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THE NORTON ANTHOLOGY OF

AMERICAN LITERATURE

NINTH EDITION

VOLUME A : B EG INN INGS TO 1820

V O L U M E A American Lit er a ture, Beginnings to 1820 • GUSTAFSON

V O L U M E B American Lit er a ture 1820–1865 • LEVINE

V O L U M E C American Lit er a ture 1865–1914 • ELLIOTT

V O L U M E D American Lit er a ture 1914–1945

LOEFFELHOLZ

V O L U M E E American Lit er a ture since 1945

HUNGERFORD

Michael A. Elliott PROFESSOR OF EN GLISH AND AMERICAN STUDIES

EMORY UNIVERSITY

Sandra M. Gustafson PROFESSOR OF EN GLISH AND AMERICAN STUDIES

UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME

Amy Hungerford PROFESSOR OF EN GLISH AND AMERICAN STUDIES

AND DIRECTOR OF THE DIVISION OF THE HUMANITIES

YALE UNIVERSITY

Mary Loeffelholz PROFESSOR OF EN GLISH

NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY

THE NORTON ANTHOLOGY OF

AMERICAN LITERATURE

NINTH ED IT ION

Robert S. Levine, General Editor professor of en glish and

distinguished university professor and distinguished scholar- teacher

University of Mary land, College Park

VOLUME A : B EG INN INGS TO 1820

B W • W • N O R T O N & C O M P A N Y

N E W Y O R K • L O N D O N

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Contents

preface xvii acknowl edgments xxix

Beginnings to 1820

introduction 3 timeline 26

native american oral lit er a ture 29

stories of the beginning of the world 31 The Iroquois Creation Story 31 The Navajo Creation Story 35

Hajíínéí (The Emergence) 36 trickster tales 43

From The Winnebago Trickster Cycle (edited by Paul Radin) 43 oratory 47

From The World Encompassed by Sir Francis Drake 47 Powhatan’s Discourse of Peace and War 52 King Philip’s Speech 53

poetry 54 Cherokee War Song 55 Lenape War Song 57 Two Cherokee Songs of Friendship 57

Christopher Columbus (1451–1506) 58 Letter of Discovery (February 15, 1493) 59 From Letter to Ferdinand and Isabella Regarding the Fourth Voyage

(July 7, 1503) 64

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Bartolomé de las Casas (1474–1566) 66 From An Account, Much Abbreviated, of the Destruction

of the Indies 68

Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca (c. 1490–1558) 71 The Relation of Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca 73

[Dedication] 73 [The Malhado Way of Life] 74 [Our Life among the Avavares and Arbadaos] 75 [Pushing On] 76 [Customs of That Region] 77 [The First Confrontation] 78 [The Falling- Out with Our Countrymen] 78

first encounters: early eu ro pean accounts of native amer i ca 80

hernán cortés: From Second Letter to the Spanish Crown 82 thomas harriot: From A Brief and True Report of the New Found

Land of Virginia 87 samuel de champlain: From The Voyages of the Sieur de

Champlain 93 robert juet: From The Third Voyage of Master Henry Hudson 98 john heckewelder: From History, Manners, and Customs of

the Indian Nations 103 william bradford and edward winslow:

From Mourt’s Relation 106

John Smith (1580–1631) 110 The General History of Virginia, New Eng land, and the

Summer Isles 113 The Third Book. From Chapter 2. What Happened till the

First Supply 113 The Fourth Book. [Smith’s Farewell to Virginia] 122

From A Description of New Eng land 122 From New Eng land’s Trials 126

William Bradford (1590–1657) 129 Of Plymouth Plantation 132

Book I 132 From Chapter I. [The En glish Reformation] 132 Chapter IV. Showing the Reasons and Causes of Their

Removal 134 From Chapter VII. Of Their Departure from Leyden 137

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Chapter IX. Of Their Voyage, and How They Passed the Sea; and of Their Safe Arrival at Cape Cod 141

Chapter X. Showing How They Sought Out a Place of Habitation; and What Befell Them Thereabout 144

Book II 149 Chapter XI. The Remainder of Anno 1620 149

[Dif"cult Beginnings] 150 [Dealings with the Natives] 151

Chapter XII. Anno 1621 [The First Thanksgiving] 154 Chapter XIX. Anno 1628 [Mr. Morton of Merrymount] 154 Chapter XXIII. Anno 1632 [Prosperity Weakens Community] 158 Chapter XXV. Anno 1634 [Trou bles to the West] 159 Chapter XXVII. Anno 1636 [War Threats] 161 Chapter XXVIII. Anno 1637 [War with the Pequots] 162 Chapter XXXII. Anno 1642 [A Horrible Truth] 165 Chapter XXXIV. Anno 1644 [Proposed Removal to Nauset] 166

Thomas Morton (c. 1579–1647) 167 New En glish Canaan 169

The Third Book [The Incident at Merry Mount] 169 Chapter XIV. Of the Revels of New Canaan 169 Chapter XV. Of a Great Monster Supposed to Be

at Ma-re Mount 172 Chapter XVI. How the Nine Worthies Put Mine Host of Ma-re

Mount into the Enchanted Castle at Plymouth 175

John Winthrop (1588–1649) 176 A Model of Christian Charity 178 From The Journal of John Winthrop 189

The Bay Psalm Book 198 Psalm 2 [“Why rage the Heathen furiously?”] 199 Psalm 19 [“The heavens do declare”] 200 Psalm 23 [“The Lord to me a shepherd is”] 201 Psalm 100 [“Make ye a joyful sounding noise”] 202

Roger Williams (c. 1603–1683) 203 A Key into the Language of Ame rica 205

To My Dear and Well- Beloved Friends and Countrymen, in Old and New Eng land 205

Directions for the Use of Language 208 An Help to the Native Language 209

From Chapter I. Of Salutation 209 From Chapter II. Of Eating and Entertainment 209 From Chapter VI. Of the Family and Business of the House 210 From Chapter XI. Of Travel 210

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From Chapter XVIII. Of the Sea 210 From XXI. Of Religion, the Soul, etc. 211

Poem [“Two sorts of men shall naked stand”] 214 From Chapter XXX. Of Their Paintings 214

From Christenings Make Not Christians 215

Anne Bradstreet (c. 1612–1672) 217 The Prologue 219 In Honor of that High and Mighty Princess Queen Elizabeth of

Happy Memory 220 To the Memory of My Dear and Ever Honored Father Thomas

Dudley Esq. 224 To Her Father with Some Verses 226 Contemplations 226 The Flesh and the Spirit 233 The Author to Her Book 236 Before the Birth of One of Her Children 236 To My Dear and Loving Husband 237 A Letter to Her Husband, Absent upon Public Employment 238 Another [Letter to Her Husband, Absent upon Public Employment] 238 In Reference to Her Children, 23 June 1659 239 In Memory of My Dear Grand child Elizabeth Bradstreet 241 In Memory of My Dear Grand child Anne Bradstreet 242 On My Dear Grand child Simon Bradstreet 242 For Deliverance from a Fever 243 Here Follows Some Verses upon the Burning of Our House 243 As Weary Pilgrim 245 To My Dear Children 246

Michael Wigglesworth (1631–1705) 249 From The Day of Doom 250

Mary Rowlandson (c. 1637–1711) 267 A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of

Mrs. Mary Rowlandson 269

Edward Taylor (c. 1642–1729) 301 Preparatory Meditations 302

Prologue 302 Meditation 8 (First Series) 303

God’s Determinations 304 The Preface 304

Upon Wedlock, and Death of Children 306 Upon a Wasp Chilled with Cold 307 Huswifery 308

Samuel Sewall (1652–1730) 309 From The Diary of Samuel Sewall 310 The Selling of Joseph: A Memorial 317

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Cotton Mather (1663–1728) 321 The Won ders of the Invisible World 322

[A People of God in the Dev il’s Territories] 322 [The Trial of Martha Carrier] 325

Magnalia Christi Americana 328 Galeacius Secundus: The Life of William Bradford, Esq., Governor of

Plymouth Colony 328 Nehemias Americanus: The Life of John Winthrop, Esq., Governor of

the Mas sa chu setts Colony 334 A Notable Exploit: Dux Fœmina Facti 349

Bonifacius 351 From Essays to Do Good 351

Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) 356 Personal Narrative 358 On Sarah Pierpont 368 Sarah Edwards’s Narrative 369 A Divine and Supernatural Light 377 Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God 390

american lit er a ture and the va ri e ties of religious expression 403

the jesuit relations 405 JÉRÔME LALEMANT: From How Father Isaac Jogues Was Taken by the

Iroquois, and What He Suffered on His First Entrance into Their Country 406

P. F. X. DE CHARLEVOIX: From Catherine Tegahkouita: An Iroquois Virgin 410

SOR JUANA INÉS DE LA CRUZ: 415 Love Opened a Mortal Wound 415 Suspend, Singer Swan 416

FRANCIS DANIEL PASTORIUS: [In These Seven Languages] 416 ELIZABETH ASHBRIDGE: From Some Account of the Early Part of the

Life of Elizabeth Ashbridge 417 JOHN WOOLMAN: From The Journal of John Woolman 423 JOHN MARRANT: From A Narrative of the Lord’s Wonderful Dealings

with John Marrant, a Black 428 REBECCA SAMUEL: Letters to Her Parents 433 SAGOYEWATHA: Reply to the Missionary Jacob Cram 436

Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) 439 The Way to Wealth 442 The Speech of Miss Polly Baker 449 Rules by Which a Great Empire May Be Reduced to a Small One 451

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Information to Those Who Would Remove to Amer i ca 456 Remarks Concerning the Savages of North Amer i ca 462 The Autobiography 466

Samson Occom (1723–1792) 585 From An Account of the Mohawk Indians, on Long Island 588 A Short Narrative of My Life 589 From A Sermon at the Execution of Moses Paul, an Indian 595 Hymns 606

The Sufferings of Christ, or Throughout the Saviour’s Life We Trace 606

A Morning Hymn, or Now the Shades of Night Are Gone 607 A Son’s Farewell, or I Hear the Gospel’s Joyful Sound 608

ethnographic and naturalist writings 609

sarah kemble knight: From The Private Journal of a Journey from Boston to New York in the Year 1704 610

william byrd: From The Secret Diary of William Byrd of Westover 1710–1712 616 From The History of the Dividing Line 618

alexander hamilton: From Hamilton’s Itinerarium 622 william bartram: Anecdotes of an American Crow 625 hendrick aupaumut: From History of the Muh- he- con- nuk Indians 629

J. Hector St. John de CrÈvecoeur (1735–1813) 634 Letters from an American Farmer 636

From Letter III. What Is an American? 636 From Letter IX. Description of Charles- Town; Thoughts on Slavery;

on Physical Evil; A Melancholy Scene 645 From Letter X. On Snakes; and on the Humming Bird 650 From Letter XII. Distresses of a Frontier Man 651

Annis Boudinot Stockton (1736–1801) 657 A Hymn Written in the Year 1753 659 An Elegiak Ode on the 28th Day of February [1782]. The Anniversary

of Mr. [Stockton’s] Death 660 On a Little Boy Going to Play on a Place from Whence He Had

Just Fallen 662 Addressed to General Washington, in the Year 1777, after the Battles

of Trenton and Prince ton 662 [L]ines on Hearing of the Death of Doctor Franklin 664

John Adams (1735–1826) and Abigail Adams (1744–1818) 664 The Letters 666

Abigail Adams to John Adams (Aug. 19, 1774) [Classical Parallels] 666

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John Adams to Abigail Adams (Sept. 16, 1774) [Prayers at the Congress] 667

John Adams to Abigail Adams (July 23, 1775) [Dr. Franklin] 668

John Adams to Abigail Adams (Oct. 29, 1775) [Prejudice in Favor of New Eng land] 669

Abigail Adams to John Adams (Nov. 27, 1775) [The Building Up a Great Empire] 670

Abigal Adams to John Adams (March 31, 1776) [Remember the Ladies] 672

John Adams to Abigail Adams (July 3, 1776) [ These colonies are free and in de pen dent states] 674

John Adams to Abigail Adams (July 3, 1776) [Redections on the Declaration of In de pen dence] 675

Abigail Adams to John Adams (July 14, 1776) [The Declaration. Smallpox. The Grey Horse] 677

John Adams to Abigail Adams (July 20, 1776) [Do My Friends Think I Have Forgotten My Wife and

Children?] 678 Abigail Adams to John Adams (July 21, 1776)

[Smallpox. The Proclamation for In de pen dence Read Aloud] 679

Thomas Paine (1737–1809) 681 Common Sense 682

Introduction 682 From III. Thoughts on the Pres ent State of American Affairs 683

The Crisis, No. 1 689 The Age of Reason 695

Chapter I. The Author’s Profession of Faith 695 Chapter II. Of Missions and Revelations 697 Chapter XI. Of the Theology of the Christians,

and the True Theology 698

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 702 The Autobiography of Thomas Jefferson 704

From The Declaration of In de pen dence 704 Notes on the State of Virginia 711

From Query V. Cascades [Natu ral Bridge] 711 From Query XIV. Laws [Slavery] 712 Query XVII. [Religion] 717 Query XIX. [Manufactures] 720

The Federalist 721 No. 1 [Alexander Hamilton] 723 No. 10 [James Madison] 726

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Olaudah Equiano (1745?–1797) 731 The In ter est ing Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano,

or Gustavas Vassa, the African, Written by Himself 733 From Chapter 1 733 Chapter II 735 From Chapter III 745 From Chapter IV 747 From Chapter V 751 From Chapter VI 755 From Chapter VII 763 From Chapter IX 767

Judith Sargent Murray (1751–1820) 770 On the Equality of the Sexes 772

Philip Freneau (1752–1832) 780 The Wild Honey Suckle 781 The Indian Burying Ground 782 To Sir Toby 783 On Mr. Paine’s Rights of Man 785 On the Religion of Nature 786

Phillis Wheatley (c. 1753–1784) 787 On Being Brought from Africa to Amer i ca 789 To the Right Honourable William, Earl of Dartmouth 789 To the University of Cambridge, in New Eng land 790 On the Death of the Rev. Mr. George White"eld, 1770 791 Thoughts on the Works of Providence 792 To S. M., a Young African Painter, on Seeing His Works 795 To His Excellency General Washington 796 Letters 798

To John Thornton (Apr. 21, 1772) 798 To Rev. Samson Occom (Feb. 11, 1774) 798

Royall Tyler (1757–1826) 799 The Contrast 801

Hannah Webster Foster (1758–1840) 841 The Coquette; or, The History of Eliza Wharton 843

Charles Brockden Brown (1771–1810) 941 Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist 943

native american eloquence: negotiation and re sis tance 985

canassatego: Speech at Lancaster 986 pontiac: Speech at Detroit 989 logan: From Chief Logan’s Speech 991

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cherokee women: To Governor Benjamin Franklin 993 tecumseh: Speech to the Osages 994

Washington Irving (1783–1859) 996 A History of New- York from the Beginning of the World

to the End of the Dutch Dynasty, by Dietrich Knickerbocker 998 Book II, Chapter I [Hudson Discovers New York] 998

Rip Van Winkle 1003

selected Bibliographies A1 permissions Acknowledgments A11 index A13

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Preface to the Ninth Edition

The Ninth Edition of The Norton Anthology of American Lit er a ture is the "rst for me as General Editor; for the Eighth Edition, I served as Associate General Editor under longstanding General Editor Nina Baym. On the occasion of a new general editorship, we have undertaken one of the most extensive revisions in our long publishing history. Three new section editors have joined the team: Sandra M. Gustafson, Professor of En glish and Con- current Professor of American Studies at the University of Notre Dame, who succeeds Wayne Franklin and Philip Gura as editor of “American Lit er a ture, Beginnings to 1820”; Michael A. Elliott, Professor of En glish at Emory University, who succeeds Nina Baym, Robert S. Levine, and Jeanne Campbell Reesman as editor of “American Lit er a ture, 1865–1914”; and Amy Hungerford, Professor of En glish and American Studies at Yale Uni- versity, who succeeds Jerome Klinkowitz and Patricia B. Wallace as editor of “American Lit er a ture since 1945.” These editors join Robert S. Levine, editor of “American Lit er a ture, 1820–1865,” and Mary Loeffelholz, editor of “American Lit er a ture, 1914–1945.” Each editor, new or continuing, is a well- known expert in the relevant "eld or period and has ultimate responsi- bility for his or her section of the anthology, but we have worked closely from "rst to last to rethink all aspects of this new edition. Volume introduc- tions, author headnotes, thematic clusters, annotations, illustrations, and biblio graphies have all been updated and revised. We have also added a number of new authors, se lections, and thematic clusters. We are excited about the outcome of our collaboration and anticipate that, like the previous eight editions, this edition of The Norton Anthology of American Lit er a ture will continue to lead the "eld.

From the anthology’s inception in 1979, the editors have had three main aims: "rst, to pres ent a rich and substantial enough variety of works to enable teachers to build courses according to their own vision of American literary history (thus, teachers are offered more authors and more se lections than they will prob ably use in any one course); second, to make the anthol- ogy self- suf"cient by featuring many works in their entirety along with extensive se lections for individual authors; third, to balance traditional interests with developing critical concerns in a way that allows for the com- plex, rigorous, and capacious study of American literary traditions. As early as 1979, we anthologized work by Anne Bradstreet, Mary Rowlandson, Sarah Kemble Knight, Phillis Wheatley, Margaret Fuller, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Frederick Douglass, Sarah Orne Jewett, Kate Chopin, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Booker T. Washington, Charles W. Chesnutt, Edith Wharton,

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W. E. B. Du Bois, and other writers who were not yet part of a standard canon. Yet we never shortchanged writers— such as Franklin, Emerson, Whitman, Hawthorne, Melville, Dickinson, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Faulkner— whose work many students expected to read in their American lit er a ture courses, and whom most teachers then and now would not think of doing without.

The so- called canon wars of the 1980s and  1990s usefully initiated a review of our understanding of American lit er a ture, a review that has enlarged the number and diversity of authors now recognized as contributors to the totality of American lit er a ture. The traditional writers look dif fer ent in this expanded context, and they also appear dif fer ent according to which of their works are selected. Teachers and students remain committed to the idea of the literary— that writers strive to produce artifacts that are both intellectually serious and formally skillful— but believe more than ever that writers should be understood in relation to their cultural and historical situations. We address the complex interrelationships between lit er a ture and history in the volume introductions, author headnotes, chronologies, and some of the footnotes. As in previous editions, we have worked with detailed suggestions from many teachers on how best to pres ent the authors and se lections. We have gained insights as well from the students who use the anthology. Thanks to questionnaires, face- to- face and phone discus- sions, letters, and email, we have been able to listen to those for whom this book is intended. For the Ninth Edition, we have drawn on the careful commentary of over 240 reviewers and reworked aspects of the anthology accordingly.

Our new materials continue the work of broadening the canon by repre- senting thirteen new writers in depth, without sacri"cing widely assigned writers, many of whose se lections have been reconsidered, reselected, and expanded. Our aim is always to provide extensive enough se lections to do the writers justice, including complete works wherever pos si ble. Our Ninth Edition offers complete longer works, including Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter and Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, and such new and recently added works as Margaret Fuller’s The Great Lawsuit, Abraham Cahan’s Yekl: A Tale of the New York Ghetto, Nella Larsen’s Passing, Katherine Anne Porter’s Pale Horse, Pale Rider, Nathanael West’s The Day of the Locust, and August Wilson’s Fences. Two complete works— Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night and Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire— are exclu- sive to The Norton Anthology of American Lit er a ture. Charles Brockden Brown, Louisa May Alcott, Upton Sinclair, and Junot Díaz are among the writers added to the prior edition, and to this edition we have introduced John Rollin Ridge, Constance Fenimore Woolson, George Saunders, and Natasha Tretheway, among others. We have also expanded and in some cases recon"gured such central "gures as Franklin, Hawthorne, Dickin- son, Twain, and Hemingway, offering new approaches in the headnotes, along with some new se lections. In fact, the headnotes and, in many cases, se lections for such frequently assigned authors as William Bradford, Wash- ington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper, William Cullen Bryant, Lydia Maria Child, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mark Twain, William Dean Howells, Henry James, Kate

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Chopin, W. E. B. Du Bois, Edith Wharton, Willa Cather, and William Faulkner have been revised, updated, and in some cases entirely rewritten in light of recent scholarship. The Ninth Edition further expands its se lections of women writers and writers from diverse ethnic, racial, and regional backgrounds— always with attention to the critical acclaim that recognizes their contributions to the American literary rec ord. New and recently added writers such as Samson Occom, Jane Johnston Schoolcraft, John Rollin Ridge, and Sarah Winnemucca, along with the "gures repre- sented in “Voices from Native Amer i ca,” enable teachers to bring early Native American writing and oratory into their syllabi, or should they pre- fer, to focus on these se lections as a freestanding unit leading toward the moment after 1945 when Native writers fully entered the mainstream of literary activity.

We are pleased to continue our popu lar innovation of topical gatherings of short texts that illuminate the cultural, historical, intellectual, and literary concerns of their respective periods. Designed to be taught in a class period or two, or used as background, each of the sixteen clusters consists of brief, carefully excerpted primary and (in one case) secondary texts, about six to ten per cluster, and an introduction. Diverse voices— many new to the anthology— highlight a range of views current when writers of a par tic u lar time period were active, and thus allow students better to understand some of the large issues that were being debated at par tic u lar historical moments. For example, in “Slavery, Race, and the Making of American Lit er a ture,” texts by David Walker, William Lloyd Garrison, Angelina Grimké, Sojourner Truth, James M. Whit"eld, and Martin R. Delany speak to the great paradox of pre– Civil War Amer i ca: the contradictory rupture between the realities of slavery and the nation’s ideals of freedom.

The Ninth Edition strengthens this feature with eight new and revised clusters attuned to the requests of teachers. To help students address the controversy over race and aesthetics in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, we have revised a cluster in Volume C that shows what some of the leading critics of the past few de cades thought was at stake in reading and interpret- ing slavery and race in Twain’s canonical novel. New to Volume A is “American Lit er a ture and the Va ri e ties of Religious Expression,” which includes se lections by Elizabeth Ashbridge, John Woolman, and John Marrant, while Volume B offers “Science and Technology in the Pre– Civil War Nation.” Volume C newly features “Becoming American in the Gilded Age,” and we continue to include the useful “Modernist Manifestos” in Volume D. We have added to the popu lar “Creative Non"ction” in Volume E new se lections by David Foster Wallace and Hunter S. Thompson, who join such writers as Jamaica Kincaid and Joan Didion.

The Ninth Edition features an expanded illustration program, both of the black-and-white images, 145 of which are placed throughout the volumes, and of the color plates so popu lar in the last two editions. In selecting color plates— from Elizabeth Graham’s embroidered map of Washington, D.C., at the start of the nineteenth century to Jeff Wall’s “After ‘Invisible Man’ ” at the beginning of the twenty- "rst— the editors aim to provide images relevant to literary works in the anthology while depicting arts and artifacts representa- tive of each era. In addition, graphic works— segments from the colonial

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children’s classic The New- Eng land Primer and from Art Spiegelman’s canonical graphic novel, Maus, and a facsimile page of Emily Dickinson manuscript, along with the many new illustrations— open possibilities for teaching visual texts.

Period- by- Period Revisions

Volume A, Beginnings to 1820. Sandra M. Gustafson, the new editor of Volume A, has substantially revised the volume. Prior editions of Volume A were broken into two historical sections, with two introductions and a dividing line at the year 1700; Gustafson has dropped that arti"cial divide to tell a more coherent and duid story (in her new introduction) about the variety of American lit er a tures during this long period. The volume continues to feature narratives by early Eu ro pean explorers of the North American continent as they encountered and attempted to make sense of the diverse cultures they met, and as they sought to justify their aim of claiming the territory for Eu ro pe ans. These are precisely the issues foregrounded by the revised cluster “First Encounters: Early Eu ro pean Accounts of Native Amer i ca,” which gathers writings by Hernán Cortés, Samuel de Champlain, Robert Juet, and others, including the newly added Thomas Harriot. In addition to the standing material from The Bay Psalm Book, we include new material by Roger Williams; additional poems by Annis Boudinot Stockton; Abigail Adams’s famous letter urging her husband to “Remember the Ladies”; an additional se lection from Olaudah Equiano on his post- emancipation travels; and Charles Brockden Brown’s “Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist” (the complete “prequel” to his "rst novel, Wieland). We continue to offer the complete texts of Rowlandson’s enormously induential A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography (which remains one of the most compelling works on the emergence of an “American” self), Royall Tyler’s popu lar play The Contrast, and Hannah Foster’s novel The Coquette, which uses a real- life tragedy to meditate on the proper role of well- bred women in the new republic and testi"es to the existence of a female audience for the popu lar novels of the period. New to this volume is Washington Irving, a writer who looks back to colonial history and forward to Jacksonian Amer i ca. The inclusion of Irving in both Volumes A and B, with one key overlapping se lection, points to con- tinuities and changes between the two volumes.

Five new and revised thematic clusters of texts highlight themes central to Volume A. In addition to “First Encounters,” we have included “Native American Oral Lit er a ture,” “American Lit er a ture and the Va ri e ties of Reli- gious Expression,” “Ethnographic and Naturalist Writings,” and “Native American Eloquence: Negotiation and Re sis tance.” “Native American Oral Lit er a ture” features creation stories, trickster tales, oratory, and poetry from a spectrum of traditions, while “Native American Eloquence” collects speeches and accounts by Canassatego and Native American women (both new to the volume), Pontiac, Chief Logan (as cited by Thomas Jefferson), and Tecumseh, which, as a group, illustrate the centuries- long pattern of initial peaceful contact between Native Americans and whites mutating into bitter and violent condict. This cluster, which focuses on Native Americans’ points of view, complements “First Encounters,” which focuses on Eu ro pean

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colonizers’ points of view. The Native American presence in the volume is further expanded with increased repre sen ta tion of Samson Occom, which includes an excerpt from his sermon at the execution of Moses Paul, and the inclusion of Sagoyewatha in “American Lit er a ture and the Va ri e ties of Religious Expression.” Strategically located between the Congregational- ist Protestant (or late- Puritan) Jonathan Edwards and the Enlightenment "gure Franklin, this cluster brings together works from the perspectives of the major religious groups of the early Amer i cas, including Quakerism (poems by Francis Daniel Pastorius, se lections from autographical narra- tives of Elizabeth Ashbridge and John Woolman), Roman Catholicism (poems by Sor Juana, two Jesuit Relations, with biographical accounts of Father Isaac Jogues and Kateri Tekakwitha), dissenting Protestantism (Mar- rant), Judaism (Rebecca Samuel), and indigenous beliefs (Sagoyewatha). The new cluster “Ethnographic and Naturalist Writings” includes writings by Sarah Kemble Knight and William Byrd, along with new se lections by Alexander Hamilton, William Bartram, and Hendrick Aupaumut. With this cluster, the new cluster on science and technology in Volume B, and a num- ber of new se lections and revisions in Volumes C, D, and E, the Ninth Edi- tion pays greater attention to the impact of science on American literary traditions.

Volume B, American Lit er a ture, 1820–1865. Under the editorship of Robert S. Levine, this volume over the past several editions has become more diverse. Included here are the complete texts of Emerson’s Nature, Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter, Thoreau’s Walden, Douglass’s Narrative, Whit- man’s Song of Myself, Melville’s Benito Cereno and Billy Budd, Rebecca Harding Davis’s Life in the Iron Mills, and Margaret Fuller’s The Great Law- suit. At the same time, aware of the impor tant role of African American writers in the period, and the omnipresence of race and slavery as literary and po liti cal themes, we have recently added two major African American writers, William Wells Brown and Frances E. W. Harper, along with Doug- lass’s novella The Heroic Slave. Thoreau’s “Plea for Captain John Brown,” a generous se lection from Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and the cluster “Slavery, Race, and the Making of American Lit er a ture” also help remind students of how central slavery was to the literary and po liti cal life of the nation during this period. “Native Americans: Re sis tance and Removal” gathers oratory and writings—by Native Americans such as Black Hawk and whites such as Ralph Waldo Emerson— protesting Andrew Jackson’s ruthless national policy of Indian removal. Newly added is a se lection from The Life and Adventures of Joaquín Murieta, by the Native American writer John Rol- lin Ridge. This potboiler of a novel, set in the new state of California, emerged from the debates that began during the Indian removal period. Through the "gure of the legendary Mexican bandit Murieta, who "ghts back against white expansionists, Ridge responds to the vio lence encour- aged by Jackson and subsequent white leaders as they laid claim to the continent. Po liti cal themes, far from diluting the literary imagination of American authors, served to inspire some of the most memorable writing of the pre-Civil War period.

Women writers recently added to Volume B include Lydia Huntley Sigourney, the Native American writer Jane Johnston Schoolcraft, and

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Louisa May Alcott. Recently added prose "ction includes chapters from Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans, Sedgwick’s Hope Leslie, and Melville’s Moby- Dick, along with Poe’s “The Black Cat” and Hawthorne’s “Wake"eld.” For the "rst time in the print edition, we include Melville’s “Hawthorne and His Mosses” as it appeared in the 1850 Literary World. Poetry by Emily Dickinson is now presented in the texts established by R. W. Franklin and includes a facsimile page from Fascicle 10. For this edition we have added several poems by Dickinson that were inspired by the Civil War. Other se lections added to this edition include Fanny Fern’s amusing sketch “Writ- ing ‘Compositions,’ ” the chapter in Frederick Douglass’s My Bondage and My Freedom on his re sis tance to the slave- breaker Covey, three poems by Melville (“Dupont’s Round Fight,” “A Utilitarian View of the Monitor’s Fight,” and “Art”), and Whitman’s “The Sleepers.”

Perhaps the most signi"cant addition to Volume B is the cluster “Science and Technology in the Pre– Civil War Nation,” with se lections by the canoni- cal writers Charles Dickens, Edgar Allan Poe, and Frederick Douglass, by the scientists Jacob Bigelow and Alexander Humboldt, and by the editor- writer Harriet Farley. The cluster calls attention to the strong interest in science and technology throughout this period and should provide a rich context for reconsidering works such as Thoreau’s Walden and Melville’s “The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids.” In an effort to under- score the importance of science and technology to Poe and Hawthorne in par tic u lar, we have added two stories that directly address these topics: Poe’s “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar” and Hawthorne’s “The Artist of the Beautiful” (which reads nicely in relation to his “The Birth- Mark” and “Rappaccini’s Daughter”). Emerson, Whitman, and Dickinson are among the many other authors in Volume B who had considerable interest in science.

Volume C, American Lit er a ture, 1865–1914. Newly edited by Michael A. Elliott, the volume includes expanded se lections of key works, as well as new ones that illustrate how many of the strug gles of this period pre"gure our own. In addition to complete longer works such as Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chopin’s The Awakening, James’s Daisy Miller, and Stephen Crane’s Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, the Ninth Edition now includes the complete text of Yekl: A Tale of the New York Ghetto, a highly induential novella of immigrant life that depicts the pressures facing newly arrived Jews in the nation’s largest metropolis. Also new is a substantial se lection from Sarah Orne Jewett’s The Country of the Pointed Firs, a mas- terpiece of literary regionalism that portrays a remote seaside community facing change.

Americans are still redecting on the legacy of the Civil War, and we have added two works approaching that subject from dif fer ent angles. Constance Fenimore Woolson’s “Rodman the Keeper” tells the story of a Union vet- eran who maintains a cemetery in the South. In “The Private History of a Campaign That Failed,” Mark Twain redects with wit and insight on his own brief experience in the war. In the Eighth Edition, we introduced a section on the critical controversy surrounding race and the conclusion of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. That section remains as impor tant as ever, and new additions incorporate a recent debate about the value of an expur- gated edition of the novel.

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We have substantially revised clusters designed to give students a sense of the cultural context of the period. New selections in “Realism and Natu- ralism” demonstrate what was at stake in the debate over realism, among them a feminist response from Charlotte Perkins Gilman. “Becoming Ameri- can in the Gilded Age,” a new cluster, introduces students to writing about wealth and citizenship at a time when the nation was undergoing transfor- mation. Se lections from one of Horatio Alger’s popu lar novels of economic uplift, Andrew Car ne gie’s “Gospel of Wealth,” and Charles W. Chesnutt’s “The Future American” together reveal how questions about the composi- tion of the nation both induenced the lit er a ture of this period and pre"gured con temporary debates on immigration, cultural diversity, and the concentra- tion of wealth.

The turn of the twentieth century was a time of im mense literary diver- sity. “Voices from Native Amer i ca” brings together a variety of expressive forms— oratory, memoir, ethnography— through which Native Americans sought to represent themselves. It includes new se lections by Francis LaFlesche, Zitkala %a, and Chief Joseph. For the "rst time, we include the complete text of José Martí’s “Our Amer i ca,” in a new translation by Martí biographer Alfred  J. López. By instructor request, we have added "ction and non"ction by African American authors: Charles W. Chesnutt’s “Po’ Sandy,” Pauline Hopkins’s “Talma Gordon,” and expanded se lections from W. E. B. Du Bois’s Souls of Black Folk and James Weldon Johnson’s Autobiography of an Ex- Colored Man.

Volume D, American Lit er a ture 1914–1945. Edited by Mary Loeffelholz, Volume D offers a number of complete longer works— Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night (exclusive to the Norton Anthology), William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, and Willa Cather’s My Ántonia. To these we have added Nella Larsen’s Passing, which replaces Quicksand, and Nathanael West’s The Day of the Locust. We added Passing in response to numerous requests from instructors and students who regard it as one of the most compelling treatments of racial passing in American lit er a ture. The novel also offers rich descriptions of the social and racial geographies of Chicago and New York City. West’s darkly comic The Day of the Locust similarly offers rich descriptions of the social and racial geography of Los Angeles. West’s novel can at times seem bleak and not “po liti cally correct,” but in many ways it is the "rst great American novel about the "lm industry, and it also has much to say about the growth of California in the early de cades of the twentieth century. New se lections by Zora Neale Hurston (“Sweat”) and John Steinbeck (“The Chrysanthemums”) further contribute to the vol- ume’s exploration of issues connected with racial and social geographies.

Se lections by Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, Marianne Moore, Hart Crane, and Langston Hughes encourage students and teachers to contemplate the inter- relation of modernist aesthetics with ethnic, regional, and popu lar writing. In “Modernist Manifestos,” F. T. Marinetti, Mina Loy, Ezra Pound, Willa Cather, William Carlos Williams, and Langston Hughes show how the man- ifesto as a form exerted a power ful induence on international modernism in all the arts. Another illuminating cluster addresses central events of the modern period. In “World War I and Its Aftermath,” writings by Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, Jessie Redmon Fauset, and others explore sharply

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divided views on the U.S. role in World War I, as well as the radicalizing effect of modern warfare— with 365,000 American casualties—on con- temporary writing. We have added to this edition a chapter from Heming- way’s "rst novel, The Sun Also Rises, which speaks to the impact of the war on sexuality and gender. Other recent and new additions to Volume D include Faulkner’s popu lar “A Rose for Emily,” Katherine Anne Porter’s novella Pale Horse, Pale Rider, Gertrude Stein’s “Objects,” Marianne Moore’s ambitious longer poem “Marriage,” poems by Edgar Lee Masters and Edwin Arlington Robinson, and Jean Toomer’s “Blood Burning Moon.”

Volume E, American Lit er a ture, 1945 to the Pres ent. Amy Hungerford, the new editor of Volume E, has revised the volume to pres ent a wider range of writing in poetry, prose, drama, and non"ction. As before, the vol- ume offers the complete texts of Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire (exclusive to this anthology), Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, Allen Ginsberg’s Howl, Sam Shepard’s True West, August Wilson’s Fences, David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross, and Louise Glück’s long poem October. A se lection from Art Spiegelman’s prize- winning Maus opens possibilities for teaching the graphic novel. We also include teachable stand- alone seg- ments from induential novels by Saul Bellow (The Adventures of Augie March) and Kurt Vonnegut (Slaughterhouse- Five), and, new to this edition, Jack Kerouac (On the Road) and Don DeLillo (White Noise). The se lection from one of DeLillo’s most celebrated novels tells what feels like a con- temporary story about a nontraditional family navigating an environmental disaster in a climate saturated by mass media. Three newly added stories— Patricia Highsmith’s “The Quest for Blank Claveringi,” Philip  K. Dick’s “Precious Artifact,” and George Saunders’s “CivilWarLand in Bad Decline”— reveal the impact of science "ction, fantasy, horror, and (especially in the case of Saunders) mass media on literary "ction. Also appearing for the "rst time are Edward P. Jones and Lydia Davis, con temporary masters of the short story, who join such short "ction writers as Ann Beattie and Junot Díaz. Recognized literary "gures in all genres, ranging from Robert Penn Warren and Elizabeth Bishop to Leslie Marmon Silko and Toni Morrison, continue to be richly represented. In response to instructors’ requests, we now include Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” and James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues.”

One of the most distinctive features of twentieth- and twenty- "rst- century American lit er a ture is a rich vein of African American poetry. This edition adds two con temporary poets from this living tradition: Natasha Trethewey and Tracy K. Smith. Trethewey’s se lections include personal and historical elegies; Smith draws on cultural materials as diverse as David Bowie’s music and the history of the Hubble Space Telescope. These writers join African American poets whose work has long helped de"ne the anthology— Rita Dove, Gwendolyn Brooks, Robert Hayden, Audre Lorde, and others.

This edition gives even greater exposure to literary and social experimen- tation during the 1960s, 1970s, and beyond. The work of two avant- garde playwrights joins “Postmodern Manifestos” (which pairs nicely with “Mod- ernist Manifestos” in Volume D). Introduced to the anthology through their short, challenging pieces, Charles Ludlam and Richard Foreman cast the mechanics of per for mance in a new light. Reading their thought pieces in

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relation to the volume’s complete plays helps raise new questions about how the seemingly more traditional dramatic works engage structures of time, plot, feeling, and spectatorship. To our popu lar cluster “Creative Non"ction” we have added a new se lection by Joan Didion, from “Slouching Towards Bethlehem,” which showcases her revolutionary style of journalism as she comments on experiments with public per for mance and communal living during the 1960s. A new se lection from David Foster Wallace in the same cluster pushes reportage on the Maine Lobster Festival into philosophical inquiry: how can we fairly assess the pain of other creatures? This edition also introduces poet Frank Bidart through his most famous work— Ellen West—in which the poet uses experimental forms of verse he pioneered during the 1970s to speak in the voice of a woman battling anorexia. Stand- ing authors in the anthology, notably John Ashbery and Amiri Baraka, "ll out the volume’s survey of radical change in the forms, and social uses, of literary art.

We are delighted to offer this revised Ninth Edition to teachers and stu- dents, and we welcome your comments.

Additional Resources from the Publisher

The Ninth Edition retains the paperback splits format, popu lar for its dex- ibility and portability. This format accommodates the many instructors who use the anthology in a two- semester survey, but allows for mixing and matching the "ve volumes in a variety of courses or ga nized by period or topic, at levels from introductory to advanced. We are also pleased to offer the Ninth Edition in an ebook format. The Digital Anthologies include all the content of the print volumes, with print- corresponding page and line numbers for seamless integration into the print- digital mixed classroom. Annotations are accessible with a click or a tap, encouraging students to use them with minimal interruption to their reading of the text. The e- reading platform facilitates active reading with a power ful annotation tool and allows students to do a full- text search of the anthology and read online or off. The Digital Editions can be accessed from any computer or device with an Internet browser and are available to students at a frac- tion of the print price at digital . wwnorton . com / americanlit9pre1865 and digital . wwnorton . com / americanlit9post1865. For exam copy access to the Digital Editions and for information on making the Digital Editions avail- able through the campus bookstore or packaging the Digital Editions with the print anthology, instructors should contact their Norton representative.

To give instructors even more dexibility, Norton is making available the full list of 254 Norton Critical Editions. A Norton Critical Edition can be included for free with either package (Volumes A and B; Volumes C, D, E) or any indi- vidual split volume. Each Norton Critical Edition gives students an author- itative, carefully annotated text accompanied by rich contextual and critical materials prepared by an expert in the subject. The publisher also offers the much- praised guide Writing about American Lit er a ture, by Karen Gocsik (University of California– San Diego) and Coleman Hutchison (University of Texas– Austin), free with either package or any individual split volume.

In addition to the Digital Editions, for students using The Norton Anthology of American Lit er a ture, the publisher provides a wealth of free

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resources at digital . wwnorton . com / americanlit9pre1865 and digital . wwnorton . com / americanlit9post1865. There students will "nd more than seventy reading- comprehension quizzes on the period introductions and widely taught works with extensive feedback that points them back to the text. Ideal for self- study or homework assignments, Norton’s sophisticated quizzing engine allows instructors to track student results and improvement. For over thirty works in the anthology, the sites also offer Close Reading Work- shops that walk students step- by- step through analy sis of a literary work. Each workshop prompts students to read, reread, consider contexts, and answer questions along the way, making these perfect assignments to build close- reading skills.

The publisher also provides extensive instructor- support materials. New to the Ninth Edition is an online Interactive Instructor’s Guide at iig.ww norton .com/americanlit9/full. Invaluable for course preparation, this resource provides hundreds of teaching notes, discussion questions, and sug- gested resources from the much-praised Teaching with The Norton Anthol- ogy of American Literature: A Guide for Instructors by Edward Whitley (Lehigh University). Also at this searchable and sortable site are quizzes, images, and lecture PowerPoints for each introduction, topic cluster, and twenty-"ve widely taught works. A PDF of Teaching with NAAL is available for download at wwnorton.com/instructors.

Fi nally, Norton Coursepacks bring high- quality digital media into a new or existing online course. The coursepack includes all the reading compre- hension quizzes (customizable within the coursepack), the Writing about Lit er a ture video series, a bank of essay and exam questions, bulleted sum- maries of the period introductions, and “Making Connections” discussion or essay prompts to encourage students to draw connections across the anthology’s authors and works. Coursepacks are available in a variety of formats, including Blackboard, Canvas, Desire2Learn, and Moodle, at no cost to instructors or students.

Editorial Procedures

As in past editions, editorial features— period introductions, headnotes, annotations, and biblio graphies— are designed to be concise yet full and to give students necessary information without imposing a single interpreta- tion. The editors have updated all apparatus in response to new scholar- ship: period introductions have been entirely or substantially rewritten, as have many headnotes. All selected biblio graphies and each period’s general- resources biblio graphies, categorized by Reference Works, Histories, and Literary Criticism, have been thoroughly updated. The Ninth Edition retains three editorial features that help students place their reading in historical and cultural context— a Texts/Contexts timeline following each period introduction, a map on the front endpaper of each volume, and a chrono- logical chart, on the back endpaper, showing the lifespans of many of the writers anthologized.

Whenever pos si ble, our policy has been to reprint texts as they appeared in their historical moment. There is one exception: we have modernized most spellings and (very sparingly) the punctuation in Volume A on the princi ple that archaic spellings and typography pose unnecessary prob lems

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for beginning students. We have used square brackets to indicate titles sup- plied by the editors for the con ve nience of students. Whenever a portion of a text has been omitted, we have indicated that omission with three asterisks. If the omitted portion is impor tant for following the plot or argument, we give a brief summary within the text or in a footnote. After each work, we cite the date of "rst publication on the right; in some instances, the latter is followed by the date of a revised edition for which the author was respon- sible. When the date of composition is known and differs from the date of publication, we cite it on the left.

The editors have bene"ted from commentary offered by hundreds of teachers throughout the country. Those teachers who prepared detailed critiques, or who offered special help in preparing texts, are listed under Acknowl edgments, on a separate page. We also thank the many people at Norton who contributed to the Ninth Edition: Julia Reidhead, who super- vised the Ninth Edition; Marian Johnson, managing editor, college; Carly Fraser Doria, media editor; manuscript editors Kurt Wildermuth, Michael Fleming, Harry Haskell, and Candace Levy; Rachel Taylor and Ava Bramson, assistant editors; Sean Mintus, production man ag er; Cat Abelman, photo editor; Julie Tesser, photo researcher; Debra Morton Hoyt, art director; Tiani Kennedy, cover designer; Megan Jackson Schindel, permissions man ag er; and Margaret Gorenstein, who cleared permissions. We also wish to acknowledge our debt to the late George P. Brockway, former presi- dent and chairman at Norton, who in ven ted this anthology, and to the late M. H. Abrams, Norton’s advisor on En glish texts. All have helped us create an anthology that, more than ever, testi"es to the continuing rich- ness of American literary traditions.

Robert S. Levine, General Editor

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Acknowl edgments

Among our many critics, advisors, and friends, the following were of espe- cial help toward the preparation of the Ninth Edition, either with advice or by providing critiques of par tic u lar periods of the anthology: Melissa Adams- Campbell (Northern Illinois University); Rolena Adorno (Yale Uni- versity); Heidi Ajrami (Victoria College); Simone A. James Alexander (Seton Hall University); Brian Anderson (Central Piedmont Community College); Lena Andersson (Fulton- Montgomery Community College); Marilyn Judith Atlas (Ohio University); Sylvia Baer (Gloucester County College); George H. Bailey (Northern Essex Community College); Margarita T. Barceló (MSU Denver); Peter Bellis (University of Alabama– Birmingham); Randall Blan- kenship (Valencia College); Susanne Bloom"eld (University of Nebraska– Kearney); David Bordelon (Ocean County College); Patricia Bostian (Central Piedmont Community College); Maria Brandt (Monroe Commu- nity College); Tamara Ponzo Brattoli (Joliet Ju nior College); Joanna Brooks (San Diego State University); David Brottman (Iowa State University); Arthur Brown (University of Evansville); Martin Brückner (University of Delaware); Judith Budz (Fitchburg State University); Dan Butcher (Univer- sity of Alabama– Birmingham); Maria J. Cahill (Edison State College); Ann Cameron (Indiana University– Kokomo); Brad Campbell (Cal Poly); Mark Canada (University of North Carolina– Pembroke); Gerry Canavan (Mar- quette University); Ann Capel (Gadsden State Community College, Ayers Campus); Elisabeth Ceppi (Portland State University); Tom Cerasulo (Elms College); Mark Cirino (University of Evansville); Josh Cohen (Emory Uni- versity); Matt Cohen (University of Texas– Austin); William Corley (Cal Poly Pomona and U.S. Naval Acad emy); David Cowart (University of South Carolina); Paul Crumbley (Utah State University); Ryan Cull (New Mexico State University); Sue Currell (University of Sussex); Kathleen Danker (South Dakota State University); Clark Davis (University of Denver); Eve Davis ( Virginia Union University); Matthew  R. Davis (University of Wisconsin– Stevens Point); Laura Dawkins (Murray State University); Bruce J. Degi (Metropolitan State University of Denver); Jerry DeNuccio (Graceland University); Lisa DeVries (Victoria College); Lorraine C. DiCicco (King’s University College); Joshua  A. Dickson (SUNY Jefferson); Rick Diguette (Georgia Perimeter College); Raymond  F. Dolle (Indiana State University); James Donelan (UC Santa Barbara); Clark Draney (College of Southern Idaho); John Dudley (University of South Dakota); Sara Eaton (North Central College); Julia Eichelberger (College of Charleston); Marilyn Elkins (California State University– Los Angeles); Sharyn Emery (Indiana

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University Southeast); Hilary Emmett (University of East Anglia); Terry Engebresten (Idaho State University); Patrick Erben (University of West Georgia); Timothy J. Evans (College of William & Mary); Duncan Faherty (CUNY); Laura Fine (Meredith College); Daniel Fineman (Occidental Col- lege); Pat Gantt (Utah State University); Xiongya Gao (Southern University at New Orleans); Becky Jo Gesteland (Weber State University); Paul Gilmore (Rutgers University); Len Gougeon (University of Scranton); Carey Goyette (Clinton Community College); Sarah Graham (University of Leicester); Alan Gravano (Marshall University); James N. Green (Library Com pany of Philadelphia); Laura Morgan Green (Northeastern University); John Gruesser (Kean University); Bernabe  G. Gutierrez (Laredo Community College); Julia Hans (Fitchburg State University); Stephanie Hawkins (Uni- versity of North Texas); Catherine F. Heath (Victoria College); Roger Hechy (SUNY Oneonta); Terry Heller (Coe College); Carl Herzig (St.  Ambrose University); Eric Heyne (University of Alaska– Fairbanks); Thomas Alan Holmes (East Tennessee State University); Greg Horn (Southwest Virginia Community College); Ruth  Y. Hsu (University of Hawaii– Manoa); Kate Huber ( Temple University); Zach Hutchins (Colorado State University); Thomas Irwin (University of Missouri– St. Louis); Elizabeth Janoski (Lack- awanna College); Andrew Jenkins (College of Central Florida); Luke Johnson (Mesabi Range College); Mark Johnson (San Jacinto College); Paul Jones (Ohio University); Roger Walton Jones (Ranger College); Jennifer Jordan- Henley (Roane State Community College); Mark Kamrath (University of Central Florida); Rachel Key (El Centro College); Julie H. Kim (Northeast- ern Illinois University); Vincent King (Black Hills State University); Denis Kohn (Baldwin Wallace University); Gary Konas (University of Wisconsin– La Crosse); Michael Kowalewski (Carleton College); Michael Lackey (University of Minnesota– Morris); Jennifer Ladino (University of Idaho); Thomas W. LaFleur (Laredo Community College); Andrew Lanham (Yale University); Christopher Leise (Whitman College); Beth Leishman (Northwest MS Community College); Jennifer Levi (Cecil College); Alfred J. López (Purdue University); Paul Madachy (Prince George’s Community College); Etta Madden (Missouri State University); Marc Malandra (Biola University); David Malone (Union University); Matt Martin (Wesleyan College); Stephen Mathewson (Central New Mexico Community College); Liz Thompson Mayo (Jackson State Community College); David McCracken (Coker College); Kathleen McDonald (Norwich University); John McGreevy (Uni- versity of Notre Dame); Dana McMichael (Abilene Christian University); Sandra Measels (Holmes Community College); Eric Mein (Normandale Community College); Christine Mihelich (Marywood University); Deborah M. Mix (Ball State University); Aaron Moe (Washington State University); Joelle Moen (Brigham Young University– Idaho); Lisa Muir (Wilkes Com- munity College); Lori Muntz (Iowa Wesleyan College); Justine Murison (University of Illinois); Jillmarie Murphy (Union College); Harold Nelson (Minot State University); Howard Nelson (Cayuga Community College); Lance Newman (Westminster College); Taryn Okuma (The Catholic Univer- sity of Amer i ca); Stanley Orr (University of Hawai’i– West O’ahu); Samuel Otter (University of California–Berkeley); Susan Scott Parrish (University of Michigan); Martha H. Patterson (McKendree University); Michelle Paulsen (Victoria College); Daniel G. Payne (SUNY Oneonta); Ian Peddie (Georgia

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Gwinnett College); Aaron Matthew Percich (West Virginia University); Tom Perrin (Huntingdon College); Sandra Petrulionis (Penn State– Altoona); Christopher Phillips (Lafayette College); Kenneth M. Price (University of Nebraska); Maria Pollack (Hudson Valley Community College); Marty G. Price (Mississippi State University); Kieran Quinlan (University of Alabama– Birmingham); Wesley Raabe (Kent State University); Maria Ramos (J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College); Palmer Rampell (Yale University); Rick Randolph (Kauai Community College); Kimberly Reed (Lipscomb University); Joan Reeves (Northeast Alabama Community College); Eliza- beth Renker (The Ohio State University); Joseph Rezek (Boston University); Anne Boyd Rioux (University of New Orleans); Marc Robinson (Yale Uni- versity); Jane Rosecrans (J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College); Phillip Round (University of Iowa); Jeffrey Rubinstein (Hillborough Community College); Maureen Ryan (University of Southern Mississippi); Jamie Sadler (Richmond Community College); Gordon Sayre (University of Oregon); Jennifer Schell (University of Alaska– Fairbanks); Jim Schrantz (Tarrant County College); Joshua Schuster (University of Western Ontario); Marc Seals (University of Wisconsin– Baraboo/Sauk County); Carl Sederholm (Brigham Young University); Larry Severeid (Utah State University– Eastern); Anna Shectman (Yale University); Deborah Sims (USC and UCR); Claudia Slate (Florida Southern College); Brenda R. Smith (Kent State University– Stark); Martha Nell Smith (University of Maryland); Eric Sterling (Auburn University Montgomery); Julia Stern (Northwestern University); Billy  J. Stratton (University of Denver); Steve Surryhne (California State University– San Francisco); Timothy Sweet (West Virginia University); David Taylor (University of North Texas); Jan Thompson (University of Nebraska– Kearney); Robin Thompson (Governors State University); Marjory Thrash (Pearl River Community College); Nicole Tonkovich (UC San Diego); Steve Tracy (University of Mas sa chu setts– Amherst); Alan Trusky (Forence- Darlington Tech College); April Van Camp (Indian River State College); Joanne van der Woude (University of Groningen); Abram van Engen (Wash- ington University); Laura Veltman (California Baptist University); Eliza Waggoner (Miami University– Middletown); Catherine Waitinas (Cal Poly State University); Laura Dassow Walls (University of Notre Dame); Raquel Wanzo (Laney College); Bryan Waterman (New York University); Stephanie Wells (Orange Coast College); Jeff Westover (Boise State University); Belinda Wheeler (Paine College); Chris Wheeler (Horry- Georgetown Tech- nical College); Steven J. Whitton (Jacksonville State University); Elizabeth Wiet (Yale University); Jason Williams (Brigham Young University– Idaho); Barbara Williamson (Spokane Falls Community College); Gaye Winter (Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College); Kelly Wisecup (University of North Texas); Aiping Zhang (California State University– Chico).

THE NORTON ANTHOLOGY OF

AMERICAN LITERATURE

NINTH EDITION

VOLUME A : B EG INN INGS TO 1820

3

Beginnings to 1820

QUESTIONS OF IDENTITY

In 1631, the En glish captain John Smith published Advertisements for the Unexperienced Planters of New Eng land, or Any Where: Or, the Path- way to Experience to Erect a Plantation, the last and most polished of his works. Smith had been instrumental in the 1607 founding of Jamestown in Virginia, Eng land’s "rst long- lived American settlement, and he later pro- vided guidance for both the Pilgrims who established Plymouth in 1620 and the Puritans who founded the Mas sa chu setts Bay Colony 10  years later. Reading Advertisements for the Unexperienced Planters now, when anticolonial and in de pen dence movements have made colonization justly suspect, Smith’s endorse- ment of En glish plantations in North Amer i ca strikes a discordant note. Smith anticipated such objections, for he heard them from his contemporaries. “Many good religious devout men have made it a great ques- tion, as a matter in conscience, by what warrant they might goe to possesse those Countries, which are none of theirs, but the poore Salvages [i.e., savages’],” he wrote. He considered the answer to this objection self- evident: “for God did make the world to be inhabited with mankind, and to have his name knowne to all Nations, and from generation to generation.” Although hardly a pious man, Smith saw God’s hand at work in Eng land’s seizing of the Amer i cas.

On a more mundane level, the dense population and soil depletion in Eng land seemed to Smith suf"- cient reason to take advantage of the fact that “ here in Florida, Virginia, New- Eng land, and Cannada, is more land than all the people in Christendome can

John White, Indian Village of Secoton (detail), 1585. For more information about this image, see the color insert in this volume.

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manure [i.e., cultivate], and yet more to spare than all the natives of those Countries can use and culturate.” The continent’s native inhabitants, he enthused, would “sell you a whole Countrey” in exchange “for a copper kettle and a few toyes, as beads and hatchets.” In his text, Smith did not consider that these “sales” might have been based on dif fer ent concepts of property, nor did he dwell on the deadly epidemics that decimated Native socie ties follow- ing the arrival of Eu ro pe ans. He based his arguments for colonization on the pre ce dents available in sacred and secular history. Adam and Eve established a plantation, Smith argued, as did Noah and his family after the dood, and so on through “the Hebrewes, Lacedemonians, the Goths, Grecians, Romans, and the rest.” Moreover Portugal and Spain had a one- hundred- and- forty- year lead on Eng land in terms of colony formation, and they were wresting great wealth from the people of the Amer i cas, who once had possessed the natu ral resources. It would be “neglect of our duty and religion” as well as “want of charity to those poore Salvages” to fail to challenge these Roman Catholic countries for control of the hemi sphere, Smith concluded. The dif"culty today of seeing Eu ro pean settlement as an expression of “charity” to the “Salvages” means that the “ great question” raised by the “good religious devout men” opposed to colonization remains fresh and vital.

In 1805, the Seneca orator Sagoyewatha, or Red Jacket, offered a Native perspective on colonization in an address to the missionary Jacob Cram that can serve as a rebuttal of Smith. “ There was a time when our forefathers owned this great island,” Sagoyewatha told Cram. “Their seats extended from the rising to the setting sun. The Great Spirit had made it for the use of Indians.” When “your forefathers” arrived, he continued, “they found friends and not enemies. They told us they had ded from their own country for fear of wicked men, and had come here to enjoy their religion. They asked us for a small seat. We took pity on them, granted their request; and they sat down amongst us.” Sagoyewatha went on to describe the devastating impact on Native Americans of the strong alcohol introduced by Eu ro pe ans and to relate how the once small colonial populations had grown and spilled over onto lands that the Natives had not meant to relinquish. He also challenged Cram on the relevance of Chris tian ity to Native communities, which, he stressed, had their own religious traditions. In addition, Chris tian ity hardly seemed a unifying force for good. “If there is but one religion,” Sagoyewatha asked, “why do you white people differ so much about it? Why [are you] not all agreed, as you can all read the book [i.e., the Bible]?”

In his 1782 book Letters from an American Farmer, the French- born writer J. Hector St. John de Crèvecœur posed another resonant question: “What is an American?” Crèvecœur offered his most explicit answer to this question in Letter III, where he described “the American” as a “new man, who acts upon new princi ples; he must therefore entertain new ideas, and form new opin- ions.” The American people were “a mixture of En glish, Scotch, Irish, French, Dutch, Germans and Swedes,” he wrote, emphasizing that they farmed their own land and peacefully practiced vari ous faiths, including Roman Catholi- cism, Quakerism, and several forms of Protestantism. Crèvecœur’s descrip- tion captured impor tant aspects of late colonial society. In its early years, the American colonies were shaped by competing empires: the large ones— New Spain, New France, and the En glish colonies, including Virginia and New Eng land— and more modest efforts, such as New Netherland and New

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Sweden. In the eigh teenth century, even as Britain consolidated its empire in North Amer i ca, an indux of immigrants from Northern Eu rope produced in the mid- Atlantic colonies the par tic u lar mixture that Crèvecœur described. He contrasted this American “melting” of peoples with life in Eu rope, where national and religious divisions fueled chronic wars while lingering feudal systems and power ful states oppressed the common people.

Elsewhere in Letters, Crèvecœur complicated his idealized vision of Amer i ca as a place where Eu ro pe ans could liberate themselves from the constraints of the Old World. He noted the attractions of the frontier, a borderland where hunting surpassed agriculture as the dominant mode of life. In that contact zone, Eu ro pean Americans adopted the customs and habits of Native Americans even as they sought to supplant them. He also reported on the hierarchical plantation- based socie ties of the southern colonies, and the horrors indicted there on enslaved African Americans. His description of a caged slave is one of the most unforgettable passages in the book. In these se lections, the liberating potential of the New World is shown to have sharp limits, and the pro cess of nation- formation to have negative rami"ca- tions as well as positive consequences.

Letters from an American Farmer proved an immediate sensation, for it offered insights into what the emerging nation might become, and how the result might affect Eu rope. Though Crèvecœur was prob ably a Loyalist sup- porter of British rule, his work was greeted enthusiastically by po liti cal radicals in Eng land and Enlightenment philosophes in France, as well as by the American statesman Thomas Jefferson, who echoed Crèvecœur’s enthu- siasm for the yeoman farmer in his Notes on the State of Virginia (1787). After a period of relative neglect in the nineteenth century, Crèvecœur’s vision of Amer i ca was revived in 1908, when Israel Zangwill’s “The Melting Pot,” a play focused on recent waves of Eu ro pean immigration, became a smash hit. Readers embraced Letters as a classic of American lit er a ture pre- senting an archetype of American identity. Unfortunately, the resulting view of Letters highlighted the formation of white American identity while marginalizing nonwhites. In recent years, a more comprehensive approach to Crèvecœur’s work has emphasized the sections on slavery and white/ Native interactions on the frontier. Letters from an American Farmer offers today’s readers vivid accounts of assumptions and contradictions that helped shape the early United States and its lit er a ture.

Nearly four de cades after Letters from an American Farmer became one of the literary hits of the age of revolution, Washington Irving cast a backward look at this founding era in his tale “Rip Van Winkle.” Irving was born in 1783, the year that the Treaty of Paris brought a formal close to the Revolu- tionary War, and he was named for the Virginia planter and slave owner who led the Continental Army to victory and later became the "rst president of the United States. Irving was one of the earliest American- born authors to win international literary celebrity, which he achieved as an expatriate writer living in Eng land. The work that "rst made him famous was The Sketch Book (1819–20), a volume of stories and essays that includes his best- known tales, “Rip Van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” While these stories take place in the Catskill region of New York and there are two essays on Native American life and history, the bulk of the volume concerns En glish customs. This fact suggests the limits to revolutionary change in the

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literary world of Irving’s day. Despite the ambition of many writers to create distinctly “American” works, the lit er a ture of the United States remained oriented toward Eng land for de cades after in de pen dence.

“Rip Van Winkle” emphasizes continuity more than transformation, and it highlights the checkered quality of human nature rather than its poten- tial for radical new beginnings. Based on a German folktale and set in a sleepy Dutch village on the Hudson River shortly before the Revolution, the story features Rip, a slacker who embarks on a hunting expedition to evade his wife’s demands. In the mountains, he mysteriously "nds himself in the com pany of the En glish explorer Henry Hudson, who in 1609 traveled from New York Harbor as far as Albany, sailing up the river that now bears his name. Hudson and his men silently invite Rip to drink with them, and he soon falls into a deep and unnaturally prolonged sleep. When he returns to his village after a 20- year interval, the Revolution has passed, and Rip "nds much that is unfamiliar, as well as things that are uncannily familiar yet somehow dif fer ent. Frustrated, he bursts out, “Does nobody here know Rip Van Winkle?”— and a version of his younger self is pointed out to him. This person turns out to be the son he left at home two de cades earlier, now grown up to be a man much like his father.

Irving invites his readers to consider the disorienting nature of social transformation. He particularly contrasts the quieter, slower colonial world with the bustle and clamor of the newly demo cratizing po liti cal culture. The story suggests that despite some obvious super"cial differences, not very much has changed, and that some of the circumstances that have changed have not necessarily improved. These central themes are captured in Irving’s description of how the image of King George III on the sign of the local inn has been repainted as George Washington. The sign offers a compelling sym- bol of how things can remain the same under neath even as external appear- ances transform. The excitement of radical change and the appeal of tradition and continuity that Irving explores in this story have been fertile themes for many American writers. Questions about the competing values and histori- cal narratives that shape American identities were as relevant for Irving’s readers as they had been two hundred years earlier for John Smith.

EXPLORING ORIGINS

The question of identity is often tied to the nature of origins. Most of the earliest surviving writings about the Amer i cas are narratives of discovery, a vast and frequently fascinating category of works that includes Samuel de Champlain’s chronicles of New France; Thomas Harriot’s descriptions of Native customs and natu ral resources in the Chesapeake Bay region; and— of great interest to Washington Irving— the account of Henry Hudson’s explorations written by Robert Juet, the sailor who later mutinied and set Hudson adrift in the bay that bears his name, never to be seen again. Irving’s retelling of the Hudson story in his History of New- York (1809) greatly mutes the brutality in Juet’s narrative to pres ent a colonial history that is notably relaxed and genial, while explic itly marginalizing Native Ameri- cans. Virtually all colonization narratives tell a story that is closer to Juet’s than to Irving’s. These works show that while some ele ments of induence

and exchange were peaceful, condict and vio lence were major forces shaping this new world. Individually and collectively, these writings demonstrate that “discovery” entailed a many- sided pro cess of confrontation and exchange among heterogeneous Eu ro pean, American, and, eventually, African peoples. It was out of encounters such as the ones described in these narratives that the hybrid cultural universe of the Atlantic world began to emerge.

In 1828, Irving published a biography of Christopher Columbus, the Gen- oese explorer who sailed across the Atlantic four times on behalf of the Spanish Empire. Columbus’s own writings provide a remarkable view into the radical changes that his voyage of 1492 set in motion. His Letter to Luis de Santangel Regarding the First Voyage (1493)—better known as the Letter of Discovery—was the "rst printed account of the territory that Eu ro pe ans later came to call Amer i ca. This riveting description of the unexpected marvels that Columbus and his crew encountered in the West Indies circu- lated widely throughout Eu rope. Columbus lavished praise on the stunning island mountains, the many dif fer ent types of trees and beautiful forms of vegetation, the rivers that appeared to be full of gold, and the fertile soil promising agricultural riches. He described the indigenous population as welcoming, loosely or ga nized, and largely defenseless. And in a harbinger of

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Columbus Landing in the Indies, from La Lettera dell’isole che ha trovata nouovamenta il re di’spagna, 1493. This woodcut was created to accompany a metrical version, by the Florentine poet Giuliano Dati, of the letter Columbus wrote describing his "rst voyage. The image is in ter est ing for its symbolic pre sen ta tion of Eu ro pean authority (in the person of Ferdinand of Spain) and its early conceptualization of what the Taino Indians looked like.

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things to come, he told how “in the "rst island that I came to, I took some of them by force.” He captured these Natives— and took some of them with him on the return voyage to Europe— with the idea that Eu ro pe ans and Natives could learn to communicate through gestures and, eventually, lan- guage. Before long, however, captivity in the ser vice of potentially peaceful exchange yielded to other types of coercion, including enslavement.

Perhaps it was one of Columbus’s original captives who in 1494 returned home to relate tales of a new world full of “marvels”— that is, the marvels of Spain, which were as unfamiliar to his Native audience as the marvels of the West Indies were to Columbus’s Eu ro pean readers. The man in ques- tion was a Taino Indian from the Bahamas, who had been baptized and renamed Diego Colón, after Columbus’s son. (Colón is the Spanish version of the family’s name.) Diego Colón and another captive served as transla- tors for a large party of Spaniards, around "fteen hundred, who arrived in the Ca rib bean early in November 1493. In the words of the Spanish histo- rian Andrés Bernáldez, who knew Columbus well and edited his papers, Colón regaled the other Natives with tales of “the things which he had seen in Castile and the marvels of Spain, . . . the great cities and fortresses and churches, . . . the people and horses and animals, . . . the great nobility and wealth of the sovereigns and great lords, . . . the kinds of food, . . . the festivals and tournaments [and] bull- "ghting.” Colón’s story catches in miniature the extraordinary changes that began to occur as natives of Eu rope encountered natives of the Amer i cas in a sustained way for the "rst time in recorded history.

Each group of peoples was of course the product and agent of its own his- tory and brought a unique sense of “real ity” to the encounter. For example, the year of Columbus’s "rst voyage was also the year of the Spanish Recon- quista, that is, the "nal defeat of the Islamic Moors of North Africa who had conquered Spain more than 700 years earlier. The Reconquista was just one phase of the centuries- long wars between Christian and Muslim empires that shaped Eu ro pean perceptions of, and actions in, the Amer i cas. Cap- tain John Smith had earned his military title "ghting in southeastern Eu rope against the imperial forces of the Ottoman Turks, then at the height of their power. There were recognizably imperial states in the Amer i cas as well. In the two centuries before Columbus’s voyage, the Aztecs had consolidated an empire in pres ent- day Mexico, and over the course of the fourteenth century the Inca Empire had expanded to encompass territory from what is now southern Colombia to Chile. Because of the Aztec and Inca presences, the view of Eu ro pean conquest as a contest of empires is particularly strong in Spanish accounts. The conquistador Hernán Cortés described the sophis- tication and wealth that existed in the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlán, before he ordered his forces to destroy it. In a more muted way, Smith portrayed En glish interactions with the Powhatan Indians as the product of their com- peting imperial proj ects, with Chief Powhatan undertaking to absorb the En glish newcomers within his expanding area of induence while Smith strug gled to establish dominance.

When the Eu ro pe ans arrived in the Amer i cas, the indigenous people num- bered between "fty million and one hundred million. Mass deaths among the indigenous communities facilitated Eu ro pean expansion. Almost liter- ally from 1492, Native peoples started to die in large numbers. Whole pop-

ulations plummeted as diseases such as smallpox, measles, and typhus spread throughout the Ca rib bean and then on the mainland of Central and South Amer i ca. These diseases became even more lethal as a consequence of war, enslavement, brutal mistreatment, and despair. The rapid introduction of slavery of Native Americans by Eu ro pe ans, which Columbus helped initi- ate, redects both historical practices and con temporary developments. The word “slave” derives from “Slav,” which refers to speakers of Slavic languages, in central and eastern Eu rope; many Slavs were taken as property by Spanish Muslims in the ninth century. Race- based slavery emerged shortly before Columbus’s "rst voyage: the Eu ro pean slave trade in Africa began in 1441, and in 1452 Pope Nicholas V authorized the enslaving of non- Christians. In 1500 slavery was a common form of labor, with variants around the globe, including in Africa and the Amer i cas. Columbus had intended to create a market in enslaved Americans, and a substantial number of Natives were taken as slaves, but ultimately this proj ect failed because too many Native people died. Eu ro- pe ans began transporting small numbers of enslaved Africans to the Amer i cas shortly after arriving there. Those numbers soon multiplied, and the social and cultural features of this new world became even more complex as the slaves introduced the arts and traditions of vari ous African socie ties.

The impacts in the Amer i cas of disease and of slavery can be seen in min- iature in the history of the Ca rib bean island Hispaniola. The population of Hispaniola (estimated at between one hundred thousand and eight million in 1492) plunged following the Spanish occupation, partly through disease

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New World Natives, from an anonymous German woodcut, c. 1505. The text accompany- ing this detailed early illustration comments on Native Americans and their customs, praising their physical appearance and healthfulness as well as their distaste for both private property and public government. Only in passing does it assert that they kill and eat their enemies, smoking the dead bodies above their "res, as on closer inspection the woodcut indicates.

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and partly through abuses of the encomienda system, which gave individual Spaniards claims to Native labor and wealth. Faced with this sudden decline in Native workers, Spain introduced African slavery there as early as 1501. In 1522, the "rst major slave rebellion in the Amer i cas took place on the island, when enslaved African Muslims killed nine Spaniards. From this point forward, slave re sis tance became commonplace. Nevertheless, by the mid- sixteenth century the Native population had been so completely dis- placed by African slaves that the Spanish historian Antonio de Herrera called the island “an ef"gy or an image of Ethiopia itself.” Hispaniola was the lead- ing edge of broader devastations and transformations; colonization, disease, and slavery had similarly sweeping effects in many parts of the Amer i cas.

It would be inaccurate to picture indigenous Americans as merely victims suffering an inexorable decline. The motif of the “vanishing Indian” that became prominent in the early nineteenth century misrepresents historical realities, which involved unevenly textured cultural developments. Some indigenous Americans made shrewd use of the Eu ro pean presence to for- ward their own aims. In 1519, the disaffected Natives in the Aztec Empire threw in their lot with Cortés because they saw a chance to settle the score with their overlord, Montezuma. In New Eng land, the Pequot War of 1637 involved a similar alignment on the En glish side of such tribes as the Nar- ragansetts and the Mohegans, who had grievances with the militarily aggres- sive Pequots. The Powhatans of the Chesapeake Bay region and the Iroquois in the Northeast seized on Eu ro pean technology and the Eu ro pean market, adopting novel weaponry (the gun) and incorporating new trade goods into their networks as a means of consolidating advantages gained before the arrival of the colonists. Beginning in the eigh teenth century, the Coman- ches built an empire that dominated other Native groups and contested Eu ro pean (and later United States and Mexican) power in the southern plains and southwestern regions of North Amer i ca. Above all, Native socie- ties were not static. Even as their populations shrank, indigenous Americans resisted, transformed, and exploited the cultural and social practices that Eu ro pe ans and Africans brought to the Amer i cas. Eventually, these resilient, resourceful peoples embraced writing and print to protect their communities, advance their interests, and convey their vital place in the world.

Meanwhile, the African population in the Amer i cas was expanding. Although free blacks were a growing presence, most of the Africans were slaves who were often forced into heterogeneous groups that brought together members of vari ous cultures speaking distinct languages. Under the harsh conditions of Eu ro pean domination, they created new forms of expression that retained ties to their cultures of origin. One notable instance of this dynamic pro cess involves the West African "gure of Esu Elegbara, the guardian of the crossroads and interpreter of the gods, who appears in works of verbal art created in African communities throughout the Amer i- cas. Esu features in narrative praise poems, divination verses, lyrical songs, and prose narratives and is particularly connected with matters of height- ened (that is, “literary”) language and interpretation. By the eigh teenth century, many African Americans practiced Chris tian ity, and the Bible pro- vided a stock of characters and rhetorical postures that they used to artic- ulate their experiences and worldviews and to advocate for their freedom.

LITERARY BACKGROUNDS AND CONSEQUENCES OF 1492

Apart from the literatures of ancient Greece and Rome, few of the works now regarded as classics of Eu ro pean lit er a ture had been produced when Columbus sailed in 1492. Those that did exist can be grouped into a few genres. There were epic poems, such as Beowulf (En glish), The Song of Roland (French), and Dante’s Divine Comedy (Italian); chivalric romances, including Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (En glish); shorter romances, such as the lais of Marie de France; story sequences, including the Italian writer Boccac- cio’s Decameron and the En glish poet Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales; sacred lyric poems, such as by Hildegard of Bingen; and sonnets, notably those by the Italian poet Petrarch, who honed the form into a major genre that, dur- ing the Re nais sance, Shakespeare made impor tant to En glish lit er a ture. Aristotle’s and Cicero’s works were already widely known, and the revival of Greco- Roman classics that characterized the Re nais sance was on the horizon. Augustine’s Confessions was among the broadly induential works of sacred prose, while secular chronicles and histories attracted many readers. In 1300, Marco Polo’s account of his travels to China began to circulate; The Travels of Sir John Mandev ille, a fabulous account of a journey through the Middle East and beyond, appeared "ve or six de cades later. Published in manuscript before the Gutenberg printing press was in ven ted around 1440, both works are thought to have induenced Christopher Columbus’s writings about his “new world.”

Beginning with the publication in 1493 of Columbus’s Letter of Discovery, the printing press became part of the engine driving Eu ro pean expansion in the Amer i cas. Explorers and adventurers produced a large and intrigu- ing body of lit er a ture that communicated the won ders of the new world, described Native socie ties with varying degrees of accuracy and apprecia- tion, and offered explanations and justi"cations for numerous colonial proj- ects. In some cases, notably that of the Spanish friar Bartolomé de las Casas, writers also testi"ed about the atrocities being committed against Native peoples. Print increasingly made pos si ble the dissemination of texts rich with imagery and practical knowledge, helping to stir individual imag- inations and national ambitions with regard to the West Indies and the Amer i cas and, in a few instances, seeking to limit the negative impact of colonization on indigenous Americans.

Cataclysms such as the devastation of the Indies and the Conquest of Mex- ico produced not only the Spanish narratives of Columbus, Cortés, and Las Casas but also Native responses. For example, in 1528 anonymous Native writers, working in the Nahuatl language of the Aztecs but using the Roman alphabet introduced by the Spanish, lamented the fall of their capital to Cortés:

Broken spears lie in the roads; we have torn our hair in our grief. The houses are roodess now, and their walls are red with blood.

No one reading these four lines will easily glorify the conquest of Mexico or of the Amer i cas more generally. Such testimonies offer an essential outlook

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on this painful history. The se lections in this volume grouped under “First Encounters: Early Eu ro pean Accounts of Native Amer i ca” offer both Eu ro- pean and indigenous perspectives. So, for instance, the excerpt from Rob- ert Juet’s narrative of Hudson’s third voyage, published in 1625, relates the same events as the Delaware narrative that John Heckewelder recorded from his Native sources in the early nineteenth century— which in turn also pro- vides an impor tant perspective on the narrative of these events offered, later in the volume, by Heckewelder’s con temporary Washington Irving.

At the time of conquest Native Americans had rich oral cultures that valued memory over material means of preserving texts. There were some impor tant exceptions. The Aztecs and a few other groups produced written works in their own languages, though Spanish conquerors destroyed many of the amoxtli and other types of Native “books.” Many indigenous communi- ties used visual rec ords in subtle and sophisticated ways, with a notable example being the Andean quipu, a type of knotted string. North Amer i can recording devices included shellwork belts, known as wampum, and painted animal hides, tepees, and shields. The histories and rituals encoded in these devices were translated into spoken language in ways that had signi"cant parallels in what is sometimes called print culture. Scripture was regularly interpreted and delivered in a sermon in much the same manner as a wam- pum belt might be “read” at a treaty conference. Again, a printed narrative might be read aloud, similar to the way that Native tales were recounted; while hymns and ballads were designed for singing and provided an early contact point between Eu ro pean and Native verbal artists.

In addition to taking diverse forms, early American lit er a ture redects the linguistic and cultural range of the colonial world. Spanish, French, Ger- man and its variants, and other Eu ro pean languages are prominent in the written archive about North Amer i ca, as exempli"ed here in works by writers such as Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, Samuel de Champlain, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, and Francis Daniel Pastorius. Dozens of Native languages left traces, which include evidence of at least eight creation narratives, with nota- ble examples being the Iroquois and Navajo creation stories included in this volume. Although En glish eventually became the main language in the United States, and thus the dominant medium of classic American lit er a ture, it was a late arrival in the Amer i cas. Likewise, although the New Eng land colonies, founded in the early seventeenth century, have conventionally been regarded as the central source of early American lit er a ture, the "rst North American settlements were established elsewhere many years earlier. The Spanish founded colonies at pres ent- day St. Augustine, Florida (1565), and Santa Fe, New Mexico (1610), and Dutch settlers established New Nether- land (1614), which came to include New York City and Albany (1614). All of these cities, which started as colonial outposts, are older than Boston (1630), which was not even the "rst permanent En glish settlement in North Amer- i ca. That distinction goes to the Jamestown colony, in Virginia (1607).

The writings of Thomas Harriot and John Smith about Virginia’s Chesa- peake Bay region are crucial to a full understanding of the English- language lit er a ture of the Amer i cas. Harriot produced the "rst account of Eng land’s new world in A Brief and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia (1588), which combines descriptions of marketable commodities, a detailed and often accurate description of Native beliefs and practices, and a narration

of how Wingina, the Algonquian headman on Roanoke Island, interacted with the En glish colonizers and sought to understand the devastating effects of the illnesses that followed in their wake. As noted earlier, John Smith was an enthusiastic and proli"c proselytizer for En glish colonization, instrumen- tal in the establishment of Virginia and induential as well in the founding of New Eng land. Smith epitomized those proponents of colonization who came from the underclasses in their native countries, and he made a power ful case for the opportunities that Amer i ca offered them. Energetic and con"dent, Smith could be subversive, even mutinous, in his writings as in his life. His works pres ent a vision of Amer i ca as a place where much that was genuinely new might be learned and created. This vision came to maturity in his writ- ings about New Eng land, and helped to shape what many regard as the most induential body of writings from the early period.

LITERARY NEW ENG LAND

The founding of Plymouth Plantation, in 1620, marks a new phase in the literary history of colonial North Amer i ca. The "rst months of the Plymouth colony were inauspicious. After landing on the raw Mas sa chu setts shore in November 1620, the Pilgrims braced for winter. They survived this “starv- ing time” with the essential aid of the nearby Wampanoag Indians and their leader, Massasoit. From these “small beginnings,” as the colony’s leader, William Bradford, refers to them in Of Plymouth Plantation (c. 1630), grew a community that later came to be invested with a symbolic signi"cance that far exceeded its size and remote location. The Pilgrims’ religious moti- vation for leaving Eng land is only part of the story. Backed by En glish investors, the seafaring migration was commercial as well as spiritual. Among the hundred people on the group’s ship, the May"ower, almost three times as many were secular settlers as were Separatist Puritans. The per sis- tent tension between the material and spiritual goals of the Plymouth colo- nists appears in many early writings about the region. For instance, Thomas Morton portrays this condict in values in New En glish Canaan (1637), where the Plymouth leaders appear not as holy men but as domineering and repressive antagonists of Morton’s colony at Ma-re Mount. Morton also conveys a dif fer ent sensibility about relations with the Natives, expressing little desire to convert them to Chris tian ity and focusing instead on joining with them in May Day festivities. Although Morton prob ably overstated the ideological differences and minimized the economic rivalry with Plymouth, the contrast suggests a spectrum of colonial responses to their new envi- ronment. In addition, Morton’s language redects a major strand in En glish Re nais sance writing, a playful style that contrasts with the plain style of Bradford and other Puritan authors.

Much larger than either Plymouth or Ma-re Mount was the Mas sa chu- setts Bay Colony, founded in 1630 by Puritans under John Winthrop. The Mas sa chu setts Bay colonists initially wanted to retain their ties with the Church of Eng land, leading to their designation as non-Separating Congre- gationalists, which distinguished them from the more radical Separatists at Plymouth. On other issues, they shared basic beliefs with the Pilgrims: both agreed with the Protestant Reformation leader Martin Luther that no pope

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The New- Eng land Primer (1690). Like other Protestants, Puritans believed that the Bible should be accessible to all believers, and to that end The New- Eng land Primer was designed for children learning to read. Benjamin Harris printed the "rst edition in Boston; a London edition appeared in 1701. Many more editions followed— though very few copies survived.

In the mid- eighteenth century, Benjamin Franklin’s Philadelphia print shop sold nearly forty thousand copies of its own later version. This page is from The New- Eng land Primer, a Reprint of the Earliest Known Edition (1899), edited by Paul Leicester Ford, which reproduces the one surviving, incomplete copy of the 1727 edition.

or bishop had the right to impose any law on a Christian without consent, and both accepted the Reformation theologian John Calvin’s view that God freely chose (or “elected”) those he would save and those he would damn eternally.

Puritans have a grim reputation as religious zealots, prudes, and killjoys. These conceptions stem from the Calvinist doctrine of election. However, counter to the ste reo type, Puritans did not necessarily consider most people damned before birth. Instead, they argued that Adam broke the “Cove- nant of Works”— the promise God made to Adam that he was immortal and could live in Paradise forever as long as he obeyed God’s commandments— when he disobeyed and ate of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, thereby bringing sin and death into the world. Their central doctrine was the new “Covenant of Grace,” a binding agreement that Jesus Christ made with all people who believed in him and that he sealed with his Cruci"xion, promising them eternal life. The New Eng land churches aspired to be more rigorous than others, and this idea of the covenant contributed to the feel- ing that they were a special few. When John Winthrop in A Model of Chris- tian Charity (written 1630) expressed the ideals that he wanted the colonists to embrace, he wrote that the eyes of the world were on them and that they should strive to be an example for all, a “city upon a hill.” In their respective histories of Plymouth and Mas sa chu setts Bay, Bradford and Winthrop wished to  rec ord the actualization of the founding dream, which was "rst and foremost a dream of a puri"ed community of mutually support- ing Protestant Christians.

In keeping with the doctrine of election, Puritan ministers typi- cally addressed themselves not to the hopelessly unregenerate but to the spiritually indifferent— that is, to the potentially “elect.” They spoke to the heart more often than the mind, always distinguishing between heartfelt “saving faith” and “historical,” or rational, understand- ing. While preachers sometimes sought to evoke fear by focusing on the terrors of hell, as the latter- day Puritan Jonathan Edwards famously did in his sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” (1741), this method did not redect the exclusive—or even the main— tenor of Puritan religious life. The consid- erable joy and love in Puritanism resulted directly from meditation on Christ’s redeeming power. The

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The Tenth Muse. Anne Bradstreet’s "rst book appeared in London in 1650, with the title The Tenth Muse, Lately Sprung up in Amer i ca. There were nine muses in the clas- sical world. In 1678, this second edition of Bradstreet’s poems was published in Boston.

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minister- poet Edward Taylor conveys this ele ment of Puritan experience in his rapturous litany of Christ’s attributes: “He is altogether lovely in every- thing, lovely in His person, lovely in His natures, lovely in His properties, lovely in His of"ces, lovely in His titles, lovely in His practice, lovely in His purchases and lovely in His relations.” All of Taylor’s art considers the mirac- ulous gift of the Incarnation, redecting his typically Puritan sensibility. Similar qualities are evident in the works of Anne Bradstreet, a Puritan and the "rst British North American writer to publish a volume of poetry. Brad- street confessed her religious doubts to her children, but she emphasized that it was “upon this rock Christ Jesus” that she built her faith. The Puritan minister Michael Wigglesworth titled a poem The Day of Doom (1662), but concluded it with God joyfully embracing the saints in heaven.

A comparable emphasis on sacred feeling inhabits the poetry of the Mexi- can Catholic nun Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz and the narratives of the North American Quaker writers Elizabeth Ashbridge and John Woolman. Indeed, religious emotion provided a unifying factor for diverse denominations, lead- ing to the kind of melding that Crèvecœur would later "nd characteristic of American life. The closest thing in New Eng land to Crèvecœur’s ideal was in the Providence colony, which the Puritan theologian Roger Williams helped guide toward a more capacious understanding of religious freedom than was accepted in Plymouth or Mas sa chu setts Bay. Williams insisted that “christenings make not Christians.” In other words, as he interpreted the doctrine of election, rituals and displays meant less than inner faith. Accord- ingly, he helped make Providence a refuge for religious dissenters and out- siders, including Antinomians, Quakers, and Jews. He also worked hard— and for a time, successfully—to establish good relations with the region’s Nar- ragansett Indians. However, harmonious relations were shattered in 1675, when King Philip led the Wampanoags and their Narragansett allies to war against the colonies, with devastating effects on both sides. In her captivity narrative, the Puritan settler Mary Rowlandson movingly describes the mutual betrayal experienced by the indigenous people and the colonists.

Just over a de cade after Rowland’s captivity, King William’s War became the "rst in a series of condicts between New Eng land and New France that culminated in 1763 with Britain’s victory in the French and Indian War. During the intervening decades, colonists regularly fought alongside Eu ro- pean troops and Native allies. Eu ro pean state politics informed the "ghting, as did religious differences between Protestant Britain and Catholic France. The Jesuit Relations, vast chronicles of life in the borderlands of New France, redect the imperial and religious tensions. A 1647 narrative included in this anthology focuses on Isaac Jogues, one of the eight Jesuit missionaries killed by Natives, canonized (i.e., sainted) by the Roman Catholic Church, and sometimes referred to as the North American Martyrs. A 1744 narrative included here tells the life story of Kateri Tekakwitha, a Mohawk woman from central New York who in 2012 became the "rst indigenous American to be canonized by the Church.

Condicts between Protestant Eng land and Catholic France infused events that roiled Puritan communities as well, notably including the Salem witchcraft crisis of 1692. That famous and, in a certain sense, de"ning crisis redected complex transformations of colonial authority and identity.

Though small in comparison to the witch trials that took place in Eu rope and the British Isles in roughly the same period, the tragic events at Salem, which culminated in the execution of twenty people, loom large in part because of their distinctive features and overdetermined meaning. The trials unfolded as the new royal charter transformed Mas sa chu setts Bay from a colony to a province, shifting power to the metropolis. Meanwhile, rivals to Puritanism were becoming more vis i ble, not only in New France, but also in other British colonies with dif fer ent religious identities and competing understandings of the relationship between church and state. Mary land, established in 1634, had a strong association with both Catholi- cism and religious toleration, while Rhode Island, which had grown from Roger Williams’s settlement at Providence, was granted a royal charter in 1663. The founding of the Quaker colony of Pennsylvania in 1681 posed an especially strong challenge to the Bay Colony, both because of the rapid growth of Philadelphia into a major hub and because of Quaker- ism’s competing approach to Christian reform.

One of the most controversial features of Quakerism was its embrace of women’s religious leadership. This issue resonated in the colony that had banished Anne Hutchinson in 1638 and, some two de cades later, went on to execute Mary Dyer, a follower of Hutchinson who later embraced Quaker beliefs and returned to Mas sa chu setts to challenge its authorities. In 1661, shortly after the end of the Commonwealth and the restoration of the mon- archy, King Charles II rebuked the Bay Colony for executing Dyer and three male Quakers. Concerns about Puritan intolerance contributed to the new regime’s approach to the Mas sa chu setts charter, which unfolded over three de cades even as the monarchy underwent a sustained period of instability that culminated in the Glorious Revolution of 1688, when the Catholic King James II was replaced by the Protestant monarchs William and Mary. All these developments contributed in impor tant though indirect ways to the Salem proceedings.

Several men were executed during the Salem crisis, but the majority of the condemned were women. What’s more, the "rst person to be accused was the enslaved woman Tituba, who was practicing folk rituals with a group of Puritan girls when the “afdictions” began. Prob ably an Indian from the South American mainland, Tituba had arrived in Salem by way of Barbados. In 1656, that island had been the immediate point of origin of the "rst Quaker evangelists to Mas sa chu setts, who were accused of witchcraft and imprisoned. Though the Puritans understood what was happening to their community in dif fer ent terms than those suggested here, focusing their fears on the presence of the devil in Mas sa chu setts rather than on social, po liti cal, and religious pressures, their writings did at times redect an awareness that many forces indamed the crisis. Two se lections in this volume give some insight into this symbolically impor tant moment in early American literary history: the diary of Samuel Sewall, who had served as a judge in the Salem trials and went on to take an early stand against slavery, and the excerpt from Cotton Mather’s Won ders of the Invisible World (1693), which shows how an internationally renowned Puritan intellectual who was attuned to the new science sought to understand the nature of witchcraft.

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ENLIGHTENMENT IDEALS

The Salem witch trials proved to be a watershed moment, tied to dramatic social and economic changes during the late colonial period. These shifts were gradually matched by transformations in intellectual life. By the early eigh teenth century, scientists and phi los o phers in Eu rope and the Amer i- cas had posed great challenges to seventeenth- century beliefs. Many intel- lectuals now embraced the power of the human mind to comprehend the universe as never before. What is sometimes called the “modern era”— characterized principally by the gradual supplanting of religious worldviews by scienti"c and philosophical ideas anchored in experiential knowledge— emerged from efforts to conceive of human existence in new terms. These developments in science and philosophy, known generally as the Enlight- enment, did not necessarily lead to secularization. For example, Isaac New- ton and John Locke— respectively, the leading En glish scientist and phi los o pher of the age— both sought to resolve implicit condicts between their work and Christian tradition. Newton’s study of the laws of motion and gravity had the potential to undermine religious beliefs insofar as it revealed a natu ral order that was perhaps in de pen dent of divine power. Locke’s the- ory of the human mind as a tabula rasa, or blank slate, endowed with pow- ers of perception but without innate content, posed a direct challenge to established forms of Chris tian ity by calling into question the idea of origi- nal sin. Arguing that God worked in reasonable, not necessarily mysterious ways, these thinkers saw nothing heretical in contending that the universe was an orderly system whose laws humanity could comprehend through the application of reason.

Many Enlightenment scientists and phi los o phers deduced the existence of a supreme being from the construction of the universe rather than from the Bible, a view often called Deism. For many Deists, a harmonious uni- verse could represent the bene"cence of God, and this positivity extended to an optimistic view of human nature. Locke said that “our business” here on earth “is not to know all things, but those which concern our conduct,” prompting his followers to consider human actions and motives as worthy objects of study. The phi los o phers of the Scottish Common Sense school built on Locke’s insights about human faculties to propose that sympathy and sociability functioned as a kind of emotional glue that could unite communi- ties no longer held together by shared beliefs and traditional structures of authority. Indeed, they claimed that one’s supreme moral obligation was to relate to one’s fellows through a natu ral power of sympathy. Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) was a notably induential contributor to this vein of social analy sis. Meanwhile, earlier modes of thought— for instance, Bradford’s and Winthrop’s penchants for the allegorical and emblematic, with every natu ral and human event seen as a direct message from God— came to seem anachronistic and quaint.

Interest in ordinary individuals as part of nature and society led to devel- opments in lit er a ture. While religiously themed works such as John Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667) and John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Pro gress (1678) remained popu lar, the novel began to take a recognizably modern shape in the early eigh teenth century. En glish novelists such as Aphra Behn, Daniel Defoe,

Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding, and Laurence Sterne portrayed emotions and expe- riences with increasing direct- ness. In the colonies, the induences that were giving birth to the Anglophone novel also engendered new forms of descriptive naturalist and eth- nographic writing, exempli"ed here in se lections from Sarah Kemble Knight, William Byrd, Alexander Hamilton, Hen- drick Aupaumut, and William Bartram. The same condu- ence of intellectual and social developments also gave rise to non"ction works such as Ben- jamin Franklin’s Autobiogra- phy (written between 1771 and 1790).

Modernity has often been characterized as a radical break from faith- based forms of thought. Consider, how- ever, that both the religious Bunyan and the more secular Defoe were among Franklin’s literary induences. From the old to the new there were substan- tial continuities, as well as shifts that were more gradual than immediate. In the "rst half of the eigh teenth century, a number of religious revivals occurred in Eng land and Amer i ca, but they were fueled by the new empha- sis on emotion as a de"ning component of human experience. For exam- ple, the religious "res that burned from 1734 until about 1750  in what became known as the Great Awakening were directly produced by the Locke- inspired cult of feeling that was reshaping narrative prose. Now ministers, echoing the Enlightenment phi los o phers, argued that human- ity’s greatest pleasure— indeed, its purpose— was to do good for others and that sympathetic emotions might guarantee future glory. These ideas, a small part of earlier religious thought, acquired a new salience in connec- tion with revivalism.

The most signi"cant "gure in transatlantic revivalism was Jonathan Edwards, a leading minister and theologian who helped form this new culture with a series of “awakenings” in and around Northampton, Mas sa chu setts. Edwards’s description of these events in A Faithful Narrative of the Surpris- ing Work of God (1737) was hugely induential on the movement. Having read Locke, Edwards believed that if his parishioners were to be awakened from their spiritual slumbers they had to experience religion viscerally, not just comprehend it intellectually. In a series of sermons and treatises, Edwards worked to rejuvenate the basic tenets of Calvinism, including that of unconditional election, the sixteenth- century doctrine most dif"cult for eighteenth- century minds to accept.

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George White!eld, c. 1741, by John Wollaston. Transatlantic revivalist George White"eld preaching to a crowded meeting during the Great Awakening.

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Edwards insisted that such doctrines made sense in terms of Enlighten- ment science, and he developed what one literary historian has called a “rhe- toric of sensation” to persuade his listeners that God’s sovereignty was not only the most reasonable doctrine but also the most “delightful” and that it revealed itself to him, in an almost sensuous way, as “exceeding pleasant, bright, and sweet.” In carefully reasoned, calmly argued prose, Edwards brought many in his audience to accept that “if the great things of religion are rightly understood, they will affect the heart.” This “heart religion,” as it later came to be known, involved both the terrors of hell, which Edwards describes in the sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” and the joy that his faith brought him, as he expresses it in his “Personal Narrative” (c. 1740) and his apostrophe to his future wife, Sarah Pierpont (written in 1723). In Edwards’s work, the pietist strains of Puritan writing— the embrace of emotion and its verbal expression— were ampli"ed and brought close to similar developments in secular lit er a ture. For example, the En glish writer Samuel Richardson’s novel Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded (1740) was a favorite in the Edwards house hold.

The revivalists’ styles of worship proved more welcoming to Native Amer- ican and African American Christians than the Puritans’ styles had been. Nonwhites had greater opportunities for literacy and training for the minis- try, and mixed- race and nonwhite congregations were formed in increasing numbers. As a result, the Great Awakening fostered greater mingling of white, red, and black expressive styles in sacred song and speech— including hym- nody, whose dourishing during the period also contributed to the growth of secular poetry— and led to the writing of some of the earliest English- language lit er a ture by Native Americans and African Americans. The writ- ers John Marrant, Samson Occom, Hendrick Aupamut, Olaudah Equiano, and Phillis Wheatley emerged from this evangelical melding of cultures. At the same time, a parallel “Indians Great Awakening” revived indigenous spir- itual practices and helped catalyze the re sis tance of leaders such as Sagoye- watha, Pontiac, and Tecumseh to colonial military and cultural power.

