occupying European powers, a process made more difficult by the slow
30、 development of knowledge about the interior: as late as 1660 people thought that the upper Mississippi emptied into the Gulf of California.At the very beginning came an effort to settle the prime problem of European title by religious authority. Three papal bulls of 1493 attempted to draw a meridia
31、n through the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, west of which Spain should have the whole occupancy of newly discovered lands, and, east of it, Portugal.12 Spain was first to see the New World, first to coast the continents, first to explore the interior, first to conquer tribes of the natives, and firs
32、t to set up organized colonies. Except in Brazil, which was east of the demarcation line, for a century after discovery Spain was the only American power. A war for the mastery of North America between the Anglo-Saxon and the Spaniard continued for more than two centuries. After the defeat of the Sp
33、anish Armada by the English, in 1588, it became possible to break in upon the monopoly of American territory; as soon as the war with Spain was over, England gave the first charter, which resulted in the founding of a lasting English colony in Americathe Virginia grant of 1606.The claim of Spain wou
34、ld have been more effective had it not included the whole continent of North America, hardly an eighth of which was occupied by Spanish colonies. International law as to the occupation of new countries was in a formative state: everybody admitted that you might seize the territory of pagans, but how
35、 did you know when you had seized it? Was the state of which an accredited vessel first followed a coast thereby possessed of all the back country draining into that coast? Did actual exploration of the interior create presumptive title to the surrounding region? Was a trading-post proof that occupa
36、tion was meant to be permanent? Did actual colonies of settlers, who expected to spend their lives there, make a complete evidence of rightful title?TERRITORIAL GROWTH (FULL SIZE)These various sorts of claims were singularly tangled and contorted in America. Who had the best title to the Chesapeaket
37、he English, who believed Sebastian Cabot had followed that part of the coast in 1498, or the French, whose commander Verrazzano undoubtedly was there in 1524, or the Spaniards, for whom De Ayllon made a voyage in 1526? Spanish explorers had crossed and followed the Mississippi River, but it is doubt
38、ful whether in 1600 they could easily have found its mouth. The French, in like manner, had explored the St. Lawrence,3 but without permanent results. Therefore, the territorial history of the United States may be said to begin with the almost simultaneous planting of settlements in the New World by
39、 France, England, and Holland, between 1600 and 1615. The French happened first on the St. Lawrence, which was the gateway into the interior, with its valuable fur-trade; and they set up their first permanent establishment at Quebec in 1608. The English, after thirty years of attempts on the Virgini
40、a coast, finally planted the colony of Jamestown in 1607. The Dutch rediscovered the Hudson River in 1609, and founded New Amsterdam in 1614. The next great river south, the Delaware, was occupied by the Swedes in 1638. It is one of the misfortunes of civilization that Germany, then the richest and
41、most intellectual nation in Europe, and well suited for taking a share in the development of the New World, was in this critical epoch absorbed in the fearful Thirty Years War, which in 1648 left the country ruined and helpless, so that no attempt could be made to link the destinies of Germany with
42、those of America.Soon began seizures of undoubted Spanish territory: the English first picked up various small islands in the West Indies, in 1655 wrested away the Spanish island of Jamaica, and thereupon made a little settlement on the coast of Honduras. The next step was a determined onset against
43、 the nearer neighbors in North America. Quebec was taken and held from 1629 to 1632; the Dutch, who had absorbed the Swedish colonies, were dispossessed in 1664;2 and the English proceeded to contest Hudson Bay with the French. These conflicts marked a deliberate intention to seize points of vantage
44、 like Belize and Jamaica, and to uproot the colonies of other European powers in North America; it was part of a process of English expansion which was going on also on the opposite side of the globe.5 As the eighteenth century began, France, England, and Spain were still in antagonism for the posse
45、ssion of North America; and the French, in 1699, succeeded in planting a colony on the Gulf in the side of the Spanish colonial empire. These international rivalries were soon altered by the struggle of England against the attempt of Louis XIV. to bring about the practical consolidation of Spain and
46、 France, which would have made an immense Latin colonial empire. To some degree on religious grounds, partly to protect their commerce, and partly from inscrutable international jealousies, the nations of Europe were plunged into a series of five land and naval wars between 1689 and 1783, in each of
47、 which North American territory was attacked, and in several of which great changes were made in the map.In these wars the colonies formed an ideal as to the duty of a mother-country to protect daughter colonies, and aided in developing a policy which has been described by one of the most brilliant
48、of modern writers as that of “sea power.”3 The illustration of that theory was a succession of fleet engagements in the West Indies, always followed by a picking up of enemys islands; and also the repeated efforts of the colonists in separate or joint expeditions to conquer the neighboring French or
49、 Spanish territory. The final result was the destruction of the French-American power and the serious weakening of the Spanish.In 1732 the charter of Georgia was a denial of the Spanish claims to Florida. By the treaty of 1763 France was pressed altogether out of the continent, yielding up to England that splendid region of the eastern part of the Mississippi Valley which the English coveted, and with it the St. Lawrence Valley. For the first time since the capture of Jamaica, a considera