Public-domain ebook
Comic History of the United States
by Bill Nye
Language: en9,113 downloads on Project Gutenberg
Subjects
In: United States·Humor·Humour
Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #21427.
About this book
Bill Nye’s Comic History of the United States is a illustrated survey that treats American events as a series of caricatured episodes rather than a sober chronicle. The book opens with a whimsical preface that likens raw facts to a naked child, insisting that history should be “embellished and beautified” before it reaches the public. From there it launches into a chapter on the “Discovery of America,” where a dramatized, almost theatrical scene places Queen Isabella in a confessional and Columbus in a courtly interview, all rendered in the exaggerated prose and visual humor of Fred B. Opper’s cartoons. The table of contents promises a rapid, tongue‑in‑cheek march through colonial foundations, revolutionary battles, and later conflicts, each chapter framed as a comic vignette rather than a conventional narrative.
The voice is unmistakably late‑Victorian, mixing lofty rhetoric with colloquial asides and a satirical edge that reflects the 1894 publishing era. Its style combines verbose, moralizing commentary with the visual punch of turn‑of‑the‑century cartooning, producing a work that feels part lecture, part comic strip. Readers who enjoy a light‑hearted, visually driven take on American history, particularly those with a taste for period humor, caricature, and the occasional anachronistic jab, will find this book an entertaining companion to more serious histories.
Who appears in Comic History of the United States
- Queen IsabellaRegal Spanish queen in elaborate 15th‑century gown, gold embroidery, crown, solemn expression
- ColumbusMiddle‑aged explorer with weathered skin, dark beard, leather doublet, wide‑brimmed hat, determined gaze
The opening · free to read
Facts in a nude state are not liable criminally, any more than bright and beautiful children commit a felony by being born thus; but it is the solemn duty of those having these children in charge to put appropriate, healthful, and even attractive apparel upon them at the earliest possible moment.
It is thus with facts. They are the frame-work of history, not the drapery. They are like the cold, hard, dishevelled, damp, and uncomfortable body under the knife of the demonstrator, not the bright and bounding boy, clothed in graceful garments and filled to every tingling capillary with a soul.
We, each of us, the artist and the author, respect facts. We have never, either of us, said an unkind word regarding facts. But we believe that they should not be placed before the public exactly as they were born. We want to see them embellished and beautified. That is why this history is written.
Certain facts have come into the possession of the artist and author of this book regarding the history of the Republic down to the present day. We find, upon looking over the records and documents on file in the various archives of state and nation, that they are absolutely beyond question, and it is our object to give these truthfully. These rough and untidy, but impregnable truths, dressed in the sweet persuasive language of the author, and fluted, embossed, embroidered, and embellished by the skilful hand of the artist, are now before you.
History is but the record of the public and official acts of human beings. It is our object, therefore, to humanize our history and deal with people past and present; people who ate and possibly drank; people who were born, flourished, and died; not grave tragedians, posing perpetually for their photographs.
If we succeed in this way, and administer historical truth in the smooth capsule of the cartoonist and the commentator, we are content. If not, we know whose fault it will be, but will not get mad and swear about it.
BILL NYE.
FRED'K B. OPPER.
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