PURSUING HAPPINESS

In the second half of the eigh teenth century, religion continued to play a major role in many colonists’ lives even as politics took on a new importance. After winning the French and Indian War in 1763, Britain consolidated its empire in North Amer i ca. To help pay for its war debt, the monarchy heavi ly taxed the colonies. Colonial resentments about increasingly heavy- handed tax policies escalated until April 1775, when the Battles of Lexington and Concord, both in Mas sa chu setts, began the American Revolutionary War against Britain. That summer, representatives from the thirteen British North American colonies convened a Second Continental Congress to take charge of the war effort. In the June 7, 1776, session of this Congress, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia brought a de cade of colonial agitation to the boiling point by moving that “ these united colonies are, and of a right ought to be, free and in de pen dent states.” Another Virginian, Thomas Jefferson, led a committee— including John Adams of Mas sa chu setts and Benjamin Frank- lin of Pennsylvania— that drafted a Declaration of In de pen dence, which was

issued on July 4. The heart of this document was the statement that “certain truths are self- evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” These words redect Jefferson’s reading of the Scottish Common Sense phi los o phers, particularly Francis Hutcheson and Lord Kames (Henry Home), who built on Locke’s work to argue that a moral sense is common to all humans. This universal sense of right and wrong justi"ed the overthrow of tyrants, the restoration of po liti cal order, and the establishment of new covenants— not, as Bradford and Winthrop would have argued, for the glory of God, but, as the Declaration argued, for the individual’s right to happiness on earth.

In January 1776 the young journalist Thomas Paine published his pam- phlet Common Sense, which proved hugely induential in tipping the scales toward revolution. Though Paine prob ably did not choose his title to allude to the Scottish phi los o phers who were so impor tant for Jefferson and other patriot leaders, his manifesto invoked similar ideas. In arguing that separa- tion from Eng land was the colonists’ only reasonable course and that “the Almighty” had planted these feelings in us “for good and wise purposes,” Paine appealed to basic tenets of the Enlightenment. He had emigrated from Eng land to Amer i ca in 1774 with a letter of recommendation from Benja- min Franklin. Franklin was, among many other things, a successful news- paper editor and printer, and Paine was quickly hired to edit the Pennsylvania Magazine, one of the new periodicals transforming the literary scene. The "rst newspaper in the colonies had appeared in 1704, and by the time of the Revolution there were almost "fty papers and forty magazines. Paine’s mag- azine work helped shape a plain style that proved effective in catalyzing revolution. He was the most prominent of a number of writers who took

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The Destruction of Tea at Boston Harbor, lithograph by Nathaniel Currier. The Boston Tea Party of 1763, when colonists, some disguised as Native Americans, protested a new British tax on tea and other commodities.

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advantage of the transformation in print culture that was to make modern authorship pos si ble.

After the former colonists’ victory over the British in 1783, people from greatly dif fer ent backgrounds and of varied nationalities now found reasons to call themselves “Americans.” Amer i ca, as Washington Irving would later note, was a “logocracy,” a polity based in and governed by words, and the po liti cal events of the 1770s presented a distinctive opportunity for writers. The most signi"cant works of the period are po liti cal writings, and among the most notable of these are the essays that the statesmen Alexander Ham- ilton, John Jay, and James Madison wrote for New York newspapers in 1787–88

Syllabus of lectures from the Young Ladies’ Acad emy, in Philadelphia, 1787. Educa- tional opportunities for girls expanded after the American Revolution. The Young Ladies’ Acad emy opened in 1787, attracting great interest from leaders in what was then the nation’s capital.

in support of the new federal Constitution, which are collectively known as The Federalist or The Federalist Papers. The impact of the revolution on the rise of early national lit er a ture can also be seen in the career of Philip Freneau, who aspired to be a full- time writer, combining journalism with belles lettres. Though he failed to sustain himself with his pen, Freneau made numerous contributions to the lit er a ture of the Revolution. His vol- ume Poems Written Chie"y during the Late War (1786) contains notable patriotic works, and his later po liti cal poetry includes a tribute to Thomas Paine.

Women writers, too, expressed a revolutionary po liti cal sensibility. In the most famous letter of her lively and informative correspondence with her husband, John, Abigail Adams exhorted the Second Continental Congress to “remember the Ladies” in the new code of laws they were then framing. John and his fellows largely failed to heed Abigail’s call. However, inspired by Enlightenment ideals of reason and equality, women such as Annis Boudinot Stockton, Judith Sargent Murray, Susanna Rowson, and Hannah Webster Foster wrote works exploring women’s rights as citizens. Murray tackled the subject in her essays on the intellectual capacities of women, whereas Stockton’s poems, as well as the writings of Rowson and Foster, explored the social and legal constraints on women and considered their right to be equal partners in the new nation’s demo cratic experiment. Like such self- consciously “American” productions as Royall Tyler’s play The Contrast ("rst performed 1787) and Franklin’s Autobiography, these works mark the beginning of a new sense of national identity.

Not all the responses to the new order were enthusiastic or uncritical. For example, "ction offered an ave nue for biting social critique. Often consid- ered the "rst American novel, William Hill Brown’s The Power of Sympathy was published in 1789, the year that the "rst government under the new Constitution was established. It tells an anti- utopian tale of incest and sui- cide. Charles Brockden Brown adapted the conventions of Gothic "ction to explore the dangers and limits of demo cratic republicanism in works such as his novella Memoirs of Carwin, the Biloquist (1803–05), a prequel to his better- known novel Wieland; or The Transformation: An American Tale (1798), which develops Carwin’s story in tragic ways. Rowson’s Charlotte Temple (1791) and Foster’s The Coquette (1797) were impor tant precursors of the many popu lar sentimental novels of the nineteenth century— most famously, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s antislavery novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852)— that carried power ful social messages.

Perhaps the most hopeful aspects of the Revolution were represented by Benjamin Franklin, whose reputation continued to grow after his death, in 1790. As parts of his Autobiography appeared in print in 1791 and 1818— the full text " nally became available in 1868— Franklin increasingly came to represent the promise of the Enlightenment in Amer i ca. He was self- educated, social, assured, a man of the world, ambitious, public- spirited, speculative about the nature of the universe, and in matters of religion content “to observe the actual conduct of humanity rather than to debate super natu ral matters that are unprovable”— a stance that John Locke had earlier endorsed. Franklin always presented himself as depending on "rst- hand experience, too worldly- wise to be caught off guard, and minding “the main chance” (i.e., for personal gain), as a Franklinian character in Tyler’s

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The Contrast counsels. These aspects of Franklin’s persona, however, belie another side of him and of the eigh teenth century: an idealistic assumption about the common good. He absorbed this sense partly from the works of Cotton Mather, which he encountered during his Boston youth, and it forms the basis of the American Revolution’s great public documents, especially the Declaration of In de pen dence.

The Revolution established the United States as an in de pen dent nation with ideals such as freedom and equality that were both ambitious and deeply ambiguous. The only people who consistently possessed the right to vote in the new government were white men who owned property. Most African Americans were enslaved, and many Native communities were being pushed off their lands. Yet Revolutionary princi ples appealed to some writers who suffered from their limited application. In 1774, the year she was manumit- ted, the poet Phillis Wheatley wrote a letter to the Mohegan leader and Pres- byterian minister Samson Occom that was later printed in a dozen colonial newspapers. Here Wheatley posited that “in every human Breast, God has implanted a Princi ple, which we call Love of Freedom; it is impatient of Oppression, and pants for Deliverance.” Though they sometimes used lan- guage similar to Wheatley’s, Revolutionary leaders held condicting views about slavery. George Washington, the "rst U.S. president, freed his slaves in his will. Thomas Jefferson, the third president, liberated just "ve slaves, leav- ing the vast majority in bondage at his death. Benjamin Franklin owned slaves for many years. He embraced the antislavery cause late in life, and in 1787 became the president of the "rst abolitionist organ ization in the United States. John Adams, the second  U.S. president, never owned slaves and sought to gradually end the system through legislation, an effort that suc- ceeded in some places. Even Adams, however, was uneasy with the Quaker- led abolitionist movement, whose at times confrontational strategies he believed counterproductive. The rising urgency of the abolitionists redected changing realities. After the inventor Eli Whitney patented the cotton gin in 1794, the slave system gained a new lease on its brutal life. The end of the Atlantic slave trade in 1807 led, not to slavery’s eventual demise as Adams and many others in the founding generation had hoped, but to forms of enslavement that in some ways were even crueler than before.

The conditions for many Native Americans also worsened in the nine- teenth century. Various eastern tribes had sided with the British during the Revolution, driven by their vulnerability to colonial expansion. After the British defeat, they were exposed to the vengeance and greed of white Amer- icans. Entire tribes were systematically displaced from their traditional ter- ritories, pushed ever farther west, or forced onto reservations. In an effort to resist the United States’ encroachments on Native territory, the confederacy headed by Shawnee leader Tecumseh sided with the British in the War of 1812, a two- and- a- half- year condict that resolved issues left from the Revo- lution with a U.S. victory. Meanwhile, Tecumseh’s confederation collapsed after American forces killed him in 1813. “Indian Removal” was vigorously debated in the 1820s, with anti- Removal activism emerging as a major social movement. Eventually the movement failed, and Removal became the policy of the federal government.

In 1820, freedom and equality remained future prospects for multitudes of Americans. Many white men still could not vote unless they owned prop-

erty, though restrictions lessened more quickly over the next de cade as uni- versal white manhood suffrage became a real ity. Women could not vote, and while the educational opportunities for white women were expanding, their legal status remained sharply limited. They were wards of their fathers until marriage, at which point their legal identities were merged with their hus- bands’, so that they could not own property or keep any wages they earned. Yet many people embraced the idea that with the application of intelligence the princi ples of liberty could be extended and the human lot improved. This “progressive” or “perfectibilist” spirit was fostered in some places by newer liberal Churches such as the Unitarians and Universalists, as well as the more established Quakers. Imaginative energy dowed into extending the princi ples of liberty codi"ed by the Revolutionary generation and correcting a variety of institutional and social injustices. In addition to the causes pre- viously mentioned, post- Revolutionary social movements targeted the mis- use of prisons, the use of capital punishment, the existence of war, and the treatment of the blind and disabled. Many works of lit er a ture redected on this progressive sensibility, whether to foster it or to question its premises.

* While at the start of the period covered in this volume “Amer i ca” was

merely notional— and its lit er a ture even more so—by 1820 “American lit er- a ture” had come to mean something fairly speci"c: the poems, short stories, novels, essays, orations, plays, and other works produced by authors who hailed from, or resided in, the United States of Amer i ca. As this list of genres suggests, “lit er a ture” itself had come to resemble its con temporary meaning more closely than it did in 1492. Printed works had become far more acces- sible, giving rise to an increasingly robust literary marketplace that featured both locally produced works and induential writings from across the Atlan- tic. Technological innovations such as the cylinder press created sweeping transformations in the book market, and new kinds of writers ( women, Afri- can Americans, Native Americans, laborers) were "nding outlets for their creations. All the while American lit er a ture continued to be shaped by its formation in the Atlantic world’s crucible of cultures, its distinctive con"gu- ration of the sacred and the secular, the induence of the American Revolu- tion, and the intertwined histories of empire and nation.

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26

BEGINNINGS TO 1820

TEXTS CONTEXTS

Peoples indigenous to the Amer i cas orally perform and transmit vari ous “literary” genres, including speeches, songs, and stories

1000–1300 Anasazi communities inhabit southwestern regions

1492 Christopher Columbus arrives in the Bahamas • An estimated 4–7 million Native Americans in what is now the United States, including Alaska

1493 Columbus, “Letter to Luis de Santangel Regarding the First Voyage”

1500 Native American populations begin to be ravaged by Eu ro pean diseases • Enslaved Africans begin arriving in small numbers

1514 Bartolomé de las Casas petitions Spanish Crown to treat Native American peoples as humanely as other subject populations

1519–21 Cortés conquers Aztecs in Mexico

1526 Spanish explorers bring "rst African slaves to South Carolina

1539 First printing press in the Amer i cas set up in Mexico City • Hernando de Soto invades Florida

1542 Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, The Relation of Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca

1552 Bartolomé de las Casas, The Very Brief Relation of the Devastation of the Indies

1558–1603 Reign of Elizabeth I

1584 Walter Raleigh lands on “island” of Roanoke; names it “ Virginia” for Queen Elizabeth (sometimes called the Virgin Queen)

1603–13 Samuel de Champlain explores the Saint Lawrence River; founds Québec

1607 Jamestown is established in Virginia • Powhatan confederacy saves colonists from starving; teaches them to plant tobacco

1619 Twenty Africans arrive in Jamestown on a Dutch vessel as indentured servants; they are the "rst known Africans in a British colony

1620 May"ower drops anchor in Plymouth Harbor

1621 First Thanksgiving, at Plymouth

Boldface titles indicate works in the anthology.

27

TEXTS CONTEXTS

1624 John Smith, The General History of Virginia, New Eng land, and the Summer Isles

1630 John Winthrop, “A Model of Christian Charity” (pub. 1838)

1630–43 Immigration of En glish Puritans to Mas sa chu setts Bay

1630–50 William Bradford writes Of Plymouth Plantation (pub. 1856)

1634 The "rst En glish settlers arrive in Mary land aboard The Ark and The Dove

1637 Thomas Morton, New En glish Canaan

1637 Pequot War

1640 Bay Psalm Book 1638 Anne Hutchinson banished from Bay Colony for challenging Puritan beliefs

1643 Roger Williams, A Key into the Language of Amer i ca

1642–51 En glish Civil War

1650 Anne Bradstreet, The Tenth Muse 1649 Execution of Charles I

1662 Michael Wigglesworth, The Day of Doom

1660 Restoration of British monarchy

1673–1729 Samuel Sewall keeps his Diary (pub. 1878–82)

1663 Royal Charter granted to Rhode Island (and Providence Plantation)

1675–76 King Philip’s War destroys power of Native American tribes in New Eng land

1681 William Penn founds Pennsylvania

1682 Mary Rowlandson’s Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration

1682–1725 Edward Taylor writing his Preparatory Meditations (pub. 1939, 1960) 1689–97 King William’s War ("rst of

four colonial wars involving France, Britain, and Spain)

1691 New royal charter creates the Province of Mas sa chu setts Bay, which includes Plymouth

1692 Salem witchcraft trials

1702 Cotton Mather, Magnalia Christi Americana

1718 French found New Orleans

1726–56 The Great Awakening

1741 Jonathan Edwards, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God

1741 Vitus Bering discovers Alaska

1755–63 French and Indian Wars

1768 Samson Occom, A Short Narrative of My Life (pub. 1982)

1771–90 Benjamin Franklin continues his Autobiography (Part I pub. 1818)

1773 Phillis Wheatley, Poems on Vari ous Subjects

1773 Boston Tea Party

1774–83 John and Abigail Adams exchange letters (pub. 1840, 1875)

1775–83 American Revolutionary War

28

TEXTS CONTEXTS

1776 Thomas Paine, Common Sense 1776 Declaration of In de pen dence

1780s Annis Boudinot Stockton publishes poems in magazines and newspapers

1782 J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur, Letters from an American Farmer

1783 Britain opens “Old Northwest” (region south of Great Lakes) to United States after Treaty of Paris ends American Revolution

1786 Philip Freneau, Poems

1787 Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia • Royall Tyler, The Contrast

1787 U.S. Constitution adopted

1787–88 The Federalist papers

1789 Olaudah Equiano, The In ter est ing Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano

1789 George Washington elected "rst president

1790 Judith Sargent Murray, On the Equality of the Sexes

1791 Washington, D.C., established as U.S. capital

1797 Hannah Foster, The Coquette

1803–05 Charles Brockden Brown, Memoirs of Carwin

1803 United States buys Louisiana Territory from France

1812–14 War of 1812 (against Eng land)

1819 Washington Irving, Rip Van Winkle 1819 Spain exchanges the Florida Territory for U.S. assumption of $5 million in debts • Missouri asks to be admitted as a slave state, sparking a crisis resolved the next year through the Missouri Compromise

29

Native American Oral Lit er a ture

T he languages, po liti cal economies, and religious beliefs of Native American peoples are extremely diverse, and so are their tales, orations, songs, chants, and other oral genres. Examples of oral works include the trickster tale cycles of the Winnebago Indians (or Ho- Chunks), Apache jokes, Hopi personal naming and grievance chants, Yaqui deer songs, and Yuman dream songs. Many genres have a religious or spiritual dimension, including Piman shamanic chants, Iroquois condo- lence rituals, Navajo curing and blessing chants, and Chippewa songs of the Great Medicine Society. Most of the works were not translated into alphabetic forms until long after the arrival of Eu ro pe ans, and the circumstances of their initial cre- ation and development are largely unknown. The use of written rec ords in the precontact Amer i cas was relatively circumscribed, and Eu ro pean conquerors sys- tematically destroyed the bodies of writing in places such as Tenochtitlán (pres ent- day Mexico City), leaving just a handful of the pictograph codices known as amoxtli to carry forward pre- Columbian practices. Other indigenous American recording devices include Andean quipu, which are colored, knotted strings used to repre- sent a numeric system. In North Amer i ca, painted hides or bark and wampum belts made of shell could serve as prompts for the recitation of tales or in treaty negotia- tions and other ceremonies. These nonalphabetic texts share some of the mne- monic and narrative functions of lit er a ture.

Although the term “lit er a ture” comes from the Latin littera, “letter,” and so has been linked to alphabetic writing, all lit er a ture has roots in the oral arts. In keeping with Aristotle’s Poetics (c. 335 b.c.e.), the earliest surviving work of literary theory, forms of Western lit er a ture have traditionally been grouped into lyric, which takes its name from the lyre, a stringed instrument used by the ancient Greeks to accom- pany a song or recitation; drama, which originated in the religious cultures of ancient Greece and the medieval Christian Church; and epic (more broadly, narra- tive), developed in and for oral per for mance. (The "rst works of Euro- American lit er a ture, the Vinland Sagas of the thirteenth century, are epics.) Rhe toric and oratory, which Aristotle treated separately from the other forms because of their prominent and distinctive place in ancient Greek culture, also involve the spoken word. There are parallels as well as differences between these Aristotelian genres and the types of oral lit er a ture created by the earliest American socie ties.

From "rst contact, Eu ro pe ans were intrigued by indigenous oral per for mances and sought to translate them into alphabetic written forms. Christopher Columbus and the explorers who came after him described the formal speeches of Native leaders, even though they often did not understand their meaning. Over time, Native artists taught Eu ro pe ans and Eu ro pean Americans to recognize other kinds of verbal art, such as creation tales and poetic songs. Eventually collaboration and indigenous authorship became more common. Today scholars are actively study- ing pre- Columbian history and art, and the sources and traditions of the most ancient texts from the American hemi sphere are gradually coming to be better understood.

The archive of Native American oral genres continues to expand as new instances are identi"ed in the written rec ord or transcribed in a modern form. The se lections in this cluster represent some genres that were common in the repertoires of many North American indigenous socie ties before 1820: creation and trickster tales,

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orations, and songs ( here rendered as poems). Native American creation stories serve Native cultures much as the Book of Genesis serves the Judeo- Christian world: they posit a general outlook and offer perspectives on what life is and how to under- stand it. All Native peoples have stories of the earliest times; reprinted here are two, one from the Iroquois of the Northeast and one from the Navajo of the South- west. Like creation stories, trickster tales are among the most ancient ele ments of Native American cultures, and they have survived because they provide both plea- sure and instruction. The term “trickster” is often used to describe a wandering, bawdy, gluttonous, and obscene "gure, a threat to order everywhere. Yet a trickster can also be a culture hero, one who long ago helped establish the order of the world that we know today, and in this way as well trickster tales resemble creation sto- ries. The qualities of this paradoxical "gure— both creator and destroyer of order— are on display in the se lection from the Winnebago trickster cycle included in this section.

Oratory was the "rst Native American genre that Eu ro pe ans recognized as a verbal art. Formalized speech is a common feature of human cultures, notably in diplomatic settings, whether a reception at a Eu ro pean court or a per for mance of an Iroquois condolence ritual. The formalized modes of address that Native Ameri- cans used in their early encounters with Eu ro pe ans were often lavishly described in narratives, such as the account of Sir Francis Drake’s voyage excerpted here. One reason such scenes were central in Renaissance- era accounts is that the writers were imitating classical historiography, with its emphasis on oratory. As set pieces in their narratives, the writers included moving and aesthetically pleasing speeches based more or less loosely on memory and other sources. “Powhatan’s Discourse of Peace and War,” by John Smith, and “King Philip’s Speech,” by William Apess, are reconstructed works that provide narrative drama in their original contexts and stand alone as effective examples of Native eloquence.

The poems included here were transcribed by Euro- Americans in the eigh teenth and early nineteenth centuries, redecting an evolving approach to Native American oral genres. While the three recorders of these works served as diplomats and, in one case, as a missionary, they took an active interest in indigenous verbal arts. At the time, a ballad revival in Britain had awakened a curiosity about oral traditions and popu lar culture, a curiosity that fed into literary Romanticism. Transcriber- authors took indigenous forms from their ritual or other per for mance contexts and brought them in written form to non- Native audiences. These transcribers often collaborated with the artists to pres ent something of the larger contexts and sig- ni"cances of the works to readers.

The se lections in this cluster illustrate the variety of ways that Native American oral lit er a ture has been experienced historically, and suggest some of the pleasures and complexities involved in its reception today. Whether reconstructed from mem- ory, recorded with the aid of a translator, or produced by Native authors, they provide insight into the verbal arts of pre- Columbian Amer i ca as they have sur- vived to the pres ent. The more modern works included here were created with the involvement of indigenous verbal artists, and their sources can be traced to the period before 1820 covered by this volume.

3 1

STORIES OF THE BEGINNING OF THE WORLD

THE IROQUOIS CREATION STORY

T he people known collectively as the Iroquois (as the French called them), or the Five Nations (as the En glish called them), were made up of the Mohawk, Seneca, Oneida, Onondaga, and Cayuga nations. This confederacy may have formed in the thirteenth or fourteenth century. In the eigh teenth century, the Tuscarora of North Carolina joined the confederacy, which became the Six Nations. The heart of Iro- quois country lies in what is now upstate New York, west of the Hudson River. At dif fer ent times in its long history “the ambiguous Iroquois Empire,” as one scholar has termed it, extended around Lake Ontario, including parts of what is now Can- ada, and south into pres ent- day Pennsylvania. The Six Nations called themselves People of the Long house (Haudenosaunee in Seneca, Kanosoni in Mohawk), in ref- erence to their primary type of dwelling. Their long houses were about twenty feet wide and from forty to two hundred feet long, accommodating several families who shared cooking "res. The largest Iroquois towns included as many as two thousand people.

The Iroquois creation story exists in some twenty- "ve written or printed versions, making it one of the best- known instances of Native American oral lit er a ture. The Frenchman Gabriel Sagard "rst translated and transcribed the tale in 1623. Two centuries later, David Cusick became the "rst Native person to write it down. Cusick published the version included here on the eve of Andrew Jackson’s election to the presidency, and he was well aware of Jackson’s stated intention of “removing”

Atotarho. This is one of four engravings that David Cusick included in the second edition (1828) of Sketches of the Ancient History of the Six Nations. It shows the war chief of the Onondagas, Atotarho, said to be a sorcerer, with a twisted body and snakes in his hair. Several times Atotarho rejected pleas from the Great Peacemaker, Deganawidah, and his follower, Hiawatha, that he join them in uniting the Iroquois. Fi nally, after they healed him and combed the tangles from his hair, he agreed and became the traditional “"rekeeper”— tender of the sacred "re—of the Iroquois Confederacy.

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eastern Indians to lands west of the Mississippi. Perhaps because the Iroquois were under intensifying pressure from white settlement, Cusick’s version emphasizes the condict between the twins Enigorio, the good mind, and Enigonhahetgea, the bad mind. Although the story involves monsters and super natu ral events, Cusick calls the work a history, because it tells the history of the Iroquois Confederacy.

David Cusick was born around 1780 on the Oneida Reservation in central New York, in Madison County, to a Tuscorora family. His father, Nicholas, an impor tant leader among his people, was a Christian who had served on the American side dur- ing the Revolution. Educated by the missionary Samuel Kirkland, David Cusick became a physician and an artist. The woodcuts at the front of the second edition (1828) of his Sketches of the Ancient History of the Six Nations are his work. Cusick’s Sketches was well known in its time and served as an impor tant source for Henry Rowe Schoolcraft’s induential Notes on the Iroquois (1847), which shaped the liter- ary culture of the day. In his preface to that work, Schoolcraft wrote that “no nation of the widely spread red race of Amer i ca, has displayed so high and heroic a love of liberty, united with the true art of government, and personal energy and stamina of character, as the Iroquois.”

Part I of Cusick’s Sketches, excerpted here, deals with the foundation and estab- lishment of the Iroquois world. Parts II and III pres ent the ancient Iroquois as defending themselves against both monsters and other tribes by means that may have resonated with the Iroquois defense against expansionist Americans.

The Iroquois Creation Story1

A Tale of the Foundation of the Great Island, Now North Amer i ca;— the Two Infants Born, and the Creation of the Universe

Among the ancients there were two worlds in existence. The lower world was in great darkness;— the possession of the great monster; but the upper world was inhabited by mankind; and there was a woman conceived2 and would have the twin born. When her travail drew near, and her situation seemed to produce a great distress on her mind, and she was induced by some of her relations to lay herself on a mattress which was prepared, so as to gain refreshments to her wearied body; but while she was asleep the very place sunk down towards the dark world.3 The monsters of the great water were alarmed at her appearance of descending to the lower world; in consequence all the species of the creatures were immediately collected into where it was expected she would fall. When the monsters were assembled, and they made consultation, one of them was appointed in haste to search the great deep, in order to procure some earth, if it could be obtained; accordingly the mon- ster descends, which succeeds, and returns to the place. Another requisi- tion was presented, who would be capable to secure the woman from the terrors of the great water, but none was able to comply except a large turtle

1. The text is from the "rst edition of Sketches of the Ancient History of the Six Nations (1827). 2.  I.e., a woman, known as Sky Woman, who became pregnant without sexual activity. “Man- kind”: humans, although they have dif fer ent pow- ers than those of humans as we understand them. “The great monster”: or monsters, unde"ned

creatures. In other versions, the “monsters” are some type of familiar animal; here, Cusick con- veys the mystery and danger in the unformed uni- verse. 3. Other versions have Sky Woman either being pushed out of the upper world or accidentally falling.

came forward and made proposal to them to endure her lasting weight, which was accepted. The woman was yet descending from a great distance. The turtle executes upon the spot, and a small quantity of earth was varnished on the back part of the turtle. The woman alights on the seat prepared, and she receives a satisfaction.4 While holding her, the turtle increased every moment and became a considerable island of earth, and apparently covered with small bushes. The woman remained in a state of unlimited darkness, and she was overtaken by her travail to which she was subject. While she was in the limits of distress one of the infants in her womb was moved by an evil opinion and he was determined to pass out under the side of the par- ent’s arm, and the other infant in vain endeavoured to prevent his design.5 The woman was in a painful condition during the time of their disputes, and the infants entered the dark world by compulsion, and their parent expired in a few moments. They had the power of sustenance without a nurse, and remained in the dark regions. After a time the turtle increased to a great Island and the infants were grown up, and one of them possessed with a gentle disposition, and named Enigorio, i.e. the good mind. The other youth possessed an insolence of character, and was named Enigonhahet- gea, i.e. the bad mind.6 The good mind was not contented to remain in a dark situation, and he was anxious to create a great light in the dark world; but the bad mind was desirous that the world should remain in a natu ral state. The good mind determines to prosecute his designs, and therefore commences the work of creation. At "rst he took the parent’s head, (the deceased) of which he created an orb, and established it in the centre of the "rmament, and it became of a very superior nature to bestow light to the new world, (now the sun) and again he took the remnant of the body and formed another orb, which was inferior to the light (now moon). In the orb a cloud of legs appeared to prove it was the body of the good mind, (parent). The former was to give light to the day and the latter to the night; and he also created numerous spots of light, (now stars): these were to regulate the days, nights, seasons, years, etc. Whenever the light extended to the dark world the monsters were displeased and immediately concealed themselves in the deep places, lest they should be discovered by some human beings. The good mind continued the works of creation, and he formed numerous creeks and rivers on the Great Island, and then created numerous species of animals of the smallest and the greatest, to inhabit the forests, and "shes of all kinds to inhabit the waters. When he had made the universe he was in doubt respecting some being to possess the Great Island; and he formed two images of the dust of the ground in his own likeness, male and female,

4. I.e., she lands safely, without harm. 5. Other versions of the story have Sky Woman give birth to a daughter, who again becomes supernaturally pregnant (perhaps by the spirit of the turtle), and it is she who conceives the twins. The twins argue even in the womb, the Evil Twin deciding not to be born in the normal way but to burst through his mother’s side, which leads to her death. The theme of rival twins is widespread in the Amer i cas. 6. More commonly, the Good Twin is called Tharonhiawagon (Sky- Grasper, Creator, or Upholder of the Heavens), and the Evil Twin is

named Tawiscaron (Evil- Minded, Flint, Ice, Patron of Winter, or vari ous disasters). Cusick’s Enigorio is a rough translation of the Tuscarora word for “good- minded” into Mohawk, and his Enigonhahetgea is an equally rough translation into Seneca, Onondaga, or Cayuga of the Tusca- rora word for “bad- minded.” Cusick has prob ably changed the Tuscarora words best known to him into these other Iroquois languages because they were considered to be more prestigious than Tuscarora, the Tuscaroras having only recently joined the Iroquois Confederacy.

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and by his breathing into their nostrils he gave them the living souls, and named them Ea- gwe- howe, i.e., a real people;7 and he gave the Great Island all the animals of game for their maintenance and he appointed thunder to water the earth by frequent rains, agreeable of the nature of the system; after this the Island became fruitful and vegetation afforded the animals subsis- tence. The bad mind, while his brother was making the universe, went throughout the Island and made numerous high mountains and falls of water, and great steeps, and also creates vari ous reptiles which would be inju- rious to mankind; but the good mind restored the Island to its former con- dition. The bad mind proceeded further in his motives and he made two images of clay in the form of mankind; but while he was giving them exis- tence they became apes;8 and when he had not the power to create man- kind he was envious against his brother; and again he made two of clay. The good mind discovered his brother’s contrivances, and aided in giving them living souls, (it is said these had the most knowledge of good and evil). The good mind now accomplishes the works of creation, notwithstanding the imaginations of the bad mind were continually evil; and he attempted to enclose all the animals of game in the earth, so as to deprive them from mankind; but the good mind released them from con"nement, (the animals were dispersed, and traces of them were made on the rocks near the cave where it was closed). The good mind experiences that his brother was at vari- ance with the works of creation, and feels not disposed to favor any of his proceedings, but gives admonitions of his future state. Afterwards the good mind requested his brother to accompany him, as he was proposed to inspect the game, etc., but when a short distance from their moninal residence,9 the bad mind became so unmanly that he could not conduct his brother any more.1 The bad mind offered a challenge to his brother and resolved that who gains the victory should govern the universe; and appointed a day to meet the contest. The good mind was willing to submit to the offer, and he enters the reconciliation with his brother; which he falsely mentions that by whipping with dags would destroy his temporal life;2 and he earnestly solic- its his brother also to notice the instrument of death, which he manifestly relates by the use of deer horns, beating his body he would expire. On the day appointed the engagement commenced, which lasted for two days: after pulling up the trees and mountains as the track of a terrible whirlwind, at last the good mind gained the victory by using the horns, as mentioned the instrument of death, which he succeeded in deceiving his brother and he crushed him in the earth; and the last words uttered from the bad mind were, that he would have equal power over the souls of mankind after death; and

7. Humans. “Ea- gwe- howe”: Tuscarora term used by speakers of all the languages of the Six Nations; today, it simply means Indian or Indi- ans. 8. Cusick may have seen an ape or a depiction of apes ( there are no apes native to the New World) and deci ded to name them as the creatures made by the Evil Twin in contrast to the humans made by the Good Twin. Some later renditions of the Iroquois creation story also refer to apes at this point in the narrative. 9. Cusick perhaps means their nominal (named

or designated) residence. 1. I.e., the Evil Twin became so rude and obnox- ious that the Good Twin could not lead (“con- duct”) his brother to the appointed place any longer. 2. The Good Twin tells his brother that he can be killed by being beaten with corn stalks, rushes, reeds, or cattails. Cusick calls this a deception; other accounts treat it as a confession of weakness. Next, the Evil Twin admits that he would die if beaten with the antlers of deer.

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he sinks down to eternal doom, and became the Evil Spirit.3 After this tumult the good mind repaired to the battle ground, and then visited the people and retires from the earth.4

3. This event may redect an awareness of the Christian belief in the devil as the ultimate evil spirit, ruler over the lower depths.

4. Other versions go on to say that the Good Twin teaches the people how to grow corn and how to avoid harm by means of prayer and ritual.

THE NAVAJO CREATION STORY

T he Navajo language is closely related to that of some Canadian and Alaskan tribes, redecting the history of its speakers. The Navajo Nation, or Din’e— ”the People,” migrated to the Southwest from more northerly points somewhere between six hundred and a thousand years ago. There they learned farming and weaving from long- settled Pueblo peoples and silverworking skills from Mexicans. They were "rst called Navajo— from Apachu de Nabajo, or Apaches Who Cultivate Fields—by Spanish invaders in the sixteenth century. The Navajo Nation today is the second- largest indigenous group in the United States, outnumbered only by the Cherokees. It occupies an area in Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah larger than the combined area of Mas sa chu setts, New Hampshire, and Vermont.

The Navajo story of the “emergence” of the People and their establishment of a world is ancient and complex. It describes a progressive creation that occurs in four or "ve stages, depending on the version, and culminates in the emergence of the “glitter- ing world,” that is, the world we now inhabit. The tale highlights the constant work involved to develop and sustain relations of harmony and balance among the gods, the People, and all other sentient beings. Especially central is the cultivation of a relationship of harmony and balance between husband and wife, redected in the relationship between First Man and First Woman. The presence of the Nádleeh, that is, “ those who have the spirit of both male and female,” is impor tant to this balance. The Nádleeh are the "rst of "ve pairs of twins born to First Man and First Woman. They are either hermaphrodites or men performing what was regarded as women’s work, for which they are in no way stigmatized. Indeed, they are credited with creat- ing pottery and basketry, two arts of great signi"cance in Navajo culture.

Other impor tant relationships in the tale include the ties between the Din’e and the Hashch’ééh Dine’é, the Holy People, who are instrumental in creating human- kind and provide instruction in matters of life and death, teaching the Din’e about evil as well as good; and with the Kiis’áanii, that is, the Pueblo peoples. Animals and other nonhuman creatures play signi"cant roles in the tale, as when the trickster Coyote (Mai’i) produces a dood that threatens to wipe out the People.

The Navajo have produced a rich body of oral lit er a ture— narrative and poetry— including several written versions of the Navajo creation story. The earliest written version is from the late nineteenth century. Printed here is a con temporary retelling by the Navajo teacher and writer Irvin Morris. Born in 1958, Morris is a member of the Tobaahi, or Water’s Edge clan of the Navajo Nation. The recipient of an MFA in creative writing from Cornell University and a doctorate in American Indian Studies from the State University of New York at Buffalo, he teaches at Din’e Col- lege in Tsaile, Arizona. Morris begins his book From the Glittering World— a blend of history, "ctionalized memoir, and Navajo stories— with this version of the cre- ation story to situate the non- Navajo reader.

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Hajíínéí1

(The Emergence)

Alk’idáá’ jinni.2 It happened a long time ago, they say. In the begin- ning there was only darkness, with sky above and water below. Then by some mysterious and holy means, sky and water came together. When they touched, that’s when every thing began. That was the First World, which was like an island doating in a sea of mist. It was red in color and it was an ancient place. There were no people living there, only Nílch’i Dine’é,3 who existed in spiritual form. They could travel like the wind. There were also Hashch’ééh Dine’é, the Holy People, whose form and beauty we have inher- ited. There was no sun or moon, and there were no stars. The only source of light was the sky, which comprised four sacred colors and glowed with a dif fer ent hue and lit the world from a dif fer ent direction according to the time of day. When the eastern sky glowed white, it was considered dawn, and the Nílch’i Dine’é would awaken and began to stir in preparation for the day. When the southern sky glowed blue, it was considered day, and the Nílch’i Dine’é went about their daily activities. When the western sky was yellow, it was considered eve ning, and the Nílch’i Dine’é put away their work and amusements. When the northern sky turned black, it was considered night, and the Nílch’i Dine’é lay down and went to sleep. At the center of that First World, there was a place called Tóbilhaask’id4 where water welled up out of the ground in a great fountain, which was the source of three rivers dowing toward the east, south, and west. No river dowed toward the north, the direction of death and darkness. There were twelve groups of Nílch’i Dine’é dwelling in twelve places in that First World, with four groups living in each of the three directions. No one lived to the north. These Nílch’i Dine’é had lived there from the very beginning. They were called ants, drag- ondies, beetles, bats, and locusts, but they were spiritual beings, not insects or animals. The waters surrounding their world were inhabited by four power ful guardians, Tééholtsódii (the Water Monster) to the east, Dééhtsoh dootl’izh (Blue Heron) to the south, Ch’al (Frog) to the west, and Ii’ni’dzil ligai (White Mountain Thunder) to the north. These spiritual beings had lived peacefully and amicably in that world for a long time; but after a while trou ble arose, and it was because of adultery.5 The First World was a holy place, and the immoral be hav ior of the Nílch’i Dine’é angered the water guardians, who did not like what they saw. They did not like the deceit, jealousy, and turmoil that resulted from the debauchery. “Do you not like living here?” the guardians scolded. “Do you not value this place? If you cannot behave properly, then you must leave.” Three times they were warned by the guardians, but the Nílch’i Dine’é did not listen. When they

1. The text is from chapter  1 of Irvin Morris, From the Glittering World (1997). 2. A long time ago, they say, or it is said. Morris begins his written per for mance of the creation story with this traditional opening to remind his readers that he is telling a story told many times before. The editor is indebted to Irvin Morris for help with the annotations to this text.

3. Super natu ral or spiritual beings associated with wind or air. 4. Place where Streams Come Together; an ele- vated place such as a hill or mound, perhaps sug- gesting a raised fountain. 5. Even for spiritual beings, adultery destroys the harmony between husbands and wives.

6. Four, sometimes as two pairs of two, is an impor tant pattern number for the Navajos, signi- fying completion or wholeness. 7. Super natu rals of the earliest times, who were

precursors of today’s swallows. 8. Super natu rals who were the precursors of today’s grasshoppers.

corrupted themselves a fourth time,6 Ii’ni’dzil ligaii, the guardian being from the north, who hadn’t spoken before, said, “ Because you do not listen, you must depart at once!” But the Nílch’i Dine’é were lost in their wickedness and did not heed. Seeing this, the guardians were outraged and turned their backs on them; they refused to listen to excuses or pleas for forgive- ness. The Nílch’i Dine’é had to be punished. One morning they saw some- thing on the horizon. It looked like a ring of snowy mountains surrounding them, an unbroken wall of white higher and wider than they could dy across. When it came closer, they saw what it was. The water guardians had sent a great dood. Frightened, the Nílch’i Dine’é soared into the air and dew in circles until they reached the sky, but then they discovered that it was smooth and solid. They tried to break through the rigid surface, but they could not even make a scratch. Just as they were ready to give up in despair, a strange blue head emerged from the sky. “Go to the east,” it said. The Nílch’i Dine’é went to the east and dew through the narrow opening into a blue world, the Second World. There they looked around and saw that the land was barren and dat. They did not see anyone living nearby. Scouts were sent out to see if there were others like themselves further out, but after two days they returned saying they could "nd no one. But then, one morning, a small group of blue beings appeared. The Nílch’i Dine’é saw that these blue beings were like themselves— with legs, feet, bodies, and wings like theirs— and they realized that they could understand their language. The blue beings, who were Swallows,7 welcomed the newcomers and addressed them as kinsmen. They promised to be friends and allies forever, but before long one of the Nílch’i Dine’é took liberties with the head Swal- low’s wife. That treachery was quickly discovered, and bad feelings imme- diately arose. “Traitors!” the Swallows cried. “We took you in as friends and relatives, and this is how you repay us? Could this be why you were asked to leave the lower world?” The Swallows demanded that they leave immediately, and once again the Nílch’i Dine’é took dight. Once again they encountered a solid sky and could not "nd an entrance. Just when they were about to give up, a white head mysteriously appeared. “Go to the south,” it said. There the locusts led them into the Third World, which was white, through a crooked opening. Again scouts were sent out, and again they found noth- ing. But in time they discovered that this world was inhabited by Grasshop- pers.8 The Nílch’i Dine’é begged the Grasshoppers to let them stay. As before, the hosts addressed the Nílch’i Dine’é as friends and kin and mingled with them. All went well for a while, but then one of the Nílch’i Dine’é grew weak and committed adultery with the wife of a Grasshopper. The Grasshoppers were incensed and told the Nílch’i Dine’é to leave. This time, when they encountered the impenetrable sky, a red head materialized. “Go to the west,” it said. When they entered into the Fourth World through a winding entrance hole in the west, they saw that it was black and white. No one greeted them. The land appeared empty. But they saw four great snow- capped mountains in the distance: one to the east, another to the south, a third to the west, and the fourth to the north. The scouts were dispatched to see if anyone

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9. Kiis’áanii means “ People Who Live in Upright Houses.” The ancient Pueblo peoples lived in vari ous structures, including pit- houses with

roofs supported by upright timbers. 1. The Hashch’ééh Dine’é, mentioned in the opening lines of the tale.

lived on those mountains, but they failed to reach the "rst three. When they went to the northern mountain, however, they returned with fascinating news. A strange group of beings lived there, dwelling in holes in the ground. These were Kiis’áanii, the Pueblo peoples, who were living in pit- houses.9 The Nílch’i Dine’é immediately set out to greet the inhabitants of this new land, who welcomed them and prepared a feast of corn, squash, pumpkins, and beans. This time, the Nílch’i Dine’é resolved to behave themselves. And true to their word, they conducted themselves well, and their days passed uneventfully. Then one day a voice was heard calling from the east. Three times the voice called, each time coming closer. Upon the fourth call, four mysterious beings appeared. They were Holy People: White Body, who is called Hashch’éélti’í (Talking God); Blue Body, known as Tóneinilii ( Water Sprinkler); Yellow Body, called Hasch’éélitsoi (Calling God); and Black Body, referred to as Hashch’é lizhin (Fire God). These Holy People did not speak, but they tried to communicate with motions and gestures. However, the Nílch’i Dine’é did not understand them. Thus the Holy People appeared, four times over four days. On the fourth day, when the Nílch’i Dine’é still could not understand the signs, Black Body " nally spoke: “We want to make more people, but in forms that are more pleasing to us,” he said. “You have bodies like us, but you also have the teeth, feet, and claws of insects and four- leggeds. And you smell bad. But "rst, you must purify yourselves before we return.” And so the Nílch’i Dine’é washed themselves and dried their limbs with sacred cornmeal, white for men and yellow for women. On the twelfth day the deities returned, bringing with them two buckskins and two ears of corn. Blue Body and Black Body carried two buckskins, one of which they laid on the ground. Yellow Body carried two perfect ears of corn, white and yellow, and laid them on the buckskin. The second buckskin was placed over the corn and the Nílch’i Dine’é were told to stand back, and the sacred wind entered between the buckskins. As the wind blew, Mirage People appeared and walked around the buckskins. On the fourth turn, the ears of corn moved. When the buckskin was lifted, a man and woman lay where the ears of corn had been. The white ear had been turned into a man and the yellow ear had been turned into a woman. These were Áltsé Hastiin and Áltsé Asdzáán, First Man and First Woman. These were the "rst real people, "ve- "ngered beings, and they were made in the image of the Holy People.1 The Holy People then instructed these new people to build a shelter. First Man and First Woman entered the shelter and thus became husband and wife. First Man was given a rock crystal— the symbol of clear thought—to burn for "re, and First Woman was given turquoise— which represents the power of speech—to burn. In four days a pair of twins were born to them, and these "rst children were Nádleeh, those who have the spirit of both male and female. Only the "rst pair were like that. In four days another pair of twins were born, and so on. In all, "ve pairs of twins were born to them. Four days after the birth of the pair of twins, the Holy People took First Man and First Woman away to the east, to the sacred mountains where they dwelt. There, First Man and First Woman remained for four days. When they returned, the Holy People then took all their children to the east and kept them for

2. House God and Talking God, respectively, although these gods also have other names. 3. Like the Holy People, super natu ral beings. 4. Power ful godlike creatures. 5. In other versions of the story, First Woman’s

remark is a very bawdy suggestion that not First Man but joosh (the vagina) is, by her indirect rea- soning, responsible for successful hunting and the provision of food. First Man’s response rep- resents an excessive loss of self-control.

four days too. It is during this time that they all received instructions from the Holy People. They learned how to live a good life and to conduct them- selves in a manner be"tting their divine origins. But because the Holy People were capable of good and evil, they also learned about the terrible secrets of witchcraft as well. After they returned, First Man and First Woman were occasionally seen wearing masks resembling Hashch’éhooghan and Hashch’éélti’í.2 While thus attired they were holy and they prayed for good things for the people: long life, ample rain, and abundant harvests. Those ceremonies were passed on to bless and protect future generations; the prayers, songs, and rituals have not changed from that time. When it came time to marry, the children of First Man and First Woman joined with the Kiis’áanii and the children of the Mirage People3 and others. In four days, children were born to these couples, and in four days those descendants bore offspring also. Soon the land was populated with the growing progeny of First Man and First Woman. They planted great "elds of corn and other crops. They also built an earthen dam, and the Nádleeh were appointed to be its guardians; while they watched over the dam they created beautiful and useful things, pottery and basketry, and the people praised these inven- tions. For eight years they lived in comfort and peace. Their days passed uneventfully. Then one day, they saw a strange thing: they saw the sky reach down, while at the same time the earth rose up to meet it. From the point of their union sprang two beings now known as Coyote and Badger,4 the children of the sky. Their arrival portended both good and bad things for the people. The people prospered for many years, but one day First Woman and First Man had an argument. First Man was a great hunter and provided much food, but First Woman made an ungrateful remark that insulted and greatly angered First Man.5 He left her and went to the other side of the "re and remained there all night. In the morning First Man called together all the men and told them about First Woman’s insult. “Let’s teach the women a lesson,” he said. “We shall gather our tools and belongings and move away. They’ll learn they can’t get along without us after all.” The men agreed and gathered up their tools and all the things they had made. First Man, recall- ing the industriousness of the Nádleeh, invited them to come along, and they brought their grinding stones, baskets, cooking utensils, and other useful implements. The men crossed the river and quickly set up a new camp. They cut brush and built new shelters and hunted. When they were hungry, the Nádleeh cooked for them. Across the river, the planted "elds they had left behind were ripening. Soon the women harvested corn and other crops and made ready for the winter. Their harvest was abundant and they ate well. They pitied the men, who had to do without fresh corn, squash, and beans. In the eve nings, they came down to the river and called to the men and taunted them. “How are you getting along over there? Do you remember the taste of roasted corn?” The men had brought seeds with them, but since it was so late in the season, they had not planted. That winter they ate mostly cakes and mush made from the cornmeal that the Nádleeh had brought

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6. The threat to the world by dood appears in many Native American creation stories and pre- cedes awareness of the account in the biblical

Book of Genesis. 7. Other versions of the story have Squirrel and his wife providing help.

along. The following spring, however, the men planted "elds larger than those planted by the women. And this time, without the men’s help in the "elds, the women’s harvest was not as plentiful as before. That winter they did not taunt the men. By the fourth year, the men could not eat all the food they grew, and most of it was left in the "elds. The women, however, began to run short of food and soon were facing starvation. They had also begun to miss the com pany of men. The more brazen used objects such as cacti and smooth stones to satisfy themselves, and some say the monsters that later plagued the people were the result of that practice. In time, First Man realized that they could not live apart forever. He realized that the people were in danger of dying out if they did not reproduce. One eve ning he called to First Woman and they talked about this. They deci ded that unless they became one people again they would dis appear. So the women crossed the river on rafts and joined the men again, and there was great rejoicing and feasting. However, it was soon discovered that three women were missing, a woman and her two daughters. The people thought they had drowned, but they had been captured instead by the Water Monster, Tééholtsódii. The people called to the Holy People for help, and White Body and Blue Body appeared with two shells. They set these shells on the water and caused them to spin, and the water under neath the spinning shell opened up to reveal the four- chambered dwelling where the monster lived. Accompanied by Coy- ote a man and woman descended to the dwelling and searched the chambers— "rst the one to the east, which was a room of dark waters, then the one to the south, which was made of blue waters; then the one to the west, which was made of yellow waters— and found nothing. Then they entered the north chamber, which was the one made of waters of all colors, and saw the women in there with Tééholtsódii. They also saw the children of Water Monster scampering about. The rescue party reclaimed the women and left, but unbeknownst to them Coyote stole one of the Water Monster’s children and tucked it under his robe. When they returned, they were greeted joyously and the people feasted again. The following morning, however, the people noticed something disturbing. They saw many animals running past as if deeing something. All day this went on, and by the third day the com- motion had greatly increased. On the morning of the fourth day, they noticed a white light shining up from the horizon. They sent Locust to investigate and he returned with startling news. The strange light was coming from a wall of water that was converging on them from all sides.6 The people ded to a nearby hill and thought about what they should do. They cried and proclaimed that this was surely their doom. Then one of the people sug- gested they plant the seed of a tree so they might climb on it and escape the danger. Squirrel produced two seeds, juniper and piñon, and planted them.7 The seeds sprouted and grew quickly, but the trees soon began to branch out and dattened into squat shapes. Then Weasel produced two seeds also, pine and spruce, and planted them. The seeds grew into tall trees, but they soon tapered into points and stopped growing. The people wailed in despair. But then someone called out that two people were approaching, an old man and a young man. These men went directly to the summit and did

8. Coyote’s responsibility for the fact that humans will eventually die is stated in many Native Amer- ican stories.

9. The Pueblo peoples, introduced earlier. 1. Sierra Blanca Peak. 2. Mount Taylor.

not speak but sat down facing east, the young man "rst and the old man behind him. The old man then produced seven buckskin bags and spoke: “I have gathered soil from the seven sacred mountains in these bundles and I shall give them to you, but I cannot help you further.” The people turned to the young man and he said, “I will help you, but you must not watch what I do.” So the people left him and waited at a distance. When the young man " nally called them, they saw that he had spread out the contents of the bags of soil and planted in it thirty- two reeds with thirty- two joints. He began to sing, and as he did the reeds began to grow, sending roots deep into the earth. The thirty- two reeds fused into one great reed, which soon towered into the sky. The young man told them to enter a hole that appeared on the east side of the reed. As the doodwaters crashed together outside, the hole closed up and sealed tightly. The reed commenced to grow quickly, lifting the people above the rising water. The Holy People accompanied them. When the reed had reached the sky, Black Body secured the reed against the sky with a plume from his headdress. This sky was solid and there was no opening in its surface, so Locust, who was good at making holes, began to scratch and dig. Eventually he broke through, and the people rejoiced. Turkey was the last to climb out, and his white- tipped tail feathers remain to this day as a reminder of their escape. One by one, the people climbed out of the giant reed into this, the Fifth World, the Glittering World.

The dood immediately receded after Coyote’s mischief was discovered and Tééholtsódii’s baby was returned. Again, the people sent out scouts. Finding the land to their liking, they proceeded to dwell upon it, planting "elds and making their homes just as in the lower worlds. There were many people by this time and they nearly "lled the land. The Holy People performed a test to determine their future. A magic shell was tossed onto a body of water; if it doated, the people would live forever; if it sank, each person would even- tually die. The object doated and the people rejoiced, but then Coyote tossed a second stone into the water. It sank, and the people wailed. Then Coyote said, “If we do not die, we shall soon overrun the world. There will be no room for us all.”8 The people saw the wisdom of his words and reluctantly agreed. One morning not long afterward, they noticed that one of the Nádleeh had stopped breathing. This was the "rst death. With instructions from the Holy People, they prepared the body and placed it in a rocky crevice. At about the same time, there was a dispute with the Kiis’áanii9 over the seed corn that had been brought from the lower world, and the groups separated because of it. First Man and First Woman, with the help of the Holy People, marked the bound aries of this new homeland with four sacred mountains made of the soil brought from the lower worlds. Three other mountains were set inside the bound aries. In an elaborate ceremony, the mountains were named and dressed. Sisnaajiní1 was set to the east; it was fastened to the earth with a bolt of lightning and decorated with white shell, white lightning, white corn, dark clouds, and male rain. A cover of sheet lightning was placed over the mountain to protect and adorn it, and Rock Crystal Boy and Rock Crystal Girl were made to dwell there. Tsoodzil2 was set to the south; it was fastened to the earth with a great stone knife, adorned with turquoise,

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3. Never Has Thawed on Top, or San Francisco Peak. 4. Big Mountain Sheep, or the La Plata Mountains. 5. Mountain Around Which Things Happen[ed], or Travelers Circle, with suggestions of the con- tinuity of life.

6. The En glish meaning is not entirely clear. Ch’o means “spruce,” but it can also refer to directionality or looking outward. According to Morris, it refers to a vantage point from which one can look out and see every thing. 7. Butte Piled on a Butte.

dark mist, and female rain, and over it all was placed a covering of eve ning sky. One Turquoise Boy and One Corn Kernel Girl were given a home there. Dook’ o’ooslííd3 was set to the west; it was fastened to the earth with a sun- beam, ornamented with abalone shell, black clouds, and yellow corn, and the whole was covered with yellow clouds. White Corn Boy and Yellow Corn Boy were settled there. Dibé ntsaa4 was set to the north; it was fastened to the earth with a rainbow and decorated with jet and dark mist, and it was cov- ered with a sheet of darkness. Pollen Boy and Grasshopper Girl were made to live there. The inner mountains were also named and sancti"ed. Dzilná’oodilii5 was fastened to the earth with a sunbeam, adorned with dark clouds and male rain, and Soft Goods Boy and Soft Goods Girl were given a home there. Ch’óol’í’ii6 was fastened to the earth with a streamer of rain and decorated with pollen, dark mist, and female rain. Boy Who Produces Jewels and Girl Who Produces Jewels were made to dwell there. Ak’idahnást’ání7 was fas- tened to the earth with a Mirage Stone, ornamented with black clouds and male rain, and guarded by Mirage Stone Boy and Red Coral Girl. In the Fifth World, as in the lower world, the people lived in accordance with the daily cycles of the four changing colors of the sky. But now more light was needed, so the sun and the moon were created. The old man who had helped them escape from the dood in the lower world was given the honor of bearing the sun across the sky, and the young man who had also helped them escape was given the privilege of carry ing the moon at night. In return for their sacri- "ce and labor, they were given immortality and power ful sacred names. In the Fifth World, the people began "lling the land and many places were named. The land was rich and the people prospered upon it, but the land soon grew dangerous. Naayéé’, monsters, were roaming the land, and they were hunting and eating the people. In time there were only a few people left. These monsters were the offspring of stones and cacti, the result of some women’s conduct during the separation of the sexes: Deelgééd, the horned monster; Tsélkáá’adah hwídziiltaal’ii, who kicked people off cliffs; Bináá’ yee ’aghánii, who killed with his eyes; and Tsénináhilééh, the dying monster who lived atop Tsébit’a’ii. In time there were only four people left in the world. These people took refuge near Tsélgai, White Rock. First Man went out to pray every day at dawn. One morning he heard a strange sound like the cries of a baby coming from atop Ch’óol’í’ii. For three mornings when he went out to pray he heard the sounds coming from atop the cloud- shrouded peak. On the fourth morning, Talking God appeared and instructed him to ascend the mountain. Atop the highest peak First Man found an infant who was Asdzáán Nádleehí, Changing Woman, the most beloved of all the deities. He took her home, and because she was holy, she reached maturity in four days. After a time, Changing Woman left to live on Dzilná’oodilii. While she was living there she bathed in a waterfall and basked in the Sun. In four days, she gave birth to twin boys, who were the sons of the waterfall and the Sun. They were Tóbágíshchíní (Born- for- Water), and Naayéé’neizghání (Monster

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Slayer). They quickly grew to maturity also. With the help of the Spider Woman, Jóhonaa’éí, and other helpers, the Twins rid the land of the mon- sters. Naayéé’neizghání went out and slew the monsters, while Tóbágísh- chíní remained home and conducted protection ceremonies to ensure victory. One of the last monsters to perish was Yéi’iitsoh, the Giant. He was also a son of the Sun; however, because he was killing people the Sun deci- ded to help the Twins to stop him. Jóhonaa’éí gave the Twins weapons made of lightning, and he taught them magic that enabled them to travel high over the land on the arching rainbow, which is the road used by the Holy People. After the defeat of the Giant only four monsters remained, Old Age, Poverty, Hunger, and Cold, but the Twins spared these creatures so the people would not grow complacent as immortals. When the land was safe, the Sun asked Changing Woman to become his wife. She did not consent at "rst, but after the Sun made promises that she would not be leaving her people forever, she agreed. He built a beautiful house for her to dwell in, on an island in the western sea. Before she left, she made more people by rubbing skin from under her arms and from under her breasts. These were the four original clans: Honágháahnii, Bit’ahnii, Hashtl’ishnii, and Tódích’ii’nii.8 Changing Woman took some of these people to live with her, but they soon grew lone- some and they left her home in the western sea to return to Dinétah. The Twins left this world to dwell with the Holy People when their work was "n- ished. They left this world from a place where two great rivers meet. They promised that they would always keep watch over the people; it is said that they can still be seen sometimes, doating in the mist above the spot where the waters converge. The Holy People also returned to their home, but they are always within reach through the songs and prayers they gave us. Lastly, a sacred rainbow was placed around Diné bikéyah, our homeland, for protection and as a blessing and a reminder of the sacredness of this land. It is said that so long as Diné remain within this boundary, we will have the blessings and protection of the Holy People. So long as we remain within these bound aries we will be living in the manner that the Holy People prescribed for us.

8. There are a great many Navajo clans, but these four are the original clans created from Changing Woman’s body. “Honágháahnii”: the One Walks Around You clan. “Bit’ahnii”: the Folded Arms

People, the Leaf clan, or the Under His Cover clan. “Hashtl’ishnii”: the Mud clan. “Tódich’ili’nii”: the Bitter Water People.

TRICKSTER TALES

FROM THE WINNEBAGO TRICKSTER CYCLE

T he Winnebagos, or Ho- Chunks, came to their homelands—at the western end of what is now Green Bay, Wisconsin— from some more southeasterly location perhaps a thousand years ago. They lived by hunting and "shing; by planting corn, squash, and beans; and by gathering wild rice and berries. The French explorer Jean Nicolet is credited as their "rst Eu ro pean contact, in 1634. The En glish name “Winnebago” comes from the Algonquian people’s name for the tribe, “ people of

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the dirty water,” which may simply refer to the strong smell of Wisconsin’s Lake Winnebago and Fox River in the summer. The Ho- Chunks’ name for themselves, “Ho- chungra,” means “ people of the parent speech,” or “ people of the Big Voice.” Now geo graph i cally divided— mainly between Wisconsin and Nebraska—as a consequence of colonization and the provisions of nineteenth- century treaties, the Ho- Chunks claim that their ancestors played an impor tant role in the creation and preservation of the large, mysterious earthen mounds that exist along the Missis- sippi River and throughout the Midwest.

Winnebago culture is rich in trickster tales. The story reprinted here comes from The Trickster: A Study in American Indian My thol ogy (1956), a collection of forty- nine Winnebago trickster stories edited by the American cultural anthro- pologist and folklorist Paul Radin. A student of the eminent anthropologist Franz Boas, Radin had begun collecting Winnebago stories in the early 1900s. He did not hear the tales narrated, nor did he know the identity of the narrator. Rather, as he notes, “an older individual” told the stories in Ho- Chunk to a Winnebago con sul- tant, Sam Blowsnake, who wrote them down. Then Radin, Blowsnake, and another Winnebago man, Oliver LaMere, collaborated on the translation into En glish, which Radin, following Boas’s methods, published in literate prose.

The tale of the trickster and the talking “laxative bulb” is widespread throughout Native American cultures. The trickster (or “the old man,” as he is twice called here) interacts with plants and trees, sometimes defying them and at other times relying on them to get oriented. He also engages with humans, who foolishly listen to him and then suffer the consequences. The trickster plays the fool with the greatest vigor. His efforts to escape the consequences of his actions— and to recover from those conse- quences once his efforts fail— propel the narrative. To cleanse and restore himself, the trickster performs some hard and extremely unpleasant work that involves a re orientation toward the natu ral world. Apart from the entertainment value of its scatological humor and farcical ele ments, this story teaches numerous lessons, such as do not be gullible and do not think of yourself as superior to natu ral forces.

[Trickster and the Talking Bulb]

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As he went wandering around aimlessly he suddenly heard someone speaking. He listened very carefully and it seemed to say, “He who chews me will defe- cate; he will defecate!” That was what it was saying. “Well, why is this person talking in this manner?” said Trickster. So he walked in the direction from which he had heard the speaking and again he heard, quite near him, some- one saying: “He who chews me, he will defecate; he will defecate!” This is what was said. “Well, why does this person talk in such fashion?” said Trick- ster. Then he walked to the other side. So he continued walking along. Then right at his very side, a voice seemed to say, “He who chews me, he will defe- cate; he will defecate!” “Well, I won der who it is who is speaking. I know very well that if I chew it, I will not defecate.” But he kept looking around for the speaker and " nally discovered, much to his astonishment, that it was a bulb on a bush. The bulb it was that was speaking. So he seized it, put it in his mouth, chewed it, and then swallowed it. He did just this and then went on.

“Well, where is the bulb gone that talked so much? Why, indeed, should I defecate? When I feel like defecating, then I shall defecate, no sooner. How could such an object make me defecate!” Thus spoke Trickster. Even as he

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spoke, however, he began to break wind. “Well this, I suppose, is what it meant. Yet the bulb said I would defecate, and I am merely expelling gas. In any case I am a great man even if I do expel a little gas!” Thus he spoke. As he was talking he again broke wind. This time it was really quite strong. “Well, what a foolish one I am. This is why I am called Foolish One, Trickster.” Now he began to break wind again and again. “So this is why the bulb spoke as it did, I suppose.” Once more he broke wind. This time it was very loud and his rectum began to smart. “Well, it surely is a great thing!” Then he broke wind again, this time with so much force, that he was propelled forward. “Well, well, it may even make me give another push, but it won’t make me defecate,” so he exclaimed de"antly. The next time he broke wind, the hind part of his body was raised up by the force of the explosion and he landed on his knees and hands. “Well, go ahead and do it again! Go ahead and do it again!” Then, again, he broke wind. This time the force of the expulsion sent him far up in the air and he landed on the ground, on his stomach. The next time he broke wind, he had to hang on to a log, so high was he thrown. However, he raised himself up and, after a while, landed on the ground, the log on top of him. He was almost killed by the fall. The next time he broke wind, he had to hold on to a tree that stood near by. It was a poplar and he held on with all his might yet, nevertheless, even then, his feet dopped up in the air. Again, and for the second time, he held on to it when he broke wind and yet he pulled the tree up by the roots. To protect himself, the next time, he went on until he came to a large tree, a large oak tree. Around this he put both his arms. Yet, when he broke wind, he was swung up and his toes struck against the tree. However, he held on.

After that he ran to a place where people were living. When he got there, he shouted, “Say, hurry up and take your lodge down, for a big warparty is upon you and you will surely be killed! Come let us get away!” He scared them all so much that they quickly took down their lodge, piled it on Trick- ster, and then got on him themselves. They likewise placed all the little dogs they had on top of Trickster.1 Just then he began to break wind again and the force of the expulsion scattered the things on top of him in all directions. They fell far apart from one another. Separated, the people were standing about and shouting to one another; and the dogs, scattered here and there, howled at one another. There stood Trickster laughing at them till he ached.

Now he proceeded onward. He seemed to have gotten over his trou bles. “Well, this bulb did a lot of talking,” he said to himself, “yet it could not make me defecate.” But even as he spoke he began to have the desire to defecate, just a very little. “Well, I suppose this is what it meant. It certainly bragged a good deal, however.” As he spoke he defecated again. “Well, what a braggart it was! I suppose this is why it said this.” As he spoke these last words, he began to defecate a good deal. After a while, as he was sitting down, his body would touch the excrement. Thereupon he got on top of a log and sat down there but, even then, he touched the excrement. Fi nally, he climbed up a log that was leaning against a tree. However, his body still touched the excre- ment, so he went up higher. Even then, however, he touched it so he climbed still higher up. Higher and higher he had to go. Nor was he able to stop def- ecating. Now he was on top of the tree. It was small and quite uncomfortable. Moreover, the excrement began to come up to him.

1. These actions are inappropriate responses to the supposed danger.

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24

Even on the limb on which he was sitting he began to defecate. So he tried a dif fer ent position. Since the limb, however, was very slippery he fell right down into the excrement. Down he fell, down into the dung. In fact he dis- appeared in it, and it was only with very great dif"culty that he was able to get out of it. His raccoon- skin blanket was covered with "lth, and he came out dragging it after him. The pack he was carry ing on his back was cov- ered with dung, as was also the box containing his penis.2 The box he emp- tied and then placed it on his back again.

25

Then, still blinded by the "lth, he started to run. He could not see anything. As he ran he knocked against a tree. The old man cried out in pain. He reached out and felt the tree and sang:

“Tree, what kind of a tree are you? Tell me something about yourself!” And the tree answered, “What kind of a tree do you think I am? I am an

oak tree. I am the forked oak tree that used to stand in the middle of the valley. I am that one,” it said. “Oh, my, is it pos si ble that there might be some water around here?” Trickster asked. The tree answered, “Go straight on.” This is what it told him. As he went along he bumped up against another tree. He was knocked backwards by the collision. Again he sang:

“Tree, what kind of a tree are you? Tell me something about yourself!” “What kind of a tree do you think I am? The red oak tree that used to stand

at the edge of the valley, I am that one.” “Oh, my, is it pos si ble that there is water around here?” asked Trickster. Then the tree answered and said, “Keep straight on,” and so he went again. Soon he knocked against another tree. He spoke to the tree and sang:

“Tree, what kind of a tree are you? Tell me something about yourself!” “What kind of a tree do you think I am? The slippery elm tree that used

to stand in the midst of the others, I am that one.” Then Trickster asked, “Oh, my, is it pos si ble that there would be some water near here?” And the tree answered and said, “Keep right on.” On he went and soon he bumped into another tree and he touched it and sang:

“Tree, what kind of a tree are you? Tell me something about yourself!” “What kind of a tree do you think I am? I am the basswood tree that used

to stand on the edge of the water. That is the one I am.” “Oh, my, it is good,” said Trickster. So there in the water he jumped and lay. He washed himself thoroughly.

It is said that the old man almost died that time, for it was only with the great- est dif"culty that he found the water. If the trees had not spoken to him he cer- tainly would have died. Fi nally, after a long time and only after great exertions, did he clean himself, for the dung had been on him a long time and had dried. After he had cleansed himself he washed his raccoon- skin blanket and his box.

2. That the trickster carries his penis in a box was established in earlier stories. It is this box that he washes at the end of the next section of the story.

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1. The text is from The World Encompassed by Sir Francis Drake, Being His Next Voyage to That to Nombre de Dios (reprint, 1854).

ORATORY

FROM THE WORLD ENCOMPASSED BY SIR FRANCIS DRAKE

I n 1577–80, the En glish explorer Sir Francis Drake (c. 1542–1596) circumnavi-gated the world in his ship the Golden Hind, landing in 1579 on what is now the California coast. The notes of the ship chaplain, Francis Fletcher, were compiled and published in 1628 as The World Encompassed by Sir Francis Drake, and the fol- lowing excerpt from that volume is Fletcher’s account of the landing. The Coast Miwok people who "gure in the se lection inhabited the areas north of pres ent- day San Francisco, including Marin and southern Sonoma counties. They lived in vil- lages of up to several hundred people that were located in sheltered places near fresh water. In the late sixteenth century, Spanish galleons began making trips between Mexico and the Philippines, traveling along this stretch of coast. The Miwoks’ recep- tion of Drake’s com pany may have been informed by earlier meetings with groups of Spaniards.

This account illustrates the period’s conventions for representing early encoun- ters between Natives and Eu ro pe ans. Some ele ments of the narrative resemble descriptions of formal diplomacy in Eu ro pean courts, as when the king and his entourage move in a pro cession to the En glish fort. Other features of the account are strikingly unfamiliar, such as the self- mutilating dance that ensues. The narra- tive concludes with an abrupt shift as the orations that puzzle Drake (“our Gen- eral”) and his men are suddenly revealed to contain “supplications, that he would take the province and kingdom into his hand, and become their king and patron.” Drake did, in fact, claim the area for Queen Elizabeth I, naming it Nova Albion (“New Great Britain”).

There is ample reason to think that the Miwoks’ request that the En glish rule them did not happen but is instead a mistranslation designed to encourage support for the colonial enterprise among the narrative’s readers. Exploration narratives generally were written to achieve par tic u lar goals, such as advancing the career of the author or the expedition leader or shaping an approach to colonization. But while this scene includes a suspicious appeal and spontaneous conversation that call the credibility of the whole account into question, the narrative remains valu- able for its texture and details. The pro cess of teasing out the plausible from the implausible is one of the in ter est ing challenges of reading exploration narratives.

From The World Encompassed by Sir Francis Drake1

* * * Against the end of three days more (the news having the while spread itself farther, and as it seemed a great way up into the country), were assembled the greatest number of people which we could reasonably imagine to dwell within any con ve nient distance round about. Amongst the rest the king him- self, a man of a goodly stature and comely personage, attended with his

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guard of about 100 tall and warlike men, this day, viz.,2 June 26, came down to see us.

Before his coming, were sent two ambassadors or messengers to our Gen- eral, to signify that their Hióh, that is, their king, was coming and at hand. They in the delivery of their message, the one spoke with a soft and low voice, prompting his fellow; the other pronounced the same, word by word, after him with a voice more audible, continuing their proclamation (for such it was) about half an hour. Which being ended, they by signs made request to our General, to send something by their hands to their Hióh or king, as a token that his coming might be in peace. Our General willingly satis"ed their desire; and they, glad men, made speedy return to their Hióh. Neither was it long before their king (making as princely a show as possibly he could) with all his train came forward.

In their coming forwards they cried continually after a singing manner, with a lusty courage. And as they drew nearer and nearer towards us, so did they more and more strive to behave themselves with a certain comeliness and gravity in all their actions.

In the forefront came a man of a large body and goodly aspect, bearing the scepter or royal mace (made of a certain kind of black wood, and in length about a yard and a half) before the king. Whereupon hanged two crowns, a bigger and a less, with three chains of a marvellous length, and often doubled, besides a bag of the herb Tabáh.3 The crowns were made of knitwork, wrought upon most curiously with feathers of divers4 colours, very arti"cially placed, and of a formal fashion. The chains seemed of a bony sub- stance, every link or part thereof being very little, thin, most "nely bur- nished, with a hole pierced through the midst. The number of links going to make one chain, is in a manner in"nite; but of such estimation it is amongst them, that few be the persons that are admitted to wear the same; and even they to whom its lawful to use them, yet are stinted5 what number they shall use, as some ten, some twelve, some twenty, and as they exceed in number of chains, so thereby are they known to be the more honorable personages.

Next unto him that bore this scepter, was the king himself with his guard about him; his attire upon his head was a caul of knitworke,6 wrought upon somewhat like the crowns, but differing much both in fashion and perfect- ness of work; upon his shoulders he had on a coat of the skins of conies,7 reaching to his waist; his guard also had each coats of the same shape, but of other skins; some having cauls likewise stuck with feathers, or covered over with a certaine down, which groweth up in the country upon an herb much like our lettuce, which exceeds any other down in the world for "neness, and being layed upon their cauls, by no winds can be removed. Of such estimation is this herb amongst them, that the down thereof is not lawful to be worn, but of such persons as are about the king (to whom also it is permitted to wear a plume of feathers on their heads, in sign of honour), and the seeds are not used but only in sacri"ce to their gods. After these, in their order, did follow the naked sort of common people, whose hair being long, was gathered into a

2. Abbreviation for videlicet: that is to say, namely (Latin). 3. Tobacco. 4. Vari ous.

5. Restricted in. 6. A knitted headdress, resembling a hairnet. 7. Rabbits.

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8. I.e., Tabáh: tobacco. 9. The rush bowls mentioned previously, here compared to punchbowls used at Christmas.

bunch behind, in which stuck plumes of feathers; but in the forepart only single feathers like horns, every one pleasing himself in his own device.

This one thing was observed to be general amongst them all, that every one had his face painted, some with white, some black, and some with other colours, every man also bringing in his hand one thing or other for a gift or pres ent. Their train or last part of their com pany consisted of women and children, each woman bearing against her breast a round basket or two, hav- ing within them divers things, as bags of Tobâh,8 a root which they call Petáh, whereof they make a kind of meal, and either bake it into bread, or eat it raw; broiled "shes, like a pilchard; the seed and down aforenamed, with such like.

Their baskets were made in fashion like a deep bowl, and though the matter were rushes, or such other kind of stuffe, yet was it so cunningly handled, that the most part of them would hold water: about the brims they were hanged with pieces of the shells of pearls, and in some places with two or three links at a place, of the chains forenamed: thereby signifying that they were vessels wholly dedicated to the only use of the gods they wor- shipped; and besides this, they were wrought upon with the matted down of red feathers, distinguished into divers works and forms.

In the mean time, our General having assembled his men together (as fore- casting the danger and worst that might fall out) prepared himself to stand upon sure ground, that we might at all times be ready in our own defence, if any thing should chance other wise than was looked for or expected.

Wherefore every man being in a warlike readiness, he marched within his fenced place, making against their approach a most warlike show (as he did also at all other times of their resort), whereby if they had been desperate enemies, they could not have chosen but have conceived terror and fear, with discouragement to attempt anything against us, in beholding of the same.

When they were come somewhat near unto us, trooping together, they gave us a common or general salutation, observing in the mean time a gen- eral silence. Whereupon, he who bore the scepter before the king, being prompted by another whom the king assigned to that of"ce, pronounced with an audible and manly voice what the other spoke to him in secret, continu- ing, whether it were his oration or proclamation, at the least half an hour. At the close whereof there was a common Amen, in sign of approbation, given by every person: and the king himself, with the whole number of men and women (the little children only remaining behind) came further down the hill, and as they came set themselves again in their former order.

And being now come to the foot of the hill and near our fort, the scepter bearer, with a composed countenance and stately carriage began a song, and answerable thereunto observed a kind of mea sures in a dance: whom the king with his guard and every other sort of person following, did in like manner sing and dance, saving only the women, who danced but kept silence. As they danced they still came on: and our General perceiving their plain and simple meaning, gave order that they might freely enter without interruption within our bulwark. Where, after they had entered, they yet continued their song and dance a reasonable time, their women also following them with their was- sail bowls9 in their hands, their bodies bruised, their faces torn, their duges,

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breasts, and other parts bespotted with blood, trickling down from the wounds, which with their nails they had made before their coming.

After that they had satis"ed, or rather tired themselves in this manner, they made signs to our General to have him sit down; unto whom both the king and divers others made several orations, or rather, indeed, if we had understood them, supplications, that he would take the province and king- dom into his hand, and become their king and patron: making signs that they would resign unto him their right and title in the whole land, and become his vassals in themselves and their posterities: which that they might make us indeed believe that it was their true meaning and intent, the king himself, with all the rest, with one consent and with great reverence, joy- fully singing a song, set the crown upon his head, enriched his neck with all their chains, and offering unto him many other things, honoured him by the name of Hyóh. Adding thereunto (as it might seem) a song and dance of triumph; because they were not only visited of the gods (for so they still judged us to be), but the great and chief God was now become their God, their king and patron, and themselves were become the only happy and blessed people in the world.

These things being so freely offered, our General thought not meet to reject or refuse the same, both for that he would not give them any cause of mistrust or disliking of him (that being the only place, wherein at this pres- ent, we were of necessity enforced to seek relief of many things), and chiedy for that he knew not to what good end God had brought this to pass, or what honour and pro"t it might bring to our country in time to come.

Wherefore, in the name and to the use of her most excellent majesty, he took the scepter, crown, and dignity of the said country into his hand; wish- ing nothing more than that it had lain so "tly for her majesty to enjoy, as it was now her proper own, and that the riches and trea sures thereof (where- with in the upland countries it abounds) might with as great conveniency be transported, to the enriching of her kingdom here at home, as it is in plenty to be attained there; and especially that so tractable and loving a people as they showed themselves to be, might have means to have manifested their most willing obedience the more unto her, and by her means, as a mother and nurse of the Church of Christ, might by the preaching of the Gospel, be brought to the right knowledge and obedience of the true and everliving God.

The ceremonies of this resigning and receiving of the kingdom being thus performed, the common sort, both of men and women leaving the king and his guard about him, with our General, dispersed themselves among our people, taking a diligent view or survey of every man; and "nding such as pleased their fancies (which commonly were the youn gest of us), they presently enclosing them about offered their sacri"ces unto them, crying out with la men ta ble shriekes and moans, weeping and scratching and tearing their very desh off their faces with their nails; neither were it the women alone which did this, but even old men, roaring and crying out, were as violent as the women were.

We groaned in spirit to see the power of Satan so far prevail in seducing these so harmeless souls, and laboured by all means, both by showing our great dislike, and when that served not, by violent withholding of their hands from that madness, directing them (by our eyes and hands lift up towards heaven) to the living God whom they ought to serve; but so mad were they upon their idolatry, that forcibly withholding them would not prevail (for as

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soon as they could get liberty to their hands again, they would be as violent as they were before) till such time, as they whom they worshipped were con- veyed from them unto the tents, whom yet as men besides themselves, they would with fury and outrage seek to have again.

After that time had a little quali"ed their madness, they then began to show and make known unto us their griefs and diseases which they carried about them; some of them having old aches, some shrunk sinews, some old sores and chancred ulcers, some wounds more lately received, and the like; in most la men ta ble manner craving help and cure thereof from us; making signs, that if we did but blow upon their griefs, or but touched the diseased places, they would be whole.

Their griefs we could not but take pity on them, and to our power desire to help them: but that (if it pleased God to open their eyes) they might under- stand we were but men and no gods, we used ordinary means, as lotions, emplasters,1 and unguents, most "tly (as far as our skills could guess) agree- ing to the natures of their griefs, beseeching God, if it made for his glory, to give cure to their diseases by these means. The like we did from time to time as they resorted to us.2

Few were the days, wherein they were absent from us, during the whole time of our abode in that place; and ordinarily every third day they brought their sacri"ces, till such time as they certainly understood our meaning, that we took no plea sure, but were displeased with them; whereupon their zeal abated, and their sacri"cing, for a season, to our good liking ceased; not- withstanding they continued still to make their resort unto us in great abun- dance, and in such sort, that they oft- times forgot to provide meat for their own sustenance; so that our General (of whom they made account as of3 a father) was fain to perform the of"ce of a father to them, relieving them with such victuals as we had provided for our selves, as mussels, seals, and such like, wherein they took exceeding much content; and seeing that their sac- ri"ces were displeasing to us, yet (hating ingratitude) they sought to recom- pence us with such things as they had, which they willingly enforced upon us, though it were never so necessary or needful for themselves to keep.

They are a people of a tractable, free, and loving nature, without guile or treachery; their bows and arrows (their only weapons, and almost all their wealth) they use very skillfully, but yet not to do any great harm with them, being by reason of their weakeness more "t for children than for men, send- ing the arrows neither far off nor with any great force: and yet are the men commonly so strong of body, that that which 2 or 3 of our men could hardly bear, one of them would take upon his back, and without grudging carry it easily away, up hill and down hill an En glish mile together: they are also exceeding swift in running, and of long continuance, the use whereof is so familiar with them, that they seldom go, but for the most part run. One thing we observed in them with admiration, that if at any time they chanced to see a "sh so near the shore that they might reach the place without swim- ming, they would never, or very seldom, miss to take it.

* * *

1. Plasters, i.e., preparations with medicinal properties that were spread on the skin, where they hardened.

2. Came to us for aid. 3. I.e., they regarded as.

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POWHATAN’S DISCOURSE OF PEACE AND WAR

P owhatan was a power ful confederation of Indian tribes in the Chesapeake Bay region of pres ent- day Virginia. In the early 1600s, the Powhatan confederacy occupied an area that was roughly one hundred miles on each side. They called the area Tsenacommacah, and it had a precontact population of roughly twenty- "ve thousand. By 1607, when Captain John Smith arrived with the expedition sent by the Virginia Com pany of London to establish Jamestown, the population had shrunk by some ten thousand people, largely from diseases borne to Tsenacom- macah by previous Eu ro pe ans. These colonists included a Spanish mission that had been briedy established there in 1571 and the En glish “lost colony” at Roanoke, which had vanished by 1590. Despite its diminished population, the Powhatan con- federacy remained a regional power involved in far- dung trade networks. It included more than thirty tribes, each with its own chief, or werowance. The tribal alliance was held together mainly by marriage and in some cases by coercion.

Powhatan was the adopted name of the paramount chief, or mamanatowick, of the Powhatans at the time of Jamestown’s settlement. His given name was Wahun- sunacock, and he was the father of Pocohantas. Chief Powhatan was prob ably in his mid sixties when, in late 1607, he captured Smith and held him for under a month, which was long enough for Smith to learn a great deal about the Powhatans and their leader. (For more on Smith, see the se lection of his writings later in this volume.) Smith and Chief Powhatan struck an alliance, and the En glish and the Powhatans became trading partners. The food and other assistance that the Pow- hatans supplied to Jamestown allowed the En glish colony to survive through its "rst winter, though more than half the men and boys in the small colony died even with their aid, leaving only thirty- eight of the original hundred and forty- four colo- nists. The metal tools, copper kettles, and glass beads provided by the En glish enabled the Powhatans to establish trade dominance over inland tribes.

“Powhatan’s Discourse of Peace and War” appears in Smith’s General History of Virginia, New Eng land, and the Summer Isles (1624), as the opening speech in his account of the tense negotiations that led to this trade agreement. In the full text, Smith describes the speech as a “subtle discourse” intended to deceive and manipulate the En glish, to which he responded with considerable bluster and thinly veiled threats. Prob ably based at least in part on Smith’s memories of these events, the discourse and the entire scene are informed by the conventions of classical historiography, which often features set speeches that distill key ele ments and add drama to the narrative. As reconstructed by Smith, Powhatan’s speech makes a compelling case for peaceful rela- tions, even as questions of its authenticity and sincerity add layers of complexity.

Powhatan’s Discourse of Peace and War1

Captain Smith, you may understand that I having seen the death of all my people thrice, and not any one living of those three generations but my self;2

1. The text is from John Smith, The Generall Historie of Virginia, New- Eng land, and the Sum- mer Isles: With the Names of the Adventurers, Planters, and Governors from Their First Begin-

ning, Ano: 1584. To This pres ent 1624 (1624). 2. Powhatan refers to deaths from both disease and warfare.

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I know the difference of peace and war better than any in my country. But now I am old and ere long must die, my brethren, namely Opitchapam, Ope- chancanough, and Kekataugh, my two sisters, and their two daughters, are distinctly each others successors. I wish their experience no less than mine, and your love to them no less than mine to you. But this bruit from Nandsa- mund,3 that you are come to destroy my country, so much affrighteth all my people as they dare not visit you. What will it avail you to take that by force you may quickly have by love, or to destroy them that provide you food? What can you get by war, when we can hide our provisions and dy to the woods? whereby you must famish by wronging us your friends. And why are you thus jealous of our loves seeing us unarmed, and both do, and are willing still to feed you, with that you cannot get but by our labours? Think you I am so simple, not to know it is better to eat good meat, lie well, and sleep quietly with my women and children, laugh and be merry with you, have copper, hatchets, or what I want being your friend: than be forced to dy from all, to lie cold in the woods, feed upon acorns, roots, and such trash, and be so hunted by you, that I can neither rest, eat, nor sleep; but my tired men must watch, and if a twig but break, every one crieth there commeth Captain Smith: then must I dy I know not whither: and thus with miserable fear, end my miserable life, leaving my pleasures to such youths as you, which through your rash unadvisedness may quickly as miserably end, for want of that, you never know where to "nd. Let this therefore assure you of our loves, and every year our friendly trade shall furnish you with corn, and now also, if you would come in friendly manner to see us, and not thus with your guns and swords as to invade your foes.

3. Noise or rumor from Nansemond, another tribe of the Chesapeake region.

KING PHILIP’S SPEECH

K ing Philip was the En glish name adopted by the Wampanoag leader Metacom (c. 1638–1676), who led an alliance against the En glish colonies in Mas sa chu setts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut in what became known as King Philip’s War (1675– 76). Philip was the son of Massassoit, who had maintained peaceful relations with the Plymouth colonists since their arrival in 1620. In 1662, when Philip became the leader of the Wampanoag alliance, longstanding grievances over land and regional governance had transformed the region into a powder keg. War erupted in 1675, after the Plymouth colony executed three Wampanoags. Philip’s alliance exacted great costs on the En glish but was defeated after Philip was killed in the Great Swamp Fight of August 1676.

After the war, there was an outpouring of printed works giving En glish perspec- tives on the condict, most famously the popu lar captivity narrative of Mary Row- landson (reprinted later in this volume), which "rst appeared in 1682 and was republished many times. Rowlandson’s descriptions of her interactions with Philip show him to have been in some mea sure generous and sympathetic toward her, even as he held her prisoner. Other reports on the war were less respectful toward the defeated leader, notably the account of Captain Benjamin Church, whose celebrity as

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a military hero arose partly from his role in Philip’s death. In Entertaining Passages Relating to Philip’s War (1716), Church described Philip’s dead body as looking like that of “a doleful, great, naked, dirty beast” and told how he had ordered the corpse drawn and quartered. Philip’s head was staked on a pole in Plymouth, where it remained for years.

It was the kind of dehumanization of Philip found in Entertaining Passages that the Pequot leader and Methodist minister William Apess set out to correct in 1836, when he delivered his “Eulogy on King Philip” at the Odeon in Boston. “King Philip’s Speech” is from that eulogy. Speeches offering a Native American perspec- tive on Amer i ca’s colonial wars had become a popu lar genre after Thomas Jefferson published “Chief Logan’s Speech” (included in this volume). Claiming descent from Philip, Apess described him as a leading American, the equal of George Washing- ton and Alexander the Great, a “hero of the wilderness” and martyr to a lost cause who deserved universal re spect. By way of introduction, Apess explained that “this famous speech of Philip was calculated to arouse them to arms, to do the best they could in protecting and defending their rights.”

King Philip’s Speech1

Brothers,— You see this vast country before us, which the great Spirit gave to our fathers and us; you see the buffalo and deer that now are our support.— Brothers, you see these little ones, our wives and children, who are looking to us for food and raiment; and you now see the foe before you, that they have grown insolent and bold; that all our ancient customs are disregarded; the trea- ties made by our fathers and us are broken, and all of us insulted; our council "res disregarded, and all the ancient customs of our fathers; our brothers murdered before our eyes, and their spirits cry to us for revenge. Brothers, these people from the unknown world will cut down our groves, spoil our hunting and planting grounds, and drive us and our children from the graves of our fathers, and our council "res, and enslave our women and children.

1. The text is from Eulogy on King Philip, as Pronounced at the Odeon, in Federal Street, Boston, by the Rev. William Apes[s], An Indian (1836).

POETRY

T hese three se lections of early Native American poetry have been excerpted from prose accounts published between 1765 and 1820. They were chosen to illustrate vari ous styles and sources. Interest in oral lit er a tures was strong on both sides of the Atlantic in the eigh teenth century, with works such as Thomas Percy’s Reliques of Ancient En glish Poetry (1765) and Sir Walter Scott’s Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (1802) representing British traditions. In North Amer i ca, the appeal of indigenous chants and songs for non- Native readers arose in part from a desire to establish a Native equivalent to the ancient poetry of the British isles that Percy and Scott had collected in their volumes. After the American Revolution, a new nationalism in search of local origins provided an additional motive for collecting and enjoying Native poetry.

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The Cherokee war song included here appears as “A Translation of the War- Song. Caw waw noo dee, &c.” in The Memoirs of Lieut. Henry Timberlake (1765). Histori- cally, the Cherokees occupied a broad territory in the Southeast, including areas of what are now the Carolinas, Georgia, and Tennessee. Timberlake had served in the Second Virginia Regiment under Col o nel William Byrd, whose ethnographic and naturalist writings are excerpted elsewhere in this volume. Timberlake’s Memoirs are a rich source of information about mid- eighteenth- century Cherokee culture and society. He had traveled to Tennessee to conduct peace negotiations in 1761, and he later accompanied Ostenaco and two other Cherokee chiefs to London. Of the songs printed in his volume, Timberlake wrote: “Both the ideas and verse are very loose in the original, and they are set to as loose a music, many composing both tunes and song off hand, according to the occasion; tho’ some tunes, especially those taken from the northern Indians, are extremely pretty, and very like the Scotch.”

The Reverend John Heckewelder, a Moravian missionary, printed the Lenape war song included here as “The Song of the Lenape Warriors Going Against the Enemy” in his History, Manners, and Customs of the Indian Nations Who Once Inhabited Pennsylvania and the Neighbouring States (1818). The Lenapes (also known as the Lenni Lenapes or Delaware Indians) were ancient inhabitants of the Middle Atlantic region, occupying parts of what later became several states, including New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and New York. Their diplomatic and mediation skills were widely admired. Heckewelder spent more than a de cade as a missionary to the Lenape in Pennsylvania and Ohio, and he later worked for the United States Senate as a treaty negotiator. The novelist James Fenimore Cooper drew heavi ly on Heck- ewelder’s History in his Leatherstocking Tales. Heckewelder’s introduction to the song included here emphasizes the impossibility of capturing the vocal tones and musical accompaniment of the per for mance, which he compares to the dif"cul- ties of describing “the melodies of the ancient Greeks.” He nevertheless reports how the performers sang the words “in short lines . . . most generally in detached parts, as time permits and as the occasion or their feelings prompt them. Their accent is very pathetic [i.e., sad], and the whole, in their language, produces con- siderable effect.”

The two Cherokee songs of friendship included here are drawn from a letter writ- ten by Dr. Samuel L. Mitchill in 1817 to the secretary of the American Antiquarian Society (AAS), which was published three years later in Archaeologia Americana, a volume of the society’s Transactions. In his letter, Mitchill describes how his inter- actions with the Osages and Cherokees during his ser vice as the chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs led to the transcription of several songs and poems. Of the per for mance of the Cherokee songs of friendship he notes, “They repeat the song and chorus until they are tired.” The words of these songs were written down for him by “Mr. Hicks, a Cherokee of the half blood, with his own hand,” while they were in the com pany of several military of"cers and Double Head, a Cherokee warrior. Mitchill sent the songs to the AAS as part of an ongoing effort by that organ ization to rec ord indigenous American history and culture.

Cherokee War Song1

Where’er the earth’s enlighten’d by the sun, Moon shines by night, grass grows, or waters run, Be’t known that we are going, like men, afar,

1. The text is from The Memoirs of Lieut. Henry Timberlake (Who Accompanied Three Cherokee Indi- ans to Eng land in the Year 1762) (1765).

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In hostile "elds to wage destructive war; Like men we go, to meet our country’s foes, 5 Who, woman- like, shall dy our dreaded blows; Yes, as a woman, who beholds a snake, In gaudy horror, glisten thro’ the brake, Starts trembling back, and stares with wild surprize, Or pale thro’ fear, unconscious, panting, dies.2 10 Just so these foes, more tim’rous than the hind, Shall leave their arms and only clothes behind; Pinch’d by each blast, by ev’ry thicket torn, Run back to their own nation, now its scorn: Or in the winter, when the barren wood 15 Denies their gnawing entrails nature’s food, Let them sit down, from friends and country far, And wish, with tears, they ne’er had come to war. We’ll leave our clubs,3 dew’d with their country show’rs, And, if they dare to bring them back to ours, 20 Their painted scalps shall be a step to fame, And grace our own and glorious country’s name. Or if we warriors spare the yielding foe, Torments at home the wretch must undergo.4 But when we go, who knows which shall return, 25 When growing dangers rise with each new morn? Farewell, ye little ones, ye tender wives, For you alone we would conserve our lives! But cease to mourn, ’tis unavailing pain, If not fore- doom’d, we soon shall meet again. 30 But, O ye friends! in case your comrades fall, Think that on you our deaths for vengeance call; With uprais’d tomahawks pursue our blood, And stain, with hostile streams, the conscious wood, That pointing enemies may never tell 35 The boasted place where we, their victims, fell.5

2. “As the Indians "ght naked, the vanquished are constrained to endure the rigours of the weather in their dight, and live upon roots and fruit, as they throw down their arms to accelerate their dight thro’ the woods” [Timberlake’s note]. 3. “It is the custom of the Indians, to leave a club something of the form of a cricket- bat, but with their warlike exploits engraved on it, in their enemy’s country, and the enemy accepts the de"ance, by bringing this back to their coun- try” [Timberlake’s note]. 4. “The prisoners of war are generally tortured by the women, at the party’s return, to revenge the death of those that have perished by the wretch’s countrymen. This savage custom has been so

much mitigated of late, that the prisoners were only compelled to marry, and then generally allowed all the privileges of the natives. This len- ity, however, has been a detriment to the nation; for many of these returning to their countrymen, have made them acquainted with the country- passes, weaknesses, and haunts of the Cherokees; besides that it gave the enemy greater courage to "ght against them” [Timberlake’s note]. 5. “Their custom is generally to engrave their victory on some neighbouring tree, or set up some token of it near the "eld of battle; to this their enemies are here supposed to point to, as boast- ing their victory over them, and the slaughter that they made” [Timberlake’s note].

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1. The text is from History, Manners, and Cus- toms of The Indian Nations Who Once Inhabited Pennsylvania and the Neighbouring States (1818; rev. ed. 1876).

2. Heckewelder wrote “Whom.” 1. The texts are from “Letter from Dr.  Sam- uel L. Mitchill,” Transactions and Collections of the American Antiquarian Society (1820).

Lenape War Song1

O poor me! Who2 am going out to "ght the enemy, And know not whether I shall return again, To enjoy the embraces of my children And my wife. 5 O poor creature! Whose life is not in his own hands, Who has no power over his own body, But tries to do his duty For the welfare of his nation. 10 O! thou Great Spirit above! Take pity on my children And on my wife! Prevent their mourning on my account! Grant that I may be successful in this attempt— 15 That I may slay my enemy, And bring home the trophies of war To my dear family and friends, That we may rejoice together. O! take pity on me! 20 Give me strength and courage to meet my enemy, Suffer me to return again to my children, To my wife And to my relations! Take pity on me and preserve my life 25 And I will make to thee a sacri"ce.

Two Cherokee Songs of Friendship1

Song the First

Can, nal, li, èh, ne- was-tu. A friend you resemble.

Chorus. Yai, ne, noo, way. E,noo,way,hā.

Song the Second

Ti, nai, tau, nā, cla, ne- was-tu. Brothers I think we are.

Chorus. Yai, ne, noo, way. E,noo,way,hā.

58

CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS 1451–1506

I n Washington Irving’s widely read biography of Christopher Columbus, "rst pub-lished in 1828, the acclaimed American writer described the Eu ro pean adventurer as possessing an “ardent and enthusiastic imagination which threw a magni"cence over his whole course of thought.” “In his letters and journals,” Irving observed, “instead of detailing circumstances with the technical precision of a mere navigator, he notices the beauties of nature with the enthusiasm of a poet or a painter.” Pop u- lar travel narratives by Marco Polo and Sir John Mandev ille prob ably induenced Columbus’s plans for his historic "rst voyage and shaped his prose style, Irving remarked, and he described as well a “visionary” cast of mind that was evident in every thing Columbus did. Summing up the meaning of the adventurer’s dramatic life, Irving wrestled with the fact that the consequences of this visionary quality were often destructive to himself and those around him— not least due to his role in mak- ing slavery a central part of the encounter between Eu rope and the Amer i cas.

