3 JO Reviews of Books by the way, is to Monroe, almost to the end of the period in question, "the federal town " or "the federal city." It is not till February 1801 that he can bring himself to call it the City of Washington. More than usual interest attaches to his annual communications to the Virginia legis- lature. On the whole, the volume is not filled with remarkable things. It will not dissipate the impression that Monroe was a somewhat dull man ; George Long, it will perhaps be remembered, thought him excessively so. And if a whole volume is devoted to this quiet period of his life, the number of volumes to which the whole series must extend will be much greater than was expected, unless subsequent and highly important periods are disposed of with disproportionate haste. A History of the People of the United States, from tke Revolution to the Civil War. By John Bach McMaster. Vol. V., 1 82 i-i 830. (New York : D. Appleton and Co. 1900. Pp. xiv, 577.) This volume of Professor McMaster' s masterpiece is in many respects unusually true to the peculiar promise of the title of the work. The period under inspection is that of Monroe's second term of office and of John Quincy Adams's administration with the introductory year of Jack- son's reign. But, as in the preceding volume of the work the author has discussed the causes which led to the final rupture between the two wings of the Democratic-Republican party, he needs here to chronicle only the catastrophe. Out of fourteen chapters of the book before us, only six are devoted to the affairs of national politics and of the central administration. These six chapters are divided between the beginning and the end of the book and made to serve as covers to the body of the work, which is devoted to the consideration of sundry phases in the social and in- dustrial evolution of ^the people of the United States. The first three chapters in the book contain, therefore, a summary of the important political and diplomatic events during Monroe's second term of office. In the first two chapters are presented the efforts for the suppression of the slave trade, the perilous controversies about the boundary in Texas and Oregon, and all the incidents and movements in Europe and South America which preceded and followed the declaration of the so-called Monroe Doctrine. The third chapter is entirely filled with the story of the presidential election of 1824, in the heat of which collision the crystal- lization of new parties began. At the close of the book we find three more chapters in which the same subjects reappear, at the risk of some repetitions, which perhaps were inevitable after such an interval. Chapter LI. is devoted to the foreign policy of the Adams administration. It continues from Chapter XL. the discussion of our negotiations with England concerning the boundaries of Maine and Oregon and shows the unfriendly relations of the two countries over the West Indian trade. The statement of the varying phases of the boundary controversy during those years is admirably lucid.
