[figure description] Preface.[end figure description]

On commencing his former work, illustrative of the revolutionary history
of Vermont, — The Green Mountain Boys, — it was the design of
the author to have embraced the battle of Bennington, and other events
of historic interest which occurred in the older and more southerly parts
of the state; but finding, as he proceeded, that the unity and interest
of his effort would be endangered by embracing so much ground, a
part of the original design was relinquished, or rather its execution was
deferred for a new and separate work, wherein better justice could be
done to the rich and unappropriated materials of which his researches
had put him in possession. That work, after an interval of ten years, and
the writing and publishing of several intermediate ones, is now presented
to the public, and with the single remark, that if it is made to possess less
interest, as a mere tale, than its predecessor, the excuse must be found
in the author's greater anxiety to give a true historic version of the interesting
and important events he has undertaken to illustrate.