Born into a family of wool workers near the Mediterranean port of Genoa, Colum- bus turned to the sea as a young man, developed a plan to "nd a commercially viable Atlantic route to Asia, and in 1492 won the support of the Spanish monarchs, Fer- dinand and Isabella, for this “enterprise of the Indies.” His unexpected discoveries led to three later voyages intended to establish Spanish power in the West Indies and in South Amer i ca. What seemed an auspicious beginning was followed by a long series of disasters and disappointments. His willingness to enslave the natives, and his lack of interest in indigenous social and cultural forms, had devastating con- sequences. What had appeared to him to be friendly relations with the Taino Indi- ans on the island of Hispaniola in 1492 turned sour as the settlers demanded gold and sexual partners from their hosts. On Columbus’s return to the island in 1494, none of the Eu ro pe ans remained alive. A new settlement fell into disorder while he was away in Cuba and Jamaica. In 1496, he was forced to return to Spain to clear his name of po liti cally motivated charges made against him by Eu ro pean rivals involved in the colonies. A third voyage, begun in 1498, took him for the "rst time to the South American mainland. The lushness of nature there made him believe he was near paradise, but when he returned to Hispaniola, he discovered the Spanish settlers on that island in open rebellion against his authority. Able to reach a truce only at the expense of the Taino Indians, who were virtually enslaved by the rebels, Columbus soon found himself under arrest. He was sent in chains to Spain in 1500 to answer yet more charges. His last voyage, intended to restore his tarnished reputa- tion, resulted in a long period of suffering in Panama and shipwreck in Jamaica. Dur- ing this time, Columbus underwent a virtual breakdown, even suffering delusional periods. Rescued at last, he returned to Eu rope and died not long afterward. His discoveries in the West Indies were left in a state of violent disorder.

The supposed Journal of Columbus’s "rst voyage is actually a summary prepared by the cleric and reformer Bartolomé de las Casas (also pres ent in this volume). However, several documents regarding the four voyages survive from Columbus’s hand. His letter to Luis de Santangel, a court of"cial who helped secure "nancing for the "rst voyage, provides a more au then tic account. This so-called Letter of Discovery served as the basis for the "rst printed description of Amer i ca, initially issued in 1493 and widely translated and reprinted across Eu rope. Here, Columbus writes of marvels in a manner that becomes entwined with the language of posses-

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sion. A memorandum regarding the second voyage, intended by Columbus for the Spanish monarchs (whose responses to each point also survive), offers useful insights into the emerging ambiguities and prob lems of the Hispaniola colony. For the third and fourth voyages, three letters from Columbus, two sent to the Crown and one to a woman of the Spanish court, detail his deepening worldly and spiritual trou bles. His emotional fragility and spiritual despair are effectively conveyed in the excerpt from his letter to Ferdinand and Isabella regarding his fourth voyage that is included here along with the letter to Santangel.

The following texts are from Select Documents Illustrating the Four Voyages of Columbus (1930–33), translated and edited by Cecil Jane.

Letter of Discovery

[At sea, February 15, 1493] Sir, As I know that you will be pleased at the great victory with which Our Lord has crowned my voyage, I write this to you, from which you will learn how in thirty- three days, I passed from the Canary Islands to the Indies with the deet which the most illustrious king and queen our sovereigns gave to me. And there I found very many islands "lled with people innumerable, and of them all I have taken possession for their highnesses, by proclamation made and with the royal standard unfurled, and no opposition was offered to me. To the "rst island which I found I gave the name San Salvador,1 in remem- brance of the Divine Majesty, Who has marvelously bestowed all this; the Indians call it “Guanahani.” To the second I gave the name Isla de Santa María de Concepción; to the third, Fernandina; to the fourth, Isabella; to the "fth, Isla Juana,2 and so to each one I gave a new name.

When I reached Juana I followed its coast to the westward, and I found it to be so extensive that I thought that it must be the mainland, the province of Catayo.3 And since there were neither towns nor villages on the seashore, but only small hamlets, with the people of which I could not have speech because they all ded immediately, I went forward on the same course, thinking that I should not fail to "nd great cities and towns. And at the end of many leagues,4 seeing that there was no change and that the coast was bearing me north- wards, which I wished to avoid since winter was already beginning and I proposed to make from it to the south, and as moreover the wind was carry- ing me forward, I determined not to wait for a change in the weather and retraced my path as far as a certain harbor known to me. And from that point I sent two men inland to learn if there were a king or great cities. They trav- eled three days’ journey and found an in"nity of small hamlets and people without number, but nothing of importance. For this reason they returned.

I understood suf"ciently from other Indians, whom I had already taken, that this land was nothing but an island. And therefore I followed its coast eastwards for one hundred and seven leagues to the point where it ended.

1. The precise identity of the Bahamian island Columbus named San Salvador is not known today, although many theories have been put forward, most positing that Watling Island is the likeliest site. 2. Of these four islands, only the identity of

Juana (Cuba) is today certain. 3. I.e., China (or “Cathay”). 4. Re nais sance units of mea sure ment were inex- act. Columbus’s “league” was prob ably about four miles.

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And from that cape I saw another island distant eigh teen leagues from the former, to the east, to which I at once gave the name “Española.”5 And I went there and followed its northern coast, as I had in the case of Juana, to the eastward for one hundred and eighty- eight great leagues in a straight line. This island and all the others are very fertile to a limitless degree, and this island is extremely so. In it there are many harbors on the coast of the sea, beyond comparison with others which I know in Christendom, and many rivers, good and large, which is marvelous. Its lands are high, and there are in it very many sierras and very lofty mountains, beyond comparison with the island of Tenerife.6 All are most beautiful, of a thousand shapes, and all are accessible and "lled with trees of a thousand kinds and tall, and they seem to touch the sky. And I am told that they never lose their fo liage, as I can understand, for I saw them as green and as lovely as they are in Spain in May, and some of them were dowering, some bearing fruit, and some in another stage, according to their nature. And the nightingale7 was singing and other birds of a thousand kinds in the month of November there where I went. There are six or eight kinds of palm, which are a won der to behold on account of their beautiful variety, but so are the other trees and fruits and plants. In it are marvelous pine groves, and there are very large tracts of cultivatable lands, and there is honey, and there are birds of many kinds and fruits in great diversity. In the interior are mines of metals, and the population is without number. Española is a marvel.

The sierras and mountains, the plains and arable lands and pastures, are so lovely and rich for planting and sowing, for breeding cattle of every kind, for building towns and villages. The harbours of the sea here are such as cannot be believed to exist unless they have been seen, and so with the riv- ers, many and great, and good waters, the majority of which contain gold. In the trees and fruits and plants, there is a great difference from those of Juana. In this island, there are many spices and great mines of gold and of other metals.

The people of this island, and of all the other islands which I have found and of which I have information, all go naked, men and women, as their mothers bore them, although some women cover a single place with the leaf of a plant or with a net of cotton which they make for the purpose. They have no iron or steel or weapons, nor are they "tted to use them, not because they are not well built men and of handsome stature, but because they are very marvel- lously timorous. They have no other arms than weapons made of canes, cut in seeding time, to the ends of which they "x a small sharpened stick. And they do not dare to make use of these, for many times it has happened that I have sent ashore two or three men to some town to have speech, and countless people have come out to them, and as soon as they have seen my men approaching they have ded, even a father not waiting for his son. And this, not because ill has been done to anyone; on the contrary, at every point where I have been and have been able to have speech, I have given to them of all that I had, such as cloth and many other things, without receiving anything for it; but so they are, incurably timid. It is true that, after they have been reassured

5. I.e., Hispaniola, where the countries of Haiti and the Dominican Republic are located. 6. The largest of the Canary Islands. 7. Not native to the Western Hemi sphere. Nor is

the honeybee, presumably the source of the honey mentioned below. The existence of gold in the rivers, also mentioned below, was purely con- jectural.

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8. A castellano was a gold coin. 9. A blanca was a copper coin. An arroba was equal to twenty- "ve pounds. 1. No rec ord exists of how many indigenous people Columbus took captive, but only seven

survived the voyage to Spain. On the second voy- age, one of these seven acted as interpreter. 2. Communication, exchange. 3. A fusta was a moderate- sized ship, smaller than a galley, with banks of oars and a single mast.

and have lost their fear, they are so guileless and so generous with all they pos- sess, that no one would believe it who has not seen it. They never refuse any- thing which they possess, if it be asked of them; on the contrary, they invite anyone to share it, and display as much love as if they would give their hearts, and whether the thing be of value or whether it be of small price, at once with what ever tride of what ever kind it may be that is given to them, with that they are content. I forbade that they should be given things so worthless as frag- ments of broken crockery and scraps of broken glass, and ends of straps, although when they were able to get them, they fancied that they possessed the best jewel in the world. So it was found that a sailor for a strap received gold to the weight of two and a half castellanos,8 and others much more for other things which were worth much less. As for new blancas, for them they would give every thing which they had, although it might be two or three cas- tellanos’ weight of gold or an arroba9 or two of spun cotton. . . . They took even the pieces of the broken hoops of the wine barrels and, like savages, gave what they had, so that it seemed to me to be wrong and I forbade it. And I gave a thousand handsome good things, which I had brought, in order that they might conceive affection, and more than that, might become Christians and be inclined to the love and ser vice of their highnesses and of the whole Castil- ian nation, and strive to aid us and to give us of the things which they have in abundance and which are necessary to us. And they do not know any creed and are not idolaters; only they all believe that power and good are in the heav- ens, and they are very "rmly convinced that I, with these ships and men, came from the heavens, and in this belief they everywhere received me, after they had overcome their fear. And this does not come because they are ignorant; on the contrary, they are of a very acute intelligence and are men who navigate all those seas, so that it is amazing how good an account they give of every thing, but it is because they have never seen people clothed or ships of such a kind.

And as soon as I arrived in the Indies, in the "rst island which I found, I took by force some of them, in order that they might learn and give me information of that which there is in those parts, and so it was that they soon understood us, and we them, either by speech or signs, and they have been very ser viceable.1 I still take them with me, and they are always assured that I come from Heaven, for all the intercourse2 which they have had with me; and they were the "rst to announce this wherever I went, and the others went running from house to house and to the neighbouring towns, with loud cries of, “Come! Come to see the people from Heaven!” So all, men and women alike, when their minds were set at rest concerning us, came, so that not one, great or small, remained behind, and all brought something to eat and drink, which they gave with extraordinary affection. In all the island, they have very many canoes, like rowing fustas,3 some larger, some smaller, and some are larger than a fusta of eigh teen benches. They are not so broad, because they are made of a single log of wood, but a fusta would not keep up with them in rowing, since their speed is a thing incredible. And in these they navigate among all those islands, which are

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4. Columbus was mistaken about the single lan- guage, as he later discovered. In fact, there was considerable linguistic diversity. 5. Actually, Cuba occupies roughly forty- three thousand square miles, whereas Eng land alone is more than "fty thousand square miles in area. 6. The Natives called one region of the island “Havana,” and “Avan” may be Columbus’s ren- dering of that name. 7. Again, Columbus overstates his comparison.

The coastline of Spain and Portugal mea sures roughly nineteen hundred miles, whereas that of Española is about "fteen hundred miles. “Colibre”: Collioure, in the Pyrenees; “Fuenterabia:” Hondar- ribia, a coastal town in northwestern Spain. 8. A site on the modern bay of Caracol, in Haiti. “ Grand Khan”: the Chinese emperor. 9. Columbus left approximately forty men at La Navidad.

innumerable, and carry their goods. One of these canoes I have seen with seventy and eighty men in her, and each one with his oar.

In all these islands, I saw no great diversity in the appearance of the people or in their manners and language.4 On the contrary, they all under- stand one another, which is a very curious thing, on account of which I hope that their highnesses will determine upon their conversion to our holy faith, towards which they are very inclined.

I have already said how I have gone one hundred and seven leagues in a straight line from west to east along the seashore of the island Juana, and as a result of that voyage, I can say that this island is larger than Eng land and Scotland together,5 for, beyond these one hundred and seven leagues, there remain to the westward two provinces to which I have not gone. One of these provinces they call “Avan,”6 and there the people are born with tails; and these provinces cannot have a length of less than "fty or sixty leagues, as I could understand from those Indians whom I have and who know all the islands.

The other, Española, has a circumference greater than all Spain, from Colibre, by the sea- coast, to Fuenterabia in Vizcaya, since I voyaged along one side one hundred and eighty- eight great leagues in a straight line from west to east.7 It is a land to be desired and, seen, it is never to be left. And in it, although of all I have taken possession for their highnesses and all are more richly endowed than I know how, or am able, to say, and I hold them all for their highnesses, so that they may dispose of them as, and as absolutely as, of the kingdoms of Castile, in this Española, in the situation most con ve- nient and in the best position for the mines of gold and for all intercourse as well with the mainland here as with that there, belonging to the Grand Khan, where will be great trade and gain, I have taken possession of a large town, to which I gave the name Villa de Navidad,8 and in it I have made for- ti"cations and a fort, which now will by this time be entirely "nished, and I have left in it suf"cient men9 for such a purpose with arms and artillery and provisions for more than a year, and a fusta, and one, a master of all seacraft, to build others, and great friendship with the king of that land, so much so, that he was proud to call me, and to treat me as, a brother. And even if he were to change his attitude to one of hostility towards these men, he and his do not know what arms are and they go naked, as I have already said, and are the most timorous people that there are in the world, so that the men whom I have left there alone would suf"ce to destroy all that land, and the island is without danger for their persons, if they know how to govern themselves.

In all these islands, it seems to me that all men are content with one woman, and to their chief or king they give as many as twenty. It appears to me that the women work more than the men. And I have not been able to learn if they hold private property; what seemed to me to appear was that, in that which one had, all took a share, especially of eatable things.

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1. Among those who expected to "nd human monstrosities was Pierre d’Ailly, a French theo- logian, phi los o pher, and cardinal. Columbus annotated his own copy of d’Ailly’s cosmographic and astronomical writings, the Imago Mundi (written between 1410 and  1419 and printed sometime between 1480 and 1490). 2. Either Dominica or Maria Galante. 3. Now Martinique. “Intercourse”: here, in the sexual sense. 4. The Genoese government. “Chios”: an island, now part of Greece, that had been claimed by Genoa since 1346; Columbus may have visited there in 1474–75. “Mastic”: a natu ral resin pro- duced from the mastic tree, sometimes known as

“the tears of Chios.” The trade in mastic was controlled by a com pany that became a tributary to the Ottomans in 1453. 5. In 1452, Pope Nicholas V authorized the Por- tuguese to reduce any non- Christians to the sta- tus of slaves; two years later, he granted Portugal a mono poly of the slave trade with Africa. Spain ignored the mono poly status that Nicholas had granted to Portugal and began trading in African slaves. On arriving in the West Indies, Colum- bus almost immediately began to take captives, and a bit later he participated in the enslavement of Native people. He eventually developed a plan for a slave trade in indigenous Americans.

In these islands I have so far found no human monstrosities, as many expected,1 but on the contrary the whole population is very well- formed, nor are they negroes as in Guinea, but their hair is dowing, and they are not born where there is intense force in the rays of the sun; it is true that the sun has there great power, although it is distant from the equinoctial line twenty- six degrees. In these islands, where there are high mountains, the cold was severe this winter, but they endure it, being used to it and with the help of meats which they eat with many and extremely hot spices. As I have found no monsters, so I have had no report of any, except in an island “Quaris,”2 the second at the coming into the Indies, which is inhab- ited by a people who are regarded in all the islands as very "erce and who eat human desh. They have many canoes with which they range through all the islands of India and pillage and take as much as they can. They are no more malformed than the others, except that they have the custom of wearing their hair long like women, and they use bows and arrows of the same cane stems, with a small piece of wood at the end, owing to lack of iron which they do not possess. They are ferocious among these other people who are cowardly to an excessive degree, but I make no more account of them than of the rest. These are those who have intercourse with the women of “Matinino,”3 which is the "rst island met on the way from Spain to the Indies, in which there is not a man. These women engage in no feminine occupation, but use bows and arrows of cane, like those already mentioned, and they arm and protect themselves with plates of copper, of which they have much.

In another island, which they assure me is larger than Española, the people have no hair. In it, there is gold incalculable, and from it and from the other islands, I bring with me Indians as evidence.

In conclusion, to speak only of that which has been accomplished on this voyage, which was so hasty, their highnesses can see that I will give them as much gold as they may need, if their highnesses will render me very slight assistance; moreover, spice and cotton, as much as their highnesses shall command; and mastic, as much as they shall order to be shipped and which, up to now, has been found only in Greece, in the island of Chios, and the Seignory4 sells it for what it pleases; and aloe wood, as much as they shall order to be shipped, and slaves, as many as they shall order to be shipped and who will be from the idolaters.5 And I believe that I have found rhubarb and cinnamon, and I shall "nd a thousand other things of value, which the people whom I have left there will have discovered, for I have not delayed at any point, so far as the wind allowed me to sail, except in the town of Navi-

6. There is a gap here in the original manuscript. 7. Columbus was in fact off Santa Maria, one of the islands in the Azores. “Caravel”: a fast, light sailing ship, much used by the Portuguese for exploring the African coast. Two of the three ships on Columbus’s "rst voyage, the Niña and the Pinta, were caravels. 8. The Admiral. 9. Columbus’s decision to go to Lisbon, Portu- gal, aroused suspicions in Spain, where Portu-

gal was regarded as a major rival. 1. Written on Jamaica in 1503, this letter was hand carried from there to Hispaniola by Diego Mendez. 2. Paria was the mainland region of what is now Venezuela, near the island of Trinidad. Columbus, who had "rst landed in South Amer i ca (“Terra Firma,” as he terms it later) in 1498, argued that the terrestrial paradise lay nearby.

dad, in order to leave it secured and well established, and in truth, I should have done much more, if the ships had served me, as reason demanded.

This is enough . . . 6 and the eternal God, our Lord, Who gives to all those who walk in His way triumph over things which appear to be impos- sible, and this was notably one; for, although men have talked or have writ- ten of these lands, all was conjectural, without suggestion of ocular evidence, but amounted only to this, that those who heard for the most part listened and judged it to be rather a fable than as having any vestige of truth. So that, since Our Redeemer has given this victory to our most illus- trious king and queen, and to their renowned kingdoms, in so great a matter, for this all Christendom ought to feel delight and make great feasts and give solemn thanks to the Holy Trinity with many solemn prayers for the great exaltation which they shall have, in the turning of so many peoples to our holy faith, and afterwards for temporal bene"ts, for not only Spain but all Christians will have hence refreshment and gain.

This, in accordance with that which has been accomplished, thus briedy. Done in the caravel, off the Canary Islands,7 on the "fteenth of Febru-

ary, in the year one thousand four hundred and ninety- three. At your orders. El Almirante.8

[Postscript]

After having written this, and being in the sea of Castile, there came on me so great a south- south- west wind, that I was obliged to lighten ship. But I ran here to- day into this port of Lisbon,9 which was the greatest marvel in the world, whence I deci ded to write to their highnesses. In all the Indies, I have always found weather like May; where I went in thirty- three days and I had returned in twenty- eight, save for these storms which have detained me for fourteen days, beating about in this sea. Here all the sailors say that never has there been so bad a winter nor so many ships lost.

Done on the fourth day of March.

1493

From Letter to Ferdinand and Isabella Regarding the Fourth Voyage1

[Jamaica, July 7, 1503]

* * * Of Española, Paria,2 and the other lands, I never think without weeping. I believed that their example would have been to the pro"t of others; on the

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3. Although it appears that Columbus has speci"c personal enemies in mind, it is not clear whom he means. 4. I.e., Panama, where Columbus was shipwrecked earlier in this voyage.

5. Cf. “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s” (Matthew 22.21).

contrary, they are in an exhausted state; although they are not dead, the in"rmity is incurable or very extensive; let him who brought them to this state come now with the remedy if he can or if he knows it; in destruction, every one is an adept. It was always the custom to give thanks and promo- tion to him who imperiled his person. It is not just that he who has been so hostile to this undertaking should enjoy its fruits or that his children should. Those who left the Indies, dying from toils and speaking evil of the matter and of me, have returned with of"cial employment.3 So it has now been ordained in the case of Veragua.4 It is an ill example and without pro"t for the business and for justice in the world.

The fear of this, with other suf"cient reasons, which I saw clearly, led me to pray your highnesses before I went to discover these islands and Terra Firma, that you would leave them to me to govern in your royal name. It pleased you; it was a privilege and agreement, and under seal and oath, and you granted me the title of viceroy and admiral and governor general of all. And you "xed the boundary, a hundred leagues beyond the Azores and the Cape Verde Islands, by a line passing from pole to pole, and you gave me wide power over this and over all that I might further discover. The docu- ment states this very fully.

The other most impor tant matter, which calls aloud for redress, remains inexplicable to this moment. Seven years I was at your royal court, where all to whom this undertaking was mentioned, unanimously declared it to be a delusion. Now all, down to the very tailors, seek permission to make dis- coveries. It can be believed that they go forth to plunder, and it is granted to them to do so, so that they greatly prejudice my honor and do very great dam- age to the enterprise. It is well to give to God that which is His due and to Caesar that which belongs to him.5 This is a just sentiment and based on justice.

The lands which here obey Your Highnesses are more extensive and richer than all other Christian lands. After I, by the divine will, had placed them under your royal and exalted lordship, and was on the point of secur- ing a very great revenue, suddenly, while I was waiting for ships to come to your high presence with victory and with great news of gold, being very secure and joyful, I was made a prisoner and with my two brothers was thrown into a ship, laden with fetters, stripped to the skin, very ill- treated, and without being tried or condemned. Who will believe that a poor foreigner could in such a place rise against Your Highnesses, with- out cause, and without the support of some other prince, and being alone among your vassals and natu ral subjects, and having all my children at your royal court?

I came to serve at the age of twenty- eight years, and now I have not a hair on my body that is not gray, and my body is in"rm, and what ever remained to me from those years of ser vice has been spent and taken away from me and sold, and from my brothers, down to my very coat, without my being heard or seen, to my great dishonor. It must be believed that this was not done by your royal command. The restitution of my honor, the reparation of

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my losses, and the punishment of him who did this, will spread abroad the fame of your royal nobility. The same punishment is due to him who robbed me of the pearls, and to him who infringed my rights as admiral.6 Very great will be your merit, fame without parallel will be yours, if you do this, and there will remain in Spain a glorious memory of Your Highnesses, as grate- ful and just princes.

The pure devotion which I have ever borne to the ser vice of Your High- nesses, and the unmerited wrong that I have suffered, will not permit me to remain silent, although I would fain do so; I pray Your Highnesses to pardon me. I am so ruined as I have said; hitherto I have wept for others; now, Heaven have mercy upon me, and may the earth weep for me. Of worldly goods, I have not even a blanca7 for an offering in spiritual things. Here in the Indies I have become careless of the prescribed forms of religion. Alone in my trou ble, sick, in daily expectation of death, and encompassed about by a million savages, full of cruelty and our foes, and so separated from the holy Sacraments of Holy Church, my soul will be forgotten if it here leaves my body. Weep for me, whoever has charity, truth, and justice.

I did not sail upon this voyage to gain honor or wealth; this is certain, for already all hope of that was dead. I came to Your Highnesses with true devo- tion and with ready zeal, and I do not lie. I humbly pray Your Highnesses that if it please God to bring me forth from this place, that you will be pleased to permit me to go to Rome and to other places of pilgrimage. May the Holy Trinity preserve your life and high estate, and grant you increase of pros- perity.

Done in the Indies in the island of Jamaica, on the seventh of July, in the year one thousand "ve hundred and three.

1505

6. The reference is to Alonso de Ojeda (1468– c. 1516), who had taken pearls— part of what was reserved to Columbus under his agreement with

the Spanish Crown— from Paria to Española. 7. See n. 9, p. 61.

BARTOLOMÉ DE LAS CASAS 1474–1566

“I saw all these things I have described, and countless others.” So wrote Bartolomé de las Casas, the Spanish “Apostle of the Indians,” who is best known as early modern Eu rope’s most eloquent advocate for Native American rights. During Las Casas’s early career as a soldier, he observed and, to some extent, participated in the atrocities that were being perpetrated on the Native inhabitants of the Amer i- cas, often in the name of Chris tian ity. Increasingly troubled by these events, and provoked by the gaps between Christian ideals and the brutality committed in its name, Las Casas gradually sought in his religious faith a means to challenge the vio lence that was decimating indigenous communities. In a famous sermon of 1514,

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delivered shortly after he entered the Roman Catholic priesthood, Las Casas repu- diated the institution of forced labor known as the encomienda system and returned the Indian serfs he had been awarded.

From this time until his death, Las Casas engaged in a vigorous campaign to institute a more just relationship between Amer i ca’s Eu ro pean colonizers and its indigenous inhabitants. Las Casas spoke, wrote, and published against existing practices, often in excoriating terms, to audiences on both sides of the Atlantic. He proposed alternatives to the existing system, including, to his later regret, the intro- duction of Africans as slaves to replace the forced labor of indigenous Americans. He engaged in practical efforts to establish more- benign colonial relations, notably in Venezuela in 1520, and again in Chiapas, Mexico, during the mid-1540s after his appointment as bishop there, but these proj ects largely failed.

Las Casas’s arguments had their greatest successes in 1537, when Pope Paul III forbade all further Native enslavements, and in 1542, when the Spanish emperor Charles V followed suit in the New Laws of the Indies, which gave Native Ameri- cans full protection of the courts, forbidding their enslavement on any grounds. “We order and command that henceforth,” ran one clause in the New Laws, “for no cause whatsoever, whether of war, rebellion, ransom, or in any other manner, can any Indian be made a slave.” Not long afterward, Las Casas was once again disap- pointed, when Charles V revoked key features of the New Laws in the face of pres- sure from settlers. The reformer spent the last twenty years of his life writing about his long crusade in the West Indies.

Las Casas had family ties to Christopher Columbus as well as personal memories of the excitement surrounding the “discoveries.” He helped shape Columbus’s leg- acy by transcribing the logbook from the "rst voyage in what is the only surviving copy of that document; he also transcribed and annotated Columbus’s diaries. Of Las Casas’s own writings, the most impor tant in his own era was Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias. ( There are minor variations in En glish translations of the title, rendered in the following text as An Account, Much Abbreviated, of the Destruction of the Indies.) First published in 1552, Destruction of the Indies was based on oral arguments that Las Casas had used a de cade earlier to persuade a special royal commission to frame the legal code of 1542. The emphasis in the printed text on personal witness, like the biting irony of his descriptions of “Chris- tians,” stems from the rhetorical context of the original setting.

Destruction of the Indies details with chilling effect the devastation visited on Native Americans by conquistadors and colonizers in pursuit of wealth. Las Casas was widely accused of treason and endured charges of heresy, partly because the quick translation of this work into several other languages provided Spain’s ene- mies with ample evidence of his country’s sins in Amer i ca— a point that Protestant nations such as the Netherlands and Eng land especially wished to highlight, at least partly in the interest of their own colonial proj ects. Ironically, the later Prot- estant “Black Legend” of Spanish devastations in the West Indies derives in impor- tant ways from the polemical exposé that the Catholic priest Bartolomé de las Casas intended less as a denunciation of Spain’s past be hav ior than as a call to its future reform.

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From An Account, Much Abbreviated, of the Destruction of the Indies1

On the Island Hispaniola

On the island Hispaniola, which was the "rst, as we said, wherein the Chris- tians entered and began the devastations and perditions of these nations, and "rst destroyed them and wiped the land clean of inhabitants, these Christians began to take the women and children of the Indians to serve them and use them ill, and they would eat their victuals that issued from the sweat of their brow and their hard work, and yet still were not content with what the Indians gave them willingly, according to the ability that each one had, which is not ever much, for they seldom have more than that which they have most immediate need of and can produce with little labour. And in truth, what suf"ces for three houses of ten persons each for a month, a Christian will eat and destroy in one day, and these Christians did them many other acts of compulsion and vio lence and vexation.

The Indians, at this treatment, began to see that those men must not have come down from the sky, or heaven,2 and some hid their victuals, others their women and children, while others ded into the wilderness to remove them- selves from men of such hard and terrible conversation.3 The Christians would smite them with their hands and strike them with their "sts and beat them with sticks and cudgels, until they " nally laid hands upon the lords of the villages. And this practice came to such great temerity and shameless- ness and ignominy that a Christian captain did violate the wife of the great- est king, the lord of all the island.4 And at that, the Indians began to seek ways to cast the Christians from their lands; they took up arms, which are but weak and petty things, of little offence and re sis tance and even less defence (for which reason, all their wars are little more than what would be games with wooden swords here in this land, or even children’s games), and at that, the Christians with their horses and swords and pikes and lances began to wreak slaughters and singular cruelties upon them.

They would enter into the villages and spare not children, or old people, or pregnant women, or women with suckling babes, but would open the woman’s belly and hack the babe to pieces, as though they were butchering lambs shut up in their pen. They would lay wagers who might slice open the belly of a man with one stroke of their blade, or cut off a man’s head with one swift motion of their pike, or spill out his entrails. They would snatch babes from their mothers’ breasts and take them by their feet and dash their heads against the rocks. Others would ding them over their shoulders into the rivers, laughing and jeering, and as they fell into the water they would call out: “Thrash, you little bugger!”; other babes, they would run their swords

1. The text is from An Account, Much Abbrevi- ated, of the Destruction of the Indies (2003), ed. Franklin W. Knight, trans. Andrew Hurley. 2. Christopher Columbus, Thomas Harriot, and other early Eu ro pean arrivals in the Amer i cas reported that Native peoples took them to be gods who had come from the heavens. 3. Social interaction. 4. Francisco de Valenzuela raped the wife of the Taino cacique (chief) Enriquillo (c. 1498– ?),

who had been raised in a Franciscan monastery on Santo Domingo. Angered by this treatment, Enriquillo led revolts against the Spanish from 1519 to 1538 from a base in the mountains that attracted Natives and escaped African slaves. Charles V eventually ordered that a peace treaty be signed, the "rst such treaty between Eu ro pe- ans and indigenous Americans. Las Casas was involved in the reconciliation with Enriquiollo that followed.

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5. Gallows. 6. A frame of parallel metal bars used for grilling.

7. A city in southern Spain. 8. Puerto Rico was called San Juan until 1521.

through mother and child at once, and all that they came across. They would erect long gibbets,5 but no higher than that a man’s feet might dangle just above the ground, and bind thirteen of the Indians at one time, in honour and reverence, they said, of Our Redeemer and the twelve Apostles, and put "rewood around it and burn the Indians alive. Others, they would tie or bind their bodies all about with dry straw, and set "re to the straw and burn them that way. Others, and all those that they desired to let live, they would cut off both their hands but leave them hanging by the skin, and they would say to them: “Go, and take these letters,” which was to say, carry the news to the people who have hidden themselves in the mountains and the wilder- ness. They would often slay the lords and nobles in this way: They would weave together twigs and branches, like unto a gridiron,6 but made of twigs, and raise it on forked poles or limbs of trees set into the ground, and tether the lords and nobles to that grate and set a slow "re below it, so that little by little, crying out and screaming from those torments, and in desperation, they would give up their souls.

I myself saw that once, four or "ve lords and men of high rank were being burned on grates in this way (and I even think that there may have been two or three pairs of grates on which others were also being burned), and on account of their loud cries and clamours, the captain seemed to take pity on them, or perhaps they disturbed his sleep, and he ordered them hanged; but the executioner that was burning them, who was worse than any hang- man (and I know what his name is and even met certain kinsmen of his in Seville),7 was not content to hang them, and so with his hands he sewed their mouths shut with sticks, so that they could make no sounds, and then poked up the "re and roasted them as long as he had "rst desired. I vouchsafe that I did see all the things I have writ above, and in"nite numbers of others. And because all those who were able to dee, did hide themselves in the wil- derness and go up into the mountains to escape those men who were so inhumane, so pitiless, and so savage, and such abominable destroyers and foremost enemies of the human lineage, the Spaniards taught and trained hunting hounds, "erce and savage dogs that would no sooner see an Indian than they would tear him to pieces, and would rather set upon a man and eat him than if he were a pig. These dogs wrought dreadful havoc and butch- eries. And because sometimes, though seldom, the Indians would slay a Christian, though for good and just reason and in holy justice, the Span- iards made a law amongst themselves that for every one Christian that the Indians slew, the Christians would slay an hundred Indians.

* * * From all that coast, which was once "lled with people, they have brought to the island of Hispaniola and that of San Juan8 two million or more souls whom they have taken in their raids, and all of those, too, they have slain on those islands and sent to the mines or to other hard labour, over and above the multitudes who lived on them, as we have said above. And it is a great pity and it breaks one’s heart to see that coast of fertile, blessed land, now des- ert and bare of people.

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9. The Bahamas.

And this is a truth that may easily be con"rmed: That they never bring a ship "lled with Indians, stolen and assaulted in this manner, as I have said, that they do not cast into the sea, dead, the third part of those who are upon it, having left that many more dead in taking them from their lands. The reason is that, in order to accomplish their ends they must have many people, to obtain more money for more slaves, and they carry but little food or water (so that the tyrants who style themselves “shipowners” may save a little money), hardly enough store, or a little more, for the Spaniards who go in the ship to carry out their raids, and so there is not enough for the poor, sad Indians, and so they die of hunger and thirst, and the answer is to throw them into the sea. And in truth one man who was with them told me that from one island of the Lucayos,9 where they cause great devastation in this wise, to the Island of Hispaniola, which is sixty or seventy leagues, a ship might sail without compass and without map, taking its course by the trail of Indians doating on the surface of the sea, thrown dead from a ship that went before.

Then, from the moment they remove them from the ship onto the island where they have carried the Indians to be sold as slaves, it would break the heart of any man in whom any jot of mercy were remaining, to see children and old persons, men and women, naked and starving, and falling in a faint from hunger. Then, as though they were lambs, fathers are separated from their sons and wives from their husbands, making herds of ten or twenty persons, and lots are cast for them, so that the groups of them may be car- ried off by the wretched “shipowners,” who are those who put in their part of the money to "t out the armada of two or three ships, and the tyrannical raiders who go out to lay hold of them and set upon them in their homes. And when it happens that within such a lot there is some Indian that is old or sick, the tyrant calls out to the one who is apportioning the lots: “This old man, to the devil with him. What are you giving him to me for, to bury him? This sick one, why should I take him, to cure him?” And one may see here in what great esteem the Spaniards hold the Indians, and may judge whether they obey the divine commandment from which the Law and the Prophets all derive, that men should love one another.

The tyranny that the Spaniards exercise against the Indians in "nding or diving for pearls is one of the most cruel and shameful things in the world. There is no hellish and hopeless life on this earth that may be compared with it, however hard and terrible taking out the gold in the mines may be. They throw them into the sea in three and four and "ve yards’ depth from early morning until the sun has set. They are always underwater swimming, without respite, tearing from the seabed the oysters in which the pearls are found. Bearing little nets and gasping for air, they come to the surface, where a Spanish torturer awaits them in a canoe or little rowboat, and if they dally too long in resting, they are beaten and water is poured upon their head to make them dive again. Their food is "sh, and also the "sh that contains the pearls, and bread made of cassava and sometimes of maize, which are the common breads in those parts, the "rst of very little substance and the other toilsome to make, and with which they never "ll themselves. The beds that

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they are given of a night is that they are cast into stocks1 set into the ground, so that they cannot run away. Often they dive into the sea in their "shing or search for pearls and never come up again, because two species of most bloodthirsty and vicious sea beasts,2 which can swallow a man down whole, do eat them and kill them. And one can see here whether the Spaniards who in their search for pearls act in this wise have obeyed the divine precepts of love for God and man by putting these poor creatures in the way of danger both temporal and of the soul as well, because they die outside the faith and without sacraments, and all for their own in"nite greed. And another thing, giving them such a miserable life until they wear them away and consume them in the space of but a few and easily numbered days. Because for men, living under the water without respite is a thing impossible for very long, most especially when the constant coldness of the water penetrates them to their very innards, and so all of them generally die spitting blood from out their mouths, by reason of the tightness of chest that seizes them from being so long and so constantly without respite, and with the diarrhea caused by the cold. Their hair, which is by nature black, becomes burned like the hair of sailors, and salt trails run down their backs, so that they appear to be mon- sters in the form of men, or another species entirely. In this incomparable labour, or to say the truth, this hellish enterprise, the Spaniards have spent3 and consumed all the Indians of the Lucayos that once lived on that island when the Spaniards descended into this species of farming. And each one of them was worth "fty or one hundred castellanos,4 and they sold them pub- licly, even though such treatment was forbidden by their own justices (unjust enough, if truth be told), although the Lucayos were "ne swimmers. And in these parts there have died countless others from other provinces and parts.

1542–46 1552

1. Wooden structures for securing a person’s hands and feet. 2. Sharks and barracuda.

3. Worn out, used up. 4. Spanish gold coins.

ÁLVAR NÚÑEZ CABEZA DE VACA c. 1490–1558

One of the most common forms of writing to emerge from the Eu ro pean encounter with the Amer i cas was travel or exploration narratives. These nar- ratives, in Spanish frequently called relaciónes, combined adventure and captivity tales with descriptions of the manners and customs of local inhabitants. While the descriptive passages sometimes resemble the modern scholarly genre of ethnogra- phy, they were written with dif fer ent aims from those of academic anthropologists. In the dedication to his relación, Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca asserts that his account “is of no trivial value” because it will help adventurers who seek to “subdue those countries and bring them to a knowledge of the true faith and true Lord and bring them under the imperial dominion” of Spain’s Emperor Charles V, grand son

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and successor of Ferdinand and Isabella. This frank statement captures the stance and tone of many such narratives.

A soldier of modest noble background who had fought in Italy and Spain, Cabeza de Vaca sailed in the 1527 expedition to Florida led by Pan"lo de Narváez. Impetu- ous, self- centered, and a poor leader, Narváez "rst took his six hundred men to His- paniola, where a quarter of them deserted, and then to Cuba, where two of the six ships were lost in a hurricane. Ten months after leaving Spain, the expedition became stranded near what is now Sarasota Bay, on Florida’s west coast. Narváez asserted possession of Florida even as the inhabitants of Sarasota Bay (prob ably Calusa Indi- ans) made, in Cabeza de Vaca’s words, “many signs and threats [that] left little doubt that they were bidding us to go.” Soon the expedition, reduced to eating its horses, sought to escape other groups of Florida Indians, from the Timucuan of the Suwan- nee River area to the Apalachees of the Panhandle. They built clumsy “barges” and retreated to the sea, traveling west along the edge of the Gulf of Mexico. Narváez took the best oarsmen in his own craft and left the other barges behind him as they neared what is now Mobile Bay, in Alabama. As he pulled away from the others he told them, with false magnanimity, that (again, in Cabeza de Vaca’s word’s) “it was no longer a time when one should command another”—in short, every man for himself! With that, Narváez and his crew dis appeared, apparently lost at sea.

The other rafts passed the mouth of what seems to have been the Mississippi River and, in November 1528, wrecked on an island, which they called Malhado (Misfortune, or Doom; pres ent- day Galveston Island or San Luis Island, Texas). Cabeza de Vaca survived and was initially accompanied by three fellow survivors: the Spaniards Andrés Dorantes and Alonso del Castillo Maldonado and Dorantes’s black slave, Estevánico, who was from the Moroccan town of Azemmor. During the subsequent de cade, alone or with drifting groups of other survivors, Cabeza de Vaca underwent a North American odyssey. He spent his "rst two years on the Texas coast as a prisoner and slave of the Capoque and Han clans of the Karankawa Indi- ans. He then gradually progressed north and west, gaining status and power among the Caddos, Atakapas, Coahuiltecans, and other Native communities from his activities as a merchant and, especially, his skill as a healer. By 1535, he reached pres ent- day New Mexico, where he encountered the Jumanos and Conchos, then headed southwest into Mexico as the leader of a vast crowd of Pimas and Opatas who rev er ent ly followed him from village to village.

The heady mood of the journey dissipated the following March, however, when the wanderers encountered a party of Spanish slave hunters under Diego de Alcaraz in western Mexico. Seeing the terror exhibited by his Indian escorts at the men he described as “Christian slavers,” Cabeza de Vaca became openly critical of Alcaraz, who arrested him, sent him south, and seized as slaves the six hundred Natives in his com pany. From Mexico City, where he agitated against the cruel (and technically illegal) activities of the likes of Alcaraz, Cabeza de Vaca went to Spain in 1537. After making similar protestations to Charles V, he was allowed to lead an expedition to South Amer i ca in 1540. As governor of the Río de la Plata region, Cabeza de Vaca hoped to enact enlightened policies toward the Natives, but his colonists, pro"ting from slavery, removed him forcibly from of"ce and sent him in chains back to Spain in 1545. After long delays in settling the dispute, in 1551 he was exiled to what is now Algeria and forbidden to return to Amer i ca.

Cabeza de Vaca composed his "rst narrative of the Narváez expedition during the three years he spent in Spain before his departure for Río de la Plata. It was published in 1542; a corrected and expanded version, which includes the story of his later Amer- ican experience, appeared in 1555. Addressed to Charles V, the 1542 account sought to justify his conclusions regarding Spanish policy and be hav ior in Amer i ca as well as to argue for renewed explorations and settlement in the regions he had crossed. Sev- eral later Spanish expeditions, including those of Coronado and de Soto, clearly drew on Cabeza de Vaca’s arguments and knowledge. More impor tant, however, The Rela-

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tion of Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca sought to recount (with remarkable understate- ment) his sufferings and many brushes with death and to explore his complex feelings regarding the Native Americans and his countrymen’s dealings with them. The se lections included here demonstrate the range and complexity of his rhetorical modes, from dedicatory prose to ethnographic- style writing to dramatic recounting.

From The Relation of Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca1

[Dedication]

Sacred Caesarian Catholic Majesty:

Among all the princes who have reigned, I know of none who has enjoyed the universal esteem of Your Majesty at this day, when strangers vie in appro- bation with those motivated by religion and loyalty.

Although every one wants what advantage may be gained from ambition and action, we see everywhere great inequalities of fortune, brought about not by conduct but by accident, and not through anybody’s fault but as the will of God. Thus the deeds of one far exceed his expectation, while another can show no higher proof of purpose than his fruitless effort, and even the effort may go unnoticed.

I can say for myself that I undertook the march abroad, on royal authori- zation, with a "rm trust that my ser vice would be as evident and distin- guished as my ancestors’, and that I would not need to speak to be counted among those Your Majesty honors for diligence and "delity in affairs of state. But my counsel and constancy availed nothing toward those objectives we set out to gain, in your interests, for our sins. In fact, no other of the many armed expeditions into those parts has found itself in such dire straits as ours, or come to so futile and fatal a conclusion.

My only remaining duty is to transmit what I saw and heard in the nine years I wandered lost and miserable over many remote lands. I hope in some mea sure to convey to Your Majesty not merely a report of positions and dis- tances, dora and fauna, but of the customs of the numerous, barbarous people I talked with and dwelt among, as well as any other matters I could hear of or observe. My hope of going out from among those nations was always small; nevertheless, I made a point of remembering all the particu- lars, so that should God our Lord eventually please to bring me where I am now, I might testify to my exertion in the royal behalf.

Since this narrative, in my opinion, is of no trivial value for those who go in your name to subdue those countries and bring them to a knowledge of the true faith and true Lord and bring them under the imperial dominion, I have written very exactly. Novel or, for some persons, dif"cult to believe though the things narrated may be, I assure you they can be accepted without hesitation as strictly factual. Better than to exaggerate, I have minimized all things; it is enough to say that the relation is offered Your Majesty for truth.

I beg that it may be received as homage, since it is the most one could bring who returned thence naked.

1. The text is from Adventures in the Unknown Interior of Amer i ca (1961), edited and translated by Cyclone Covey.

7 4 | Á LVA R N Ú Ñ E Z C A B E Z A D E VA C A

* * * [The Malhado Way of Life]

The people2 we came to know there are tall and well built. Their only weap- ons are bows and arrows, which they use with great dexterity. The men bore through one of their nipples, some both, and insert a joint of cane two and a half palms long by two "n gers thick. They also bore their lower lip and wear a piece of cane in it half a "n ger in dia meter.

Their women toil incessantly. From October to the end of February every year, which is the season these

Indians live on the island, they subsist on the roots I have mentioned,3 which the women get from under water in November and December. Only in these two months, too, do they take "sh in their cane weirs. When the "sh is con- sumed, the roots furnish the one staple. At the end of February the island- ers go into other parts to seek sustenance, for then the root is beginning to grow and is not edible.

These people love their offspring more than any in the world and treat them very mildly.

If a son dies, the whole village joins the parents and kindred in weeping. The parents set off the wails each day before dawn, again at noon, and at sunset, for one year. The funeral rites occur when the year of mourning is up. Following these rites, the survivors wash off the smoke stain of the cer- emony in a symbolic purgation. All the dead are lamented this way except the aged, who merit no regrets. The dead are buried, except medicine- men, who are cremated. Every body in the village dances and makes merry while the pyre of a medicine- man kindles, and until his bones become powder. A year later, when his rites are celebrated, the entire village again participat- ing, this powder is presented in water for the relatives to drink.

Each man has an acknowledged wife, except the medicine- men, who may have two or three wives apiece. The several wives live together in perfect amity.

When a daughter marries, she must take every thing her husband kills in hunting or catches in "shing to the house of her father, without daring to eat or to withhold any part of it, and the husband gets provided by female carrier from his father- in- law’s house. Neither the bride’s father nor mother may enter the son- in- law’s house after the marriage, nor he theirs; and this holds for the children of the respective couples. If a man and his in- laws should chance to be walking so they would meet, they turn silently aside from each other and go a crossbow- shot out of their way, averting their glance to the ground. The woman, however, is free to fraternize with the parents and relatives of her husband. These marriage customs prevail for more than "fty leagues inland from the island.

At a house where a son or brother may die, no one goes out for food for three months, the neighbors and other relatives providing what is eaten. Because of this custom, which the Indians literally would not break to save their lives, great hunger reigned in most houses while we resided there, it being a time of repeated deaths. Those who sought food worked hard, but they could get little in that severe season. That is why Indians who kept me left the island by canoe for oyster bays on the main.

2. The Capoques and Hans of coastal Texas. 3. I.e., “certain roots which taste like nuts, mostly grubbed from [ under] the water with great labor.”

T H E R E L AT I O N | 7 5

4. Re nais sance units of mea sure ment were inex- act. Cabeza de Vaca’s “league” was prob ably about four miles. 5. I.e., Spanish moss.

6. Having escaped from the Capoques and Hans, Cabeza de Vaca is now among the Avava- res and Arbadaos in inland Texas.

Three months out of every year they eat nothing but oysters and drink very bad water. Wood is scarce; mosquitoes, plentiful. The houses are made of mats; their doors consist of masses of oyster shells. The natives sleep on these shells—in animal skins, those who happen to own such.

Many a time I would have to go three days without eating, as would the natives. I thought it impossible that life could be so prolonged in such pro- tracted hunger; though afterwards I found myself in yet greater want, as shall be seen.

The Indians who had Alonso del Castillo, Andrés Dorantes, and the others of their barge who remained alive, spoke a dif fer ent dialect and claimed a dif fer ent descent from these I lived among. They frequented the opposite shore of the main to eat oysters, staying till the "rst of April, then returning.

The distance to the main is two leagues at the widest part of the chan- nel.4 The island itself, which supports the two tribes commodiously, is half a league wide by "ve long.

The inhabitants of all these parts go naked, except that the women cover some part of their persons with a wool that grows on trees,5 and damsels dress in deerskin.

The people are generous to each other with what little they have. There is no chief. All belonging to the same lineage keep together. They speak two languages: Capoque and Han.

They have a strange custom when acquaintances meet or occasionally visit, of weeping for half an hour before they speak. This over, the one who is visited rises and gives his visitor all he has. The latter accepts it and, after a while, carries it away, often without a word. They have other strange cus- toms, but I have told the principal and most remarkable of them.

In April [1529] we went to the seashore and ate blackberries all month, a time of [dance ceremonies] and "estas among the Indians.

* * *

[Our Life among the Avavares and Arbadaos]

All the Indians of this region6 are ignorant of time, either by the sun or moon; nor do they reckon by the month or year. They understand the seasons in terms of the ripening of fruits, the dying of "sh, and the position of stars, in which dating they are adept.

The Avavares always treated us well. We lived as free agents, dug our own food, and lugged our loads of wood and water. The houses and our diet were like those of the nation we had just come from, but the Avavares suffer yet greater want, having no corn, acorns, or pecans. We always went naked like them and covered ourselves at night with deerskins.

Six of the eight months we dwelled with these people we endured acute hunger; for "sh are not found where they are either. At the end of the eight months, when the prickly pears were just beginning to ripen again [mid- June 1535], I traveled with the Negro— unknown to our hosts—to others a day’s

7 6 | Á LVA R N Ú Ñ E Z C A B E Z A D E VA C A

7. Neighbors of the Avavares and Arbadaos. “The Negro”: Estevánico.

journey farther on: the Maliacones.7 When three days had passed, I sent Estevánico to fetch Castillo and Dorantes.

When they got there, the four of us set out with the Maliacones, who were going to "nd the small fruit of certain trees which they subsist on for ten or twelve days while the prickly pears are maturing. They joined another tribe, the Arbadaos, who astonished us by their weak, emaciated, swollen condition.

We told the Maliacones with whom we had come that we wanted to stop with these Arbadaos. The Maliacones despondently returned the way they came, leaving us alone in the brushland near the Arbadao houses. The observing Arbadaos talked among themselves and came up to us in a body. Four of them took each of us by the hand and led us to their dwellings.

Among them we underwent "ercer hunger than among the Avavares. We ate not more than two handfuls of prickly pears a day, and they were still so green and milky they burned our mouths. In our lack of water, eating brought great thirst. At nearly the end of our endurance we bought two dogs for some nets, with other things, and a skin I used for cover.

I have already said that we went naked through all this country; not being accustomed to going so, we shed our skins twice a year like snakes. The sun and air raised great, painful sores on our chests and shoulders, and our heavy loads caused the cords to cut our arms. The region is so broken and so over- grown that often, when we gathered wood, blood dowed from us in many places where the thorns and shrubs tore our desh. At times, when my turn came to get wood and I had collected it at heavy cost in blood, I could nei- ther drag nor bear it out. My only solace in these labors was to think of the sufferings of our Redeemer, Jesus Christ, and the blood He shed for me. How much worse must have been his torment from the thorns than mine here!

I bartered with these Indians in combs I made for them and in bows, arrows, and nets. We made mats, which are what their houses consist of and for which they feel a keen necessity. Although they know how to make them, they prefer to devote their full time to "nding food; when they do not, they get too pinched with hunger.

Some days the Indians would set me to scraping and softening skins. These were my days of greatest prosperity in that place. I would scrape thoroughly enough to sustain myself two or three days on the scraps. When it happened that these or any people we had left behind gave us a piece of meat, we ate it raw. Had we put it to roast, the "rst native who came along would have "lched it. Not only did we think it better not to risk this, we were in such a condition that roasted meat would have given us pain. We could digest it more easily raw.

Such was our life there, where we earned our meager subsistence by trade in items which were the work of our own hands.

[Pushing On]

Eating the dogs seemed to give us strength enough to go forward; so com- mending ourselves to the guidance of God our Lord, we took leave of our hosts, who pointed out the way to others nearby who spoke their language.

T H E R E L AT I O N | 7 7

Rain caught us. We traveled the day in the wet and got lost. At last, we made for an extensive scrub wood stretch, where we stopped and pulled prickly pear pads, which we cooked overnight in a hot oven we made. By morning they were ready.

After eating, we put ourselves again in the hands of God and set forth. We located the path we had lost and, after passing another scrub wood stretch, saw houses. Two women who were walking in the “forest” with some boys ded deep into it in fright to call their men, when they noticed us head- ing for the houses. The men arrived and hid behind trees to look at us. We called to them, and they came up very timidly. After some conversation, they told us their food was very scarce and that many houses of their people stood close by, to which they would conduct us.

At nightfall we came to a village of "fty dwellings. The residents looked at us in astonishment and fear. When they grew somewhat accustomed to our appearance, they felt our faces and bodies and then their own, comparing.

We stayed in that place overnight. In the morning the Indians brought us their sick, beseeching our blessing. They shared with us what they had to eat— prickly pear pads and the green fruit roasted. Because they did this with kindness and good will, gladly foregoing food to give us some, we tar- ried here several days.

Other Indians came from beyond in that interval and, when they were about to depart, we told our hosts we wanted to go with them. Our hosts felt quite uneasy at this and pressed us warmly to stay. In the midst of their weeping we left them.

[Customs of That Region]

From the Island of Doom to this land, all the Indians we saw have the cus- tom of not sleeping with their wives from the time they are discovered preg- nant to two years after giving birth. Children are suckled until they are twelve, when they are old enough to "nd their own support. We asked why they thus prolonged the nursing period, and they said that the poverty of the land frequently meant—as we witnessed— going two or three days without eating, sometimes four; if children were not allowed to suckle in seasons of scarcity, those who did not famish would be weaklings.

Anyone who chances to fall sick on a foraging trip and cannot keep up with the rest is left to die, unless he be a son or brother; him they will help, even to carry ing on their back.

It is common among them all to leave their wives when there is disagree- ment, and directly reconnect with whomever they please. This is the course of men who are childless. Those who have children never abandon their wives.

When Indian men get into an argument in their villages, they "st- "ght until exhausted, then separate. Sometimes the women will go between and part them, but men never interfere. No matter what the disaffection, they do not resort to bows and arrows. After a "ght, the disputants take their houses (and families) and go live apart from each other in the scrub wood until they have cooled off; then they return and from that moment are friends as if nothing had happened. No intermediary is needed to mend their friendship.

In case the quarrelers are single men, they repair to some neighboring people (instead of the scrub wood), who, even if enemies, welcome them

7 8 | Á LVA R N Ú Ñ E Z C A B E Z A D E VA C A

8. It was prob ably March 1536. 9. I.e., Culiacán, the northernmost Spanish set-

tlement in Mexico at that time, located in Sinaloa near the mouth of the Gulf of California.

warmly and give so largely of what they have that when the quarrelers’ ani- mosity subsides, they return to their home village rich.

* * *

[The First Confrontation]

When we saw for certain that we were drawing near the Christians, we gave thanks to God our Lord for choosing to bring us out of such a melancholy and wretched captivity. The joy we felt can only be conjectured in terms of the time, the suffering, and the peril we had endured in that land.

The eve ning of the day we reached the recent campsite, I tried hard to get Castillo or Dorantes to hurry on three days, unencumbered, after the Christians who were now circling back into the area we had assured protec- tion. They both reacted negatively, excusing themselves for weariness, though younger and more athletic than I; but they being unwilling, I took the Negro and eleven Indians next morning to track the Christians. We went ten leagues, past three villages where they had slept.

The day after that, I overtook four of them on their horses. They were dumbfounded at the sight of me, strangely undressed and in com pany with Indians. They just stood staring for a long time, not thinking to hail me or come closer to ask questions.

“Take me to your captain,” I at last requested; and we went together half a league to a place where we found their captain, Diego de Alcaraz.

When we had talked awhile, he confessed to me that he was completely undone, having been unable to catch any Indians in a long time; he did not know which way to turn; his men were getting too hungry and exhausted. I told him of Castillo and Dorantes ten leagues away with an escorting mul- titude. He immediately dispatched three of his horse men to them, along with "fty of his Indian allies. The Negro went, too, as a guide; I stayed behind.

I asked the Christians to furnish me a certi"cate of the year, month, and day I arrived here, and the manner of my coming; which they did.8 From this river to the Christian town, Sant Miguel9 within the government of the recently created province of New Galicia, is a distance of thirty leagues.

[The Falling- Out with Our Countrymen]

After "ve days, Andrés Dorantes and Alonso del Castillo arrived with those who had gone for them; and they brought more than 600 natives of the vicin- ity whom the Indians who had been escorting us drew out of the woods and took to the mounted Christians, who thereupon dismissed their own escort.

When they arrived, Alcaraz begged us to order the villa gers of this river out of the woods in the same way to get us food. It would be unnecessary to command them to bring food, if they came at all; for the Indians were always diligent to bring us all they could.

We sent our heralds to call them, and presently there came 600 Indians with all the corn they possessed. They brought it in clay- sealed earthen pots which had been buried. They also brought what ever else they had; but we wished only a meal, so gave the rest to the Christians to divide among themselves.

T H E R E L AT I O N | 7 9

After this we had a hot argument with them, for they meant to make slaves of the Indians in our train. We got so angry that we went off forgetting the many Turkish- shaped bows, the many pouches, and the "ve emerald arrowheads, etc., which we thus lost. And to think we had given these Christians a supply of cowhides and other things that our retainers had carried a long distance!

It proved dif"cult to persuade our escorting Indians to go back to their homes, to feel apprehensive no longer, and to plant their corn. But they did not want to do anything until they had "rst delivered us into the hands of other Indians, as custom bound them. They feared they would die if they returned without ful"ling this obligation whereas, with us, they said they feared neither Christians nor lances.

This sentiment roused our countrymen’s jealousy. Alcaraz bade his inter- preter tell the Indians that we were members of his race who had been long lost; that his group were the lords of the land who must be obeyed and served, while we were inconsequential. The Indians paid no attention to this. Con- ferring among themselves, they replied that the Christians lied: We had come from the sunrise, they from the sunset; we healed the sick, they killed the sound; we came naked and barefoot, they clothed, horsed, and lanced; we coveted nothing but gave what ever we were given, while they robbed whomever they found and bestowed nothing on anyone.

* * * To the last I could not convince the Indians that we were of the same people as the Christian slavers. Only with the greatest effort were we able to induce them to go back home. We ordered them to fear no more, reestab- lish their towns, and farm.

Already the countryside had grown rank from neglect. This is, no doubt, the most proli"c land in all these Indies. It produces three crops a year; the trees bear a great variety of fruit; and beautiful rivers and brimming springs abound throughout. There are gold- and silver- bearing ores. The people are well disposed, serving such Christians as are their friends with great good will. They are comely, much more so than the Mexicans. This land, in short, lacks nothing to be regarded as blest.

When the Indians took their leave of us they said they would do as we commanded and rebuild their towns, if the Christians let them. And I sol- emnly swear that if they have not done so it is the fault of the Christians.

After we had dismissed the Indians in peace and thanked them for their toil in our behalf, the Christians subtly sent us on our way in the charge of an alcalde named Cebreros, attended by two horse men.1 They took us through forests and wastes so we would not communicate with the natives and would neither see nor learn of their crafty scheme afoot. Thus we often misjudge the motives of men; we thought we had effected the Indians’ lib- erty, when the Christians were but poising to pounce.

* * *

c. 1536–40 1542

1. I.e., they were, in effect, under arrest.

80

First Encounters: Early Eu ro pean Accounts of Native Amer i ca

C hristopher Columbus’s voyage of 1492 unleashed a torrent of words from innu-merable mouths and pens, words designed to describe, promote, dispute, or defend accounts of events that took place in the contact zone between Eu ro pe ans and Native Americans. “First encounter” is how the Pilgrim leaders William Bradford and Edward Winslow, among others, labeled such an initial contact. The phrase sug- gests the drama of what was, in real ity, a series of moments that unfolded over many de cades. Often, what seemed to be a “"rst” encounter turned out to involve Natives who had previously interacted with Eu ro pe ans or had even been to Eu rope. Before he rescued the settlers at Plymouth, for example, the Pawtuxet man Tisquantum, or Squanto as he is more familiarly known, had been taken captive to Eu rope, where he remained for over a de cade before returning to "nd his native village decimated by European- borne illnesses.

Though there was travel in both directions, most of the written and printed accounts that survive offer a Eu ro pean perspective on these encounters. In describing the greatly varied inhabitants of the Western Hemi sphere for Eu ro pean eyes and minds, these writers crafted something like a notion of culture. Although from a certain perspective Eu ro pe ans, with their primitive "rearms and disease- wracked bodies, were not all that dif fer ent from the inhabitants of the Western Hemi sphere, the contrasts were evident to both sides from the beginning, and the sense of differ- ence often deepened over time. Eu ro pean descriptions of the habits and attitudes of Native Americans caused widespread redection on the question of what key traits de"ned human nature globally.

Along with providing such descriptive passages, many of them richly informative about Native customs and practices, the lit er a ture of the contact zone pulses with incident, sensation, and turmoil. Tragedy is often near the surface. Many narratives subtly indicate an expanding Eu ro pean footprint that is vis i ble in accounts of Natives killed by infectious diseases that were new to the Western Hemi sphere. One such disease, smallpox, could wipe out an entire village and spread rapidly through- out a region. “Virgin soil” epidemics were the largest single cause of Native deaths, and mortality rates were often made worse by Eu ro pean actions.

Consider the catastrophic eruption of smallpox in Tenochtitlán (located where Mexico City is today). This plague occurred in 1520, the year after the arrival of the Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés and his army. Thirty years later, survivors of the plague described its effects to Bernardino de Sahagún, a Franciscan friar, who then produced a chilling account in his General History of Things of New Spain, also known as The Florentine Codex:

There was indeed perishing; many indeed died of it. No longer could they walk; they only lay in their abodes, in their beds. No longer could they move, no lon- ger could they bestir themselves, no longer could they raise themselves, no lon- ger could they stretch themselves out face down, no longer could they stretch themselves out on their backs. And when they bestirred themselves, much did they cry out. There was much perishing. . . . Indeed many people died of them [i.e., smallpox pustules], and many just died of hunger. There was death from hunger; there was no one to take care of another; there was no one to attend to another.

F I R S T E N C O U N T E R S | 8 1

This painfully vivid description captures the essence of innumerable similar scenes that unfolded in indigenous communities across two continents over some four hundred years, until inoculation against smallpox became widely available in the twentieth century.

For Cortés, the epidemic mainly made it pos si ble to seize the city. In 1519, Tenochtitlán had been the thriving center of the Aztec Empire at the height of its power. In his correspondence with King Charles V of Spain, Cortés portrayed the Aztecs as a serious challenge to Spanish domination of the region. His lavishly beautiful account of the Aztec capital— with its amply stocked markets, large temples, and expansive public squares— pres ents a major civilization previously unknown to Eu ro pe ans. In describing an urban center the equal of most Eu ro pean cities, Cortés was tempting the king to support the colonization effort. Other wise, Charles might have focused on opportunities closer to home, particularly since he had recently been elected to the of"ce of Holy Roman Emperor.

In A Brief and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia (1588), the "rst printed English- language account of Amer i ca, Thomas Harriot highlights the pos- sibilities for trade and settlement, as well as providing a richly detailed ethno- graphic description of the Indians in the Outer Banks area of pres ent- day North Carolina and the Chesapeake Bay region. Harriot’s admiration for the abundance there is closely linked to his sense that the opportunities for pro"t are rich, at least in part because of the relatively unthreatening presence of the native Algonquians. Harriot also offers a poignant and troubling account of how the Natives in the region suffered from the “invisible bullets” of disease brought by the English— and how Native leaders aspired to enlist the En glish in their cause and to use these “bullets” against their enemies.

Other features of the lit er a ture of encounter dominate the se lection from The Voyages of the Sieur de Champlain (1613). Samuel de Champlain’s description of the battle that he and his Algonquin allies fought against their Iroquois opponents highlights the complex rivalries between indigenous groups that Eu ro pe ans often exploited. Champlain shows himself drawing on his allies’ war time practices, such as dream interpretation, and he provides an action- "lled description of the "ght. The gruesome torture scene is an early written repre sen ta tion of Iroquois war cus- toms. Champlain’s self- righteous condemnation of Iroquois practices should be read with the knowledge that similar forms of torture and execution (such as drawing and quartering or burning at the stake) were then widely used in Eu rope.

In History, Manners, and Customs of the Indian Nations (1818), John Heckewelder renders a Delaware Indian version of a 1609 encounter with Henry Hudson’s expe- dition, giving the tale a mythic frame signaled by the opening phrase, “A great many years ago.” Prob ably derived from an oral narrative that had been passed down over generations, Heckewelder’s rendition offers a striking counterpoint to Robert Juet’s con temporary journal- style account of these events, which was published in his Third Voyage of Master Henry Hudson (1625). Both versions describe the ritual ele ments of the encounter and highlight Native experience with what was to them a novel intoxicant, alcohol. While Heckewelder’s version of this “"rst encounter” is not an “au then tic” rendition of Delaware experience, it tells the story from the dis- tinctive perspective of the local people. But whereas Heckewelder’s narrative is both portentous and vaguely droll, Juet’s account of the same events emphasizes the mutual fearfulness, distrust, and brutality that undermined Eu ro pe ans’ early attempts to establish trade at “Manna- hata” (Manhattan).

A dif fer ent kind of counterpoint emerges between the description of the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock in Mourt’s Relation (1622), by Bradford and Winslow, excerpted here, and the grand narrative of the legendary landing that Bradford presented in Of Plymouth Plantation, which appears later in this anthol- ogy. The con temporary account that Bradford coauthored with his good friend Winslow portrays the days and weeks after the landing as a narrative of confused

8 2 | F I R S T E N C O U N T E R S

1. The text is from Hernán Cortés: Letters from  Mexico (1971), edited and translated by

A. R. Pagden. 2. Prominent cities in Spain.

movements and puzzling discoveries: a “black thing” seen on the beach along with buried caches of corn, large burying grounds, and deserted clusters of Indian wig- wams, prob ably emptied by a smallpox epidemic such as the one that Bradford describes in Of Plymouth Plantation. Bradford and Winslow emphasize the confusion between wolves and men, an episode that conveys the larger ambiguity of the coloniz- ing efforts in which all these writers took part. Bradford’s later version of these events reveals how colonial actors subsequently sought to dispel at least some of the fuzzi- ness of earlier reports, sometimes imbuing them with clearer moral lessons.

Representing the colonial proj ects of Spain, France, Holland, and Eng land, the following se lections describe a range of locales spanning the "rst century and a half of the Eu ro pean presence in the Amer i cas. They illuminate vari ous ele ments that shaped the “"rst encounters”— from fear, disease, and vio lence to won der, curiosity, ambition, and even, at times, re spect.

HERNÁN CORTÉS

T ypical in some ways of the class of colonial agents that quickly developed in Spain and its American possessions after 1492, Hernán Cortés (1485–1543) was from a noble family in Extremadura, Spain. He spent two years at the great university at Salamanca, in the Spanish region of Castile, where he studied law and later worked as a notary. He also acquired familiarity with the histories, chronicles, and romances of chivalry that formed the literary culture of the Castilian nobility. Cortés already had much experience as a magistrate and military leader in Hispaniola and Cuba when in 1519 the governor of Cuba, Diego Velázquez, gave him command of an expe- dition to round up stranded Spaniards on the mainland of Yucatán. Ambitious to make a name for himself, Cortés took advantage of an ambiguity in his orders and pursued a bold course of exploration. Once on the Mexican coast, he destroyed his ships so his men could not back out. He then plunged inland, gathering Native allies for what proved a remarkable and remarkably bloody conquest of the Aztec Empire. The "ve letters that Cortés wrote to Charles V were intended to create a rationale for his technically illegal actions. The following se lection derives from the second letter, written after the Spaniards had arrived in Tenochtitlán ( here called Temixtitan) but before they began their "ght against the Aztec forces, which were led by the emperor Moctezuma II ( here, Mutezuma).

From Second Letter to the Spanish Crown1

[Description of Tenochtitlán]

This great city of Temixtitan * * * is as big as Seville or Córdoba.2 The main streets are very wide and very straight; some of these are on the land, but the rest and all the smaller ones are half on land, half canals where they paddle their canoes. All the streets have openings in places so that the water

C O R T É S : S E C O N D L E T T E R T O T H E S P A N I S H C R O W N | 8 3

may pass from one canal to another. Over all these openings, and some of them are very wide, there are bridges made of long and wide beams joined together very "rmly and so well made that on some of them ten horse men may ride abreast.

Seeing that if the inhabitants of this city wished to betray us they were very well equipped for it by the design of the city, for once the bridges had been removed they could starve us to death without our being able to reach the mainland, as soon as I entered the city I made great haste to build four brigantines, and completed them in a very short time. They were such as could carry three hundred men to the land and transport the horses when- ever we might need them.

This city has many squares where trading is done and markets are held continuously. There is also one square twice as big as that of Salamanca, with arcades all around, where more than sixty thousand people come each day to buy and sell, and where every kind of merchandise produced in these

Tenochtitlán, or Mexico City, from Praeclara Ferdinadi Cortesii de Nova maris Oceani Hyspania Narratio, 1524. This German map of the Aztec capital, based on a sketch reportedly made for Cortés, accompanied a translation of his second and third letters to Charles V. It displays the material complexity documented in his prose.

8 4 | F I R S T E N C O U N T E R S

3. A large, spiked plant (also called aloe) from which both a sweet syrup and a strong liquor

(pulque) are still produced today. 4. Another prominent Spanish city.

lands is found; provisions as well as ornaments of gold and silver, lead, brass, copper, tin, stones, shells, bones, and feathers. They also sell lime, hewn and unhewn stone, adobe bricks, tiles, and cut and uncut woods of vari ous kinds. There is a street where they sell game and birds of every species found in this land: chickens, partridges and quails, wild ducks, dycatchers, wid- geons, turtledoves, pigeons, cane birds, parrots, ea gles and ea gle owls, fal- cons, sparrow hawks and kestrels, and they sell the skins of some of these birds of prey with their feathers, heads and claws. They sell rabbits and hares, and stags and small gelded dogs which they breed for eating.

There are streets of herbalists where all the medicinal herbs and roots found in the land are sold. There are shops like apothecaries’, where they sell ready- made medicines as well as liquid ointments and plasters. There are shops like barbers’ where they have their hair washed and shaved, and shops where they sell food and drink. There are also men like porters to carry loads. There is much "rewood and charcoal, earthenware braziers and mats of vari ous kinds like mattresses for beds, and other, "ner ones, for seats and for covering rooms and hallways. There is every sort of vegetable, especially onions, leeks, garlic, common cress and watercress, borage, sorrel, teasels and artichokes; and there are many sorts of fruit, among which are cherries and plums like those in Spain.

They sell honey, wax, and a syrup made from maize canes, which is as sweet and syrupy as that made from the sugar cane. They also make syrup from a plant which in the islands is called maguey,3 which is much better than most syrups, and from this plant they also make sugar and wine, which they likewise sell. There are many sorts of spun cotton, in hanks of every color, and it seems like the silk market at Granada,4 except here there is a much greater quantity. They sell as many colors for paint ers as may be found in Spain and all of excellent hues. They sell deerskins, with and without the hair, and some are dyed white or in vari ous colors. They sell much earthen- ware, which for the most part is very good; there are both large and small pitchers, jugs, pots, tiles, and many other sorts of vessel, all of good clay and most of them glazed and painted. They sell maize both as grain and as bread and it is better both in appearance and in taste than any found in the islands or on the mainland. They sell chicken and "sh pies, and much fresh and salted "sh, as well as raw and cooked "sh. They sell hen and goose eggs, and eggs of all the other birds I have mentioned, in great number, and they sell tortillas made from eggs.

Fi nally, besides those things which I have already mentioned, they sell in the market every thing else to be found in this land, but they are so many and so varied that because of their great number and because I cannot remember many of them nor do I know what they are called I shall not men- tion them. Each kind of merchandise is sold in its own street without any mixture what ever; they are very par tic u lar in this. Every thing is sold by num- ber and size, and until now I have seen nothing sold by weight. There is in this great square a very large building like a court house, where ten or twelve persons sit as judges. They preside over all that happens in the markets, and sentence criminals. There are in this square other persons who walk among

the people to see what they are selling and the mea sures they are using; and they have been seen to break some that were false.

There are, in all districts of this great city, many temples or houses for their idols. They are all very beautiful buildings, and in the impor tant ones there are priests of their sect who live there permanently; and, in addition to the houses for the idols, they also have very good lodgings. All these priests dress in black and never comb their hair from the time they enter the priesthood until they leave; and all the sons of the persons of high rank, both the lords and honored citizens also, enter the priesthood and wear the habit from the age of seven or eight years until they are taken away to be married; this occurs more among the "rst- born sons, who are to inherit, than among the others. They abstain from eating things, and more at some times of the year than at others; and no woman is granted entry nor permitted inside these places of worship.

Amongst these temples there is one, the principal one, whose great size and magni"cence no human tongue could describe, for it is so large that within the precincts, which are surrounded by a very high wall, a town of some "ve hundred inhabitants could easily be built. All round inside this wall there are very elegant quarters with very large rooms and corridors where their priests live. There are as many as forty towers, all of which are so high that in the case of the largest there are "fty steps leading up to the main part of it; and the most impor tant of these towers is higher than that of the cathedral of Seville. They are so well constructed in both their stone and woodwork that there can be none better in any place, for all the stone- work inside the chapels where they keep their idols is in high relief, with "gures and little houses, and the woodwork is likewise of relief and painted with monsters and other "gures and designs. All these towers are burial places of chiefs, and the chapels therein are each dedicated to the idol which he venerated.

There are three rooms within this great temple for the principal idols, which are of remarkable size and stature and decorated with many designs and sculptures, both in stone and in wood. Within these rooms are other chapels, and the doors to them are very small. Inside there is no light what- soever; there only some of the priests may enter, for inside are the sculp- tured "gures of the idols, although, as I have said, there are also many outside.

The most impor tant of these idols, and the ones in whom they have most faith, I had taken from their places and thrown down the steps; and I had those chapels where they were cleaned, for they were full of the blood of sacri"ces; and I had images of Our Lady and of other saints put there, which caused Mutezuma and the other natives some sorrow. First they asked me not to do it, for when the communities learnt of it they would rise against me, for they believed that those idols gave them all their worldly goods, and that if they were allowed to be ill treated, they would become angry and give them nothing and take the fruit from the earth leaving the people to die of hunger. I made them understand through the interpreters how deceived they were in placing their trust in those idols which they had made with their hands from unclean things. They must know that there was only one God, Lord of all things, who had created heaven and earth and all else and who made all of us; and He was without beginning or end, and they must adore

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5. A certain part (Latin).

and worship only Him, not any other creature or thing. And I told them all I knew about this to dissuade them from their idolatry and bring them to the knowledge of God our Saviour. All of them, especially Mutezuma, replied that they had already told me how they were not natives of this land, and that as it was many years since their forefathers had come here, they well knew that they might have erred somewhat in what they believed, for they had left their native land so long ago; and as I had only recently arrived from there, I would better know the things they should believe, and should explain to them and make them understand, for they would do as I said was best. Mutezuma and many of the chieftains of the city were with me until the idols were removed, the chapel cleaned and the images set up, and I urged them not to sacri"ce living creatures to the idols, as they were accustomed, for, as well as being most abhorrent to God, Your Sacred Majesty’s laws for- bade it and ordered that he who kills shall be killed. And from then on they ceased to do it, and in all the time I stayed in that city I did not see a living creature killed or sacri"ced.

The "gures of the idols in which these people believe are very much larger than the body of a big man. They are made of dough from all the seeds and vegetables which they eat, ground and mixed together, and bound with the blood of human hearts which those priests tear out while still beating. And also after they are made they offer them more hearts and anoint their faces with the blood. Every thing has an idol dedicated to it, in the same manner as the pagans who in antiquity honored their gods. So they have an idol whose favor they ask in war and another for agriculture; and likewise for each thing they wish to be done well they have an idol which they honor and serve.

There are in the city many large and beautiful houses, and the reason for this is that all the chiefs of the land, who are Mutezuma’s vassals, have houses in the city and live there for part of the year; and in addition there are many rich citizens who likewise have very good houses. All these houses have very large and very good rooms and also very pleasant gardens of vari- ous sorts of dowers both on the upper and lower doors.

Along one of the causeways to this great city run two aqueducts made of mortar. Each one is two paces wide and some six feet deep, and along one of them a stream of very good fresh water, as wide as a man’s body, dows into the heart of the city and from this they all drink. The other, which is empty, is used when they wish to clean the "rst channel. Where the aque- ducts cross the bridges, the water passes along some channels which are as wide as an ox; and so they serve the whole city.

Canoes paddle through all the streets selling the water; they take it from the aqueduct by placing the canoes beneath the bridges where those chan- nels are, and on top there are men who "ll the canoes and are paid for their work. At all the gateways to the city and at the places where these canoes are unloaded, which is where the greater part of the provisions enter the city, there are guards in huts who receive a certum quid5 of all that enters. I have not yet discovered whether this goes to the chief or to the city, but I think to the chief, because in other markets in other parts I have seen this tax paid to the ruler of the place. Every day, in all the markets and public

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places there are many workmen and craftsmen of every sort, waiting to be employed by the day. The people of this city are dressed with more elegance and are more courtly in their bearing than those of the other cities and prov- inces, and because Mutezuma and all those chieftains, his vassals, are always coming to the city, the people have more manners and politeness in all matters. Yet so as not to tire Your Highness with the description of the things of this city (although I would not complete it so briedy), I will say only that these people live almost like those in Spain, and in as much har- mony and order as there, and considering that they are barbarous and so far from the knowledge of God and cut off from all civilized nations, it is truly remarkable to see what they have achieved in all things.

* * *

1522

THOMAS HARRIOT

T homas Harriot (1560–1621) was an impor tant En glish scientist and mathema-tician, but he remained for many years an obscure "gure, and little is known about his early life. Born in Oxfordshire, he enrolled at the University at Oxford seventeen years later, earning a reputation for brilliance and befriending the geog- rapher Richard Hakluyt. Soon after graduating, he went to work for Sir Walter Raleigh, who became his patron. A year after Raleigh’s "rst voyage to the Amer i cas in 1584, Harriot sailed with Sir Richard Grenville, making astronomical observa- tions along the way. Anchored at Roanoke Island, off the Outer Banks of what is now North Carolina, Grenville’s expedition explored the mainland. In his capacity as a kind of staff scientist, Harriot observed the topography and the dora and fauna, as well as taking note of the customs and language of the local people. He made drawings and maps and developed a phonetic system for recording and learning the native Algonquian language. When Sir Francis Drake (see p. 47) arrived, warning of an imminent Spanish attack on the settlement at Roanoke, Harriot and his party sailed with Drake for Eng land. A Brief and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia (1588) became Harriot’s only work to appear in print during his lifetime, and it was reprinted twice by Richard Hakluyt. This abstract of a lost longer work offered a compendium of useful information for prospective planters and colonists. In 1590, Theodor de Bry produced a Latin edition that had engravings based on the watercolors made by John White, a member of Harriot’s party. De Bry’s volume was enormously popu lar, going through seventeen editions between 1590 and 1620. In later years, Harriot achieved considerable fame as a religious freethinker as well as a scholar and explorer.

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1. The text is from A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia (1588; rpt. 1903). 2. I.e., it seems appropriate that. 3. Ranging in size as En glish people do.

4. Archaism for “places where trees are grown.” 5. Mounted guns; artillery. 6. Lack.

From A Brief and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia1

Of the Nature and Manners of the People

It resteth2 I speak a word or two of the natu ral inhabitants, their natures and manners, leaving large discourse thereof until time more con ve nient hereaf- ter: now only so far forth, as that you may know, how that they in re spect of troubling our inhabiting and planting, are not to be feared; but that they shall have cause both to fear and love us, that shall inhabit with them.

They are a people clothed with loose mantles made of deer skins, & aprons of the same round about their middles; all else naked; of such a difference of statures only as we in Eng land;3 having no edge tools or weapons of iron or steel to offend us withal, neither know they how to make any: those weapons they have, are only bows made of witch hazel, & arrows of reeds; dat edged truncheons also of wood about a yard long, neither have they any thing to defend themselves but targets made of barks; and some armours made of sticks wickered together with thread.

Their towns are but small, & near the sea coast but few, some containing but 10 or 12 houses: some 20: the greatest that we have seen have been but of 30 houses: if they be walled it is only done with barks of trees made fast to stakes, or else with poles only "xed upright and close one by another.

Their houses are made of small poles made fast at the tops in round form after the manner as is used in many arbories4 in our gardens of Eng land, in most towns covered with barks, and in some with arti"cial mats made of long rushes; from the tops of the houses down to the ground. The length of them is commonly double to the breadth, in some places they are but 12 and 16 yards long, and in other some we have seen of four and twenty.

In some places of the country one only town belongeth to the government of a wiróans or chief lord; in other some two or three, in some six, eight, & more; the greatest wiróans that yet we had dealing with had but eigh teen towns in his government, and able to make not above seven or eight hundred "ghting men at the most: The language of every government is dif fer ent from any other, and the farther they are distant the greater is the difference.

Their manner of wars amongst themselves is either by sudden surprising one another most commonly about the dawning of the day, or moon light; or else by ambushes, or some subtle devices: Set battles are very rare, except it fall out where there are many trees, where either part may have some hope of defence, after the delivery of every arrow, in leaping behind some or other.

If there fall out any wars between us & them, what their "ght is likely to be, we having advantages against them so many manner of ways, as by our disci- pline, our strange weapons and devices else; especially by ordnance5 great and small, it may be easily imagined; by the experience we have had in some places, the turning up of their heels against us in running away was their best defence.

In re spect of us they are a people poor, and for want6 of skill and judge- ment in the knowledge and use of our things, do esteem our trides before

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7. Dwelling place.

things of greater value: Notwithstanding in their proper manner consider- ing the want of such means as we have, they seem very ingenious; for although they have no such tools, nor any such crafts, sciences and arts as we; yet in those things they do, they show excellence of wit. And by how much they upon due consideration shall "nd our manner of knowledges and crafts to exceed theirs in perfection, and speed for doing or execution, by so much the more is it probable that they should desire our friendships & love, and have the greater re spect for pleasing and obeying us. Whereby may be hoped if means of good government be used, that they may in short time be brought to civility, and the embracing of true religion.

Some religion they have already, which although it be far from the truth, yet being as it is, there is hope it may be the easier and sooner reformed.

They believe that there are many gods which they call montóac, but of dif fer ent sorts and degrees; one only chiefe and great God, which hath been from all eternity. Who as they af"rm when he purposed to make the world, made "rst other gods of a principal order to be as means and instruments to be used in the creation and government to follow; and after the sun, moon, and stars, as petty gods and the instruments of the other order more princi- pal. First they say were made waters, out of which by the gods was made all diversity of creatures that are vis i ble or invisible.

For mankind they say a woman was made "rst, which by the working of one of the gods, concieved and brought forth children: And in such sort they say they had their beginning.

But how many years or ages have passed since, they say they can make no relation having no letters nor other such means as we to keep rec ords of the particularities of times past, but only tradition from father to son.

They think that all the gods are of human shape, & therfore they repre- sent them by images in the forms of men, which they call kewasówok; one alone is called kewás; them they place in houses appropriate or temples which they call machicómuck; where they worship, praise, sing, and make many times offerings unto them. In some machicómuck we have seen but one kewás, in some two, and in other some three; the common sort think them to be also gods.

They believe also the immortality of the soul, that after this life as soon as the soul is departed from the body according to the works it hath done, it is either carried to heaven the habitacle7 of gods, there to enjoy perpetual bliss and happiness, or else to a great pit or hole, which they think to be in the furthest parts of their part of the world toward the sun set, there to burn continually: the place they call popogusso.

For the con"rmation of this opinion, they told me two stories of two men that had been lately dead and revived again; the one happened but few years before our coming into the country, of a wicked man which having been dead and buried, the next day the earth of the grave being seen to move, was taken up again; who made declaration where his soul had been, that is to say very near entering into popogusso, had not one of the gods saved him & gave him leave to return again, and teach his friends what they should do to avoid that terrible place of torment.

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8. An incendiary weapon, like Greek "re. “Burning glasses”: large convex lenses used to concentrate the sun’s rays, potentially causing ignition.

The other happened in the same year we were there, but in a town that was threescore miles from us, and it was told me for strange news that one being dead, buried and taken up again as the "rst, showed that although his body had lain dead in the grave, yet his soul was alive, and had traveled far in a long broad way, on both sides whereof grew most delicate and pleasant trees, bearing more rare and excellent fruits than ever he had seen before or was able to express, and at length came to most brave and fair houses, near which he met his father, that had been dead before, who gave him great charge to go back again and show his friends what good they were to do to enjoy the plea- sures of that place, which when he had done he should after come again.

What subtlety soever be in the wiroances and priests, this opinion wor- keth so much in many of the common and simple sort of people that it maketh them have great re spect to their governours, and also great care what they do, to avoid torment after death, and to enjoy bliss; although not- withstanding there is punishment ordained for malefactors, as stealers, whoremongers, and other sorts of wicked doers; some punished with death, some with forfeitures, some with beating, according to the greatness of the facts.

And this is the sum of their religion, which I learned by having special familiarity with some of their priests. Wherein they were not so sure grounded, nor gave such credit to their traditions and stories but through conversing with us they were brought into great doubts of their own, and no small admiration of ours, with earnest desire in many, to learn more than we had means for want of perfect utterance in their language to express.

Most things they saw with us, as mathematical instruments, sea com- passes, the virtue of the loadstone in drawing iron, a perspective glass whereby was showed many strange sights, burning glasses, wild"re works,8 guns, books, writing and reading, spring clocks that seem to go off them- selves, and many other things that we had, were so strange unto them, and so far exceeded their capacities to comprehend the reason and means how they should be made and done, that they thought they were rather the works of gods than of men, or at the leastwise they had been given and taught us of the gods. Which made many of them to have such opinion of us, as that if they knew not the truth of God and religion already, it was rather to be had from us, whom God so specially loved, than from a people that were so simple, as they found themselves to be in comparison of us. Whereupon greater credit was given unto that we spoke of concerning such matters.

Many times and in every town where I came, according as I was able, I made declaration of the contents of the Bible; that therein was set forth the true and only God, and his mighty works, that therein was contained the true doctrine of salvation through Christ, with many particularities of mir- acles and chief points of religion, as I was able then to utter, and thought "t for the time. And although I told them the book materially & of it self was not of any such virtue, as I thought they did concieve, but only the doctrine therein contained; yet would many be glad to touch it, to embrace it, to kiss it, to hold it to their breasts and heads, and stroke over all their body with it to show their hungry desire of that knowledge which was spoken of.

9. Many indigenous religions in the Amer i cas readily incorporate new practices, an approach sometimes called syncretism. 1. Trou ble, as in cross to bear. 2. Harriot and his contemporaries did not under- stand how disease was spread; germ theory was

not developed until the nineteenth century. In this section, Harriot describes how Wingina and the colonists offered competing interpretations for the devastating illnesses that swept through the region after the arrival of the En glish.

The wiroans with whom we dwelt, called Wingina, and many of his people would be glad many times to be with us at our prayers, and many times call upon us both in his own town, as also in others whither he sometimes accom- panied us, to pray and sing psalms; hoping thereby to be partaker of the same effects which we by that meanes also expected.9

Twice this wiroans was so grievously sick that he was like to die, and as he lay languishing, doubting of any help by his owne priests, and thinking he was in such danger for offending us and thereby our God, sent for some of us to pray and be a means to our God that it would please him either that he might live or after death dwell with him bliss; so likewise were the requests of many others in the like case.

On a time also when their corn began to wither by reason of a drought which happened extraordinarily, fearing that it had come to pass by reason that in some thing they had displeased us, many would come to us & desire us to pray to our God of Eng land, that he would preserve their corn, prom- ising that when it was ripe we also should be partakers of the fruit.

There could at no time happen any strange sickness, losses, hurts, or any other cross1 unto them, but that they would impute to us the cause or means therof for offending or not pleasing us.

One other rare and strange accident, leaving others, will I mention before I end, which moved the whole country that either knew or heard of us, to have us in wonderful admiration.

There was no town where we had any subtle device praised against us, we leaving it unpunished or not revenged ( because we sought by all means pos- si ble to win them by gentleness) but that within a few days after our depar- ture from every such town, the people began to die very fast, and many in short space; in some towns about twenty, in some fourty, in some sixty, & in one six score, which in truth was very many in re spect of their numbers.2 This happened in no place that we could learn but where we had been, where they used some practise against us, and after such time; The disease also so strange, that they neither knew what it was, nor how to cure it; the like by report of the oldest men in the country never happened before, time out of mind. A thing specially observed by us as also by the natu ral inhabitants themselves.

Insomuch that when some of the inhabitants which were our friends & especially the wiroans Wingina had observed such effects in four or "ve towns to follow their wicked practises, they were persuaded that it was the work of our God through our means, and that we by him might kill and slay whom we would without weapons and nor come near them.

And thereupon when it had happened that they had understanding that any of their enemies had abused us in our journeys, hearing that we had wrought no revenge with our weapons, & fearing upon some cause the matter should so rest: did come and entreat us that we would be a means to our God that they as others that had dealt ill with us might in like sort die; alleging

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3. Archaism for “pleased” or “chose.”

how much it would be for our credit and pro"t, as also theirs; and hoping furthermore that we would do so much at their requests in re spect of the friendship we professe them.

Whose entreaties although we showed that they were ungodlie, af"rming that our God would not subject him selfe to any such prayers and requests of men: that indeed all thinges have been and were to be done according to his good plea sure as he had ordained: and that we to show our selves his true servants ought rather to make petition for the contrary, that they with them might live together with us, be made partakers of his truth & serve him in righ teousness; but notwithstanding in such sort, that we refer that as all other things, to be done according to his divine will & plea sure, and as by his wisdom he had ordained to be best.

Yet because the effect fell out so suddenly and shortly after according to their desires, they thought neverthelesse it came to pass by our means, and that we in using such speeches into them did but dissemble the matter, and therefore came unto us to give us thanks in their manner that although we satis"ed them not in promise, yet in deeds and effect we had ful"lled their desires.

This marvelous accident in all the country wrought so strange opinions of us, that some people could not tell whether to think us gods or men, and the rather because that all the space of their sicknesse, there was no man of ours known to die, or that was specially sick: they noted also that we had no women amongst us, neither that we did care for any of theirs.

Some therefore were of opinion that we were not born of women, and therefore not mortal, but that we were men of an old generation many years past then risen again to immortality.

Some would likewise seem to prophesy that there were more of our gen- eration yet to come, to kill theirs and take their places, as some thought the purpose was by that which was already done.

Those that were immediatly to come after us they imagined to be in the air, yet invisible & without bodies, & that they by our entreaty & for the love of us did make the people to die in that sort as they did by shooting invis- ible bullets into them.

To con"rm this opinion their physicians to excuse their ignorance in cur- ing the disease, would not be ashamed to say, but earnestly make the simple people believe, that the strings of blood that they sucked out of the sick bod- ies, were the strings wherewithal the invisible bullets were tied and cast.

Some also thought that we shot them ourselves out of our pieces from the place where we dwelt, and killed the people in any such town that had offended us as we listed,3 how far distant from us soever it were.

And other some said that it was the special work of God for our sakes, as we our selves have cause in some sort to think no less, whatsoever some do or may imagine to the contrary, specially some astrologers knowing of the eclipse of the sun which we saw the same year before in our voyage thither- ward, which unto them appeared very terrible. And also of a comet which began to appear but a few days before the beginning of the said sickness. But to conclude them from being the special causes of so special an acci- dent, there are farther reasons than I think "t at this pres ent to be alleged.

These their opinions I have set down the more at large that it may appear unto you that there is good hope they may be brought through discreet deal- ing and government to the embracing of the truth, and consequently to honour, obey, feare and love us.

And although some of our com pany towards the end of the year, showed themselves too "erce, in slaying some of the people, in some towns, upon causes that on our part, might easily enough have been borne withal: yet notwithstanding because it was on their part justly deserved, the alteration of their opinions generally & for the most part concerning us is the less to be doubted. And whatsoever else they may be, by carefulness of ourselves need nothing at all to be feared.

The best nevertheless in this as in all actions besides is to be endeavored and hoped, & of the worst that may happen notice to be taken with consid- eration, and as much as may be eschewed.

* * *

SAMUEL DE CHAMPLAIN

B orn into a seafaring family near La Rochelle, a city on France’s Atlantic coast, Samuel de Champlain (c. 1570–1635) did more than any other Frenchman of his time to deepen his country’s interest in North Amer i ca. He had already crossed the ocean six times by 1603, when (as royal geographer under the command of the explorer François Pont- Gravé) he sailed up the Saint Lawrence River as far as the future site of Montreal. The expedition traded with the Natives there for valuable furs before returning to France. Early in 1604, Champlain published his of"cial report, Des Sauvages, or Of the Indians, illustrated with his own maps, and in April he returned to North Amer i ca under the command of the Sieur de Monts, a Protes- tant merchant who was a native of Champlain’s own region. (Sieur, meaning “Sir,” was an honori"c title in old French.) In 1608, Champlain made another voyage, dur- ing which he founded Quebec City. The next year he gathered Indian allies from several tribes in the Saint Lawrence valley and the mountains to the north, then journeyed down the Richelieu River into the long, narrow lake to the south that today bears his name. While on this trip, which he wrote about in his next book, Les Voy- ages de Sieur de Champlain (1613), he and his allies met and defeated a party of Mohawk Indians from what is now central New York. This violent encounter, related in the following se lection, helped turn most Mohawk and their kin in the Iroquois Confederacy against the French for the next 150 years.

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1. The text is from The Works of Samuel de Champlain in Six Volumes (1925), vol. 2, edited by H. P. Biggar and translated by John Squair. 2. Now known as the Richelieu; called by Champlain “the Iroquois river” and “the river of the Iroquois.” 3. Lake Champlain contains a number of large islands near where the Richelieu dows out of its

north end. 4. This length could have been from "fty to seventy- "ve miles. 5. Now known as Lake George; connected to Lake Champlain through the short La Chute River, site of the rapids mentioned in the previous sentence.

From The Voyages of the Sieur de Champlain1

[The Iroquois]

We departed on the following day, pursuing our way up the river2 as far as the entrance to the lake. * * *

On the following day we entered the lake * * * in which I saw four beau- tiful islands3 * * * which, like the Iroquois river, were formerly inhabited by Indians: but have been abandoned, since they have been at war with one another. There are also several rivers dowing into the lake, on whose banks are many "ne trees of the same va ri e ties we have in France, with many of the "nest vines I had seen anywhere. * * *

Continuing our way along this lake in a westerly direction and viewing the country, I saw towards the east very high mountains on the tops of which there was snow. I enquired of the natives whether these parts were inhab- ited. They said they were, and by the Iroquois, and that in those parts there were beautiful valleys and "elds rich in corn such as I have eaten in that country, along with other products in abundance. And they said that the lake went close to the mountains, which, as I judged, might be some twenty- "ve leagues4 away from us. Towards the south I saw others which were not less lofty than the "rst- mentioned, but there was no snow on these. The Indians told me that it was there that we were to meet their enemies, that the moun- tains were thickly populated, and that we had to pass a rapid which I saw afterwards. Thence they said we had to enter another lake.5 * * *

Now as we began to get within two or three days’ journey of the home of their enemy, we proceeded only by night, and during the day we rested. Nev- ertheless, they kept up their usual superstitious ceremonies in order to know what was to happen to them in their undertakings, and often would come and ask me whether I had had dreams and had seen their enemies. I would tell them that I had not, but nevertheless continued to inspire them with courage and good hope. When night came on, we set off on our way until the next morning. Then we retired into the thick woods where we spent the rest of the day. Towards ten or eleven o’clock, after walking around our camp, I went to take a rest, and while asleep I dreamed that I saw in the lake near a mountain our enemies, the Iroquois, drowning before our eyes. I wanted to succour them, but our Indian allies said to me that we should let them all perish; for they were bad men. When I awoke they did not fail to ask me as usual whether I had dreamed anything. I told them what I had seen in my dream. This gave them such con"dence that they no longer had any doubt as to the good fortune awaiting them.

Eve ning having come, we embarked in our canoes in order to proceed on our way, and as we were paddling along very quietly, and without making any noise, about ten o’clock at night on the twenty- ninth of [July], at the

6. Now known as Crown Point; in the southern part of Lake Champlain. 7. Members of this group of peoples, from the mountainous region north of the Saint Law-

rence River, accompanied Champlain on his expedition into the territory of their ancient enemies, the Iroquois. 8. An early, relatively heavy kind of gun.

extremity of a cape6 which proj ects into the lake on the west side, we met the Iroquois on the war- path. Both they and we began to utter loud shouts and each got his arms ready. We drew out into the lake and the Iroquois landed and arranged all their canoes near one another. Then they began to fell trees with the poor axes which they sometimes win in war, or with stone axes; and they barricaded themselves well.

