It has been my aim less to collect new facts than to draw from the immense storehouse of facts already collected those which were to real importance in New York history, and to show their true meaning, and their relations to one another; to sketch the workings of the town’s life, social, commercial, and political, at successive periods, with their sharp transformations and contrasts; and to trace the causes which gradually changed a little Dutch trading-hamlet into a huge American city. I have also striven to make clear the logical sequence and continuity of these events; to outline the steps by which the city gradually obtained a free political life; and to give proper prominence to the remarkable and ever-recurring revolutions in the ethnic make-up of our mixed population,—a population which from the beginning has been composed of many different race-elements, and which has owed its marvelous growth more to immigration than to natural increase.Nisyros Publishers has a proud history of publishing high quality and rare titles.