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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from A Straight Deal by Owen Wister: blocked us up, and rioted unchecked along our coasts? You probably did
know that the British burned Washington, and you accordingly hated them
for this barbarous vandalism--but did you know that we had burned Toronto
a year earlier?
I left school knowing none of this--it wasn't in my school book, and I
learned it in mature years with amazement. I then learned also that
England, while she was fighting with us, had her hands full fighting
Bonaparte, that her war with us was a sideshow, and that this was
uncommonly lucky for us--as lucky quite as those ships from France under
Admiral de Grasse, without whose help Washington could never have caught
Cornwallis and compelled his surrender at Yorktown, October 19, 1781. Did
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