Our Indians all night long also kept their canoes close to one another and tied to poles in order not to get separated, but to "ght all together in case of need. We were on the water within bowshot of their barricades. And when they were armed, and every thing in order, they sent two canoes which they had separated from the rest, to learn from their enemies whether they wished to "ght, and these replied that they had no other desire, but that for the moment nothing could be seen and that it was necessary to wait for daylight in order to distinguish one another. They said that as soon as the sun should rise, they would attack us, and to this our Indians agreed. Meanwhile the whole night was spent in dances and songs on both sides, with many insults and other remarks, such as the lack of courage of our side, how little we could resist or do against them, and that when daylight came our people would learn all this to their ruin. Our side too was not lacking in retort, tell- ing the enemy that they would see such deeds of arms as they had never seen, and a great deal of other talk, such as is usual at the siege of a city. Having sung, danced, and dung words at one another for some time, when daylight came, my companions and I were still hidden, lest the enemy should see us, getting our "re- arms ready as best we could, being however still sepa- rated, each in a canoe of the Montagnais Indians.7 After we were armed with light weapons, we took, each of us, an arquebus8 and went ashore. I saw the enemy come out of their barricade to the number of two hundred, in appearance strong, robust men. They came slowly to meet us with a grav- ity and calm which I admired; and at their head were three chiefs. Our Indi- ans likewise advanced in similar order, and told me that those who had the three big plumes were the chiefs, and that there were only these three, whom you could recognize by these plumes, which were larger than those of their companions; and I was to do what I could to kill them. I promised them to do all in my power, and told them that I was very sorry they could not under- stand me, so that I might direct their method of attacking the enemy, all of whom undoubtedly we should thus defeat; but that there was no help for it, and that I was very glad to show them, as soon as the engagement began, the courage and readiness which were in me.

As soon as we landed, our Indians began to run some two hundred yards towards their enemies, who stood "rm and had not yet noticed my compan- ions who went off into the woods with some Indians. Our Indians began to call to me with loud cries; and to make way for me they divided into two groups, and put me ahead some twenty yards, and I marched on until I was within some thirty yards of the enemy, who as soon as they caught sight of me halted and gazed at me and I at them. When I saw them make a move to

C H A M P L A I N : T H E V O Y A G E S | 9 5

9 6 | F I R S T E N C O U N T E R S

draw their bows upon us, I took aim with my arquebus and shot straight at one of the three chiefs, and with this shot two fell to the ground and one of their companions was wounded who died thereof a little later. I had put four bullets into my arquebus. As soon as our people saw this shot so favorable for them, they began to shout so loudly that one could not have heard it thun- der, and meanwhile the arrows dew thick on both sides. The Iroquois were much astonished that two men should have been killed so quickly, although they were provided with shields made of cotton thread woven together and wood, which were proof against their arrows. This frightened them greatly. As I was reloading my arquebus, one of my companions "red a shot from within the woods, which astonished them again so much that, seeing their chiefs dead, they lost courage and took to dight, abandoning the "eld and their fort, and deeing into the depth of the forest, whither I pursued them and laid low still more of them. Our Indians also killed several and took ten or twelve prisoners. The remainder ded with the wounded. Of our Indians "fteen or sixteen were wounded with arrows, but these were quickly healed.

After we had gained the victory, our Indians wasted time in taking a large quantity of Indian corn and meal belonging to the enemy, as well as their shields, which they had left behind, the better to run. Having feasted, danced, and sung, we three hours later set off for home with the prisoners. The place where this attack took place is in 43° and some minutes of latitude, and was named Lake Champlain.

* * * Having gone about eight leagues, the Indians, towards eve ning, took one of the prisoners to whom they made a harangue on the cruelties which he and his friends without any restraint had practiced upon them, and that simi- larly he should resign himself to receive as much, and they ordered him to sing, if he had the heart. He did so, but it was a very sad song to hear.

Meanwhile our Indians kindled a "re, and when it was well lighted, each took a brand and burned this poor wretch a little at a time in order to make him suffer the greater torment. Sometimes they would leave off, throwing water on his back. Then they tore out his nails and applied "re to the ends of his "n gers and to his membrum virile.9 Afterwards they scalped him and caused a certain kind of gum to drip very hot upon the crown of his head. Then they pierced his arms near the wrists and with sticks pulled and tore out his sinews by main force, and when they saw they could not get them out, they cut them off. This poor wretch uttered strange cries, and I felt pity at seeing him treated in this way. Still he bore it so "rmly that sometimes one would have said he felt scarcely any pain. They begged me repeatedly to take "re and do like them. I pointed out to them that we did not commit such cruelties, but that we killed people outright, and that if they wished me to shoot him with the arquebus, I should be glad to do so. They said no; for he would not feel any pain. I went away from them as if angry at seeing them practice so much cruelty on his body. When they saw that I was not pleased, they called me back and told me to give him a shot with the arque- bus. I did so, without his perceiving anything, and with one shot caused him to escape all the tortures he would have suffered rather than see him brutally

9. Virile member (Latin); i.e., penis.

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9 8 | F I R S T E N C O U N T E R S

treated. When he was dead, they were not satis"ed; they opened his body and threw his bowels into the lake. Afterwards they cut off his head, arms and legs, which they scattered about; but they kept the scalp, which they had dayed, as they did with those of all the others whom they had killed in their attack. They did another awful thing, which was to cut his heart into several pieces and to give it to a brother of the dead man to eat and to others of his companions who were prisoners. These took it and put it into their mouths, but would not swallow it. Some of the Algonquin Indians who were guarding the prisoners made them spit it out and threw it into the water. That is how these people act with regard to those whom they capture in war. And it would be better for them to die "ghting, and be killed at once, as many do, rather than to fall into the hands of their enemies. When this exe- cution was over, we set out upon our return with the rest of the prisoners, who went along continually singing, without other expectation than to be tortured like him of whom we have spoken. When we arrived at the rapids of the river of the Iroquois, the Algonquins returned into their own country and the Ochategu’s1 also with some of the prisoners, all much pleased at what had taken place in the war, and because I had gone with them will- ingly. So we all separated with great protestations of mutual friendship, and they asked me if I would not go to their country, and aid them continually like a brother. I promised them I would.

* * *

1613

1. Actually, the Yendots, a tribe allied with the Algonquins against the Iroquois. Champlain mistook their chief’s name, Ochateguin, for the tribe’s name.

ROBERT JUET

In 1609, the same year that Samuel de Champlain journeyed south into Iroquois ter-ritory, the En glish navigator Henry Hudson (c. 1570–1611) abandoned his orders from the power ful Dutch East Indies Com pany. Instead of seeking out a Northeast Passage leading around Rus sia to the Amer i cas, Hudson sailed west toward the coast of what is now the northeastern United States. Upon arrival, he entered the large bay at the lower end of the river that later came to bear his name and set out to explore the bay’s islands, including “Manna- hata” (Manhattan). Hudson then sailed up the river for 150 miles or so, to the vicinity of pres ent- day Albany. During his exploration of this river, Hudson and his crew encountered Native peoples (such as the Lenni Lenape, or Delaware; and the Mahicanni, or River Indians), with whom they traded in an atmosphere fraught with suspicion and punctuated by acts of open hostility and vio lence. As recounted in the following se lection, the explorers also entertained one Indian with brandy, a tragicomic episode that blends ele ments of the convivial and the brutal. Then, continuing to manifest the odd mixture of curiosity, mercantile savvy, and armed intransigence that had marked their travels upstream, they went back downriver. Robert Juet (d. 1611), who kept the best con temporary rec ord of the

R O B E R T J U E T | 9 9

voyage but about whom little else is known, apparently was an En glish sailor with a penchant for vio lence. While traveling again with Hudson in June 1611, Juet helped foment a mutiny among his discontented fellow sailors. They overpowered Hudson and set him adrift, with his son and a handful of supporters, in a small boat and with few provisions. The abandoned group dis appeared in what thereafter was known as Hudson’s Bay. Juet, acting as navigator, died a few days before the starving mutineers reached the coast of Ireland that September.

Hudson set adrift. This painting, The Last Voyage of Henry Hudson (1881), is by the British artist John Collier (1850–1934). It shows Hudson with his son and a crew member after they were set adrift in June 1611 by a mutinous crew that included Robert Juet. Hudson was attempting to "nd the Northwest Passage. He and his companions were never seen again.

1 0 0 | F I R S T E N C O U N T E R S

From The Third Voyage of Master Henry Hudson1

[September 4, 1609]

* * * At night the wind blew hard at the north- west, and our anchor came home and we drove on shore, but took no hurt, thanked be God, for the ground is soft sand and ooze. This day the people of the country came aboard of us, seeming very glad of our coming, and brought green tobacco, and gave us of it for knives and beads. They go in deer skins loose, well dressed. They have yellow copper. They desire clothes, and are very civil. They have great store of maize or Indian wheat, whereof they make good bread. The coun- try is full of great and tall oaks.

The #fth, in the morning, as soon as the day was light, the wind ceased and the dood came. So we heaved off our ship again into "ve fathoms water, and sent our boat to sound the bay,2 and we found that there was three fathoms hard by the southern shore. Our men went on land there, and saw great store of men, women, and children, who gave them tobacco at their coming on land. So they went up into the woods, and saw great store of very goodly oaks and some currants. For one of them came aboard and brought some dried, and gave me some, which were sweet and good. This day many of the people came aboard, some in mantles of feathers, and some in skins of divers3 sorts of good furs. Some women also came to us with hemp. They had red copper tobacco pipes, and other things of copper they did wear about their necks. At night they went on land again, so we rode very quiet, but durst not trust them.

The sixth, in the morning, was fair weather, and our master sent John Col- man, with four other men in our boat, over to the north- side to sound the other river, being four leagues4 from us. They found by the way shoal water, two fathoms; but at the north of the river eigh teen, and twenty fathoms, and very good riding for ships; and a narrow river to the westward, between two islands. The lands, they told us, were as pleasant with grass and dowers and goodly trees as ever they had seen, and very sweet smells came from them. So they went in two leagues and saw an open sea, and returned; and as they came back, they were set upon by two canoes, the one having twelve, the other fourteen men. The night came on, and it began to rain, so that their match5 went out; and they had one man slain in the "ght, which was an En glishman, named John Colman, with an arrow shot into his throat, and two more hurt. It grew so dark that they could not "nd the ship that night, but labored to and fro on their oars. They had so great a stream, that their grapnel6 would not hold them.

The seventh, was fair, and by ten of the clock they returned aboard the ship, and brought our dead man with them, whom we carried on land and

1. The text is from Henry Hudson the Navigator (1860), edited and translated by G. M. Asher. 2. New York Bay. 3. Vari ous. 4. This distance would have been about twelve miles. 5. A wax- coated fuse kept burning to ignite the

matchlock guns that soldiers carried before the invention of the dintlock mechanism. Whereas in the latter device gunpowder is lighted by sparks struck from a piece of dint stone, matchlock weapons had to be lighted by hand. 6. Small, claw- tipped anchor.

buried, and named the point after his name, Colmans Point. Then we hoisted in our boat, and raised her side with waist boards7 for defence of our men. So we rode still all night, having good regard to our watch.

The eighth, was very fair weather, we rode still very quietly. The people came aboard us, and brought tobacco and Indian wheat to exchange for knives and beads, and offered us no vio lence. So we "tting up our boat did mark8 them, to see if they would make any show of the death of our man; which they did not.

The ninth, fair weather. In the morning, two great canoes came aboard full of men; the one with their bows and arrows, and the other in show of buying of knives to betray us; but we perceived their intent. We took two of them to have kept them, and put red coats on them, and would not suffer the other to come near us. So they went on land, and two other came aboard in a canoe; we took the one and let the other go; but he which we had taken, got up and leapt over- board. Then we weighed and went off into the chan- nel of the river, and anchored there all night.

* * * The #fteenth, in the morning, was misty, until the sun arose: then it cleared. So we weighed with the wind at south, and ran up into the river twenty leagues, passing by high mountains. We had a very good depth, as six, seven, eight, nine, ten, twelve, and thirteen fathoms, and great store of salmons in the river. This morning our two savages got out of a port9 and swam away. After we were under sail, they called to us in scorn. At night we came to other mountains, which lie from1 the river’s side. There we found very loving people, and very old men: where we were well used. Our boat went to "sh, and caught great store of very good "sh.

* * * The one and twentieth was fair weather, and the wind all southerly: we deter- mined yet once more to go farther up into the river. * * * Our master and his mate determined to try some of the chief men of the country, whether they had any treachery in them. So they took them down into the cabin, and gave them so much wine and aqua vitae2 that they were all merry: and one of them had his wife with them, which sat so modestly, as any of our country women would do in a strange place. In the end one of them was drunk, which had been aboard of our ship all the time that we had been there: and that was strange to them; for they could not tell how to take it. The canoes and folk went all on shore: but some of them came again, and brought stropes of beads: some had six, seven, eight, nine, ten; and gave him.3 So he slept all night quietly.

The two and twentieth was fair weather: in the morning our master’s mate and four more of the com pany went up with our boat to sound the river higher up. The people of the country came not aboard till noon: but when they came, and saw the savages well, they were glad. So at three of the clock in the after noon they came aboard, and brought tobacco, and more beads,

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7. Boards inserted atop the low sides, or waist, of a ship. 8. Watch. 9. Hole for a gun. 1. I.e., away from.

2. Brandy. 3. I.e., gave him the “stropes of beads”: belts of wampum, which was made from marine shells and used as a kind of money.

1 0 2 | F I R S T E N C O U N T E R S

and gave them to our master, and made an oration, and showed him all the country round about. Then they sent one of their com pany on land, who presently returned, and brought a great platter full of venison dressed by themselves; and they caused him to eat with them: then they made him reverence4 and departed, all save the old man that lay aboard.

* * * The #rst of October, fair weather, the wind variable between the west and the north. In the morning we weighed at seven of the clock with the ebb, and got down below the mountains, which was seven leagues. Then it fell calm and the dood was come, and we anchored at twelve of the clock. The people of the mountains came aboard us, wondering at our ship and weap- ons. We bought some small skins of them for trides. This after noon, one canoe kept hanging under our stern with one man in it, which we could not keep from thence, who got up by our rudder to the cabin win dow, and stole out my pillow, and two shirts, and two bandoliers.5 Our master’s mate shot at him, and struck him on the breast, and killed him. Whereupon all the rest ded away, some in their canoes, and so leapt out of them into the water. We manned our boat, and got our things again. Then one of them that swam got hold of our boat, thinking to overthrow it.6 But our cook took a sword, and cut off one of his hands, and he was drowned. By this time the ebb was come, and we weighed and got down two leagues: by that time it was dark. So we anchored in four fathoms water, and rode well.

The second, fair weather. At break of day we weighed, the wind being at north- west, and got down seven leagues; then the dood was come strong, so we anchored. Then came one of the savages that swam away from us at our going up the river with many others, thinking to betray us. But we perceived their intent, and suffered none of them to enter our ship. Whereupon two canoes full of men, with their bows and arrows shot at us after our stern: in recompense whereof we discharged six muskets, and killed two or three of them. Then above an hundred of them came to a point of land to shoot at us. There I shot a falcon7 at them, and killed two of them: whereupon the rest ded into the woods. Yet they manned off another canoe with nine or ten men, which came to meet us. So I shot at it also a falcon, and shot it through, and killed one of them. Then our men with their muskets killed three or four more of them. So they went their way; within a while after we got down two leagues beyond that place, and anchored in a bay, clear from all danger of them on the other side of the river, where we saw a very good piece of ground: and hard by it there was a cliff, that looked of the color of a white8 green, as though it were either copper or silver mine: and I think it to be one of them, by the trees that grow upon it. For they be all burned, and the other places are green as grass; it is on that side of the river that is called Manna- hata. There we saw no people to trou ble us: and rode quietly all night; but had much wind and rain.

* * *

1625

4. Paid him their re spects. 5. Ammunition belts. 6. Tip it over.

7. Light cannon. 8. Whitish.

1. The text is from John Heckewelder, History, Manners, and Customs of the Indian Nations Who Once Inhabited Pennsylvania and the Neighbouring States (1876), edited by William C. Reichel.

JOHN HECKEWELDER

A missionary to Native Americans and a member of the pietist Moravian Church in Pennsylvania, John Heckewelder (1743–1823) was born in Eng land to Ger- man parents who were refugees from religious persecution in Germany. He emi- grated with them to Amer i ca in 1754 and "rst traveled to Native territory in 1762. For the rest of his long life, he was intimately associated with the Lenni Lenape, or Delaware, and their allies and neighbors in Ohio. Although Heckewelder cared deeply for the Natives, he sought to convert them to the faith of the Eu ro pean invaders, whose interests at vari ous points he directly served—as an agent of the American rebels during the Revolution and as an agent of the U.S. government in the period when settlers began moving into Native lands. After retiring to Bethle- hem, Pennsylvania, in 1810, Heckewelder spent his last years writing accounts of his travels as well as descriptions of the manners and customs of Native communi- ties. James Fenimore Cooper drew on these ethnographic writings in his Leather- stocking Tales (1827–41). One of Heckewelder’s best- known works, An Account of the History, Manners, and Customs of the Indian Nations Who Once Inhabited Penn- sylvania and the Neighbouring States (1819), includes a brief Native story he had picked up years before. That story, the following se lection, has both striking paral- lels to and suggestive differences from the previous se lection, by Robert Juet. Hecke- welder’s version provides a fascinating glimpse of the Native side of the narrative divide in descriptions of “"rst encounters.”

From History, Manners, and Customs of the Indian Nations1

[Delaware Legend of Hudson’s Arrival]

The Lenni Lenape claim the honor of having received and welcomed the Eu ro pe ans on their "rst arrival in the country, situated between New Eng land and Virginia. It is probable, however, that the Mahicanni or Mohi- cans, who then inhabited the banks of the Hudson, concurred in the hospi- table act. The relation I am going to make was taken down many years since from the mouth of an intelligent Delaware Indian, and may be considered as a correct account of the tradition existing among them of this momen- tous event. I give it as much as pos si ble in their own language.

A great many years ago, when men with a white skin had never yet been seen in this land, some Indians who were out a "shing, at a place where the sea widens, espied at a great distance something remarkably large doating on the water, and such as they had never seen before. These Indians imme- diately returning to the shore, apprised their countrymen of what they had observed, and pressed them to go out with them and discover what it might be. They hurried out together, and saw with astonishment the phenomenon which now appeared to their sight, but could not agree upon what it was; some believed it to be an uncommonly large "sh or animal, while others

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2. Drinking vessel.

were of opinion it must be a very big house doating on the sea. At length the spectators concluded that this wonderful object was moving towards the land, and that it must be an animal or something else that had life in it; it would therefore be proper to inform all the Indians on the inhabited islands of what they had seen, and put them on their guard. Accordingly they sent off a number of runners and watermen to carry the news to their scattered chiefs, that they might send off in every direction for the warriors, with a message that they should come on immediately. These arriving in numbers, and having themselves viewed the strange appearance, and observing that it was actually moving towards the entrance of the river or bay; concluded it to be a remarkably large house in which the Mannitto (the Great or Supreme Being) himself was pres ent, and that he prob ably was coming to visit them. By this time the chiefs were assembled at [New] York island, and deliberating in what manner * * * they should receive their Mannitto on his arrival. Every mea sure was taken to be well provided with plenty of meat for a sacri"ce. The women were desired to prepare the best victuals. All the idols or images were examined and put in order, and a grand dance was supposed not only to be an agreeable entertainment for the Great Being, but it was believed that it might, with the addition of a sacri"ce, contribute to appease him if he was angry with them. The conjurers were also set to work, to determine what this phenomenon portended, and what the pos si ble result of it might be. To these and to the chiefs and wise men of the nations, men, women, and children were looking up for advice and protection. Distracted between hope and fear, they were at a loss what to do; a dance, however, commenced in great confusion. While in this situa- tion, fresh runners arrive declaring it to be a large house of vari ous colours, and crowded with living creatures. It appears now to be certain, that it is the great Mannitto, bringing them some kind of game, such as he had not given them before, but other runners soon after arriving declare that it is positively a house full of human beings, of quite a dif fer ent colour from that of the Indians, and dressed differently from them; that in par tic u lar one of them was dressed entirely in red, who must be the Mannitto himself. They are hailed from the vessel in a language they do not understand, yet they shout or yell in return by way of answer, according to the custom of their country; many are for running off to the woods, but are pressed by others to stay, in order not to give offence to their visitor, who might "nd them out and destroy them. The house, some say, large canoe, at last stops, and a canoe of a smaller size comes on shore with the red man, and some others in it; some stay with his canoe to guard it. The chiefs and wise men, assembled in council, form themselves into a large circle, towards which the man in red clothes approaches with two others. He salutes them with a friendly countenance, and they return the salute after their manner. They are lost in admiration; the dress, the manners, the whole appearance of the unknown strangers is to them a subject of won der; but they are particularly struck with him who wore the red coat all glittering with gold lace, which they could in no manner account for. He, surely, must be the great Man- nitto, but why should he have a white skin? Meanwhile, a large Hackhack2

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is brought by one of his servants, from which an unknown substance is poured out into a small cup or glass, and handed to the supposed Mannitto. He drinks— has the glass "lled again, and hands it to the chief standing next to him. The chief receives it, but only smells the contents and passes it on to the next chief, who does the same. The glass or cup thus passes through the circle, without the liquor being tasted by any one, and is upon the point of being returned to the red clothed Mannitto, when one of the Indians, a brave man and a great warrior, suddenly jumps up and harangues the assembly on the impropriety of returning the cup with its contents. It was handed to them, says he, by the Mannitto, that they should drink out of it, as he himself had done. To follow his example would be pleasing to him; but to return what he had given them might provoke his wrath, and bring destruction on them. And since the orator believed it for the good of the nation that the contents offered them should be drunk, and as no one else would do it, he would drink it himself, let the consequence be what it might; it was better for one man to die, than that a whole nation should be destroyed. He then took the glass, and bidding the assembly a solemn fare- well, at once drank up its whole contents. Every eye was "xed on the reso- lute chief, to see what effect the unknown liquor would produce. He soon began to stagger, and at last fell prostrate on the ground. His companions now bemoan his fate, he falls into a sound sleep, and they think he has expired. He wakes again, jumps up and declares, that he has enjoyed the most delicious sensations, and that he never before felt himself so happy as after he had drunk the cup. He asks for more, his wish is granted; the whole assembly then imitate him, and all become intoxicated.

After this general intoxication had ceased, for they say that while it lasted the whites had con"ned themselves to their vessel, the man with the red clothes returned again, and distributed pres ents among them, consisting of beads, axes, hoes, and stockings such as the white people wear. They soon became familiar with each other, and began to converse by signs. The Dutch made them understand that they would not stay here, that they would return home again, but would pay them another visit the next year, when they would bring them more pres ents, and stay with them awhile; but as they could not live without eating, they should want a little land of them to sow seeds, in order to raise herbs and vegetables to put into their broth. They went away as they had said, and returned in the following season, when both parties were much rejoiced to see each other; but the whites laughed at the Indians, seeing that they knew not the use of the axes and hoes they had given them the year before; for they had these hanging to their breasts as ornaments, and the stockings were made use of as tobacco pouches. The whites now put handles to the former for them, and cut trees down before their eyes, hoed up the ground, and put the stockings on their legs. Here, they say, a general laughter ensued among the Indians, that they had remained ignorant of the use of such valuable implements, and had borne the weight of such heavy metal hanging to their necks, for such a length of time. They took every white man they saw for an inferior Man- nitto attendant upon the supreme Deity who shone superior in the red and laced clothes. As the whites became daily more familiar with the Indians, they at last proposed to stay with them, and asked only for so much ground for a garden spot as, they said, the hide of a bullock would

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cover or encompass, which hide was spread before them. The Indians readily granted this apparently reasonable request; but the whites then took a knife, and beginning at one end of the hide, cut it up to a long rope, not thicker than a child’s "n ger, so that by the time the whole was cut up, it made a great heap; they then took the rope at one end, and drew it gently along, carefully avoiding its breaking. It was drawn out into a circular form, and being closed at its ends, encompassed a large piece of ground. The Indians were sur- prised at the superior wit3 of the whites, but did not wish to contend with them about a little land, as they had still enough themselves. The white and red men lived contentedly together for a long time, though the former from time to time asked for more land, which was readily obtained, and thus they gradually proceeded higher up the Mahicannittuck,4 until the Indi- ans began to believe that they would soon want all their country, which in the end proved true.

1819

3. In the sense of canniness. The trick prob ably was modeled on the one employed in the ancient world by Dido, queen of Carthage, when she

struck a bargain for the site where that city was founded on the north African coast. 4. Now the Hudson River.

WILLIAM BRADFORD EDWARD WINSLOW

G rowing up among radical nonconforming Protestants in rural northern Eng land, William Bradford (1590–1657) embraced their cause at a young age. Early in the seventeenth century, he accompanied them on their exile in the Neth- erlands, where they settled in Leiden (or Leyden). Edward Winslow (1595–1655) was brought up in relative ease in Worcestershire, closer to London, largely untouched by spiritual concerns. He encountered Bradford and the other exiles while traveling in Leiden and, embracing the new sense of purpose that he found in their spiritual life, in 1620 he joined them on their voyage to Amer i ca. Once the colonists had established themselves at Plymouth, Mas sa chu setts, Bradford and Winslow became impor tant public "gures: each, for instance, served several terms as governor. The book they wrote together during their "rst months in New Eng land, Mourt’s Relation (1622), suggests their common objectives and shared viewpoint. In later de cades, the two went their separate ways. After returning to Eng land on public business in 1646, Winslow became involved in Oliver Cromwell’s Puritan government. He died of yellow fever in the West Indies after jointly commanding an unsuccessful military campaign against the Spanish colony of Santo Domingo. Bradford remained at Plymouth, serving as its governor for more than three de cades, and writing the main account of its history, Of Plymouth Plantation. Bradford retells the Cape Cod story included here in the ninth chapter of the "rst book of Of Plymouth Plantation, which appears later in this volume.

From Mourt’s Relation1

[Cape Cod Forays]

Wednesday the sixth of December [1620] we set out, being very cold and hard weather, we were a long while after we launched from the ship, before we could get clear of a sandy point, which lay within less than a furlong of the same. In which time, two were very sick, and Edward Tilley had like to have sounded with cold; the gunner was also sick unto death, (but hope of trucking2 made him to go) and so remained all that day, and the next night; at length we got clear of the sandy point, and got up our sails, and within an hour or two we got under the weather shore,3 and then had smoother water and better sailing, but it was very cold, for the water froze on our clothes, and made them many times like coats of iron: we sailed six or seven leagues4 by the shore, but saw neither river nor creek, at length we met with a tongue of land, being dat off from the shore, with a sandy point, we bore up to gain the point, and found there a fair income or road,5 of a bay, being a league over at the narrowest, and some two or three in length, but we made right over to the land before us, and left the discovery of this income till the next day: as we drew near to the shore, we espied some ten or twelve Indians, very busy about a black thing, what it was we could not tell, til afterwards they saw us, and ran to and fro, as if they had been carry ing some thing away, we landed a league or two from them, and had much ado to put ashore anywhere, it lay so full of dat sands, when we came to shore, we made us a baricado,6 and got "rewood, and set out our sentinels, and betook us to our lodging, such as it was; we saw the smoke of the "re which the savages made that night, about four or "ve miles from us, in the morning we divided our com pany, some eight in the shallop,7 and the rest on the shore went to discover this place, but we found it only to be a bay, without either river or creek coming into it, yet we deemed it to be as good an har- bor as Cape Cod, for they that sounded it, found a ship might ride in "ve fathom water, we on the land found it to be a level soil, but none of the fruitfulest; we saw two becks8 of fresh water, which were the "rst running streams that we saw in the country, but one might stride over them: we found also a great "sh, called a grampus dead on the sands, they in the shal- lop found two of them also in the bottom of the bay, dead in like sort, they were cast up at high water, and could not get off for the frost and ice; they were some "ve or six paces long, and about two inches thick of fat, and deshed like a swine, they would have yielded a great deal of oil, if there had been time and means to have taken it, so we "nding nothing for our turn, both we and our shallop returned. We then directed our course along the sea sands, to the place where we "rst saw the Indians, when we were there,

1. The text is from William Bradford and Edward Winslow, Mourt’s Relation, or Journal of the Plan- tation at Plymouth (1622; rpt., 1865), edited by Henry Martyn Dexter. Mourt’s Relation was "rst published in London by Bradford’s brother- in- law, George Mourt. 2. Trading. “Sounded”: fainted. 3. The shore from which the wind was blowing.

4. This distance might have been about eigh teen to twenty- one miles. 5. Protected inlet or roadstead. 6. Barricade. 7. Small sailing vessel often used in coastal exploration. 8. Brooks.

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we saw it was also a grampus which they were cutting up, they cut it into long rands9 or pieces, about an ell long, and two handfuls broad, we found here and there a piece scattered by the way, as it seemed, for haste: this place the most were minded1 we should call, the Grampus Bay, because we found so many of them there: we followed the track of the Indians’ bare feet a good way on the sands, at length we saw where they struck into the woods by the side of a pond, as we went to view the place, one said, he thought he saw an Indian house among the trees, so went up to see: and here we and the shallop lost sight one of another till night, it being now about nine or ten o’clock, so we light on a path, but saw no house, and followed a great way into the woods, at length we found where corn had been set,2 but not that year, anon we found a great burying place, one part whereof was encompassed with a large palazado, like a churchyard, with young spires3 four or "ve yards long, set as close one by another as they could two or three foot in the ground within it was full of graves, some bigger, and some less, some were also paled about, and others had like an Indian house made over them, but not matted: those graves were more sumptuous than those at Corne- hill,4 yet we digged none of them up, but only viewed them, and went our way; without5 the palazado were graves also, but not so costly: from this place we went and found more corn ground, but not of this year. As we ranged we light on four or "ve Indian houses, which had been lately dwelt in, but they were uncovered and had no mats about them, else they were like those we found at Corne- hill, but had not been so lately dwelt in, there was nothing left but two or three pieces of old matts, a little sedge,6 also a little further we found two baskets full of parched acorns hid in the ground, which we supposed had been corn when we began to dig the same, we cast earth thereon again and went our way. All this while we saw no people, we went ranging up and down till the sun began to draw low, and then we hasted out of the woods, that we might come to our shallop, which when we were out of the woods, we espied a great way off, and called them to come unto us, the which they did as soon as they could, for it was not yet high water, they were exceeding glad to see us, (for they feared because they had not seen us in so long a time) thinking we would have kept by the shoreside, so being both weary and faint, for we had eaten nothing all that day, we fell to make our rendezvous7 and get "rewood, which always cost us a great deal of labor, by [the] time we had done, and our shallop come to us, it was within night, and we fed upon such victuals as we had, and betook us to our rest, after we had set out our watch. About midnight we heard a great and hideous cry, and our sentinel called, Arm, arm. So we bestirred our- selves and shot off a couple of muskets, and noise ceased; we concluded, that it was a com pany of wolves or foxes, for one told us, he had heard such a noise in New- found- land. About "ve o’clock in the morning we began to be stirring, and two or three which doubted whether their Pieces would go off or no made trial of them, and shot them off, but thought nothing at all,

9. Strips. 1. Most people thought. 2. Planted. 3. Saplings. “Palazado”: palisade; fence of thin posts or pales. 4. A spot on Cape Cod where they had unearthed buried stores of grain. Corn Hill was also an

ancient ward in London. “Indian house”: Native American wigwams were constructed of timber frames and covered with woven mats. 5. Outside. 6. Reed used for roo"ng. 7. Camp.

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after prayer we prepared ourselves for breakfast, and for a journey, and it being now the twilight in the morning, it was thought meet to carry the things down to the shallop: some said, it was not best to carry the armor down, others said, they would be readier, two or three said, they would not carry theirs, till they went themselves, but mistrusting nothing at all: as it fell out, the water not being high enough, they laid the things down upon the shore, and came up to breakfast. Anon, all upon a sudden, we heard a great and strange cry, which we knew to be the same voices, though they varied their notes, one of our com pany being abroad came running in, and cried, They are men, Indians, Indians,8 and withal, their arrows came dying amongst us, our men ran out with all speed to recover their arms, as by the good Providence of God they did. In the meantime, Captain Miles Standish, having a snaphance9 ready, made a shot, and after him another, after they two had shot, other two of us were ready, but he wished us not to shoot, till we could take aim, for we knew not what need we should have, and there were four only of us, which had their arms there ready, and stood before the open side of our Baricado, which was "rst assaulted, they thought it best to defend it, lest the enemy should take it and our stuff, and so have the more vantage against us, our care was no less for the Shallop, but we hoped all the rest would defend it; we called unto them to know how it was with them, and they answered, Well, Well, every one, and be of good courage: we heard three of their Pieces go off, and the rest called for a "re- brand to light their matches,1 one took a log out of the "re on his shoulder and went and carried it unto them, which was thought did not a little discourage our enemies. The cry of our enemies was dreadful, especially, when our men ran out to recover their Arms, their note was after this manner, Woath woach ha ha hach woach: our men were no sooner come to their Arms, but the enemy was ready to assault them.

There was a lusty man and no wit less valiant, who was thought to be their Captain, stood behind a tree within half a musket shot of us, and there let his arrows dy at us; he was seen to shoot three arrows, which were all avoided, for he at whom the "rst arrow was aimed, saw it, and stooped down and it dew over him, the rest were avoided also: he stood three shots of a Musket, at length one took full aim at him, after which he gave an extraordinary cry and away they went all, we followed them about a quarter of a mile, but we left six to keep our shallop, for we were careful of our business: then we shouted all together two several2 times, and shot off a couple of muskets and so returned: this we did that they might see we were not afraid of them nor discouraged. Thus it pleased God to vanquish our Enemies and give us deliv- erance, by their noise we could not guess that they were less than thirty or forty, though some thought that they were many more yet in the dark of the morning, we could not so well discern them among the trees, as they could see us by our "reside, we took up eigh teen of their arrows which we have sent to Eng land by Master Jones, some whereof were headed with brass, others with Harts horn,3 and others with Ea gles’ claws many more no doubt were shot, for these we found, were almost covered with leaves: yet by the

8. As opposed to the wolves or foxes that the En glishmen had earlier thought the men to be. 9. An early version of a dintlock gun. 1. Wax- coated fuses used with guns lacking

snaphance devices. 2. Separate. 3. I.e., points made from deer antlers.

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especial providence of God, none of them either hit or hurt us, though many came close by us, and on every side of us, and some coats which hung up in our baricado, were shot through and through. So after we had given God thanks for our deliverance, we took our shallop and went on our journey, and called this place, The #rst encounter. * * *

1622

JOHN SMITH 1580–1631

O ne of the most vivid episodes in the lit er a ture of colonial British North Amer-i ca is a scene from the writings of Captain John Smith that takes place at the “court” of Powhatan, the mamanatowick (or paramount chief) of the Algonquians in the Chesapeake Bay region. (For more on Powhatan, see the excerpt from “Powhatan’s Discourse” earlier in this volume.) Smith was a leading member of the En glish com- pany that had established the colony of Jamestown, in what is now Virginia. While on an expedition to discover the source of the Chickahominy River, he was taken captive by some of Powhatan’s men. Arriving at Powhatan’s residence at Werowocomoco—on the York River, north of Jamestown— Smith was greeted with an elaborate welcoming ceremony and feast. Soon afterward, however, he was suddenly dragged before Pow- hatan and threatened with execution. The mamanatowick’s preteen daughter Mata- oka, better known as Pocahontas (c. 1591–1617), pleaded with her father not to kill Smith. When her appeal appeared to be failing, she shielded Smith’s head with her arms and saved his life—or so Smith claimed. Historians and anthropologists have speculated that what Smith describes as a rescue from execution was instead a cere- mony designed to make Smith subordinate to Powhatan, thereby transforming James- town into a tributary of the Algonquian leader.

The romantic narrative about how Pocahontas rescued John Smith forms one of the central myths of En glish colonization. It emerges from a short passage in The General History of Virginia, New Eng land, and the Summer Isles (1624), a historical compilation that Smith produced jointly with several other writers. In the years between Smith’s return from Virginia in 1609 and the appearance of the General History, Smith had published other accounts of his Virginia adventures that men- tion Pocahontas. But the lines devoted to her “rescue” of him appear exclusively in the General History. That volume appeared seven years after she died on board a ship while returning from Eng land with her husband— the white colonist John Rolfe— and their son, Thomas. By the time the General History was published in London, no one was available to corroborate Smith’s account of his dramatic rescue or clarify its signi"cance. The my thol ogy that has grown out of these few brief lines, sometimes condating the rescue of Smith with Pocahontas’s subsequent mar- riage to Rolfe, is a striking example of how some colonial- era texts have accrued layers of meaning that extend well beyond the words on the page.

This scene is not the only romancelike feature of Smith’s writings. The En glish adventurer deliberately cultivated an aura resembling that of a knight in a chivalric romance— but with impor tant differences. Like Sir Walter Raleigh, the aristo- cratic En glish explorer and champion of colonization, Smith pursued adventure

J O H N S M I T H | 1 1 1

and glory. Unlike Raleigh, he was not an aristocrat but a farmer’s son. This differ- ence in status forms a major ele ment in Smith’s writings. He hailed from the east of Eng land, where his father had a farm on the edge of the Lincolnshire Wolds, an area of considerable natu ral beauty. The young Smith found the countryside too quiet for his taste. Shortly after his father died in 1596, the restless sixteen- year- old went to the Netherlands to "ght for Dutch in de pen dence from Philip II of Spain. The "ght was part of the Eu ro pean wars of religion, which pitted Protestants against Roman Catholics and, on the eastern front, Christians against Muslims. Smith was one of many planters whose involvement in the colonization of the Amer i cas was colored by experience in these often brutal condicts. Following his tour of duty in the Netherlands, he fought in the Mediterranean, and he later joined the Austrian imperial army in its war against the Ottoman Empire, which at that time encompassed large swathes of southeastern Eu rope and the Middle East, as well as parts of North Africa. While "ghting the Ottomans in Hungary, Smith earned promotion to the captain’s rank that became an enduring part of his public persona. He claimed, apparently with at least some degree of truth, that he had defeated and beheaded a succession of three Turkish of"cers in single combat. The coat of arms that he was later awarded showed the three severed heads.

Eventually, Smith was wounded in battle, taken prisoner, and sold as a slave to a Turkish noblewoman. Smith described his developing attachment to this noble- woman in his semiautobiographical work, The True Travels, Adventures, and Obser- vations of Captaine John Smith, in Eu rope, Asia, Affrica, and Amer i ca (1630). The romance might have ended in marriage, with Smith converting to Islam and serving as an Ottoman bureaucrat. Instead, the En glishman killed the noblewoman’s brother in ambiguous circumstances— Smith may have mistaken a form of training for mistreatment— and escaped. Smith later gave place names drawn from his Turkish adventures to areas in New Eng land, such as Three Turks’ Heads (near Cape Ann in Mas sa chu setts), which John Winthrop mentioned in his journal account of the Puri- tans’ arrival in 1630.

After returning to Eng land in the winter of 1604–05, Smith began looking for his next adventure. The twenty- six- year- old veteran had an assertive personality and military experience that were attractive qualities to the members of the Virginia Com pany of London as they or ga nized their 1606 expedition to establish what they hoped would be Eng land’s "rst permanent plantation in North Amer i ca. But those qualities also carried liabilities. Smith sometimes used force unnecessarily, and his hard- to- control temper and stubborn self- reliance could make him a trouble- some companion. He ran afoul of the people in charge of the expedition on the voyage to Amer i ca in 1607, when he was placed under arrest and threatened with execution. Then, in a remarkable turn of events, his name was found on the list of council members that the com pany had designated to run the colony, which had been kept secret until the group’s arrival. The com pany had recognized qualities in Smith that they believed would be useful to the group, and so despite his compara- tively modest status and his propensity for challenging authority, they gave him a role in the Jamestown colony’s leadership.

Smith set out to or ga nize the men and explore and map the region. Many of the other colonists were from elite backgrounds, and they were often unwilling or unable to perform the hard and dangerous work that settlement demanded. The colonists who survived rampant illness, famine, warfare, and other mis haps increasingly came to value Smith’s leadership, and in 1608 he was elected to the colony’s highest of"ce, becoming the equivalent of its governor. But of"cial status offered little pro- tection in the volatile colonial setting. When Smith returned to Jamestown after being held captive by Powhatan— the episode where he was “rescued” by Poca- hontas—he was charged with the deaths of the two soldiers who had accompanied him on the expedition that ended in his capture. Smith was saved from hanging

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when the colonists were distracted by the fortuitous arrival of a deet with much- needed supplies from Eng land. Not long afterward, however, Smith’s gunpowder bag mysteriously exploded in his lap while he napped on the deck of an exploring vessel— possibly because a disgruntled member of the com pany had thrown a match into the powder. Smith left Virginia in 1609, never to return.

Smith is most closely associated with the Virginia enterprise, but he also took an active interest in New Eng land, and his works form an impor tant bridge between these "rst two permanent En glish colonies in North Amer i ca. In 1614 he voyaged to New Eng land, and he, not the Puritans, gave the region its name. He offered the Pilgrims his ser vices as a guide for their voyage in 1620, but they chose instead to put Smith’s helpful books and maps in the hands of a more temperate military leader, Myles Standish. If not for this rejection and some unfortunate setbacks that prevented future voyages, Smith might have become more famous for this second aspect of his American career than for the "rst: he published more works on New Eng land than on Virginia, seeing in the northern region great potential for “middling” En glish settlers. Smith’s New Eng land works have a strong ideological caste, in that they focus more on the idea of Amer i ca and less on the many chal- lenges of establishing plantations there, doubtless a redection of his indirect involvement.

Smith published some nine books between 1608 and 1631, including his works on Virginia and New Eng land, books for aspiring seamen, and The True Travels. Many of his writings have a distinctly Elizabethan caste to them, though with a difference. In his works, the heroic ideal of the elite adventurer, typi"ed by Sir Wal- ter Raleigh, gives way to the prototype of the in de pen dent self- made man. Tales of exploration, piracy, and military adventure had stirred Smith’s youthful imagina- tion, and he longed to create his own heroic narratives. Rather than simply repro- duce heroic literary conventions, Smith actively transformed them. In contrast to Raleigh, who was associated with the high literary ideals embodied in Edmund Spenser’s epic poem The Faerie Queen (1590), Smith wrote prose accounts addressed to the expanding market for popu lar printed works, which was driven in part by the public appetite for writings about the colonization effort. Though largely untu- tored in the "ner points of style, he had an ear for a good story and a capacity for striking meta phors. Sprinkled with classical allusions and references to the popu lar theater, his writings also demonstrate his mastery of the humanistic genres of ora- tory, history, and descriptive travel writing.

The most lasting and induential contribution of his writings was a vision of Eng land’s colonies as places where people of all economic backgrounds could sup- port themselves as small farmers, in healthful and pleasant circumstances, with greater liberty than might be pos si ble elsewhere. The outlines of the yeoman farmer ideal that would be so impor tant for Virginia’s Thomas Jefferson emerge clearly in Smith’s works. The negative aspects of this vision emerge as well in passages revealing how this "gure comes to overshadow and dominate those who pursued other modes of life, notably Amer i ca’s indigenous inhabitants. Perhaps Smith’s most salient quality as a writer is his special knack for illustrating the connections between the often sordid or brutal details of the colonization enterprise and the imaginative work that propelled it.

The following texts are from Travels and Works of Captain John Smith (1910), edited by Edward Arber and A. G. Bradley.

1 1 3

From The General History of Virginia, New Eng land, and the Summer Isles1

From The Third Book2

from chapter 2. what happened till the first supply3

Being thus left to our fortunes, it fortuned that within ten days4 scarce ten amongst us could either go, or well stand, such extreme weakness and sick- ness oppressed us. And thereat none need marvel, if they consider the cause and reason, which was this:

Whilst the ships stayed, our allowance was somewhat bettered, by a daily proportion of biscuit, which the sailors would pilfer to sell, give, or exchange with us, for money, Sassafras,5 furs, or love. But when they departed, there remained neither tavern, beer house, nor place of relief, but the common kettle.6 Had we been as free from all sins as [from] gluttony, and drunkenness, we might have been canonized for Saints; but our President would never have been admitted, for engrossing to his private [use], oatmeal, sack, oil, aqua vitae, beef, eggs, or what not, but the kettle;7 that indeed he allowed equally to be distributed, and that was half a pint of wheat, and as much barley boiled with water for a man a day, and this having fried some twenty- six weeks in the ship’s hold, contained as many worms as grains, so that we might truly call it rather so much bran then corn; our drink8 was water, our lodgings castles in the air.

With this lodging and diet, our extreme toil in bearing and planting pali- sades, so strained and bruised us, and our continual labor in the extremity of the heat had so weakened us, as were cause suf"cient to have made us as miserable in our native country, or any other place in the world.

From May, to September [1607], those that escaped, lived upon sturgeon, and sea crabs. Fifty in this time we buried, the rest seeing the President’s9 proj ects to escape these miseries in our pinnace by dight (who all this time had neither felt want nor sickness) so moved our dead spirits, as we deposed him and established Ratcliffe in his place, (Gosnold being dead, Kendall deposed). Smith newly recovered, Martin1 and Ratcliffe were by his care preserved and relieved, and the most of the soldiers recovered with the skillful diligence of Master Thomas Wotton our general surgeon.

1. The Bermuda Islands. 2. The Third Book is titled “The Proceedings and Accidents of the En glish Colony in Virginia” and is derived from Smith’s Virginia book of 1612. 3. The bulk of this chapter may have been written by Smith, although at its publication in 1612 it was credited solely to Thomas Studley, chief store- keeper of the colony. In 1624, Smith added to Stud- ley’s signature at the end of this section of the text not only his own initials but also the names of Rob- ert Fenton and Edward Harrington as part authors. Studley died early in the "rst year, on August 28, 1607, four days after Harrington, so neither could have written much of what is partly attributed to them. Of Robert Fenton nothing is known. 4. By the end of June 1607, after Captain Chris- topher Newport (d. 1617) left to fetch new sup- plies from Eng land. “Fortuned”: happened. 5. The bark of the sassafras tree, sold for its sup- posed medicinal qualities, was a valuable com- modity in London. 6. I.e., the communal resources.

7. I.e., President Edward Maria Wing"eld (c. 1560–1613), a man of high connections in Eng land, would not have been canonized because he diverted many supplies (every thing except the contents of the common kettle) for his own use, including sack (wine) and aqua vitae (brandy). 8. “Drink,” here used ironically, customarily referred to wine or beer. “Corn”: grain. 9. I.e., Wing"eld’s. 1. Captain John Martin (c. 1567–1632?) was a colonist best known for his contentiousness. “Captain John Ratcliffe” was an alias of John Sickle- more, master of one of the vessels on the voyage over and a member of the local council. The most enigmatic "gure in Jamestown, he was elected president of the council in September 1607, but later fell out with Smith. Captain Bar- tholomew Gosnold (ca. 1572–1607), who had explored New Eng land before the "rst Jamestown voyage, prob ably had been responsible for Smith’s recruitment to the venture. Captain George Ken- dall was executed for mutiny later in the year.

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2. I.e., was in want. 3. Intractable. 4. I.e., outside the colony’s palisade. 5. An open boat. 6. Inability to speak.

7. A village near the mouth of the James River whose inhabitants, the Kecoughtans, were mem- bers of the Powhatan Confederacy. 8. Fired.

But now was all our provision spent, the sturgeon gone, all helps aban- doned, each hour expecting the fury of the savages, when God the patron of all good endeavors, in that desperate extremity so changed the hearts of the savages, that they brought such plenty of their fruits, and provision, as no man wanted.2

And now where some af"rmed it was ill done of the Council to send forth men so badly provided, this incontradictable reason will show them plainly they are too ill advised to nourish such ill conceits: "rst, the fault of our going was our own; what could be thought "tting or necessary we had; but what we should "nd, or want, or where we should be, we were all ignorant, and supposing to make our passage in two months, with victual to live, and the advantage of the spring to work; we were at sea "ve months, where we both spent our victual and lost the opportunity of the time and season to plant, by the unskilfull presumption of our ignorant transporters, that under- stood not at all, what they undertook.

Such actions have ever since the world’s beginning been subject to such accidents, and every thing of worth is found full of dif"culties: but nothing so dif"cult as to establish a commonwealth so far remote from men and means, and where men’s minds are so untoward3 as neither do well them- selves, nor suffer others. But to proceed.

The new President and Martin, being little beloved, of weak judgment in dangers, and less industry in peace, committed the managing of all things abroad4 to Captain Smith: who by his own example, good words, and fair promises, set some to mow, others to bind thatch, some to build houses, others to thatch them, himself always bearing the greatest task for his own share, so that in short time, he provided most of them lodgings, neglecting any for himself.

This done, seeing the savages’ superduity begin to decrease [Smith] (with some of his workmen) shipped himself in the shallop5 to search the country for trade. The want of6 the language, knowledge to manage his boat with- out sails, the want of a suf"cient power (knowing the multitude of the sav- ages), apparel for his men, and other necessaries, were in"nite impediments yet no discouragement.

Being but six or seven in com pany he went down the river to Kecoughtan7 where at "rst they scorned him as a famished man, and would in derision offer him a handful of corn, a piece of bread, for their swords and muskets, and such like proportions also for their apparel. But seeing by trade and cour- tesy there was nothing to be had, he made bold to try such conclusions as necessity enforced; though contrary to his commission, [he] let dy8 his mus- kets, ran his boat on shore, whereat they all ded into the woods.

So marching towards their houses, they might see great heaps of corn: much ado he had to restrain his hungry soldiers from pres ent taking of it, expecting as it happened that the savages would assault them, as not long after they did with a most hideous noise. Sixty or seventy of them, some black, some

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9. “Square order”: formation. “Particoloured”: i.e., painted for battle. 1. Several. “Targets”: small shields. “So kindly”: in such a way. 2. Smith elsewhere de"nes this term as referring to the “petty gods” of the Algonquian- speaking peoples, but here it may mean priests. 3. I.e., in mutual contentment. 4. A village on the south side of the James River. 5. I.e., none of the settlers, despite their recent sufferings, gave any thought to gathering a store of provision for the future. 6. The region along the Chickahominy River, which empties into the James River a short dis- tance west of Jamestown.

7. Shot for a small cannon used in sieges and on shipboard. “Discovered”: revealed. 8. I.e., it is necessary to recount these trou bles and lay the blame on the responsible individuals (Wing"eld and Kendall), rather than let the whole “business” of the colony suffer ill repute. 9. Gabriel Archer (c. 1575–1609?) had been an associate of Bartholomew Gosnold before the Jamestown voyage. Having gone back to Eng land in 1608 as a con"rmed opponent of Smith, he returned to Virginia the following year to head an anti- Smith faction but died during the starving time the next winter. Ratcliffe (Sickle- more) was still president.

red, some white, some particoloured, came in a square order,9 singing and dancing out of the woods, with their Okee (which was an Idol made of skins, stuffed with moss, all painted and hung with chains and copper) borne before them, and in this manner, being well armed with clubs, targets, bows and arrow, they charged the En glish that so kindly received them with their muskets loaded with pistol shot, that down fell their God, and divers1 lay sprawling on the ground; the rest ded again to the woods, and ere long sent one of their Quiyoughkasoucks2 to offer peace, and redeem their Okee.

Smith told them, if only six of them would come unarmed and load his boat, he would not only be their friend, but restore them their Okee, and give them beads, copper, and hatchets besides, which on both sides was to their contents3 performed, and then they brought him venison, turkeys, wild fowl, bread, and what they had, singing and dancing in sign of friendship till they departed.

In his return he discovered the town and country of Warraskoyack.4

Thus God unboundless by His power, Made them thus kind, would us devour.

Smith perceiving (notwithstanding their late misery) not any regarded but from hand to mouth5 (the com pany being well recovered) caused the pinnace to be provided with things "tting to get provision for the year fol- lowing, but in the interim he made three or four journeys and discovered the people of Chickahominy.6 Yet what he carefully provided the rest care- lessly spent.

Wing"eld and Kendall living in disgrace * * * strengthened themselves with the sailors and other confederates, to regain their former credit and authority, or at least such means aboard the pinnace, (being "tted to sail as Smith had appointed for trade) to alter her course and to go for Eng land.

Smith, unexpectedly returning, had the plot discovered to him, much trou ble he had to prevent it, till with store of saker7 and musket shot he forced them stay or sink in the river: which action cost the life of Captain Kendall.

These brawls are so disgustful, as some will say they were better forgot- ten, yet all men of good judgment will conclude, it were better their base- ness should be manifest to the world, than the business bear the scorn and shame of their excused disorders.8

The President and Captain Archer9 not long after intended also to have abandoned the country, which proj ect also was curbed, and suppressed by Smith.

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1. I.e., Smith wanted to "nd food for the colo- nists as much as Spanish conquistadors wanted to "nd gold. 2. Self- indulgent persons who might be given to wearing lace. “Putchamins”: persimmons. 3. Objections. 4. I.e., only through fault of their own did they fail to wipe out Cassen’s whole party. “Govern- ment”: discipline. 5. Wilderness. 6. Shield. “Garters”: laces used for tying clothing.

7. Behaved. 8. I.e., these are the two men mentioned above as having been killed while they slept by the canoe (the "reside being by the canoe). John Robinson was a “gentleman”; Thomas Emry was a carpenter. “King of Pamunkey”: Opechanca- nough, Powhatan’s younger half- brother (d. 1644) and Smith’s captor, who led the Powhatan Confederacy’s attack on the colonists in 1622 and as late as 1644 attempted one last time to expel them from the country.

The Spaniard never more greedily desired gold then he victual,1 nor his soldiers more to abandon the country, than he to keep it. But [he found] plenty of corn in the river of Chickahominy, where hundreds of savages in divers places stood with baskets expecting his coming.

And now the winter approaching, the rivers became so covered with swans, geese, ducks, and cranes that we daily feasted with good bread, Virginia peas, pumpkins, and putchamins, "sh, fowl, and divers sorts of wild beasts as fat as we could eat them, so that none of our Tuftaffety humorists2 desired to go for Eng land.

But our comedies never endured long without a tragedy, some idle excep- tions3 being muttered against Captain Smith, for not discovering the head of Chickahominy river, and [he being] taxed by the council to be too slow in so worthy an attempt. The next voyage he proceeded so far that with much labor by cutting of trees asunder he made his passage, but when his barge could pass no farther, he left her in a broad bay out of danger of shot, com- manding none should go ashore till his return; himself with two En glish and two savages went up higher in a canoe, but he was not long absent but his men went ashore, whose want of government gave both occasion and oppor- tunity to the savages to surprise one George Cassen, whom they slew and much failed not to have cut off the boat and all the rest.4

Smith little dreaming of that accident, being got to the marshes at the river’s head twenty miles in the desert,5 had his two men slain (as is sup- posed) sleeping by the canoe, whilst himself by fowling sought them vict- ual, who "nding he was beset with 200 savages, two of them he slew, still defending himself with the aid of a savage his guide, whom he bound to his arm with his garters, and used him as a buckler,6 yet he was shot in his thigh a little, and had many arrows that stuck in his clothes but no great hurt, till at last they took him prisoner.

When this news came to Jamestown, much was their sorrow for his loss, few expecting what ensued.

Six or seven weeks those barbarians kept him prisoner, many strange triumphs and conjurations they made of him, yet he so demeaned7 himself amongst them, as he not only diverted them from surprising the fort, but procured his own liberty, and got himself and his com pany such estimation amongst them, that those savages admired him more than their owne Quiyoughkasoucks.

The manner how they used and delivered him, is as followeth: The savages having drawn from George Cassen whither Captain Smith

was gone, prosecuting that opportunity they followed him with 300 bowmen, conducted by the King of Pamunkey, who in divisions searching the turnings of the river, found Robinson and Emry by the "reside; those they shot full of arrows and slew.8 Then "nding the Captain, as is said, that used the savage

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9. Wounded. 1. Agreement for surrender. 2. Compass card. 3. On the opposite side of the globe. 4. Treated. “Orapaks”: a village located farther inland, later the residence of Powhatan. 5. Guns.

6. Notched; i.e., with their arrows "tted on the bowstring ready for use. 7. From an Italian term denoting a snakelike formation. 8. Outspread. “Vambrace”: forearm protection. “Pocones”: a vegetable dye.

that was his guide as his shield (three of them being slain and divers other so galled)9 all the rest would not come near him. Thinking thus to have returned to his boat, regarding them, as he marched, more than his way, [he] slipped up to the middle in an oozy creek and his savage with him, yet dared they not come to him till being near dead with cold, he threw away his arms. Then according to their composition1 they drew him forth and led him to the "re, where his men were slain. Diligently they chafed his benumbed limbs.

He demanding for their captain, they showed him Opechancanough, King of Pamunkey, to whom he gave a round ivory double compass dial. Much they marveled at the playing of the dy2 and needle, which they could see so plainly and yet not touch it because of the glass that covered them. But when he demonstrated by that globe- like jewell, the roundness of the earth, and skies, the sphere of the sun, moon, and stars, and how the sun did chase the night round about the world continually, the greatness of the land and sea, the diversity of nations, variety of complexions, and how we were to them antipodes,3 and many other such like matters, they all stood as amazed with admiration.

Notwithstanding, within an hour after, they tied him to a tree, and as many as could stand about him prepared to shoot him, but the King holding up the compass in his hand, they all laid down their bows and arrows, and in a triumphant manner led him to Orapaks, where he was after their man- ner kindly feasted, and well used.4

Their order in conducting him was thus: Drawing themselves all in "le, the King in the midst had all their pieces5 and swords borne before him. Captain Smith was led after him by three great savages holding him fast by each arm, and on each side six went in "le with their arrows nocked.6 But arriving at the town (which was but only thirty or forty hunting houses made of mats, which they remove as they please, as we our tents), all the women and children staring to behold him, the soldiers "rst all in "le performed the form of a Bissom7 so well as could be, and on each dank, of"cers as ser- geants to see them keep their orders. A good time they continued this exer- cise and then cast themselves in a ring, dancing in such several postures and singing and yelling out such hellish notes and screeches; being strangely painted, every one [had] his quiver of arrows and at his back a club, on his arm a fox or an otter’s skin or some such matter for his vambrace, their heads and shoulders painted red, with oil and pocones mingled together, which scarlet- like color made an exceeding handsome show, his bow in his hand, and the skin of a bird with her wings abroad8 dryed, tied on his head, a piece of copper, a white shell, a long feather with a small rattle growing at the tails of their snakes tied to it, or some such like toy. All this while, Smith and the King stood in the midst, guarded as before is said, and after three dances they all departed. Smith they conducted to a long house where thirty or forty tall fellows did guard him, and ere long more bread and venison was brought him than would have served twenty men. I think his stomach at that

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9. Payment. 1. A notebook. 2. Weaponry. 3. Perform magic. “Expedition”: speed. 4. Other Algonquian- speaking groups. The named groups were part of the Powhatan Con- federacy.

5. Incantations. However, Smith derived the fol- lowing couplet from a translation of the ancient Roman writer Seneca published by Martin Fotherby in his philosophical treatise Atheomas- tix (1622). 6. I.e., charcoal.

time was not very good; what he left they put in baskets and tied over his head. About midnight they set the meat again before him; all this time not one of them would eat a bit with him, till the next morning they brought him as much more, and then did they eat all the old, and reserved the new as they had done the other, which made him think they would fat him to eat him. Yet in this desperate estate, to defend him from the cold, one Maocas- sater brought him his gown, in requital9 of some beads and toys Smith had given him at his "rst arrival in Virginia.

Two days after, a man would have slain him (but that the guard pre- vented it) for the death of his son, to whom they conducted him to recover the poor man then breathing his last. Smith told them that at Jamestown he had a water would do it, if they would let him fetch it, but they would not permit that, but made all the preparations they could to assault James- town, craving his advice, and for recompence he should have life, liberty, land, and women. In part of a table book1 he wrote his mind to them at the fort, what was intended, how they should follow that direction to affright the messengers, and without fail send him such things as he wrote for. And an inventory with them. The dif"culty and danger, he told the sav- ages, of the mines, great guns, and other engines2 exceedingly affrighted them, yet according to his request they went to Jamestown in as bitter weather as could be of frost and snow, and within three days returned with an answer.

But when they came to Jamestown, seeing men sally out as he had told them they would, they ded, yet in the night they came again to the same place where he had told them they should receive an answer and such things as he had promised them, which they found accordingly, and with which they returned with no small expedition to the won der of them all that heard it, that he could either divine3 or the paper could speak.

Then they led him to the Youghtanunds, the Mattapanients, the Pianka- tanks, the Nantaughtacunds, and Onawmanients upon the rivers of Rap- pahannock and Potomac, over all those rivers, and back again by divers other several nations,4 to the King’s habitation at Pamunkey where they entertained him with most strange and fearful conjurations:5

As if near led to hell, Amongst the dev ils to dwell.

Not long after, early in a morning, a great "re was made in a long house, and a mat spread on the one side as on the other; on the one they caused him to sit, and all the guard went out of the house, and presently came skip- ping in a great grim fellow all painted over with coal6 mingled with oil, and many snakes’ and weasels’ skins stuffed with moss, and all their tails tied together so as they met on the crown of his head in a tassel, and round about the tassel was as a coronet of feathers, the skins hanging round about his head, back, and shoulders and in a manner covered his face, with a hellish

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7. Encircled. 8. Prayer. “Wheat corns”: i.e., "ve kernels of Indian corn. 9. A dat, wooden dish. 1. Actually the chief’s half- brother; he suc- ceeded Powhatan in 1618.

2. Gifts. 3. From a translation of the ancient Roman writer Lucretius by Fotherby. 4. Powhatan’s village on the north shore of the York River, almost due north of Jamestown. 5. Finery; i.e., costumes.

voice, and a rattle in his hand. With most strange gestures and passions he began his invocation and environed7 the "re with a circle of meal; which done, three more such like dev ils came rushing in with the like antic tricks, painted half black, half red, but all their eyes were painted white and some red strokes like mustaches along their cheeks. Round about him those "ends danced a pretty while, and then came in three more as ugly as the rest, with red eyes and white strokes over their black faces. At last they all sat down right against him, three of them on the one hand of the chief priest, and three on the other. Then all with their rattles began a song; which ended, the chief priest laid down "ve wheat corns; then straining his arms and hands with such vio lence that he sweat and his veins swelled, he began a short ora- tion;8 at the conclusion they all gave a short groan and then laid down three grains more. After that, began their song again, and then another oration, ever laying down so many corns as before till they had twice encircled the "re; that done, they took a bunch of little sticks prepared for that purpose, continuing still their devotion, and at the end of every song and oration they laid down a stick betwixt the divisions of corn. Till night, neither he nor they did either eat or drink, and then they feasted merrily with the best provi- sions they could make. Three days they used this ceremony; the meaning whereof, they told him, was to know if he intended them well or no. The circle of meal signi"ed their country, the circles of corn the bounds of the sea, and the sticks his country. They imagined the world to be dat and round, like a trencher,9 and they in the midst.

After this they brought him a bag of gunpowder, which they carefully pre- served till the next spring, to plant as they did their corn, because they would be acquainted with the nature of that seed.

Opitchapam, the King’s brother,1 invited him to his house, where, with as many platters of bread, fowl, and wild beasts as did environ him, he bid him welcome, but not any of them would eat a bit with him but put up all the remainder in baskets.

At his return to Opechancanough’s, all the King’s women and their children, docked about him for their parts,2 as a due by custom, to be merry with such fragments:

But his waking mind in hideous dreams did oft see wondrous shapes, Of bodies strange, and huge in growth, and of stupendous makes.3

At last they brought him to Werowocomoco,4 where was Powhatan, their Emperor. Here more than two hundred of those grim courtiers stood won- dering at him, as [if] he had been a monster, till Powhatan and his train had put themselves in their greatest braveries.5 Before a "re upon a seat like a bedstead, he sat covered with a great robe made of raccoon skins and all the tails hanging by. On either hand did sit a young wench of sixteen or eigh- teen years and along on each side [of] the house, two rows of men and behind them as many women, with all their heads and shoulders painted

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6. Opossunoquonuske was the weroansqua, or leader, of a small village (Appamatuck) near the future site of Petersburg, Virginia. In 1610, she was killed by the En glish in retaliation for the

deaths of fourteen settlers. 7. I.e., they thought him as variously skilled as themselves.

red, many of their heads bedecked with the white down of birds, but every one with something, and a great chain of white beads about their necks.

At his entrance before the King, all the people gave a great shout. The Queen of Appomattoc6 was appointed to bring him water to wash his hands, and another brought him a bunch of feathers, instead of a towel to dry them; having feasted him after their best barbarous manner they could, a long con- sultation was held, but the conclusion was, two great stones were brought before Powhatan; then as many as could, laid hands on him, dragged him to them, and thereon laid his head and being ready with their clubs to beat out his brains, Pocahontas, the King’s dearest daughter, when no entreaty could prevail, got his head in her arms and laid her own upon his to save him from death, whereat the Emperor was contented he should live to make him hatch- ets, and her bells, beads, and copper, for they thought him as well of all occu- pations as themselves.7 For the King himself will make his own robes, shoes, bows, arrows, pots; plant, hunt, or do any thing so well as the rest.

“Map of the old Virginia,” by Robert Vaughan, from John Smith, The General History of Virginia, New Eng land, and the Summer Isles (1624). This map of Old Virginia, the part of coastal North Carolina where the "rst En glish explorations and settlements took place in the 1580s, is surrounded by images portraying John Smith’s warlike encounters around Jamestown some twenty years later. The panel in the lower right corner shows the inter- vention of Pocahontas in the supposed execution of Smith.

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8. Derived from a translation of the ancient Greek playwright Euripides by Fotherby. 9. I.e., Powhatan would esteem him as highly as his own son Nantaquoud. Capahowasic was along the York River, near where Smith was held prisoner. 1. Large cannons.

2. Small artillery piece. 3. “And he that killeth any man shall surely be put to death” (Leviticus 24.17). 4. The "rst line appears to be Smith’s, inspired by Fotherby. The second comes from Fotherby’s translation of a quotation from Euripides in a text by the ancient Greek writer Plutarch.

They say he bore a pleasant show, But sure his heart was sad. For who can pleasant be, and rest, That lives in fear and dread: And having life suspected, doth It still suspected lead.8

Two days after, Powhatan having disguised himself in the most fearfulest manner he could, caused Captain Smith to be brought forth to a great house in the woods and there upon a mat by the "re to be left alone. Not long after, from behind a mat that divided the house, was made the most dolefulest noise he ever heard; then Powhatan more like a devil than a man, with some two hundred more as black as himself, came unto him and told him now they were friends, and presently he should go to Jamestown, to send him two great guns and a grindstone for which he would give him the Country of Capahowasic and for ever esteem him as his son Nantaquoud.9

So to Jamestown with twelve guides Powhatan sent him. That night they quartered in the woods, he still expecting (as he had done all this long time of his imprisonment) every hour to be put to one death or other, for all their feasting. But almighty God (by His divine providence) had molli"ed the hearts of those stern barbarians with compassion. The next morning betimes they came to the fort, where Smith having used the savages with what kind- ness he could, he showed Rawhunt, Powhatan’s trusty servant, two demi- culverins1 and a millstone to carry [to] Powhatan; they found them somewhat too heavy, but when they did see him discharge them, being loaded with stones, among the boughs of a great tree loaded with icickles, the ice and branches came so tumbling down that the poor savages ran away half dead with fear. But at last we regained some conference with them and gave them such toys and sent to Powhatan, his women, and children such pres ents as gave them in general full content.

Now in Jamestown they were all in combustion, the strongest preparing once more to run away with the pinnace; which with the hazard of his life, with saker falcon2 and musket shot, Smith forced now the third time to stay or sink.

Some no better than they should be, had plotted with the President the next day to have put him to death by the Levitical3 law, for the lives of Robin- son and Emry; pretending the fault was his that had led them to their ends: but he quickly took such order with such lawyers that he laid them by the heels till he sent some of them prisoners for Eng land.

Now ever once in four or "ve days, Pocahontas with her attendants brought him so much provision that saved many of their lives, that else for all this had starved with hunger.

Thus from numb death our good God sent relief, The sweet assuager of all other grief.4

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5. I.e., the evident affection of Pocahontas for Smith and the En glish was instrumental in reviving the colonists’ spirits. 6. Pages. 7. Smith was not requested to write the whole General History by the Virginia Com pany, so it is not clear what he means here. Possibly the dis- course to which he refers is the brief summary of recommendations for the “reformation” of

Virginia that ends the Fourth Book and that he drew up at the request of the royal commission- ers charged with effecting that reformation. 8. I.e., anonymous or “fugitive” narratives. “Approved”: proven. 9. I.e., and who is it that I have been a burden to? 1. Venture. “Events”: results. 1. Harm. “Magnanimity”: greatness of spirit.

His relation of the plenty he had seen, especially at Werowocomoco, and of the state and bounty of Powhatan (which till that time was unknown), so revived their dead spirits (especially the love of Pocahontas)5 as all men’s fear was abandoned.

Thus you may see what dif"culties still crossed any good endeavor; and the good success of the business being thus oft brought to the very period of destruction; yet you see by what strange means God hath still delivered it.

* * *

From The Fourth Book

[smith’s farewell to virginia]

Thus far I have traveled in this Wilderness of Virginia, not being ignorant for all my pains this discourse will be wrested, tossed and turned as many ways as there is leaves;6 that I have written too much of some, too little of others, and many such like objections. To such I must answer, in the Com pany’s name I was requested to do it,7 if any have concealed their approved experiences from my knowledge, they must excuse me: as for every fatherless or stolen relation,8 or whole volumes of sophisticated rehearsals, I leave them to the charge of them that desire them. I thank God I never undertook anything yet [for which] any could tax me of carelessness or dishonesty, and what is he to whom I am indebted or troublesome?9 Ah! were these my accusers but to change cases and places with me [for] but two years, or till they had done but so much as I, it may be they would judge more charitably of my imperfections. But here I must leave all to the trial of time, both myself, Virginia’s preparations, pro- ceedings and good events, praying to that great God the protector of all good- ness to send them as good success as the goodness of the action1 and country deserveth, and my heart desireth.

1624

From A Description of New Eng land

Who can desire more content, that hath small means; or but only his merit to advance his fortune, than to tread, and plant that ground he hath purchased by the hazard of his life? If he have but the taste of virtue and magnanimity, what to such a mind can be more pleasant, than planting and building a foundation for his posterity, got from the rude earth, by God’s blessing and his own industry, without prejudice1 to any? If he have any grain of faith or zeal in religion, what can he do less hurtful to any; or more agreeable to God,

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2. I.e., live in poverty while claiming great ances- tors. 3. Expedients. “Bravery”: "ne appearances.

4. Sponge. 5. Deceive. “Excess”: overindulgence. 6. Provision.

than to seek to convert those poor savages to know Christ, and humanity, whose labors with discretion will triple requite thy charge and pains? What so truly suits with honor and honesty, as the discovering things unknown? erecting towns, peopling countries, informing the ignorant, reforming things unjust, teaching virtue; and gaining to our native mother country a kingdom to attend her, "nding employment for those that are idle, because they know not what to do: so far from wronging any, as to cause posterity to remember thee; and remembering thee, ever honor that remembrance with praise?

* * * Then, who would live at home idly (or think in himself any worth to live)

only to eat, drink, and sleep, and so die? Or by consuming that carelessly, [which] his friends got worthily? Or by using that miserably, that maintained virtue honestly? Or for being descended nobly, pine with the vain vaunt of great kindred, in penury?2 Or (to maintain a silly show of bravery) toil out thy heart, soul, and time, basely, by shifts,3 tricks, cards, and dice? Or by relating news of others’ actions, shark4 here or there for a dinner, or supper; deceive thy friends, by fair promises, and dissimulation, in borrowing where thou never intendest to pay; offend the laws, surfeit with excess, burden thy coun- try, abuse thyself, despair in want, and then cozen5 thy kindred, yea even thine own brother, and wish thy parents’ death (I will not say damnation) to have their estates? though thou seest what honors, and rewards, the world yet hath for them will seek them and worthily deserve them.

* * * Let this move you to embrace employment, for those whose educations, spirits, and judgments want but your purses; not only to prevent such accus- tomed dangers, but also to gain more thereby than you have. And you fathers that are either so foolishly fond, or so miserably covetous, or so wilfully ignorant, or so negligently careless, as that you will rather maintain your children in idle wantonness, till they grow your masters; or become so basely unkind, as they wish nothing but your deaths; so that both sorts grow disso- lute: and although you would wish them anywhere to escape the gallows, and ease your cares; though they spend you here one, two, or three hundred pound a year; you would grudge to give half so much in adventure with them, to obtain an estate, which in a small time but with a little assistance of your providence,6 might be better than your own. But if an angel should tell you, that any place yet unknown can afford such fortunes; you would not believe him, no more than Columbus was believed there was any such land as is now the well- known abounding Amer i ca; much less such large regions as are yet unknown, as well in Amer i ca, as in Africa, and Asia, and Terra Incognita; where were courses for gentlemen (and them that would be so reputed) more suiting their qualities, than begging from their Prince’s generous disposition, the labors of his subjects, and the very marrow of his maintenance.

I have not been so ill bred, but I have tasted of plenty and plea sure, as well as want and misery: nor doth necessity yet, or occasion of discontent, force

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7. Lack. 8. Alone. 9. I.e., he won’t promise that even with bad management they’ll succeed. 1. I.e., or never read Smith’s works.

2. I.e., once they have paid the cost of their sup- port for the year. 3. Task. 4. I.e., "sh.

me to these endeavors: nor am I ignorant what small thank I shall have for my pains; or that many would have the World imagine them to be of great judgment, that can but blemish these my designs, by their witty objections and detractions: yet (I hope) my reasons with my deeds, will so prevail with some, that I shall not want7 employment in these affairs, to make the most blind see his own senselessness, and incredulity; hoping that gain will make them affect that, which religion, charity, and the common good cannot. It were but a poor device in me, to deceive myself; much more the king, state, my friends and country, with these inducements: which, seeing his Majesty hath given permission, I wish all sorts of worthy, honest, industrious spir- its, would understand: and if they desire any further satisfaction, I will do my best to give it: Not to persuade them to go only;8 but go with them: Not leave them there; but live with them there.

I will not say, but by ill providing and undue managing, such courses may be taken, [that] may make us miserable enough:9 But if I may have the exe- cution of what I have projected; if they want to eat, let them eat or never digest me.1 If I perform what I say, I desire but that reward out of the gains [which] may suit my pains, quality, and condition. And if I abuse you with my tongue, take my head for satisfaction. If any dislike at the year’s end, defraying their charge,2 by my consent they should freely return. I fear not want of com pany suf"cient, were it but known what I know of those coun- tries; and by the proof of that wealth I hope yearly to return, if God please to bless me from such accidents, as are beyond my power in reason to pre- vent: For, I am not so simple to think, that ever any other motive than wealth, will ever erect there a commonwealth; or draw com pany from their ease and humors at home, to stay in New Eng land to effect my purposes.

And lest any should think the toil might be insupportable, though these things may be had by labor, and diligence: I assure myself there are who delight extremely in vain plea sure, that take much more pains in Eng land, to enjoy it, than I should do here to gain wealth suf"cient: and yet I think they should not have half such sweet content: for, our plea sure here is still gains; in Eng land charges and loss. Here nature and liberty affords us that freely, which in Eng land we want, or it costeth us dearly. What plea sure can be more, than (being tired with any occasion3 a- shore, in planting vines, fruits, or herbs, in contriving their own grounds, to the plea sure of their own minds, their "elds, gardens, orchards, buildings, ships, and other works, &c.) to re create themselves before their own doors, in their own boats upon the sea; where man, woman and child, with a small hook and line, by angling, may take diverse sorts of excellent "sh, at their pleasures? And is it not pretty sport, to pull up two pence, six pence, and twelve pence, as fast as you can haul and veer a line?4 He is a very bad "sher [that] cannot kill in one day with his hook and line, one, two, or three hundred cods: which dressed and dried, if they be sold there for ten shillings the hundred (though in Eng land they will give more than twenty) may not both the servant, the master, and merchant, be well content with this gain? If a man work but

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three days in seven, he may get more than he can spend, unless he will be excessive. Now that carpenter, mason, gardener, tailor, smith, sailor, forg- ers,5 or what other, may they not make this a pretty recreation though they "sh but an hour in a day, to take more than they eat in a week? or if they will not eat it, because there is so much better choice; yet sell it, or change it, with the "shermen, or merchants, for anything they want. And what sport doth yield a more pleasing content, and less hurt or charge than angling with a hook; and crossing the sweet air from isle to isle, over the silent streams of a calm sea? Wherein the most curious may "nd plea sure, pro"t, and content.

Thus, though all men be not "shers: yet all men, whatsoever, may in other matters do as well. For necessity doth in these cases so rule a commonwealth, and each in their several functions, as their labors in their qualities may be as pro"table, because there is a necessary mutual use of all.

For Gentlemen, what exercise should more delight them, than ranging daily those unknown parts, using fowling and "shing, for hunting and hawk- ing? and yet you shall see the wild hawks give you some plea sure, in seeing them stoop (six or seven after one another) an hour or two together, at the schools of "sh in the fair harbors, as those ashore at a fowl; and never trou- ble nor torment yourselves, with watching, mewing,6 feeding, and attending them: nor kill horse and man with running and crying, See you not a hawk?7 For hunting also: the woods, lakes, and rivers afford not only chase suf"- cient, for any that delights in that kind of toil, or plea sure; but such beasts to hunt, that besides the delicacy of their bodies for food, their skins are so rich, as may well recompence thy daily labor, with a captains pay.

For laborers, if those that sow hemp, rape,8 turnips, parsnips, carrots, cab- bage, and such like; give twenty, thirty, forty, "fty shillings yearly for an acre of ground, and meat, drink, and wages to use it, and yet grow rich; when better, or at least as good ground, may be had, and cost nothing but labor; it seems strange to me, any such should there grow poor.

My purpose is not to persuade children [to go] from their parents; men from their wives; nor servants from their masters: only, such as with free consent may be spared: But that each parish, or village, in city, or country, that will but apparell their fatherless children, of thirteen or fourteen years of age, or young married people, that have small wealth to live on; here by their labor may live exceedingly well: provided always that "rst there be a suf"cient power to command them, houses to receive them, means to defend them, and meet provisions for them; for, any place may be overlain:9 and it is most neces- sary to have a fortress (ere this grow to practice) and suf"cient masters (as, carpenters, masons, "shers, fowlers, gardeners, husbandman, sawyers, smiths, spinsters, tailors, weavers, and such like) to take ten, twelve, or twenty, or as there is occasion, for apprentices. The masters by this may quickly grow rich; these may learn their trades themselves, to do the like; to a general and an incredible bene"t, for king, and country, master, and servant.

1616

5. I.e., ironworkers. 6. Keeping in a cage. “Stoop”: swoop down. 7. Smith contrasts the delight of watching wild hawks hunt their prey in Amer i ca with the tedious care that keepers of trained hawks in

Eng land must give their birds—as when such birds dy away and must be hunted for all over the countryside. 8. The rape plant. 9. Overcome.

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1. Tests or experiments, not sufferings. 2. The Powhatans. Smith is here speaking of the massacre of three hundred forty-seven settlers in Jamestown, Virginia— one- quarter of  that colony’s En glish population—in March 1622. News of the massacre reached New Eng land in May of that year. In mustering sup- port for settlement in New Eng land, he obviously had to take into account the dampening effect of events in Virginia. 3. Allow. 4. I.e., such events are not strong enough to dis- suade an En glishman. 5. Nothing. “With thirty- eight”: i.e., he pro- tected or secured Virginia by means of a very modest force. 6. Several “Dutch” (prob ably German) skilled workers had been shipped to Virginia in 1608. Sent to build a house for Powhatan, they hinted to him that they would take his side against

the En glish and soon were plotting against Smith and the colony. Arrested by the En glish and brought back to Jamestown for execution, they were saved when a new ship arrived from Eng land, bringing fresh supplies and impor tant new instructions for President Smith and Virginia’s governing council. 7. The Algonquian name for the region around Jamestown. Smith took its werowance, or chief, Wowinchopunck, prisoner in 1609, an episode shown in an engraving in the General History (p. 120; see the lower left panel). 8. I.e., Smith’s "rst book, which contains a sec- tion so titled. “President”: Smith was president of the Virginia council for only a single term; he prob ably means “twice during the time I was their president these things happened,” although the passage may have been garbled. “Con"- dence”: i.e., overcon"dence.

From New Eng land’s Trials1

Here I must entreat a little your favors to digress. They2 did not kill the En glish because they were Christians, but for their weapons and commodi- ties, that were rare novelties; but now they fear we may beat them out of their dens, which lions and tigers would not admit3 but by force. But must this be an argument for an En glishman,4 or discourage any either in Virginia or New Eng land? No: for I have tried them both.

For Virginia, I kept that country with thirty- eight, and had not5 to eat but what we had from the savages. When I had ten men able to go abroad, our commonwealth was very strong: with such a number I ranged that unknown country fourteen weeks; I had but eigh teen to subdue them all, with which great army I stayed six weeks before their greatest king’s habi- tations, till they had gathered together all the power they could; and yet the Dutchmen sent at a needless excessive charge did help Powhatan how to betray me.6

* * * For wronging a soldier but the value of a penny, I have caused Powhatan [to] send his own men to Jamestown to receive their punishment at my dis- cretion. It is true in our greatest extremity they shot me, slew three of my men, and by the folly of them that ded took me prisoner: yet God made Poca- hontas the king’s daughter the means to deliver me: and thereby taught me to know their treacheries to preserve the rest.

It was also my chance in single combat to take the king of Paspahegh7 prisoner: and by keeping him, [I] forced his subjects to work in chains till I made all the country pay contribution; having little else whereon to live.

Twice in this time I was their president, and none can say in all that time I had a man slain: but for keeping them in that fear I was much blamed both there and here: yet I left "ve hundred behind me that, through their con"- dence, in six months came most to confusion, as you may reade at large in the description of Virginia.8

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9. I.e., men from Southwest Eng land. “Brute”: tough. 1. Smith here refers to the tough going among earlier En glish voyagers to New Eng land, espe- cially Sir Ferdinando Gorges (1568–1647), a backer of Smith, and Thomas Hunt, who had been with Smith on the latter’s 1614 voyage to the region. Hunt had stirred up much trou ble with the local American Indians by kidnapping

more than twenty of them, including the Native American Tisquantum (called Squanto by the Pil- grims) to sell into slavery in Spain. 2. Those who pick through events in search of bits of scandal. 3. Large casks. “Draught”: haul of the "sh net. 4. Here Smith speaks of the Plymouth settlers. “Adventurers”: the investors who backed the Pil- grim venture.

When I went "rst to these desperate designs, it cost me many a forgotten pound to hire men to go; and procrastination caused more [to] run away than went. But after the ice was broken, came many brave voluntaries: notwith- standing since I came from thence, the honorable com pany have been humble suitors to his Majesty to get vagabonds and condemned man to go thither; nay so much scorned was the name of Virginia, some did choose to be hanged ere they would go thither, and were: yet for all the worst of spite, detraction, and discouragement, and this la men ta ble massacre, there is more honest men now suitors to go, then ever hath been constrained knaves; and it is not unknown to most men of understanding, how happy many of those calumniators do think themselves, that they might be admitted, and yet pay for their passage to go now to Virginia: and had I but means to transport as many as would go, I might have choice of 10,000 that would gladly be in any of those new places, which were so basely condemned by ungrateful base minds.

To range this country of New Eng land in like manner I had but eight, as is said, and amongst their brute conditions I met many of their silly encoun- ters, and without any hurt, God be thanked; when your West country men9 were many of them wounded and much tormented with the savages that assaulted their ship, as they did say themselves, in the "rst year I was there, 1614; and though Master Hunt, then master with me, did most basely in stealing some savages from that coast to sell, when he was directed to have gone for Spain.1 * * * I speak not this out of vainglory, as it may be some gleaners,2 or some [that] was never there may censure me: but to let all men be assured by those examples, what those savages are, that thus strangely do murder and betray our countrymen. But to the purpose.

What is already writ of the healthfulness of the air, the richness of the soil, the goodness of the woods, the abundance of fruits, "sh, and fowl in their season, they still af"rm that have been there now near two years, and at one draught they have taken 1000 basses, and in one night twelve hogs- heads3 of herring. They are building a strong fort, they hope shortly to "n- ish, in the interim they are well provided: their number is about a hundred persons, all in health, and well near sixty acres of ground well planted with corn, besides their gardens well replenished with useful fruits; and if their adventurers would but furnish them with necessaries for "shing, their wants would quickly be supplied.4

To supply them this sixteenth of October is going the Paragon with sixty- seven persons, and all this is done by private men’s purses. And to conclude in their own words, should they write of all plenties they have found, they think they should not be believed.

* * *

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5. I.e., by Virginia’s example; Plymouth had barely been settled, but the longer experience of the En glish in Virginia (with all its faults) could be used to suggest the probable course of events in New Eng land. 6. Excite; imbue with passion. 7. I.e., as equally dear to me as one hand or the other. 8. The offspring of Smith’s deeds; i.e., the accomplishments of others would not have been pos si ble had he not gone before. 9. Well- known places in Eng land. 1. Smith means that once he led the way into

Amer i ca, the En glish who followed him accom- plished nothing truly bold. The exception was Captain Thomas Dermer (d. 1621), who had accompanied Smith to New Eng land in 1614, had spent two years in Newfoundland (1616–18), and had returned to New Eng land in 1619, in the pro cess acquiring more knowledge about the region than Smith. (For more on Dermer, see references in Bradford’s Of Plymouth Plantation, on p. 151 ff.) 2. I.e., of"cial documents sealed with the king’s signet.

Thus you may see plainly the yearly success from New Eng land (by Virginia)5 which has been so costly to this kingdom and so dear to me, which either to see perish or but bleed, pardon me though it passionate6 me beyond the bounds of modesty, to have been suf"ciently able to foresee it, and had nei- ther power nor means how to prevent it. By that acquaintance I have with them, I may call them my children; for they have been my wife, my hawks, my hounds, my cards, my dice, and in total my best content, as indifferent to my heart as my left hand to my right:7 and notwithstanding all those mir- acles of disasters [that] have crossed both them and me, yet were there not one En glishman remaining (as God be thanked there is some thousands) I would yet begin again with as small means as I did at the "rst. Not for that I have any secret encouragement from any I protest, more than la men ta ble experiences: for all their discoveries I can yet hear of, are but pigs of my own sow;8 nor more strange to me than to hear one tell me he hath gone from Billingsgate and discovered Greenwich, Gravesend, Tilbury, Queenborough, Leigh, and Margate;9 which to those [who] did never hear of them, though they dwell in Eng land, might be made seem some rare secrets and great countries unknown: except the relations of Master Dirmer.1

* * * What here I have writ by relation, if it be not right, I humbly entreat your

pardons; but I have not spared any diligence to learn the truth of them that have been actors or sharers in those voyages: in some particulars they might deceive me, but in the substances they could not, for few could tell me any- thing, except where they "shed. But seeing all those [that] have lived there, do con"rm more than I have written, I doubt not but all those testimonies with these new- begun examples of plantation, will move both city and coun- try freely to adventure with me and my partners more than promises, seeing I have from his Majesty letters patent,2 such honest, free, and large condi- tions assured me from his commissioners, as I hope will satisfy any honest understanding.

1622

129

WILLIAM BRADFORD 1590–1657

W illiam Bradford’s Of Plymouth Plantation offered the "rst sustained treat-ment of New Eng land’s early history, and it helped shape enduring cultural narratives about the small settlement that a group of religious dissenters known as the Pilgrims established on the Mas sa chu setts coast in 1620. Written between roughly 1630 and 1650, Of Plymouth Plantation casts a backward look on the Plym- outh colony’s early history and seeks meaning in its major episodes. As he composed his retrospective account, Bradford revised more immediate, journalistic- style narra- tives such as Mourt’s Relation (1622), which Bradford coauthored with Edward Win- slow, another Plymouth leader. (See the excerpt in the “First Encounters” cluster, earlier in this volume.) He also incorporated and reworked his own notes. In the resulting narrative, Bradford portrays the uncertain and ambiguous emergence of providential meaning.

Bradford’s life, with its many losses and dislocations as well as its strong if some- times muted sense of purpose, provides a model of the Plymouth community. He was born in Yorkshire, in the northeast of Eng land, a region still retaining marks of Viking invasions from centuries past. Bradford’s father died when he was an infant, and he was passed among relatives and taught the arts of farming. His life changed at age twelve or thirteen, when he heard the sermons of Richard Clyfton. Clyfton was the Nonconformist minister of a small community in Scrooby, Nottingham- shire, a neighboring parish. Despite opposition from his uncles and grandparents, in 1606 Bradford left home and joined the community.

The members of the Scrooby church were known as “Separatists” because they were not sympathetic to the idea of a national Church, such as the one that King Henry VIII established in Eng land after he broke with the pope. Separating from the Church of Eng land was, however, by En glish law an act of treason, and many believers paid a high price for their dreams of purity. Other Puritan critics of the established Church, such as the non- Separating Congregationalists who eventually settled Boston, struck a middle path, retaining ties to the Church of Eng land even as they devel- oped a dif fer ent orga nizational structure. Despite these differences, the churches at both Plymouth and the neighboring Mas sa chu setts Bay Colony embraced John Calvin’s Congregationalist model. Calvin (1509–1564), a French theologian, called upon Protestant reformers to set up “par tic u lar,” in de pen dent churches, each founded on a formal covenant that would be sworn to by its members. In Congrega- tional churches, God offered himself as a contractual partner to each believer in a contract freely initiated but perpetually binding. The model was twofold: the Old Testament covenant that God made with Adam and renewed through Jesus Christ, as well as the tight- knit communities of the early Christian churches.

Wishing to pursue their beliefs about church government more freely, the Scrooby community took up residence in the Netherlands, in Leiden (or Leyden), where Brad- ford joined them in 1609. But they suffered from continued government harassment, and with the Netherlands on the brink of war with Catholic Spain, the community took counsel from Captain John Smith and petitioned the En glish government for a grant of land in North Amer i ca. In mid- September 1620, a portion of the congrega- tion and a group of entrepreneurs sailed from Plymouth, Eng land, for Amer i ca. The rest of the congregation was expected to follow at some future time. The voyage on the May"ower went relatively smoothly, though one person died, and there was

some friction with the often less- than- godly mari ners. The colonists’ original grant was for land in the Virginia territory, but high seas prevented them from reaching that area and, after an initial foray at Cape Cod, they settled just north of the Cape at an area they named Plymouth, adapting the name that Smith gave to the region in his 1614 expedition. Soon after the May"ower’s arrival on the coast, Bradford’s wife, Dorothy, fell overboard and drowned. However, little is known about this trag- edy; strikingly, Bradford does not mention Dorothy’s death in his journal or other writings.

In the second book of Bradford’s history he describes the signing of the Maydower Compact, a civil covenant designed to allow the temporal state to serve the devout citi- zen. It was the "rst of numerous “plantation covenants” intended both to protect the rights of citizens from the reach of established governments and to assert the commu- nity’s authority to create its own “civil body politic” and make its own laws. The sense of communal purpose bolstered by the Compact helped sustain the Plymouth settle- ment through its dif"cult "rst months. Having arrived in winter and being inade- quately provisioned, the com pany was decimated in the “Starving Time” that followed, losing half its members to disease and undernourishment. The colony’s "rst governor, John Carver, was one of the fatalities, and Bradford was elected in Carver’s place. As governor, Bradford was chief judge and jury, oversaw agriculture and trade, and made allotments of land. He also conferred with John Winthrop, a leader of neighboring Mas sa chu setts Bay Colony, about matters of regional interest. Bradford served as governor for most of his remaining years.

Bradford was the "rst person to use the word “Pilgrims,” from Hebrews 11.13 in the Geneva Bible, to describe the community of believers who sailed on the May- "ower. (The Geneva Bible, also known as the En glish Bible, was translated by Reformed En glish Protestants living in Switzerland; this version, used by Puritans, was outlawed by the Church of Eng land.) For Bradford, as for the other members of this community, the decision to settle at Plymouth was the last step in their long journey to escape religious oppression in Eng land. Of Plymouth Plantation situates their self- exile in the arc of Christian history as well as in the more recent events sur- rounding the Protestant Reformation, which sparked wars of religion that plagued Eng land and the rest of Eu rope for generations. In the opening pages of his Plymouth history, Bradford invokes John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments (1563), which relates the sufferings of Protestants under Mary Stuart, who as queen of Eng land (1553–58) briedy reinstated Roman Catholicism and oversaw the execution by burning of some three hundred Protestants. Foxe’s account, also known as Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, was an iconic portrayal of Protestant oppression at the hands of Catholic authorities. The continued oppression of dissenters under Anglican rulers had driven the Plymouth colonists "rst to the Netherlands and then to Amer i ca, where they hoped to "nd greater autonomy and opportunity.

This remote settlement was hardly isolated. Bradford locates Plymouth in an expanding network of relations with indigenous communities; with other En glish settlements, which had a mixture of commercial and religious imperatives; and with numerous Eu ro pean colonies. The latter included the neighboring Dutch colonies, which were Protestant; the more distant yet, ideologically speaking, more threaten- ing French and Spanish colonies, which were Catholic; and the Eu ro pean colonies in the West Indies. Amid Eu ro pean colonization of the Amer i cas, imperial rivalries, and religious condicts, the Puritans sought to re- create the primitive simplicity of early Chris tian ity.

Cotton Mather, in Magnalia Christi Amer i ca (1702), his ecclesiastical history of New Eng land, describes the self- educated Bradford as

a person for study as well as action; and hence notwithstanding the dif"culties which he passed in his youth, he attained unto a notable skill in languages. . . . But the Hebrew he most of all studied, because, he said, he would see with his

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own eyes the ancient oracles of God in their native beauty. . . . The crown of all his life was his holy, prayerful, watchful and fruitful walk with God, wherein he was exemplary.

The primitivist impulse animating Bradford and his companions made the success or failure of the Plymouth colony more than a worldly venture—it was a mea sure of their ability to interpret God’s will as they found it in Scripture and to remake the world in its image.

However, the sense of uni"ed purpose in the opening pages of Bradford’s chron- icle splinters as his account proceeds. Contributing to this fracture was the dif"- culty that the Plymouth community had in "nding a suitable minister. The group’s beloved pastor, John Robinson, died before he could cross the Atlantic. Several sub- stitutes were inadequate or worse. Bradford relates the story of the Reverend John Lyford, who served the colony for years. A secret Anglican sympathizer, Lyford betrayed the colonists and was later implicated in misadventures and crimes, including a rape. The Reverend Roger Williams briedy served the Plymouth church but left after a few years for ideological reasons. Some of the other major episodes that tested Bradford and the community, represented in the following se lections, include the condict with Thomas Morton (whose competing version of these events is presented later); tensions involving other colonies; the war with the Pequot Indians; an episode of bestiality; and, perhaps most challenging for Bradford, the drift of people away from Plymouth, drawn by economic opportunities, and the resulting divisions in the church. Finding that his lifelong search for a stable, like- minded community had once again been thwarted, the aging Bradford compared Plymouth to “an ancient mother, grown old and forsaken of her children.”

Bradford composed his history at the height of the En glish Civil War, and it remained unpublished for over two centuries. The manuscript mysteriously dis- appeared around the time of the American Revolution. The "rst book (through chap- ter IX) had been copied into the Plymouth church rec ords and was thus preserved, but the second book was believed lost. In 1855 the manuscript was located in the palace of  the bishop of London, prob ably having been removed from Boston’s Old South Church by British soldiers or the departing Tory governor, Thomas Hutchinson. After several de cades of negotiations, the manuscript was returned to the United States in 1897 and deposited in the Mas sa chu setts State Library.

Though not available in a printed edition until 1856, Bradford’s manuscript was a major source for other historians and interpreters of the New Eng land experience, such as Cotton Mather and Samuel Sewall. The incidents reported in Bradford’s history continued to guide interpretations of the New Eng land past even when the manuscript’s location was unknown. In the early nineteenth century, the leading po liti cal thinker and orator Daniel Webster traced the origins of the U.S. Constitu- tion to the Maydower Compact, contributing to the formation of a narrative about the Puritan sources of American democracy that induenced the French writer Alexis de Tocqueville’s landmark study Democracy in Amer i ca (1835, 1840). These develop- ments in turn helped catalyze a literary reconsideration of the Puritan past. Some of the major events that Bradford describes in Of Plymouth Plantation were cast into "ctional form by writers such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, whose story “The May- Pole of Merry Mount” (written 1835–36) portrays the condict between the Plymouth colo- nists and Thomas Morton’s settlement at Ma-re Mount, and Herman Melville, who gave the name of the Pequot Indians to his ill- fated ship in Moby- Dick (1851).

Perhaps the main reason for Plymouth’s continued place in American memory today is its association with the Thanksgiving holiday. Thanksgiving feasts were common practices in early modern Eu rope, where they were held on special occasions to celebrate harvests and other impor tant communal events, and this remained the practice in the colonies and United States well into the nineteenth century. Presi- dent Abraham Lincoln initiated Thanksgiving Day as a national holiday in 1863,

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1. The text is adapted from William Bradford, Bradford’s History “Of Plimoth Plantation.” From

the Original Manuscript (1897). 2. I.e., of Eng land and Scotland.

intending it as a unifying gesture in the midst of the Civil War. Seventy- six years later, President Franklin Delano Roo se velt moved the holiday from the last week of November to the previous week to help bolster retail sales during the Great Depression.

