As Arnold had demonstrated, the real enemy was not Great Britain, but those Americans who sought to undercut their fellow citizens’ commitment to one another. Whether it was Joseph Reed’s willingness...
Atrocities were expected in both European and Native conflicts. And yet, the English had to admit that compared to what was typical of European wars, the Indians had conducted themselves with surprisi...
In the end, the Mayflower Compact represented a remarkable act of coolheaded and pragmatic resolve. They were nearing the end of a long and frightening voyage. They were bound for a place about which...
It may have been true that from a strictly legal standpoint there was nothing wrong with how Winslow and the other Plymouth officials acquired large amounts of Pokanoket land. And yet, from a practica...
The Puritans believed that the identity of the Saints had long since been determined by God. This meant that there was nothing a person could do to win salvation. But instead of being a reason to fors...
Thomas Paine was so inspired by the heroism displayed at Fort Mifflin that he published an open letter to William Howe: 'You are fighting for what you can never obtain and we are defending what we nev...
Without Massasoit’s help, the Pilgrims would never have survived the first year, and they remained steadfast supporters of the sachem to the very end. For his part, Massasoit realized almost from the...
As Starbuck discovers, simply being a good guy with a positive worldview is not enough to stop a force of nature like Ahab, who feeds on the fears and hatreds in us all.
By doing their best to destroy the Native people who had welcomed and sustained their forefathers, New Englanders had destroyed their forefathers’ way of life.
It is painful to witness the death of the smallest of God’s created beings, much more, one in which life is so vigorously maintained as the Whale! And when I saw this, the largest and most terrible of...
Only in the heart of quickest perils; only when within the eddyings of his angry flukes; only on the profound unbounded sea, can the fully invested whale be truly and livingly found out.
Some Englishmen privately admitted that if the Narragansetts had chosen to join Philip in July, all would have been lost. As the Nipmucks assailed them from the west, the far more powerful Narraganset...
In the end, both sides wanted what the Pilgrims had been looking for in 1620: a place unfettered by obligations to others.
POLLARD had known better, but instead of pulling rank and insisting that his officers carry out his proposal to sail for the Society Islands, he embraced a more democratic style of command. Modern sur...
It was not as if the rest of the nation was suffering from want. .. Americans were experiencing a war-related economic boom. these same citizens might be enjoying an unusual level of prosperity, but t...
No longer mindful of the debt they owed the Pokanokets, without whom their parents would never have endured their first year in America, some of the Pilgrims’ children were less willing to treat Nativ...
Part of what makes a revolution such a fascinating subject to study is the arrival of the moment when neutrality is no longer an option. Like it or not, a person has to choose.
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