In April, Bradford had decided that each household should be assigned its own plot to cultivate, with the understanding that each family kept whatever it grew. The change in attitude was stunning. Fam...
For the future welfare of the settlement, it was essential that all the colonists—Leideners and Strangers alike—learn to live together as best they could. This nonjudgmental attitude did not come natu...
Countless Victorian-era engravings notwithstanding, the Pilgrims did not spend the day sitting around a long table draped with a white linen cloth, clasping each other’s hands in prayer as a few curio...
A total of about 200,000 Americans had served in the war, but that did not mean the rest of the country of about 3 million would show them any gratitude or respect. Americans in 1783 were desperate to...
Fluidity of the sea, not the rigidity of irresistible law, characterizes human conduct, especially in the midst of a calamity.
Confronted them now. When first presented
Bloc, effectively guaranteeing that
A space of time is a great breeder of myths.
When an enlisted man sees his commanding officer lose his head entirely…, Private Taylor wrote, it would…demoralize anyone taught to breathe, almost, at the word of command.
The United States had been created through an act of disloyalty. No matter how eloquently the Declaration of Independence had attempted to justify the American rebellion, a residual guilt hovered over...
That Church according to Church is too brave, too cunning, and too good to be true is beside the point. America was destined to become a nation of self-fashioned and self-promoting men. What makes his...
Paul Revere Jr., with whom I had lunch at Spanky’s Clam Shack in Hyannis, Massachusetts.
In the years after the War of Independence, historian paid scant attention to the Siege of Fort Mifflin, primarily because, Martin believed 'there was no Washington, Putnam, or Wayne there.' 'Had ther...
In the end, both sides wanted what the Pilgrims had been looking for in 1620: a place unfettered by obligations to others. But from the moment Massasoit decided to become the Pilgrims’ ally, New Engla...
Then I’ll haste to wed a sailor, and send him off to sea, For a life of independence, is the pleasant life for me. But every now and then I shall like to see his face, For it always seems to me to bea...
In the year 1712, a Captain Hussey, cruising in his little boat for right whales along Nantucket’s south shore, was blown out to sea in a fierce northerly gale.
In a letter hastily written to a friend in London, Cushman saw only doom and disaster ahead. Friend, if ever we make a plantation God works a miracle, especially considering how scant we shall be of v...
Hope was all that stood between them and death.
Hindsight has a way of corrupting people’s memories, inviting them to view a past event not as it actually occurred but as they wished it had occurred given the ultimate result.
By the 1770s, the Teton Sioux had overrun the Arikara, or Ree, on the Missouri River and made it as far west as the Black Hills, where they quickly ousted the Kiowa and the Crows. Over the next hundre...