One striking thing about Bradford’s narrative is how little his account of the “First Thanksgiving,” in 1621, matches the popu lar image of that event, which features Puritans and Native Americans sharing the fruits of the land together. The vision of friendly cohabitation derives more directly from a passage in Bradford and Winslow’s Mourt’s Relation, which highlights the presence of the Wampanoag sachem (para- mount chief) Massasoit and some ninety of his men, describes how “three days we entertained and feasted” them, and links the cele bration to the “Covenant of Peace” between the colonists and the natives. In recounting the same event de cades later, Bradford does not mention the Natives, the peace covenant, or a feast. Instead, he stresses the natu ral bounty that the community enjoyed and insists on the truthful- ness of his earlier reports regarding the land’s potential. Though elsewhere Bradford mentions the peace agreement with Massasoit, far more memorable is his account of the burning of Mystic Fort, one of the worst colonial atrocities, where the Puritans slaughtered some four hundred Pequot men, women, and children, backed up by their Narragansett allies.

The differences between the two "rsthand descriptions of the Plymouth colonists’ "rst thanksgiving suggest Bradford’s shifting priorities and audiences. Once the lead- ing edge of radical Protestant colonization, the small plantation at Plymouth came, after 1630, to be overshadowed by Boston and the Mas sa chu setts Bay Colony, and then by rapidly evolving events in Eng land: civil war, the execution of King Charles I, and the establishment of the Commonwealth of Eng land. Toward the end of the period when he revised his history, the future of New Eng land was in doubt. The overthrow of the British monarchy made some Puritan colonists, notably including Winslow, decide to cast their fortunes with the new regime. Bradford oriented the events that he chronicled toward the changing scenes in Eng land, New Eng land, and the larger Atlantic world.

When Bradford wrote in his opening paragraph that his goal was to relate the main events of the Plymouth colony’s short history, making them “manifest in a plain style, with singular regard unto the simple truth in all things,” he knew that his work would include matter that he elsewhere described as “tedious and uncomfortable.” The full history oscillates between passages of crisp, descriptive prose, sometimes embellished with claims of providential signi"cance, and murky, drawn- out accounts of uncertain "nancial and po liti cal dealings. The uneven texture of the narrative registers the chal- lenges that Bradford faced in both relating the dow of events during a volatile histori- cal moment and trying to discern the signs of God’s will in those events.

Of Plymouth Plantation1

From Book I

from chapter i. [the en glish reformation]

* * * When as by the travail and diligence of some godly and zealous preach- ers, and God’s blessing on their labors, as in other places of the land, so in the North parts,2 many became enlightened by the word of God, and had

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3. Revealed. 4. Worldly. 5. I.e., threatened with forced compliance with the tenets of the Church of Eng land. 6. “Apparitors . . . courts”: the ecclesiastical courts and their of"cers. 7. Bradford quotes the Dutch historian Emanuel van Meteren’s General History of the Netherlands (1608). King Edward VI reigned from 1547 to 1553. King James I reigned from 1603 to

1625. Most Puritans preferred the Calvinist sys- tem in Geneva or the Church of Scotland, which replaced a hierarchy of archbishops, bishops, and priests with a national assembly and a parish presbytery consisting of the ministers and elders. 8. Believers. 9. Not the soldier and explorer; a Cambridge Uni- versity gradu ate who seceded from the Church of Eng land in 1605.

their ignorance and sins discovered3 unto them, and began by His grace to reform their lives, and make conscience of their ways, the work of God was no sooner manifest in them, but presently they were both scoffed and scorned by the profane4 multitude, and the ministers urged with the yoke of subscrip- tion,5 or else must be silenced; and the poor people were so vexed with appa- ritors, and the pursuivants, and the commissary courts,6 as truly their afdiction was not small; which, notwithstanding, they bore sundry years with much patience, till they were occasioned (by the continuance and increase of these trou bles, and other means which the Lord raised up in those days) to see further into things by the light of the word of God. How not only these base and beggarly ceremonies were unlawful, but also that the lordly and tyranous power of the prelates ought not to be submitted unto; which thus, contrary to the freedom of the gospel, would load and burden men’s con- sciences, and by their compulsive power make a profane mixture of persons and things in the worship of God. And that their of"ces and callings, courts and canons, etc. were unlawful and anti- Christian; being such as have no warrant in the word of God; but the same that were used in popery, and still retained. Of which a famous author thus writeth in his Dutch commentaries: At the coming of King James into Eng land,

The new king (saith he) found there established the reformed religion, according to the reformed religion of King Edward VI. Retaining, or keeping still the spiritual state of the bishops, etc. after the old manner, much varying and differing from the reformed churches in Scotland, France, and the Netherlands, Embden, Geneva, etc. whose reformation is cut, or shaped much nearer the "rst Christian churches, as it was used in the Apostles’ times.7

So many therefore of these professors8 as saw the evil of these things, in these parts, and whose hearts the Lord had touched with heavenly zeal for his truth, they shook off this yoke of anti- Christian bondage, and as the Lord’s free people, joined themselves (by a covenant of the Lord) into a church estate, in the fellowship of the gospel, to walk in all his ways, made known, or to be made known unto them, according to their best endeavors, whatsoever it should cost them, the Lord assisting them. And that it cost them something this ensuing history will declare.

These people became two distinct bodies or churches, and in regard of distance of place did congregate severally; for they were of sundry towns and villages, some in Nottinghamshire, some of Lincolnshire, and some of York- shire, where they border nearest together. In one of these churches (besides others of note) was Mr. John Smith,9 a man of able gifts, and a good preacher, who afterwards was chosen their pastor. But these afterwards falling into

1. The Netherlands. 2. Like John Smith and Richard Clyfton, a Cambridge gradu ate and a Separatist. 3. A church leader of the Pilgrims in both Ley- den and Plymouth. 4. I.e., were nearly captured by the authorities.

5. The strug gle for in de pen dence by provinces of the Netherlands, a Protestant country, against Spain, a Catholic country, was interrupted by a twelve- year truce that began on March 30, 1609; this truce was now coming to a close. “This city”: Leyden.

some errors in the Low Countries,1 there (for the most part) buried them- selves, and their names.

But in this other church (which must be the subject of our discourse) besides other worthy men, was Mr. Richard Clyfton, a grave and revered preacher, who by his pains and diligence had done much good, and under God had been a means of the conversion of many. And also that famous and worthy man Mr. John Robinson,2 who afterwards was their pastor for many years, till the Lord took him away by death. Also Mr. William Brewster3 a reverent man, who afterwards was chosen an elder of the church and lived with them till old age.

But after these things they could not long continue in any peaceable con- dition, but were hunted and persecuted on every side, so as their former afdictions were but as dea- bitings in comparison of these which now came upon them. For some were taken and clapped up in prison, others had their houses beset and watched night and day, and hardly escaped their hands;4 and the most were fain to dy and leave their houses and habitations, and the means of their livelihood. Yet these and many other sharper things which afterward befell them, were no other than they looked for, and therefore were the better prepared to bear them by the assistance of God’s grace and spirit. Yet seeing themselves thus molested, and that there was no hope of their continuance there, by a joint consent they resolved to go into the Low Coun- tries, where they heard was freedom of religion for all men; as also how sundry from London, and other parts of the land, had been exiled and per- secuted for the same cause, and were gone thither, and lived at Amsterdam, and in other places of the land. So after they had continued together about a year, and kept their meetings every Sabbath in one place or other, exercis- ing the worship of God amongst themselves, notwithstanding all the dili- gence and malice of their adversaries, they seeing they could no longer continue in that condition, they resolved to get over into Holland as they could; which was in the year 1607 and 1608.

* * * chapter iv. showing the reasons and causes of their removal

After they had lived in this city about some eleven or twelve years (which is the more observable being the whole time of that famous truce between that state and the Spaniards)5 and sundry of them were taken away by death, and many others began to be well stricken in years, the grave mistress Experi- ence having taught them many things, those prudent governors with sundry of the sagest members began both deeply to apprehend their pres ent dan- gers, and wisely to foresee the future, and think of timely remedy. In the agitation of their thoughts, and much discourse of things hereabout, at length they began to incline to this conclusion, of removal to some other place. Not out of any newfangledness, or other such like giddy humor, by which men are oftentimes transported to their great hurt and danger, but

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6. Ancient Roman statesman of unbending integrity who committed suicide after being defeated in battle by the future emperor Julius Caesar. Orpah was the sister- in- law of Ruth, who did not leave their mother- in- law: “And they

lifted up their voice, and wept again: and Orpah kissed her mother- in- law; but Ruth clave unto her” (Ruth 1.14). 7. “It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth” (Lamentations 3.27).

for sundry weighty and solid reasons; some of the chief of which I will here briedy touch. And "rst, they saw and found by experience the hardness of the place and country to be such, as few in comparison would come to them, and fewer that would bide it out, and continue with them. For many that came to them, and many more that desired to be with them, could not endure that great labor and hard fare, with other incon ve niences which they under- went and were contented with. But though they loved their persons, approved their cause, and honored their sufferings, yet they left them as it were weep- ing, as Orpah did her mother- in- law Naomi, or as those Romans did Cato6 in Utica, who desired to be excused and borne with, though they could not all be Catos. For many, though they desired to enjoy the ordinances of God in their purity, and the liberty of the gospel with them, yet, alas, they admit- ted of bondage, with danger of conscience, rather than to endure these hard- ships; yea, some preferred and chose the prisons in Eng land, rather than this liberty in Holland, with these afdictions. But it was thought that if a better and easier place of living could be had, it would draw many, and take away these discouragements. Yea, their pastor would often say, that many of those who both wrote and preached now against them, if they were in a place where they might have liberty and live comfortably, they would then prac- tice as they did.

Secondly. They saw that though the people generally bore all these dif"- culties very cheerfully, and with a resolute courage, being in the best and strength of their years, yet old age began to steal on many of them (and their great and continual labors, with other crosses and sorrows, hastened it before the time), so as it was not only prob ably thought, but apparently seen, that within a few years more they would be in danger to scatter, by necessities pressing them, or sink under their burdens, or both. And therefore accord- ing to the divine proverb, that a wise man seeth the plague when it cometh, and hideth himself, Proverbs 22:3, so they like skillful and beaten soldiers were fearful either to be entrapped or surrounded by their enemies, so as they should neither be able to "ght nor dy; and therefore thought it better to dislodge betimes to some place of better advantage and less danger, if any such could be found.

Thirdly; as necessity was a taskmaster over them, so they were forced to be such, not only to their servants, but in a sort, to their dearest children; the which as it did not a little wound the tender hearts of many a loving father and mother, so it produced likewise sundry sad and sorrowful effects. For many of their children, that were of best dispositions and gracious inclina- tions, having learned to bear the yoke in their youth,7 and [being] willing to bear part of their parents’ burden, were, oftentimes, so oppressed with their heavy labors, that though their minds were free and willing, yet their bodies bowed under the weight of the same, and became decrepit in their early youth; the vigor of nature being consumed in the very bud as it were. But that which was more la men ta ble, and of all sorrows most heavy to be borne, was that many of their children, by these occasions, and the great licentiousness of

8. Slices, portions.

youth in that country, and the manifold temptations of the place, were drawn away by evil examples into extravagant and dangerous courses, getting the reins off their necks, and departing from their parents. Some became soldiers, others took upon them far voyages by sea, and other some worse courses, tending to dissoluteness and the danger of their souls, to the great grief of their parents and dishonor of God. So that they saw their posterity would be in danger to degenerate and be corrupted.

Lastly (and which was not least), a great hope and inward zeal they had of laying some good foundation, or at least to make some way thereunto, for the propagating and advancing the gospel of the kingdom of Christ in those remote parts of the world; yea, though they should be but even as stepping- stones unto others for the performing of so great a work.

These, and some other like reasons, moved them to undertake this reso- lution of their removal; the which they afterward prosecuted with so great dif"culties, as by the sequel will appear.

The place they had thoughts on was some of those vast and unpeopled countries of Amer i ca, which are fruitful and "t for habitation, being devoid of all civil inhabitants, where there are only savage and brutish men, which range up and down, little other wise than the wild beasts of the same. This proposi- tion being made public and coming to the scanning of all, it raised many vari- able opinions amongst men, and caused many fears and doubts amongst themselves. Some, from their reasons and hopes conceived, labored to stir up and encourage the rest to undertake and prosecute the same; others, again, out of their fears, objected against it, and sought to divert from it, alleging many things, and those neither unreasonable nor unprobable; as that it was a great design, and subject to many unconceivable perils and dangers; as, besides the casualties of the seas (which none can be freed from) the length of the voyage was such, as the weak bodies of women and other persons worn out with age and travail (as many of them were) could never be able to endure. And yet if they should, the miseries of the land which they should be exposed unto, would be too hard to be borne; and likely, some or all of them together, to consume and utterly to ruinate them. For there they should be liable to famine, and nakedness, and the want, in a manner, of all things. The change of air, diet, and drinking of water, would infect their bodies with sore sicknesses, and grievous diseases. And also those which should escape or overcome these dif"culties, should yet be in continual danger of the savage people, who are cruel, barbarous, and most treacher- ous, being most furious in their rage, and merciless where they overcome; not being content only to kill, and take away life, but delight to torment men in the most bloody manner that may be; daying some alive with the shells of "shes, cutting off the members and joints of others by piecemeal, and broiling on the coals, eat the collops8 of their desh in their sight whilst they live; with other cruelties horrible to be related. And surely it could not be thought but the very hearing of these things could not but move the very bowels of men to grate within them, and make the weak to quake and tremble. It was further objected, that it would require greater sums of money to furnish such a voyage, and to "t them with necessaries, than their con- sumed estates would amount to; and yet they must as well look to be seconded

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9. The Speedwell, with a capacity of sixty tons. 1. The May"ower had a capacity of one hundred eighty tons.

with supplies, as presently to be transported. Also many pre ce dents of ill success, and la men ta ble miseries befallen others in the like designs, were easy to be found, and not forgotten to be alleged; besides their own experi- ence, in their former trou bles and hardships in their removal into Holland, and how hard a thing it was for them to live in that strange place, though it was a neighbor country, and a civil and rich commonwealth.

It was answered, that all great and honorable actions are accompanied with great dif"culties, and must be both enterprised and overcome with answerable courages. It was granted the dangers were great, but not desper- ate; the dif"culties were many, but not invincible. For though there were many of them likely, yet they were not certain; it might be sundry of the things feared might never befall; others by provident care and the use of good means, might in a great mea sure be prevented; and all of them, through the help of God, by fortitude and patience, might either be borne, or overcome. True it was, that such attempts were not to be made and undertaken with- out good ground and reason; not rashly or lightly as many have done for curi- osity or hope of gain, etc. But their condition was not ordinary; their ends were good and honorable; their calling lawful, and urgent; and therefore they might expect the blessing of God in their proceeding. Yea, though they should lose their lives in this action, yet might they have comfort in the same, and their endeavors would be honorable. They lived here but as men in exile, and in a poor condition; and as great miseries might possibly befall them in this place, for the twelve years of truce were now out, and there was noth- ing but beating of drums, and preparing for war, the events whereof are always uncertain. The Spaniard might prove as cruel as the savages of Amer- i ca, and the famine and pestilence as sore here as there, and their liberty less to look out for remedy. After many other par tic u lar things answered and alleged on both sides, it was fully concluded by the major part, to put this design in execution, and to prosecute it by the best means they could.

* * * from chapter vii. of their departure from leyden, and other

things thereabout, with their arrival at southampton, where they all met together, and took in their provisions

At length, after much travail and these debates, all things were got ready and provided. A small ship9 was bought, and "tted in Holland, which was intended as to serve to help to transport them, so to stay in the country and attend upon "shing and such other affairs as might be for the good and bene"t of the col- ony when they came there. Another was hired at London, of burden about nine score;1 and all other things got in readiness. So being ready to depart, they had a day of solemn humiliation, their pastor taking his text from Ezra 8.21: “And there at the river, by Ahava, I proclaimed a fast, that we might humble ourselves before our God, and seek of Him a right way for us, and for our children, and for all our substance.” Upon which he spent a good part of the day very pro"tably, and suitable to their pres ent occasion. The rest of the time was spent in pouring out prayers to the Lord with great fervency, mixed with abundance of tears. And the time being come that they must

2. “They were strangers and pilgrims on the earth” (Hebrews 11.13). 3. In Mourt’s Relation. 4. John Carver (c. 1576–1621), the colony’s "rst

governor. 5. See 2 Corinthians 1.8 and Acts 18.5. 6. Proverbs 18.14. 7. Carver’s wife was Robinson’s sister.

depart, they were accompanied with most of their brethren out of the city, unto a town sundry miles off called Delfshaven, where the ship lay ready to receive them. So they left that goodly and pleasant city, which had been their resting place near twelve years; but they knew they were pilgrims,2 and looked not much on those things, but lifted up their eyes to the heavens, their dearest country, and quieted their spirits. When they came to the place they found the ship and all things ready; and such of their friends as could not come with them followed after them, and sundry also came from Amsterdam to see them shipped and to take their leave of them. That night was spent with little sleep by the most, but with friendly entertainment and Christian discourse and other real expressions of true Christian love. The next day, the wind being fair, they went aboard, and their friends with them, where truly doleful was the sight of that sad and mournful parting; to see what sighs and sobs and prayers did sound amongst them, what tears did gush from every eye, and pithy speeches pierced each heart; that sun- dry of the Dutch strangers that stood on the quay as spectators, could not refrain from tears. Yet comfortable and sweet it was to see such lively and true expressions of dear and unfeigned love. But the tide (which stays for no man) calling them away that were thus loath to depart, their reverend pastor falling down on his knees, and they all with him, with watery cheeks commended them with most fervent prayers to the Lord and His blessing. And then with mutual embraces and many tears, they took their leaves one of another, which proved to be the last leave to many of them.

* * * At their parting Mr. Robinson writ a letter to the whole com pany, which,

though it hath already been printed,3 yet I thought good here likewise to insert it, as also a brief letter writ at the same time to Mr. Carver,4 in which the tender love and godly care of a true pastor appears:

My dear Brother, I received enclosed in your last letter the note of infor- mation, which I shall carefully keep and make use of as there shall be occa- sion. I have a true feeling of your perplexity of mind and toil of body, but I hope that you who have always been able so plentifully to administer com- fort unto others in their trials, are so well furnished for yourself as that far greater dif"culties than you have yet under gone (though I conceive them to have been great enough) cannot oppress you, though they press you, as the Apostle speaks.5 The spirit of a man (sustained by the spirit of God) will sustain his in"rmity;6 I doubt not so will yours. And the better much when you shall enjoy the presence and help of so many godly and wise brethren, for the bearing of part of your burthen, who also will not admit into their hearts the least thought of suspicion of any the least negligence, at least presumption, to have been in you, whatsoever they think in others. Now what shall I say or write unto you and your good wife, my loving sister?7

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8. Delay.

Even only this, I desire (and always shall) unto you from the Lord, as unto my own soul; and assure yourself that my heart is with you, and that I will not forslow8 my bodily coming at the "rst opportunity. I have written a large letter to the whole, and am sorry I shall not rather speak than write to them; and the more, considering the want of a preacher, which I shall also make some spur to my hastening after you. I do ever commend my best affection unto you, which if I thought you made any doubt of, I would express in more, and the same more ample and full words. And the Lord in whom you trust and whom you serve ever in this business and journey, guide you with His hand, protect you with His wing, and show you and us His salvation in the end, and bring us in the meanwhile together in the place desired, if such be His good will, for His Christ’s sake. Amen. Yours, etc.

July 27, 1620 John Robinson

This was the last letter that Mr. Carver lived to see from him. The other follows:

Loving and Christian friends, I do heartily and in the Lord salute you all, as being they with whom I am pres ent in my best affection, and most earnest longings after you, though I be constrained for a while to be bodily absent from you. I say constrained, God knowing how willingly, and much rather than other wise, I would have borne my part with you in this "rst brunt, were I not by strong necessity held back for the pres ent. Make account of me in the meanwhile, as of a man divided in myself with great pain, and as (natu ral bonds set aside) having my better part with you. And though I doubt not but in your godly wisdoms, you both foresee and resolve upon that which concer- neth your pres ent state and condition, both severally and jointly, yet have I thought it but my duty to add some further spur of provocation unto them, who run already, if not because you need it, yet because I owe it in love and duty. And "rst, as we are daily to renew our repentance with our God, espe- cially for our sins known, and generally for our unknown trespasses, so doth the Lord call us in a singular manner upon occasions of such dif"culty and danger as lieth upon you, to a both more narrow search and careful reforma- tion of your ways in his sight; lest He, calling to remembrance our sins forgot- ten by us or unrepented of, take advantage against us, and in judgment leave us for the same to be swallowed up in one danger or other; whereas, on the contrary, sin being taken away by earnest repentance and the pardon thereof from the Lord sealed up unto a man’s conscience by His spirit, great shall be his security and peace in all dangers, sweet his comforts in all distresses, with happy deliverance from all evil, whether in life or in death.

Now next after this heavenly peace with God and our own consciences, we are carefully to provide for peace with all men what in us lieth, espe- cially with our associates; and for that watchfulness must be had, that we neither at all in ourselves do give, no, nor easily take offense being given by others. Woe be unto the world for offenses, for though it be necessary (con- sidering the malice of Satan and man’s corruption) that offenses come, yet

9. See 1 Peter 4.8. 1. Lack.

woe unto the man or woman either by whom the offense cometh, saith Christ, Matthew 18.7. And if offenses in the unseasonable use of things in themselves indifferent, be more to be feared than death itself, as the Apostle teacheth, 1 Corinthians 9.15, how much more in things simply evil, in which neither honor of God nor love of man is thought worthy to be regarded. Nei- ther yet is it suf"cient that we keep ourselves by the grace of God from giving offense, except withal we be armed against the taking of them when they be given by others. For how unperfect and lame is the work of grace in that per- son, who wants charity to cover a multitude of offenses, as the scriptures speak.9 Neither are you to be exhorted to this grace only upon the common grounds of Chris tian ity, which are, that persons ready to take offense, either want1 charity, to cover offenses, or wisdom duly to weigh human frailty; or lastly, are gross, though close hypocrites, as Christ our Lord teacheth, Mat- thew 7.1, 2, 3, as indeed in my own experience, few or none have been found which sooner give offense, than such as easily take it; neither have they ever proved sound and pro"table members in socie ties, which have nourished this touchy humor. But besides these, there are diverse motives provoking you above others to great care and conscience this way: As "rst, you are many of you strangers, as to the persons, so to the in"rmities one of another, and so stand in need of more watchfulness this way, lest when such things fall out in men and women as you suspected not, you be inordinately affected with them; which doth require at your hands much wisdom and charity for the covering and preventing of incident offenses that way. And, lastly, your intended course of civil community will minister continual occasion of offense, and will be as fuel for that "re, except you diligently quench it with brotherly forebearance. And if taking of offense causelessly or easily at men’s doings be so carefully to be avoided, how much more heed is to be taken that we take not offense at God himself, which yet we certainly do so often as we do murmur at His providence in our crosses, or bear impatiently such afdic- tions as wherewith He pleaseth to visit us. Store up therefore patience against the evil day, without which we take offense at the Lord himself in His holy and just works.

A fourth thing there is carefully to be provided for, to wit, that with your common employments you join common affections truly bent upon the gen- eral good, avoiding as a deadly plague of your both common and special comfort all retiredness of mind for proper advantage, and all singularly affected any manner of way; let every man repress in himself and the whole body in each person, as so many rebels against the common good, all pri- vate re spects of men’s selves, not sorting with the general conveniency. And as men are careful not to have a new house shaken with any vio lence before it be well settled and the parts "rmly knit, so be you, I beseech you, breth- ren, much more careful, that the house of God which you are, and are to be, be not shaken with unnecessary novelties or other oppositions at the "rst settling thereof.

Lastly, whereas you are become a body politic, using amongst yourselves civil government, and are not furnished with any persons of special emi- nency above the rest, to be chosen by you into of"ce of government, let your wisdom and godliness appear, not only in choosing such persons as do

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2. See Romans 13.4. 3. Several. 4. Some of Bradford’s community sailed on the

Speedwell from Delftshaven early in August 1620, but that ship’s unseaworthiness forced their transfer to the May"ower.

entirely love and will promote the common good, but also in yielding unto them all due honor and obedience in their lawful administrations; not behold- ing in them the ordinariness of their persons, but God’s ordinance for your good, not being like the foolish multitude who more honor the gay coat, than either the virtuous mind of the man, or glorious ordinance of the Lord. But you know better things, and that the image of the Lord’s power and authority which the magistrate beareth,2 is honorable, in how mean persons soever. And this duty you both may the more willingly and ought the more conscionably to perform, because you are at least for the pres ent to have only them for your ordinary governors, which yourselves shall make choice of for that work.

Sundry other things of importance I could put you in mind of, and of those before mentioned, in more words, but I will not so far wrong your godly minds as to think you heedless of these things, there being also divers3 among you so well able to admonish both themselves and others of what concerneth them. These few things therefore, and the same in few words, I do earnestly com- mend unto your care and conscience, joining therewith my daily incessant prayers unto the Lord, that He who hath made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all rivers of waters, and whose providence is over all His works, espe- cially over all His dear children for good, would so guide and guard you in your ways, as inwardly by His Spirit, so outwardly by the hand of His power, as that both you and we also, for and with you, may have after matter of praising His name all the days of your and our lives. Fare you well in Him in whom you trust, and in whom I rest.

An unfeigned wellwiller of your happy success in this hopeful voyage,

john robinson

This letter, though large, yet being so fruitful in itself, and suitable to their occasion, I thought meet to insert in this place.

All things being now ready, and every business dispatched, the com pany was called together, and this letter read amongst them, which had good accepta- tion with all, and after fruit with many. Then they ordered and distributed their com pany for either ship, as they conceived for the best. And chose a Governor and two or three assistants for each ship, to order the people by the way, and see to the disposing of their provisions, and such like affairs. All which was not only with the liking of the masters of the ships, but according to their desires. Which being done, they set sail from thence about the "fth of August.

* * * chapter ix. of their voyage, and how they passed the sea;

and of their safe arrival at cape cod

September 6. These trou bles being blown over,4 and now all being compact together in one ship, they put to sea again with a prosperous wind, which continued divers days together, which was some encouragement unto them;

5. Strong, energetic. 6. Hesitate. 7. Shrewdly, in its original sense of badly or dan- gerously.

8. Watertight. 9. Overburden. 1. Drift before the weather under very little sail. 2. Roll.

yet, according to the usual manner, many were afdicted with seasickness. And I may not omit here a special work of God’s providence. There was a proud and very profane young man, one of the seamen, of a lusty,5 able body, which made him the more haughty; he would always be contemning the poor people in their sickness, and cursing them daily with grievous execrations, and did not let6 to tell them, that he hoped to help to cast half of them over- board before they came to their journey’s end, and to make merry with what they had; and if he were by any gently reproved, he would curse and swear most bitterly. But it pleased God before they came half seas over, to smite this young man with a grievous disease, of which he died in a desperate man- ner, and so was himself the "rst that was thrown overboard. Thus his curses lighted on his own head; and it was an astonishment to all his fellows, for they noted it to be the just hand of God upon him.

After they had enjoyed fair winds and weather for a season, they were encountered many times with cross winds, and met with many "erce storms, with which the ship was shroudly7 shaken, and her upper works made very leaky; and one of the main beams in the midships was bowed and cracked, which put them in some fear that the ship could not be able to perform the voyage. So some of the chief of the com pany, perceiving the mari ners to fear the suf"ciency of the ship, as appeared by their mutterings, they entered into serious consultation with the master and other of"cers of the ship, to con- sider in time of the danger; and rather to return than to cast themselves into a desperate and inevitable peril. And truly there was great distraction and difference of opinion amongst the mari ners themselves; fain would they do what could be done for their wages’ sake (being now half the seas over) and on the other hand they were loath to hazard their lives too desperately. But in examining of all opinions, the master and others af"rmed they knew the ship to be strong and "rm underwater; and [as] for the buckling of the main beam, there was a great iron screw the passengers brought out of Holland, which would raise the beam into his place; the which being done, the car- penter and master af"rmed that with a post put under it, set "rm in the lower deck, and otherways bound, he would make it suf"cient. And as for the decks and upper works they would caulk them as well as they could, and though with the working of the ship they would not long keep staunch,8 yet there would other wise be no great danger, if they did not overpress9 her with sails. So they committed themselves to the will of God, and resolved to proceed. In sundry of these storms the winds were so "erce, and the seas so high, as they could not bear a knot of sail, but were forced to hull,1 for divers days together. And in one of them, as they thus lay at hull, in a mighty storm, a lusty young man (called John Howland) coming upon some occasion above the gratings, was, with a seele2 of the ship thrown into [the] sea; but it pleased God that he caught hold of the topsail halyards, which hung overboard, and ran out at length; yet he held his hold (though he was sundry fathoms under water) till he was hauled up by the same rope to the brim of the water, and then with a boat hook and other means got into the ship again, and his life saved; and though he was something ill with it, yet he lived many years after,

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3. The Hudson River, in New York. 4. They arrived at pres ent- day Provincetown Harbor on November  11, 1620, after sixty- "ve days at sea. 5. In the year (Latin). 6. The pre"x mal means “bad,” a reference to

the dangerous sandbars. 7. Bradford cites Moral Epistles to Lucilius, by the Roman Stoic phi los o pher Seneca (4? b.c.e.– 65 c.e.). 8. See Acts 28.1–2.

and became a pro"table member both in church and commonwealth. In all this voyage there died but one of the passengers, which was William But- ten, a youth, servant to Samuel Fuller, when they drew near the coast. But to omit other things (that I may be brief) after long beating at sea they fell with that land which is called Cape Cod; the which being made and cer- tainly known to be it, they were not a little joyful. After some deliberation had amongst themselves and with the master of the ship, they tacked about and resolved to stand for the southward (the wind and weather being fair) to "nd some place about Hudson’s River3 for their habitation. But after they had sailed that course about half the day, they fell amongst dangerous shoals and roaring breakers, and they were so far entangled therewith as they con- ceived themselves in great danger; and the wind shrinking upon them withal, they resolved to bear up again for the Cape, and thought themselves happy to get out of those dangers before night overtook them, as by God’s provi- dence they did. And the next day they got into the Cape Harbor,4 where they rid in safety. A word or two by the way of this cape; it was thus "rst named by Captain Gosnold and his com pany, Anno5 1602, and after by Captain Smith was called Cape James, but it retains the former name amongst sea- men. Also that point which "rst showed those dangerous shoals unto them, they called Point Care, and Tucker’s Terror, but the French and Dutch to this day call it Malabarr, by reason of those perilous shoals,6 and the losses they have suffered there.

Being thus arrived in a good harbor and brought safe to land, they fell upon their knees and blessed the God of heaven, who had brought them over the vast and furious ocean, and delivered them from all the perils and mis- eries thereof, again to set their feet on the "rm and stable earth, their proper ele ment. And no marvel if they were thus joyful, seeing wise Seneca was so affected with sailing a few miles on the coast of his own Italy; as he af"rmed, that he had rather remain twenty years on his way by land, than pass by sea to any place in a short time, so tedious and dreadful was the same unto him.7

But here I cannot but stay and make a pause, and stand half amazed at this poor people’s pres ent condition, and so I think will the reader, too, when he well considers the same. Being thus passed the vast ocean, and a sea of trou bles before in their preparation (as may be remembered by that which went before), they had now no friends to welcome them, nor inns to enter- tain or refresh their weatherbeaten bodies, no houses or much less towns to repair to, to seek for succor. It is recorded in scripture as a mercy to the apostle and his shipwrecked com pany, that the barbarians showed them no small kindness in refreshing them,8 but these savage barbarians, when they met with them (as after will appear) were readier to "ll their sides full of arrows than other wise. And for the season it was winter, and they that know the winters of that country know them to be sharp and violent, and subject to cruel and "erce storms, dangerous to travel to known places, much more to search an unknown coast. Besides, what could they see but a hideous and

9. Mountain from which Moses saw the Prom- ised Land (Deuteronomy 34.1–4). 1. Small vessel "tted with one or more masts.

2. Deuteronomy 26.6–8 [Bradford’s note]. 3. Psalm 107.1, 2, 4, 5, 8 [Bradford’s note].

desolate wilderness, full of wild beasts and wild men? And what multitudes there might be of them they knew not. Neither could they, as it were, go up to the top of Pisgah,9 to view from this wilderness a more goodly country to feed their hopes; for which way soever they turned their eyes (save upward to the heavens) they could have little solace or content in re spect of any out- ward objects. For summer being done, all things stand upon them with a weatherbeaten face, and the whole country, full of woods and thickets, rep- resented a wild and savage hue. If they looked behind them, there was the mighty ocean which they had passed, and was now as a main bar and gulf to separate them from all the civil parts of the world. If it be said they had a ship to succor them, it is true; but what heard they daily from the master and com pany? but that with speed they should look out a place with their shallop,1 where they would be at some near distance; for the season was such as he would not stir from thence till a safe harbor was discovered by them where they would be, and he might go without danger; and that victuals con- sumed apace, but he must and would keep suf"cient for themselves and their return. Yea, it was muttered by some, that if they got not a place in time, they would turn them and their goods ashore and leave them. Let it also be con- sidered what weak hopes of supply and succor they left behind them, that might bear up their minds in this sad condition and trials they were under; and they could not but be very small. It is true, indeed, the affections and love of their brethren at Leyden was cordial and entire towards them, but they had little power to help them, or themselves; and how the case stood between them and the merchants at their coming away, hath already been declared. What could now sustain them but the spirit of God and His grace? May not and ought not the children of these fathers rightly say: “Our fathers were En glishmen which came over this great ocean, and were ready to perish in this wilderness; but they cried unto the Lord, and He heard their voice, and looked on their adversity,”2 “Let them therefore praise the Lord, because He is good, and His mercies endure forever.” “Yea, let them which have been redeemed of the Lord, show how He hath delivered them from the hand of the oppressor. When they wandered in the desert wilderness out of the way, and found no city to dwell in, both hungry, and thirsty, their soul was over- whelmed in them. Let them confess before the Lord His loving kindness, and His wonderful works before the sons of men.”3

chapter x. showing how they sought out a place of habitation; and what befell them thereabout

Being thus arrived at Cape Cod the 11th of November, and necessity calling them to look out a place for habitation (as well as the master’s and mari ners’ importunity), they having brought a large shallop with them out of Eng land, stowed in quarters in the ship, they now got her out and set their carpenters to work to trim her up; but [she] being much bruised and shattered in the ship with foul weather, they saw she would be long in mending. Whereupon a few of them tendered themselves to go by land and discover those nearest

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4. This distance might have been six to nine miles. 5. Myles Standish (1584?–1656), a professional soldier who had fought in the Netherlands, was employed by the Pilgrims.

6. Fast. 7. In Numbers 13.23–26, scouts sent out by Moses to search the wilderness return after forty days with clusters of grapes picked near a brook they call Eschol.

places, whilst the shallop was in mending, and the rather because as they went into that harbor there seemed to be an opening some two or three leagues off,4 which the master judged to be a river. It was conceived there might be some danger in the attempt, yet seeing them resolute, they were permitted to go, being sixteen of them, well armed, under the conduct of Captain Standish,5 having such instructions given them as was thought meet. They set forth the 15th of November, and when they had marched about the space of a mile by the seaside, they espied "ve or six persons with a dog coming towards them, who were savages, but they ded from them, and ran up into the woods, and the En glish followed them, partly to see if they could speak with them, and partly to discover if there might not be more of them lying in ambush. But the Indians seeing themselves thus followed, they again forsook the woods, and ran away on the sands as hard6 as they could, so as they could not come near them, but followed them by the track of their feet sundry miles, and saw that they had come the same way. So, night com- ing on, they made their rendezvous and set out their sentinels, and rested in quiet that night, and the next morning followed their track till they had headed a great creek, and so left the sands, and turned another way into the woods. But they still followed them by guess, hoping to "nd their dwellings, but they soon lost both them and themselves, falling into such thickets as were ready to tear their clothes and armor in pieces, but were most distressed for want of drink. But at length they found water and refreshed themselves, [it] being the "rst New Eng land water they drunk of, and was now in their great thirst as pleasant unto them as wine or beer had been in foretimes. Afterwards they directed their course to come to the other shore, for they knew it was a neck of land they were to cross over, and so at length got to the seaside, and marched to this supposed river, and by the way found a pond of clear fresh water, and shortly after a good quantity of clear ground where the Indians had formerly set corn, and some of their graves. And proceed- ing further they saw new stubble where corn had been set the same year, also they found where lately a house had been, where some planks and a great kettle was remaining, and heaps of sand newly paddled with their hands, which they, digging up, found in them divers fair Indian baskets "lled with corn, and some in ears, fair and good, of divers colors, which seemed to them a very goodly sight (having never seen any such before). This was near the place of that supposed river they came to seek, unto which they went and found it to open itself into two arms with a high cliff of sand in the entrance, but more like to be creeks of salt water than any fresh, for aught they saw, and that there was good harborage for their shallop, leaving it further to be discovered by their shallop when she was ready. So their time limited them being expired, they returned to the ship, lest they should be in fear of their safety, and took with them part of the corn, and buried up the rest, and so like the men from Eshcol7 carried with them of the fruits of the land, and showed their brethren, of which, and their return, they were marvelously glad, and their hearts encouraged.

8. Descendants of these Nauset Indians, the Wampanoag, today live on the reservation in Mashpee, Cape Cod.

9. Near pres ent- day Eastham. 1. Prob ably a pi lot whale.

After this, the shallop being got ready, they set out again for the better discovery of this place, and the master of the ship desired to go himself, so there went some thirty men, but found it to be no harbor for ships but only for boats. There was also found two of their houses covered with mats, and sundry of their implements in them, but the people were run away and could not be seen.8 Also there was found more of their corn, and of their beans of vari ous colors. The corn and beans they brought away, purposing to give them full satisfaction when they should meet with any of them (as about some six months afterward they did, to their good content). And here is to be noted a special providence of God, and a great mercy to this poor people, that here they got seed to plant them corn the next year, or else they might have starved, for they had none, nor any likelihood to get any till the season had been past (as the sequel did manifest). Neither is it likely they had had this, if the "rst voyage had not been made, for the ground was now all cov- ered with snow, and hard frozen. But the Lord is never wanting unto his in their greatest needs; let his holy name have all the praise.

The month of November being spent in these affairs, and much foul weather falling in, the 6th of December they sent out their shallop again with ten of their principal men, and some seamen, upon further discovery, intend- ing to circulate that deep bay of Cape Cod. The weather was very cold, and it froze so hard as the spray of the sea lighting on their coats, they were as if they had been glazed; yet that night betimes they got down into the bottom of the bay, and as they drew near the shore9 they saw some ten or twelve Indians very busy about something. They landed about a league or two from them, and had much ado to put ashore anywhere, it lay so full of dats. [ After their] being landed, it grew late, and they made themselves a barricade with logs and boughs as well as they could in the time, and set out their sentinel and betook them to rest, and saw the smoke of the "re the savages made that night. When morning was come they divided their com pany, some to coast along the shore in the boat, and the rest marched through the woods to see the land, if any "t place might be for their dwelling. They came also to the place where they saw the Indians the night before, and found they had been cutting up a great "sh like a grampus,1 being some two inches thick of fat like a hog, some pieces whereof they had left by the way; and the shallop found two more of these "shes dead on the sands, a thing usual after storms in that place, by reason of the great dats of sand that lie off. So they ranged up and down all that day, but found no people, nor any place they liked. When the sun grew low, they hasted out of the woods to meet with their shal- lop, to whom they made signs to come to them into a creek hard by, the which they did at high water, of which they were very glad, for they had not seen each other all that day, since the morning. So they made them a barricado (as usually they did every night) with logs, stakes, and thick pine boughs, the height of a man, leaving it open to leeward, partly to shelter them from the cold and wind (making their "re in the middle, and lying round about it), and partly to defend them from any sudden assaults of the savages, if they should surround them.

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2. The En glish.

So being very weary, they betook them to rest. But about midnight, they heard a hideous and great cry, and their sentinel called, “Arm! arm,” so they bestirred them and stood to their arms, and shot off a couple of muskets, and then the noise ceased. They concluded it was a com pany of wolves, or such like wild beasts, for one of the seamen told them he had often heard such a noise in Newfoundland. So they rested till about "ve of the clock in the morning, for the tide, and their purpose to go from thence, made them be stirring betimes. So after prayer they prepared for breakfast, and it being day dawning, it was thought best to be carry ing things down to the boat. But some said it was not best to carry the arms down, others said they would be the readier, for they had lapped them up in their coats from the dew. But some three or four would not carry theirs till they went themselves, yet as it fell out, the water being not high enough, they laid them down on the bank- side, and came up to breakfast. But presently, all on the sudden, they heard a great and strange cry, which they knew to be the same voices they heard in the night, though they varied their notes, and one of their com pany being abroad came running in, and cried, “Men, Indians, Indians,” and withal, their arrows came dying amongst them. Their men ran with all speed to recover their arms, as by the good providence of God they did. In the mean- time, of those that were there ready, two muskets were discharged at them, and two more stood ready in the entrance of their rendezvous, but were com- manded not to shoot till they could take full aim at them, and the other two charged again with all speed, for there were only four had arms there, and defended the barricado, which was "rst assaulted. The cry of the Indians was dreadful, especially when they saw their men run out of the rendezvous toward the shallop, to recover their arms, the Indians wheeling about upon them. But some running out with coats of mail on, and cutlasses in their hands, they soon got their arms, and let dy amongst them, and quickly stopped their vio- lence. Yet there was a lusty man, and no less valiant, stood behind a tree within half a musket shot, and let his arrows dy at them. He was seen [to] shoot three arrows, which were all avoided. He stood three shots of a musket, till one taking full aim at him, made the bark or splinters of the tree dy about his ears, after which he gave an extraordinary shriek, and away they went all of them. They2 left some to keep the shallop, and followed them about a quar- ter of a mile, and shouted once or twice, and shot off two or three pieces, and so returned. This they did, that they might conceive that they were not afraid of them or any way discouraged. Thus it pleased God to vanquish their ene- mies, and give them deliverance; and by His special providence so to dispose that not any one of them were either hurt, or hit, though their arrows came close by them, and on every side them, and sundry of their coats, which hung up in the barricado, were shot through and through. Afterwards they gave God solemn thanks and praise for their deliverance, and gathered up a bundle of their arrows, and sent them into Eng land afterward by the master of the ship, and called that place the “First Encounter.” From hence they departed, and coasted all along, but discerned no place likely for harbor, and there- fore hasted to a place that their pi lot (one Mr. Coppin, who had been in the country before) did assure them was a good harbor, which he had been in, and they might fetch it before night, of which they were glad, for it began to

3. Flood tide. 4. Heavi ly. 5. Weapons.

6. Mea sured the depth of. 7. The landing, at Plymouth, occurred on De cem- ber 21.

be foul weather. After some hours’ sailing, it began to snow and rain, and about the middle of the after noon, the wind increased, and the sea became very rough, and they broke their rudder, and it was as much as two men could do to steer her with a couple of oars. But their pi lot bade them be of good cheer, for he saw the harbor; but the storm increasing, and night drawing on, they bore what sail they could to get in, while they could see. But herewith they broke their mast in three pieces, and their sail fell over- board, in a very grown sea, so as they had like to have been cast away; yet by God’s mercy they recovered themselves, and having the dood3 with them, struck into the harbor. But when it came to, the pi lot was deceived in the place, and said, the Lord be merciful unto them, for his eyes never saw that place before, and he and the master’s mate would have run her ashore, in a cove full of breakers, before the wind. But a lusty seaman which steered, bade those which rowed, if they were men, about with her, or else they were all cast away, the which they did with speed. So he bid them be of good cheer and row lustily, for there was a fair sound before them, and he doubted not but they should "nd one place or other where they might ride in safety. And though it was very dark, and rained sore,4 yet in the end they got under the lee of a small island, and remained there all that night in safety. But they knew not this to be an island till morning, but were divided in their minds: some would keep the boat for fear they might be amongst the Indians; others were so weak and cold, they could not endure, but got ashore, and with much ado got "re (all things being so wet) and the rest were glad to come to them, for after midnight the wind shifted to the north- west, and it froze hard. But though this had been a day and night of much trou ble and danger unto them, yet God gave them a morning of comfort and refreshing (as usually He doth to His children), for the next day was a fair sunshining day, and they found themselves to be on an island secure from the Indians, where they might dry their stuff, "x their pieces,5 and rest themselves, and gave God thanks for His mercies, in their manifold deliverances. And this being the last day of the week, they prepared there to keep the Sabbath. On Monday they sounded6 the harbor, and found it "t for shipping, and marched into the land, and found divers corn"elds, and little running brooks, a place (as they supposed) "t for situation. At least it was the best they could "nd, and the season, and their pres ent necessity, made them glad to accept of it. So they returned to their ship again with this news to the rest of their people, which did much comfort their hearts.

On the 15th of December they weighed anchor to go to the place they had discovered, and came within two leagues of it, but were fain to bear up again, but the 16th day the wind came fair, and they arrived safe in this harbor, and afterwards took better view of the place, and resolved where to pitch their dwelling,7 and the 25th day began to erect the "rst house for common use to receive them and their goods.

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1. Bradford did not number the chapters in Book II. 2. A form of union. 3. Bradford’s term for the voyagers who were not members of the Separatist church. 4. A document signed by a sovereign granting

privileges to those named in it. 5. In the year of the Lord (Latin). 6. A tradesman, like Bradford, and an original member of the group that went to Holland. 7. Several people. “Unlading”: unloading.

From Book II

* * * from chapter xi.1 the remainder of anno 1620

I shall a little return back and begin with a combination2 made by them before they came ashore, being the "rst foundation of their government in this place, occasioned partly by the discontented and mutinous speeches that some of the strangers3 amongst them had let fall from them in the ship (that when they came ashore they would use their own liberty; for none had power to com- mand them, the patent4 they had being for Virginia, and not for New Eng land, which belonged to another Government, with which the Virginia Com pany had nothing to do), and partly that such an act by them done (this their condition considered) might be as "rm as any patent, and in some re spects more sure.

The form was as followeth. In the name of God, Amen. We whose names are underwritten, the loyal

subjects of our dread sovereign Lord, King James, by the grace of God, of Great Britain, France, and Ireland king, defender of the faith, etc., having undertaken, for the glory of God, and advancement of the Christian faith, and honor of our king and country, a voyage to plant the "rst colony in the north- ern parts of Virginia, do by these pres ents solemnly and mutually in the pres- ence of God, and one of another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil body politic, for our better ordering and preservation and further- ance of the ends aforesaid; and by virtue hereof to enact, constitute, and frame such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions, and of"ces, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and con ve nient for the gen- eral good of the Colony, unto which we promise all due submission and obedi- ence. In witness whereof we have hereunder subscribed our names at Cape Cod the 11th of November, in the year of the reign of our sovereign lord, King James, of Eng land, France, and Ireland the eigh teenth, and of Scotland the "fty- fourth. Anno Domini5 1620.

After this they chose, or rather con"rmed, Mr. John Carver6 (a man godly and well approved amongst them) their governor for that year. And after they had provided a place for their goods, or common store, (which were long in unlading for want of boats, foulness of the winter weather, and sick- ness of divers)7 and begun some small cottages for their habitation, as time would admit, they met and consulted of laws and orders, both for their civil and military government, as the necessity of their condition did require, still adding thereunto as urgent occasion in several times, and as cases did require.

8. Attitudes. 9. Past tense of cleave: stuck closely. “Carriage”: handling. 1. Intimate, domestic.

2. Lacking in attention. 3. Which was this author himself [Bradford’s note].

[difficult beginnings]

In these hard and dif"cult beginnings they found some discontents and mur- murings arise amongst some, and mutinous speeches and carriages8 in other; but they were soon quelled and overcome by the wisdom, patience, and just and equal carriage of things by the governor and better part, which clave9 faithfully together in the main. But that which was most sad and la men ta ble was, that in two or three months’ time half of their com pany died, especially in January and February, being the depth of winter, and wanting houses and other comforts; being infected with the scurvy and other diseases, which this long voyage and their inaccommodate condition had brought upon them; so as there died sometimes two or three of a day, in the foresaid time; that of one hundred and odd persons, scarce "fty remained. And of these in the time of most distress, there was but six or seven sound persons, who, to their great commendations be it spoken, spared no pains, night nor day, but with abundance of toil and hazard of their own health, fetched them wood, made them "res, dressed them meat, made their beds, washed their loathsome clothes, clothed and unclothed them; in a word, did all the homely1 and nec- essary of"ces for them which dainty and queasy stomachs cannot endure to hear named; and all this willingly and cheerfully, without any grudging in the least, showing herein their true love unto their friends and brethren, a rare example and worthy to be remembered. Two of these seven were Mr. Wil- liam Brewster, their reverend elder, and Myles Standish, their captain and military commander, unto whom myself and many others were much beholden in our low and sick condition. And yet the Lord so upheld these persons, as in this general calamity they were not at all infected either with sickness or lameness. And what I have said of these, I may say of many others who died in this general visitation, and others yet living, that whilst they had health, yea, or any strength continuing, they were not wanting2 to any that had need of them. And I doubt not but their recompense is with the Lord.

But I may not here pass by another remarkable passage not to be forgot- ten. As this calamity fell among the passengers that were to be left here to plant, and were hasted ashore and made to drink water, that the seamen might have the more beer, and one3 in his sickness, desiring but a small can of beer, it was answered, that if he were their own father he should have none. The disease began to fall amongst them also, so as almost half of their com pany died before they went away, and many of their of"cers and lustiest men, as the boatswain, gunner, three quartermasters, the cook, and others. At which the master was something stricken and sent to the sick ashore and told the governor he should send for beer for them that had need of it, though he drunk water homeward bound. But now amongst his com pany there was far another kind of carriage in this misery than amongst the passengers: for they that before had been boon companions in drinking and jollity in the time of their health and welfare, began now to desert one another in this calamity, saying they would not hazard their lives for them, they should be

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4. Cheat. “Mess”: meal. 5. The Abnaki chief Samoset had encountered En glish "shing vessels in southern Maine; he picked up his En glish there and may have come south with Captain Thomas Dermer (see n. 1,

p. 128; and see the reference to him below). 6. Chief. 7. Bradford’s aside indicates that, having begun his history in 1630, he was writing this part in 1644.

infected by coming to help them in their cabins, and so, after they came to die by it, would do little or nothing for them, but if they died let them die. But such of the passengers as were yet aboard showed them what mercy they could, which made some of their hearts relent, as the boatswain (and some others), who was a proud young man, and would often curse and scoff at the passengers. But when he grew weak, they had compassion on him and helped him; then he confessed he did not deserve it at their hands, he had abused them in word and deed. “O!” saith he, “you, I now see, show your love like Christians indeed one to another, but we let one another lie and die like dogs.” Another lay cursing his wife, saying if it had not been for her he had never come [on] this unlucky voyage, and anon cursing his fellows, saying he had done this and that, for some of them, he had spent so much, and so much, amongst them, and they were now weary of him, and did not help him, having need. Another gave his companion all he had, if he died, to help him in his weakness; he went and got a little spice and made him a mess of meat once or twice, and because he died not so soon as he expected, he went amongst his fellows, and swore the rogue would cozen4 him, he would see him choked before he made him any more meat; and yet the poor fellow died before morning.

[dealings with the natives]

All this while the Indians came skulking about them, and would sometimes show themselves aloof off, but when any approached near them, they would run away. And once they stole away their tools where they had been at work, and were gone to dinner. But about the 16th of March a certain Indian came boldly amongst them, and spoke to them in broken En glish, which they could well understand, but marveled at it. At length they understood by discourse with him, that he was not of these parts, but belonged to the eastern parts, where some En glish ships came to "sh, with whom he was acquainted, and could name sundry of them by their names, amongst whom he had got his language.5 He became pro"table to them in acquainting them with many things concerning the state of the country in the east parts where he lived, which was afterwards pro"table unto them; as also of the people here, of their names, number, and strength; of their situation and distance from this place, and who was chief amongst them. His name was Samoset; he told them also of another Indian whose name was Squanto, a native of this place, who had been in Eng land and could speak better En glish than himself. Being, after some time of entertainment and gifts, dismissed, a while after he came again, and "ve more with him, and they brought again all the tools that were stolen away before, and made way for the coming of their great sachem,6 called Massasoit, who, about four or "ve days after, came with the chief of his friends and other attendance, with the aforesaid Squanto. With whom, after friendly entertainment, and some gifts given him, they made a peace with him (which hath now continued this twenty- four years)7 in these terms:

8. I.e., A Brief Relation of the Discovery and Plan- tation of New Eng land (1622), by Gorges (c. 1566–1647), an En glish colonial entrepreneur. Gorges had a patent for settling in northern New Eng land, but he hired explorers and did not travel to Amer i ca. 9. Here, Dermer means Plymouth, Eng land. John

Smith published his Description of New  Eng land two years after his 1614 voyage. Tisquantum was Squanto’s Indian name. 1. Near the mouth of the Charles River, in pres ent- day Boston and Charlestown. 2. A large bay on Maine’s central coast. “Pokan- okets”: the Wampanoags, the tribe of Massasoit.

1. That neither he nor any of his, should injure or do hurt to any of their people.

2. That if any of his did any hurt to any of theirs, he should send the offender, that they might punish him.

3. That if anything were taken away from any of theirs, he should cause it to be restored, and they should do the like to his.

4. If any did unjustly war against him, they would aid him; if any did war against them, he should aid them.

5. He should send to his neighbors confederates, to certify them of this, that they might not wrong them, but might be likewise comprised in the conditions of peace.

6. That when their men came to them, they should leave their bows and arrows behind them.

After these things he returned to his place called Sowams, some forty mile from this place, but Squanto continued with them, and was their interpreter, and was a special instrument sent of God for their good beyond their expec- tation. He directed them how to set their corn, where to take "sh, and to procure other commodities, and was also their pi lot to bring them to unknown places for their pro"t, and never left them till he died. He was a native of this place, and scarce any left alive besides himself. He was carried away with div- ers others by one Hunt, a master of a ship, who thought to sell them for slaves in Spain; but he got away for Eng land, and was entertained by a merchant in London, and employed to Newfoundland and other parts, and lastly brought hither into these parts by one Mr. Dermer, a gentleman employed by Sir Fer- dinando Gorges and others, for discovery, and other designs in these parts. Of whom I shall say something, because it is mentioned in a book set forth Anno 1622 by the President and Council for New Eng land,8 that he made the peace between the savages of these parts and the En glish, of which this plantation, as it is intimated, had the bene"t. But what a peace it was, may appear by what befell him and his men.

This Mr. Dermer was here the same year that these people came, as appears by a relation written by him, and given me by a friend, bearing date June 30, Anno 1620. And they came in November following, so there was but four months difference. In which relation to his honored friend, he hath these passages of this very place:

I will "rst begin (saith he) with that place from whence Squanto, or Tisquantum, was taken away, which in Capt. Smith’s map is called Plymouth (and I would that Plymouth9 had the like commodities). I would that the "rst plantation might here be seated, if there come to the number of "fty persons, or upward. Other wise at Charlton,1 because there the savages are less to be feared. The Pokanokets, which live to the west of Plymouth, bear an inveterate malice to the En glish, and are of more strength than all the savages from thence to Penobscot.2 Their

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3. Small cannons. 4. If Dermer was not lying about the soil, it has been much degraded since his visit. Patuxet (“at the little falls”) was the Indian name for Plym- outh. Nauset, named for the local Indian tribe, was near pres ent- day Eastham. Satucket (“near the mouth of the stream”) was a Nauset village close to the town of Brewster. 5. Once a harbor near Orleans and Harwich. 6. Samuel Purchas (1577–1626) was an En glish

clergyman and collector of travel writings, famous for compiling the four- volume work to which Bradford refers: Purchas His Pilgrimes (1625). “Lib.”: abbreviation for liber: book (Latin). “Fol.”: abbreviation for folio: sheet, or page (Latin). This reference is to p.  1778  in book 9 of vol. 4. 7. Martha’s Vineyard. 8. The Indians.

desire of revenge was occasioned by an En glishman, who having many of them on board, made a great slaughter with their murderers3 and small shot, when as (they say) they offered no injury on their parts. Whether they were En glish or no, it may be doubted; yet they believe they were, for the French have so possessed them; for which cause Squanto cannot deny but they would have killed me when I was at Namasket, had he not entreated hard for me. The soil of the borders of this great bay, may be compared to most of the plantations which I have seen in Virginia. The land is of diverse sorts, for Patuxet is a hardy but strong soil, Nauset and Satucket are for the most part a blackish and deep mould, much like that where groweth the best tobacco in Virginia.4 In the bottom of that great bay is store of cod and bass, or mullet, etc.

But above all he commends Pokanoket for the richest soil, and much open ground "t for En glish grain, etc.

Mas sa chu setts is about nine leagues from Plymouth, and situate in the midst between both, is full of islands and peninsulas, very fertile for the most part.

(With sundry such relations which I forbear to transcribe, being now better known than they were to him.)

He was taken prisoner by the Indians at Monomoit5 (a place not far from hence, now well known). He gave them what they demanded for his liberty, but when they had got what they desired, they kept him still and endeav- ored to kill his men, but he was freed by seizing on some of them, and kept them bound till they gave him a canoe’s load of corn. Of which, see Pur- chas, lib. 9, fol. 1778.6 But this was Anno 1619.

After the writing of the former relation he came to the Isle of Capawack7 (which lies south of this place in the way to Virginia), and the foresaid Squanto with him, where he going ashore amongst the Indians to trade, as he used to do, was betrayed and assaulted by them, and all his men slain, but one that kept the boat; but himself got aboard very sore wounded, and they had cut off his head upon the cuddy of the boat, had not the man res- cued him with a sword. And so they got away, and made shift to get into Virginia, where he died, whether of his wounds or the diseases of the coun- try, or both together, is uncertain. By all which it may appear how far these people were from peace, and with what danger this plantation was begun, save as the power ful hand of the Lord did protect them. These things were partly the reason why they8 kept aloof and were so long before they came to the En glish. Another reason (as after themselves made known) was how about three years before, a French ship was cast away at Cape Cod, but the men got ashore, and saved their lives, and much of their victuals, and other

9. The May"ower. 1. Medicine men. 2. Mourt’s Relation.

3. Lack. 4. I.e., of a clever nature.

goods. But after the Indians heard of it, they gathered together from these parts, and never left watching and dogging them till they got advantage, and killed them all but three or four which they kept, and sent from one sachem to another, to make sport with, and used them worse than slaves (of which the foresaid Mr. Dermer redeemed two of them) and they conceived this ship9 was now come to revenge it.

Also, as after was made known, before they came to the En glish to make friendship, they got all the powachs1 of the country, for three days together, in a horrid and dev ilish manner to curse and execrate them with their con- jurations, which assembly and ser vice they held in a dark and dismal swamp.

But to return. The spring now approaching, it pleased God the mortality began to cease amongst them, and the sick and lame recovered apace, which put as it were new life into them, though they had borne their sad afdiction with much patience and contentedness, as I think any people could do. But it was the Lord which upheld them, and had beforehand prepared them; many having long borne the yoke, yea from their youth. Many other smaller matters I omit, sundry of them having been already published in a journal made by one of the com pany,2 and some other passages of journeys and rela- tions already published, to which I refer those that are willing to know them more particularly. And being now come to the 25th of March, I shall begin the year 1621.

from chapter xii. anno 1621 * * *

[the first thanksgiving]

They began now to gather in the small harvest they had, and to "t up their houses and dwellings against winter, being all well recovered in health and strength, and had all things in good plenty; for as some were thus employed in affairs abroad, others were exercised in "shing, about cod, and bass, and other "sh, of which they took good store, of which every family had their portion. All the summer there was no want.3 And now began to come in store of fowl, as winter approached, of which this place did abound when they came "rst (but afterward decreased by degrees). And besides waterfowl, there was great store of wild turkeys, of which they took many, besides venison, etc. Besides they had about a peck of meal a week to a person, or now since harvest, Indian corn to that proportion. Which made many afterwards write so largely of their plenty here to their friends in Eng land, which were not feigned, but true reports.

* * * from chapter xix. anno 1628

* * * [mr. morton of merrymount]

About some three or four years before this time, there came over one Cap- tain Wollaston, a man of pretty parts,4 and with him three or four more of some eminency, who brought with them a great many servants, with provisions

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5. Now Quincy, Mas sa chu setts. 6. Very little is known of Captain Wollaston or Thomas Morton other than what Bradford tells. Wollaston may have been Richard Wollaston, a ship’s captain and sometime pirate. Morton (c. 1579–1647) trained as a lawyer in London, moved to New Eng land in the 1620s. He tangled with Bradford, partly because of his anti- Puritanism and more liberal version of colonial- ism, presented in his New En glish Canaan (1637), excerpted below. Morton named his set- tlement Ma- Re Mount, or “Hill by the Sea.” The Puritans sarcastically called it Merrymount. 7. A servant was someone employed in agricul- tural or domestic labor; the servants in this case

were indentured, meaning that their time had been purchased by their original employers (or masters) in exchange for their transportation to the colonies, and hence the remainder of their time could be sold to others. 8. The shifty lawyer (“pettifogger”) Morton (who studied law at Furnivals Inn, one of Lon- don’s Inns of Court), knowing that the settlers’ ordinary food (“commons”) was in short supply, threw a feast of alcohol and delicacies (“ jun- kets”) to win over the hearts and minds of the remaining servants. 9. The master of the carnival- like atmosphere of old En glish holidays, especially at Christmas.

and other implements for to begin a plantation, and pitched themselves in a place within the Mas sa chu setts [Bay Colony] which they called, after their Captain’s name, Mount Wollaston.5 Amongst whom was one Mr. Morton,6 who, it should seem, had some small adventure of his own or other men’s amongst them, but had little re spect amongst them, and was slighted by the meanest servants. Having continued there some time, and not "nding things to answer their expectations, nor pro"t to arise as they looked for, Captain Wollaston takes a great part of the servants, and transports them to Virginia, where he puts them off at good rates, selling their time to other men;7 and writes back to one Mr. Rasdall, one of his chief partners, and accounted their merchant, to bring another part of them to Virginia like- wise, intending to put them off there as he had done the rest. And he, with the consent of the said Rasdall, appointed one Fitcher to be his lieutenant, and govern the remains of the plantation, till he or Rasdall returned to take further order thereabout. But this Morton abovesaid, having more craft than honesty (who had been a kind of pettifogger, of Furnivals Inn) in the other’s absence, watches an opportunity (commons being but hard amongst them) and got some strong drink and other junkets, and made them a feast;8 and after they were merry, he began to tell them, he would give them good coun- sel. “You see,” saith he, “that many of your fellows are carried to Virginia; and if you stay till this Rasdall return, you will also be carried away and sold for slaves with the rest. Therefore I would advise you to thrust out this Lieutenant Fitcher; and I, having a part in the Plantation, will receive you as my partners and consociates; so may you be free from ser vice, and we will converse, trade, plant, and live together as equals, and support and pro- tect one another,” or to like effect. This counsel was easily received; so they took opportunity, and thrust Lieutenant Fitcher out [of] doors, and would suffer him to come no more amongst them, but forced him to seek bread to eat, and other relief from his neighbors, till he could get passage for Eng land. After this they fell to great licentiousness, and led a dissolute life, pouring out themselves into all profaneness. And Morton became lord of misrule,9 and maintained (as it were) a school of Atheism. And after they had got some good into their hands, and got much by trading with the Indians, they spent it as vainly, in quaf"ng and drinking both wine and strong waters in great excess, and, as some reported, £10 worth in a morning. They also set up a maypole, drinking and dancing about it many days together, inviting the Indian women, for their consorts, dancing and frisking together, like so many fairies, or furies rather, and worse practices. As if they had anew revived

1. At the ancient revels in honor of Bacchus, Roman god of wine, frenzied worshipers drank, danced, and even tore apart wild animals and devoured them. Flora, the Roman goddess of dowers and vegetation, was the center of a cult that put on risqué farces.

2. According to Judges 16.23–31, the Philistines captured and tortured Samson, who brought down the temple of the Philistine god Dagon. 3. Guns. 4. In a scattered fashion.

and celebrated the feasts of the Roman Goddess Flora, or the beastly prac- tices of the mad Bacchinalians.1 Morton likewise (to show his poetry) com- posed sundry rhymes and verses, some tending to lasciviousness, and others to the detraction and scandal of some persons, which he af"xed to this idle or idol maypole. They changed also the name of their place, and instead of calling it Mount Wollaston, they call it Merrymount, as if this jollity would have lasted ever. But this continued not long, for after Morton was sent for Eng land (as follows to be declared) shortly after came over that worthy gen- tleman, Mr. John Endicott, who brought over a patent under the broad seal, for the government of the Mas sa chu setts, who visiting those parts caused that maypole to be cut down, and rebuked them for their profaneness, and admonished them to look there should be better walking; so they now, or others, changed the name of their place again, and called it Mount Dagon.2

Now to maintain this riotous prodigality and profuse excess, Morton, thinking himself lawless, and hearing what gain the French and "shermen made by trading of pieces,3 powder, and shot to the Indians, he, as the head of this consortship, began the practise of the same in these parts; and "rst he taught them how to use them, to charge and discharge, and what pro- portion of powder to give the piece, according to the size or bigness of the same; and what shot to use for fowl, and what for deer. And having thus instructed them, he employed some of them to hunt and fowl for him, so as they became far more active in that employment than any of the En glish, by reason of their swiftness of foot, and nimbleness of body, being also quick- sighted, and by continual exercise well knowing the haunts of all sorts of game. So as when they saw the execution that a piece would do, and the bene"t that might come by the same, they became mad, as it were, after them, and would not stick to give any price they could attain to for them, accounting their bows and arrows but baubles in comparison of them.

* * * This Morton having thus taught them the use of pieces, he sold them all he could spare, and he and his consorts determined to send for many out of Eng land, and had by some of the ships sent for above a score. The which being known, and his neighbors meeting the Indians in the woods armed with guns in this sort, it was a terror unto them, who lived stragglingly,4 and were of no strength in any place. And other places (though more remote) saw this mischief would quickly spread over all, if not prevented. Besides, they saw they should keep no servants, for Morton would entertain any, how vile soever, and all the scum of the country, or any discontents, would dock to him from all places, if this nest was not broken; and they should stand in more fear of their lives and goods (in short time) from this wicked and debauched crew, than from the savages themselves.

So sundry of the chief of the straggling plantations, meeting together, agreed by mutual consent to solicit those of Plymouth (who were then of more strength than them all) to join with them, to prevent the further growth

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5. Insensible. 6. In his own book, Morton refers to Standish as “Captain Shrimp” and says it would have been easy for him to destroy these “nine worthies” like “a dock of wild geese,” but that he loathed vio- lence and asked for his freedom to leave. He sug- gests that he was treated brutally because the Pilgrims wished to shame him before the Indian

revelers. 7. The Council of New Eng land was a joint stock com pany established by the British Crown in 1620. Its role was to colonize and govern New Eng land. “Isle of Shoals”: i.e., the Isles of Shoals, a group of small Atlantic islands straddling the borders of Maine and New Hampshire.

of this mischief, and suppress Morton and his consorts before they grew to further head and strength. Those that joined in this action (and after con- tributed to the charge of sending him for Eng land) were from Piscataqua, Naumkeag, Winnisimmett, Wessaguset, Nantasket, and other places where any En glish were seated. Those of Plymouth being thus sought to by their messengers and letters, and weighing both their reasons, and the common danger, were willing to afford them their help, though themselves had least cause of fear or hurt. So, to be short, they "rst resolved jointly to write to him, and in a friendly and neighborly way to admonish him to forbear these courses, and sent a messenger with their letters to bring his answer. But he was so high as he scorned all advice, and asked who had to do with him; he had and would trade pieces with the Indians in despite of all, with many other scurillous terms full of disdain. They sent to him a second time, and bade him be better advised, and more temperate in his terms, for the coun- try could not bear the injury he did; it was against their common safety, and against the King’s proclamation. He answered in high terms as before, and that the King’s proclamation was no law, demanding what penalty was upon it. It was answered, more than he could bear, His Majesty’s dis plea sure. But insolently he persisted, and said the King was dead and his dis plea sure with him, and many the like things; and threatened withal that if any came to molest him, let them look to themselves, for he would prepare for them. Upon which they saw there was no way but to take him by force, and having so far proceeded, now to give over would make him far more haughty and inso- lent. So they mutually resolved to proceed, and obtained of the governor of Plymouth to send Captain Standish, and some other aid with him, to take Morton by force. The which accordingly was done. But they found him to stand stifdy in his defense, having made fast his doors, armed his consorts, set divers dishes of powder and bullets ready on the table; and if they had not been over- armed with drink, more hurt might have been done. They sum- moned him to yield, but he kept his house, and they could get nothing but scoffs and scorns from him; but at length, fearing they would do some vio- lence to the house, he and some of his crew came out, but not to yield, but to shoot; but they were so steeled5 with drink as their pieces were too heavy for them; himself with a carbine (over- charged and almost half "lled with powder and shot, as was after found) had thought to have shot Captain Standish, but he stepped to him, and put by his piece, and took him. Nei- ther was there any hurt done to any of either side, save that one was so drunk that he ran his own nose upon the point of a sword that one held before him as he entered the house, but he lost but a little of his hot blood.6 Mor- ton they brought away to Plymouth, where he was kept, till a ship went from the Isle of Shoals for Eng land, with which he was sent to the Council of New Eng land;7 and letters written to give them information of his course and carriage; and also one was sent at their common charge to inform their

8. Salable. 9. Petitioned, requested.

1. Financially hampered.

Honors more particularly, and to prosecute against him. But he fooled of the messenger, after he was gone from hence, and though he went for Eng land, yet nothing was done to him, not so much as rebuked, for aught was heard; but returned the next year. Some of the worst of the com pany were dispersed, and some of the more modest kept the house till he should be heard from. But I have been too long about so unworthy a person, and bad a cause.

* * * from chapter xxiii. anno 1632

* * * [prosperity weakens community]

Also the people of the plantation began to grow in their outward estates, by reason of the dowing of many people into the country, especially into the Bay of the Mas sa chu setts, by which means corn and cattle rose to a great price, by which many were much enriched, and commodities grew plenti- ful; and yet in other regards this bene"t turned to their hurt, and this acces- sion of strength to their weakness. For now as their stocks increased, and the increase vendible,8 there was no longer any holding them together, but now they must of necessity go to their great lots; they could not other wise keep their cattle; and having oxen grown, they must have land for plowing and tillage. And no man now thought he could live, except he had cattle and a great deal of ground to keep them, all striving to increase their stocks. By which means they were scattered all over the bay, quickly, and the town, in which they lived compactly till now, was left very thin, and in a short time almost desolate. And if this had been all, it had been less, though too much; but the church must also be divided, and those that had lived so long together in Christian and comfortable fellowship must now part and suffer many divi- sions. First, those that lived on their lots on the other side of the bay (called Duxbury) they could not long bring their wives and children to the public worship and church meetings here, but with such burthen, as, growing to some competent number, they sued9 to be dismissed and become a body of themselves; and so they were dismissed (about this time), though very unwill- ingly. But to touch this sad matter, and handle things together that fell out afterward: to prevent any further scattering from this place, and weakening of the same, it was thought best to give out some good farms to special per- sons, that would promise to live at Plymouth, and likely to be helpful to the church or commonwealth, and so tie the lands to Plymouth as farms for the same; and there they might keep their cattle and tillage by some servants, and retain their dwellings here. And so some special lands were granted at a place general, called Green’s Harbor, where no allotments had been in the former division, a place very well meadowed, and "t to keep and rear cattle, good store. But alas! this remedy proved worse than the disease; for within a few years those that had thus got footing there rent themselves away, partly by force, and partly wearing the rest with importunity and pleas of neces- sity, so as they must either suffer them to go, or live in continual opposition and contention. And others still, as they conceived themselves straitened,1 or to want accommodation, break away under one pretense or other, thinking

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2. Captain John Stone, with a cargo of cattle bound for Boston, had put into New Amsterdam to replenish his water supply. “Bark”: ship. 3. Wouter van Twiller, director- general of New

Netherland from 1633 to 1638. 4. I.e., Plymouth Plantation’s. 5. As you please (Dutch).

their own conceived necessity, and the example of others, a warrant suf"- cient for them. And this, I fear, will be the ruin of New Eng land, at least of the churches of God there, and will provoke the Lord’s dis plea sure against them.

* * * from chapter xxv. anno 1634

* * * [trou bles to the west]

This year (in the forepart of the same) they sent forth a bark to trade at the Dutch plantation, and they met there with one Captain Stone, that had lived in Christopher’s, one of the West Indies islands, and now had been some time in Virginia, and came from thence into these parts.2 He kept com pany with the Dutch governor,3 and, I know not in what drunken "t, he got leave of the governor to seize on their4 bark, when they were ready to come away, and had done their market, having the value of £500 worth of goods aboard her; having no occasion at all, or any color of ground for such a thing, but having made the governor drunk, so as he could scarce speak a right word; and when he urged him here about, he answered him, Als ’t u beleeft.5 So he got aboard (the chief of their men and merchant being ashore) and with some of his own men, made the rest of theirs weigh anchor, set sail, and carry her away towards Virginia. But divers of the Dutch seamen, which had been often at Plymouth, and kindly entertained there, said one to another, “ Shall we suffer our friends to be thus abused, and have their goods carried away, before our faces, whilst our governor is drunk?” They vowed they would never suffer it; and so got a vessel or two and pursued him, and brought him in again, and delivered them their bark and goods again.

Afterwards Stone came into the Mas sa chu setts, and they sent and com- menced suit against him for this fact; but by mediation of friends it was taken up, and the suit let fall. And in the com pany of some other gentlemen Stone came afterwards to Plymouth, and had friendly and civil entertainment amongst them, with the rest; but revenge boiled within his breast (though concealed) for some conceived he had a purpose (at one time) to have stabbed the governor, and put his hand to his dagger for that end, but by God’s prov- idence and the vigilance of some, was prevented. He afterward returned to Virginia, in a pinnace, with one Captain Norton and some others; and, I know not for what occasion, they would needs go up Connecticut River; and how they carried themselves I know not, but the Indians knocked him in the head, as he lay in his cabin, and had thrown the covering over his face ( whether out of fear or desperation is uncertain); this was his end. They like- wise killed all the rest, but Captain Norton defended himself a long time against them all in the cook room, till by accident the gunpowder took "re, which (for readiness) he had set in an open thing before him, which did so burn, and scald him, and blind his eyes, as he could make no longer re sis- tance, but was slain also by them, though they much commended his valor.

6. The Plymouth outpost at pres ent- day Wind- sor.

7. I.e., the skin eruptions characteristic of small- pox.

And having killed the men, they made a prey of what they had, and chaf- fered away some of their things to the Dutch that lived there. But it was not long before a quarrel fell between the Dutch and them, and they would have cut off their bark, but they slew the chief sachem with the shot of a murderer.

I am now to relate some strange and remarkable passages. There was a com pany of people lived in the country, up above in the river of Connecti- cut, a great way from their trading house there, and were enemies to those Indians which lived about them, and of whom they stood in some fear (being a stout people). About a thousand of them had enclosed themselves in a fort, which they had strongly palisadoed about. Three or four Dutchmen went up in the beginning of winter to live with them, to get their trade, and pre- vent them [from] bringing it to the En glish, or to fall into amity with them, but at spring to bring all down to their place. But their enterprise failed, for it pleased God to visit these Indians with a great sickness, and such a mor- tality that of a thousand above nine hundred and a half of them died, and many of them did rot above ground for want of burial, and the Dutchmen almost starved before they could get away, for ice and snow. But about Feb- ruary they got with much dif"culty to their trading house, whom they kindly relieved, being almost spent with hunger and cold. Being thus refreshed by them divers days, they got to their own place, and the Dutch were very thank- ful for this kindness.

This spring, also, those Indians that lived about their trading house6 there fell sick of the smallpox, and died most miserably, for a sorer disease cannot befall them. They fear it more than the plague, for usually they that have this disease have them7 in abundance, and for want of bedding and linen and other helps, they fall into a la men ta ble condition, as they lie on their hard mats, the pox breaking and mattering, and running one into another, their skin cleaving (by reason thereof) to the mats they lie on. When they turn them, a whole side will day off at once, as it were, and they will be all of a gore blood, most fearful to behold; and then being very sore, what with cold and other distempers, they die like rotten sheep. The condition of this people was so la men ta ble, and they fell down so generally of this disease, as they were in the end not able to help one another; no, not to make a "re, nor to fetch a little water to drink, nor any to bury the dead; but would strive as long as they could, and when they could procure no other means to make "re, they would burn the wooden trays and dishes they ate their meat in, and their very bows and arrows; and some would crawl out on all four to get a little water, and sometimes die by the way, and not be able to get in again. But those of the En glish house, though at "rst they were afraid of the infec- tion, yet seeing their woeful and sad condition and hearing their pitiful cries and lamentations, they had compassion of them, and daily fetched them wood and water, and made them "res, got them victuals whilst they lived, and buried them when they died. For very few of them escaped, notwith- standing they did what they could for them, to the hazard of themselves. The chief sachem himself now died, and almost all his friends and kindred. But by the marvelous goodness and providence of God not one of the En glish

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8. Beads of polished shells, used as money. 9. There is little trust to be given to their rela-

tions in these things [Bradford’s note].

was so much as sick, or in the least mea sure tainted with this disease, though they daily did these of"ces for them for many weeks together. And this mercy which they showed them was kindly taken, and thankfully acknowledged of all the Indians that knew or heard of the same; and their masters here did much commend and reward them for the same.

* * * from chapter xxvii. anno 1636

* * * [war threats]

In the year 1634, the Pequots (a stout and warlike people), who had made wars with sundry of their neighbors, and puffed up with many victories, grew now at variance with the Narragansetts, a great people bordering upon them. These Narragansetts held correspondence and terms of friendship with the En glish of the Mas sa chu setts. Now the Pequots, being conscious of the guilt of Captain Stone’s death, whom they knew to be an En glishman, as also those that were with him, and being fallen out with the Dutch, lest they should have over many enemies at once, sought to make friendship with the En glish of the Mas sa chu setts, and for that end sent both messengers and gifts unto them, as appears by some letters sent from the governor hither:

Dear and worthy Sir: etc. To let you know somewhat of our affairs, you may understand that the Pequots have sent some of theirs to us, to desire our friendship, and offered much wampum8 and beaver, etc. The "rst messengers were dismissed without answer; with the next we had divers days conference, and taking the advice of some of our ministers, and seeking the Lord in it, we concluded a peace and friendship with them, upon these conditions: that they should deliver up to us those men who were guilty of Stone’s death, etc. And if we desired to plant in Connecticut, they should give up their right to us, and so we would send to trade with them as our friends (which was the chief thing we aimed at, being now in war with the Dutch and the rest of their neigh- bors). To this they readily agreed, and that we should mediate a peace between them and the Narragansetts, for which end they were content we should give the Narragansetts part of that pres ent they would bestow on us (for they stood so much on their honor, as they would not be seen to give anything of themselves). As for Captain Stone, they told us there were but two left of those who had any hand in his death, and that they killed him in a just quarrel, for (say they) he surprised two of our men, and bound them, to make them by force to show him the way up the river,9 and he with two other coming on shore, nine Indians watched him, and when they were asleep in the night, they killed them, to deliver their own men; and some of them going afterwards to the pinnace, it was suddenly blown up. We are now preparing to send a pinnace unto them, etc.

In another of his, dated the 12th of the "rst month, he hath this:

1. Frustration. 2. Under orders from Mas sa chu setts Bay, John Endicott led an expedition into Pequot country

in late August 1637 that served only to stir up the anger of the Indians.

Our pinnace is lately returned from the Pequots; they put off but little commodity, and found them a very false people, so as they mean to have no more to do with them. I have divers other things to write unto you, etc.

Yours ever assured, john winthrop

Boston, 12th of the 1st month, 1634 After these things, and, as I take, this year, John Oldham (of whom much

is spoken before), being now an inhabitant of the Mas sa chu setts, went with a small vessel and slenderly manned, a- trading into these south parts, and upon a quarrel between him and the Indians was cut off by them (as hath been before noted) at an island called by the Indians Munisses, but since by the En glish Block Island. This, with the former about the death of Stone, and the bafding1 of the Pequots with the En glish of the Mas sa chu setts, moved them to set out some to take revenge, and require satisfaction for these wrongs; but it was done so super"cially, and without their acquainting of those of Connecticut and other neighbors with the same, as they did little good. But their neighbors had more hurt done, for some of the murderers of Oldham ded to the Pequots, and though the En glish went to the Pequots, and had some parley with them, yet they did but delude them, and the En glish returned without doing anything to purpose, being frustrate of their opportu- nity by the others’ deceit.2 After the En glish were returned, the Pequots took their time and opportunity to cut off some of the En glish as they passed in boats, and went on fowling, and assaulted them the next spring at their habi- tations, as will appear in its place. I do but touch these things, because I make no question they will be more fully and distinctly handled by them- selves, who had more exact knowledge of them, and whom they did more properly concern.

* * * from chapter xxviii. anno 1637

* * * [war with the pequots]

In the fore part of this year, the Pequots fell openly upon the En glish at Con- necticut, in the lower parts of the river, and slew sundry of them as they were at work in the "elds, both men and women, to the great terror of the rest, and went away in great pride and triumph, with many high threats. They also assaulted a fort at the river’s mouth, though strong and well defended; and though they did not there prevail, yet it struck them with much fear and astonishment to see their bold attempts in the face of danger, which made them in all places to stand upon their guard, and to prepare for re sis tance, and earnestly to solicit their friends and confederates in the Bay of Mas sa- chu setts to send them speedy aid, for they looked for more forcible assaults. Mr. Vane, being then governor, writ from their General Court to them here, to join with them in this war, to which they were cordially willing, but took

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3. Speed. 4. A forti"ed Pequot village near the Mystic River.

opportunity to write to them about some former things, as well as pres ent, considerable hereabout.

* * * In the meantime, the Pequots, especially in the winter before, sought to make peace with the Narragansetts, and used very pernicious arguments to move them thereunto: as that the En glish were strangers and began to over- spread their country, and would deprive them thereof in time, if they were suffered to grow and increase; and if the Narragansetts did assist the En glish to subdue them, they did but make way for their own overthrow, for if they were rooted out, the En glish would soon take occasion to subjugate them. And if they would harken to them, they should not need to fear the strength of the En glish, for they would not come to open battle with them, but "re their houses, kill their cattle, and lie in ambush for them as they went abroad upon their occasions, and all this they might easily do without any or little danger to themselves. The which course being held, they well saw the En glish could not long subsist, but they would either be starved with hunger, or be forced to forsake the country; with many the like things, insomuch that the Narragan- setts were once wavering, and were half minded to have made peace with them, and joined against the En glish. But again when they considered, how much wrong they had received from the Pequots, and what an opportunity they now had by the help of the En glish to right themselves, revenge was so sweet unto them, as it prevailed above all the rest, so as they resolved to join with the En glish against them, and did. The Court here agreed forthwith to send "fty men at their own charge, and with as much speed as possibly they could, got them armed, and had made them ready under suf"cient leaders, and provided a bark to carry them provisions and tend upon them for all occasions. But when they were ready to march (with a supply from the Bay) they had word to stay, for the enemy was as good as vanquished, and there would be no need.

I shall not take upon me exactly to describe their proceedings in these things, because I expect it will be fully done by themselves, who best know the carriage and circumstances of things; I shall therefore but touch them in general. From Connecticut (who were most sensible of the hurt sustained, and the pres ent danger), they set out a party of men, and another party met them from the Bay, at the Narragansetts, who were to join with them. The Narragansetts were earnest to be gone before the En glish were well rested and refreshed, especially some of them which came last. It should seem their desire was to come upon the enemy suddenly, and undiscovered. There was a bark of this place, newly put in there, which was come from Connecticut, who did encourage them to lay hold of the Indians’ forwardness, and to show as great forwardness as they, for it would encourage them, and expedition3 might prove to their great advantage. So they went on, and so ordered their march, as the Indians brought them to a fort of the enemy’s4 (in which most of their chief men were) before day. They approached the same with great silence, and surrounded it both with En glish and Indians, that they might not break out, and so assaulted them with great courage, shooting amongst

5. See Leviticus 2.2. 6. Reportedly seventy- seven years old at the

time, Sassacus held sway over much of southern New Eng land before the war.

them, and entered the fort with all speed; and those that "rst entered found sharp re sis tance from the enemy, who both shot at and grappled with them. Others ran into their houses, and brought out "re, and set them on "re, which soon took in their mats, and, standing close together, with the wind, all was quickly on a dame, and thereby more were burnt to death than was other wise slain. It burnt their bowstrings, and made them unser viceable. Those that escaped the "re were slain with the sword; some hewed to pieces, others run through with their rapiers, so as they were quickly dispatched, and very few escaped. It was conceived they thus destroyed about four hundred at this time. It was a fearful sight to see them thus frying in the "re, and the streams of blood quenching the same, and horrible was the stink and scent thereof; but the victory seemed a sweet sacri"ce,5 and they gave the praise thereof to God, who had wrought so wonderfully for them, thus to enclose their enemies in their hands, and give them so speedy a victory over so proud and insulting an enemy. The Narragansett Indians, all this while, stood round about, but aloof from all danger, and left the whole execution to the En glish, except it were the stopping of any that broke away, insulting over their enemies in this their ruin and misery, when they saw them dancing in the dames, calling them by a word in their own language, signifying, “O brave Pequots!” which they used familiarly among themselves in their own praise, in songs of triumph after their victories. After this ser vice was thus happily accomplished, they marched to the waterside, where they met with some of their vessels, by which they had refreshing with victuals and other necessaries. But in their march the rest of the Pequots drew into a body, and accosted them, thinking to have some advantage against them by reason of a neck of land, but when they saw the En glish prepare for them, they kept aloof, so as they neither did hurt, nor could receive any. After their refreshing and repair together for further coun- sel and directions, they resolved to pursue their victory, and follow the war against the rest, but the Narragansett Indians most of them forsook them, and such of them as they had with them for guides, or other wise, they found them very cold and backward in the business, either out of envy, or that they saw the En glish would make more pro"t of the victory than they were willing they should, or else deprive them of such advantage as themselves desired by hav- ing them become tributaries unto them, or the like.

* * * That I may make an end of this matter: this Sassacus (the Pequots’ chief sachem)6 being ded to the Mohawks, they cut off his head, with some other of the chief of them, whether to satisfy the En glish, or rather the Narragan- setts (who, as I have since heard, hired them to do it) or for their own advan- tage, I well know not; but thus this war took end. The rest of the Pequots were wholly driven from their place, and some of them submitted themselves to the Narragansetts, and lived under them; others of them betook them- selves to the Mohegans, under Uncas, their sachem, with the approbation of the En glish of Connecticut, under whose protection Uncas lived, and he and his men had been faithful to them in this war, and done them very good ser vice. But this did so vex the Narragansetts, that they had not the whole

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7. “And if a man lie with a beast, he shall surely be put to death: and ye shall slay the beast.”

sway over them, as they have never ceased plotting and contriving how to bring them under, and because they cannot attain their ends, because of the En glish who have protected them, they have sought to raise a general conspiracy against the En glish.

* * * from chapter xxxii. anno 1642

* * * [a horrible truth]

There was a youth whose name was Thomas Granger; he was servant to an honest man of Duxbury, being about sixteen or seventeen years of age. (His father and mother lived at the same time at Scituate.) He was this year detected of buggery, and indicted for the same, with a mare, a cow, two goats, "ve sheep, two calves, and a turkey. Horrible it is to mention, but the truth of the history requires it. He was "rst discovered by one that accidentally saw his lewd practice towards the mare. (I forbear particulars.) Being upon it examined and committed, in the end he not only confessed the fact with that beast at that time, but sundry times before, and at several times with all the rest of the forenamed in his indictment; and this his free confession was not only in private to the magistrates, though at "rst he strived to deny it, but to sundry, both ministers and others, and afterwards, upon his indict- ment, to the whole court and jury, and con"rmed it at his execution. And whereas some of the sheep could not so well be known by his description of them, others with them were brought before him, and he declared which were they, and which were not. And accordingly he was cast by the jury, and condemned, and after executed about the 8th of September, 1642. A very sad spectacle it was; for "rst the mare, and then the cow, and the rest of the lesser cattle, were killed before his face, according to the law, Leviticus 20.15,7 and then he himself was executed. The cattle were all cast into a great and large pit that was digged of purpose for them, and no use made of any part of them.

Upon the examination of this person, and also of a former that had made some sodomitical attempts upon another, it being demanded of them how they came "rst to the knowledge and practice of such wickedness, the one confessed he had long used it in old Eng land; and this youth last spoken of said he was taught it by another that had heard of such things from some in  Eng land when he was there, and they kept cattle together. By which it appears how one wicked person may infect many, and what care all ought to have what servants they bring into their families.

But it may be demanded how came it to pass that so many wicked per- sons and profane people should so quickly come over into this land, and mix themselves amongst them, seeing it was religious men that began the work, and they came for religion’s sake. I confess this may be marveled at, at least in time to come, when the reasons thereof should not be known; and the more because here was so many hardships and wants met withal. I shall therefore endeavor to give some answer hereunto. And "rst, according to that in the gospel, it is ever to be remembered that where the Lord begins to sow

8. Weeds common in grain "elds. See Matthew 13.25. 9. I.e., Plymouth.

1. Varied, divided. 2. In the old sense of “agree.”

good seed, there the envious man will endeavor to sow tares.8 Secondly, men being to come over into a wilderness, in which much labor and ser vice was to be done about building and planting, etc., such as wanted help in that re spect, when they could not have such as they would, were glad to take such as they could; and so, many untoward servants, sundry of them proved, that were thus brought over, both men and women kind; who, when their times were expired, became families of themselves, which gave increase hereunto. Thirdly, another and a main reason hereof was, that men, "nding so many godly disposed persons willing to come into these parts, some began to make a trade of it, to transport passengers and their goods, and hired ships for that end; and then, to make up their freight and advance their pro"t, cared not who the persons were, so they had money to pay them. And by this means the country became pestered with many unworthy persons, who, being come over, crept into one place or other. Fourthly, again, the Lord’s blessing usu- ally following his people, as well in outward as spiritual things (though afdic- tions be mixed withal) do make many to adhere to the people of God, as many followed Christ, for the loaves’ sake, John 6.26, and a mixed multi- tude came into the wilderness with the people of God out of Egypt of old, Exodus 12.38. So also there were sent by their friends some under hope that they would be made better; others that they might be eased of such burthens, and they kept from shame at home that would necessarily follow their dis- solute courses. And thus, by one means or other, in twenty years’ time, it is a question whether the greater part be not grown the worser.

* * * from chapter xxxiv. anno 1644

* * * [proposed removal to nauset]

Mr. Edward Winslow was chosen governor this year. Many having left this place,9 as is before noted, by reason of the strait-

ness and barrenness of the same, and their "nding of better accommoda- tions elsewhere, more suitable to their ends and minds; and sundry others still upon every occasion desiring their dismissions, the church began seri- ously to think whether it were not better jointly to remove to some other place, than to be thus weakened, and as it were insensibly dissolved. Many meetings and much consultation was held hereabout, and divers1 were men’s minds and opinions. Some were still for staying together in this place, alleg- ing men might here live, if they would be content with their condition, and that it was not for want or necessity so much that they removed, as for the enriching of themselves. Others were resolute upon removal, and so signi- "ed that here they could not stay, but if the church did not remove, they must; insomuch as many were swayed, rather than there should be a disso- lution, to condescend2 to a removal, if a "t place could be found, that might more con ve niently and comfortably receive the whole, with such accession of others as might come to them, for their better strength and subsistence,

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and some such like cautions and limitations. So as, with the aforesaid pro- visos, the greater part consented to a removal to a place called Nauset, which had been super"cially viewed and the good will of the purchasers (to whom it belonged) obtained, with some addition thereto from the Court. But now they began to see their error, that they had given away already the best and most commodious places to others, and now wanted themselves: for this place was about "fty miles from hence, and at an outside of the country, remote from all society; also, that it would prove so strait, as it would not be compe- tent to receive the whole body, much less be capable of any addition or increase, so as (at least in a short time) they should be worse there than they are now here. The which, with sundry other like considerations and incon ve- niences, made them change their resolutions. But such as were before resolved upon removal took advantage of this agreement, and went on notwithstand- ing, neither could the rest hinder them, they having made some beginning. And thus was this poor church left, like an ancient mother, grown old and forsaken of her children, though not in their affections, yet in regard of their bodily presence and personal helpfulness. Her ancient members being most of them worn away by death, and these of later time being like children trans- lated into other families, and she like a widow left only to trust in God. Thus she that had made many rich became herself poor.3

1630–50 1856

3. See 2 Corinthians 6.10 and 1 Timothy 5.5.

THOMAS MORTON c. 1579–1647

T homas Morton’s amusing and irreverent history, New En glish Canaan (pub-lished in Amsterdam in 1637), deals with some of the same episodes as the previ- ous se lection, William Bradford’s Of Plymouth Plantation. However, Morton, an Anglican, tells a very dif fer ent version of the condict between the devout colonists at Plymouth and Boston and Morton’s mixed community of Native Americans, sailors, and traders at Ma-re Mount, which his Puritan neighbors sarcastically called “Merry Mount.” Deftly deploying mock- epic conventions, Morton celebrated the qualities— sensuality, worldliness, and embrace of the region’s indigenous peoples— that made him an economic rival and potent enemy of the Puritans. The religious exiles did not celebrate Christmas, let alone the old pagan festival of May Day, and they were less intimate with their Native neighbors. When Morton erected a maypole at Ma-re Mount and invited the “Lasses in beaver coats” to join him and his men in dancing around it and drinking “good liquor,” he was de"antly demonstrating his closeness to American Natives and violating Puritan norms of decorum. More to the point, he was unequivocally stating his ideological differences with what he humorously portrayed as the straitlaced and self- impor tant Pilgrims. A long line of literary treat- ments of Morton and his colony, most famously Nathaniel Hawthorne’s story “The

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May- Pole of Merry Mount” (written 1835–36), makes him of continuing fascination today.

Raised in the West Country of Eng land, Morton studied law at the Inns of Court in London. He later came to serve as an attorney for the Council for New Eng land, which had been established in 1620 to promote the colonization of the lands north of modern- day New York. Morton enjoyed many contacts with the court of King Charles I. He was also the sort of "gure around whom rumors and tales tended to circulate: by the time he left Eng land for Mas sa chu setts Bay in 1624, the gos- sip about him included rumors that he had mistreated his wife and murdered an associate.

The most per sis tent tales about Morton date from his brief career in New Eng land. He joined with a Captain Wollaston (perhaps Richard Wollaston, a ship’s captain and sometime pirate) to settle a site in what is now Quincy, Mas sa chu setts, which they named Mount Wollaston. After Wollaston departed for Virginia, Morton renamed the settlement Ma-re Mount (from the Latin for “Hill by the Sea”). As a base for the New Eng land fur trade, the outpost enjoyed very good relations with Native traders. The rumors about Morton, including the charge that he began the sale of guns to New Eng land Indians, may have stemmed from the Pilgrims’ desire to monopolize the lucrative market in furs. In any case, the threat from such sales was prob ably exaggerated, for the type of gun available at the time— the matchlock— was unwieldy, inaccurate, and time- consuming to load. In some ways, it was much less effective than Indian bows and arrows.

In 1627 the Pilgrim authorities seized Morton, and he was deported for trial in Eng land the following year, but there was insuf"cient proof to sustain the charges against him. He returned to New Eng land a year later, only to be taken into custody once more by the indignant Pilgrims, who burned his house and deported him again for trial. While in exile in Eng land, Morton began a lawsuit against the Mas sa- chu setts Bay Colony, the Puritans’ sponsor. In 1635, as a prosecutor for the Council of New Eng land, he successfully petitioned to have the colony’s charter repealed. When he returned one last time to New Eng land in 1643, he proceeded to tangle yet again with the authorities in the colony. The Puritans’ “professed old adversary,” as John Winthrop termed him, was again ordered to leave. After a brief exile in Rhode Island, a colony that was friendly to those who opposed the Puritan authorities, Mor- ton made the mistake of going back to Mas sa chu setts, where he was arrested for conspiracy and jailed for a year. The aged rebel emerged from con"nement in poor health in 1645. He died two years later in York, Maine.

