The main body of manuscripts left by Mr. Van Buren having been thus applied, some question remained in regard to that portion now published. Begun as an episode, the subject grew on the author's hands (as he explains in a note) to such proportions as to seem to stand more properly as a distinct production, and although, like the principal work, incomplete, it had been nevertheless carried forward to the point, chronologically speaking, that had been proposed, and that was in fact its natural termination. For this reason, and because it had no such connection with the memoirs as required that they should be printed together, it has been thought best to publish it without further delay in the form in which it was left by the writer. The subject is of peculiar interest at this time when our country, having suffered the rude shock and disorder of civil war, and our free and popular institutions having sustained with admirable firmness and substantial triumph a more fearful trial than any to which they had before been subjected, the sacred and momentous duty is devolved on patriots and good citizens throughout our borders to reconstruct whatever valuable parts have been thrown down, to restore what may have been injured or defaced in our political system and in the principles on which it rests; and the occasion seems auspicious for recalling the attention of our people to the study of the lives and doctrines--the grounds and motives of action--of the great men by whom the foundations of their government were laid. The work of editing this volume has been inconsiderable, the sum of it having been to correct a few manifest inadvertencies, to divide it into chapters, with indexical heads, to furnish the whole with a title, and to add one or two foot-notes that appeared to be proper. Otherwise the aim has been to preserve the form and substance of the original. The citation from Cicero on the title-page was found on Mr. Van Buren's table, in his library, extracted in his own handwriting; whether only as a terse declaration of the law by the spirit of which his pen was guided, or as a possible motto for his complete work, is not known. The letter from Mr. Jefferson, forming an Appendix, was intended by Mr. Van Buren to be printed with whatever of his own might reach publication, and is spoken of in the present volume as "accompanying this work." It is now printed for the first time from the original manuscript letter, and a few errors in the edition published (probably from the draft) by the Library Committees of Congress are corrected. The portrait fronting this book is engraved from Brady's imperial photograph, by Ritchie, and must be pronounced a very favorable specimen of his art. It represents Mr. Van Buren in the seventy-fifth year of his age. EDGEHILL, FISHKILL-ON-HUDSON, N. Y., _February, 1867_. POLITICAL PARTIES IN THE UNITED STATES. CHAPTER I.