Page:15 decisive battles of the world Vol 2 (London).djvu/241

Rh subjects, and who described the United States only five years ago. Macgregor tells us—

"The States which, on the ratification of independence, formed the American Republican Union were thirteen, viz.:—

"Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia.

"The foregoing thirteen states (the whole inhabited territory of which, with the exception of a few small settlements, was confined to the region extending between the Alleghany mountains and the Atlantic) were those which existed at the period when they became an acknowledged separate and independent federal sovereign power. The thirteen stripes of the standard or flag of the United States, continue to represent the original number. The stars have multiplied to twenty-six, according as the number of States have increased. "The territory of the thirteen original States of the Union, including Maine and Vermont, comprehended a superficies of 371,124 English square miles; that of the whole United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, 120,354; that of France, including Corsica, 214,910; that of the Austrian