Morton’s witty, sometimes puzzling, always lighthearted narrative of the maypole episode features exuberant wordplay and mirthful per for mances of song and dance, which the comically staid and sober Pilgrims fail to understand, no less to appreciate. Pitting “Captain Shrimp” (i.e., Captain Myles Standish, the military leader of the Plymouth Colony) against “mine host” (himself), the account makes use of Morton’s considerable learning. Its references to ancient and modern lit er a ture include a men- tion of Don Quixote battling the windmill, which shows Morton’s familiarity with recent developments in Eu ro pean lit er a ture. (The "rst volume of Miguel de Cer- vantes’s novel Don Quixote was published in Madrid in 1605 and rapidly spread across Eu rope; an En glish translation appeared in 1612.) In Morton’s vibrant world- view, language proliferated meanings that could not be controlled by a single group. Responding to the Puritans’ desire to restore the Church to biblical purity, Morton articulated a competing approach to a complicated era, leading his opponents to con- sider him, as he put it, “the very hydra,” or many-headed monster, “of the time.”

1 6 9

1. The text was edited by Charles Francis Adams Jr.  for the Prince Society (1883). “Canaan”: in the Bible, the Israelites’ promised land. 2. New En glish Canaan consists of three parts. The "rst book describes “the natives, their man- ners and customs, with their tractable nature and love towards the En glish.” The second book is titled “Containing a Description of the Beauty of the Country with Her Natu ral Endowments, Both in the Land and Sea; with the Great Lake of Iroquois” (Lake Champlain, New York). The third book is titled “Containing a Description of the People That Are Planted There, What Remark- able Accidents Have Happened There Since They Were Settled, What Tenents [religious doctrines] They Hold, Together with the Practice of Their Church.” 3. At [a place] near the little point (Algonquian, literal trans.).

4. May 1 is the feast day of Saints Philip and James (Jacob being the Latin form of James), but why they are joined together on this day is not known. The raising of a maypole was a secular tradition harking back to the Roman festivals in honor of the renewal of vegetative life. 5. The colonists at Plymouth, who distinguished themselves from other Puritans by separating from the Church of Eng land, which they regarded as incapable of reform. 6. In Greek my thol ogy, he solved the riddle of the Sphinx. 7. In Greek my thol ogy, a monster who lived in a cave opposite the monster Charybdis and devoured sailors. 8. In Greek my thol ogy, the gods slew her four- teen children; she is usually depicted weeping for them.

From New En glish Canaan1

From The Third Book [The Incident at Merry Mount]2

chapter xiv. of the revels of new canaan

The inhabitants of Passonagessit3 (having translated the name of their habi- tation from that ancient savage name to Ma-re Mount, and being resolved to have the new name con"rmed for a memorial to after ages) did devise amongst themselves to have it performed in a solemn manner, with revels and merriment after the old En glish custom; [they] prepared to set up a May- pole upon the festival day of Philip and Jacob,4 and therefore brewed a barrel of excellent beer and provided a case of bottles to be spent, with other good cheer, for all comers of that day. And because they would have it in a com- plete form, they had prepared a song "tting to the time and pres ent occasion. And upon May Day they brought the Maypole to the place appointed, with drums, guns, pistols, and other "tting instruments for that purpose, and there erected it with the help of savages that came thither of purpose to see the manner of our revels. A goodly pine tree of 80 foot long was reared up, with a pair of buckhorns nailed on somewhat near unto the top of it, where it stood as a fair sea- mark for directions how to "nd out the way to mine host of Ma-re Mount.

And because it should more fully appear to what end it was placed there, they had a poem in readiness made, which was "xed to the Maypole, to show the new name con"rmed upon that plantation, which, although it were made according to the occurrence of the time, it being enigmatically composed, puzzled the Separatists5 most pitifully to expound it, which (for the better information of the reader) I have here inserted.

the poem

Rise Oedipus,6 and, if thou canst, unfold What means Charybdis under neath the mold, When Scylla7 solitary on the ground (Sitting in form of Niobe8) was found, Till Amphitrite’s darling did acquaint

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9. Complaint, lament. “Amphitrite’s darling”: a sarcastic reference to Scylla, whom Amphitrite, Neptune’s wife, turned into a hideous monster because Neptune loved her. 1. The son of Poseidon, god of the sea, he is usu- ally depicted with a conch shell as his horn. 2. Changing. 3. The long- suffering Old Testament patriarch. Samson was the Israelite who brought down with his own hands the temple of the Philistines as they honored their god Dagon. 4. Venus, the Roman goddess of love. 5. When John Scogan (1442–1483), jester to King Edward IV, was condemned to be hanged, he was given an opportunity to choose the tree and escaped hanging because he could "nd none to suit him. “Scogan’s choice” became a popu lar

expression in Morton’s time and suggested that any choice, even between undesirable alterna- tives, is better than no choice at all. 6. The Greek god of healing. 7. In Greek and Roman my thol ogy, the three women who determine human destiny. 8. Also called Aphrodite, goddess of love and beauty (known as “Venus” to the Romans). 9. I.e., Plymouth Plantation, not Plymouth in Eng land. “Precise”: strict, indexible. 1. The idol that the Israelites worshiped as their deliverer from Egypt (Exodus 32; Deuteronomy 9.16). 2. I.e., lacking Oedipus’s insight. 3. Just as the cupbearer Ganymede brought wine to the most power ful Roman god.

Grim Neptune with the tenor of her plaint,9 And caused him send forth Triton1 with the sound Of trumpet loud, at which the seas were found So full of protean2 forms that the bold shore Presented Scylla a new paramour So strong as Samson and so patient As Job3 himself, directed thus, by fate, To comfort Scylla so unfortunate. I do profess, by Cupid’s beauteous mother,4 Here’s Scogan’s choice5 for Scylla, and none other; Though Scylla’s sick with grief, because no sign Can there be found of virtue masculine. Asclepius6 come; I know right well His labor’s lost when you may ring her knell. The fatal sisters’7 doom none can withstand, Nor Cytherea’s8 power, who points to land With proclamation that the "rst of May At Ma-re Mount shall be kept holiday.

The setting up of this Maypole was a la men ta ble spectacle to the precise Separatists that lived at New Plymouth.9 They termed it an idol; yea, they called it the Calf of Horeb1 and stood at de"ance with the place, naming it Mount Dagon, threatening to make it a woeful mount and not a merry mount.

The riddle, for want of Oedipus,2 they could not expound, only they made some explication of part of it and said it was meant by Samson Job, the car- penter of the ship that brought over a woman to her husband that had been there long before and thrived so well that he sent for her and her children to come to him, where shortly after he died; having no reason but because of the sound of those two words, when as (the truth is) the man they applied it to was altogether unknown to the author.

There was likewise a merry song made which (to make their revels more fash ion able) was sung with a chorus, every man bearing his part, which they performed in a dance, hand in hand about the Maypole, while one of the com pany sang and "lled out the good liquor, like Ganymede and Jupiter.3

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4. In Roman my thol ogy, the god of marriage. 5. Hail (Latin). 6. Medicine. 7. No worn- out Irish or Scottish cloth. 8. Native American women. 9. “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypo- crites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and

cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith” (Mat- thew 23.23). 1. Insigni"cant. 2. An aged boatman whom Aphrodite rewarded with a chest that contained an elixir that made him young.

the song

Chorus. Drink and be merry, merry, merry boys; Let all your delight be in the Hymen’s4 joys; Io5 to Hymen, now the day is come, About the merry Maypole take a room. Make green garlands, bring bottles out And "ll sweet nectar freely about. Uncover thy head and fear no harm, For here’s good liquor to keep it warm. Then drink and be merry, &c. Io to Hymen, &c. Nectar is a thing assigned By the Deity’s own mind To cure the heart oppressed with grief, And of good liquors is the chief. Then drink, &c. Io to Hymen, &c. Give to the melancholy man A cup or two of’t now and then; This physic6 will soon revive his blood, And make him be of a merrier mood. Then drink, &c. Io to Hymen, &c. Give to the nymph that’s free from scorn No Irish stuff nor Scotch over worn.7 Lasses in beaver coats8 come away, Ye shall be welcome to us night and day. To drink and be merry, &c. Io to Hymen, &c.

This harmless mirth made by young men (that lived in hope to have wives brought over to them, that would save them a labor to make a voyage to fetch any over) was much distasted of the precise Separatists that keep much ado about the tithe of mint and cummin,9 troubling their brains more than rea- son would require about things that are indifferent,1 and from that time [they] sought occasion against my honest host of Ma-re Mount, to overthrow his undertakings and to destroy his plantation quite and clean. But because they presumed [that] with their imaginary gifts (which they have out of Pha- on’s2 box) they could expound hidden mysteries, to convince them of blind- ness as well in this as in other matters of more consequence, I will illustrate the poem according to the true intent of the authors of these revels, so much distasted by those moles.

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3. Understood as. 4. The wife of Odysseus, who refused many suit- ors during his twenty- year absence. 5. In Greek my thol ogy, the sea god, who assumed many shapes. 6. The woman who betrayed Samson (Judges 16). 7. In Greek and Roman my thol ogy, the god of fertility, whose symbol was the phallus. 8. Morton argues that the Separatists accused the revelers at Merry Mount of honoring the

licentious Roman goddess Flora rather than Maia, the goddess of the spring. 9. I.e., in their confusion of Flora and Maia the Separatists reveal their contempt for the wisdom of Athena or Minerva, and in their hatred for the classical studies at Oxford and Cambridge they reveal their, for Morton, unsophisticated minds. 1. I.e., his habitation (not his person). 2. Now Weymouth, Mas sa chu setts.

Oedipus is generally received for3 the absolute reader of riddles, who is invoked; Scylla and Charybdis are two dangerous places for seamen to encounter, near unto Venice, and have been by poets formerly resembled to man and wife. The like license the author challenged for a pair of his nom- ination, the one lamenting for the loss of the other as Niobe for her children. Amphitrite is an arm of the sea, by which the news was carried up and down of a rich widow, now to be taken up or laid down. By Triton is the fame spread that caused the suitors to muster (as it had been to Penelope4 of Greece), and, the coast lying circular, all our passage to and fro is made more con ve nient by sea than land. Many aimed at this mark, but he that played Proteus5 best and could comply with her humor must be the man that would carry her; and he had need have Samson’s strength to deal with a Delilah,6 and as much patience as Job that should come there, for a thing that I did observe in the lifetime of the former.

But marriage and hanging (they say) come by destiny, and Scogan’s choice is better [than] none at all. He that played Proteus (with the help of Pria- pus)7 put their noses out of joint, as the proverb is.

And this the whole com pany of the revelers at Ma-re Mount knew to be the true sense and exposition of the riddle that was "xed to the Maypole which the Separatists were at de"ance with. Some of them af"rmed that the "rst institution thereof was in memory of a whore, not knowing that it was a trophy erected at "rst in honor of Maia.8 The Lady of Learning which [sic] they despise, vilifying the two universities with uncivil terms,9 account- ing what is there obtained by study is but unnecessary learning, not consid- ering that learning does enable men’s minds to converse with ele ments of a higher nature than is to be found within the habitation of the mole.

chapter xv. of a great monster supposed to be at ma-re mount; and the preparation made to destroy it

The Separatists, envying the prosperity and hope of the plantation at Ma-re Mount (which they perceived began to come forward and to be in a good way for gain in the beaver trade), conspired together against mine host espe- cially (who was the owner of that plantation) and made up a party against him and mustered up what aid they could, accounting of him as of a great monster.

Many threatening speeches were given out both against his person and his habitation, which1 they divulged should be consumed with "re. And tak- ing advantage of the time when his com pany (which seemed little to regard their threats) were gone up unto the inlands to trade with the savages for beaver, they set upon my honest host at a place called Wessaguscus,2 where, by accident, they found him. The inhabitants there were in good hope of

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3. Containing the prayers adopted by the Church of Eng land; rejected by the Separatists. 4. Explain, rationalize. 5. The wooden horse used by the Greeks to con- quer Troy was built by Epeios.

6. When the Gauls attempted to invade Rome in 390 b.c.e. the geese on the Capitoline Hill spoiled the surprise attack by hissing. 7. A counterfeit coin rather than a true sixpence.

the subversion of the plantation at Ma-re Mount (which they principally aimed at) and the rather because mine host was a man that endeavored to advance the dignity of the Church of Eng land, which they (on the contrary part) would labor to vilify with uncivil terms, inveighing against the sacred Book of Common Prayer3 and mine host that used it in a laudable manner amongst his family as a practice of piety.

There he would be a means to bring sacks to their mill (such is the thirst after beaver) and [it] helped the conspirators to surprise mine host (who was there all alone), and they charged him ( because they would [want to] seem to have some reasonable cause against him, to set a gloss upon4 their mal- ice) with criminal things, which indeed had been done by such a person, but was of their conspiracy. Mine host demanded of the conspirators who it was that was author of that information that seemed to be their ground for what they now intended. And because they answered they would not tell him, he as peremptorily replied that he would not say whether he had or he had not done as they had been informed.

The answer made no matter (as it seemed) whether it had been negatively or af"rmatively made, for they had resolved what he would suffer because (as they boasted) they were now become the greater number; they had shaken off their shackles of servitude and were become masters and masterless people.

It appears they were like bears’ whelps in former time when mine host’s plantation was of as much strength as theirs, but now (theirs being stronger) they (like overgrown bears) seemed monstrous. In brief, mine host must endure to be their prisoner until they could contrive it so that they might send him for Eng land (as they said), there to suffer according to the merit of the fact which they intended to father upon him, supposing (belike) it would prove a heinous crime.

Much rejoicing was made that they had gotten their capital enemy (as they concluded him) whom they purposed to hamper in such sort that he should not be able to uphold his plantation at Ma-re Mount.

The conspirators sported themselves at my honest host, that meant them no hurt, and were so jocund that they feasted their bodies and fell to tip- pling as if they had obtained a great prize, like the Trojans when they had the custody of Epeios’ pinetree horse.5

Mine host feigned grief and could not be persuaded either to eat or drink, because he knew emptiness would be a means to make him as watchful as the geese kept in the Roman Capital,6 whereon, the contrary part, the con- spirators would be so drowsy that he might have an opportunity to give them a slip instead of a tester.7

Six persons of the conspiracy were set to watch him at Wessaguscus. But he kept waking, and in the dead of the night (one lying on the bed for fur- ther surety), up gets mine host and got to the second door that he was to pass, which, notwithstanding the lock, he got open and shut it after him with such vio lence that it affrighted some of the conspirators.

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8. I.e., in astonishment. 9. Morton’s favorite epithet for Captain Myles Standish, who had a ruddy complexion and was short. 1. Puritans objected to fashionably long hair as a vanity. 2. A liquor red like the sun. 3. A group of heroes and kings who, to the medi- eval mind, represented an ideal of human conduct.

4. A one- time drummer and thus a man of low rank. 5. The Greek phi los o pher Diogenes (c. 412–323 b.c.e.) was indifferent to status and lived in a tub. 6. I.e., by drinking. “Craven”: coward. 7. In Greek my thol ogy, a monster. 8. Put down. “Beat a parley”: suggest a confer- ence. “Quarter”: clemency.

The word which was given with an alarm was, “O he’s gone, he’s gone, what shall we do, he’s gone!” The rest (half asleep) start up in amaze8 and like rams, ran their heads one at another full butt in the dark.

Their grand leader, Captain Shrimp,9 took on most furiously and tore his clothes for anger, to see the empty nest and their bird gone.

The rest were eager to have torn their hair from their heads, but it was so short that it would give them no hold.1 Now Captain Shrimp thought in the loss of this prize (which he accounted his masterpiece) all his honor would be lost forever.

In the meantime mine host was got home to Ma-re Mount through the woods, eight miles round about the head of the river Monatoquit that parted the two plantations, "nding his way by the help of the lightning (for it thun- dered as he went terribly), and there he prepared powder, three pounds dried, for his pres ent employment, and four good guns for him and the two assistants left at his house, with bullets of several sizes, three hundred or thereabouts, to be used if the conspirators should pursue him thither; and these two persons promised their aids in the quarrel and con"rmed that promise with health in good rosa solis.2

Now Captain Shrimp, the "rst captain in the land (as he supposed) must do some new act to repair this loss and to vindicate his reputation, who had sustained blemish by this oversight, begins now to study how to repair or survive his honor; in this manner, calling of council, they conclude.

He takes eight persons more to him, and (like the nine worthies3 of New Canaan) they embark with preparation against Ma-re Mount where this monster of a man, as their phrase was, had his den; the whole number, had the rest not been from home, being but seven, would have given Captain Shrimp (a quondam drummer)4 such a welcome as would have made him wish for a drum as big as Diogenes’ tub,5 that he might have crept into it out of sight.

Now the nine worthies are approached, and mine host prepared, having intelligence by a savage that hastened in love from Wessaguscus to give him notice of their intent.

One of mine host’s men proved a craven; the other had proved his wits to purchase a little valor,6 before mine host had observed his posture.

The nine worthies coming before the den of this supposed monster (this seven- headed hydra,7 as they termed him) and began, like Don Quixote against the windmill, to beat a parley and to offer quarter if mine host would yield, for they resolved to send him to Eng land and bade him lay by8 his arms.

But he (who was the son of a soldier), having taken up arms in his just defense, replied that he would not lay by those arms because they were so needful at sea, if he should be sent over. Yet, to save the effusion of so much worthy blood as would have issued out of the veins of these nine worthies of New Canaan if mine host should have played upon them out at his portholes

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9. Tied. 1. Reports. 2. In Greek my thol ogy, a giant who fought the gods. Morton does not identify his tormentor. 3. Removed from.

4. In Greek my thol ogy, a judge in the infernal regions. Morton later identi"es him as Samuel Fuller of Plymouth and names William Bradford and Myles Standish as his other two judges. 5. A small sailboat.

(for they came within danger like a dock of wild geese, as if they had been tailed9 one to another, as colts to be sold at a fair), mine host was content to yield upon quarter and did capitulate with them in what manner it should be for more certainty, because he knew what Captain Shrimp was.

He expressed that no vio lence should be offered to his person, none to his goods, nor any of his house hold but that he should have his arms and what else was requisite for the voyage, which their herald returns;1 it was agreed upon and should be performed.

But mine host no sooner had set open the door and issued out, but instantly Captain Shrimp and the rest of the worthies stepped to him, laid hold of his arms, and had him down; and so eagerly was every man bent against him (not regarding any agreement made with such a carnal man), that they fell upon him as if they would have eaten him; some of them were so violent that they would have a slice with scabbard, and all for haste, until an old soldier (of the Queen’s, as the proverb is) that was there by accident, clapped his gun under the weapons and sharply rebuked these worthies for their unworthy practices. So the matter was taken into more deliberate consideration.

Captain Shrimp and the rest of the nine worthies made themselves (by this outrageous riot) masters of mine host of Ma-re Mount and disposed of what he had at his plantation.

This they knew (in the eye of the savages) would add to their glory and diminish the reputation of mine honest host, whom they practiced to be rid of upon any terms, as willingly as if he had been the very hydra of the time.

chapter xvi. how the nine worthies put mine host of ma-re mount into the enchanted castle at plymouth and terrified

him with the monster briareus2

The nine worthies of New Canaan having now the law in their own hands ( there being no general governor in the land, nor none of the separation that regarded the duty they owe their sovereign, whose natu ral born subjects they were, though translated out of3 Holland from whence they had learned to work all to their own ends and make a great show of religion but no human- ity), for [sic] they were now to sit in council on the cause.

And much it stood mine honest host upon to be very circumspect and to take Eacus4 to task for that his voice was more allowed of than both the other; and had not mine host confounded all the arguments that Eacus could make in their defense and confuted him that swayed the rest, they would have made him unable to drink in such manner of merriment any more. So that following this private counsel, given him by one that knew who ruled the roost, the hurricane ceased that else would split his pinnace.5

A conclusion was made and sentence given that mine host should be sent to Eng land a prisoner. But when he was brought to the ships for that pur- pose, no man dared be so foolhardly as to undertake to carry him. So these

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worthies set mine host upon an island, without gun, powder, or shot, or dog, or so much as a knife to get anything to feed upon, or any other clothes to shelter him with at winter than a thin suit which he had on at that time. Home he could not get to Ma-re Mount. Upon this island he stayed a month at least and was relieved by savages that took notice that mine host was a sachem6 of Passonagessit, and would bring bottles of strong liquor to him and unite themselves into a league of brotherhood with mine host, so full of humanity are these in"dels before those Christians.

From this place for Eng land sailed mine host in a Plymouth ship7 (that came into the land to "sh upon the coast) that landed him safe in Eng land at Plymouth; and he stayed in Eng land until the ordinary time for shipping to set forth for these parts, and then returned, no man being able to tax8 him of anything.

But the worthies (in the meantime) hoped they had been rid of him.

* * *

c. 1635 1637

6. Ruling chief. 7. I.e., from Plymouth, Eng land.

8. Charge.

JOHN WINTHROP 1588–1649

W hen Cotton Mather looked back on the founding years of the Mas sa chu setts Bay Colony in Magnalia Christi Americana (1702)— the "rst attempt at a comprehensive history of the Puritan experiment, excerpted later in this volume— he identi"ed John Winthrop as his model of the ideal earthly ruler. Mather came from a family of prominent Bay Colony ministers, and he was well placed to shape Winthrop’s legacy. He did so using a number of sacred and secular analogies, label- ing Winthrop “Nehemias Americanus” after Nehemiah, the biblical governor of Judea who rebuilt the wall of Jerusalem; describing him as a new Moses; and com- paring him favorably to the Greek lawgiver Lycurgus and the devout Roman king Numa. Mather’s praise for the man who led the Bay Colony in its early years redects his era’s approach to historical writing, which was strongly induenced by the work of the Greek historian Plutarch, supplemented with Roman and biblical texts. Mather’s biography of the Puritan leader also underlines the status and skills that Winthrop brought to his position.

John Winthrop was the son of Adam Winthrop, a lawyer, and Anne Browne, the daughter of a tradesman. He was born in Groton, Eng land, on an estate his father had purchased from King Henry VIII. It was a prosperous farm, and Winthrop had all the advantages of his father’s social and economic position. He went to Cam- bridge University for two years—it is likely that he was "rst exposed to Puritan ideas there— and married at age seventeen. Unlike William Bradford and the Pilgrims, Winthrop was not a Separatist; that is, he wished to reform the Church of England

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from within rather than breaking with it and starting fresh. For Puritans like Win- throp, reform involved purging the national Church of the residual presence of Roman Catholicism, especially the hierarchy of the clergy and traditional practices such as kneeling at communion. For a time Winthrop thought of becoming a cler- gyman, but instead he turned to the practice of law.

In the 1620s, severe economic depression in Eng land made Winthrop realize that he could not depend on the income from his father’s estate and would need to "nd new means of support. The ascension to the throne of Charles I, who was known to be sympathetic to Roman Catholicism and impatient with Puritan reformers, also seemed an ominous sign. Winthrop was not alone in predicting that “God will bring some heavy afdiction upon the land, and that speedily.” He came to realize that if he antagonized the king by openly espousing the Puritan cause, he would lose every thing. The only recourse seemed to be to obtain Charles’s permission to emigrate. In March 1629, a group of enterprising merchants, all ardent Puritans, was able to get a charter for land in Amer i ca from a Crown- approved joint stock com- pany called the Council for New Eng land. They called themselves “The Com pany of Mas sa chu setts Bay in New Eng land.”

Winthrop was chosen governor in October 1629, and for the next twenty years most of the responsibility for the colony rested in his hands. An initial group of some seven hundred emigrants sailed from Eng land with Winthrop on April 8, 1630, aboard the Arbella. It has long been believed that Winthrop delivered his sermon A Model of Christian Charity either just before departing from Eng land or during the voyage. A review of the historical rec ord suggests a far more ambiguous origin. There is no con temporary account of Winthrop delivering A Model, and there exists little evidence of its composition. The manuscript that survives is a copy made during Winthrop’s lifetime, possibly incomplete, and of unknown prov- enance.

A Model of Christian Charity remains an iconic text despite its uncertain past. It sets out clearly and eloquently the ideals of a harmonious Christian community and reminds its audience members that they stand as an example to the world of the triumph or the failure of the Puritan enterprise. And in fact, events at the Mas sa- chu setts Bay Colony soon suggested that Winthrop’s ideal of a seldess community was impossible to realize. In its "rst de cade, the colony confronted basic differ- ences over religious and civil liberties, social organ ization, and po liti cal structure. The colony also engaged in a brutal war with its Pequot neighbors.

Winthrop was governor for much of this de cade, and he was closely involved with all of these condicts. The frictions in the colony took a personal turn in 1645, when a group of leaders from the town of Hingham challenged Winthrop, then serv- ing as deputy governor, over issues of local autonomy and representative govern- ment. Winthrop withstood the resulting impeachment threat and responded in the General Court with a trenchant speech distinguishing between natu ral liberty and civil or federal liberty, a distinction that remains a classic formulation. These and other disputes are detailed in the journal that he kept from 1630 until his death. Once the Winthrop family made the manuscript available to the colony’s historians, including Cotton Mather and William Hubbard, the journal joined Wil- liam Bradford’s manuscript history, Of Plymouth Plantation, as a semiof"cial history of New Eng land.

Mather’s account of Winthrop helped keep his memory alive. Beginning in 1790, when Noah Webster of dictionary fame published the "rst two volumes of Win- throp’s journal, several New Eng land intellectuals af"liated with the Mas sa chu- setts Historical Society (founded in 1791) worked to recover his words for future generations. James Savage published the "rst complete edition of the journal in 1825–26, though the achievement was marred when a "re at Savage’s of"ce destroyed the second volume of the manuscript. The "rst printed edition of A Model of Christian Charity appeared in the Collections of the Mas sa chu setts Historical Society

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1. The text is from Old South Leadets, Old South Association, Old South Meeting house, Boston, Mas sa chu setts, No. 207 (n.d.), edited by Samuel Eliot Morison. 2. Humanity lost its natu ral innocence when Adam and Eve fell; that state is called unregen- erate. When Jesus Christ came to ransom humankind from Adam and Eve’s sin, he offered salvation for those who believed in him and who thus became regenerate, or saved. 3. “Thou hast also taken thy fair jewels made of my gold and of my silver, which I had given thee, and madest to thyself images of men, and didst

commit whoredom with them.” Textual evidence shows that Winthrop used the Geneva Bible, with occasional variants from the text of the 1599 edi- tion. (The Geneva Bible, also known as the En glish Bible, was translated by Reformed En glish Protestants living in Switzerland; this version, used by the Puritans, was outlawed by the Church of Eng land.) 4. “Honor the Lord with thy riches, and with the "rst fruits of all thine increase. So shall thy barns be "lled with abundance, and thy presses shall burst with new wine” (Proverbs 3.9–10).

in 1838. Eventually, this little- known sermon acquired the status it has today, as an expression of the ideal suggested by its most resonant phrase, “a city upon a hill.”

A Model of Christian Charity1

I

a model hereof

God Almighty in His most holy and wise providence, hath so disposed of the condition of mankind, as in all times some must be rich, some poor, some high and eminent in power and dignity; others mean and in subjection.

the reason hereof

First, to hold conformity with the rest of His works, being delighted to show forth the glory of His wisdom in the variety and difference of the creatures; and the glory of His power, in ordering all these differences for the preser- vation and good of the whole; and the glory of His greatness, that as it is the glory of princes to have many of"cers, so this great King will have many stewards, counting Himself more honored in dispensing His gifts to man by man, than if He did it by His own immediate hands.

Secondly, that He might have the more occasion to manifest the work of His Spirit: "rst upon the wicked in moderating and restraining them, so that the rich and mighty should not eat up the poor, nor the poor and despised rise up against their superiors and shake off their yoke; secondly in the regenerate,2 in exercising His graces, in them, as in the great ones, their love, mercy, gentleness, temperance, etc., in the poor and inferior sort, their faith, patience, obedience, etc.

Thirdly, that every man might have need of other, and from hence they might be all knit more nearly together in the bonds of brotherly affection. From hence it appears plainly that no man is made more honorable than another or more wealthy, etc., out of any par tic u lar and singular re spect to himself, but for the glory of his Creator and the common good of the crea- ture, man. Therefore God still reserves the property of these gifts to Him- self as [in] Ezekiel: 16.17. He there calls wealth His gold and His silver.3 [In] Proverbs: 3.9, he claims their ser vice as His due: honor the Lord with thy riches, etc.4 All men being thus (by divine providence) ranked into two sorts, rich and poor; under the "rst are comprehended all such as are able to live comfortably by their own means duly improved; and all others are poor according to the former distribution.

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5. Matthew 5.43, 19.19. 6. “Therefore whatsoever ye would that men should do to you: even so do ye to them: for this is the Law and the Prophets” (Matthew 7.12). 7. In Judges 19.16–21, an old citizen of Gibeah offered shelter to a traveling priest or Levite and defended him from enemies from a neighboring city. Abraham entertains the angels in Genesis 18: “Again the Lord appeared unto him in the plain of Mamre, as he sat in his tent door about the heat of the day. And he lifted up his eyes, and looked: and lo, three men stood by him, and when he saw them, he ran to meet them from the tent door, and bowed himself to the ground” (Genesis 18.1–2). Lot was Abraham’s nephew, and he escaped the destruction of the city of Sodom because he defended from a mob two angels who

were his guests (Genesis 19.1–14). 8. People who lived in Canaan, the biblical promised land for the Israelites. 9. “And they sold their possessions, and goods, and parted them to all men, as every one had need” (Acts 2.45). 1. “We do you also to wit, brethren, of the grace of God bestowed upon the Churches of Macedo- nia. Because in great trial of afdiction their joy abounded, and their most extreme poverty abounded unto their rich liberality. For to their power (I bear rec ord) yea, and beyond their power they were willing. And prayed us with great instance that we would receive the grace, and fellowship of the ministering which is toward the Saints” (2 Corinthians 8.1–4).

There are two rules whereby we are to walk one towards another: justice and mercy. These are always distinguished in their act and in their object, yet may they both concur in the same subject in each re spect; as sometimes there may be an occasion of showing mercy to a rich man in some sudden danger of distress, and also doing of mere justice to a poor man in regard of some par tic u lar contract, etc.

There is likewise a double law by which we are regulated in our conversa- tion one towards another in both the former re spects: the law of nature and the law of grace, or the moral law or the law of the Gospel, to omit the rule of justice as not properly belonging to this purpose other wise than it may fall into consideration in some par tic u lar cases. By the "rst of these laws man as he was enabled so withal [is] commanded to love his neighbor as himself.5 Upon this ground stands all the precepts of the moral law, which concerns our dealings with men. To apply this to the works of mercy, this law requires two things: "rst, that every man afford his help to another in every want or distress; secondly, that he performed this out of the same affection which makes him careful of his own goods, according to that of our Savior. Mat- thew: “Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you.”6 This was practiced by Abraham and Lot in entertaining the Angels and the old man of Gibeah.7

The law of grace or the Gospel hath some difference from the former, as in these re spects: First, the law of nature was given to man in the estate of innocency; this of the Gospel in the estate of regeneracy. Secondly, the for- mer propounds one man to another, as the same desh and image of God; this as a brother in Christ also, and in the communion of the same spirit and so teacheth us to put a difference between Christians and others. Do good to all, especially to the house hold of faith: Upon this ground the Israel- ites were to put a difference between the brethren of such as were strangers though not of Canaanites.8 Thirdly, the law of nature could give no rules for dealing with enemies, for all are to be considered as friends in the state of innocency, but the Gospel commands love to an enemy. Proof. If thine Enemy hunger, feed him; Love your Enemies, do good to them that hate you. Matthew: 5.44.

This law of the Gospel propounds likewise a difference of seasons and occasions. There is a time when a Christian must sell all and give to the poor, as they did in the Apostles’ times.9 There is a time also when a Chris- tian (though they give not all yet) must give beyond their ability, as they of Macedonia, Corinthians: 2.8.1 Likewise community of perils calls for

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2. Ecclesiastes 2.14. Solomon was the son of David and successor to David as king of Israel. 3. “Cast thy bread upon the waters: for after many days thou shalt "nd it. Give a portion to seven, and also to eight: for thou knowest not what evil shall be upon the earth” (Ecclesiastes 11.1–2). 4. The passage in Luke refers to a servant who is about to lose his job managing his boss’s accounts. To guarantee that he will be welcome in the houses of his master’s debtors, he cuts their bills in half. Jesus explains: “And I say unto

you, Make you friends with the riches of iniq- uity, that when ye shall want, they may receive you into everlasting habitations” (Luke 16.9). 5. Originally a mea sure of money (as in the weight of gold). 6. “Lay not up trea sures for yourselves upon the earth, where the moth and canker corrupt, and where thieves dig through and steal. But lay up trea sures for yourselves in heaven, where neither the moth nor canker corrupteth, and where thieves neither dig through nor steal” (Matthew 6.19–20).

extraordinary liberality, and so doth community in some special ser vice for the Church. Lastly, when there is no other means whereby our Christian brother may be relieved in his distress, we must help him beyond our abil- ity, rather than tempt God in putting him upon help by miraculous or extraordinary means.

This duty of mercy is exercised in the kinds, giving, lending and forgiving.— Quest. What rule shall a man observe in giving in re spect of the mea sure? Ans. If the time and occasion be ordinary, he is to give out of his abun-

dance. Let him lay aside as God hath blessed him. If the time and occasion be extraordinary, he must be ruled by them; taking this withal, that then a man cannot likely do too much, especially if he may leave himself and his family under probable means of comfortable subsistence.

Objection. A man must lay up for posterity, the fathers lay up for poster- ity and children and he “is worse than an in"del” that “provideth not for his own.”

Ans. For the "rst, it is plain that it being spoken by way of comparison, it must be meant of the ordinary and usual course of fathers and cannot extend to times and occasions extraordinary. For the other place, the Apostle speaks against such as walked inordinately, and it is without question, that he is worse than an in"del who through his own sloth and voluptuousness shall neglect to provide for his family.

Objection. “The wise man’s eyes are in his head” saith Solomon, “and fore- seeth the plague,”2 therefore we must forecast and lay up against evil times when he or his may stand in need of all he can gather.

Ans. This very argument Solomon useth to persuade to liberality, Eccle- siastes: “Cast thy bread upon the waters,” and “for thou knowest not what evil may come upon the land.”3 Luke: 16.9. “Make you friends of the riches of iniquity.” 4 You will ask how this shall be? very well. For "rst he that gives to the poor, lends to the Lord and He will repay him even in this life an hundred fold to him or his— The righ teous is ever merciful and lendeth and his seed enjoyeth the blessing; and besides we know what advantage it will be to us in the day of account when many such witnesses shall stand forth for us to witness the improvement of our talent.5 And I would know of those who plead so much for laying up for time to come, whether they hold that to be Gospel, Matthew: 6.19: “Lay not up for yourselves trea sures upon earth,” 6 etc. If they acknowledge it, what extent will they allow it? if only to those primitive times, let them consider the reason whereupon our Savior grounds it. The "rst is that they are subject to the moth, the rust, the thief. Secondly, they will steal away the heart; where the trea sure is there will the heart be also. The reasons are of like force at all times. Therefore the exhortation must be general and perpetual, with always in re spect of the love and affection

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7. The son of Jacob and Rachel, who stored up the harvest in the seven good years before the famine (Genesis 41). 8. Matthew 21.5–7. 9. 1 Kings 17.8–24. 1. “If one of thy brethren with thee be poor within any of thy gates in thy land, which the Lord thy God giveth thee, thou shalt not harden thine heart, nor shut thine hand from thy poor brother: But thou shalt open thine hand unto him, and shalt lend him suf"cient for his need which he hath” (Deuteronomy 15.7–8). 2. According to Mosaic law (Leviticus 25.8–13), the Jubilee year followed a cycle of seven sab-

batical years. In the "ftieth year, the lands would lie fallow, all work would cease, and all debts would be canceled. 3. “Beware that there be not a wicked thought in thine heart, to say, The seventh year, the year of freedom is at hand: therefore it grieveth thee to look on thy poor brother, and thou givest him nought, and he cry unto the Lord against thee, so that sin be in thee: Thou shalt give him, and let it not grieve thine heart to give unto him: for because of this the Lord thy God shall bless thee in all thy works, and in all that thou puttest thine hand to” (Deuteronomy 15.9–10).

to riches and in regard of the things themselves when any special ser vice for the church or par tic u lar distress of our brother do call for the use of them; other wise it is not only lawful but necessary to lay up as Joseph7 did to have ready upon such occasions, as the Lord (whose stewards we are of them) shall call for them from us. Christ gives us an instance of the "rst, when He sent his disciples for the ass, and bids them answer the owner thus, the Lord hath need of him.8 So when the tabernacle was to be built He sends to His people to call for their silver and gold, etc.; and yields them no other reason but that it was for His work. When Elisha comes to the widow of Sareptah and "nds her preparing to make ready her pittance for herself and family, He bids her "rst provide for Him; he challengeth "rst God’s part which she must "rst give before she must serve her own family.9 All these teach us that the Lord looks that when He is pleased to call for His right in anything we have, our own interest we have must stand aside till His turn be served. For the other, we need look no further than to that of John: 1: “He who hath this world’s goods and seeth his brother to need and shuts up his compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him,” which comes punctually to this conclusion: if thy brother be in want and thou canst help him, thou needst not make doubt, what thou shouldst do, if thou lovest God thou must help him.

Quest. What rule must we observe in lending? Ans. Thou must observe whether thy brother hath pres ent or probable, or

pos si ble means of repaying thee, if there be none of these, thou must give him according to his necessity, rather than lend him as he requires. If he hath pres ent means of repaying thee, thou art to look at him not as an act of mercy, but by way of commerce, wherein thou art to walk by the rule of justice; but if his means of repaying thee be only probable or pos si ble, then is he an object of thy mercy, thou must lend him, though there be danger of losing it, Deuteronomy: 15.7: “If any of thy brethren be poor,” etc., “thou shalt lend him suf"cient.”1 That men might not shift off this duty by the apparent hazard, He tells them that though the year of Jubilee2 were at hand (when he must remit it, if he were not able to repay it before) yet he must lend him and that cheerfully: “It may not grieve thee to give him” saith He; and because some might object; “why so I should soon impoverish myself and my family,” He adds “with all thy work,”3 etc.; for our Savior, Matthew: 5.42: “From him that would borrow of thee turn not away.”

Quest. What rule must we observe in forgiving? Ans. Whether thou didst lend by way of commerce or in mercy, if he have

nothing to pay thee, [you] must forgive, (except in cause where thou hast a

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4. Nehemiah was sent by King Artaxerxes to repair the walls of the city of Jerusalem; he saved the city as governor when he persuaded those

lending money to charge no interest and to think "rst of the common good (see Nehemiah 3). 5. Vari ous. The names are of Christian martyrs.

surety or a lawful pledge) Deuteronomy: 15.2. Every seventh year the credi- tor was to quit that which he lent to his brother if he were poor as appears— verse 8: “Save when there shall be no poor with thee.” In all these and like cases, Christ was a general rule, Matthew: 7.12: “Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye the same to them also.”

Quest. What rule must we observe and walk by in cause of community of peril?

Ans. The same as before, but with more enlargement towards others and less re spect towards ourselves and our own right. Hence it was that in the primitive church they sold all, had all things in common, neither did any man say that which he possessed was his own. Likewise in their return out of the captivity, because the work was great for the restoring of the church and the danger of enemies was common to all, Nehemiah exhorts the Jews to liberal- ity and readiness in remitting their debts to their brethren, and disposing liberally of his own to such as wanted, and stand not upon his own due, which he might have demanded of them.4 Thus did some of our forefathers in times of persecution in Eng land, and so did many of the faithful of other churches, whereof we keep an honorable remembrance of them; and it is to be observed that both in Scriptures and later stories of the churches that such as have been most bountiful to the poor saints, especially in these extraordinary times and occasions, God hath left them highly commended to posterity, as Zacheus, Cornelius, Dorcas, Bishop Hooper, the Cuttler of Brussells and divers5 others. Observe again that the Scripture gives no caution to restrain any from being over liberal this way; but all men to the liberal and cheerful practice hereof by the sweetest promises; as to instance one for many, Isaiah: 58.6: “Is not this the fast I have chosen to loose the bonds of wickedness, to take off the heavy burdens, to let the oppressed go free and to break every yoke, to deal thy bread to the hungry and to bring the poor that wander into thy house, when thou seest the naked to cover them. And then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thy health shall grow speedily, thy righ teousness shall go before God, and the glory of  the Lord shall embrace thee; then thou shalt call and the Lord shall answer thee” etc. [Verse] 10: “If thou pour out thy soul to the hungry, then shall thy light spring out in darkness, and the Lord shall guide thee con- tinually, and satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat thy bones; thou shalt be like a watered garden, and they shalt be of thee that shall build the old waste places” etc. On the contrary, most heavy curses are laid upon such as are straightened towards the Lord and His people, Judges: 5.[23]: “Curse ye Meroshe because ye came not to help the Lord,” etc. Proverbs: [21.13]: “He who shutteth his ears from hearing the cry of the poor, he shall cry and shall not be heard.” Matthew: 25: “Go ye cursed into everlasting "re” etc. “I was hungry and ye fed me not.” 2 Corinthians: 9.6: “He that soweth sparingly shall reap sparingly.”

Having already set forth the practice of mercy according to the rule of God’s law, it will be useful to lay open the grounds of it also, being the other part of the commandment, and that is the affection from which this exercise

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6. Saint Paul in his Epistle to the Romans 13.8.

of mercy must arise. The apostle6 tells us that this love is the ful"lling of the law, not that it is enough to love our brother and so no further; but in regard of the excellency of his parts giving any motion to the other as the soul to the body and the power it hath to set all the faculties on work in the outward exercise of this duty. As when we bid one make the clock strike, he doth not lay hand on the hammer, which is the immediate instrument of the sound, but sets on work the "rst mover or main wheel, knowing that will certainly produce the sound which he intends. So the way to draw men to works of mercy, is not by force of argument from the goodness or neces- sity of the work; for though this course may enforce a rational mind to some pres ent act of mercy, as is frequent in experience, yet it cannot work such a habit in a soul, as shall make it prompt upon all occasions to produce the same effect, but by framing these affections of love in the heart which will as natively bring forth the other, as any cause doth produce effect.

The de"nition which the Scripture gives us of love is this: “Love is the bond of perfection.” First, it is a bond or ligament. Secondly it makes the work perfect. There is no body but consists of parts and that which knits these parts together gives the body its perfection, because it makes each part so contiguous to others as thereby they do mutually participate with each other, both in strength and in"rmity, in plea sure and pain. To instance in the most perfect of all bodies: Christ and His church make one body. The several parts of this body, considered apart before they were united, were as disproportionate and as much disordering as so many contrary qualities or ele ments, but when Christ comes and by His spirit and love knits all these parts to Himself and each to other, it is become the most perfect and best proportioned body in the world. Ephesians: 4.16: “Christ, by whom all the body being knit together by every joint for the furniture thereof, according to the effectual power which is the mea sure of every perfection of parts,” “a glorious body without spot or wrinkle,” the ligaments hereof being Christ, or His love, for Christ is love (1 John: 4.8). So this de"nition is right: “Love is the bond of perfection.”

From hence we may frame these conclusions. 1. First of all, true Chris- tians are of one body in Christ, 1 Corinthians: 12.12, 27: “Ye are the body of Christ and members of their part.” Secondly: The ligaments of this body which knit together are love. Thirdly: No body can be perfect which wants its proper ligament. Fourthly: All the parts of this body being thus united are made so contiguous in a special relation as they must needs partake of each other’s strength and in"rmity; joy and sorrow, weal and woe. 1 Corin- thians: 12.26: “If one member suffers, all suffer with it, if one be in honor, all rejoice with it.” Fifthly: This sensibleness and sympathy of each other’s conditions will necessarily infuse into each part a native desire and endeavor to strengthen, defend, preserve and comfort the other.

To insist a little on this conclusion being the product of all the former, the truth hereof will appear both by precept and pattern. 1 John: 3.10: “Ye ought to lay down your lives for the brethren.” Galatians: 6.2: “bear ye one another’s burthens and so ful"ll the law of Christ.” For patterns we have that "rst of our Savior who out of His good will in obedience to His father,

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7. 2 Corinthians 11.29. 8. Saint Paul tells the Philippians he will send them a spiritual guide: “But I supposed it neces- sary to send my brother Epaphroditus unto you my companion in labor, and fellow soldier, even your messenger, and he that ministered unto me such things as I wanted” (Philippians 2.25).

9. A Christian woman praised by Saint Paul in Romans 16.1. 1. I.e., in his innocence. 2. Predominance. 3. Jesus Christ has traditionally been called the New Adam to signify the redemption of human- kind from the original sin of Old Adam.

becoming a part of this body, and being knit with it in the bond of love, found such a native sensibleness of our in"rmities and sorrows as He willingly yielded Himself to death to ease the in"rmities of the rest of His body, and so healed their sorrows. From the like sympathy of parts did the apostles and many thousands of the saints lay down their lives for Christ. Again, the like we may see in the members of this body among themselves. Romans: 9. Paul could have been contented to have been separated from Christ, that the Jews might not be cut off from the body. It is very observable what he professeth of his affectionate partaking with every member: “who is weak” saith he “and I am not weak? who is offended and I burn not;”7 and again, 2 Corinthians: 7.13. “therefore we are comforted because ye were comforted.” Of Epaphroditus he speaketh,8 Philippians: 2.30. that he regarded not his own life to do him ser vice. So Phoebe9 and others are called the servants of the church. Now it is apparent that they served not for wages, or by con- straint, but out of love. The like we shall "nd in the histories of the church in all ages, the sweet sympathy of affections which was in the members of this body one towards another, their cheerfulness in serving and suffering together, how liberal they were without repining, harborers without grudg- ing and helpful without reproaching; and all from hence, because they had fervent love amongst them, which only make the practice of mercy constant and easy.

The next consideration is how this love comes to be wrought. Adam in his "rst estate1 was a perfect model of mankind in all their generations, and in him this love was perfected in regard of the habit. But Adam rent himself from his creator, rent all his posterity also one from another; whence it comes that every man is born with this princi ple in him, to love and seek himself only, and thus a man continueth till Christ comes and takes possession of the soul and infuseth another princi ple, love to God and our brother. And this latter having continual supply from Christ, as the head and root by which he is united, gets the predomining2 in the soul, so by little and little expels the former. 1 John: 4.7. “love cometh of God and every one that loveth is born of God,” so that this love is the fruit of the new birth, and none can have it but the new creature. Now when this quality is thus formed in the souls of men, it works like the spirit upon the dry bones. Ezekiel: 37: “bone came to bone.” It gathers together the scattered bones, of perfect old man Adam,3 and knits them into one body again in Christ, whereby a man is become again a living soul.

The third consideration is concerning the exercise of this love which is twofold, inward or outward. The outward hath been handled in the former preface of this discourse. For unfolding the other we must take in our way that maxim of philosophy simile simili gaudet, or like will to like [Latin]; for as it is things which are turned with disaffection to each other, the ground of it is from a dissimilitude arising from the contrary or dif fer ent nature of

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4. The story of Jonathan and David is told in 1 Samuel 19 ff. 5. Naomi was Ruth’s mother- in- law; when

Ruth’s husband died, she refused to leave Naomi (Ruth 1.16).

the things themselves; for the ground of love is an apprehension of some resemblance in things loved to that which affects it. This is the cause why the Lord loves the creature, so far as it hath any of His image in it; He loves His elect because they are like Himself, He beholds them in His beloved son. So a mother loves her child, because she thoroughly conceives a resem- blance of herself in it. Thus it is between the members of Christ. Each dis- cerns, by the work of the spirit, his own image and resemblance in another, and therefore cannot but love him as he loves himself. Now when the soul, which is of a sociable nature, "nds anything like to itself, it is like Adam when Eve was brought to him. She must have it one with herself. This is desh of my desh (saith the soul) and bone of my bone. She conceives a great delight in it, therefore she desires nearness and familiarity with it. She hath a great propensity to do it good and receives such content in it, as fearing the miscarriage of her beloved she bestows it in the inmost closet of her heart. She will not endure that it shall want any good which she can give it. If by occasion she be withdrawn from the com pany of it, she is still looking towards the place where she left her beloved. If she heard it groan, she is with it presently. If she "nd it sad and disconsolate, she sighs and moans with it. She hath no such joy as to see her beloved merry and thriving. If she see it wronged, she cannot hear it without passion. She sets no bounds to her affections, nor hath any thought of reward. She "nds recompense enough in the exercise of her love towards it. We may see this acted to life in Jonathan and David.4 Jonathan, a valiant man endowed with the spirit of Christ, so soon as he discovers the same spirit in David, had presently his heart knit to him by this lineament of love, so that it is said he loved him as his own soul. He takes so great plea sure in him, that he strips himself to adorn his beloved. His father’s kingdom was not so precious to him as his beloved David. David shall have it with all his heart, himself desires no more but that he may be near to him to rejoice in his good. He chooseth to converse with him in the wilderness even to the hazard of his own life, rather than with the great courtiers in his father’s palace. When he sees danger towards him, he spares neither rare pains nor peril to direct it. When injury was offered his beloved David, he would not bear it, though from his own father; and when they must part for a season only, they thought their hearts would have broke for sorrow, had not their affections found vent by abundance of tears. Other instances might be brought to show the nature of this affection, as of Ruth and Naomi,5 and many others; but this truth is cleared enough.

If any shall object that it is not pos si ble that love should be bred or upheld without hope of requital, it is granted; but that is not our cause; for this love is always under reward. It never gives, but it always receives with advantage; "rst, in regard that among the members of the same body, love and affec- tion are reciprocal in a most equal and sweet kind of commerce. Secondly, in regard of the plea sure and content that the exercise of love carries with it, as we may see in the natu ral body. The mouth is at all the pains to receive and mince the food which serves for the nourishment of all the other parts of the body, yet it hath no cause to complain; for "rst the other parts send

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6. The Waldenses took their name from Pater Valdes, an early French reformer of the Church. They still survive as a religious community. 7. Solent amare is closer to the Latin than is

ament, the suggestion of the original editor, Samuel Eliot Morison. Aeneas Sylvius Piccolo- mini (1405–1464), historian and scholar, became Pope Pius II.

back by several passages a due proportion of the same nourishment, in a better form for the strengthening and comforting the mouth. Secondly, the labor of the mouth is accompanied with such plea sure and content as far exceeds the pains it takes. So is it in all the labor of love among Christians. The party loving, reaps love again, as was showed before, which the soul covets more than all the wealth in the world. Thirdly: Nothing yields more plea sure and content to the soul than when it "nds that which it may love fervently, for to love and live beloved is the soul’s paradise, both here and in heaven. In the state of wedlock there be many comforts to bear out the trou- bles of that condition; but let such as have tried the most, say if there be any sweetness in that condition comparable to the exercise of mutual love.

From former considerations arise these conclusions. First: This love among Christians is a real thing, not imaginary. Secondly: This love is as absolutely necessary to the being of the body of

Christ, as the sinews and other ligaments of a natu ral body are to the being of that body.

Thirdly: This love is a divine, spiritual nature free, active, strong, coura- geous, permanent; undervaluing all things beneath its proper object; and of all the graces, this makes us nearer to resemble the virtues of our Heavenly Father.

Fourthly: It rests in the love and welfare of its beloved. For the full and certain knowledge of these truths concerning the nature, use, and excellency of this grace, that which the Holy Ghost hath left recorded, 1 Corinthians: 13, may give full satisfaction, which is needful for every true member of this lovely body of the Lord Jesus, to work upon their hearts by prayer, medita- tion, continual exercise at least of the special [induence] of His grace, till Christ be formed in them and they in Him, all in each other, knit together by this bond of love.

II

It rests now to make some application of this discourse by the pres ent design, which gave the occasion of writing of it. Herein are four things to be pro- pounded: "rst the persons, secondly the work, thirdly the end, fourthly the means.

First, For the persons. We are a com pany professing ourselves fellow mem- bers of Christ, in which re spect only though we were absent from each other many miles, and had our employments as far distant, yet we ought to account ourselves knit together by this bond of love, and live in the exercise of it, if we would have comfort of our being in Christ. This was notorious in the practice of the Christians in former times; as is testi"ed of the Waldenses,6 from the mouth of one of the adversaries Æneas Sylvius “mutuo [ament]7 penè antequam norunt,” they used to love any of their own religion even before they were acquainted with them.

Secondly, for the work we have in hand. It is by a mutual consent, through a special overvaluing providence and a more than an ordinary approbation

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8. “But Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, took either of them his censor, and put "re therein, and put incense thereupon, and offered strange "re before the Lord, which he had not commanded them. Therefore a "re went out from the Lord, and devoured them: so they died before the Lord” (Leviticus 10.1–2). Winthrop’s point is that the chosen people are often pun- ished more severely than unbelievers. 9. I.e., made an agreement with him on parts of

a contract. Saul was instructed to destroy the Amalekites and all they possessed, but he spared their sheep and oxen, and in doing so disobeyed God’s commandment and was rejected as king (1 Samuel 15.1–34). 1. A legal contract. The Israelites entered into a covenant with God in which he promised to pro- tect them if they kept his word and were faithful to him.

of the Churches of Christ, to seek out a place of cohabitation and consort- ship under a due form of government both civil and ecclesiastical. In such cases as this, the care of the public must oversway all private re spects, by which, not only conscience, but mere civil policy, doth bind us. For it is a true rule that par tic u lar estates cannot subsist in the ruin of the public.

Thirdly. The end is to improve our lives to do more ser vice to the Lord; the comfort and increase of the body of Christ whereof we are members; that ourselves and posterity may be the better preserved from the common corruptions of this evil world, to serve the Lord and work out our salvation under the power and purity of His holy ordinances.

Fourthly, for the means whereby this must be effected. They are twofold, a conformity with the work and end we aim at. These we see are extraordi- nary, therefore we must not content ourselves with usual ordinary means. Whatsoever we did or ought to have done when we lived in Eng land, the same must we do, and more also, where we go. That which the most in their churches maintain as a truth in profession only, we must bring into familiar and constant practice, as in this duty of love. We must love brotherly with- out dissimulation; we must love one another with a pure heart fervently. We must bear one another’s burthens. We must not look only on our own things, but also on the things of our brethren, neither must we think that the Lord will bear with such failings at our hands as he doth from those among whom we have lived; and that for three reasons.

First, In regard of the more near bond of marriage between Him and us, where-in He hath taken us to be His after a most strict and peculiar man- ner, which will make Him the more jealous of our love and obedience. So He tells the people of Israel, you only have I known of all the families of the earth, therefore will I punish you for your transgressions. Secondly, because the Lord will be sancti"ed in them that come near Him. We know that there were many that corrupted the ser vice of the Lord, some setting up altars before His own, others offering both strange "re and strange sacri"ces also; yet there came no "re from heaven or other sudden judgment upon them, as did upon Nadab and Abihu,8 who yet we may think did not sin presump- tuously. Thirdly. When God gives a special commission He looks to have it strictly observed in every article. When He gave Saul a commission to destroy Amaleck, He indented with him upon certain articles,9 and because he failed in one of the least, and that upon a fair pretense, it lost him the kingdom which should have been his reward if he had observed his commission.

Thus stands the cause between God and us. We are entered into cove- nant1 with Him for this work. We have taken out a commission, the Lord hath given us leave to draw our own articles. We have professed to enter- prise these actions, upon these and those ends, we have hereupon besought Him of favor and blessing. Now if the Lord shall please to hear us, and bring

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2. An eighth- century- b.c.e. prophet who, in the Book of Micah, speaks continually of God’s judgment and the need to hope for salvation: “He hath showed thee, O man, what is good, and what the Lord requireth of thee: surely to do justly, and to love mercy, and to humble thyself, to walk with thy God” (Micah 6.8). 3. “Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill, cannot be hid. Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a can- dlestick, and it giveth light unto all that are in the house” (Matthew 5.14–15). 4. “Behold, I have set before thee this day life and good, death and evil, In that I command thee this day, to love the Lord thy God, to walk in his ways, and to keep his commandment, and his ordi- nances, and his laws, that thou mayest live, and be

multiplied, and that the Lord thy God may bless thee in the land, whither thou goest to possess it. But if thine heart turn away, so that thou wilt not obey, but shalt be seduced and worship other gods, and serve them, I pronounce unto you this day, that ye shall surely perish, ye shall not prolong your days in the land, whither thou passest over Jordan to possess it. I call heaven and earth to rec- ord this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live, By loving the Lord thy God, by obeying his voice, and by cleaving unto him: for he is thy life, and the length of thy days, that thou mayest dwell in the land which the Lord sware unto thy fathers, Abra- ham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give them” (Deuteron- omy 30.15–20).

us in peace to the place we desire, then hath He rati"ed this covenant and sealed our commission, [and] will expect a strict per for mance of the arti- cles contained in it; but if we shall neglect the observation of these articles which are the ends we have propounded, and, dissembling with our God, shall fall to embrace this pres ent world and prosecute our carnal intentions, seeking great things for ourselves and our posterity, the Lord will surely break out in wrath against us; be revenged of such a perjured people and make us know the price of the breach of such a covenant.

Now the only way to avoid this shipwreck, and to provide for our poster- ity, is to follow the counsel of Micah,2 to do justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with our God. For this end, we must be knit together in this work as one man. We must entertain each other in brotherly affection, we must be willing to abridge ourselves of our superduities, for the supply of other’s necessities. We must uphold a familiar commerce together in all meekness, gentleness, patience and liberality. We must delight in each other, make other’s conditions our own, rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suf- fer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, our community as members of the same body. So shall we keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. The Lord will be our God, and delight to dwell among us as His own people, and will command a blessing upon us in all our ways, so that we shall see much more of His wisdom, power, goodness and truth, than formerly we have been acquainted with. We shall "nd that the God of Israel is among us, when ten of us shall be able to resist a thousand of our enemies; when He shall make us a praise and glory that men shall say of succeeding plantations, “the Lord make it like that of New England.” For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill.3 The eyes of all people are upon us, so that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to with- draw His pres ent help from us, we shall be made a story and a by- word through the world. We shall open the mouths of enemies to speak evil of the ways of God, and all professors for God’s sake. We shall shame the faces of many of God’s worthy servants, and cause their prayers to be turned into curses upon us till we be consumed out of the good land whither we are agoing.

And to shut up this discourse with that exhortation of Moses, that faith- ful servant of the Lord, in his last farewell to Israel, Deuteronomy 30.4 Beloved, there is now set before us life and good, death and evil, in that we

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1. The text is from The Journal of John Win- throp, 1630–1649 (1996), abridged ed., edited by Richard S. Dunn and Laetitia Yeandle. 2. Winthrop saw Mount Desert Island, Maine. The En glish named it after a British admiral, Sir Robert Mansell (1573–1656); the French explorer Samuel de Champlain (see the “First Encounters” cluster, above) named it Île des

Monts Déserts. 3. Air. 4. Several. 5. The Reverend John Wilson (1588–1667), then beginning a pastorate that lasted thirty- seven years. 6. Winthrop.

are commanded this day to love the Lord our God, and to love one another, to walk in His ways and to keep His commandments and His ordinance and His laws, and the articles of our covenant with Him, that we may live and be multiplied, and that our Lord our God may bless us in the land whither we go to possess it. But if our hearts shall turn away, so that we will not obey, but shall be seduced, and worship other gods, our pleasures and prof- its, and serve them; it is propounded unto us this day, we shall surely perish out of the good land whither we pass over this vast sea to possess it.

Therefore let us choose life, that we and our seed

may live by obeying His voice and cleaving to Him,

for He is our life and our prosperity.

1630 1838

From The Journal of John Winthrop1

[Sighting Mount Desert Island, Maine]

[June 8, 1630] About 3 in the after noon we had sight of land to the NW about 15 leagues, which we supposed was the Isles of Monhegen, but it proved Mount Mansell.2 Then we tacked and stood WSW. We had now fair sunshine weather and so pleasant a sweet ether3 as did much refresh us, and there came a smell off the shore like the smell of a garden. There came a wild pigeon into our ship and another small land bird.

[Overcoming Satan]

[July 5, 1632] At Watertown there was (in the view of divers4 witnesses) a great combat between a mouse and a snake, and after a long "ght the mouse prevailed and killed the snake. The pastor of Boston, Mr. Wilson,5 a very sin- cere, holy man, hearing of it gave this interpretation: that the snake was the devil, the mouse was a poor contemptible people which God had brought hither, which should overcome Satan here and dispossess him of his kingdom. Upon the same occasion he told the governor6 that before he was resolved to come into this country he dreamed he was here, and that he saw a church arise out of the earth, which grew up and became a marvelous goodly church.

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7. Roger Williams, a Puritan theologian who had emigrated to New Eng land in 1630 and expressed radical views on Church reform and colonialism (his writing is excerpted later in this volume). 8. In 1633, Edward Winslow was governor in Plymouth (see the “First Encounters” cluster). 9. Arranged to make a "nancial settlement. 1. Summoned to appear.

2. Abbreviation for videlicet: namely (Latin). 3. John Endecott (c. 1588–1665): governor to the Mas sa chu setts Bay Colony’s advance settlement in Salem from 1628 until Winthrop arrived. 4. Not further identi"ed. 5. John Hays (1594–1654). Winthrop was elected governor again in 1637.

[Charges Made against Roger Williams]

[December 27, 1633] The governor and assistants met at Boston and took into consideration a treatise which Mr. Williams7 (then of Salem) had sent to them, and which he had formerly written to the governor8 and Council of Plymouth, wherein among other things he disputes their right to the lands they possessed here, and concluded that claiming by the King’s grant they could have no title, nor other wise except they compounded9 with the natives. For this, taking advice with some of the most judicious ministers (who much condemned Mr. Williams’s error and presumption), they gave order that he should be convented1 at the next Court to be censured, etc. There were 3 passages chiedy whereat they were much offended: 1. For that he chargeth King James to have told a solemn public lie, because in his patent he blessed God that he was the "rst Christian prince that had discovered this land; 2. For that he chargeth him and others with blasphemy for calling Eu rope Christendom or the Christian world; 3. For that he did personally apply to our pres ent King Charles these 3 places in the Revelation, viz.2

Mr. Endecott3 being absent, the governor wrote to him to let him know what was done, and withal added divers arguments to confute the said errors, wishing him to deal with Mr. Williams to retract the same, etc. Whereunto he returned a very modest and discreet answer. Mr. Williams also wrote very submissively, professing his intent to have been only to have written for the private satisfaction of the governor, etc., of Plymouth without any purpose to have stirred any further in it if the governor here had not required a copy of him; withal offering his book or any part of it to be burnt, etc. So it was left and nothing done in it.

[A Smallpox Epidemic]

[January 20, 1634] Hall and the 2 others4 who went to Connecticut Novem- ber 3 came now home, having lost themselves and endured much misery. They informed us that the smallpox was gone as far as any Indian planta- tion was known to the W[est], and much people dead of it, by reason whereof they could have no trade. At Narragansett by the Indians’ report there died 700, but beyond Pascataquack none to the E[ast].

[A Warrant for Roger Williams]

[January 11, 1636] The governor5 and assistants met at Boston to consult about Mr. Williams, for that they were credibly informed that notwithstand- ing the injunction laid upon him (upon the liberty granted him to stay till the spring) not to go about to draw others to his opinions, he did use to enter- tain com pany in his house and to preach to them, even of such points as he

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6. Misguided teachings. Providence Plantation, the colony Williams started in Rhode Island, received its patent in 1644. 7. I.e., returned to Boston by ship. 8. John Underhill (c. 1597–1672), soldier who or ga nized the Mas sa chu setts Bay Colony mili- tia. “Pinnace”: a small, light vessel, usually with two masts. 9. Anne Hutchinson (1591–1643) held the radi- cal view that the “ justi"ed”— those elected or chosen for salvation by God— were joined in per- sonal union with God and superior to those lacking such inspiration. 1. I.e., that proper moral conduct is no sign of justi"cation.

2. I.e., that good works are not a sign of God’s favor; justi"cation is by faith alone and has noth- ing to do with either piety or worldly success. 3. John Wheelwright (c. 1592–1679) had been a vicar near Alford, Eng land, where Anne Hutchinson and her husband, William, lived before emigrating to Amer i ca. Wheelwright was removed from his ministry, prob ably because he refused to sign an oath of loyalty to the Church of Eng land, and went to Boston in 1636. 4. Satis"ed their doubts about him. The sermons of the Reverend John Cotton (1584–1652), a prom- inent Boston theologian, were admired by the Hutchinsons, which worried his fellow ministers.

had been censured for; and it was agreed to send him into Eng land by a ship then ready to depart. The reason was because he had drawn above 20 per- sons to his opinion and they were intended to erect a plantation about the Narragansett Bay, from whence the infection6 would easily spread into these churches (the people being many of them much taken with the apprehen- sion of his godliness). Whereupon a warrant was sent to him to come pres- ently to Boston to be shipped,7 etc. He returned answer (and divers of Salem came with it) that he could not come without hazard of his life, etc., where- upon a pinnace was sent with commission to Captain Underhill,8 etc., to apprehend him and carry him aboard the ship (which then rode at Nantas- ket), but when they came at his house they found he had been gone 3 days before, but whither they could not learn.

[The Case of Anne Hutchinson]

[October 21, 1636] * * * One Mrs. Hutchinson, a member of the church of Boston, a woman of a ready wit and bold spirit, brought over with her two dangerous errors: 1. That the person of the Holy Ghost dwells in a justi"ed person.9 2. That no sancti"cation can help to evidence to us our justi"cation.1— From these two grew many branches; as, 1, Our union with the Holy Ghost, so as a Christian remains dead to every spiritual action, and hath no gifts nor graces, other than such as are in hypocrites, nor any other sancti"cation but the Holy Ghost Himself.2

There joined with her in these opinions a brother of hers, one Mr. Wheel- wright, a silenced minister sometimes in Eng land.3

[Rev. John Cotton Explains His Position]

[October 25, 1636] The other ministers in the bay, hearing of these things, came to Boston at the time of a general court, and entered conference in private with them, to the end they might know the certainty of these things; that if need were, they might write to the church of Boston about them, to prevent (if it were pos si ble) the dangers which seemed hereby to hang over that and the rest of the churches. At this conference, Mr. Cotton was pres- ent, and gave satisfaction4 to them, so as he agreed with them all in the point of sancti"cation, and so did Mr. Wheelwright; so as they all did hold that sancti"cation did help to evidence justi"cation. The same he had delivered plainly in public, divers times; but, for the indwelling of the person of the

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5. To qualify her statements. 6. Seventy- "ve people were disarmed, a severe

punishment for this time and place. 7. Near Boston.

Holy Ghost, he held that still, but not union with the person of the Holy Ghost, so as to amount to a personal union.

[Charges Brought against Mrs. Hutchinson and Others]

[November 1, 1637] * * * There was great hope that the late general assem- bly would have had some good effect in pacifying the trou bles and dissen- sions about matters of religion; but it fell out other wise. For though Mr. Wheelwright and those of his party had been clearly confuted and con- founded in the assembly, yet they persisted in their opinions, and were as busy in nourishing contentions (the principal of them) as before. * * *

The court also sent for Mrs. Hutchinson, and charged her with divers matters, as her keeping two public lectures every week in her house, whereto sixty or eighty persons did usually resort, and for reproaching most of the ministers (viz., all except Mr. Cotton) for not preaching a covenant of free grace, and that they had not the seal of the spirit, nor were able ministers of the New Testament; which were clearly proved against her, though she sought to shift it off.5 And after many speeches to and fro, at last she was so full as she could not contain, but vented her revelations; amongst which this was one, that she had it revealed to her that she should come into New Eng land, and she should here be persecuted, and that God would ruin us and our pos- terity and the whole state for the same. So the court proceeded and ban- ished her; but because it was winter, they committed her to a private house where she was well provided, and her own friends and the elders permitted to go to her, but none else.

The court called also Capt. Underhill and some "ve or six more of the principal, whose hands were to the said petition; and because they stood to justify it they were disfranchised, and such as had public places were put from them.

The court also ordered, that the rest, who had subscribed the petition, (and would not acknowledge their fault, and which near twenty of them did,) and some others, who had been chief stirrers in these contentions, etc., should be disarmed.6 This troubled some of them very much, especially because they were to bring them in themselves; but at last, when they saw no remedy, they obeyed.

All the proceedings of this court against these persons were set down at large, with the reasons and other observations, and were sent into Eng land to be published there, to the end that our godly friends might not be dis- couraged from coming to us, etc. * * *

[Mrs. Hutchinson Admonished Further]

[March 1638] While Mrs. Hutchinson continued at Roxbury,7 divers of the elders and others resorted to her, and "nding her to persist in maintaining those gross errors beforementioned and many others to the number of thirty or thereabout, some of them wrote to the church at Boston, offering to make proof of the same before the church, etc., [March] 15; whereupon she was

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8. Winthrop. Newtown was soon thereafter renamed Cambridge. 9. I.e., from the beginning. Orthodox believers hold that the soul is always immortal. 1. Her son Edward Hutchinson and her son- in- law Thomas Savage, both of whom moved to

Rhode Island. 2. John Davenport (1597–1670), a minister. 3. Because Anne Hutchinson’s beliefs threat- ened both civil and ecclesiastical law. 4. Warned.

called, (the magistrates being desired to give her license to come,) and the lecture was appointed to begin at ten. (The general court being then at New- town, the governor8 and the trea surer, being members of Boston, were per- mitted to come down, but the rest of the court continued at Newtown.) When she appeared, the errors were read to her. The "rst was that the souls of men are mortal by generation,9 but after made immortal by Christ’s pur- chase. This she maintained a long time; but at length she was so clearly convinced by reason and scripture, and the whole church agreeing that suf- "cient had been delivered for her conviction, that she yielded she had been in an error. Then they proceeded to three other errors: That there was no resurrection of these bodies, and that these bodies were not united to Christ, but every person united hath a new body, etc. These were also clearly con- futed, but yet she held her own; so as the church (all but two of her sons)1 agreed she should be admonished, and because her sons would not agree to it, they were admonished also.

Mr. Cotton pronounced the sentence of admonition with great solemnity, and with much zeal and detestation of her errors and pride of spirit. The assembly continued till eight at night, and all did acknowledge the special presence of God’s spirit therein; and she was appointed to appear again the next lecture day. * * *

[Mrs. Hutchinson Banished]

[March 22, 1638] Mrs. Hutchinson appeared again; (she had been licensed by the court, in regard she had given hope of her repentance, to be at Mr. Cot- ton’s house that both he and Mr. Davenport2 might have the more opportu- nity to deal with her;) and the articles being again read to her, and her answer required, she delivered it in writing, wherein she made a retractation of near all, but with such explanations and circumstances as gave no satisfaction to the church; so as she was required to speak further to them. Then she declared that it was just with God to leave her to herself, as He had done, for her slighting His ordinances, both magistracy and ministry;3 and con- fessed that what she had spoken against the magistrates at the court (by way of revelation) was rash and ungrounded; and desired the church to pray for her. This gave the church good hope of her repentance; but when she was examined about some particulars, as that she had denied inherent righ- teousness, etc., she af"rmed that it was never her judgment; and though it was proved by many testimonies that she had been of that judgment, and so had persisted and maintained it by argument against divers, yet she impu- dently persisted in her af"rmation, to the astonishment of all the assembly. So that after much time and many arguments had been spent to bring her to see her sin, but all in vain, the church with one consent cast her out. Some moved to have her admonished4 once more; but, it being for manifest evil in matter of conversation, it was agreed other wise; and for that reason also the

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5. I.e., read in public by John Wilson. 6. Cast out of the congregation. 7. William Hutchinson and several others laid out plans for the town of Portsmouth, Rhode Island. 8. Aquidneck Island, Rhode Island.

9. Dr. John Clarke came to Boston in 1637 and was disarmed, having been declared an antino- mian (believer that faith alone, not morality, is necessary for salvation). 1. In a heavy discharge from the womb (Latin). 2. Swim bladders.

sentence was denounced by the pastor,5 matter of manners belonging prop- erly to his place.

After she was excommunicated,6 her spirits which seemed before to be somewhat dejected revived again, and she gloried in her sufferings, saying that it was the greatest happiness next to Christ that ever befell her. Indeed it was a happy day to the churches of Christ here, and to many poor souls who had been seduced by her, who by what they heard and saw that day were (through the grace of God) brought off quite from her errors, and settled again in the truth.

At this time the good providence of God so disposed, divers of the con- gregation (being the chief men of the party, her husband being one) were gone to Narragansett to seek out a new place for plantation, and taking lik- ing of one in Plymouth patent, they went thither to have it granted them; but the magistrates there, knowing their spirit, gave them a denial, but con- sented they might buy of the Indians an island in the Narragansett Bay.7

After two or three days the governor sent a warrant to Mrs. Hutchinson to depart this jurisdiction before the last of this month, according to the order of court, and for that end set her at liberty from her former constraint, so as she was not to go forth of her own house till her departure; and upon the 28th she went by water to her farm at the Mount, where she was to take water with Mr. Wheelwright’s wife and family to go to Pascataquack; but she changed her mind, and went by land to Providence, and so to the island in the Narragansett Bay which her husband and the rest of that sect had purchased of the Indians, and prepared with all speed to remove unto. For the court had ordered, that except they were gone with their families by such a time they should be summoned to the general court, etc.

[Mrs. Hutchinson Delivers a Child]

[September 1638] * * * Mrs. Hutchinson, being removed to the Isle of Aqui- day8 in the Narragansett Bay, after her time was ful"lled that she expected deliverance of a child, was delivered of a monstrous birth. Hereupon the governor wrote to Mr. Clarke,9 a physician and a preacher to those of the island, to know the certainty thereof, who returned him this answer: Mrs.  Hutchinson, six weeks before her delivery, perceived her body to be greatly distempered and her spirits failing and in that regard doubtful of life, she sent to me etc., and not long after (in immoderato "uore uterino)1 it was brought to light, and I was called to see it, where I beheld innumerable dis- tinct bodies in the form of a globe, not much unlike the swims2 of some "sh, so confusedly knit together by so many several strings (which I conceive were the beginning of veins and nerves) so that it was impossible either to number the small round pieces in every lump, much less to discern from whence every string did fetch its original, they were so snarled one within another. The small globes I likewise opened, and perceived the matter of them (setting

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3. Afterbirth. 4. Lectured. 5. After the death of her husband in 1642, Anne Hutchinson moved to Dutch territory: Pelham Bay, now a part of the Bronx in New York City. 6. Winthrop. The governor in 1645 was Thomas Dudley (1576–1653). The “ little speech” that fol-

lows is one of Winthrop’s most impor tant medita- tions on Christian liberty. Several residents of the town of Hingham argued that “words spoken against the General Court” had been unfairly used and hoped that Winthrop would be impeached for misusing his power as deputy. Winthrop was fully acquitted.

aside the membrane in which it was involved) to be partly wind and partly water. The governor, not satis"ed with this relation, spake after with the said Mr. Clarke, who thus cleared all the doubts: The lumps were twenty- six or twenty- seven, distinct and not joined together; there came no secundine3 after them; six of them were as great as his "st, and the smallest about the bigness of the top of his thumb. The globes were round things, included in the lumps, about the bigness of a small Indian bean, and like the pearl in a man’s eye. The two lumps which differed from the rest were like liver or con- gealed blood, and had no small globes in them, as the rest had.

[An Earthquake at Aquiday]

[March 16, 1639] * * * At Aquiday also Mrs. Hutchinson exercised4 pub- licly, and she and her party (some three or four families) would have no mag- istracy. She sent also an admonition to the church of Boston; but the elders would not read it publicly because she was excommunicated. By these exam- ples we may see how dangerous it is to slight the censures of the church; for it was apparent that God had given them up to strange delusions. . . . Mrs. Hutchinson and some of her adherents happened to be at prayer when the earthquake was at Aquiday, etc., and the house being shaken thereby, they were persuaded (and boasted of it) that the Holy Ghost did shake it in coming down upon them, as He did upon the apostles.

[The Death of Mrs. Hutchinson and Others]

[September 1643] The Indians near the Dutch, having killed 15 men, began to set upon the En glish who dwelt under the Dutch. They came to Mrs. Hutchinson’s5 in way of friendly neighborhood, as they had been accus- tomed, and taking their opportunity, killed her and Mr. Collins, her son- in- law (who had been kept prisoner in Boston, as is before related), and all her family, and such [other] families as were at home; in all sixteen, and put their cattle into their houses and there burnt them. These people had cast off ordi- nances and churches, and now at last their own people, and for larger accommodation had subjected themselves to the Dutch and dwelt scatter- ingly near a mile asunder. * * *

[Winthrop’s Speech to the General Court]

[July 3, 1645] * * * Then was the deputy governor6 desired by the Court to go up and take his place again upon the bench, which he did accordingly. And the Court being about to rise, he desired leave for a little speech which was to this effect.

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7. Termination. 8. Miriam was the sister of Moses and Aaron. “And the Lord said unto Moses, If her father had but spit in her face, should she not be ashamed

seven days? let her be shut out from the camp seven days, and after that let her be received in again” (Numbers 12.14). 9. Format agreement.

I suppose something may be expected from me upon this charge that is befallen me, which moves me to speak now to you. Yet I intend not to inter- meddle in the proceedings of the Court, or with any of the persons con- cerned therein. Only I bless God that I see an issue7 of this troublesome business. I also acknowledge the justice of the Court, and for mine own part I am well satis"ed. I was publicly charged, and I am publicly and legally acquitted, which is all I did expect or desire. And though this be suf"cient for my justi"cation before men, yet not so before the Lord, who hath seen so much amiss in any dispensations (and even in this affair) as calls me to be humbled. For to be publicly and criminally charged in this Court is matter of humiliation (and I desire to make a right use of it), notwithstanding I be thus acquitted. If her father had spit in her face (saith the Lord concerning Miriam), should she not have been ashamed 7 days?8 Shame had lain upon her what ever the occasion had been. I am unwilling to stay you from your urgent affairs, yet give me leave (upon this special occasion) to speak a little more to this assembly. It may be of some good use to inform and rectify the judgments of some of the people, and may prevent such distempers as have arisen amongst us. The great questions that have troubled the country are about the authority of the magistrates and the liberty of the people. It is your- selves who have called us to this of"ce, and being called by you we have our authority from God in way of an ordinance, such as hath the image of God eminently stamped upon it, the contempt and violation whereof hath been vindicated with examples of divine vengeance. I entreat you to consider that when you choose magistrates you take them from among yourselves, men subject to like passions as you are. Therefore, when you see in"rmities in us, you should redect upon your own, and that would make you bear the more with us, and not be severe censurers of the failings of your magistrates when you have continual experience of the like in"rmities in yourselves and others. We account him a good servant who breaks not his covenant.9 The covenant between you and us is the oath you have taken of us, which is to this purpose, that we shall govern you and judge your causes by the rules of God’s laws and our own, according to our best skill. When you agree with a workman to build you a ship or house, etc., he undertakes as well for his skill as for his faithfulness, for it is his profession, and you pay him for both. But when you call one to be a magistrate, he doth not profess nor undertake to have suf"cient skill for that of"ce, nor can you furnish him with gifts, etc. Therefore you must run the hazard of his skill and ability. But if he fail in faithfulness, which by his oath he is bound unto, that he must answer for. If it fall out that the case be clear to common apprehension and the rule clear also, if he transgress here the error is not in the skill but in the evil of the will; it must be required of him. But if the case be doubtful, or the rule doubtful, to men of such understanding and parts as your magistrates are, if your magistrates should err here yourselves must bear it.

For the other point concerning liberty, I observe a great mistake in the country about that. There is a twofold liberty: natu ral (I mean as our nature

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1. Because we are fallen and subject to death. 2. We are all the worse for license (Latin). From the ancient Roman dramatist Terence, Heauton Timorumenos (The Self- Tormentor) 3.1.74. 3. “Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled

again with the yoke of bondage” (Galatians 5.1). 4. “For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matthew 11.30). “And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her hus- band” (Revelation 21.2).

is now corrupt),1 and civil or federal. The "rst is common to man with beasts and other creatures. By this, man as he stands in relation to man simply, hath liberty to do what he list. It is a liberty to evil as well as to good. This liberty is incompatible and inconsistent with authority, and cannot endure the least restraint of the most just authority. The exercise and maintaining of this liberty makes men grow more evil, and in time to be worse than brute beasts, omnes sumus licentia deteriores.2 This is that great enemy of truth and peace, that wild beast which all the ordinances of God are bent against, to restrain and subdue it.

The other kind of liberty I call civil or federal. It may also be termed moral, in reference to the covenant between God and man in the moral law, and the politic covenants and constitutions amongst men themselves. This lib- erty is the proper end and object of authority and cannot subsist without it, and it is a liberty to that only which is good, just, and honest. This liberty you are to stand for, with the hazard not only of your goods but of your lives, if need be. Whatsoever crosseth this is not authority, but a distemper thereof. This liberty is maintained and exercised in a way of subjection to authority. It is of the same kind of liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free.3 The woman’s own choice makes such a man her husband, yet being so chosen he is her lord and she is to be subject to him, yet in a way of liberty, not of bondage, and a true wife accounts her subjection her honor and freedom, and would not think her condition safe and free but in her subjection to her husband’s authority. Such is the liberty of the church under the authority of Christ her King and husband. His yoke is so easy and sweet to her as a bride’s ornaments,4 and if through frowardness or wantonness, etc., she shake it off at any time, she is at no rest in her spirit until she take it up again. And whether her Lord smiles upon her and embraceth her in His arms, or whether He frowns, or rebukes, or smites her, she apprehends the sweetness of His love in all and is refreshed, supported, and instructed by every such dispen- sation of His authority over her. On the other side, you know who they are that complain of this yoke and say: let us break their bands, etc.; we will not have this man to rule over us. Even so, brethren, it will be between you and your magistrates. If you stand for your natu ral corrupt liberties, and will do what is good in your own eyes, you will not endure the least weight of author- ity, but will murmur and oppose and be always striving to shake off that yoke. But if you will be satis"ed to enjoy such civil and lawful liberties, such as Christ allows you, then will you quietly and cheerfully submit unto that authority which is set over you in all the administrations of it for your good; wherein if we fail at any time, we hope we shall be willing (by God’s assis- tance) to hearken to good advice from any of you, or in any other way of God. So shall your liberties be preserved in upholding the honor and power of authority amongst you.

The deputy governor having ended his speech, the Court arose, and the magistrates and deputies retired to attend their other affairs. * * *

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[A Daughter Returned]

[July 1646] * * * A daughter of Mrs. Hutchinson was carried away by the Indians near the Dutch, when her mother and others were killed by them; and upon the peace concluded between the Dutch and the same Indians, she was returned to the Dutch governor, who restored her to her friends here. She was about 8 years old when she was taken, and continued with them about 4 years, and she had forgot her own language, and all her friends, and was loath to have come from the Indians.

1630–49 1825–26

THE BAY PSALM BOOK

T he Protestant Reformation sparked a revival of psalm- and hymn- singing that held impor tant consequences for English- language poetry. Church music had previously been reserved for choirs and other selective ensembles, rather than prac- ticed by the full congregation. The shift in the language of worship from Latin to the vernacular allowed for a more demo cratic participation in the singing of sacred songs. Protestant denominations differed as to who should be allowed to sing— every one all the time, or smaller groups in speci"c contexts— and what kinds of works should be performed in religious settings. This second question hinged on issues of source and of translation. Many of the leading New Eng land ministers believed that only psalms, which were drawn directly from the Bible, and not hymns on religious themes with no speci"c scriptural source, should be permitted in worship ser vices. They also wanted the psalms to redect the original Hebrew as closely as pos si ble.

When the "rst printing press arrived in Cambridge, Mas sa chu setts, in 1638, the ministers in the area took the opportunity to produce their own psalm book. Two years later they issued what has been famous ever since as the "rst book printed in the En glish colonies: The Whole Book of Psalms Faithfully Translated into En glish Meter (1640), familiarly known today as the Bay Psalm Book. The translators, whose individual efforts have never been fully identi"ed, strug gled with some knotty issues. The Reverend John Cotton, a leading theologian, stressed in his preface to the 1640 volume that the translators had not “taken liberty or poetical license to depart from the true and proper sense of David’s word.” (David, the second king of ancient Israel, was traditionally considered the author of the biblical Book of Psalms.) At the same time, Cotton reassured the public that “as it can be no just offence to any good conscience to sing David’s Hebrew songs in En glish words,” it ought to be equally unobjectionable to employ En glish metrical forms in transla- tions of the psalms. Purity was desirable, but so were comprehensibility and tune- fulness. The psalms were performed a capella, often using a system called “lining out,” where a leader sang a phrase and the congregation repeated it. This method enabled church members who could not read, or who could not afford a psalter, to participate in the song. The tunes sometimes used to accompany the words were mostly of common origin and simple form, enhancing the earnest, self- restrained beauty of the per for mance.

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1. The texts are from The Bay Psalm Book: A Facsimile Reprint of the First Edition of 1640 (1956). The numbers in the left margin corre-

spond to the Bible verses. 2. Think (of).

A comparison of one of the most familiar psalms as it appears in the Bay Psalm Book and in the King James Bible shows how the rough Puritan translation lends itself to vocal per for mance in a way that its Anglican counterpart does not. Here is part of Psalm 23 from the Bay Psalm Book:

For me a table thou hast spread, In presence of my foes; Thou dost anoint my head with oil, My cup it overdows.

Here is that same part of Psalm 23, from the King James Bible:

Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.

Worshipers in the New Eng land colonies and abroad embraced the Bay Psalm Book, which was revised several times and widely reprinted. However, the book has always had detractors. In 1829, in the "rst impor tant anthology of American poetry, the editor Samuel Kettell called the versi"cation of the Bay volume “harsh and unmusical to the last degree.” But the simple lines in the sturdy En glish of the Puri- tan preachers, whether read aloud or sung, evince an energy that is missing in more polished versions. The rough lines were designed to connect the reader to God, and their awkwardness was a means to an end.

Both versions of the psalms induenced American poetry. Echoes of the King James Bible translations of the psalms occur in, for example, Walt Whitman’s free verse. The more metrical versions of the Bay Psalm Book induenced the writings of Anne Bradstreet and resonate in Emily Dickinson’s poems about God and belief.

From The Bay Psalm Book1

Psalm 2

1 Why rage the Heathen furiously? Muse2 vain things people do; 2 Kings of the earth do set themselves, Princes consult also: With one consent against the Lord, 5 And his anointed one. 3 Let us asunder break their bands, Their cords be from us thrown. 4 Who sits in heav’n shall laugh; the Lord Will mock them; then will he 10 5 Speak to them in his ire, and wrath; And vex them suddenly. 6 But I anointed have my King Upon the holy hill 7 Of Zion: The established 15 Counsel declare I will. God spoke to me, thou art my Son:

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3. Inheritance. 4. Shards, fragments. 5. Wrathful. 6. I.e., fail to be saved. 7. Trust.

1. Sky. 2. Temporary place of worship. 3. Established. 4. From his. 5. Range.

This day I thee begot. 8 Ask thou of me, and I will give The Heathen for thy lot:3 20 And of the earth thou shalt possess The utmost coasts abroad. 9 Thou shalt them break as potter’s sherds4 And crush with iron rod. 10 And now ye Kings be wise, be learn’d 25 Ye judges of th’earth (Hear!). 11 Serve ye the Lord with reverence, Rejoice in him with fear. 12 Kiss ye the Son, lest he be wroth,5 And ye fall in the way.6 30 When his wrath quickly burns, oh blest Are all that on him stay.7

Psalm 19

to the chief musician, a psalm of david

1 The heavens do declare The majesty of God: Also the "rmament1 shows forth His handi work abroad. 2 Day speaks to day, knowledge 5 Night hath to night declar’d. 3 There neither speech nor language is, Where their voice is not heard. 4 Through all the earth their line Is gone forth, and unto 10 The utmost end of all the world, Their speeches reach also: A Tabernacle2 he In them pitched3 for the Sun, 5 Who bridegroom- like from’s4 chamber goes 15 Glad giants- race to run. 6 From heaven’s utmost end, His course and compassing;5 To ends of it, and from the heat Thereof is hid nothing. 20

(2)

7 The Lord’s law perfect is, The soul converting back: God’s testimony faithful is,

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6. The Lord’s judgments (verse 9). 7. An instance in which sense is interrupted by poor proofreading and the need to force rhymes (know/thou). The revised edition of 1651 has

“And from presumptuous sins also / Keep thou thy servant free.” 8.  I.e., do not let those presumptuous sins (or sins of pride) have power over me.

Makes wise who wisdom lack. 8 The statutes of the Lord, 25 Are right, and glad the heart: The Lord’s commandment is pure, Light doth to eyes impart. 9 Jehovah’s fear is clean, And doth endure forever: 30 The judgments of the Lord are true, And righ teous altogether. 10 Than gold, than much "ne gold, More to be prized are, Than honey, and the honeycomb, 35 Sweeter they are by far. 11 Also thy servant is Admonished from hence: And in the keeping of the same6 Is a full recompense. 40 12 Who can his errors know? From secret faults cleanse me. 13 And from presumptuous sins, let thou Kept back thy servant be:7 Let them not bear the rule 45 In me,8 and then shall I Be perfect and shall cleansed be From much iniquity. 14 Let the words of my mouth, And the thoughts of my heart, 50 Be pleasing with thee, Lord, my rock, Who my redeemer art.

Psalm 23

a psalm of david

1 The Lord to me a shepherd is, Want therefore shall not I, 2 He in the folds of tender grass, Doth cause me down to lie: To waters calm me gently leads 5 3 Restore my soul doth He: He doth in paths of righ teousness: For His name’s sake lead me. 4 Yea, though in valley of death’s shade I walk, none ill I’ll fear: 10 Because Thou art with me, Thy rod And staff my comfort are. 5 For me a table thou hast spread,

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In presence of my foes: Thou dost anoint my head with oil, 15 My cup it overdows. 6 Goodness and mercy surely shall All my days follow me: And in the Lord’s house I shall dwell So long as days shall be. 20

Psalm 100

a psalm of praise

1 Make ye a joyful sounding noise Unto Jehovah, all the earth: 2 Serve ye Jehovah with gladness: Before His presence come with mirth. 3 Know, that Jehovah He is God, 5 Who hath us formed, it is He, And not ourselves: His own people And sheep of His pasture are we. 4 Enter into His gates with praise, Into His courts with thankfulness 10 Make ye confession unto Him And His name rev er ent ly bless. 5 Because Jehovah He is good, For evermore is His mercy: And unto generations all 15 Continue doth His verity.

another [version] of the same

1 Make ye a joyful noise unto Jehovah all the earth: 2 Serve ye Jehovah with gladness: Before Him come with mirth. 3 Know, that Jehovah He is God, 5 Not we ourselves, but He Hath made us: His people, and sheep Of His pasture are we. 4 O enter ye into His gates With praise, and thankfulness 10 Into His courts: confess to Him, And His name do ye bless. 5 Because Jehovah He is good, His bounteous mercy Is everlasting: and His truth 15 Is to eternity.

1640

203

ROGER WILLIAMS c. 1603–1683

R oger Williams is the preeminent "gure associated with freedom of conscience and religious liberty in early New Eng land. Banished from the Mas sa chu setts Bay Colony in 1636 for spreading opinions that the colony’s leadership considered dangerous, Williams went on to build Rhode Island into a model of inclusive self- government and a haven for religious minorities, opening it to dissenting refugees from the Puritan colonies and to the "rst Jewish and Quaker settlers in British North Amer i ca. Williams also developed close relationships with indigenous lead- ers in the region, living at times in Native communities and mediating condicts with other En glish colonies. In 1643, Williams produced A Key into the Language of Amer i ca, a dictionary and cultural guide to the Algonquian peoples of New Eng land that offers comparative social commentary, including redections on the moral short- comings of the En glish.

Williams was also a brilliant polemicist. A prominent genre in Williams’s day, polemic involves a vigorous attack on an individual or an idea. Polemical writings on colonization and on religion contributed importantly to the rise of popu lar print cul- ture in Eng land. In controversial pamphlets such as “The Bloody Tenet of Persecu- tion” (1644) and “The Hireling Ministry None of Christ’s” (1652), Williams took strongly worded positions challenging many of the foundational assumptions of his Puritan neighbors. And in “Christenings Make Not Christians” (1645), Williams the- orized about the formation of a truly consent- based religious community, which would not be restricted by race or cultural heritage, compelled by physical vio lence, or shaped by intellectual and emotional coercion. This work reveals a mind preoccu- pied with fundamental questions about human consciousness and will. In his life as in his writings, Williams pursued his understanding of liberty of conscience with striking integrity.

The son of a London merchant, Williams took an unexpected turn in 1617 when he met Sir Edward Coke, a leading legal thinker whose advocacy for the common law tradition and challenge to the authority of the king fundamentally shaped the era and transformed En glish law. Prob ably impressed by Williams’s sharp intellect, Coke helped the young man get a "rst- rate education. After graduating from Cambridge University in 1627 and taking holy orders, Williams became involved in Church reform. Years later, he said that Archbishop William Laud, the preeminent clergyman in the Church of Eng land under King Charles I, “pursued” him “out of this land.” Laud required all clerics to pledge an oath of loyalty to the Church of Eng land, sparking a crisis for dissenting clergy and contributing to the “ Great Migra- tion” of Puritans to New Eng land.

In 1631 Williams arrived in Boston with his wife, Mary. He was at "rst a valued addition to the new colony at Mas sa chu setts Bay, which badly needed men of his intellectual capabilities and educational attainments. Soon, however, Williams refused to minister at the prestigious First Church of Boston because he “durst not of"ciate to an unseparated people”— that is, a church that retained af"liations with the Anglican orthodoxy. This episode gave Mas sa chu setts authorities their "rst taste of Williams’s deep re sis tance to the established Church and his enormous con"dence in matters of belief. Over the next four years, he ministered to the com- munities at Plymouth and then Salem. In 1635, while he was at Salem, the Bay

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Colony leaders accused him of holding “new and dangerous opinions against the authority of magistrates.”

Williams had infuriated and threatened the leaders of Mas sa chu setts by taking four positions, any one of which seriously undermined the theocracy that was at the heart of the Bay Colony government. He denied, "rst, that Mas sa chu setts had a proper title to its land, arguing that King Charles I could not bestow a title to something that belonged to the Natives. Second, he argued that no unregenerate person (that is, anyone who had not been “born again”) could be required either to pray or to swear a legal oath; third, that Mas sa chu setts Bay Colony ministers, who had persuaded the king of Eng land that they wished to remain part of the Church of Eng land, should not only separate from the Church but repent that they had ever served it; and last, that civil authority was limited to civil matters and that magis- trates had no jurisdiction over the soul. Williams wanted to create a barrier between Church and state to prevent Chris tian ity from being contaminated by worldly inter- ests. The position was disturbing to Separatist and non- Separatist alike, and it made Williams unwelcome in both Plymouth and Boston.

In his journal for January 1636, John Winthrop notes that when the governor of Mas sa chu setts and his assistants met to reconsider the charge of divisiveness against Williams, they agreed that they could not wait until spring to banish him from the commonwealth. His opinions were dangerous and spreading, so they needed to send him back to Eng land immediately. When they went to Salem to “carry him aboard the ship,” however, they found he “had been gone 3 days before, but whither they could not learn.” Williams had ded Mas sa chu setts for Rhode Island— reportedly with Winthrop’s aid. He found shelter there with the Narragansett Indi- ans and, from that time until his death almost "fty years later, Williams and Providence Plantation were synonymous with the spirit of religious liberty. In 1663, Rhode Island received a royal charter from King Charles II in which freedom of conscience was guaranteed, giving the colony an exceptional status in the English- speaking world.

The Mas sa chu setts authorities did not cite Williams’s attitude toward the Ameri- can Indians in their charges against him, but in this regard as well, his position was antithetical to their own. From the beginning, he wrote, his “soul’s desire was to do the natives good, and to that end to have their language.” Although he was not interested in assimilating into their culture, Williams presented American Indians as no better or worse than the En glish “rogues” who dealt with them, and stressed that they possessed complex cultures with their own forms of civility. Williams knew that A Key into the Language of Amer i ca would prove useful to those who wished to convert Native Americans to Chris tian ity. He was not primarily interested in such efforts, and in “Christenings Make Not Christians” he argued against a line of thinking that promoted missionary work, which was ostensibly a central reason for the foundation of the Puritan colonies. Anyone not regenerate, Williams argued, was outside the people of God, and to refer to the American Indians as “heathen” was “improperly sinful” and “unchristianly.”

