Historical Briefs

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Dodd, Mead, 1896 - History - 310 pages
 

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Page 105 - This can be done without implicating the government. Let it be signified to me through any channel (say Mr. J. Rhea) that the possession of the Floridas would be desirable to the United States, and in sixty days it will be accomplished.
Page 112 - Your letter of January 6, was received while I was seriously indisposed. Observing that it was from you, I handed it to Mr. Calhoun to read, after reading one or two lines, only, myself. The order to you to take the command in that quarter had before then been issued. He remarked, after perusing the letter, that it was a confidential one, relating to Florida, which I must answer.
Page 8 - Faithfulness to the truth of history involves far more than a research, however patient and scrupulous, into special facts.
Page 134 - No President who performs his duty faithfully and conscientiously can have any leisure. If he entrusts the details and smaller matters to subordinates constant errors will occur. I prefer to supervise the whole operations of the Government myself rather than entrust the public business to subordinates, and this makes my duties very great.
Page 105 - British partisans, or, if you please, with Aury's force, attacks him. What may not be the result? Defeat and massacre. Permit me to remark that the arms of the United States must be carried to any point within the limits of East Florida, where an enemy is permitted and protected, or disgrace attends. "The...
Page 141 - I told them that if a man surrendered his arm to be shaken, by some horizontally, by others perpendicularly, and by others again with a strong grip, he could not fail to suffer severely from it, but that if he would shake and not be shaken, grip and not be gripped, taking care always to squeeze the hand of his adversary as hard as he squeezed him, that he suffered no inconvenience from it.
Page 8 - The narrator must seek to imbue himself with the life and spirit of the time. He must study events in their bearings, near and remote ; in the character, habits, and manners of those who took part in them. He must himself be, as it were, a sharer or spectator of the action he describes.
Page 45 - ... truthfully put the facts in a new light or add something really valuable, which has not been already set forth elsewhere. Let it be admitted, in fine, in all historical writing, that much patient and minute study must be bestowed for one's own personal gratification alone; that one may spread the results before his readers, but not the processes. Whatever the historian may print and publish for the edification of the public, let him endeavor to make the result apparent for which he prospected...
Page 129 - Mr. Buchanan is an able man, but is in small matters without judgment, and sometimes acts like an old maid.
Page 105 - The Executive Government have ordered (and, as I conceive, very properly) Amelia Island to be taken possession of; this order ought to be carried into execution at all hazards, and, simultaneously, the whole of East Florida seized and held as an indemnity for the outrages of Spain upon the property of our Citizens...

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