OF THE WARS OF THE UNITED STATES: COMPRISING THE MOST STRIKING AND REMARKABLE EVENTS OF THE REVOLUTION, THE FRENCH WAR, THE TRIPOLITAN WITH GREAT BRITAIN, AND THE E 181 .N38 1851 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1848, by CAREY AND HART, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, in and for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. PREFACE. THE purpose of the writer in the following pages is apparent in the title-page. He has selected, from the various authentic histories, memoirs, and reminiscences which have appeared during the last fifty years, the narratives of those events which were at once the most striking and important in our national annals, and presented them in a collective form. The view thus exhibited, bears the same relation to a complete and connected history that a sketch does to a finished picture. The strong points and striking features only are represented; but, at the same time, a vivid conception is afforded of the whole subject. The imagination of the reader receives, perhaps, a livelier impulse from the sketch than it would from the picture. What is delineated suggests more to the active fancy than if the delineator had endeavoured to place the whole upon |