Many of the literary histories written in the last half century have carefully avoided quotations or reprints of documents. In the early historical literature of America documents were inserted or appended to almost every history; but this style gave way to the literary ideal of expressing the thought of the documents in the historian’s own words. There are many volumed histories written toward the close of the nineteenth century which make no pretence of reproducing the form or words of the source-material. It was but natural, therefore, when the study of history came to be taken up seriously in colleges and schools, that teachers and scholars should desire to get away from the insipid literary generalizations, and taste the freshness of the original sources. It was this insistence upon a certain literary style which created the source-book; and to-day we have therefore the literary history and the source-collection side by side. Early source-books contained simply highly significant documents, or documents which might be treated as types. We have advanced far from this, and now our editor aims to give the narrative of history in the language of the original documents. Casting aside all reverence for the document as a completed whole, Professors Caldwell and Persinger have cut and trimmed out every unnecessary phrase and sentence, taking a few words from one document, a few paragraphs from another, a few pages, perhaps, from another. By this process, the volume is made to approach nearly to the consecutive development of thought and arrangement shown in the narrative histories. The language and spelling of the originals are in all cases preserved, and all omissions are indicated by the usual typographical means.