The Glorious Revolution in America

"If the editors of this volume, the third in the Documentary Problems in Early American History, agreed upon any one thing at the very outset of their collaboration, it was the need to make available to their students the raw materials of one of the most exciting and crucial episodes in the first century of the nation's creation. The assignment of textbooks and monographs serves a valuable purpose by giving the student a view of either the whole scope of history or a particular phase of it. But it is a predigested view. Moreover, it is an exceptional text or monograph that can stimulate a student's intellectual inquisitiveness and appetite for historical knowledge. For this, teachers are turning more and more toward controllable collections of primary source materials. By working with the basic stuff of history, the student can formulate his own conclusions and interpretations; he can become, in at least a limited sense, his own historian." "Through study and analysis of the documents that follow, the student can participate in the events of the Glorious Revolution, reconstruct them, appreciate the subtle and often conflicting issues involved, and derive conclusions substantiated by evidence. Of particular advantage is the gathering together, from a multitude of sources, documents that would otherwise be unavailable because of their scarcity or because of the time that would be consumed. Grappling with the same range of documents that would confront the professional historian, the student acquires both substantive knowledge and an ability to exercise historical methodology with discernment and skill. Thus he can better appreciate the general complexity that faces the historian as he analyzes men and events." From the preface.