NEW WORLD BEGINNINGS
"I have come to believe that this is a mighty continent which was hitherto unknown... Your Highness have an Other World here." - Christopher Columbus, 1498
"Who of those in future centuries will believe this? I myself who am writing this and saw it and know the most about it can hardly believe that such was possible." - Bartolome de Las Casas, on the awful fate of the Native Americans and in protest of Spanish policies in the New World
THE PLANTING OF ENGLISH AMERICA
"...For I shall yet live to see it [Virginia] an Inglishe nation." - Sir Walter Raleigh, 1602
"There is under our noses the great and ample country of Virginia; the inland whereof is found of late to be so sweet and wholesome a climate, so rich and abundant in silver mines, a better and richer country than Mexico itself. If it shall please the Almighty to stir up Her Majesty's heart to continue with transporting one or two thousand of her people, she shall by God's assistance, in short space, increase her dominions, enrich her coffers, and reduce many pagans to the faith of Christ." - Richard Hakluyt, exhorting his English countrymen to undertake the colonization of the New World
"Our men were destroyed with cruel diseases as swellings, burning fevers, and by wars, and some departed suddenly, but for the most part they died of mere famine. There were never Englishmen left in a foreign country in such misery as we were in this new discovered Virginia." - George Percy, on his experience in Virginia
"be disarmed [and] have his arms broken and his tongue bored through with an awl [and] shall pass through a guard of 40 men and shall be butted [with muskets] by every one of them and at the head of the troop kicked down and footed out of the fort." - Official sentence for a Jamestown settler who criticized the governor
"For our Shippe was so pestered with people and goods that we were so full of infection that after a while we saw little but throwing folkes over board: It pleased god to send me my helth till I came to shoare and 3 dayes after I fell sick but I thank god I am well recovered. Few else are left alive that came in that Shippe." - Wife of a Virginia governor, on her voyage to the New World in 1623
"When an Indian child has been brought up among us, taught our language and habituated to our customs, yet if he goes to see his relations and make one Indian ramble with them, there is no persuading him ever to return. [But] when white persons of either sex have been taken prisoners by the Indians, and lived awhile among them, though ransomed by their friends, and treated with all imaginable tenderness to prevail with them to stay among the English, yet in a short time they become disgusted with our manner of life, and the care and pains that are necessary to support it, and take the first good opportunity of escaping again into the woods, from whence there is no reclaiming them." - Benjamin Franklin, on the attractiveness of Indian life to Europeans
"The Negroes are so wilful and loth to leave their own country, that have leap'd out of the canoes, boat and ship, into the sea, and kept under water till they were drowned, to avoid being taken up and saved by our boats, which pursued them; they having a more dreadful apprehension of Barbadoes than we can have of hell." - English sailor, describing the scene of African slaves reaction to being bound and branded and ferried on canoes to slave ships in West Africa
"If any Negro or slave whatsoever shall offer any violence to any Christian by striking or the like, such Negro or slave shall for his or her first offence be severely whipped by the Constable. For his second offence of that nature he shall be severely whipped, his nose slit, and be burned in some part of his face with a hot iron. And being brutish slaves, [they] deserve not, for the baseness of their condition, to be tried by the legal trial of twelve men of their peers, as the subjects of England are. And it is further enacted and ordained that if any Negro or other slave under punishment by his master unfortunately shall suffer in life or member, which seldom happens, no person whatsoever shall be liable to any fine therefore." - Barbados slave code (1661)
SETTLING THE NORTHERN COLONIES
"God hath sifted a nation that he might send Choice Grain into this Wilderness." - William Stoughton [of Massachusetts Bay], 1699
"Thus out of small beginnings greater things have been produced by His hand that made all things of nothing, and gives being to all things that are; and, as one small candle may light a thousand, so the light here kindled hath shone unto many, yea in some sort to our whole nation." - William Bradford, on Plymouth plantation
"The sect of the Quakers in their best representatives appear to me to have come nearer to the sublime history and genius of Christ than any other of the sects." - Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1869
AMERICAN LIFE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
"Being thus passed the vast ocean, and a sea of troubles before in their preparation..., they had now no friends to welcome them, nor inns to entertaine or refresh their weatherbeaten bodys, no houses or much less towns to repaire too, to seeke for succore." - William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, 1630
"I found the plantations generally seated upon mere salt marshes full of infectious bogs and muddy creeks and lakes, and thereby subjected to all those inconveniences and diseases which are so commonly found in the most unsound and most unhealthy parts of England." - Virginia Company agent, 1622
"for having protected, favored, and emboldened the Indians against His Majesty's loyal subjects, never contriving, requiring, or appointing any due or proper means of satisfaction for their many invasions, robberies, and murders committed upon us." - Nathaniel Bacon, assailing Virginia's Governor William Berkeley, 1676
