Patrick Henry addressing the Virginia House of Burgesses in 1765 Washington as a Virginia Colonel, from portrait by Peale painted in 1772 117 Statue of Minuteman at Concord 118 Charles Carroll of Carrollton, last surviving signer of the Declara Henry Lee, known as "Light Horse Harry" Lee. 163 PAGE Facsimile of Inscription written by Jefferson for his Tombstone 228 Nicholas Biddle, President of the Bank of the United States 282 Robert E. Lee. His last photograph, taken in 1869 General Philip H. Sheridan General William T. Sherman of Washington and Lee University at Lexington, Virginia 372 376 387 412 414 416 Valentine's Recumbent Statue over the Tomb of Lee, in the Chapel Thaddeus Stevens 420 432 PART I THE COLONIES CHAPTER I THE NEW WORLD As late as the fifteenth century men knew surprisingly little of the planet on which they dwelt. In the maps that have come down to us from the Middle Ages the shores Limits of of the Mediterranean and of western Europe are geographical knowledge clearly outlined, but there all accurate geograph- in the ical knowledge ends. The coast line of northern fifteenth Europe is badly contracted, Africa is unknown century below the Tropic of Cancer, and Asia bulges out into an ill-defined land of mystery. By the middle of the thirteenth century European adventurers had followed the trade routes into eastern Asia and brought back marvelous tales of adventure, of vast cities and empires, and of untold wealth. The most celebrated of these travelers was Marco Polo, a Venetian, who after a sojourn of twenty years at the court of the Great Khan at Peking returned to Italy at the close of the century and wrote an account of his travels which within a few years was widely read throughout Europe. Cathay, the name given to China by Marco Polo and his contemporaries, became a land of intense interest to Europeans. Polo did not visit Japan, but under the name of Cipango he describes the great island lying a thousand miles east of Cathay. A copy of his travels with marginal notes |