He was greatly disappointed when, despite his efforts to befriend the Narragan- setts, they burned the settlements at both Warwick and Providence during King Philip’s War. By the time Williams died, the future looked grave for the Narragan- setts. The great tribe would never recover from the losses incurred during that war. Despite this failure, Williams’s efforts to separate religious and civil life, and to promote peaceful interactions among dif fer ent groups, produced a lasting legacy. The Rhode Island charter offered a model that would be taken up in the U.S. Bill of Rights, which mandates the separation of Church and state and guarantees free- dom of speech, of the press, and of assembly.

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1. The text is from the "rst edition (1643), reprinted by the Rhode Island and Providence Tercentenary Committee (1936).

2. Shaped. 3. Place of origin. 4. Aboriginal.

From A Key into the Language of Amer i ca1

To My Dear and Well- Beloved Friends and Countrymen, in Old and New Eng land

I pres ent you with a key; I have not heard of the like, yet framed,2 since it pleased God to bring that mighty continent of Amer i ca to light. Others of my countrymen have often, and excellently, and lately written of the coun- try (and none that I know beyond the goodness and worth of it).

This key, re spects the native language of it, and happily may unlock some rarities concerning the natives themselves, not yet discovered.

I drew the materials in a rude lump at sea, as a private help to my own memory, that I might not, by my pres ent absence, lightly lose what I had so dearly bought in some few years hardship, and charges among the barbar- ians. Yet being reminded by some, what pity it were to bury those materials in my grave at land or sea; and withal, remembering how oft I have been impor- tuned by worthy friends of all sorts, to afford them some helps this way. I resolved (by the assistance of The Most High) to cast those materials into this key, pleasant and pro"table for all, but especially for my friends residing in those parts.

A little key may open a box, where lies a bunch of keys. With this I have entered into the secrets of those countries, wherever

En glish dwell about two hundred miles, between the French and Dutch plan- tations; for want of this, I know what gross mistakes myself and others have run into.

There is a mixture of this language north and south, from the place of my abode, about six hundred miles; yet within the two hundred miles (afore- mentioned) their dialects do exceedingly differ; yet not so, but (within that compass) a man may, by this help, converse with thousands of natives all over the country: and by such converse it may please the Father of Mercies to spread civility, (and in His own most holy season) Chris tian ity. For one candle will light ten thousand, and it may please God to bless a little leaven to season the mighty lump of those peoples and territories.

It is expected, that having had so much converse with these natives, I should write some little of them.

Concerning them (a little to gratify expectation) I shall touch upon four heads:

First, by what names they are distinguished. Secondly, their original3 and descent. Thirdly, their religion, manners, customs, etc. Fourthly, that great point of their conversion. To the "rst, their names are of two sorts: First, those of the En glish giving: as natives, savages, Indians, wildmen (so

the Dutch call them wilden), Abergeny4 men, pagans, barbarians, heathen. Secondly, their names which they give themselves.

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5. After the great dood described in the Bible, only Noah and his family remained. 6. I.e., in Chapter XXI of Williams’s Key, which

has thirty- two chapters. 7. Mongolia.

I cannot observe that they ever had (before the coming of the En glish, French or Dutch amongst them) any names to difference themselves from strangers, for they knew none; but two sorts of names they had, and have amongst themselves:

First, general, belonging to all natives, as Nínnuock, Ninnimissinnûwock, Eniskeetomparwog, which signi"es Men, Folk, or People.

Secondly, par tic u lar names, peculiar to several nations, of them amongst themselves, as Nanhiggan uck, Massachusêuck, Cawasumsêuck, Cowwes uck, Quintikóock, Qunnipi uck, Pequttóog, etc.

They have often asked me, why we call them Indians, natives, etc. And understanding the reason, they will call themselves Indians, in opposition to En glish, etc.

For the second head proposed, their original and descent: From Adam and Noah5 that they spring, it is granted on all hands. But for their later descent, and whence they came into those parts, it seems

as hard to "nd, as to "nd the wellhead of some fresh stream, which running many miles out of the country to the salt ocean, hath met with many mix- ing streams by the way. They say themselves, that they have sprung and grown up in that very place, like the very trees of the wilderness.

They say that their great god Kautántowwìt created those parts, as I observed in the chapter of their religion.6 They have no clothes, books, nor letters, and conceive their fathers never had; and therefore they are easily persuaded that the God that made En glishmen is a greater God, because He hath so richly endowed the En glish above themselves. But when they hear that about sixteen hundred years ago, Eng land and the inhabitants thereof were like unto themselves, and since have received from God, clothes, books, etc. they are greatly affected with a secret hope concerning themselves.

Wise and judicious men, with whom I have discoursed, maintain their original to be northward from Tartaria:7 and at my now taking ship, at the Dutch plantation, it pleased the Dutch Governor, (in some discourse with me about the natives), to draw their line from Iceland, because the name Sackmakan (the name for an Indian prince, about the Dutch) is the name for a prince in Iceland.

Other opinions I could number up: under favor I shall pres ent (not mine opinion, but) my observations to the judgment of the wise.

First, others (and myself) have conceived some of their words to hold af"n- ity with the Hebrew.

Secondly, they constantly anoint their heads as the Jews did. Thirdly, they give dowries for their wives, as the Jews did. Fourthly (and which I have not so observed amongst other nations as

amongst the Jews, and these:) they constantly separate their women (during the time of their monthly sickness) in a little house alone by themselves four or "ve days, and hold it an irreligious thing for either father or husband or any male to come near them.

They have often asked me if it be so with women of other nations, and whether they are so separated: and for their practice they plead nature and

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8.  I.e., the constellation known as Ursa Major ( Great Bear), the Big Dipper, or Charlemagne’s wagon (“wain”). 9. Asserted, proffered (with none of the modern

connotations of deceit). 1. Conversations. 2. Connecticut.

tradition. Yet again I have found a greater af"nity of their language with the Greek tongue.

2. As the Greeks and other nations, and ourselves call the seven stars (or Charles’ Wain, the Bear,)8 so do they Mosk or Paukunnawaw, the Bear.

3. They have many strange relations of one Wétucks, a man that wrought great miracles amongst them, and walking upon the waters, etc., with some kind of broken resemblance to the Son of God.

Lastly, it is famous that the Sowwest (Sowaniu) is the great subject of their discourse. From thence their traditions. There they say (at the southwest) is the court of their great god Kautántowwìt: at the southwest are their forefathers’ souls: to the southwest they go themselves when they die; from the southwest came their corn, and beans out of their great god Kautántow- wìt’s "eld: and indeed the further northward and westward from us their corn will not grow, but to the southward better and better. I dare not con- jecture in these uncertainties. I believe they are lost, and yet hope (in the Lord’s holy season) some of the wildest of them shall be found to share in the blood of the Son of God. To the third head, concerning their religion, customs, manners etc. I shall here say nothing, because in those 32 chap- ters of the whole book, I have briedy touched those of all sorts, from their birth to their burials, and have endeavored (as the nature of the work would give way) to bring some short observations and applications home to Eu rope from Amer i ca.

Therefore fourthly, to that great point of their conversion, so much to be longed for, and by all New- English so much pretended,9 and I hope in truth.

For myself I have uprightly labored to suit my endeavors to my pretenses: and of later times (out of desire to attain their language) I have run through va ri e ties of intercourses1 with them day and night, summer and winter, by land and sea, par tic u lar passages tending to this, I have related divers, in the chapter of their religion.

Many solemn discourses I have had with all sorts of nations of them, from one end of the country to another (so far as opportunity, and the little lan- guage I have could reach).

I know there is no small preparation in the hearts of multitudes of them. I know their many solemn confessions to myself, and one to another of their lost wandering conditions.

I know strong convictions upon the consciences of many of them, and their desires uttered that way.

I know not with how little knowledge and grace of Christ the Lord may save, and therefore, neither will despair, nor report much.

But since it hath pleased some of my worthy countrymen to mention (of late in print) Wequash, the Péquot captain, I shall be bold so far to second their relations, as to relate mine own hopes of him (though I dare not be so con"dent as others).

Two days before his death, as I passed up to Qunníhticut2 River, it pleased my worthy friend Mr. Fenwick, (whom I visited at his house in Saybrook Fort

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3. Came to the end of my talk. 4. I.e., until Judgment Day. 5. Japhet was the third son of Noah and, in some traditions, the progenitor of the Indo- European

race (see Genesis 9.18). 6. “For from the rising of the sun even unto the going down of the same my name shall be great among the Gentiles” (Malachi 1.11).

at the mouth of that river) to tell me that my old friend Wequash lay very sick. I desired to see him, and himself was pleased to be my guide two miles where Wequash lay.

Amongst other discourse concerning his sickness and death (in which he freely bequeathed his son to Mr. Fenwick) I closed3 with him concerning his soul: he told me that some two or three years before he had lodged at my house, where I acquainted him with the condition of all mankind, & his own in par tic u lar; how God created man and all things; how man fell from God, and of his pres ent enmity against God, and the wrath of God against him until repentance. Said he, “your words were never out of my heart to this pres ent;” and said he “me much pray to Jesus Christ.” I told him so did many En glish, French, and Dutch, who had never turned to God, nor loved Him. He replied in broken En glish: “Me so big naughty heart, me heart all one stone!” Savory expressions using to breathe from compunct and broken hearts, and a sense of inward hardness and unbrokenness [sic]. I had many discourses with him in his life, but this was the sum of our last parting until our General Meeting.4

Now, because this is the great inquiry of all men: what Indians have been converted? what have the En glish done in those parts? what hopes of the Indians receiving the knowledge of Christ?

And because to this question, some put an edge from the boast of the Jesu- its in Canada and Mary land, and especially from the wonderful conver- sions made by the Spaniards and Portugals in the West- Indies, besides what I have here written, as also, beside what I have observed in the chapter of their religion, I shall further pres ent you with a brief additional discourse concerning this great point, being comfortably persuaded that that Father of Spirits, who was graciously pleased to persuade Japhet (the Gentiles) to dwell in the tents of Shem (the Jews),5 will, in His holy season (I hope approaching), persuade these Gentiles of Amer i ca to partake of the mercies of Eu rope, and then shall be ful"lled what is written by the prophet Mala- chi,6 from the rising of the sun (in Eu rope) to the going down of the same (in Amer i ca), My name shall be great among the Gentiles. So I desire to hope and pray,

Your unworthy countryman, Roger Williams

Directions for the Use of the Language

1. A dictionary or grammar way I had consideration of, but purposely avoided, as not so accommodate to the bene"t of all, as I hope this form is.

2. A dialogue also I had thoughts of, but avoided for brevity’s sake, and yet (with no small pains) I have so framed every chapter and the matter of it, as I may call it an implicit dialogue.

3. It is framed chiedy after the Narragansett dialect, because most spoken in the country, and yet (with attending to the variation of peoples and dia- lects) it will be of great use in all parts of the country.

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7. Page. 8. Mostly.

9. Over. 1. Divide among.

4. What ever your occasion be, either of travel, discourse, trading etc. turn to the table which will direct you to the proper chapter.

5. Because the life of all language is in the pronunciation, I have been at the pains and charges to cause the accents, tones or sounds to be af"xed, (which some understand, according to the Greek language, acutes, graves, circumdexes) for example, in the second leaf7 in the word Ewò He: the sound or tone must not be put on E, but wò where the grave accent is.

In the same leaf, in the word Ascowequássin, the sound must not be on any of the syllables, but on quáss, where the acute or sharp sound is.

In the same leaf in the word Anspaumpmaûntam, the sound must not be on any other syllable but maûn, where the circumdex or long sounding accent is.

6. The En glish for every Indian word or phrase stands in a straight line directly against the Indian: yet sometimes there are two words for the same thing (for their language is exceeding copious, and they have "ve or six words sometimes for one thing) and then the En glish stands against them both: for example in the second leaf:

Cowáunckamish & Cuckqué na mish I pray your favor.

From An Help to the Native Language of that Part of Amer i ca Called New Eng land

from chapter i. of salutation

1. The courteous pagan shall condemn Uncourteous En glishmen, Who live like foxes, bears and wolves, Or lion in his den.

2. Let none sing blessings to their souls, 5 For that they courteous are: The wild barbarians with no more Than nature, go so far.

3. If nature’s sons both wild and tame, Humane and courteous be: 10 How ill becomes it Sons of God To want humanity?

from chapter ii. of eating and entertainment

1. Coarse bread and water’s most,8 their fare, O Eng land’s diet "ne; Thy cup runs ore9 with plenteous store Of wholesome beer and wine.

2. Sometimes God gives them Fish or Flesh, 5 Yet they’re content without; And what comes in, they part to1 friends And strangers round about.

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2. Also (archaic). 3. “And about the eleventh hour he [Christ] went out, and found others standing idle, and said unto them, ‘Why stand ye here all the day

idle?’ They said unto him, ‘ Because no man hath hired us.’ He said unto them, ‘Go ye also into the vineyard; and whatsoever is right, that shall ye receive’ ” (Matthew 20.6–7).

3. God’s providence is rich to his, Let none distrustful be; 10 In wilderness, in great distress, These ravens have fed me.

from chapter vi. of the family and business of the house

1. How busy are the sons of men? How full their heads and hands? What noise and tumults in our own, And eke2 in Pagan lands?

2. Yet I have found less noise, more peace 5 In wild Amer i ca, Where women quickly build the house, And quickly move away.

[3] En glish and Indians busy are, In parts of their abode: 10 Yet both stand idle, till God’s call Set them to work for God. Mat. 20.7.3

from chapter xi. of travel

1. God makes a path, provides a guide, And feeds in wilderness! His glorious name while breath remains, O that I may confess.

2. Lost many a time, I have had no guide, 5 No house, but hollow tree! In stormy winter night no "re, No food, no com pany:

3. In him I have found a house, a bed, A table, com pany: 10 No cup so bitter, but’s made sweet, When God shall sweet’ning be.

from chapter xviii. of the sea

[1] They see God’s won ders that are call’ed Through dreadful seas to pass, In tearing winds and roaring seas, And calms as smooth as glass.

[2] I have in Eu rope’s ships, oft been 5 In King of terror’s hand; When all have cried, “Now, now we sink,” Yet God brought safe to land.

[3] Alone ’mongst Indians in canoes, Sometime o’er- turn’d, I have been 10 Half inch from death, in ocean deep, God’s won ders I have seen.

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4. Conversation.

from chapter xxi. of religion, the soul, etc.

Manìt- manittó, wock. God, Gods. Obs. He that questions whether God made the world, the Indians will

teach him. I must acknowledge I have received in my converse4 with them many con"rmations of those two great points, Hebrews II. 6. viz:

1. That God is. 2. That He is a rewarder of all them that diligently seek Him. They will generally confess that God made all, but them in special,

although they deny not that En glishman’s God made En glishmen, and the heavens and earth there! yet their Gods made them and the heaven, and earth where they dwell.

Nummusquauna- múckqun manìt. God is angry with me? Obs. I have heard a poor Indian lamenting the loss of a child at break of

day, call up his wife and children, and all about him to lamentation, and with abundance of tears cry out! “O God thou hast taken away my child! thou art angry with me: O turn Thine anger from me, and spare the rest of my children.”

If they receive any good in hunting, "shing, harvest etc. they acknowl- edge God in it.

Yea, if it be but an ordinary accident, a fall, etc. they will say God was angry and did it, musquàntum manit God is angry. But herein is their misery:

First, they branch their God- head into many gods. Secondly, attribute it to creatures. First, many gods: they have given me the names of thirty seven which I

have, all which in their solemn worships they invocate, as: Kautántowwìt the great Southwest God, to whose house all souls go, and

from whom came their corn, beans, as they say.

Wompanand. The Eastern God. Chekesuwànd. The Western God. Wunnanaméanit. The Northern God. Sowwanànd. The Southern God. Wetuómanit. The House God.

Even as the papists have their he and she saint protectors as St. George, St. Patrick, St. Denis, Virgin Mary, etc.

Squáuanit. The Woman’s God. Muckquachuckquànd. The Children’s God.

Obs. I was once with a native dying of a wound, given him by some mur- derous En glish who robbed him and ran him through with a rapier, from whom in the heat of his wound, he at present escaped from them, but dying of his wound, they suffered death at New Plymouth, in New En gland, this native dying called much upon Muckquachuckquànd, which of other natives I understood (as they believed) had appeared to the dying young man, many years before, and bid him whenever he was in distress call upon him.

Secondly, as they have many of these fained deities; so worship they the creatures in whom they conceive doth rest some deity:

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Keesuckquànd. The Sun God. Nanepaûshat. The Moon God. Paumpágussit. The Sea. Yotáanit. The Fire God.

Supposing that deities be in these, etc.

* * * They have a modest religious persuasion not to disturb any man, either

themselves En glish, Dutch, or any in their conscience, and worship, and therefore say:

Aquiewopwarwash. Peace, hold your peace. Aquiewopwarwock. Peeyàuntam. He is at prayer. Peeyaúntamwock. They are praying. Cowwéwonck. The soul.

Derived from cowwene to sleep, because say they, it works and operates when the body sleeps. Míchachunck, the soul, in a higher notion which is of af"nity, with a word signifying a looking glass, or clear resemblance, so that it hath its name from a clear sight or discerning, which indeed seems very well to suit with the nature of it.

Wuhóck. The body Nohòck: cohòck My body, your body Awaunkeesitteoúwincohòck: Tunna- awwa commítchichunck-

kitonckquèan? Whether goes your soul when you

die? An. Sowánakitaúwaw. It goes to the southwest.

Obs. They believe that the souls of men and women go to the southwest, their great and good men and women to Kautántowwìt, his house, where they have hopes (as the Turks have of carnal joys). Murderers, thieves and liars, their souls (say they) wander restless abroad.

Now because this book (by God’s good providence) may come into the hand of many fearing God, who may also have many an opportunity of occa- sional discourse with some of these, their wild brethren and sisters, and may speak a word for their and our glorious Maker, which may also prove some preparatory mercy to their souls: I shall propose some proper expressions concerning the creation of the world, and man’s estate, and in par tic u lar theirs also, which from myself many hundreds of times, great numbers of them have heard with great delight, and great convictions; which, who knows (in God’s holy season), may rise to the exalting of the Lord Jesus Christ in their conversion, and salvation?

Nétop Kunnatótemous. Friend, I will ask you a question. Natótema: Speak on. Tocketunnântum? What think you? Awaun Keesiteoûwin

Kéesuck? Who made the heavens?

Aûke Wechêkom? The earth, the sea? Míttauke. The world.

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Some will answer Tattá, I cannot tell, some will answer Manittôwock, the gods.

Tà suóg Maníttôwock How many gods be there? Maunarog Mishaúnawock. Many, great many. Nétop machàge. Friend, not so. Parsuck narnt manìt. There is only one God. Cuppíssittone. You are mistaken. Cowauwaúnemun. You are out of the way.

A phrase which much pleaseth them, being proper for their wandering in the woods, and similitudes greatly please them.

Kukkakótemous, wâchit quáshouwe. I will tell you, presently. Kuttaunchemókous. I will tell you news. Paûsuck narnt manit kéesittin

keesuck, etc. One only God made the heavens

etc. Napannetashèmittan naugecautúm-

monab nshque. Five thousand years ago and

upwards. Nargom narnt wukkesittínnes-

wâme teâgun. He alone made all things.

Wuche mateâg. Out of nothing. Quttatashuchuckqún- nacau-

skeesitínnes wâme. In six days He made all things.

Nquittaqúnne. The "rst day He made the light. Wuckéesitin wequâi. Néesqunne. Wuckéesitin Keésuck.

The second day He made the "rmament

Shúckqunnewuckéesitin Arke kà wechêkom

The third day He made the earth and sea.

Yóqunne wuckkéesitin Nippauus kà Naneparshat.

The fourth day He made the sun and the moon.

Neenash- mamockíuwash wêquan- antíganash.

Two great lights.

Kà wáme anócksuck. And all the stars. Napannetashúckqunne Wuckéesit

tin pussuckseésuck wâme. The "fth day He made all the

fowl. Keesuckquíuke. In the air, or heavens. Ka wáme namarsuck. Wechekom-

míuke. And all the "sh in the sea.

Quttatashúkqunne wuckkeésittin penashímwock wamè.

The sixth day He made all the beasts of the "eld.

Wuttàke wuchè wuckeesittin pau- suck Enìn, or, Eneskéetomp.

Last of all he made one man.

Wuche mishquòck. Of red earth, Ka wesuonckgonnakaûnes Adam,

túppautea mishquòck. And called him Adam, or red

earth. Wuttàke wuchè, Câwit míshquock, Then afterward, while Adam, or

red earth, slept, Wuckaudnúmmenes manìt

peetar- gon wuche Adam. God took a rib from Adam, or red

earth. Kà wuchè peteaúgon. Wukkeesitín-

nes pausuck squàw. And of that rib he made one

woman. Kà pawtouwúnnes Adâmuck And brought her to Adam.

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5. “And to you who are troubled rest with us, when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels, in daming "re taking ven- geance on them that know not God, and that obey

not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Thes- salonians 1.7–8). 6. See 2 Samuel 14.26 and 2 Kings 9.30.

Nawônt Adam wuttúnnawaun nup- peteâgon ewò.

When Adam saw her, he said, “This is my bone.”

Enadatashúckqunne, aquêi, The seventh day He rested, Nagaû wuchè quttatashúckqune

anacaûsuock En glishmánuck. And, therefore, En glishmen work

six days. Enadatashuckqunnóckat tauba-

tarmwock. On the seventh day they praise

God. Obs. At this relation they are much satis"ed, with a reason why (as they

observe) the En glish and Dutch, etc., labor six days, and rest and worship the seventh.

Besides, they will say, we never heard of this before: and then will relate how they have it from their fathers, that Kautántowwìt made one man and woman of a stone, which disliking, he broke them in pieces, and made another man and woman of a tree, which were the fountains of all mankind.

* * * [1.] Two sorts of men shall naked stand

Before the burning ire 2 Thes. 1.85 Of him that shortly shall appear, In dreadful daming "re.

[2.] First, millions know not God, nor for His knowledge care to seek: Millions have knowledge store, but in Obedience are not meek.

[3.] If woe to Indians, where shall Turk, Where shall appear the Jew? O, where shall stand the Christian false? O blessed then the true.

* * * from chapter xxx. of their paintings

[1.] Truth is a native, naked beauty; but Lying inventions are but Indian paints; Dissembling hearts their beauty’s but a lie. Truth is the proper beauty of God’s saints.

2. Foul are the Indians’ hair and painted faces, 5 More foul such hair, such face in Israel. En gland so calls herself, yet there’s Absalom’s foul hair and face of Jezebel.6

[3.] Paints will not bide Christ’s washing dames of "re, Feigned inventions will not bide such storms: 10 O that we may prevent him, that betimes, Repentance tears may wash off all such forms.

1643

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1. The text used here was originally published in London in 1645 and was reprinted as no. 14  in the series Rhode Island Historical Tracts (1881). 2. In the archaic sense of not being Christian or Jewish. 3. “Typical” in the sense of symbolizing a “holy nation.” 4. 1 Peter 2.9 concerns the idea of a holy nation. “&c”: i.e., et cetera.

5. Williams says that all peoples have some mem- bers who are saved (i.e., “Christians”) and some who are not (i.e., “heathens”). He refers speci"- cally to 1 Corinthians 5:12: “For what have I to do to judge them also that are without? do not ye judge them that are within? But them that are without God judgeth. Therefore put away from among yourselves that wicked person.”

From Christenings Make Not Christians Or a Brief Discourse Concerning That Name Heathen,

Commonly Given to the Indians1

As Also Concerning that Great Point of Their Conversion

I shall "rst be humbly bold to inquire into the name heathen, which the En glish give them, & the Dutch approve and practise in their name hey- denen, signifying heathen or nations.

How oft have I heard both the En glish and Dutch (not only the civil, but the most debauched and profane) say, These heathen dogs, better kill a thou- sand of them than that we Christians should be endangered or troubled with them; better they were all cut off, & then we shall be no more troubled with them: They have spilt our Christian blood, the best way to make rid- dance of them, cut them all off, and so make way for Christians.

I shall therefore humbly entreat my country- men of all sorts to consider, that although men have used to apply this word heathen to the Indians that go naked, and have not heard of that one God, yet this word heathen is most improperly, sinfully, and unchristianly so used in this sence. The word hea- then signi"eth no more than nations or gentiles; so do our translations from the Hebrew כךים and the Greek in the Old and New Testaments pro- miscuously render these words gentiles, nations, heathens.

Why nations? Because the Jews being the only people and nation of God, esteemed (and that rightly) all other people, not only those that went naked, but the famous Babylonians, Caldeans, Medes, and Persians, Greeks and Romans, their stately cities and citizens, inferior [to] themselves, and not partakers of their glorious privileges, but ethnick,2 gentiles, heathen, or the nations of the world.

Now then we must inquire who are the people of God, his holy nation, since the coming of the Lord Jesus, and the rejection of his "rst typical holy nation, the Jews.3

It is confessed by all, that the Christians, the followers of Jesus, are now the only people of God, his holy nation, &c. ; 1. Pet. 2. 9.4

Who are then the nations, heathen, or gentiles, in opposition to this people of God? I answer, All people, civilized as well as uncivilized, even the most famous states, cities, and kingdoms of the world: For all must come within that distinction; 1. Cor. 5; within or without.5

* * * Now * * * for the hopes of conversion, and turning the people of Amer-

i ca unto God: There is no re spect of persons with him, for we are all the work of his hands; from the rising of the sun to the going down thereof, his

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6. I.e., physical resources such as churches and Bibles. “Respect”: consider. 7. Ephesians 4. 8. Williams condemns the Catholic practice of mass conversion of Natives in the Amer i cas. 9. I.e., the Christian sabbath. “The chapter . . . reli- gion”: i.e., Chapter XXI of Williams’s Key. 1. Religious ser vice.

2. Williams traces the shifting religious estab- lishments under a series of En glish monarchs, from King Henry VII (1457–1509; reigned 1485– 1509) to Queen Elizabeth I (1533–1603; reigned 1558–1603). 3. Williams alludes to the Parable of the Talents (Matthew 25.14–30).

name shall be great among the nations from the east and from the west, &c. If we re spect their sins, they are far short of Eu ro pean sinners: They neither abuse such corporal mercies,6 for they have them not; nor sin they against the Gospel light (which shines not amongst them), as the men of Eu rope do: And yet if they were greater sinners than they are, or greater sinners than the Eu ro pe ans, they are not the further from the great ocean of mercy in that re spect.

Lastly, they are intelligent, many very ingenuous, plain- hearted, inquisi- tive, and (as I said before) prepared with many convictions, &c.

Now * * * for the Catholics’ conversion, although I believe I may safely hope that God hath his in Rome, in Spain, yet if Antichrist be their false head (as most true it is) the body, faith, baptism, hope (opposite to the true; Ephes. 4.)7 are all false also; yea, consequently their preachings, conversions, salvations (leaving secret things to God) must all be of the same false nature likewise.

If the reports (yea, some of their own historians) be true, what monstrous and most inhumane conversions have they made; baptizing thousands, yea, ten thousands of the poor Natives, sometimes by wiles and subtle devices, sometimes by force compelling them to submit to that which they understood not, neither before nor after such their monstrous Christening of them.8 * * * For our New Eng land parts, I can speak uprightly and con"dently, I know it to have been easy for my self long ere this, to have brought many thousands of these Natives, yea, the whole country, to a far greater Antichris- tian conversion than ever was yet heard of in Amer i ca. I have reported some- thing in the chapter of their religion, how readily I could have brought the whole country to have observed one day in seven;9 I add to have received a baptisme (or washing), though it were in Rivers (as the "rst Christians and the Lord Jesus himself did), to have come to stated church meeting,1 main- tained priests and forms of prayer, and a whole form of Antichristian worship in life and death. Let none won der at this, for plausible persuasions in the mouths of those whom natu ral men esteem and love: for the power of prevail- ing forces and armies hath done this in all the nations (as men speak) of Christendom. Yea, what la men ta ble experience have we of the turnings and turnings of the body of this land in point of religion in [a] few years?

When Eng land was all popish under Henry the seventh, how easy is con- version wrought to half- papish half- Protestant under Henry the eighth?

From half- Protestanism half- popery under Henry the eighth, to absolute Protestanism under Edward the sixth: from absolute Protestation under Edward the sixth to absolute popery under Quen Mary, and from absolute popery under Queen Mary (just like the weathercock, with the breath of every prince), to absolute Protestanism under Queen Elizabeth &c.2

For all this, yet some may ask, why hath there been such a price in my hand not improved?3 Why have I not brought them to such a conversion as I speak of? I answer, Woe be to me if I call light darkness, or darkness light;

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sweet bitter, or bitter sweet; woe be to me if I call that conversion unto God which is indeed subversion of the souls of millions in Christendom, from one false worship to another, and the profanation of the holy name of God, his holy Son and blessed ordinances. Amer i ca (as Eu rope and all nations) lies dead in sin and trespasses: It is not a suit of crimson satin will make a dead man live; take off and change his crimson into white he is dead still; off with that, and shift him into cloth of gold, and from that to cloth of dia- monds, he is but a dead man still: For it is not a form, nor the change of one form into another, a "ner, and a "ner, and yet more "ne, that makes a man a convert; I meane such a convert as is acceptable to God in Jesus Christ, according to the vis i ble rule of his last will and testament. * * *

* * * * * * It must not be (it is not pos si ble it should be in truth) a conversion

of people to the worship of the Lord Jesus by force of arms and swords of steel: So indeed did Nebuchadnezzer deal with all the world; Dan. 3. So doth his antitype and successor the beast deal with all the Earth; Rev. 13. &c.

But so did never the Lord Jesus bring any unto his most pure worship, for he abhors (as all men, yea, the very Indians do) an unwilling spouse, and to enter into a forced bed: The will in worship, if true, is like a free vote, nec cogit, nec cogitur:4 Jesus Christ compels by the mighty persuasions of his messengers to come in, but other wise with earthly weapons he never did compel nor can be compelled.

The not discerning of this truth hath let out the blood of thousands in civil combustions in all ages; and made the whore5 drunk & the Earth drunk with the blood of the saints, and witnesses of Jesus.

1645

4. Neither does he compel, nor is he compelled (Latin).

5. The biblical whore of Babylon; here, the Roman Catholic Church.

ANNE BRADSTREET c. 1612–1672

A nne Bradstreet produced the "rst sustained body of poetry in British North Amer i ca. In Bradstreet’s day, many people wrote and read poetry for plea- sure, and poems were often included in prose works. (Consider John Smith’s writ- ings, Thomas Morton’s New En glish Canaan [1637], and Roger Williams’s A Key into the Language of Amer i ca [1643], which are excerpted above.) When Brad- street’s The Tenth Muse appeared in London in 1650, it became the "rst pub- lished volume of poems in En glish written by a resident of Amer i ca. It was widely read in Eng land and the colonies, notably by the New Eng land minister- poet Edward Taylor, who had a copy of the second edition of Bradstreet’s poems (1678) in his library.

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Bradstreet’s work continues to resonate with readers and writers. In the twentieth century, the American poets John Berryman, Susan Howe, and Adrienne Rich all wrote about Bradstreet and her work, inspired by her achievement. In her preface to the 1967 edition of Bradstreet’s writings, Rich captured the drama of Bradstreet’s life as a woman and a poet in the new British colonies: “To have written poems, the "rst good poems in Amer i ca, while rearing eight children, lying frequently sick, keeping house at the edge of wilderness, was to have managed a poet’s range and extension within con"nes as strict as any American poet has confronted.” These circumstances, Rich continued, “forced into concentration and permanence a gifted energy that might, in another context, have spent itself in other, less enduring, directions.”

Bradstreet’s social position helped mitigate the “con"nes” that Rich described, and her En glish education provided intellectual resources that fueled her achieve- ment. Her father, Thomas Dudley, man ag er of the country estate of the Puritan earl of Lincoln, enabled his daughter to receive an education superior to that of most young women of the time, including training in the classics. As a young girl, Bradstreet wrote poems to please her father. Her earliest surviving poems engage with such major literary works as Sir Walter Raleigh’s History of the World (1614), as well as the writings of the leading En glish poets Sir Philip Sidney and Edmund Spenser and the French Protestant poet Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas.

At sixteen she married Simon Bradstreet, a recent gradu ate of Cambridge Univer- sity, who worked with Thomas Dudley. She continued to write poetry after their marriage. Simon assisted in preparing the Mas sa chu setts Bay Com pany for its departure for Amer i ca, and in 1630 the Bradstreets and the Dudleys sailed with John Winthrop’s deet. Bradstreet writes that when she "rst “came into this coun- try” she “found a new world and new manners,” at which her “heart rose” in re sis- tance. “But after I was convinced it was the way of God, I submitted to it and joined the church at Boston.”

Bradstreet’s new circumstances posed many challenges and physical trials. As a child, she had endured a bout of rheumatic fever, which led to recurrent periods of severe fatigue. Even so, she eventually bore eight children. Simon’s travels and her family’s prominence doubtless placed demands on her as well. Her father served several terms as the Bay colony’s governor and held other public of"ces. Her husband, who was secretary to the com pany and later governor of the colony, was involved in numerous diplomatic missions that took him away from home, including an extended trip to Eng land in 1661. The frequent absence of her husband was one challenge among many. In 1666, she lost most of her worldly possessions when her house burned. She may also have lost manuscripts in the "re.

Like any good Puritan, Bradstreet routinely examined her conscience and wres- tled to make sense of events, such as the house "re, in relation to a divine plan. According to one of the “Meditations” Bradstreet wrote for her children, she was troubled many times about the truth of the Scriptures, she never saw any convinc- ing miracles, and she always wondered if the miracles she read about “ were feigned.” Eventually she came to believe that her eyes gave her the best evidence of God’s existence. She is the "rst in a long line of American poets who took their consola- tion not from theology but from, as she wrote, the “wondrous works, that I see, the vast frame of the heaven and the earth, the order of all things, night and day, sum- mer and winter, spring and autumn, the daily providing for this great house hold upon the earth, the preserving and directing of all to its proper end.”

Bradstreet’s poems circulated in manuscript until, without her knowledge, her brother- in- law John Woodbridge had them printed in London as The Tenth Muse, Lately Sprung Up in Amer i ca (1650). Bradstreet expressed her ambivalence about the print publication of her work in the poem “The Author to Her Book,” which she seems to have written in connection with a proposed second edition of The Tenth Muse. That volume was published posthumously, in Boston, as Several Poems Com-

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1. Humble. 2. Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas (1544– 1590), a French Protestant writer much admired by the Puritans. He was most famous as the author of The Divine Weeks, an epic poem recounting great moments in Christian history.

3. In Greek my thol ogy, the nine goddesses of the arts and sciences. “Fool”: i.e., like a fool. 4. Accord, harmony of sound. 5. The ancient Greek orator De mos the nes con- quered a speech defect.

piled with Great Wit and Learning (1678). This edition shows the growing induence of the Bay Psalm Book on Bradstreet’s prosody and diction, and it includes a number of new poems in a more lyrical or elegiac vein that contrasts with her early works on public and philosophical themes. The more intimate poems highlight her concern for her family and home and reveal the pleasures that she took in everyday life.

The following texts are from The Works of Anne Bradstreet (1967), edited by Jean- nine Hensley.

The Prologue

1

To sing of wars, of captains, and of kings, Of cities founded, commonwealths begun, For my mean1 pen are too superior things: Or how they all, or each their dates have run Let poets and historians set these forth, 5 My obscure lines shall not so dim their worth.

2

But when my wond’ring eyes and envious heart Great Bartas’2 sugared lines do but read o’er, Fool I do grudge the Muses3 did not part ’Twixt him and me that overduent store; 10 A Bartas can do what a Bartas will But simple I according to my skill.

3

From schoolboy’s tongue no rhet’ric we expect, Nor yet a sweet consort4 from broken strings, Nor perfect beauty where’s a main defect: 15 My foolish, broken, blemished Muse so sings, And this to mend, alas, no art is able, ’Cause nature made it so irreparable.

4

Nor can I, like that duent sweet tongued Greek, Who lisped at "rst, in future times speak plain.5 20 By art he gladly found what he did seek, A full requital of his striving pain. Art can do much, but this maxim’s most sure: A weak or wounded brain admits no cure.

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5

I am obnoxious to each carping tongue 25 Who says my hand a needle better "ts, A poet’s pen all scorn I should thus wrong, For such despite they cast on female wits: If what I do prove well, it won’t advance, They’ll say it’s stol’n, or else it was by chance. 30

6

But sure the antique Greeks were far more mild Else of our sex, why feigned they those nine And poesy made Calliope’s6 own child; So ’mongst the rest they placed the arts divine: But this weak knot they will full soon untie. 35 The Greeks did nought, but play the fools and lie.

7

Let Greeks be Greeks, and women what they are; Men have precedency and still excel, It is but vain unjustly to wage war; Men can do best, and women know it well 40 Preeminence in all and each is yours; Yet grant some small acknowl edgment of ours.

8

And oh ye high down quills7 that soar the skies, And ever with your prey still catch your praise, If e’er you deign these lowly lines your eyes 45 Give thyme or parsley wreath, I ask no bays;8 This mean and unre"ned ore of mine Will make your glist’ring gold but more to shine.

1650

In Honor of That High and Mighty Princess Queen Elizabeth1 of Happy Memory

The Proem2

Although, great Queen, thou now in silence lie, Yet thy loud herald Fame doth to the sky

6. The muse of epic poetry. 7. Pens. 8. Garlands of laurel, used to crown a poet.

1. Elizabeth I (1533–1603), queen of Eng land, ascended to the throne in 1558. 2. Prelude.

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3. Enraptures. 4. Loud. “Hecatombs”: sacri"cial offerings of one hundred beasts, made in ancient Greece. 5. An elaborate framework erected over a royal tomb, to which verses or epitaphs were attached. 6. William Camden (1551–1623) wrote Annales, translated in 1630 as The History of the Most Renowned and Victorious Princess Elizabeth. “No Phoenix pen”: perhaps a reference to the En glish poet Sir Philip Sidney (1554–1586), the subject of one of Bradstreet’s poems, but she may also be referring to any immortal poet’s work. (The phoenix is a mythological bird that dies in dames and rises from its ashes.) “Spenser’s”: Edmund Spenser (c. 1552–1599), author of The Faerie Queen (1590, 1596), whose title honors

Elizabeth. “Speed’s”: John Speed (1552?–1629), author of Historie of Great Britain (1611). 7. Reduce to manageable space. 8. Elizabeth I reigned for forty- four years. “Olympiads”: four- year intervals between Olym- pic games; in ancient Greece, dates were calcu- lated by them. 9. King (Latin). 1. Philip II (1527–1598) was Spain’s monarch when Queen Elizabeth’s navy defeated his “host” (the many ships of the Spanish Armada) in 1588. 2. A law of the Salian Franks that excluded women from succession to the French Crown. 3. Learned men. 4. I.e., never- "nished course. 5. I.e., Earth has a new face each spring.

Thy wondrous worth proclaim in every clime, And so hath vowed while there is world or time. So great’s thy glory and thine excellence, 5 The sound thereof rapts3 every human sense, That men account it no impiety, To say thou wert a deshly deity. Thousands bring offerings (though out of date) Thy world of honors to accumulate; 10 ’Mongst hundred hecatombs of roaring4 verse, Mine bleating stands before thy royal hearse.5 Thou never didst nor canst thou now disdain T’ accept the tribute of a loyal brain. Thy clemency did erst esteem as much 15 The acclamations of the poor as rich, Which makes me deem my rudeness is no wrong, Though I resound thy praises ’mongst the throng.

The Poem

No Phoenix pen, nor Spenser’s poetry, No Speed’s nor Camden’s learned history,6 20 Eliza’s works, wars, praise, can e’er compact;7 The world’s the theatre where she did act. No memories nor volumes can contain The ’leven Olympiads of her happy reign.8 Who was so good, so just, so learn’d, so wise, 25 From all the kings on earth she won the prize. Nor say I more than duly is her due, Millions will testify that this is true. She hath wiped off th’ aspersion of her sex, That women wisdom lack to play the rex.9 30 Spain’s monarch, says not so, nor yet his host; She taught them better manners, to their cost.1 The Salic law,2 in force now had not been, If France had ever hoped for such a queen. But can you, doctors,3 now this point dispute, 35 She’s argument enough to make you mute. Since "rst the Sun did run his ne’er run race,4 And earth had, once a year, a new old face,5

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6. Disturbances. 7. Don Antonio of Crato (1531–1595), who laid claim to the Portuguese throne. 8. Henri IV (1553–1610), Protestant king of France. 9. A reference to the Netherlands, whose national assembly was called the States General. Elizabeth I came to their aid in the wars against Spain. 1. Female warrior. 2. The Irish chieftain Hugh O’Neill (c. 1540– 1616), second earl of Tyrone, was defeated by En glish forces in 1601. 3. The Roman goddess of war, wisdom, chastity, the arts, and justice; in Greece, known as Pallas Athena. 4. Unknown land (Latin). 5. Robert Devereux (1566–1601), second earl of Essex, captured the Spanish port Cadiz, near the legendary Pillars of Hercules at Gibraltar, in 1596. Essex was the patron of the poet Edmund Spenser, who famously declared that the con-

queror’s name “through all Spain did thunder, / And Hercules’ two pillars, standing hear, / Did make to quake and fear.” “Drake”: the explorer Sir Francis Drake (1540?–1596) brought back to Eng land Spanish gold from Chile and Peru. 6. Late- ninth- century queen of Assyria, said to have built Babylon. 7. The tower of Babel was built to win fame for its builders (Genesis 11). 8. Tomyris was queen of the Massagetae, a Scythian tribe, whose armies defeated Cyrus the Great of Persia in 529 b.c.e. According to some accounts, Tomyris had Cyrus beheaded and his head thrown into a pot of blood because it was a "tting end to a bloodthirsty man. 9. In 1588, anticipating a Spanish invasion, Eliza- beth I reportedly addressed the En glish troops at Tilbury, on the north bank of the Thames River, dressed like the mythological female warriors known as Amazons and wearing a silver breast- plate.

Since time was time, and man unmanly man, Come show me such a Phoenix if you can. 40 Was ever people better ruled than hers? Was ever land more happy freed from stirs?6 Did ever wealth in Eng land more abound? Her victories in foreign coasts resound; Ships more invincible than Spain’s, her foe, 45 She wracked, she sacked, she sunk his Armado; Her stately troops advanced to Lisbon’s wall, Don Anthony7 in’s right there to install. She frankly helped Frank’s brave distressed king;8 The states united9 now her fame do sing. 50 She their protectrix was; they well do know Unto our dread virago,1 what they owe. Her nobles sacri"ced their noble blood, Nor men nor coin she spared to do them good. The rude untamed Irish, she did quell, 55 Before her picture the proud Tyrone fell.2 Had ever prince such counsellors as she? Herself Minerva3 caused them so to be. Such captains and such soldiers never seen, As were the subjects of our Pallas queen. 60 Her seamen through all straits the world did round; Terra incognita4 might know the sound. Her Drake came laden home with Spanish gold; Her Essex took Cadiz, their Herculean hold.5 But time would fail me, so my tongue would too, 65 To tell of half she did, or she could do. Semiramis6 to her is but obscure, More infamy than fame she did procure. She built her glory but on Babel’s walls,7 World’s won der for a while, but yet it falls. 70 Fierce Tomris (Cyrus’ headsman) Scythians’ queen,8 Had put her harness off, had she but seen Our Amazon in th’ Camp of Tilbury,9 Judging all valor and all majesty

1. The Latin poet Virgil (70–19 b.c.e.), in book 4 of his Aeneid, tells the tale of the fabled queen of Carthage and her self- immolation after she was abandoned by Aeneas. 2. In Greek, Cleopatra— the name of the famous, licentious Egyptian queen (69–30 b.c.e.)— means “glory to the father.” Bradstreet extends the meaning to “fatherland.” 3. Queen of Palmyra, Syria, famous for her wars of expansion and defeated by the Roman emperor Aurelian in 273. 4. The Hippocrene spring—on Mount Helicon, home of the Muses— was the source of poetic inspiration.

5. The Latin poets’ name for the sun god. 6. “And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the "rst heaven and the "rst earth were passed away; and there was no more sea” (Revelation 21.1). 7. Eng land. 8. Queen Elizabeth’s father, Henry VIII (1491– 1547), descended from the House of Lancaster, iden- ti"ed with the symbol of the red rose; her mother, Anne Boleyn (1507?–1536), was from the House of York, identi"ed with a white rose. The two houses were at war with each other for many years. Brad- street suggests that the damask rose of Elizabeth is formed by the intermingling of these two colors.

Within that princess to have residence, 75 And prostrate yielded to her excellence. Dido, "rst foundress of proud Carthage walls1 (Who living consummates her funerals), A great Eliza, but compared with ours, How vanisheth her glory, wealth, and powers. 80 Profuse, proud Cleopatra, whose wrong name,2 Instead of glory, proved her country’s shame, Of her what worth in stories to be seen, But that she was a rich Egyptian queen. Zenobya,3 potent empress of the East, 85 And of all these without compare the best, Whom none but great Aurelius could quell; Yet for our Queen is no "t parallel. She was a Phoenix queen, so shall she be, Her ashes not revived, more Phoenix she. 90 Her personal perfections, who would tell Must dip his pen in th’ Heleconian well,4 Which I may not, my pride doth but aspire To read what others write and so admire. Now say, have women worth? or have they none? 95 Or had they some, but with our Queen is’t gone? Nay masculines, you have thus taxed us long, But she, though dead, will vindicate our wrong. Let such as say our sex is void of reason, Know ’tis a slander now but once was treason. 100 But happy Eng land which had such a queen; Yea happy, happy, had those days still been. But happiness lies in a higher sphere, Then won der not Eliza moves not here. Full fraught with honor, riches and with days 105 She set, she set, like Titan5 in his rays. No more shall rise or set so glorious sun Until the heaven’s great revolution;6 If then new things their old forms shall retain, Eliza shall rule Albion7 once again. 110

Her Epitaph

Here sleeps the queen, this is the royal bed Of th’ damask rose, sprung from the white and red,8

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1. I.e., a founder of the Mas sa chu setts Bay Colony. 2. I.e., estate; position in life.

Whose sweet perfume "lls the all- "lling air. This rose is withered, once so lovely fair. On neither tree did grow such rose before, 115 The greater was our gain, our loss the more.

Another

Here lies the pride of queens, pattern of kings, So blaze it, Fame, here’s feathers for thy wings. Here lies the envied, yet unparalleled prince, Whose living virtues speak (though dead long since). 120 If many worlds, as that fantastic framed, In every one be her great glory famed.

1643 1650

To the Memory of My Dear and Ever Honored Father Thomas Dudley Esq. Who Deceased, July 31, 1653, and of His Age 77

By duty bound and not by custom led To celebrate the praises of the dead, My mournful mind, sore pressed, in trembling verse Pres ents my lamentations at his hearse, Who was my father, guide, instructor too, 5 To whom I ought what ever I could do. Nor is’t relation near my hand shall tie; For who more cause to boast his worth than I? Who heard or saw, observed or knew him better? Or who alive than I a greater debtor? 10 Let malice bite and envy gnaw its "ll, He was my father, and I’ll praise him still. Nor was his name or life led so obscure That pity might some trumpeters procure Who after death might make him falsely seem 15 Such as in life no man could justly deem. Well known and loved, where e’er he lived, by most Both in his native and in foreign coast, These to the world his merits could make known, So needs no testimonial from his own; 20 But now or never I must pay my sum; While others tell his worth, I’ll not be dumb. One of Found ers, thy1 him New Eng land know, Who stayed thy feeble sides when thou wast low, Who spent his state,2 his strength and years with care 25 That after- comers in them might have share. True patriot of this little commonweal, Who is’t can tax thee aught, but for thy zeal? Truth’s friend thou wert, to errors still a foe,

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3. Though. 4. Gray- haired.

5. Hammer or club. “Sectaries”: opposing believers. 6. Store house.

Which caused apostates to malign so. 30 Thy love to true religion e’er shall shine; My father’s God, be God of me and mine. Upon the earth he did not build his nest, But as a pilgrim, what he had, possessed. High thoughts he gave no harbor in his heart, 35 Nor honors puffed him up when he had part; Those titles loathed, which some too much do love, For truly his ambition lay above. His humble mind so loved humility, He left it to his race for legacy; 40 And oft and oft with speeches mild and wise Gave his in charge that jewel rich to prize. No ostentation seen in all his ways, An3 in the mean ones of our foolish days, Which all they have and more still set to view, 45 Their greatness may be judged by what they shew. His thoughts were more sublime, his actions wise, Such vanities he justly did despise. Nor won der ’twas, low things ne’er much did move For he a mansion had, prepared above, 50 For which he sighed and prayed and longed full sore He might be clothed upon for evermore. Oft spake of death, and with a smiling cheer He did exult his end was drawing near; Now fully ripe, as shock of wheat that’s grown, 55 Death as a sickle hath him timely mown, And in celestial barn hath housed him high, Where storms, nor show’rs, nor aught can damnify. His generation served, his labors cease; And to his fathers gathered is in peace. 60 Ah happy soul, ’mongst saints and angels blest, Who after all his toil is now at rest. His hoary4 head in righ teousness was found; As joy in heaven, on earth let praise resound. Forgotten never be his memory, 65 His blessing rest on his posterity; His pious footsteps, followed by his race, At last will bring us to that happy place Where we with joy each other’s face shall see, And parted more by death shall never be. 70

His Epitaph

Within this tomb a patriot lies That was both pious, just, and wise, To truth a shield, to right a wall, To sectaries a whip and maul,5 A magazine6 of history, 75

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1. The capital that yields interest. 2. “Stock” and “bond” include puns on “worth” and “contract,” respectively, in their emotional and "nancial senses.

3. The smallest pos si ble denomination. 1. Apollo, the Greek and Roman sun god. 2. Knew.

A prizer of good com pany, In manners pleasant and severe; The good him loved, the bad did fear, And when his time with years was spent, If some rejoiced, more did lament. 80

1867

To Her Father with Some Verses

Most truly honored, and as truly dear, If worth in me or aught I do appear, Who can of right better demand the same Than may your worthy self from whom it came? The principal1 might yield a greater sum, 5 Yet handled ill, amounts but to this crumb; My stock’s so small I know not how to pay, My bond2 remains in force unto this day; Yet for part payment take this simple mite,3 Where nothing’s to be had, kings lose their right. 10 Such is my debt I may not say forgive, But as I can, I’ll pay it while I live; Such is my bond, none can discharge but I, Yet paying is not paid until I die.

1678

Contemplations

1

Some time now past in the autumnal tide, When Phoebus1 wanted but one hour to bed, The trees all richly clad, yet void of pride, Were gilded o’er by his rich golden head. Their leaves and fruits seemed painted, but was true, 5 Of green, of red, of yellow, mixed hue; Rapt were my senses at this delectable view.

2

I wist2 not what to wish, yet sure thought I, If so much excellence abide below, How excellent is He that dwells on high, 10 Whose power and beauty by His works we know?

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3. Furnished, adorned. 4. The sun “is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, and rejoiceth as a strong man to run a

race” (Psalm 19.5). 5. I.e., as well as plant life. 6. I.e., I know the feeling of (the sun).

Sure He is goodness, wisdom, glory, light, That hath this under world so richly dight;3 More heaven than earth was here, no winter and no night.

3

Then on a stately oak I cast mine eye, 15 Whose rufding top the clouds seemed to aspire; How long since thou wast in thine infancy? Thy strength, and stature, more thy years admire, Hath hundred winters past since thou wast born? Or thousand since thou brakest thy shell of horn? 20 If so, all these as nought, eternity doth scorn.

4

Then higher on the glistering Sun I gazed, Whose beams was shaded by the leafy tree; The more I looked, the more I grew amazed, And softly said, “What glory’s like to thee?” 25 Soul of this world, this universe’s eye, No won der some made thee a deity; Had I not better known, alas, the same had I.

5

Thou as a bridegroom from thy chamber rushes, And as a strong man, joys to run a race;4 30 The morn doth usher thee with smiles and blushes; The Earth redects her glances in thy face. Birds, insects, animals with vegative,5 Thy heat from death and dullness doth revive, And in the darksome womb of fruitful nature dive. 35

6

Thy swift annual and diurnal course, Thy daily straight and yearly oblique path, Thy pleasing fervor and thy scorching force, All mortals here the feeling knowledge hath.6 Thy presence makes it day, thy absence night, 40 Quaternal seasons causéd by thy might: Hail creature, full of sweetness, beauty, and delight.

7

Art thou so full of glory that no eye Hath strength thy shining rays once to behold?

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7. Either. 8. Amazed. 9. Short lyric or narrative poems intended to be sung. 1. I.e., those who.

2. Apprehension, the pro cesses of thought. 3. Thought to have lived 969 years (Genesis 5.27). 4. Slave. For the story of Adam and Eve in Eden, where they ate the apple from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, see Genesis 1–3.

And is thy splendid throne erect so high, 45 As to approach it, can no earthly mold? How full of glory then must thy Creator be, Who gave this bright light luster unto thee? Admired, adored for ever, be that Majesty.

8

Silent alone, where none or7 saw, or heard, 50 In pathless paths I lead my wand’ring feet, My humble eyes to lofty skies I reared To sing some song, my mazéd8 Muse thought meet. My great Creator I would magnify, That nature had thus decked liberally; 55 But Ah, and Ah, again, my imbecility!

9

I heard the merry grasshopper then sing. The black- clad cricket bear a second part; They kept one tune and played on the same string, Seeming to glory in their little art. 60 Shall creatures abject thus their voices raise And in their kind resound their Maker’s praise Whilst I, as mute, can warble forth no higher lays?9

10

When pres ent times look back to ages past, And men in being fancy those1 are dead, 65 It makes things gone perpetually to last, And calls back months and years that long since ded. It makes a man more aged in conceit2 Than was Methuselah,3 or’s grandsire great, While of their persons and their acts his mind doth treat. 70

11

Sometimes in Eden fair he seems to be, Sees glorious Adam there made lord of all, Fancies the apple, dangle on the tree, That turned his sovereign to a naked thrall.4 Who like a miscreant’s driven from that place, 75 To get his bread with pain and sweat of face, A penalty imposed on his backsliding race.

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5. Fortune, circumstances. As an adult, Eve’s elder son, Cain, slew his brother, Abel (Genesis 4.8). 6. Satan. 7. Animals fattened for slaughter.

8.  I.e., at a (holy) tribunal; facing God’s judg- ment. 9. An unidenti"ed region east of Eden where Cain dwelled after slaying Abel (Genesis 4.16).

12

Here sits our grandame in retired place, And in her lap her bloody Cain new- born; The weeping imp oft looks her in the face, 80 Bewails his unknown hap5 and fate forlorn; His mother sighs to think of Paradise, And how she lost her bliss to be more wise, Believing him that was, and is, father of lies.6

13

Here Cain and Abel come to sacri"ce, 85 Fruits of the earth and fatlings7 each do bring. On Abel’s gift the "re descends from skies, But no such sign on false Cain’s offering; With sullen hateful looks he goes his ways, Hath thousand thoughts to end his brother’s days, 90 Upon whose blood his future good he hopes to raise.

14

There Abel keeps his sheep, no ill he thinks; His brother comes, then acts his fratricide: The virgin Earth of blood her "rst draught drinks, But since that time she often hath been cloyed. 95 The wretch with ghastly face and dreadful mind Thinks each he sees will serve him in his kind, Though none on earth but kindred near then could he "nd.

15

Who fancies not his looks now at the bar,8 His face like death, his heart with horror fraught, 100 Nor malefactor ever felt like war, When deep despair with wish of life hath fought, Branded with guilt and crushed with treble woes, A vagabond to Land of Nod9 he goes. A city builds, that walls might him secure from foes. 105

16

Who thinks not oft upon the father’s ages, Their long descent, how nephew’s sons they saw, The starry observations of those sages, And how their precepts to their sons were law, How Adam sighed to see his progeny, 110

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1. Neither.

Clothed all in his black sinful livery, Who neither guilt nor yet the punishment could dy.

17

Our life compare we with their length of days Who to the tenth of theirs doth now arrive? And though thus short, we shorten many ways, 115 Living so little while we are alive; In eating, drinking, sleeping, vain delight So unawares comes on perpetual night, And puts all pleasures vain unto eternal dight.

18

When I behold the heavens as in their prime, 120 And then the earth (though old) still clad in green, The stones and trees, insensible of time, Nor1 age nor wrinkle on their front are seen; If winter come and greenness then do fade, A spring returns, and they more youthful made; 125 But man grows old, lies down, remains where once he’s laid.

19

By birth more noble than those creatures all, Yet seems by nature and by custom cursed, No sooner born, but grief and care makes fall That state obliterate he had at "rst; 130 Nor youth, nor strength, nor wisdom spring again, Nor habitations long their names retain, But in oblivion to the "nal day remain.

20

Shall I then praise the heavens, the trees, the earth Because their beauty and their strength last longer? 135 Shall I wish there, or never to had birth, Because they’re bigger, and their bodies stronger? Nay, they shall darken, perish, fade, and die, And when unmade, so ever shall they lie, But man was made for endless immortality. 140

21

Under the cooling shadow of a stately elm Close sat I by a goodly river’s side, Where gliding streams the rocks did overwhelm, A lonely place, with pleasures digni"ed.

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2. Dif"culties. 3. Anything. 4. I.e., the sea, home of the sea nymph Thetis.

5. Roman god of the ocean. “Eftsoon”: soon after- ward.

I once that loved the shady woods so well, 145 Now thought the rivers did the trees excel, And if the sun would ever shine, there would I dwell.

22

While on the stealing stream I "xt mine eye, Which to the longed- for ocean held its course, I marked, nor crooks, nor rubs,2 that there did lie 150 Could hinder aught,3 but still augment its force. “O happy dood,” quoth I, “that holds thy race Till thou arrive at thy beloved place, Nor is it rocks or shoals that can obstruct thy pace,

23

Nor is’t enough, that thou alone mayst slide 155 But hundred brooks in thy clear waves do meet, So hand in hand along with thee they glide To Thetis’ house,4 where all embrace and greet. Thou emblem true of what I count the best, O could I lead my rivulets to rest, 160 So may we press to that vast mansion, ever blest.”

24

Ye "sh, which in this liquid region ’bide, That for each season have your habitation, Now salt, now fresh where you think best to glide To unknown coasts to give a visitation, 165 In lakes and ponds you leave your numerous fry; So nature taught, and yet you know not why, You wat’ry folk that know not your felicity.

25

Look how the wantons frisk to taste the air, Then to the colder bottom straight they dive; 170 Eftsoon to Neptune’s5 glassy hall repair To see what trade they great ones there do drive, Who forage o’er the spacious sea- green "eld, And take the trembling prey before it yield, Whose armor is their scales, their spreading "ns their shield. 175

26

While musing thus with contemplation fed, And thousand fancies buzzing in my brain,

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6. I.e., the nightingale. In Greek my thol ogy, Philomela, the daughter of King Attica, was transformed into a nightingale after her brother- in- law raped her and tore out her tongue.

7. I.e., excruciating, painful. 8. Anticipate. 9. Transformation.

The sweet- tongued Philomel6 perched o’er my head And chanted forth a most melodious strain Which rapt me so with won der and delight, 180 I judged my hearing better than my sight, And wished me wings with her a while to take my dight.

27

“O merry Bird,” said I, “that fears no snares, That neither toils nor hoards up in thy barn, Feels no sad thoughts nor cruciating7 cares 185 To gain more good or shun what might thee harm. Thy clothes ne’er wear, thy meat is everywhere, Thy bed a bough, thy drink the water clear, Reminds not what is past, nor what’s to come dost fear.”

28

“The dawning morn with songs thou dost prevent,8 190 Sets hundred notes unto thy feathered crew, So each one tunes his pretty instrument, And warbling out the old, begin anew, And thus they pass their youth in summer season, Then follow thee into a better region, 195 Where winter’s never felt by that sweet airy legion.”

29

Man at the best a creature frail and vain, In knowledge ignorant, in strength but weak, Subject to sorrows, losses, sickness, pain, Each storm his state, his mind, his body break, 200 From some of these he never "nds cessation, But day or night, within, without, vexation, Trou bles from foes, from friends, from dearest, near’st relation.

30

And yet this sinful creature, frail and vain, This lump of wretchedness, of sin and sorrow, 205 This weatherbeaten vessel wracked with pain, Joys not in hope of an eternal morrow; Nor all his losses, crosses, and vexation, In weight, in frequency and long duration Can make him deeply groan for that divine translation.9 210

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1. Destroyer. 2. Vanity. “Parts”: features. “Ports”: places of refuge. 3. “To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna and will give him a white

stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it” (Revelation 2.17). “Scape”: escape. 1. In Latin, lacrima means “tear.”

31

The mari ner that on smooth waves doth glide Sings merrily and steers his bark with ease, As if he had command of wind and tide, And now become great master of the seas: But suddenly a storm spoils all the sport, 215 And makes him long for a more quiet port, Which ’gainst all adverse winds may serve for fort.

32

So he that saileth in this world of plea sure, Feeding on sweets, that never bit of th’ sour, That’s full of friends, of honor, and of trea sure, 220 Fond fool, he takes this earth ev’n for heav’n’s bower. But sad afdiction comes and makes him see Here’s neither honor, wealth, nor safety; Only above is found all with security.

33

O Time the fatal wrack1 of mortal things, 225 That draws oblivion’s curtains over kings; Their sumptuous monuments, men know them not, Their names without a rec ord are forgot, Their parts, their ports, their pomp’s2 all laid in th’ dust Nor wit nor gold, nor buildings scape time’s rust; 230 But he whose name is graved in the white stone3 Shall last and shine when all of these are gone.

1678

The Flesh and the Spirit

In secret place where once I stood Close by the banks of Lacrim1 dood, I heard two sisters reason on Things that are past and things to come; One Flesh was called, who had her eye 5 On worldly wealth and vanity; The other Spirit, who did rear Her thoughts unto a higher sphere: Sister, quoth Flesh, what liv’st thou on, Nothing but meditation? 10

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2. Thought. 3. Fool. “Art fancy sick”: i.e., do you have hallu- cinations? 4. Monuments. 5. Unrepentant, unsaved.

6. In Puritan theology, humankind was lost to sin after the fall of “old Adam,” but was redeemed by the sacri"ce of the “new Adam,” Jesus Christ. 7. Exhibitions, displays.

Doth contemplation feed thee so Regardlessly to let earth go? Can speculation satisfy Notion2 without real ity? Dost dream of things beyond the moon, 15 And dost thou hope to dwell there soon? Hast trea sures there laid up in store That all in th’ world thou count’st but poor? Art fancy sick, or turned a sot3 To catch at shadows which are not? 20 Come, come, I’ll show unto thy sense, Industry hath its recompense. What canst desire, but thou may’st see True substance in variety? Dost honor like? Acquire the same, 25 As some to their immortal fame, And trophies4 to thy name erect Which wearing time shall ne’er deject. For riches doth thou long full sore? Behold enough of precious store. 30 Earth hath more silver, pearls, and gold, Than eyes can see or hands can hold. Affect’s thou plea sure? Take thy "ll, Earth hath enough of what you will. Then let not go, what thou may’st "nd 35 For things unknown, only in mind.

Spirit: Be still thou unregenerate5 part, Disturb no more my settled heart, For I have vowed (and so will do) Thee as a foe still to pursue. 40 And combat with thee will and must, Until I see thee laid in th’ dust. Sisters we are, yea, twins we be, Yet deadly feud ’twixt thee and me; For from one father are we not, 45 Thou by old Adam6 wast begot. But my arise is from above, Whence my dear Father I do love. Thou speak’st me fair, but hat’st me sore, Thy datt’ring shows7 I’ll trust no more. 50 How oft thy slave, hast thou me made, When I believed what thou hast said, And never had more cause of woe Than when I did what thou bad’st do. I’ll stop mine ears at these thy charms, 55 And count them for my deadly harms.

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8. In classical times, a crown of laurel was a sign of victory for poets, heroes, and athletes. 9. The food sent by God to the Israelites in the wilderness (Exodus 16.15).

1. Lines 85 to 106 follow the description of the heavenly city of the New Jerusalem in Revelation 21–22.

Thy sinful pleasures I do hate, Thy riches are to me no bait, Thine honors do, nor will I love; For my ambition lies above. 60 My greatest honor it shall be When I am victor over thee, And triumph shall with laurel head,8 When thou my captive shalt be led, How I do live, thou need’st not scoff, 65 For I have meat thou know’st not of; The hidden manna9 I do eat, The word of life it is my meat. My thoughts do yield me more content Than can thy hours in plea sure spent. 70 Nor are they shadows which I catch, Nor fancies vain at which I snatch, But reach at things that are so high, Beyond thy dull capacity: Eternal substance I do see, 75 With which enrichéd I would be. Mine eye doth pierce the heavens and see What is invisible to thee. My garments are not silk nor gold, Nor such like trash which earth doth hold, 80 But royal robes I shall have on, More glorious than the glist’ring sun; My crown not diamonds, pearls, and gold, But such as angels’ heads enfold. The city1 where I hope to dwell, 85 There’s none on earth can parallel; The stately walls both high and strong, Are made of precious jasper stone; The gates of pearl, both rich and clear, And angels are for porters there; 90 The streets thereof transparent gold, Such as no eye did e’er behold; A crystal river there doth run, Which doth proceed from the Lamb’s throne. Of life, there are the waters sure, 95 Which shall remain forever pure, Nor sun, nor moon, they have no need, For glory doth from God proceed. No candle there, nor yet torchlight, For there shall be no darksome night. 100 From sickness and in"rmity For evermore they shall be free; Nor withering age shall e’er come there,

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1. Bradstreet is thought to have written this poem in 1666, when the second edition of The Tenth Muse was contemplated.

2. I.e., metrical feet; thus to smooth out the lines. 3. The common people.

But beauty shall be bright and clear; This city pure is not for thee, 105 For things unclean there shall not be. If I of heaven may have my "ll, Take thou the world and all that will.

1678

The Author to Her Book1

Thou ill- formed offspring of my feeble brain, Who after birth didst by my side remain, Till snatched from thence by friends, less wise than true, Who thee abroad, exposed to public view, Made thee in rags, halting to th’ press to trudge, 5 Where errors were not lessened (all may judge). At thy return my blushing was not small, My rambling brat (in print) should mother call, I cast thee by as one un"t for light, Thy visage was so irksome in my sight; 10 Yet being mine own, at length affection would Thy blemishes amend, if so I could: I washed thy face, but more defects I saw, And rubbing off a spot still made a daw. I stretched thy joints to make thee even feet,2 15 Yet still thou run’st more hobbling than is meet; In better dress to trim thee was my mind, But nought save homespun cloth i’ th’ house I "nd. In this array ’mongst vulgars3 may’st thou roam. In critic’s hands beware thou dost not come, 20 And take thy way where yet thou art not known; If for thy father asked, say thou hadst none; And for thy mother, she alas is poor, Which caused her thus to send thee out of door.

1678

Before the Birth of One of Her Children

All things within this fading world hath end, Adversity doth still our joys attend; No ties so strong, no friends so dear and sweet, But with death’s parting blow is sure to meet. The sentence past is most irrevocable, 5

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1. I.e., stepmother’s.

A common thing, yet oh, inevitable. How soon, my Dear, death may my steps attend, How soon’t may be thy lot to lose thy friend, We both are ignorant, yet love bids me These farewell lines to recommend to thee, 10 That when that knot’s untied that made us one, I may seem thine, who in effect am none. And if I see not half my days that’s due, What nature would, God grant to yours and you; The many faults that well you know I have 15 Let be interred in my oblivious grave; If any worth or virtue were in me, Let that live freshly in thy memory And when thou feel’st no grief, as I no harms, Yet love thy dead, who long lay in thine arms, 20 And when thy loss shall be repaid with gains Look to my little babes, my dear remains. And if thou love thyself, or loved’st me, These O protect from stepdame’s1 injury. And if chance to thine eyes shall bring this verse, 25 With some sad sighs honor my absent hearse; And kiss this paper for thy love’s dear sake, Who with salt tears this last farewell did take.

1678

To My Dear and Loving Husband

If ever two were one, then surely we. If ever man were loved by wife, then thee; If ever wife was happy in a man, Compare with me, ye women, if you can. I prize thy love more than whole mines of gold 5 Or all the riches that the East doth hold. My love is such that rivers cannot quench, Nor ought but love from thee, give recompense. Thy love is such I can no way repay, The heavens reward thee manifold, I pray. 10 Then while we live, in love let’s so persevere That when we live no more, we may live ever.

1678

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1. Ware house. 2. Ipswich, Mas sa chu setts. Her husband may have been in Eng land when she wrote this poem. 3. Capricorn, the tenth of the twelve signs of the zodiac, represents winter. “Sol”: sun.

4. Cancer, the fourth sign of the zodiac, repre- sents summer. 1. Lacks. “Hind”: female deer. “Hartless” puns on hart (male deer) and heart.

A Letter to Her Husband, Absent upon Public Employment

My head, my heart, mine eyes, my life, nay, more, My joy, my magazine1 of earthly store, If two be one, as surely thou and I, How stayest thou there, whilst I at Ipswich lie?2 So many steps, head from the heart to sever, 5 If but a neck, soon should we be together. I, like the Earth this season, mourn in black, My Sun is gone so far in’s zodiac, Whom whilst I ’ joyed, nor storms, nor frost I felt, His warmth such frigid colds did cause to melt. 10 My chilled limbs now numbed lie forlorn; Return, return, sweet Sol, from Capricorn;3 In this dead time, alas, what can I more Than view those fruits which through thy heat I bore? Which sweet contentment yield me for a space, 15 True living pictures of their father’s face. O strange effect! now thou art southward gone, I weary grow the tedious day so long; But when thou northward to me shalt return, I wish my Sun may never set, but burn 20 Within the Cancer4 of my glowing breast, The welcome house of him my dearest guest. Where ever, ever stay, and go not thence, Till nature’s sad decree shall call thee hence; Flesh of thy desh, bone of thy bone, 25 I here, thou there, yet both but one.

1678

Another [Letter to Her Husband, Absent upon Public Employment]

As loving hind that (hartless) wants1 her deer, Scuds through the woods and fern with hark’ning ear, Perplext, in every bush and nook doth pry, Her dearest deer, might answer ear or eye; So doth my anxious soul, which now doth miss 5 A dearer dear (far dearer heart) than this, Still wait with doubts, and hopes, and failing eye, His voice to hear or person to descry. Or as the pensive dove doth all alone

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2. I.e., turtledove. 3. A common species of "sh.

(On withered bough) most uncouthly bemoan 10 The absence of her love and loving mate, Whose loss hath made her so unfortunate, Ev’n thus do I, with many a deep sad groan, Bewail my turtle2 true, who now is gone, His presence and his safe return still woos, 15 With thousand doleful sighs and mournful coos. Or as the loving mullet,3 that true "sh, Her fellow lost, nor joy nor life do wish, But launches on that shore, there for to die, Where she her captive husband doth espy. 20 Mine being gone, I lead a joyless life, I have a loving peer, yet seem no wife; But worst of all, to him can’t steer my course, I here, he there, alas, both kept by force. Return my dear, my joy, my only love, 25 Unto thy hind, thy mullet, and thy dove, Who neither joys in pasture, house, nor streams, The substance gone, O me, these are but dreams. Together at one tree, oh let us browse, And like two turtles roost within one house, 30 And like the mullets in one river glide, Let’s still remain but one, till death divide. Thy loving love and dearest dear, At home, abroad, and everywhere.

1678

In Reference to Her Children, 23 June 1659

I had eight birds hatched in one nest, Four cocks there were, and hens the rest. I nursed them up with pain and care, Nor cost, nor labor did I spare, Till at the last they felt their wing, 5 Mounted the trees, and learned to sing; Chief of the brood then took his dight To regions far and left me quite. My mournful chirps I after send, Till he return, or I do end: 10 Leave not thy nest, thy dam and sire, Fly back and sing amidst this choir. My second bird did take her dight, And with her mate dew out of sight; Southward they both their course did bend, 15 And seasons twain they there did spend, Till after blown by southern gales, They norward steered with "lled sails. A prettier bird was nowhere seen,

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1. Trees. 2. The Roman goddess of the dawn. 3. Either. 4. Bird catcher’s.

5. Unruly, fractious. 6. I.e., caught by means of birdlime (a sticky substance) spread on twigs.

Along the beach among the treen.1 20 I have a third of color white, On whom I placed no small delight; Coupled with mate loving and true, Hath also bid her dam adieu; And where Aurora2 "rst appears, 25 She now hath perched to spend her years. One to the acad emy dew To chat among that learned crew; Ambition moves still in his breast That he might chant above the rest, 30 Striving for more than to do well, That nightingales he might excel. My "fth, whose down is yet scarce gone, Is ’mongst the shrubs and bushes down, And as his wings increase in strength, 35 On higher boughs he’ll perch at length. My other three still with me nest, Until they’re grown, then as the rest, Or3 here or there they’ll take their dight, As is ordained, so shall they light. 40 If birds could weep, then would my tears Let others know what are my fears Lest this my brood some harm should catch, And be surprised for want of watch, Whilst pecking corn and void of care, 45 They fall un’wares in fowler’s4 snare, Or whilst on trees they sit and sing, Some untoward5 boy at them do ding, Or whilst allured with bell and glass, The net be spread, and caught, alas. 50 Or lest by lime- twigs they be foiled,6 Or by some greedy hawks be spoiled. O would my young, ye saw my breast, And knew what thoughts there sadly rest, Great was my pain when I you bred, 55 Great was my care when I you fed, Long did I keep you soft and warm, And with my wings kept off all harm, My cares are more and fears than ever, My throbs such now as ’fore were never. 60 Alas, my birds, you wisdom want, Of perils you are ignorant; Oft times in grass, on trees, in dight, Sore accidents on you may light. O to your safety have an eye, 65 So happy may you live and die. Meanwhile my days in tunes I’ll spend,

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7. Ballads, poems. 8. Winged angels.

1. Since.

Till my weak lays7 with me shall end. In shady woods I’ll sit and sing, And things that passed to mind I’ll bring. 70 Once young and pleasant, as are you, But former toys (no joys) adieu. My age I will not once lament, But sing, my time so near is spent. And from the top bough take my dight 75 Into a country beyond sight, Where old ones instantly grow young, And there with seraphims8 set song; No seasons cold, nor storms they see; But spring lasts to eternity. 80 When each of you shall in your nest Among your young ones take your rest, In chirping language, oft them tell, You had a dam that loved you well, That did what could be done for young, 85 And nursed you up till you were strong, And ’fore she once would let you dy, She showed you joy and misery; Taught what was good, and what was ill, What would save life, and what would kill. 90 Thus gone, amongst you I may live, And dead, yet speak, and counsel give: Farewell, my birds, farewell adieu, I happy am, if well with you.

1678

In Memory of My Dear Grand child Elizabeth Bradstreet, Who Deceased August, 1665, Being a Year and a Half Old

1

Farewell dear babe, my heart’s too much content, Farewell sweet babe, the plea sure of mine eye, Farewell fair dower that for a space was lent, Then ta’en away unto eternity. Blest babe, why should I once bewail thy fate, 5 Or sigh thy days so soon were terminate, Sith1 thou art settled in an everlasting state.

2

By nature trees do rot when they are grown, And plums and apples thoroughly ripe do fall, And corn and grass are in their season mown, 10

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And time brings down what is both strong and tall. But plants new set to be eradicate, And buds new blown to have so short a date, Is by His hand alone that guides nature and fate.

1678

In Memory of My Dear Grand child Anne Bradstreet, Who Deceased June 20, 1669, Being Three Years and

Seven Months Old

With troubled heart and trembling hand I write, The heavens have changed to sorrow my delight. How oft with disappointment have I met, When I on fading things my hopes have set. Experience might ’fore this have made me wise, 5 To value things according to their price. Was ever stable joy yet found below? Or perfect bliss without mixture of woe? I knew she was but as a withering dower, That’s here today, perhaps gone in an hour; 10 Like as a bubble, or the brittle glass, Or like a shadow turning as it was. More fool then I to look on that was lent As if mine own, when thus impermanent. Farewell dear child, thou ne’er shall come to me, 15 But yet a while, and I shall go to thee; Meantime my throbbing heart’s cheered up with this: Thou with thy Savior art in endless bliss.

1678

On My Dear Grand child Simon Bradstreet, Who Died on 16 November, 1669, Being But a Month, and One Day Old

No sooner came, but gone, and fall’n asleep. Acquaintance short, yet parting caused us weep; Three dowers, two scarcely blown, the last i’ th’ bud, Cropped by th’ Almighty’s hand; yet is He good. With dreadful awe before Him let’s be mute, 5 Such was His will, but why, let’s not dispute, With humble hearts and mouths put in the dust, Let’s say He’s merciful as well as just. He will return and make up all our losses, And smile again after our bitter crosses. 10 Go pretty babe, go rest with sisters twain; Among the blest in endless joys remain.

1678

H E R E F O L L O W S S O M E V E R S E S | 2 4 3

1. I.e., when nothing was spared. 2. Cleanse. “Thou”: God.

3. Hell. 4. Ever.

For Deliverance from a Fever

When sorrows had begirt me round, And pains within and out, When in my desh no part was found,1 Then didst Thou rid2 me out. My burning desh in sweat did boil, 5 My aching head did break, From side to side for ease I toil, So faint I could not speak. Beclouded was my soul with fear Of Thy dis plea sure sore, 10 Nor could I read my evidence Which oft I read before. “Hide not Thy face from me!” I cried, “From burnings keep my soul. Thou know’st my heart, and hast me tried; 15 I on Thy mercies roll.” “O heal my soul,” Thou know’st I said, “Though desh consume to nought, What though in dust it shall be laid, To glory ’t shall be brought.” 20 Thou heard’st, Thy rod Thou didst remove And spared my body frail, Thou show’st to me Thy tender love, My heart no more might quail. O, praises to my mighty God, 25 Praise to my Lord, I say, Who hath redeemed my soul from pit,3 Praises to Him for aye.4

1867

Here Follows Some Verses upon the Burning of Our House, July 10th, 1666

Copied Out of a Loose Paper

In silent night when rest I took For sorrow near I did not look I wakened was with thund’ring noise And piteous shrieks of dreadful voice. That fearful sound of “Fire!” and “Fire!” 5 Let no man know is my desire. I, starting up, the light did spy,

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1. “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1.21). 2. Empty, worthless. Cf. Ecclesiastes 1.2.

3. Possessions, usually in the sense of being falsely gained.

And to my God my heart did cry To strengthen me in my distress And not to leave me succorless. 10 Then, coming out, beheld a space The dame consume my dwelling place. And when I could no longer look, I blest His name that gave and took,1 That laid my goods now in the dust. 15 Yea, so it was, and so ’twas just. It was His own, it was not mine, Far be it that I should repine; He might of all justly bereft But yet suf"cient for us left. 20 When by the ruins oft I past My sorrowing eyes aside did cast, And here and there the places spy Where oft I sat and long did lie: Here stood that trunk, and there that chest, 25 There lay that store I counted best. My pleasant things in ashes lie, And them behold no more shall I. Under thy roof no guest shall sit, Nor at thy table eat a bit. 30 No pleasant tale shall e’er be told, Nor things recounted done of old. No candle e’er shall shine in thee, Nor bridegroom’s voice e’er heard shall be. In silence ever shall thou lie, 35 Adieu, Adieu, all’s vanity.2 Then straight I ’gin my heart to chide, And did thy wealth on earth abide? Didst "x thy hope on mold’ring dust? The arm of desh didst make thy trust? 40 Raise up thy thoughts above the sky That dunghill mists away may dy. Thou hast an house on high erect, Framed by that mighty Architect, With glory richly furnished, 45 Stands permanent though this be ded. It’s purchaséd and paid for too By Him who hath enough to do. A price so vast as is unknown Yet by His gift is made thine own; 50 There’s wealth enough, I need no more, Farewell, my pelf,3 farewell my store. The world no longer let me love, My hope and trea sure lies above.

1867

2 4 5

1. I.e., my body. 2. Christ is the bridegroom, and the soul is mar- ried to him. “And Jesus said unto them, Can the

children of the bridechamber fast, while the bride- groom is with them? As long as they have the bride- groom with them, they cannot fast” (Mark 2.19).

As Weary Pilgrim

As weary pilgrim, now at rest, Hugs with delight his silent nest, His wasted limbs now lie full soft That mirey steps have trodden oft, Blesses himself to think upon 5 His dangers past, and travails done. The burning sun no more shall heat, Nor stormy rains on him shall beat. The briars and thorns no more shall scratch. Nor hungry wolves at him shall catch. 10 He erring paths no more shall tread, Nor wild fruits eat instead of bread. For waters cold he doth not long For thirst no more shall parch his tongue. No rugged stones his feet shall gall, 15 Nor stumps nor rocks cause him to fall. All cares and fears he bids farewell And means in safety now to dwell. A pilgrim I, on earth perplexed With sins, with cares and sorrows vext, 20 By age and pains brought to decay, And my clay house1 mold’ring away. Oh, how I long to be at rest And soar on high among the blest. This body shall in silence sleep, 25 Mine eyes no more shall ever weep, No fainting "ts shall me assail, Nor grinding pains my body frail, With cares and fears ne’er cumb’red be Nor losses know, nor sorrows see. 30 What though my desh shall there consume, It is the bed Christ did perfume, And when a few years shall be gone, This mortal shall be clothed upon. A corrupt carcass down it lies, 35 A glorious body it shall rise. In weakness and dishonor sown, In power ’tis raised by Christ alone. Then soul and body shall unite And of their Maker have the sight. 40 Such lasting joys shall there behold As ear ne’er heard nor tongue e’er told. Lord make me ready for that day, Then come, dear Bridegroom,2 come away.

August 31, 1669 1867

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1. I.e., stop speaking. 2. I.e., worldly.

To My Dear Children

This book by any yet unread, I leave for you when I am dead, That being gone, here you may "nd What was your living mother’s mind. Make use of what I leave in love, And God shall bless you from above.

A. B.

My dear children, I, knowing by experience that the exhortations of parents take most

effect when the speakers leave to speak,1 and those especially sink deepest which are spoke latest, and being ignorant whether on my death bed I shall have opportunity to speak to any of you, much less to all, thought it the best, whilst I was able, to compose some short matters (for what else to call them I know not) and bequeath to you, that when I am no more with you, yet I may be daily in your remembrance (although that is the least in my aim in what I now do), but that you may gain some spiritual advantage by my experience. I have not studied in this you read to show my skill, but to declare the truth, not to set forth myself, but the glory of God. If I had minded the former, it had been perhaps better pleasing to you, but seeing the last is the best, let it be best pleasing to you.

The method I will observe shall be this: I will begin with God’s dealing with me from my childhood to this day.

In my young years, about 6 or 7 as I take it, I began to make conscience of my ways, and what I knew was sinful, as lying, disobedience to parents, etc., I avoided it. If at any time I was overtaken with the like evils, it was as a great trou ble, and I could not be at rest till by prayer I had confessed it unto God. I was also troubled at the neglect of private duties though too often tardy that way. I also found much comfort in reading the Scriptures, especially those places I thought most concerned my condition, and as I grew to have more understanding, so the more solace I took in them.

In a long "t of sickness which I had on my bed I often communed with my heart and made my supplication to the most High who set me free from that afdiction.

But as I grew up to be about 14 or 15, I found my heart more carnal,2 and sitting loose from God, vanity and the follies of youth take hold of me.

About 16, the Lord laid His hand sore upon me and smote me with the smallpox. When I was in my afdiction, I besought the Lord and confessed my pride and vanity, and He was entreated of me and again restored me. But I rendered not to Him according to the bene"t received.

After a short time I changed my condition and was married, and came into this country, where I found a new world and new manners, at which my heart rose. But after I was convinced it was the way of God, I submitted to it and joined to the church at Boston.

After some time I fell into a lingering sickness like a consumption together with a lameness, which correction I saw the Lord sent to humble and try me and do me good, and it was not altogether ineffectual.

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3. Toil, labor. 4. Financial losses. 5. Cf. Psalm 139.23–24. 6. Unruly. “Circumspection”: Prudence. 7. Cf. Psalm 119.8.

8. In 1 Samuel 7.12, a stone monument to com- memorate a victory over the Philistines. “Manna”: the “bread from heaven” (Exodus 16.4) that fed the Israelites in the wilderness.

It pleased God to keep me a long time without a child, which was a great grief to me and cost me many prayers and tears before I obtained one, and after him gave me many more of whom I now take the care, that as I have brought you into the world, and with great pains, weakness, cares, and fears brought you to this, I now travail3 in birth again of you till Christ be formed in you.

Among all my experiences of God’s gracious dealings with me, I have con- stantly observed this, that He hath never suffered me long to sit loose from Him, but by one afdiction or other hath made me look home, and search what was amiss; so usually thus it hath been with me that I have no sooner felt my heart out of order, but I have expected correction for it, which most commonly hath been upon my own person in sickness, weakness, pains, sometimes on my soul, in doubts and fears of God’s dis plea sure and my sin- cerity towards Him; sometimes He hath smote a child with a sickness, some- times chastened by losses in estate,4 and these times (through His great mercy) have been the times of my greatest getting and advantage; yea, I have found them the times when the Lord hath manifested the most love to me. Then have I gone to searching and have said with David, “Lord, search me and try me, see what ways of wickedness are in me, and lead me in the way everlasting,”5 and seldom or never but I have found either some sin I lay under which God would have reformed, or some duty neglected which He would have performed, and by His help I have laid vows and bonds upon my soul to perform His righ teous commands.

If at any time you are chastened of God, take it as thankfully and joyfully as in greatest mercies, for if ye be His, ye shall reap the greatest bene"t by it. It hath been no small support to me in times of darkness when the Almighty hath hid His face from me that yet I have had abundance of sweetness and refreshment after afdiction and more circumspection in my walking after I have been afdicted. I have been with God like an untoward6 child, that no longer than the rod has been on my back (or at least in sight) but I have been apt to forget Him and myself, too. Before I was afdicted, I went astray, but now I keep Thy statutes.7

I have had great experience of God’s hearing my prayers and returning comfortable answers to me, either in granting the thing I prayed for, or else in satisfying my mind without it, and I have been con"dent it hath been from Him, because I have found my heart through His goodness enlarged in thankfulness to Him.

I have often been perplexed that I have not found that constant joy in my pilgrimage and refreshing which I supposed most of the servants of God have, although He hath not left me altogether without the witness of His holy spirit, who hath oft given me His word and set to His seal that it shall be well with me. I have sometimes tasted of that hidden manna that the world knows not, and have set up my Ebenezer,8 and have resolved with myself that against such a promise, such tastes of sweetness, the gates of hell shall never prevail; yet have I many times sinkings and droopings, and

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9. In spite of. “Divers”: vari ous ( people). “Con- temned”: despised.

1. Unbelievers, heretics. 2. Cf. John 13.19 and 14.29, Matthew 24.25.

not enjoyed that felicity that sometimes I have done. But when I have been in darkness and seen no light, yet have I desired to stay myself upon the Lord, and when I have been in sickness and pain, I have thought if the Lord would but lift up the light of His countenance upon me, although He ground me to powder, it would be but light to me; yea, oft have I thought were I in hell itself and could there "nd the love of God toward me, it would be a heaven. And could I have been in heaven without the love of God, it would have been a hell to me, for in truth it is the absence and presence of God that makes heaven or hell.

Many times hath Satan troubled me concerning the verity of the Scrip- tures, many times by atheism how I could know whether there was a God; I never saw any miracles to con"rm me, and those which I read of, how did I know but they were feigned? That there is a God my reason would soon tell me by the wondrous works that I see, the vast frame of the heaven and the earth, the order of all things, night and day, summer and winter, spring and autumn, the daily providing for this great house hold upon the earth, the preserving and directing of all to its proper end. The consideration of these things would with amazement certainly resolve me that there is an Eternal Being. But how should I know He is such a God as I worship in Trinity, and such a Savior as I rely upon? Though this hath thousands of times been suggested to me, yet God hath helped me over. I have argued thus with myself. That there is a God, I see. If ever this God hath revealed himself, it must be in His word, and this must be it or none. Have I not found that operation by it that no human invention can work upon the soul, hath not judgments befallen divers who have scorned and contemned it, hath it not been preserved through all ages maugre9 all the heathen tyrants and all of the enemies who have opposed it? Is there any story but that which shows the beginnings of times, and how the world came to be as we see? Do we not know the prophecies in it ful"lled which could not have been so long fore- told by any but God Himself?

When I have got over this block, then have I another put in my way, that admit this be the true God whom we worship, and that be his word, yet why may not the Popish religion be the right? They have the same God, the same Christ, the same word. They only interpret it one way, we another.

This hath sometimes stuck with me, and more it would, but the vain fool- eries that are in their religion together with their lying miracles and cruel persecutions of the saints, which admit were they as they term them, yet not so to be dealt withal.

The consideration of these things and many the like would soon turn me to my own religion again.

But some new trou bles I have had since the world has been "lled with blasphemy and sectaries,1 and some who have been accounted sincere Christians have been carried away with them, that sometimes I have said, “Is there faith upon the earth?” and I have not known what to think; but then I have remembered the works of Christ that so it must be, and if it were pos si ble, the very elect should be deceived. “Behold,” saith our Savior, “I have told you before.”2 That hath stayed my heart, and I can now say,

M I C H A E L W I G G L E S W O R T H | 2 4 9

“Return, O my Soul, to thy rest, upon this rock Christ Jesus will I build my faith, and if I perish, I perish”; but I know all the Powers of Hell shall never prevail against it. I know whom I have trusted, and whom I have believed, and that He is able to keep that I have committed to His charge.

Now to the King, immortal, eternal and invisible, the only wise God, be honor, and glory for ever and ever, Amen.

This was written in much sickness and weakness, and is very weakly and imperfectly done, but if you can pick any bene"t out of it, it is the mark which I aimed at.

1867

MICHAEL WIGGLESWORTH 1631–1705

I n 1662, twenty- two years after the Boston- area publication of the Bay Psalm Book and twelve years after the London publication of Anne Bradstreet’s The Tenth Muse, an obscure minister from Malden, Mas sa chu setts, created a sensation with The Day of Doom, a poem about Judgment Day. Michael Wigglesworth’s volume has been called the "rst American best seller. The initial edition of eigh teen hun- dred copies quickly sold out. Roughly one colonist out of twenty in New Eng land seems to have purchased a copy at that time, and many more read the poem or heard it read aloud. No complete copies of the "rst edition survive, for it was liter- ally read to pieces. New editions began to appear on both sides of the Atlantic in 1666— the year of the Great Fire of London, a cataclysm that suggested an earthly day of judgment— and The Day of Doom continued to be reprinted for over a century.

Brought up in New Haven, Connecticut, Wigglesworth entered Harvard College at sixteen with the plan of becoming a physician, but his introspective, bookish, and didactic nature drew him to the ministry. In 1655 he accepted a call to minister at the Malden church, and he remained there for the next "fty years. On the day Wigglesworth died, the Boston merchant Samuel Sewall noted in his diary that the minister “was very useful as a physician” and described him as “the author of the poem entitled The Day of Doom, which has been so often printed.” Wigglesworth’s poem was so popu lar at least partly because it marked a new development in Puri- tan poetry. The poem dramatizes the "nal days of humanity, interweaving passages and phrases from the Bible to create an integrated vision of Christian end- times. Like the En glish poet John Milton in his great epic Paradise Lost (1667) and the En glish prose writer John Bunyan in his allegory The Pilgrim’s Pro gress (1678), Wig- glesworth let his imagination range far beyond the scriptural words transformed in his work.

Wigglesworth’s dramatic imagination is evident in the diary that he kept in his early twenties, where he recorded a number of psychological and emotional crises. At times he was almost para lyzed with anxiety and self- doubt. He was also troubled by erotic feelings, including an attraction to men that he recorded in a special shorthand in his diary but other wise felt compelled to suppress. Never physically

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1. The text is from The Day of Doom or a Poeti- cal Description of the Great and Last Judgment with Other Poems (1929), edited by Kenneth B. Murdock, which reprints the only complete American edition (1701). The marginal glosses

are part of the original text. 2. The rationalizations of the desh as opposed to spiritual “right reason.” 3. Ever.

strong, he fretted over numerous illnesses, including syphilis. Some of his afdic- tions were real, but others were imaginary. The diary also reveals that Judgment Day was never far from Wigglesworth’s mind, a preoccupation that emerges most clearly in his response to his father’s death, in 1653. Shortly after hearing the news, which he acknowledged had made him “secretly glad,” Wigglesworth “dreamed of the approach of the great and dreadful Day of Judgment.” When he awoke, he wept and determined to “follow God with tears and cries until He gave me some hopes of His gracious good will toward me.” But two months later, he despaired of his “senselessness” toward this loss and bewailed his “secure, hard heart.” “The death of the righ teous unlamented,” he notes, “is a forerunner of evil to come.” Wiggles- worth’s strug gle to maintain a suitable level of attention toward God’s will was a challenge familiar to many Puritans, and his vivid imagining of Judgment Day cap- tured their attention.

The Day of Doom so captivated colonial- era readers that many people learned its verses by heart. The minister and poet Edward Taylor said that one of the reasons he loved his wife was that “the Doomsday verses much perfumed her breath.” Com- mitting the poem to memory was a formidable task, made easier by Wigglesworth’s use of common hymn meter (“fourteeners”— alternating rhymed lines of eight and six syllables) and because the subject of his poem was familiar to Puritans from sermons. Although Wigglesworth published other poems, notably Meat Out of the Eater (1670), nothing he wrote achieved the popularity of these “Doomsday verses.” The poem’s great appeal to this generation of Puritans is sometimes attributed to its vivid picture of hell"re; but its popularity also derived from its assurance that heaven is a “glorious place! where face to face / Jehovah may be seen,” and where the regenerate will reign with Christ eternally, embraced by God “in arms of love.” At the end, the poem is as comforting as it is frightening.

From The Day of Doom1

1

Still was the night, serene and bright, when all men sleeping lay; Calm was the season, and carnal reason2 thought so ’twould last for ay.3 Soul, take thine ease, let sorrow cease, 5 much good thou hast in store: This was their song, their cups among, the eve ning before.

2

Wallowing in all kind of sin, vile wretches lay secure: 10 The best of men had scarcely then

The security of the world before Christ’s coming to judgment Luk. 12.19

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4. Use, condition. 5. Despise. 6. Broke.

7. I.e., their lower bodies trembled. 8. In full force. “Train”: retinue. 9. Living.

their lamps kept in good ure.4 Virgins unwise, who through disguise amongst the best were number’d, Had closed their eyes: yea, and the wise 15 through sloth and frailty slumber’d.

3

Like as of old, when men grow bold God’s threat’nings to contemn,5 Who stopped their ear, and would not hear, when Mercy warned them: 20 But took their course, without remorse, till God began to pour Destruction the world upon in a tempestuous shower.

4

They put away the evil day, 25 and drowned their care and fears, Till drowned were they, and swept away by vengeance unawares: So at the last, whilst men sleep fast in their security, 30 Surprised they are in such a snare as cometh suddenly.

5

For at midnight brake6 forth a light, which turned the night to day, And speedily an hideous cry 35 did all the world dismay. Sinners awake, their hearts do ache, trembling their loins surpriseth;7 Amazed with fear, by what they hear, each one of them ariseth. 40

6

They rush from beds with giddy heads, and to their win dows run, Viewing this light, which shines more bright then doth the noon- day sun. Straightway appears (they see’t with tears) 45 the Son of God most dread; Who with His train comes on amain8 to judge both quick9 and dead.

Mat 25.5

Mat. 24.37– 38

1 Thes. 5.3

The sudden- ness, majesty, & terror of Christ’s appearing. Mat. 25.6 2 Pet. 3.10

Mat. 24.29– 30

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1. Their accustomed places. 2. Trust, believe. 3. Pierced.

4. Haughty and de"ant souls. 5. Ordinary.

7

Before his face the Heav’ns gave place, and skies are rent asunder, 50 With mighty voice, and hideous noise, more terrible than thunder. His brightness damps Heav’n’s glorious lamps and makes them hide their heads, As if afraid and quite dismayed, 55 they quit their wonted steads.1

8

Ye sons of men that durst contemn the threat’nings of God’s word, How cheer you now? your hearts, I trow,2 are thrilled3 as with a sword. 60 Now atheist blind, whose brutish mind a God could never see, Dost thou perceive, dost now believe, that Christ thy Judge shall be?