"I have lived thirty-four years amongst you [Virginians], as uncorrupt and diligent as ever [a] Governor was, [while] Bacon is a man of two years amongst you, his person and qualities unknown to most of you, and to all men else, by any virtuous act that ever I heard of... I will take counsel of wiser men than myself, but Mr. Bacon has none about him but the lowest of the people." - Governor Berkeley, response to Nathaniel Bacon, 1676
"There is a saying, that we should do to all men like as we will be done ourselves... But to bring men hither, or to rob and sell them against... Pray, what thing in the world can be done worse towards us, than if men should rob or steal us away, and sell us for slaves to strange countries, separating husbands from their wives and children." - Mennonites of Germantown, Pennsylvania, protesting against slavery, 1688
"No country yields a more propitious air for our temper than New England... Many of our people that have found themselves always weak and sickly at home, have become strong and healthy there: perhaps by the dryness of the air and constant temper[ature] of it, which seldom varies from cold to heat, as it does with us... Neither are the natives at any time troubled with pain of teeth, soreness of eyes, or ache in their limbs." - Reverend John White, advertising the Massachusetts Bay Colony, 1630
"It being one chief project of the old deluder, Satan, to keep men from the knowledge of the Scriptures, as in former times by keeping them in an unknown tongue, it is therefore ordered that every township in this jurisdiction, after the Lord has increased them [in] number to fifty householders, shall then forthwith appoint one within their town to teach all such children as shall resort to him to write and read, whose wages shall be paid either by the parents or masters of such children, or by the inhabitants in general." - Massachusetts School Law, 1647
COLONIAL SOCIETY ON THE EVE OF REVOLUTION
"Driven from every other corner of the earth, freedom of thought and the right of private judgment in matters of conscience direct their course to this happy country as their last asylum." - Samuel Adams, 1776
"They are a mixture of English, Scotch, Irish, French, Dutch, Germans, and Swedes. From this promiscuous breed, that race now called Americans have arisen... I could point out to you a family whose grandfather was an Englishman, whose wife was Dutch, whose son married a French woman, and whose present four sons have now four wives of different nations." - Michel-Guillaume Jean de Crevecoeur, on the diversity of the population, 1770
"Never till now was that rule contested, of two evils, choose the least... I would ask them whether it be not a most criminal ingratitude unto the God of Health, when He has acquainted us with a most invaluable method of the saving of our lives from so great a death, to treat with neglect and contempt, and multiply abuses on them who thankfully and in a spirit of obedience to Him, embrace His blessings?" - Cotton Mather, frustrated with Boston residents opposition to inoculation during the smallpox epidemic, 1721
"A good example is the best sermon." - Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack, on religion
"Many have quarreled about religion that never practiced it." - Benjamin Franklin, on religion
"Serving God is doing good to man, but praying is thought an easier service, and therefore more generally chosen." - Benjamin Franklin, on religion
"How many observe Christ's birthday; how few his precepts! O! 'tis easier to keep holidays than commandments." - Benjamin Franklin, on religion
"The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked. His wrath toward you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else but to be cast into the fire." - Jonathan Edwards, preaching hellfire
"The education of our children is never out of mind... I must study politics and war that my sons may have the liberty to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain." - John Adams, letter to Abigail Adams
"The question before the court and you, gentlemen of the jury, is not of small nor private concern. It is not the cause of a poor printer, nor of New York alone, which you are now trying. No! It may, in its consequence, affect every freeman that lives under a British government on the main [land] of America. It is the best cause. It is the cause of liberty." - Andrew Hamilton, conclusion of his plea in the Zenger case
"It was not Virginia that wanted a governor but a court favorite that wanted a salary." - Junius (pseudonym for a critic of the British government), 1768-1772
THE DUEL FOR NORTH AMERICA
"A torch lighted in the forests of America set all Europe in conflagration." - Voltaire, 1756
"...for fire and water are not more heterogeneous than the different colonies in North America. Nothing can exceed the jealousy and emulation which they possess in regard to each other... In short... were they left to themselves there would soon be a civil war from one end of the continent to the other, while the Indians and Negroes would... impatiently watch the opportunity of exterminating them all together." - Reverend Andrew Burnaby, scoffing at the possibility of unification, 1760
THE ROAD TO REVOLUTION
"The Revolution was effected before the war commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people." - John Adams, 1818
"To prohibit a great people, however, from making all that they can of every part of their own produce, or from employing their stock and industry in the way that they judge most advantageous to themselves, is a manifest violation of the most sacred rights of mankind." - Adam Smith, attacking mercantilism, 1776
"A colonist cannot make a button, a horseshoe, nor a hobnail, but some snooty ironmonger or respectable buttonmaker of Britain shall bawl and squall that his honor's worship is most egregiously maltreated, injured, cheated, and robbed by the rascally American republicans." - Boston Gazette, 1765
"Young man, there is America - which at this day serves for little more than to amuse you with stories of savage men and uncouth manners; yet shall, before you taste of death, show itself equal to the whole of that commerce which now attracts the envy of the world." - Edmund Burke, casts a warning, 1775
