{Text transcribed and annotated by Hugh MacDougall, Founder and Secretary/Treasurer of the James Fenimore Cooper Society, who will appreciate corrections and comments at jfcooper@wpe.com. All material not from Cooper's text is enclosed in {curly} brackets. {Introductory Note: In 1851, just before his death on the eve of his 62nd birthday, James Fenimore Cooper was working a history of New York City, for which he planned the title of "The Towns of Manhattan." Cooper never completed it, and most of the parts of the manuscript that he did complete were destroyed in a fire at the printers after his death. The Introduction to the work, however, survived, and was published during the Civil War in…
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