"SIC VOLVENDA ETAS COMMUTAT TEMPORA RERUM; -Lucretius. RALEIGH: ALFRED WILLIAMS & CO., PUBLISHERS. UZZELL & WILEY, PRINTERS AND BINDERS. 1880. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1880, by ALFRED WILLIAMS & CO., In the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. F •M82 PREFACE. In submitting this work to public uses I avail myself of the opportunity to return thanks for the very gracious reception vouchsafed the School History of North Carolina. Whatever of merit may be in that work has been generously pointed out and extolled by the many writers who have noticed it in the newspapers of this and other States, and that some harsh criticism should have been mingled in the general chorus of applause was by no means unexpected or deprecated. Many valuable hints and corrections have been suggested, and I trust by diligence to remove in this book and the subsequent editions of the smaller work the faults which have been thus not unkindly indicated. My convictions as to the correctness of the outlines and proportions of that picture of our past have not been disturbed. The matters discussed in this volume are of the past and rest upon data which are now fixed and irreversible. That any one should question the prominence I have given Colonel John Harvey argues a want of attention to the legislation and correspondence of the period embraced in the two last decades of our provincial history. The letter-books of Governors Tryon and Martin, the journals of the House of Assembly, the proceedings of the two first Provincial Congresses and the numerous proclamations sent out by Governor Josiah Martin from New-Bern in 1774 and 1775, are all cited to show how abundantly I am justified in my disposition and grouping of the figures on our historical canvas. |