"The constitutional modes of obtaining relief are those which I wish to see pursued on the present occasion... We have an excellent prince, in whose good disposition we may confide... Let us behave like dutiful children who have received unmerited blows from a beloved parent. Let us complain to our parent; but let our complaint speak at the same time the language of affliction and veneration." - John Dickinson, advocating a middle-of-the-road response to the British revenue acts
"We the Daughters of those Patriots who have and now do appear for the public interest... do with Pleasure engage with them in denying ourselves the drinking of Foreign Tea, in hopes to frustrate a Plan that tends to deprive the whole Community of... all that is valuable in Life." - Group of 126 Boston women signing a "subscription list"
"Those who are well disposed towards Government are termed Tories. They daily increase & have made some efforts to take the power out of the hands of the Patriots, but they are intimidated and overpowered by Numbers... However I don't despair of seeing Peace & tranquility in America, tho' they talk very high & furious at present." - Ann Hulton, a Loyalist, describing the colonies and her hops and fears, 1774
"As long as you have the wisdom to keep the sovereign authority of this country as the sanctuary of liberty... they will turn their faces towards you... Slavery they can have anywhere; freedom they can have from none but you. This is the commodity of price, of which you have the monopoly. This is the true Act of Navigation, which binds you to the commerce of the colonies, and through them secures to you the wealth of the world. Deny them this participation of freedom, and you break that sole bond which originally made, and must still preserve, the unity of the empire." - Edmund Burke, speech to Britain's House of Commons, pleading for reconciliation, 1775
"Chimney corner patriots abound; venality, corruption, prostitution of office for selfish ends, abuse of trust, perversion of funds from a national to a private use, and speculations upon the necessities of the times pervade all interests." - General Washington, disgust for his countrymen, 1776
"[Freedom] is their common Talk throughout the Province, and has occasioned impertinent behavior in many of them, insomuch that our Provincial Congress now sitting hath voted the immediate raising of Two Thousand Men Horse and food, to keep those mistaken creatures in awe." - Josiah Smith, Jr., rumor among the slaves
AMERICA SECEDES FROM THE EMPIRE
"These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman." - Thomas Paine, 1776
"The nearer any government approaches to a republic the less business there is for a king. It is somewhat difficult to find a proper name for the government of England. Sir William Meredith calls it a republic; but in its present state it is unworthy of the name, because the corrupt influence of the crown, by having all the places in its disposal, hath so effectively swallowed up the power, and eaten out the virtue of the house of commons (the republican part of the constitution) that the government of England is nearly as monarchical as that of France or Spain." - Thomas Paine, Common Sense, arguing the superiority of a republic over a monarchy
"If any fortunate revolution should take place in the world, it will begin in America... It will become the asylum of our people who have been oppressed by political establishments, or driven away by war." - Abbe Raynal, 1770
"...[You] are to be hanged by the neck, but not until you are dead; for while you are still living your bodies are to be taken down, your bowels torn out and burned before your faces, your heads then cut off, and your bodies divided each into four quarters, and your heads and quarters to be then at the King's disposal; and may the Almighty God have mercy on your souls." - English death sentence for seven Irish rebels, approved by King George III, 1802
"The waste and ravage produced by this unhappy war are every where felt. Wherever our foes pervade, ruin and devastation follow after them; or rather, they march in their front, and on their right, and on their left, and in their rear they rage without controul. No house is sacred; no person secure. Age or sex, from blooming youth to decrepit age, they regard or spare not. And in the field, how many of our countrymen and friends have fallen?" - Minister in Pennsylvania, admonishing the brutality of the British army
"Who would have thought that the American colonies, imperfectly known in Europe a few years ago and claimed by every pettifogging lawyer in the House of Commons, every cobbler in the beer-houses of London, as a part of their property, should to-day receive an ambassador from the most powerful monarchy in Europe." - Patriot journalist, response to the alliance with France
"The genius of this nation is not in the least to be compared with that of the Prussians, Austrians, or French. You say to your soldier, 'Do this' and he doeth it; but I am obliged to say, 'This is the reason why you ought to do that,' and then he does it." - Baron von Steuben, on the difference between American soldiers and other soldiers he had known
"Knavery seems to be so much the striking feature of its inhabitants that it may not in the end be an evil that they become aliens to this Kingdom." - King George III, reaction to the loss of America
"the Americans escaped the most dangerous of all rocks, which in our times threatens the founders of any revolution: the deadly passion for making political experiments with abstract theories and untried systems." - Friedrich von Gentz, Origins and Principles of the American Revolution, Compared with the French, 1800
"it rescues [the American] revolution from the disgraceful imputation of having proceeded from the same principles as the French." - John Quincy Adams, on why he translated von Gentz's work into English