ILE employed, during the early part of the year 1876, under appointment by Governor Bagley, in preparing for the press a statistical review of the State designed primarily for distribution at the Centennial Exhibition in the interest of immigration, I was impressed with the importance of making some specific and connected record, in form for preservation, of Michigan representation at the Exhibition. The official record it was, of course, understood would be preserved by the able and competent gentlemen having the official management; but it was also believed that there would be very many things worthy of note of which official cognizance could not well be taken, and hence that there was a demand for a work of a popular character outside of the mere official record.
The public thought, during the year 1876, centered so much upon the Centennial Exhibition, that the term, "The Centennial," came to have a technical meaning as referring to that enterprise. The germinal idea of this volume, in sympathy with the public thought on the subject, connected it only with the Exhibition, and hence it was first announced as "Michigan at the Centennial." But most human enterprises are things of growth and development, and reflection soon suggested that "The Centennial" had a much broader scope than as a mere descriptive term referring to the International Exhibition that it comprehended not only the Centennial year, but the commemoration of events preceding and leading directly to the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. To meet this broader view, the title was changed to that under which the work is now presented to the public. As preliminary to any definite undertaking, the members of the State Centennial Board of Managers were consulted, and their recommendation, which appears elsewhere, was cordially given. As a further preliminary, a partial canvass was made to determine whether there was a demand for such a work, and although the first proposals were necessarily somewhat indefinite, the readiness with which subscriptions were made demonstrated that the demand existed.
It was announced that the work would be "a representative Centennial book in all departments comprehended by it," and such it aims to be. The brief resumé that is given in the first chapter of the work, of the rise of the colonies, in close connection with acts of the British government impinging upon the civil and political rights of the colonists, and counter acts of the colonies themselves, the whole preceding and leading to the formal separation by the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, will give to the young reader a better understanding of the rise of the nation as a political structure than a considerable study of political history would do. And it is here appropriately remarked that the arrangement of the work in its various parts, while