9

Stout courages4 (whose hardiness 65 could death and hell out- face) Are you as bold now you behold your Judge draw near apace? They cry, no, no: alas! and woe! our courage all is gone: 70 Our hardiness (fool hardiness) hath us undone, undone.

10

No heart so bold, but now grows cold and almost dead with fear: No eye so dry, but now can cry, 75 and pour out many a tear. Earth’s potentates and power ful states, captains and men of might Are quite abashed, their courage dashed at this most dreadful sight. 80

11

Mean5 men lament, great men do rent their robes, and tear their hair:

2 Pet. 3.10

Rev. 6.16

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6. I.e., stupid people (who think they can escape God’s judgment).

7. I.e., whose daming eyes do espy hidden things.

They do not spare their desh to tear through horrible despair. All kindreds wail: all hearts do fail: 85 horror the world doth "ll With weeping eyes, and loud out- cries, yet knows not how to kill.

12

Some hide themselves in caves and delves, in places under ground: 90 Some rashly leap into the deep, to scape by being drowned: Some to the rocks (O senseless blocks!)6 and woody mountains run, That there they might this fearful sight, 95 and dreaded presence shun.

13

In vain do they to mountains say, “Fall on us, and us hide From Judge’s ire, more hot than "re, for who may it abide?” 100 No hiding place can from His face, sinners at all conceal, Whose daming eyes hid things doth ’spy,7 and darkest things reveal.

14

The Judge draws nigh, exalted high 105 upon a lofty throne, Amidst the throng of angels strong, lo, Israel’s Holy One! The excellence of Whose presence and awful Majesty, 110 Amazeth Nature, and every creature, doth more than terrify.

15

The mountains smoke, the hills are shook, the earth is rent and torn, As if she should be clean dissolved, 115 or from the center borne. The sea doth roar, forsakes the shore, and shrinks away for fear;

Mat. 24.30

Rev. 6.15– 16

Mat. 25.31

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8. Trumpet. 9. Offer.

1. Standing, place.

The wild beasts dee into the sea, so soon as He draws near. 120

16

Whose glory bright, whose wondrous might, whose power imperial, So far surpass what ever was in realms terrestrial; That tongues of men (nor Angel’s pen) 125 cannot the same express, And therefore I must pass it by, lest speaking should transgress.

17

Before His throne a trump8 is blown, proclaiming the Day of Doom: 130 Forthwith He cries, “Ye dead arise, and unto Judgment come.” No sooner said, but ’tis obeyed; sepulchers opened are: Dead bodies all rise at His call, 135 and’s mighty power declare.

18

Both sea and land, at His command, their dead at once surrender: The "re and air constrainéd are also their dead to tender.9 140 The mighty word of this great Lord links body and soul together Both of the just, and the unjust, to part no more forever.

* * *

21

Thus every one before the throne of Christ the Judge is brought, Both righ teous and impious that good or ill had wrought. A separation, and differing station1 165 by Christ appointed is (To sinners sad) ’twixt good and bad, ’twixt heirs of woe and bliss.

Rev. 6.14

1 Thes. 4.16 Resurrection of the dead. Joh. 5.28– 29

2 Cor. 5.10 The sheep separated from the goats. Mat. 25

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2. Dressed.

22

At Christ’s right hand the sheep do stand, His holy martyrs, who 170 For His dear name suffering shame, calamity and woe, Like champions stood, and with their blood their testimony sealed; Whose innocence without offense, 175 to Christ their Judge appealed.

23

Next unto whom there "nd a room all Christ’s afdicted ones, Who being chastised, neither despised nor sank amidst their groans: 180 Who by the rod were turned to God, and lovéd Him the more, Not murmuring nor quarreling when they were chastened sore.

24

Moreover, such as lovéd much, 185 that had not such a trial, As might constrain to so great pain, and such deep self- denial: Yet ready were the cross to bear, when Christ them called thereto, 190 And did rejoice to hear His voice, they’re counted sheep also.

25

Christ’s dock of lambs there also stands, whose faith was weak, yet true; All sound believers (Gospel receivers) 195 whose grace was small, but grew: And them among an infant throng of babes, for whom Christ died; Whom for His own, by ways unknown to men, He sancti"ed. 200

26

All stand before their Savior in long white robes yclad,2 Their countenance full of pleasance,

Who are Christ’s sheep. Mat. 5.10– 11

Heb. 12.5– 7

Luk. 7.41,47

Joh. 21.15 Mat. 19.14 Joh. 3.3

Rev. 6.11 Phil. 3.21

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3. Spirits. 4. Turncoats. 5. I.e., with seven accomplices more evil than he. 6. Inveterate.

7. I.e., tried. 8. Attempts to gain admittance to their souls. “Behold, I stand at the door and knock” (Revela- tion 3.20).

appearing wondrous glad. O glorious sight! Behold how bright 205 dust heaps are made to shine, Conforméd so their Lord unto, whose glory is divine.

27

At Christ’s left hand the goats do stand, all whining hypocrites, 210 Who for self- ends did seem Christ’s friends, but fostered guileful sprites;3 Who sheep resembled, but they dissembled (their hearts were not sincere); Who once did throng Christ’s lambs among, 215 but now must not come near.

28

Apostates4 and run- aways, such as have Christ forsaken, Of whom the devil, with seven more evil,5 hath fresh possession taken: 220 Sinners ingrain,6 reserved to pain and torments most severe: Because ’gainst light they sinned with spite, are also placéd there.

29

There also stand a num’rous band, 225 that no profession made Of godliness, nor to redress their ways at all essayed:7 Who better knew, but (sinful crew) Gospel and law despised; 230 Who all Christ’s knocks8 withstood like blocks and would not be advised.

30

Moreover, there with them appear a number, numberless Of great and small, vile wretches all, 235 that did God’s Law transgress; Idolaters, false worshipers, profaners of God’s name,

The goats described or the several sorts of repro- bates on the left hand. Mat. 24.51

Luk. 11.24,26 Heb. 6.4– 6 Heb. 10.29

Luk. 12.47 Prov. 1.24,26 Joh. 3.19

Gal. 3.10 1 Cor. 6.9 Rev. 21.8

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9. Those chosen by God for eternal life. 1. I.e., appropriate.

2. Accustom. 3. I.e., the pain of being cruci"ed.

Who not at all thereon did call, or took in vain the same. 240

* * *

38

All silence keep, both goats and sheep, before the Judge’s throne; With mild aspect to His elect9 then spake the Holy One: 300 “My sheep draw near, your sentence hear, which is to you no dread, Who clearly now discern, and know your sins are pardonéd.

39

“ ’Twas meet1 that ye should judgéd be, 305 that so the world may spy No cause of grudge, when as I judge and deal impartially. Know therefore all, both great and small, the ground and reason why 310 These men do stand at My right hand, and look so cheerfully.

40

“ These men be those My Father chose before the world’s foundation, And to Me gave, that I should save 315 from death and condemnation. For whose dear sake I desh did take, was of a woman born, And did inure2 Myself t’endure, unjust reproach and scorn. 320

41

“For them it was that I did pass through sorrows many one: That I drank up that bitter cup, which made Me sigh and groan. The cross his pain3 I did sustain; 325 yea more, My Father’s ire I underwent, My blood I spent to save them from hell "re.

* * *

The saints cleared & justi#ed.

2 Cor. 5.10 Eccles. 3.17 Joh. 3.18

Joh. 17.6 Eph. 1.4

Rev. 1.5

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4. Encompass. 5. Good deeds; merits.

107

A wond’rous crowd then ’gan aloud, thus for themselves to say, 850 “We did intend, Lord to amend, and to reform our way: Our true intent was to repent, and make our peace with Thee; But sudden death stopping our breath, 855 left us no liberty.

108

“Short was our time, for in his prime our youthful dower was cropped: We died in youth, before full growth, so was our purpose stopped. 860 Let our good will to turn from ill, and sin to have forsaken, Accepted be, O Lord, by Thee, and in good part be taken.”

109

To whom the Judge: “Where you allege 865 the shortness of the space, That from your birth you lived on earth, to compass4 saving grace: It was free grace that any space was given you at all 870 To turn from evil, defy the devil, and upon God to call.

110

“One day, one week, wherein to seek God’s face with all your hearts, A favor was that far did pass 875 the best of your deserts.5 You had a season, what was your reason such precious hours to waste? What could you "nd, what could you mind that was of greater haste? 880

* * *

Those that pretend want of opportunity to repent. Prov. 27.1 Jam. 4.13

Are confuted and convinced.

Eccles. 12.1 Rev. 2.21

Luk. 13.24 2 Cor. 6.2 Heb. 3.7– 9

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113

“Had your intent been to repent, and had you it desired, 900 There would have been endeavors seen, before your time expired. God makes no trea sure, nor hath he plea sure, in idle purposes: Such fair pretenses are foul offenses, 905 and cloaks for wickedness.”

* * *

130

Others argue, and not a few, “Is not God gracious? His equity and clemency 1035 are they not marvelous? Thus we believed; are we deceived? cannot His mercy great, (As hath been told to us of old) assuage His anger’s heat? 1040

* * *

132

“Can God delight in such a sight as sinners’ misery? 1050 Or what great good can this our blood bring unto The Most High? Oh, Thou that dost Thy glory most in pard’ning sin display! Lord, might it please Thee to release, 1055 and pardon us this day?”

* * *

134

But all too late, grief’s out of date, 1065 when life is at an end. The glorious King thus answering, all to His voice attend: “God gracious is,” quoth He, “like His no mercy can be found; 1070 His equity and clemency to sinners do abound.

Luk. 13.24– 25 etc. Phil. 2.12

Others plead for pardon both from God’s mercy and justice Psal. 78.38

Psal. 30.9 Mic. 7.18

They answered.

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6. Lashes. 7. Acquitted. 8. Similar. 9. Growing.

1. Familiar, usual. 2. Spiritless, inanimate. 3. Blocks of wood; speechless persons.

135

“As may appear by those that here are placed at My right hand; Whose stripes6 I bore, and cleared the score, 1075 that they might quitted7 stand. For surely none, but God alone, whose grace transcends men’s thought, For such as those that were His foes like8 won ders would have wrought. 1080

* * *

137

“With cords of love God often strove your stubborn hearts to tame: 1090 Nevertheless your wickedness, did still resist the same. If now at last mercy be past from you forevermore, And justice come in mercy’s room, 1095 yet grudge you not therefore.

138

“If into wrath God turnéd hath His long long- suffering, And now for love you vengeance prove, it is an equal thing. 1100 Your waxing9 worse, hath stopped the course of wonted1 clemency: Mercy refused, and grace misused, call for severity.”

* * *

156

These words appall and daunt them all; dismayed, and all amort,2 Like stocks3 they stand at Christ’s left hand, and dare no more retort.

* * *

Mercy that now shines forth in the vessels of mercy. Mic. 7.18 Rom. 9.23

Luk. 13.34 The day of grace now past.

Luk. 19.42– 43 Jud. 4

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4. Hurt. 5. Souls, persons. 6. Never. “ ’T”: that.

7. Animals were not believed to possess souls and thus could not be damned.

182

Thus all men’s pleas the Judge with ease doth answer and confute, 1450 Until that all, both great and small, are silencéd and mute. Vain hopes are cropped, all mouths are stopped, sinners have naught to say, But that ’tis just, and equal most 1455 they should be damned for ay.

183

Now what remains, but that to pains and everlasting smart,4 Christ should condemn the sons of men, which is their just desert; 1460 Oh, rueful plights of sinful wights!5 oh wretches all forlorn: ’T had happy been they ne’re6 had seen the sun, or not been born.

184

Yea, now it would be good they could 1465 themselves annihilate, And cease to be, themselves to free from such a fearful state. Oh happy dogs, and swine, and frogs: yea serpent’s generation, 1470 Who do not fear this doom to hear, and sentence of damnation!7

185

This is their state so desperate: their sins are fully known; Their vanities and villanies 1475 before the world are shown. As they are gross and impious, so are their numbers more Than motes i’th’ air, or than their hair, or sands upon the shore. 1480

186

Divine justice offended is and satisfaction claimeth:

Behold the formidable estate of all the ungodly, as they stand hopeless & helpless before an impartial Judge, expect- ing their #nal sentence. Rev. 6.16– 17

Psal. 139.2– 4 Eccles. 12.14

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8. Dismiss from fellowship 9. Either. 1. Punish. 2. Those who experienced saving grace and in

this life felt assurance of salvation; not to be confused with the canonized saints of the Cath- olic Church. 3. Dazed.

God’s wrathful ire kindled like "re, against them "ercely dameth. Their Judge severe doth quite cashier8 1485 and all their pleas off take, That never a man, or9 dare, or can a further answer make.

187

Their mouths are shut, each man is put to silence and to shame: 1490 Nor have they aught within their thought, Christ’s justice for to blame. The Judge is just, and plague1 them must, nor will He mercy show (For mercy’s day is past away) 1495 to any of this crew.

* * *

195

Unto the saints2 with sad complaints should they themselves apply? They’re not dejected, nor ought affected 1555 with all their misery. Friends stand aloof, and make no proof what prayers or tears can do: Your godly friends are now more friends to Christ than unto you. 1560

196

Where tender love men’s hearts did move unto a sympathy, And bearing part of other’s smart in their anxiety; Now such compassion is out of fashion 1565 and wholly laid aside: No friends so near, but saints to hear their sentence can abide.

197

One natu ral brother beholds another in this astonied3 "t, 1570 Yet sorrows not thereat a jot, nor pities him a whit.

Mat. 25.45

Mat. 22.12 Rom. 2.5–6 Luk. 19.42

Psal. 58.10

Rev. 21.4

1 Cor. 6.2

Compare Prov. 1.26 with

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4. At one time. 5. I.e., that God should sustain injury by sparing

the graceless son. 6. Spirits.

The godly wife conceives no grief, nor can she shed a tear For the sad state of her dear mate, 1575 When she his doom doth hear.

198

He that was erst4 a husband pierced with sense of wife’s distress, Whose tender heart did bear a part of all her grievances, 1580 Shall mourn no more as heretofore because of her ill plight; Although he see her now to be a damned forsaken wight.

199

The tender mother will own no other 1585 of all her num’rous brood, But such as stand at Christ’s right hand acquitted through His blood. The pious father had now much rather his graceless son should lie 1590 In hell with dev ils, for all his evils burning eternally,

200

Than God most high should injury, by sparing him sustain;5 And doth rejoice to hear Christ’s voice 1595 adjudging him to pain; Who having all, both great and small, convinc’d and silencéd, Did then proceed their doom to read, and thus it utteréd: 1600

201

“Ye sinful wights, and cursed sprights,6 that work iniquity, Depart together from me forever to endless misery; Your portion take in yonder lake, 1605 where #re and brimstone "ameth: Suffer the smart, which your desert as its due wages claimeth.”

* * *

1 Joh. 3.2 &

2 Cor. 5.16

Luk. 16.25

Psal. 58.10

The Judge pronounceth the sentence of condemna- tion. Mat. 25.41

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7. Wretched. 8. Despite their wishes. 9. Reluctant to do so.

1. Resolute, brave. 2. This wicked deeing mob.

205

They wring their hands, their caitiff7 hands and gnash their teeth for terror; They cry, they roar for anguish sore, 1635 and gnaw their tongues for horror. But get away without delay, Christ pities not your cry: Depart to hell, there may you yell, and roar eternally. 1640

206

That word, Depart, maugre their heart,8 drives every wicked one, With mighty power, the selfsame hour, far from the Judge’s throne. Away they’re chased by the strong blast 1645 of His death- threat’ning mouth: They dee full fast, as if in haste, although they be full loath.9

207

As chaff that’s dry, and dust doth dy before the northern wind: 1650 Right so are they chaséd away, and can no refuge "nd. They hasten to the pit of woe, guarded by angels stout;1 Who to ful"ll Christ’s holy will, 1655 attend this wicked rout.2

208

Whom having brought, as they are taught, unto the brink of hell (That dismal place far from Christ’s face, where death and darkness dwell: 1660 Where God’s "erce ire kindleth the "re, and vengeance feeds the dame With piles of wood, and brimstone dood, that one can quench the same),

209

With iron bands they bind their hands, 1665 and curséd feet together,

Luk. 13.28

Prov. 1.26

It is put in execution.

Mat. 25.46

Mat. 13.41–42

HELL. Mat. 25.30 Mar. 9.43 Isa. 30.33 Rev. 21.8

Wicked men and dev ils

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3. Songs.

And cast them all, both great and small, into that lake forever. Where day and night, without respite, they wail, and cry, and howl 1670 For tort’ring pain, which they sustain in body and in soul.

210

For day and night, in their despite, their torment’s smoke ascendeth. Their pain and grief have no relief, 1675 their anguish never endeth. There must they lie, and never die, though dying every day: There must they dying ever lie, and not consume away. 1680

* * *

218

Thus shall they lie, and wail, and cry, tormented, and tormenting Their galléd hearts with poisoned darts but now too late repenting. 1740 There let them dwell i’th’ dames of hell; there leave we them to burn, And back again unto the men whom Christ acquits, return.

219

The saints behold with courage bold, 1745 and thankful wonderment, To see all those that were their foes thus sent to punishment: Then do they sing unto their King a song of endless praise: 1750 They praise His name, and do proclaim that just are all His ways.

220

Thus with great joy and melody to heav’n they all ascend, Him there to praise with sweetest lays,3 1755 and hymns that never end, Where with long rest they shall be blest, and nought shall them annoy:

cast into it forever. Mat. 22.13 & 25.46

Rev. 14.10–11

Mar. 9.44 Rom. 2.15

The saints rejoice to see judgment exe cuted upon the wicked world. Psal. 58.10 Rev. 19.1–3

They ascend with Christ into heaven triumphing. Mat. 25.46 1 Joh. 3.2

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4. Once, earlier. 5. Reborn.

6. Channel bed.

Where they shall see as seen they be, and whom they love enjoy. 1760

221

O glorious place! where face to face Jehovah may be seen, By such as were sinners whilere4 and no dark veil between. Where the sun shine, and light divine, 1765 of God’s bright countenance, Doth rest upon them every one, with sweetest induence.

222

O blessed state of the renate!5 O wondrous happiness, 1770 To which they’re brought, beyond what thought can reach, or words express! Grief’s water- course,6 and sorrow’s source, are turned to joyful streams. Their old distress and heaviness 1775 are vanishéd like dreams.

223

For God above in arms of love doth dearly them embrace, And "lls their sprights with such delights, and pleasures in His grace; 1780 As shall not fail, nor yet grow stale through frequency of use: Nor do they fear God’s favor there, to forfeit by abuse.

224

For there the saints are perfect saints, 1785 and holy ones indeed, From all the sin that dwelt within their mortal bodies freed: Made kings and priests to God through Christ’s dear love’s transcendency, 1790 There to remain, and there to reign with Him eternally.

1662

1 Cor. 13.12

Their eternal happiness and incomparable glory there.

Rev. 21.4

Psal. 16.11

Heb. 12.23

Rev. 1.6 & 22.5

267

MARY ROWLANDSON c. 1637–1711

On June 20, 1675, the Wampanoag leader Metacom, who was sometimes called King Philip, or ga nized the "rst of a series of attacks on New Eng land settle- ments. These attacks, which lasted for more than a year, have become known as “King Philip’s War.” They were occasioned by the execution in Plymouth of three Wam- panoag tribesmen, but the grievances behind them had been growing for de cades. Crowded off their lands by the En glish colonists, the region’s Algonquian com- munities, including the Wampanoag, had begun to experience severe food short-

ages. Metacom and his allies wanted to regain sovereignty over their territory and to stop further colonial expansion. By the end of the war, in August 1676, three thousand Native Americans were dead, including Metacom, who was killed by a Native ally of the En glish. Colonial leaders had sold Metacom’s wife and children into slavery in the West Indies, along with many other pris- oners of the war. The En glish had suf- fered major losses as well. More than twelve hundred houses had been burned, and about six hundred colonials were dead. The war to restore Native sover- eignty in New Eng land had instead sharply diminished it, though Metacom and his forces had posed an existential challenge to the colonies.

The most famous account of these attacks is A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, written by the wife of the minister of the town of Lancaster, Mas sa chu setts, "fty miles west of Boston. Rowlandson spent eleven weeks as the Wampanoag’s cap- tive. Born in Somersetshire, in the south of Eng land, she moved to New Eng land with her family in 1639. Her father, John White, became a wealthy landholder in the Mas sa chu setts Bay Colony, and in 1653 he settled in Lancaster. Around 1656, she married the Reverend Joseph Rowlandson. The attack on Lancaster occurred on February 20, 1676, while Joseph was away from home. Several members of Rowlandson’s family were killed in the attack, and she and three of

A Narrative. Mary Rowlandson, whose narrative "rst appeared in 1682, had refused to resist—or even try to escape from— her Native American captors. But in this illustration from around 1773, shortly before the beginning of the American Revolution, she has been given a gun and thus elevated into a defender of her realm — like the male patriots who at that time were opposing British policy.

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her children were taken captive; her daughter Sarah was badly wounded and died a few days later. During her captivity, Rowlandson was separated from her older children and saw them only occasionally. She was ransomed and released on the second of May, and after several weeks her surviving children were returned. In 1677 she and Joseph moved to Wethers"eld, Connecticut, where he died the next year. The town voted to pay her an annuity as their minister’s widow. She married Captain Samuel Talcott in Wethers"eld on August 6, 1679, and died in that Con- necticut Valley town, thirty "ve years after her famous ordeal.

Shortly after her release by the Wampanoags, Rowlandson began writing about her captivity, prompted by leading members of the clergy, including one who wrote a preface designed to "nd meaning for the colony in Rowlandson’s experiences. (That anonymous author was prob ably Increase Mather, who is discussed in the headnote for his son, Cotton Mather, below.) Published in 1682, A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson became one of the most popu lar prose works of the seventeenth century in both British North Amer i ca and Eng land. The narrative combines high adventure with tragedy and exemplary piety, while also revealing complex psychological and social dynamics. Using “removes” (i.e., depar- tures, movings from place to place) to structure her account, Rowlandson shows how she adjusted to the shock of the attack, the death of her daughter, and her own situation. As Rowlandson recovers and acclimates, she takes more interest in the unfamiliar people and activities around her, recognizing that some actions that initially seemed to redect the “savagery” of her captors were instead necessitated by their desperate circumstances. She includes striking portrayals of Metacom, who treats her graciously; her master, Quinnapin, who becomes something of a protec- tor for her; and Quinnapin’s wife Weetamoo, the “squaw sachem,” who treats her more harshly. She also vividly describes a “powwow” and other rituals and practices that were unfamiliar to her and many of her readers. She has some harsh words for “Praying Indians,” that is, Native Christians who sided with Metacom against the En glish. Her closing redections suggest her lingering trauma and her effort to make sense of her experiences as part of a divine plan. They offer some of the most mov- ing passages about grief and ac cep tance in American literature.

Several editions of the narrative appeared around the time of the American Revo- lution, suggesting that part of the work’s appeal is its connecting of an individual’s experience to a group identity. Its continued popularity contributed to a revival of the genre of the captivity narrative in the early nineteenth century, as Indian Removal and westward expansion created new pressures on Native communities. One of the major descendants in the genre is A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison (1824), the story of a captive white woman who made a life with the Iroquois. Rowlandson’s narrative also exerted a lasting induence on American "ction, through works such as James Fenimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans (1826) and Catharine Maria Sedgwick’s Hope Leslie: Or, Early Times in the Mas sa chu setts (1827), which were inspired in part by the genre that Rowlandson so powerfully brought to life.

2 6 9

1. The text is from Original Narratives of Early American History, Narratives of Indian Wars 1675–1699 (1952), vol. 14, edited by C. H. Lin- coln. All copies of Rowlandson’s original edition have been lost. Like most modern editors, Lin- coln reprints the second “Addition,” "rst printed in Cambridge, Mas sa chu setts, in 1682. The full title is The sovereignty and goodness of GOD, together with the faithfulness of his promises dis- played; being a narrative of the captivity and res- toration of Mrs.  Mary Rowlandson, commended by her, to all that desires to know the Lord’s doings to, and dealings with her. Especially to her dear children and relations. The second Addition Cor- rected and amended. Written by her own hand for

her private use, and now made public at the ear- nest desire of some friends, and for the bene#t of the af"icted. Deut. 32.39. See now that I, even I am he, and there is no god with me; I kill and I make alive, I wound and I heal, neither is there any can deliver out of my hand. 2. Thursday, February  20, 1676, according to the Gregorian calendar, which was adopted in 1752. 3. Then a frontier town of about "fty families. 4. I.e., houses in the town where people gath- ered for defense. 5. Belly. 6. Projecting forti"cations.

A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson1

On the tenth of February 1675,2 came the Indians with great numbers upon Lancaster:3 their "rst coming was about sunrising; hearing the noise of some guns, we looked out; several houses were burning, and the smoke ascending to heaven. There were "ve persons taken in one house; the father, and the mother and a sucking child, they knocked on the head; the other two they took and carried away alive. There were two others, who being out of their garrison4 upon some occasion were set upon; one was knocked on the head, the other escaped; another there was who running along was shot and wounded, and fell down; he begged of them his life, promising them money (as they told me) but they would not hearken to him but knocked him in head, and stripped him naked, and split open his bowels.5 Another, seeing many of the Indians about his barn, ventured and went out, but was quickly shot down. There were three others belonging to the same garrison who were killed; the Indians getting up upon the roof of the barn, had advantage to shoot down upon them over their forti"cation. Thus these murderous wretches went on, burning, and destroying before them.

At length they came and beset our own house, and quickly it was the dole- fulest day that ever mine eyes saw. The house stood upon the edge of a hill; some of the Indians got behind the hill, others into the barn, and others behind anything that could shelter them; from all which places they shot against the house, so that the bullets seemed to dy like hail; and quickly they wounded one man among us, then another, and then a third. About two hours (according to my observation, in that amazing time) they had been about the house before they prevailed to "re it (which they did with dax and hemp, which they brought out of the barn, and there being no defense about the house, only two dankers6 at two opposite corners and one of them not "nished); they "red it once and one ventured out and quenched it, but they quickly "red it again, and that took. Now is the dreadful hour come, that I have often heard of (in time of war, as it was the case of others), but now mine eyes see it. Some in our house were "ghting for their lives, others wal- lowing in their blood, the house on "re over our heads, and the bloody hea- then ready to knock us on the head, if we stirred out. Now might we hear mothers and children crying out for themselves, and one another, “Lord, what shall we do?” Then I took my children (and one of my sisters’, hers) to

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7. I.e., eager to return the gun"re. 8. Hollered, yelled.

9. Psalm 46.8.

go forth and leave the house: but as soon as we came to the door and appeared, the Indians shot so thick that the bullets rattled against the house, as if one had taken an handful of stones and threw them, so that we were fain to give back.7 We had six stout dogs belonging to our garrison, but none of them would stir, though another time, if any Indian had come to the door, they were ready to dy upon him and tear him down. The Lord hereby would make us the more acknowledge His hand, and to see that our help is always in Him. But out we must go, the "re increasing, and coming along behind us, roaring, and the Indians gaping before us with their guns, spears, and hatchets to devour us. No sooner were we out of the house, but my brother- in- law (being before wounded, in defending the house, in or near the throat) fell down dead, whereat the Indians scornfully shouted, and hallowed,8 and were presently upon him, stripping off his clothes, the bullets dying thick, one went through my side, and the same (as would seem) through the bowels and hand of my dear child in my arms. One of my elder sisters’ children, named William, had then his leg broken, which the Indians perceiving, they knocked him on [his] head. Thus were we butchered by those merciless heathen, standing amazed, with the blood running down to our heels. My eldest sister being yet in the house, and seeing those woeful sights, the in"dels hauling mothers one way, and children another, and some wallowing in their blood: and her elder son telling her that her son William was dead, and myself was wounded, she said, “And Lord, let me die with them,” which was no sooner said, but she was struck with a bullet, and fell down dead over the threshold. I hope she is reap- ing the fruit of her good labors, being faithful to the ser vice of God in her place. In her younger years she lay under much trou ble upon spiritual accounts, till it pleased God to make that precious scripture take hold of her heart, “And he said unto me, my Grace is suf"cient for thee” (2 Corinthians 12.9). More than twenty years after, I have heard her tell how sweet and com- fortable that place was to her. But to return: the Indians laid hold of us, pull- ing me one way, and the children another, and said, “Come go along with us”; I told them they would kill me: they answered, if I were willing to go along with them, they would not hurt me.

Oh the doleful sight that now was to behold at this house! “Come, behold the works of the Lord, what desolations he has made in the earth.”9 Of thirty- seven persons who were in this one house, none escaped either pres ent death, or a bitter captivity, save only one, who might say as he, “And I only am escaped alone to tell the News” (Job 1.15). There were twelve killed, some shot, some stabbed with their spears, some knocked down with their hatchets. When we are in prosperity, Oh the little that we think of such dreadful sights, and to see our dear friends, and relations lie bleeding out their heart- blood upon the ground. There was one who was chopped into the head with a hatchet, and stripped naked, and yet was crawling up and down. It is a solemn sight to see so many Christians lying in their blood, some here, and some there, like a com- pany of sheep torn by wolves, all of them stripped naked by a com pany of hell- hounds, roaring, singing, ranting, and insulting, as if they would have torn our very hearts out; yet the Lord by His almighty power preserved a number of us from death, for there were twenty- four of us taken alive and carried captive.

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1. Close. 2. I.e., Mas sa chu setts Bay, or Boston. 3. On August 30, 1675, Captain Samuel Mosely, encouraged by a number of people who were skep- tical of converted American Indians, brought to

Boston by force "fteen Christianized American Indians who lived on their own lands in Marlbor- ough, Mas sa chu setts, and accused them (prob ably unjustly) of an attack on the town of Lancaster on August 22.

I had often before this said that if the Indians should come, I should choose rather to be killed by them than taken alive, but when it came to the trial my mind changed; their glittering weapons so daunted my spirit, that I chose rather to go along with those (as I may say) ravenous beasts, than that moment to end my days; and that I may the better declare what happened to me during that grievous captivity, I shall particularly speak of the several removes we had up and down the wilderness.

The First Remove

Now away we must go with those barbarous creatures, with our bodies wounded and bleeding, and our hearts no less than our bodies. About a mile we went that night, up upon a hill within sight of the town, where they intended to lodge. There was hard1 by a vacant house (deserted by the En glish before, for fear of the Indians). I asked them whether I might not lodge in the house that night, to which they answered, “What, will you love En glish men still?” This was the dolefulest night that ever my eyes saw. Oh the roar- ing, and singing and dancing, and yelling of those black creatures in the night, which made the place a lively resemblance of hell. And as miserable was the waste that was there made of horses, cattle, sheep, swine, calves, lambs, roasting pigs, and fowl (which they had plundered in the town), some roasting, some lying and burning, and some boiling to feed our merciless enemies; who were joyful enough, though we were disconsolate. To add to the dolefulness of the former day, and the dismalness of the pres ent night, my thoughts ran upon my losses and sad bereaved condition. All was gone, my husband gone (at least separated from me, he being in the Bay;2 and to add to my grief, the Indians told me they would kill him as he came home- ward), my children gone, my relations and friends gone, our house and home and all our comforts— within door and without— all was gone (except my life), and I knew not but the next moment that might go too. There remained nothing to me but one poor wounded babe, and it seemed at pres ent worse than death that it was in such a pitiful condition, bespeaking compassion, and I had no refreshing for it, nor suitable things to revive it. Little do many think what is the savageness and brutishness of this barbarous enemy, Ay, even those that seem to profess more than others among them, when the En glish have fallen into their hands.

Those seven that were killed at Lancaster the summer before upon a Sabbath day, and the one that was afterward killed upon a weekday, were slain and mangled in a barbarous manner, by one- eyed John, and Marlbor- ough’s Praying Indians, which Capt. Mosely brought to Boston, as the Indi- ans told me.3

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4. West to Prince ton, Mas sa chu setts, near Mount Wachusett. 5. February 12–27; they stopped at a Native American village on the Ware River, near New

Braintree. 6. Abbreviation for videlicet: that is to say, namely (Latin).

The Second Remove4

But now, the next morning, I must turn my back upon the town, and travel with them into the vast and desolate wilderness, I knew not whither. It is not my tongue, or pen, can express the sorrows of my heart, and bitterness of my spirit that I had at this departure: but God was with me in a wonderful manner, carry ing me along, and bearing up my spirit, that it did not quite fail. One of the Indians carried my poor wounded babe upon a horse; it went moaning all along, “I shall die, I shall die.” I went on foot after it, with sorrow that cannot be expressed. At length I took it off the horse, and carried it in my arms till my strength failed, and I fell down with it. Then they set me upon a horse with my wounded child in my lap, and there being no furniture upon the horse’s back, as we were going down a steep hill we both fell over the horse’s head, at which they, like inhumane creatures, laughed, and rejoiced to see it, though I thought we should there have ended our days, as overcome with so many dif"culties. But the Lord renewed my strength still, and carried me along, that I might see more of His power; yea, so much that I could never have thought of, had I not experienced it.

After this it quickly began to snow, and when night came on, they stopped, and now down I must sit in the snow, by a little "re, and a few boughs behind me, with my sick child in my lap; and calling much for water, being now (through the wound) fallen into a violent fever. My own wound also growing so stiff that I could scarce sit down or rise up; yet so it must be, that I must sit all this cold winter night upon the cold snowy ground, with my sick child in my arms, looking that every hour would be the last of its life; and having no Christian friend near me, either to comfort or help me. Oh, I may see the wonderful power of God, that my Spirit did not utterly sink under my afdic- tion: still the Lord upheld me with His gracious and merciful spirit, and we were both alive to see the light of the next morning.

The Third Remove5

The morning being come, they prepared to go on their way. One of the Indi- ans got up upon a horse, and they set me up behind him, with my poor sick babe in my lap. A very wearisome and tedious day I had of it; what with my own wound, and my child’s being so exceeding sick, and in a la men ta ble con- dition with her wound. It may be easily judged what a poor feeble condition we were in, there being not the least crumb of refreshing that came within either of our mouths from Wednesday night to Saturday night, except only a little cold water. This day in the after noon, about an hour by sun, we came to the place where they intended, viz.6 an Indian town, called Wenimesset, northward of Quabaug. When we were come, Oh the number of pagans (now merciless enemies) that there came about me, that I may say as David, “I had fainted, unless I had believed, etc.” (Psalm 27.13). The next day was the Sab- bath. I then remembered how careless I had been of God’s holy time; how many Sabbaths I had lost and misspent, and how evilly I had walked in

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7. A colonial town. 8. Captain Beers had attempted to save the gar- rison of North"eld, Mas sa chu setts, on September 4, 1675. “Albany”: then a colony in New York.

9. In Job 16.2, Job says: “I have heard many such things: miserable comforters are ye all.” 1. A subordinate chief.

God’s sight; which lay so close unto my spirit, that it was easy for me to see how righ teous it was with God to cut off the thread of my life and cast me out of His presence forever. Yet the Lord still showed mercy to me, and upheld me; and as He wounded me with one hand, so he healed me with the other. This day there came to me one Robert Pepper (a man belonging to Roxbury)7 who was taken in Captain Beers’s "ght, and had been now a considerable time with the Indians; and up with them almost as far as Albany, to see King Philip, as he told me, and was now very lately come into these parts.8 Hearing, I say, that I was in this Indian town, he obtained leave to come and see me. He told me he himself was wounded in the leg at Captain Beers’s "ght; and was not able some time to go, but as they carried him, and as he took oaken leaves and laid to his wound, and through the blessing of God he was able to travel again. Then I took oaken leaves and laid to my side, and with the blessing of God it cured me also; yet before the cure was wrought, I may say, as it is in Psalm 38.5–6, “My wounds stink and are corrupt, I am troubled, I am bowed down greatly, I go mourning all the day long.” I sat much alone with a poor wounded child in my lap, which moaned night and day, having nothing to revive the body, or cheer the spirits of her, but instead of that, sometimes one Indian would come and tell me one hour that “your master will knock your child in the head,” and then a second, and then a third, “your master will quickly knock your child in the head.”

This was the comfort I had from them, miserable comforters are ye all, as he said.9 Thus nine days I sat upon my knees, with my babe in my lap, till my desh was raw again; my child being even ready to depart this sorrowful world, they bade me carry it out to another wigwam (I suppose because they would not be troubled with such spectacles) whither I went with a very heavy heart, and down I sat with the picture of death in my lap. About two hours in the night, my sweet babe like a lamb departed this life on Feb. 18, 1675. It being about six years, and "ve months old. It was nine days from the "rst wounding, in this miserable condition, without any refreshing of one nature or other, except a little cold water. I cannot but take notice how at another time I could not bear to be in the room where any dead person was, but now the case is changed; I must and could lie down by my dead babe, side by side all the night after. I have thought since of the wonderful goodness of God to me in preserving me in the use of my reason and senses in that dis- tressed time, that I did not use wicked and violent means to end my own miserable life. In the morning, when they understood that my child was dead they sent for me home to my master’s wigwam (by my master in this writ- ing, must be understood Quinnapin, who was a Sagamore,1 and married King Philip’s wife’s sister; not that he "rst took me, but I was sold to him by another Narragansett Indian, who took me when "rst I came out of the gar- rison). I went to take up my dead child in my arms to carry it with me, but they bid me let it alone; there was no resisting, but go I must and leave it. When I had been at my master’s wigwam, I took the "rst opportunity I could get to go look after my dead child. When I came I asked them what they had done with it; then they told me it was upon the hill. Then they went and

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2. Jacob’s lamentation in Genesis 42.36. 3. This colonial town in Mas sa chu setts was

attacked on February 21. 4. Whooping.

showed me where it was, where I saw the ground was newly digged, and there they told me they had buried it. There I left that child in the wilderness, and must commit it, and myself also in this wilderness condition, to Him who is above all. God having taken away this dear child, I went to see my daughter Mary, who was at this same Indian town, at a wigwam not very far off, though we had little liberty or opportunity to see one another. She was about ten years old, and taken from the door at "rst by a Praying Ind. and afterward sold for a gun. When I came in sight, she would fall aweeping; at which they were provoked, and would not let me come near her, but bade me be gone; which was a heart- cutting word to me. I had one child dead, another in the wilderness, I knew not where, the third they would not let me come near to: “Me (as he said) have ye bereaved of my Children, Joseph is not, and Simeon is not, and ye will take Benjamin also, all these things are against me.”2 I could not sit still in this condition, but kept walking from one place to another. And as I was going along, my heart was even over- whelmed with the thoughts of my condition, and that I should have children, and a nation which I knew not, ruled over them. Whereupon I earnestly entreated the Lord, that He would consider my low estate, and show me a token for good, and if it were His blessed will, some sign and hope of some relief. And indeed quickly the Lord answered, in some mea sure, my poor prayers; for as I was going up and down mourning and lamenting my condi- tion, my son came to me, and asked me how I did. I had not seen him before, since the destruction of the town, and I knew not where he was, till I was informed by himself, that he was amongst a smaller parcel of Indians, whose place was about six miles off. With tears in his eyes, he asked me whether his sister Sarah was dead; and told me he had seen his sister Mary; and prayed me, that I would not be troubled in reference to himself. The occa- sion of his coming to see me at this time, was this: there was, as I said, about six miles from us, a small plantation of Indians, where it seems he had been during his captivity; and at this time, there were some forces of the Ind. gath- ered out of our com pany, and some also from them (among whom was my son’s master) to go to assault and burn Med"eld.3 In this time of the absence of his master, his dame brought him to see me. I took this to be some gra- cious answer to my earnest and unfeigned desire. The next day, viz. to this, the Indians returned from Med"eld, all the com pany, for those that belonged to the other small com pany, came through the town that now we were at. But before they came to us, Oh! the outrageous roaring and hooping4 that there was. They began their din about a mile before they came to us. By their noise and hooping they signi"ed how many they had destroyed (which was at that time twenty- three). Those that were with us at home were gathered together as soon as they heard the hooping, and every time that the other went over their number, these at home gave a shout, that the very earth rung again. And thus they continued till those that had been upon the expedition were come up to the Sagamore’s wigwam; and then, Oh, the hideous insult- ing and triumphing that there was over some En glishmen’s scalps that they had taken (as their manner is) and brought with them. I cannot but take notice of the wonderful mercy of God to me in those afdictions, in sending

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5. A chapter concerned with blessings for obedi- ence to God and curses for disobedience. 6. I.e., in place of the blessings. 7. “That then the Lord thy God will turn thy captivity, and have compassion upon thee, and will return and gather thee from all the nations” (Deuteronomy 30.3), referring to the Israelites’ Babylonian captivity, or exile.

8. I.e., the mistress of a house. 9. Food. “One . . . reckon”: i.e., before she was expected to give birth. 1. Verse 14. “Ver. ult.”: last verse (Latin abbrev.) 2. February  28 to March  3. The camp was between Ware River and Miller’s River, in pres ent- day Petersham, Mas sa chu setts. 3. I.e., so soon after giving birth.

me a Bible. One of the Indians that came from [the] Med"eld "ght, had brought some plunder, came to me, and asked me, if I would have a Bible, he had got one in his basket. I was glad of it, and asked him, whether he thought the Indians would let me read? He answered, yes. So I took the Bible, and in that melancholy time, it came into my mind to read "rst the 28th chapter of Deuteronomy,5 which I did, and when I had read it, my dark heart wrought on this manner: that there was no mercy for me, that the blessings were gone, and the curses come in their room,6 and that I had lost my opportunity. But the Lord helped me still to go on reading till I came to Chap. 30, the seven "rst verses, where I found, there was mercy promised again, if we would return to Him by repentance;7 and though we were scattered from one end of the earth to the other, yet the Lord would gather us together, and turn all those curses upon our enemies. I do not desire to live to forget this Scrip- ture, and what comfort it was to me.

Now the Ind. began to talk of removing from this place, some one way, and some another. There were now besides myself nine En glish captives in this place (all of them children, except one woman). I got an opportunity to go and take my leave of them. They being to go one way, and I another, I asked them whether they were earnest with God for deliverance. They told me they did as they were able, and it was some comfort to me, that the Lord stirred up children to look to Him. The woman, viz. goodwife8 Joslin, told me she should never see me again, and that she could "nd in her heart to run away. I wished her not to run away by any means, for we were near thirty miles from any En glish town, and she very big with child, and had but one week to reckon, and another child in her arms, two years old, and bad rivers there were to go over, and we were feeble, with our poor and coarse enter- tainment.9 I had my Bible with me, I pulled it out, and asked her whether she would read. We opened the Bible and lighted on Psalm 27, in which Psalm we especially took notice of that, ver. ult., “Wait on the Lord, Be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine Heart, wait I say on the Lord.”1

The Fourth Remove2

And now I must part with that little com pany I had. Here I parted from my daughter Mary (whom I never saw again till I saw her in Dorchester, returned from captivity), and from four little cousins and neighbors, some of which I never saw afterward: the Lord only knows the end of them. Amongst them also was that poor woman before mentioned, who came to a sad end, as some of the com pany told me in my travel: she having much grief upon her spirit about her miserable condition, being so near her time,3 she would be often asking the Indians to let her go home; they not being willing to that, and yet vexed with her importunity, gathered a great com pany together about her and stripped her naked, and set her in the midst of them, and when they had sung

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4. March 3 to March 5. 5. Mas sa chu setts and Connecticut forces. 6. King of Israel (c. 843–816 b.c.e.) who killed the kings Jehoram and Ahaziah (cf. 2 Kings

9.20). 7. Pres ent- day Miller’s River, in Orange, Mas sa- chu setts. 8. Weetamoo.

and danced about her (in their hellish manner) as long as they pleased they knocked her on [the] head, and the child in her arms with her. When they had done that they made a "re and put them both into it, and told the other children that were with them that if they attempted to go home, they would serve them in like manner. The children said she did not shed one tear, but prayed all the while. But to return to my own journey, we traveled about half a day or little more, and came to a desolate place in the wilderness, where there were no wigwams or inhabitants before; we came about the middle of the after noon to this place, cold and wet, and snowy, and hungry, and weary, and no refreshing for man but the cold ground to sit on, and our poor Indian cheer.

Heart- aching thoughts here I had about my poor children, who were scat- tered up and down among the wild beasts of the forest. My head was light and dizzy ( either through hunger or hard lodging, or trou ble or all together), my knees feeble, my body raw by sitting double night and day, that I cannot express to man the afdiction that lay upon my spirit, but the Lord helped me at that time to express it to Himself. I opened my Bible to read, and the Lord brought that precious Scripture to me. “Thus saith the Lord, refrain thy voice from weeping, and thine eyes from tears, for thy work shall be rewarded, and they shall come again from the land of the enemy” (Jeremiah 31.16). This was a sweet cordial to me when I was ready to faint; many and many a time have I sat down and wept sweetly over this Scripture. At this place we continued about four days.

The Fifth Remove4

The occasion (as I thought) of their moving at this time was the En glish army,5 it being near and following them. For they went as if they had gone for their lives, for some considerable way, and then they made a stop, and chose some of their stoutest men, and sent them back to hold the En glish army in play whilst the rest escaped. And then, like Jehu,6 they marched on furiously, with their old and with their young: some carried their old decrepit mothers, some carried one, and some another. Four of them carried a great Indian upon a bier; but going through a thick wood with him, they were hin- dered, and could make no haste, whereupon they took him upon their backs, and carried him, one at a time, till they came to Banquaug river.7 Upon a Friday, a little after noon, we came to this river. When all the com- pany was come up, and were gathered together, I thought to count the num- ber of them, but they were so many, and being somewhat in motion, it was beyond my skill. In this travel, because of my wound, I was somewhat favored in my load; I carried only my knitting work and two quarts of parched meal. Being very faint I asked my mistress8 to give me one spoonful of the meal, but she would not give me a taste. They quickly fell to cutting dry trees, to make rafts to carry them over the river: and soon my turn came to go over. By the advantage of some brush which they had laid upon the raft to sit upon, I did not wet my foot (which many of themselves at the other end were mid-

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9. Monday, March  6, ending near North"eld, Mas sa chu setts. 1. Lot’s wife looked back on the wicked city of

Sodom and was turned into a pillar of salt (Genesis 19.24).

leg deep) which cannot but be acknowledged as a favor of God to my weak- ened body, it being a very cold time. I was not before acquainted with such kind of doings or dangers. “When thou passeth through the waters I will be with thee, and through the rivers they shall not overdow thee” (Isaiah 43.2). A certain number of us got over the river that night, but it was the night after the Sabbath before all the com pany was got over. On the Saturday they boiled an old horse’s leg which they had got, and so we drank of the broth, as soon as they thought it was ready, and when it was almost all gone, they "lled it up again.

The "rst week of my being among them I hardly ate anything; the second week I found my stomach grow very faint for want of something; and yet it was very hard to get down their "lthy trash; but the third week, though I could think how formerly my stomach would turn against this or that, and I could starve and die before I could eat such things, yet they were sweet and savory to my taste. I was at this time knitting a pair of white cotton stockings for my mistress; and had not yet wrought upon a Sabbath day. When the Sabbath came they bade me go to work. I told them it was the Sabbath day, and desired them to let me rest, and told them I would do as much more tomorrow; to which they answered me they would break my face. And here I cannot but take notice of the strange providence of God in pre- serving the heathen. They were many hundreds, old and young, some sick, and some lame; many had papooses at their backs. The greatest number at this time with us were squaws, and they traveled with all they had, bag and baggage, and yet they got over this river aforesaid; and on Monday they set their wigwams on "re, and away they went. On that very day came the En glish army after them to this river, and saw the smoke of their wigwams, and yet this river put a stop to them. God did not give them courage or activ- ity to go over after us. We were not ready for so great a mercy as victory and deliverance. If we had been God would have found out a way for the En glish to have passed this river, as well as for the Indians with their squaws and children, and all their luggage. “Oh that my people had hearkened to me, and Israel had walked in my ways, I should soon have subdued their ene- mies, and turned my hand against their adversaries” (Psalm 81.13–14).

The Sixth Remove9

On Monday (as I said) they set their wigwams on "re and went away. It was a cold morning, and before us there was a great brook with ice on it; some waded through it, up to the knees and higher, but others went till they came to a beaver dam, and I amongst them, where through the good provi- dence of God, I did not wet my foot. I went along that day mourning and lamenting, leaving farther my own country, and traveling into a vast and howling wilderness, and I understood something of Lot’s wife’s temptation, when she looked back.1 We came that day to a great swamp, by the side of which we took up our lodging that night. When I came to the brow of the hill, that looked toward the swamp, I thought we had been come to a great Indian

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2. Near Beers Plain, in North"eld, Mas sa chu- setts. 3. I.e., bent (with a crackling sound).

4. Proverbs 27.7. 5. To Coasset, in South Vernon, Vermont.

town (though there were none but our own com pany). The Indians were as thick as the trees: it seemed as if there had been a thousand hatchets going at once. If one looked before one there was nothing but Indians, and behind one, nothing but Indians, and so on either hand, I myself in the midst, and no Christian soul near me, and yet how hath the Lord preserved me in safety? Oh the experience that I have had of the goodness of God, to me and mine!

The Seventh Remove

After a restless and hungry night there, we had a wearisome time of it the next day. The swamp by which we lay was, as it were, a deep dungeon, and an exceeding high and steep hill before it. Before I got to the top of the hill, I thought my heart and legs, and all would have broken, and failed me. What, through faintness and soreness of body, it was a grievous day of travel to me. As we went along, I saw a place where En glish cattle had been. That was comfort to me, such as it was. Quickly after that we came to an En glish path, which so took with me, that I thought I could have freely lyen down and died. That day, a little after noon, we came to Squakeag,2 where the Indians quickly spread themselves over the deserted En glish "elds, glean- ing what they could "nd. Some picked up ears of wheat that were crickled3 down; some found ears of Indian corn; some found ground nuts, and others sheaves of wheat that were frozen together in the shock, and went to thresh- ing of them out. Myself got two ears of Indian corn, and whilst I did but turn my back, one of them was stolen from me, which much troubled me. There came an Indian to them at that time with a basket of horse liver. I asked him to give me a piece. “What,” says he, “can you eat horse liver?” I told him, I would try, if he would give a piece, which he did, and I laid it on the coals to roast. But before it was half ready they got half of it away from me, so that I was fain to take the rest and eat it as it was, with the blood about my mouth, and yet a savory bit it was to me: “For to the hungry soul every bitter thing is sweet.”4 A solemn sight methought it was, to see "elds of wheat and Indian corn forsaken and spoiled and the remainders of them to be food for our merciless enemies. That night we had a mess of wheat for our supper.

The Eighth Remove5

On the morrow morning we must go over the river, i.e. Connecticut, to meet with King Philip. Two canoes full they had carried over; the next turn I myself was to go. But as my foot was upon the canoe to step in there was a sudden outcry among them, and I must step back, and instead of going over the river, I must go four or "ve miles up the river farther northward. Some of the Indians ran one way, and some another. The cause of this rout was, as I thought, their espying some En glish scouts, who were thereabout. In this travel up the river about noon the com pany made a stop, and sat down; some to eat, and others to rest them. As I sat amongst them, musing of things

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6. Job 1.21. 7. Rowlandson prob ably has in mind Psalm 145.4: “One generation shall praise thy works to another, and shall declare thy mighty acts.”

8. I.e., among believers (“saints”) as well as the unregenerate. 9. A colonial town in Western Mas sa chu setts.

past, my son Joseph unexpectedly came to me. We asked of each other’s wel- fare, bemoaning our doleful condition, and the change that had come upon us. We had husband and father, and children, and sisters, and friends, and relations, and house, and home, and many comforts of this life: but now we may say, as Job, “Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return: the Lord gave, the Lord hath taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord.”6 I asked him whether he would read. He told me he earnestly desired it, I gave him my Bible, and he lighted upon that comfortable Scripture “I shall not die but live, and declare the works of the Lord: the Lord hath chastened me sore, yet he hath not given me over to death” (Psalm 118.17–18). “Look here, mother,” says he, “did you read this?” And here I may take occasion to mention one principal ground of my setting forth these lines: even as the psalmist says, to declare the works of the Lord, and His wonderful power in carry ing us along, preserving us in the wilderness, while under the enemy’s hand, and returning of us in safety again. And His goodness in bringing to my hand so many comfortable and suitable scriptures in my distress.7 But to return, we traveled on till night; and in the morning, we must go over the river to Philip’s crew. When I was in the canoe I could not but be amazed at the numerous crew of pagans that were on the bank on the other side. When I came ashore, they gathered all about me, I sitting alone in the midst. I observed they asked one another questions, and laughed, and rejoiced over their gains and victories. Then my heart began to fail: and I fell aweeping, which was the "rst time to my remembrance, that I wept before them. Although I had met with so much afdiction, and my heart was many times ready to break, yet could I not shed one tear in their sight; but rather had been all this while in a maze, and like one astonished. But now I may say as Psalm 137.1, “By the Rivers of Babylon, there we sate down: yea, we wept when we remembered Zion.” There one of them asked me why I wept. I could hardly tell what to say: Yet I answered, they would kill me. “No,” said he, “none will hurt you.” Then came one of them and gave me two spoonfuls of meal to comfort me, and another gave me half a pint of peas; which was more worth than many bush- els at another time. Then I went to see King Philip. He bade me come in and sit down, and asked me whether I would smoke it (a usual compliment nowa- days amongst saints and sinners)8 but this no way suited me. For though I had formerly used tobacco, yet I had left it ever since I was "rst taken. It seems to be a bait the devil lays to make men lose their precious time. I remember with shame how formerly, when I had taken two or three pipes, I was presently ready for another, such a bewitching thing it is. But I thank God, He has now given me power over it; surely there are many who may be better employed than to lie sucking a stinking tobacco- pipe.

Now the Indians gather their forces to go against Northampton.9 Over night one went about yelling and hooting to give notice of the design. Where- upon they fell to boiling of ground nuts, and parching of corn (as many as had it) for their provision; and in the morning away they went. During my abode in this place, Philip spake to me to make a shirt for his boy, which I

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1. Food. 2. Husband. 3. Relation, i.e., wife.

4. I.e., "ve kernels of corn in place of it. 5. To the Ashuelot Valley, in New Hampshire.

did, for which he gave me a shilling. I offered the money to my master, but he bade me keep it; and with it I bought a piece of horse desh. Afterwards he asked me to make a cap for his boy, for which he invited me to dinner. I went, and he gave me a pancake, about as big as two "n gers. It was made of parched wheat, beaten, and fried in bear’s grease, but I thought I never tasted pleasanter meat1 in my life. There was a squaw who spake to me to make a shirt for her sannup,2 for which she gave me a piece of bear. Another asked me to knit a pair of stockings, for which she gave me a quart of peas. I boiled my peas and bear together, and invited my master and mistress to dinner; but the proud gossip,3 because I served them both in one dish, would eat nothing, except one bit that he gave her upon the point of his knife. Hear- ing that my son was come to this place, I went to see him, and found him lying dat upon the ground. I asked him how he could sleep so? He answered me that he was not asleep, but at prayer; and lay so, that they might not observe what he was doing. I pray God he may remember these things now he is returned in safety. At this place (the sun now getting higher) what with the beams and heat of the sun, and the smoke of the wigwams, I thought I should have been blind. I could scarce discern one wigwam from another. There was here one Mary Thurston of Med"eld, who seeing how it was with me, lent me a hat to wear; but as soon as I was gone, the squaw (who owned that Mary Thurston) came running after me, and got it away again. Here was the squaw that gave me one spoonful of meal. I put it in my pocket to keep it safe. Yet notwithstanding, somebody stole it, but put "ve Indian corns in the room of it;4 which corns were the greatest provisions I had in my travel for one day.

The Indians returning from Northampton, brought with them some horses, and sheep, and other things which they had taken; I desired them that they would carry me to Albany upon one of those horses, and sell me for powder: for so they had sometimes discoursed. I was utterly hopeless of getting home on foot, the way that I came. I could hardly bear to think of the many weary steps I had taken, to come to this place.

The Ninth Remove5

But instead of going either to Albany or homeward, we must go "ve miles up the river, and then go over it. Here we abode a while. Here lived a sorry Indian, who spoke to me to make him a shirt. When I had done it, he would pay me nothing. But he living by the riverside, where I often went to fetch water, I would often be putting of him in mind, and calling for my pay: At last he told me if I would make another shirt, for a papoose not yet born, he would give me a knife, which he did when I had done it. I carried the knife in, and my master asked me to give it him, and I was not a little glad that I had anything that they would accept of, and be pleased with. When we were at this place, my master’s maid came home; she had been gone three weeks into the Narragansett country to fetch corn, where they had stored up some in the ground. She brought home about a peck and half of corn. This was

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6. To another location in the Ashuelot Valley.

about the time that their great captain, Naananto, was killed in the Narra- gansett country. My son being now about a mile from me, I asked liberty to go and see him; they bade me go, and away I went; but quickly lost myself, traveling over hills and through swamps, and could not "nd the way to him. And I cannot but admire at the wonderful power and goodness of God to me, in that, though I was gone from home, and met with all sorts of Indians, and those I had no knowledge of, and there being no Christian soul near me; yet not one of them offered the least imaginable miscarriage to me. I turned homeward again, and met with my master. He showed me the way to my son. When I came to him I found him not well: and withal he had a boil on his side, which much troubled him. We bemoaned one another a while, as the Lord helped us, and then I returned again. When I was returned, I found myself as unsatis"ed as I was before. I went up and down mourning and lamenting; and my spirit was ready to sink with the thoughts of my poor children. My son was ill, and I could but not think of his mournful looks, and no Christian friend was near him, to do any of"ce of love for him, either for soul or body. And my poor girl, I knew not where she was, nor whether she was sick, or well, or alive, or dead. I repaired under these thoughts to my Bible (my great comfort in that time) and that Scripture came to my hand, “Cast thy burden upon the Lord, and He shall sustain thee” (Psalm 55.22).

But I was fain to go and look after something to satisfy my hunger, and going among the wigwams, I went into one and there found a squaw who showed herself very kind to me, and gave me a piece of bear. I put it into my pocket, and came home, but could not "nd an opportunity to broil it, for fear they would get it from me, and there it lay all that day and night in my stinking pocket. In the morning I went to the same squaw, who had a kettle of ground nuts boiling. I asked her to let me boil my piece of bear in her kettle, which she did, and gave me some ground nuts to eat with it: and I cannot but think how pleasant it was to me. I have sometime seen bear baked very handsomely among the En glish, and some like it, but the thought that it was bear made me tremble. But now that was savory to me that one would think was enough to turn the stomach of a brute creature.

One bitter cold day I could "nd no room to sit down before the "re. I went out, and could not tell what to do, but I went in to another wigwam, where they were also sitting round the "re, but the squaw laid a skin for me, and bid me sit down, and gave me some ground nuts, and bade me come again; and told me they would buy me, if they were able, and yet these were strang- ers to me that I never saw before.

The Tenth Remove6

That day a small part of the com pany removed about three- quarters of a mile, intending further the next day. When they came to the place where they intended to lodge, and had pitched their wigwams, being hungry, I went again back to the place we were before at, to get something to eat, being encouraged by the squaw’s kindness, who bade me come again. When I was there, there came an Indian to look after me, who when he had found me,

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7. April 1676, near Chester"eld, New Hamp- shire—as far north as Rowlandson was taken. 8. Sunday, April 9.

9. Yes. 1. Outraged.

kicked me all along. I went home and found venison roasting that night, but they would not give me one bit of it. Sometimes I met with favor, and some- times with nothing but frowns.

The Eleventh Remove7

The next day in the morning they took their travel, intending a day’s journey up the river. I took my load at my back, and quickly we came to wade over the river; and passed over tiresome and wearisome hills. One hill was so steep that I was fain to creep up upon my knees, and to hold by the twigs and bushes to keep myself from falling backward. My head also was so light that I usually reeled as I went; but I hope all these wearisome steps that I have taken, are but a forewarning to me of the heavenly rest: “I know, O Lord, that thy judgments are right, and that thou in faithfulness hast afdicted me” (Psalm 119.75).

The Twelfth Remove8

It was upon a Sabbath- day morning, that they prepared for their travel. This morning I asked my master whether he would sell me to my husband. He answered me “Nux,” 9 which did much rejoice my spirit. My mistress, before we went, was gone to the burial of a papoose, and returning, she found me sitting and reading in my Bible; she snatched it hastily out of my hand, and threw it out of doors. I ran out and catched it up, and put it into my pocket, and never let her see it afterward. Then they packed up their things to be gone, and gave me my load. I complained it was too heavy, whereupon she gave me a slap in the face, and bade me go; I lifted up my heart to God, hoping the redemption was not far off; and the rather because their insolency grew worse and worse.

But the thoughts of my going homeward (for so we bent our course) much cheered my spirit, and made my burden seem light, and almost nothing at all. But (to my amazement and great perplexity) the scale was soon turned; for when we had gone a little way, on a sudden my mistress gives out; she would go no further, but turn back again, and said I must go back again with her, and she called her sannup, and would have had him gone back also, but he would not, but said he would go on, and come to us again in three days. My spirit was, upon this, I confess, very impatient, and almost outrageous.1 I thought I could as well have died as went back; I cannot declare the trou- ble that I was in about it; but yet back again I must go. As soon as I had the opportunity, I took my Bible to read, and that quieting Scripture came to my hand, “Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46.10). Which stilled my spirit for the pres ent. But a sore time of trial, I concluded, I had to go through, my master being gone, who seemed to me the best friend that I had of an Indian, both in cold and hunger, and quickly so it proved. Down I sat, with my heart as full as it could hold, and yet so hungry that I could not sit neither; but going out to see what I could "nd, and walking among

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2. Worthless things. 3. To Hinsdale, New Hampshire, near the

Connecticut River. 4. Job 19.21.

the trees, I found six acorns, and two chestnuts, which were some refresh- ment to me. Towards night I gathered some sticks for my own comfort, that I might not lie a- cold; but when we came to lie down they bade me to go out, and lie somewhere else, for they had com pany (they said) come in more than their own. I told them, I could not tell where to go, they bade me go look; I told them, if I went to another wigwam they would be angry, and send me home again. Then one of the com pany drew his sword, and told me he would run me through if I did not go presently. Then was I fain to stoop to this rude fellow, and to go out in the night, I knew not whither. Mine eyes have seen that fellow afterwards walking up and down Boston, under the appearance of a Friend Indian, and several others of the like cut. I went to one wigwam, and they told me they had no room. Then I went to another, and they said the same; at last an old Indian bade me to come to him, and his squaw gave me some ground nuts; she gave me also something to lay under my head, and a good "re we had; and through the good providence of God, I had a comfort- able lodging that night. In the morning, another Indian bade me come at night, and he would give me six ground nuts, which I did. We were at this place and time about two miles from [the] Connecticut River. We went in the morning to gather ground nuts, to the river, and went back again that night. I went with a good load at my back (for they when they went, though but a little way, would carry all their trumpery2 with them). I told them the skin was off my back, but I had no other comforting answer from them than this: that it would be no matter if my head were off too.

The Thirteenth Remove3

Instead of going toward the Bay, which was that I desired, I must go with them "ve or six miles down the river into a mighty thicket of brush; where we abode almost a fortnight. Here one asked me to make a shirt for her papoose, for which she gave me a mess of broth, which was thickened with meal made of the bark of a tree, and to make it the better, she had put into it about a handful of peas, and a few roasted ground nuts. I had not seen my son a pretty while, and here was an Indian of whom I made inquiry after him, and asked him when he saw him. He answered me that such a time his master roasted him, and that himself did eat a piece of him, as big as his two "n gers, and that he was very good meat. But the Lord upheld my Spirit, under this discouragement; and I considered their horrible addictedness to lying, and that there is not one of them that makes the least conscience of speaking of truth. In this place, on a cold night, as I lay by the "re, I removed a stick that kept the heat from me. A squaw moved it down again, at which I looked up, and she threw a handful of ashes in mine eyes. I thought I should have been quite blinded, and have never seen more, but lying down, the water run out of my eyes, and carried the dirt with it, that by the morn- ing I recovered my sight again. Yet upon this, and the like occasions, I hope it is not too much to say with Job, “Have pity upon me, O ye my Friends, for the Hand of the Lord has touched me.”4 And here I cannot but remember how many times sitting in their wigwams, and musing on things past, I

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5. Judges 16.20. “Wist”: knew. 6. A colonial town southeast of Northampton.

7. I.e., Satan.

should suddenly leap up and run out, as if I had been at home, forgetting where I was, and what my condition was; but when I was without, and saw nothing but wilderness, and woods, and a com pany of barbarous heathens, my mind quickly returned to me, which made me think of that, spoken con- cerning Sampson, who said, “I will go out and shake myself as at other times, but he wist not that the Lord was departed from him.”5 About this time I began to think that all my hopes of restoration would come to noth- ing. I thought of the En glish army, and hoped for their coming, and being taken by them, but that failed. I hoped to be carried to Albany, as the Indi- ans had discoursed before, but that failed also. I thought of being sold to my husband, as my master spake, but instead of that, my master himself was gone, and I left behind, so that my spirit was now quite ready to sink. I asked them to let me go out and pick up some sticks, that I might get alone, and pour out my heart unto the Lord. Then also I took my Bible to read, but I found no comfort here neither, which many times I was wont to "nd. So easy a thing it is with God to dry up the streams of Scripture comfort from us. Yet I can say, that in all my sorrows and afdictions, God did not leave me to have my impatience work towards Himself, as if His ways were unrigh- teous. But I knew that He laid upon me less than I deserved. Afterward, before this doleful time ended with me, I was turning the leaves of my Bible, and the Lord brought to me some Scriptures, which did a little revive me, as that [in] Isaiah 55.8: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord.” And also that [in] Psalm 37.5: “Commit thy way unto the Lord; trust also in him; and he shall bring it to pass.” About this time they came yelping from Hadley,6 where they had killed three En glishmen, and brought one captive with them, viz. Thomas Read. They all gathered about the poor man, asking him many questions. I desired also to go and see him; and when I came, he was crying bitterly, supposing they would quickly kill him. Whereupon I asked one of them, whether they intended to kill him; he answered me, they would not. He being a little cheered with that, I asked him about the welfare of my husband. He told me he saw him such a time in the Bay, and he was well, but very melan- choly. By which I certainly understood (though I suspected it before) that whatsoever the Indians told me respecting him was vanity and lies. Some of them told me he was dead, and they had killed him; some said he was mar- ried again, and that the Governor wished him to marry; and told him he should have his choice, and that all persuaded I was dead. So like were these barbarous creatures to him who was a liar from the beginning.7

As I was sitting once in the wigwam here, Philip’s maid came in with the child in her arms, and asked me to give her a piece of my apron, to make a dap for it. I told her I would not. Then my mistress bade me give it, but still I said no. The maid told me if I would not give her a piece, she would tear a piece off it. I told her I would tear her coat then. With that my mistress rises up, and take up a stick big enough to have killed me, and struck at me with it. But I stepped out, and she struck the stick into the mat of the wigwam. But while she was pulling of it out I ran to the maid and gave her all my apron, and so that storm went over.

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8. A colonial town southwest of Hadley. 9. Dysentery.

Hearing that my son was come to this place, I went to see him, and told him his father was well, but melancholy. He told me he was as much grieved for his father as for himself. I wondered at his speech, for I thought I had enough upon my spirit in reference to myself, to make me mindless of my husband and every one else; they being safe among their friends. He told me also, that awhile before, his master (together with other Indians) were going to the French for powder; but by the way the Mohawks met with them, and killed four of their com pany, which made the rest turn back again, for it might have been worse with him, had he been sold to the French, than it proved to be in his remaining with the Indians.

I went to see an En glish youth in this place, one John Gilbert of Spring- "eld.8 I found him lying without doors, upon the ground. I asked him how he did? He told me he was very sick of a dux,9 with eating so much blood. They had turned him out of the wigwam, and with him an Indian papoose, almost dead (whose parents had been killed), in a bitter cold day, without "re or clothes. The young man himself had nothing on but his shirt and waistcoat. This sight was enough to melt a heart of dint. There they lay quiv- ering in the cold, the youth round like a dog, the papoose stretched out with his eyes and nose and mouth full of dirt, and yet alive, and groaning. I advised John to go and get to some "re. He told me he could not stand, but I persuaded him still, lest he should lie there and die. And with much ado I got him to a "re, and went myself home. As soon as I was got home his mas- ter’s daughter came after me, to know what I had done with the En glishman. I told her I had got him to a "re in such a place. Now had I need to pray Paul’s Prayer “That we may be delivered from unreasonable and wicked men” (2 Thessalonians 3.2). For her satisfaction I went along with her, and brought her to him; but before I got home again it was noised about that I was running away and getting the En glish youth, along with me; that as soon as I came in they began to rant and domineer, asking me where I had been, and what I had been doing? and saying they would knock him on the head. I told them I had been seeing the En glish youth, and that I would not run away. They told me I lied, and taking up a hatchet, they came to me, and said they would knock me down if I stirred out again, and so con"ned me to the wigwam. Now may I say with David, “I am in a great strait” (2 Samuel 24.14). If I keep in, I must die with hunger, and if I go out, I must be knocked in [the] head. This distressed condition held that day, and half the next. And then the Lord remembered me, whose mercies are great. Then came an Indian to me with a pair of stockings that were too big for him, and he would have me ravel them out, and knit them "t for him. I showed myself willing, and bid him ask my mistress if I might go along with him a little way; she said yes, I might, but I was not a little refreshed with that news, that I had my liberty again. Then I went along with him, and he gave me some roasted ground nuts, which did again revive my feeble stomach.

Being got out of her sight, I had time and liberty again to look into my Bible; which was my guide by day, and my pillow by night. Now that comfort- able Scripture presented itself to me, “For a small moment have I forsaken thee, but with great mercies will I gather thee” (Isaiah 54.7). Thus the Lord carried me along from one time to another, and made good to me this precious

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1. Lack. Cf. Psalm 23.1. 2. Isaiah 38.3. 3. Psalm 51.4. 4. Luke 18.13. 5. Luke 15.21.

6. Isaiah 54.7. 7. The fourteenth to nineteenth removes (April 20 to April 28) retrace the path taken ear- lier. The “Baytowns” are the towns near Boston.

promise, and many others. Then my son came to see me, and I asked his master to let him stay awhile with me, that I might comb his head, and look over him, for he was almost overcome with lice. He told me, when I had done, that he was very hungry, but I had nothing to relieve him, but bid him go into the wigwams as he went along, and see if he could get anything among them. Which he did, and it seems tarried a little too long; for his master was angry with him, and beat him, and then sold him. Then he came running to tell me he had a new master, and that he had given him some ground nuts already. Then I went along with him to his new master who told me he loved him, and he should not want.1 So his master carried him away, and I never saw him afterward, till I saw him at Piscataqua in Portsmouth.

That night they bade me go out of the wigwam again. My mistress’s papoose was sick, and it died that night, and there was one bene"t in it— that there was more room. I went to a wigwam, and they bade me come in, and gave me a skin to lie upon, and a mess of venison and ground nuts, which was a choice dish among them. On the morrow they buried the papoose, and afterward, both morning and eve ning, there came a com pany to mourn and howl with her; though I confess I could not much condole with them. Many sorrowful days I had in this place, often getting alone. “Like a crane, or a swallow, so did I chatter; I did mourn as a dove, mine eyes ail with looking upward. Oh, Lord, I am oppressed; undertake for me” (Isaiah 38.14). I could tell the Lord, as Hezekiah, “Remember now O Lord, I beseech thee, how I have walked before thee in truth.”2 Now had I time to examine all my ways: my conscience did not accuse me of unrigh teousness toward one or other; yet I saw how in my walk with God, I had been a careless creature. As David said, “Against thee, thee only have I sinned”:3 and I might say with the poor publi- can, “God be merciful unto me a sinner.”4 On the Sabbath days, I could look upon the sun and think how people were going to the house of God, to have their souls refreshed; and then home, and their bodies also; but I was destitute of both; and might say as the poor prodigal, “He would fain have "lled his belly with the husks that the swine did eat, and no man gave unto him” (Luke 15.16). For I must say with him, “ Father, I have sinned against Heaven and in thy sight.”5 I remembered how on the night before and after the Sabbath, when my family was about me, and relations and neighbors with us, we could pray and sing, and then refresh our bodies with the good creatures of God; and then have a comfortable bed to lie down on; but instead of all this, I had only a little swill for the body and then, like a swine, must lie down on the ground. I cannot express to man the sorrow that lay upon my spirit; the Lord knows it. Yet that comfortable Scripture would often come to mind, “For a small moment have I forsaken thee, but with great mercies will I gather thee.”6

The Fourteenth Remove7

Now must we pack up and be gone from this thicket, bending our course toward the Baytowns; I having nothing to eat by the way this day, but a few

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8. Steaming. 9. Fastidious.

1. Slovenly (unclean) practice. 2. I.e., it so happened.

crumbs of cake, that an Indian gave my girl the same day we were taken. She gave it me, and I put it in my pocket; there it lay, till it was so moldy (for want of good baking) that one could not tell what it was made of; it fell all to crumbs, and grew so dry and hard, that it was like little dints; and this refreshed me many times, when I was ready to faint. It was in my thoughts when I put it into my mouth, that if ever I returned, I would tell the world what a blessing the Lord gave to such mean food. As we went along they killed a deer, with a young one in her, they gave me a piece of the fawn, and it was so young and tender, that one might eat the bones as well as the desh, and yet I thought it very good. When night came on we sat down; it rained, but they quickly got up a bark wigwam, where I lay dry that night. I looked out in the morning, and many of them had lain in the rain all night, I saw by their reeking.8 Thus the Lord dealt mercifully with me many times, and I fared better than many of them. In the morning they took the blood of the deer, and put it into the paunch, and so boiled it. I could eat nothing of that, though they ate it sweetly. And yet they were so nice9 in other things, that when I had fetched water, and had put the dish I dipped the water with into the kettle of water which I brought, they would say they would knock me down; for they said, it was a sluttish trick.1

The Fifteenth Remove

We went on our travel. I having got one handful of ground nuts, for my sup- port that day, they gave me my load, and I went on cheerfully (with the thoughts of going homeward), having my burden more on my back than my spirit. We came to Banquang river again that day, near which we abode a few days. Sometimes one of them would give me a pipe, another a little tobacco, another a little salt: which I would change for a little victuals. I cannot but think what a wolvish appetite persons have in a starving condi- tion; for many times when they gave me that which was hot, I was so greedy, that I should burn my mouth, that it would trou ble me hours after, and yet I should quickly do the same again. And after I was thoroughly hungry, I was never again satis"ed. For though sometimes it fell out,2 that I got enough, and did eat till I could eat no more, yet I was as unsatis"ed as I was when I began. And now could I see that Scripture veri"ed ( there being many Scrip- tures which we do not take notice of, or understand till we are afdicted) “Thou shalt eat and not be satis"ed” (Micah 6.14). Now might I see more than ever before, the miseries that sin hath brought upon us. Many times I should be ready to run against the heathen, but the Scripture would quiet me again, “ Shall there be evil in a City and the Lord hath not done it?” (Amos 3.6). The Lord help me to make a right improvement of His word, and that I might learn that great lesson: “He hath showed thee (Oh Man) what is good, and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and love mercy, and walk humbly with thy God? Hear ye the rod, and who hath appointed it” (Micah 6.8–9).

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3. Porridge made of Indian corn. 4. I.e., the refuse, that which he was casting away.

The Sixteenth Removal

We began this remove with wading over Banquang river: the water was up to the knees, and the stream very swift, and so cold that I thought it would have cut me in sunder. I was so weak and feeble, that I reeled as I went along, and thought there I must end my days at last, after my bearing and getting through so many dif"culties. The Indians stood laughing to see me stagger- ing along; but in my distress the Lord gave me experience of the truth, and goodness of that promise, “When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overdow thee” (Isaiah 43.2). Then I sat down to put on my stockings and shoes, with the tears running down mine eyes, and sorrowful thoughts in my heart, but I got up to go along with them. Quickly there came up to us an Indian, who informed them that I must go to Wachusett to my master, for there was a letter come from the council to the Sagamores, about redeeming the captives, and that there would be another in fourteen days, and that I must be there ready. My heart was so heavy before that I could scarce speak or go in the path; and yet now so light, that I could run. My strength seemed to come again, and recruit my feeble knees, and aching heart. Yet it pleased them to go but one mile that night, and there we stayed two days. In that time came a com pany of Indians to us, near thirty, all on horse back. My heart skipped within me, thinking they had been En glishmen at the "rst sight of them, for they were dressed in En glish apparel, with hats, white neckcloths, and sashes about their waists; and ribbons upon their shoulders; but when they came near, there was a vast difference between the lovely faces of Christians, and foul looks of those heathens, which much damped my spirit again.

The Seventeenth Remove

A comfortable remove it was to me, because of my hopes. They gave me a pack, and along we went cheerfully; but quickly my will proved more than my strength; having little or no refreshing, my strength failed me, and my spirits were almost quite gone. Now may I say with David, “I am poor and needy, and my heart is wounded within me. I am gone like the shadow when it declineth: I am tossed up and down like the locust; my knees are weak through fasting, and my desh faileth of fatness” (Psalm 119.22–24). At night we came to an Indian town, and the Indians sat down by a wigwam discours- ing, but I was almost spent, and could scarce speak. I laid down my load, and went into the wigwam, and there sat an Indian boiling of horses’ feet (they being wont to eat the desh "rst, and when the feet were old and dried, and they had nothing else, they would cut off the feet and use them). I asked him to give me a little of his broth, or water they were boiling in; he took a dish, and gave me one spoonful of samp,3 and bid me take as much of the broth as I would. Then I put some of the hot water to the samp, and drank it up, and my spirit came again. He gave me also a piece of the ruff or rid- ding4 of the small guts, and I broiled it on the coals; and now may I say with Jonathan, “See, I pray you, how mine eyes have been enlightened, because

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I tasted a little of this honey” (1 Samuel 14.29). Now is my spirit revived again; though means be never so inconsiderable, yet if the Lord bestow His blessing upon them, they shall refresh both soul and body.

The Eigh teenth Remove

We took up our packs and along we went, but a wearisome day I had of it. As we went along I saw an En glishman stripped naked, and lying dead upon the ground, but knew not who it was. Then we came to another Indian town, where we stayed all night. In this town there were four En glish children, captives; and one of them my own sister’s. I went to see how she did, and she was well, considering her captive condition. I would have tarried that night with her, but they that owned her would not suffer it. Then I went into another wigwam, where they were boiling corn and beans, which was a lovely sight to see, but I could not get a taste thereof. Then I went to another wigwam, where there were two of the En glish children; the squaw was boiling horses feet; then she cut me off a little piece, and gave one of the En glish children a piece also. Being very hungry I had quickly eat up mine, but the child could not bite it, it was so tough and sinewy, but lay sucking, gnawing, chewing and slabbering of it in the mouth and hand. Then I took it of the child, and eat it myself, and savory it was to my taste. Then I may say as Job 6.7, “The things that my soul refused to touch are as my sorrowful meat.” Thus the Lord made that pleasant refreshing, which another time would have been an abomination. Then I went home to my mistress’s wig- wam; and they told me I disgraced my master with begging, and if I did so any more, they would knock me in the head. I told them, they had as good knock me in [the] head as starve me to death.

The Nineteenth Remove

They said, when we went out, that we must travel to Wachusett this day. But a bitter weary day I had of it, traveling now three days together, without resting any day between. At last, after many weary steps, I saw Wachusett hills, but many miles off. Then we came to a great swamp, through which we traveled, up to the knees in mud and water, which was heavy going to one tired before. Being almost spent, I thought I should have sunk down at last, and never got out; but I may say, as in Psalm 94.18, “When my foot slipped, thy mercy, O Lord, held me up.” Going along, having indeed my life, but little spirit, Philip, who was in the com pany, came up and took me by the hand, and said, two weeks more and you shall be mistress again. I asked him, if he spake true? He answered, “Yes, and quickly you shall come to your master again; who had been gone from us three weeks.” After many weary steps we came to Wachusett, where he was: and glad I was to see him. He asked me, when I washed me? I told him not this month. Then he fetched me some water himself, and bid me wash, and gave me the glass to see how I looked; and bid his squaw give me something to eat. So she gave me a mess of beans and meat, and a little ground nut cake. I was wonderfully revived with this favor showed me: “He made them also to be pitied of all those that carried them captives” (Psalm 106.46).

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5. Rowlandson spells the name “Wattimore” here. 6. Beads of polished shells used by some Ameri- can Indians as currency. 7. I.e., the anticipated ransom money.

8. Christian Indians. 9. I.e., I’ll hang that rogue. 1. In imitation of the colonial assembly of Mas- sa chu setts.

My master had three squaws, living sometimes with one, and sometimes with another one, this old squaw, at whose wigwam I was, and with whom my master had been those three weeks. Another was Weetamoo5 with whom I had lived and served all this while. A severe and proud dame she was, bestowing every day in dressing herself neat as much time as any of the gen- try of the land: powdering her hair, and painting her face, going with neck- laces, with jewels in her ears, and bracelets upon her hands. When she had dressed herself, her work was to make girdles of wampum6 and beads. The third squaw was a younger one, by whom he had two papooses. By the time I was refreshed by the old squaw, with whom my master was, Weetamoo’s maid came to call me home, at which I fell aweeping. Then the old squaw told me, to encourage me, that if I wanted victuals, I should come to her, and that I should lie there in her wigwam. Then I went with the maid, and quickly came again and lodged there. The squaw laid a mat under me, and a good rug over me; the "rst time I had any such kindness showed me. I understood that Weetamoo thought that if she should let me go and serve with the old squaw, she would be in danger to lose not only my ser vice, but the redemption pay7 also. And I was not a little glad to hear this; being by it raised in my hopes, that in God’s due time there would be an end of this sorrowful hour. Then came an Indian, and asked me to knit him three pair of stockings, for which I had a hat, and a silk handkerchief. Then another asked me to make her a shift, for which she gave me an apron.

Then came Tom and Peter,8 with the second letter from the council, about the captives. Though they were Indians, I got them by the hand, and burst out into tears. My heart was so full that I could not speak to them; but recov- ering myself, I asked them how my husband did, and all my friends and acquaintance? They said, “They are all very well but melancholy.” They brought me two biscuits, and a pound of tobacco. The tobacco I quickly gave away. When it was all gone, one asked me to give him a pipe of tobacco. I told him it was all gone. Then began he to rant and threaten. I told him when my husband came I would give him some. Hang him rogue9 (says he), I will knock out his brains, if he comes here. And then again, in the same breath they would say that if there should come an hundred without guns, they would do them no hurt. So unstable and like madmen they were. So that fearing the worst, I durst not send to my husband, though there were some thoughts of his coming to redeem and fetch me, not knowing what might follow. For there was little more trust to them than to the master they served. When the letter was come, the Sagamores met to consult about the captives, and called me to them to inquire how much my husband would give to redeem me. When I came I sat down among them, as I was wont to do, as their manner is. Then they bade me stand up, and said they were the Gen- eral Court.1 They bid me speak what I thought he would give. Now knowing that all we had was destroyed by the Indians, I was in a great strait. I thought if I should speak of but a little it would be slighted, and hinder the matter;

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2. An attack on Sudbury, Mas sa chu setts, April 18. 3. Confer.

if of a great sum, I knew not where it would be procured. Yet at a venture I said, “Twenty pounds,” yet desired them to take less. But they would not hear of that, but sent that message to Boston, that for twenty pounds I should be redeemed. It was a Praying Indian that wrote their letter for them. There was another Praying Indian, who told me, that he had a brother, that would not eat horse; his conscience was so tender and scrupulous (though as large as hell, for the destruction of poor Christians). Then he said, he read that Scripture to him, “ There was a famine in Samaria, and behold they besieged it, until an ass’s head was sold for fourscore pieces of silver, and the fourth part of a cab of dove’s dung for "ve pieces of silver” (2 Kings 6.25). He expounded this place to his brother, and showed him that it was lawful to eat that in a famine which is not at another time. And now, says he, he will eat horse with any Indian of them all. There was another Praying Indian, who when he had done all the mischief that he could, betrayed his own father into the En glish hands, thereby to purchase his own life. Another Praying Indian was at [the] Sudbury "ght,2 though, as he deserved, he was afterward hanged for it. There was another Praying Indian, so wicked and cruel, as to wear a string about his neck, strung with Christians’ "n gers. Another Praying Indian, when they went to [the] Sudbury "ght, went with them, and his squaw also with him, with her papoose at her back. Before they went to that "ght they got a com pany together to powwow.3 The manner was as followeth: there was one that kneeled upon a deerskin, with the com pany round him in a ring who kneeled, and striking upon the ground with their hands, and with sticks, and muttering or humming with their mouths. Besides him who kneeled in the ring, there also stood one with a gun in his hand. Then he on the deerskin made a speech, and all manifested assent to it; and so they did many times together. Then they bade him with the gun go out of the ring, which he did. But when he was out, they called him in again; but he seemed to make a stand; then they called the more earnestly, till he returned again. Then they all sang. Then they gave him two guns, in either hand one. And so he on the deerskin began again; and at the end of every sentence in his speaking, they all assented, humming or muttering with their mouths, and striking upon the ground with their hands. Then they bade him with the two guns go out of the ring again; which he did, a little way. Then they called him in again, but he made a stand. So they called him with greater earnest- ness; but he stood reeling and wavering as if he knew not whither he should stand or fall, or which way to go. Then they called him with exceeding great vehemency, all of them, one and another. After a little while he turned in, staggering as he went, with his arms stretched out, in either hand a gun. As soon as he came in they all sang and rejoiced exceedingly a while. And then he upon the deerskin, made another speech unto which they all assented in a rejoicing manner. And so they ended their business, and forthwith went to [the] Sudbury "ght. To my thinking they went without any scruple, but that they should prosper, and gain the victory. And they went out not so rejoic- ing, but they came home with as great a victory. For they said they had killed two captains and almost an hundred men. One En glishman they brought along with them: and he said, it was too true, for they had made sad work at

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4. Shaman. 5. Pillowcase. 6. April 28 to May 2, to a camp at the southern

end of Wachusett Lake, Prince ton, Mas sa chu setts. 7. Oldest neighborhood in Boston.

Sudbury, as indeed it proved. Yet they came home without that rejoicing and triumphing over their victory which they were wont to show at other times; but rather like dogs (as they say) which have lost their ears. Yet I could not perceive that it was for their own loss of men. They said they had not lost above "ve or six; and I missed none, except in one wigwam. When they went, they acted as if the devil had told them that they should gain the victory; and now they acted as if the devil had told them they should have a fall. Whether it were so or no, I cannot tell, but so it proved, for quickly they began to fall, and so held on that summer, till they came to utter ruin. They came home on a Sabbath day, and the Powwow4 that kneeled upon the deer- skin came home (I may say, without abuse) as black as the devil. When my master came home, he came to me and bid me make a shirt for his papoose, of a holland- laced pillowbere.5 About that time there came an Indian to me and bid me come to his wigwam at night, and he would give me some pork and ground nuts. Which I did, and as I was eating, another Indian said to me, he seems to be your good friend, but he killed two En glishmen at Sud- bury, and there lie their clothes behind you: I looked behind me, and there I saw bloody clothes, with bullet- holes in them. Yet the Lord suffered not this wretch to do me any hurt. Yea, instead of that, he many times refreshed me; "ve or six times did he and his squaw refresh my feeble carcass. If I went to their wigwam at any time, they would always give me something, and yet they were strangers that I never saw before. Another squaw gave me a piece of fresh pork, and a little salt with it, and lent me her pan to fry it in; and I cannot but remember what a sweet, pleasant, and delightful relish that bit had to me, to this day. So little do we prize common mercies when we have them to the full.

The Twentieth Remove6

It was their usual manner to remove, when they had done any mischief, lest they should be found out; and so they did at this time. We went about three or four miles, and there they built a great wigwam, big enough to hold an hundred Indians, which they did in preparation to a great day of dancing. They would say now amongst themselves, that the governor would be so angry for his loss at Sudbury, that he would send no more about the cap- tives, which made me grieve and tremble. My sister being not far from the place where we now were, and hearing that I was here, desired her master to let her come and see me, and he was willing to it, and would go with her; but she being ready before him, told him she would go before, and was come within a mile or two of the place. Then he overtook her, and began to rant as if he had been mad, and made her go back again in the rain; so that I never saw her till I saw her in Charlestown.7 But the Lord requited many of their ill doings, for this Indian her master, was hanged afterward at Boston. The Indians now began to come from all quarters, against their merry danc- ing day. Among some of them came one goodwife Kettle. I told her my heart was so heavy that it was ready to break. “So is mine too,” said she, but yet

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8. By the request of Rowlandson’s husband, Hoar— a prominent lawyer and Indian mission- ary from Concord, Mas sa chu setts— represented the colonial authorities at the negotiations for Rowlandson’s release.

9. Incident. 1. Cloth used for barter. 2. Bad. 3. The prophet Daniel was cast into a den of lions, but they did not harm him (Daniel 6.1–29).

said, “I hope we shall hear some good news shortly.” I could hear how ear- nestly my sister desired to see me, and I as earnestly desired to see her; and yet neither of us could get an opportunity. My daughter was also now about a mile off, and I had not seen her in nine or ten weeks, as I had not seen my sister since our "rst taking. I earnestly desired them to let me go and see them: yea, I entreated, begged, and persuaded them, but to let me see my daughter; and yet so hard- hearted were they, that they would not suffer it. They made use of their tyrannical power whilst they had it; but through the Lord’s wonderful mercy, their time was now but short.

On a Sabbath day, the sun being about an hour high in the after noon, came Mr. John Hoar8 (the council permitting him, and his own foreward spirit inclining him), together with the two forementioned Indians, Tom and Peter, with their third letter from the council. When they came near, I was abroad. Though I saw them not, they presently called me in, and bade me sit down and not stir. Then they catched up their guns, and away they ran, as if an enemy had been at hand, and the guns went off apace. I manifested some great trou ble, and they asked me what was the matter? I told them I thought they had killed the En glishman (for they had in the meantime informed me that an En glishman was come). They said, no. They shot over his horse and under and before his horse, and they pushed him this way and that way, at their plea sure, showing what they could do. Then they let them come to their wigwams. I begged of them to let me see the En glishman, but they would not. But there was I fain to sit their plea sure. When they had talked their "ll with him, they suffered me to go to him. We asked each other of our welfare, and how my husband did, and all my friends? He told me they were all well, and would be glad to see me. Amongst other things which my husband sent me, there came a pound of tobacco, which I sold for nine shillings in money; for many of the Indians for want of tobacco, smoked hem- lock, and ground ivy. It was a great mistake in any, who thought I sent for tobacco; for through the favor of God, that desire was overcome. I now asked them whether I should go home with Mr. Hoar? They answered no, one and another of them, and it being night, we lay down with that answer. In the morning Mr. Hoar invited the Sagamores to dinner; but when we went to get it ready we found that they had stolen the greatest part of the provision Mr. Hoar had brought, out of his bags, in the night. And we may see the wonderful power of God, in that one passage,9 in that when there was such a great number of the Indians together, and so greedy of a little good food, and no En glish there but Mr. Hoar and myself, that there they did not knock us in the head, and take what we had, there being not only some provision, but also trading- cloth,1 a part of the twenty pounds agreed upon. But instead of doing us any mischief, they seemed to be ashamed of the fact, and said, it were some matchit2 Indian that did it. Oh, that we could believe that there is nothing too hard for God! God showed His power over the heathen in this, as He did over the hungry lions when Daniel was cast into the den.3 Mr. Hoar

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4. In good time; early. 5. Linen. 6. Coarse cloth woven from long wool and usu- ally ribbed.

7. Unless. 8. Wowaus, who assisted the Reverend John Eliot in his printing of the Bible.

called them betime4 to dinner, but they ate very little, they being so busy in dressing themselves, and getting ready for their dance, which was carried on by eight of them, four men and four squaws. My master and mistress being two. He was dressed in his holland5 shirt, with great laces sewed at the tail of it; he had his silver buttons, his white stockings, his garters were hung round with shillings, and he had girdles of wampum upon his head and shoulders. She had a kersey6 coat, and covered with girdles of wampum from the loins upward. Her arms from her elbows to her hands were cov- ered with bracelets; there were handfuls of necklaces about her neck, and several sorts of jewels in her ears. She had "ne red stockings, and white shoes, her hair powdered and face painted red, that was always before black. And all the dancers were after the same manner. There were two others sing- ing and knocking on a kettle for their music. They kept hopping up and down one after another, with a kettle of water in the midst, standing warm upon some embers, to drink of when they were dry. They held on till it was almost night, throwing out wampum to the standers by. At night I asked them again, if I should go home? They all as one said no, except7 my hus- band would come for me. When we were lain down, my master went out of the wigwam, and by and by sent in an Indian called James the Printer,8 who told Mr. Hoar, that my master would let me go home tomorrow, if he would let him have one pint of liquors. Then Mr. Hoar called his own Indians, Tom and Peter, and bid them go and see whether he would promise it before them three; and if he would, he should have it; which he did, and he had it. Then Philip smelling the business called me to him, and asked me what I would give him, to tell me some good news, and speak a good word for me. I told him I could not tell what to give him. I would [give him] anything I had, and asked him what he would have? He said two coats and twenty shillings in money, and half a bushel of seed corn, and some tobacco. I thanked him for his love; but I knew the good news as well as the crafty fox. My master after he had had his drink, quickly came ranting into the wigwam again, and called for Mr. Hoar, drinking to him, and saying, he was a good man, and then again he would say, “hang him rogue.” Being almost drunk, he would drink to him, and yet presently say he should be hanged. Then he called for me. I trembled to hear him, yet I was fain to go to him, and he drank to me, showing no incivility. He was the "rst Indian I saw drunk all the while that I was amongst them. At last his squaw ran out, and he after her, round the wigwam, with his money jingling at his knees. But she escaped him. But having an old squaw he ran to her; and so through the Lord’s mercy, we were no more troubled that night. Yet I had not a comfortable night’s rest; for I think I can say, I did not sleep for three nights together. The night before the letter came from the council, I could not rest, I was so full of fears and trou bles, God many times leaving us most in the dark, when deliv- erance is nearest. Yea, at this time I could not rest night nor day. The next night I was overjoyed, Mr. Hoar being come, and that with such good tid- ings. The third night I was even swallowed up with the thoughts of things,

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9. Amos 3.6. 1. Amos 6.6–7.

2. I.e., that which.

viz. that ever I should go home again; and that I must go, leaving my children behind me in the wilderness; so that sleep was now almost departed from mine eyes.

On Tuesday morning they called their General Court (as they call it) to consult and determine, whether I should go home or no. And they all as one man did seemingly consent to it, that I should go home; except Philip, who would not come among them.

But before I go any further, I would take leave to mention a few remark- able passages of providence, which I took special notice of in my afdicted time.

1. Of the fair opportunity lost in the long march, a little after the fort "ght, when our En glish army was so numerous, and in pursuit of the enemy, and so near as to take several and destroy them, and the enemy in such distress for food that our men might track them by their rooting in the earth for ground nuts, whilst they were dying for their lives. I say, that then our army should want provision, and be forced to leave their pursuit and return homeward; and the very next week the enemy came upon our town, like bears bereft of their whelps, or so many ravenous wolves, rending us and our lambs to death. But what shall I say? God seemed to leave his People to themselves, and order all things for His own holy ends. Shall there be evil in the City and the Lord hath not done it?9 They are not grieved for the afdiction of Joseph, therefore shall they go captive, with the "rst that go captive.1 It is the Lord’s doing, and it should be marvelous in our eyes.

2. I cannot but remember how the Indians derided the slowness, and dull- ness of the En glish army, in its setting out. For after the desolations at Lan- caster and Med"eld, as I went along with them, they asked me when I thought the En glish army would come after them? I told them I could not tell. “It may be they will come in May,” said they. Thus did they scoff at us, as if the En glish would be a quarter of a year getting ready.

3. Which also I have hinted before, when the En glish army with new sup- plies were sent forth to pursue after the enemy, and they understanding it, ded before them till they came to Banquaug river, where they forthwith went over safely; that that river should be impassable to the En glish. I can but admire to see the wonderful providence of God in preserving the hea- then for further afdiction to our poor country. They could go in great num- bers over, but the En glish must stop. God had an over- ruling hand in all those things.

4. It was thought, if their corn were cut down, they would starve and die with hunger, and all their corn that could be found, was destroyed, and they driven from that little they had in store, into the woods in the midst of win- ter; and yet how to admiration did the Lord preserve them for His holy ends, and the destruction of many still amongst the En glish! strangely did the Lord provide for them; that I did not see (all the time I was among them) one man, woman, or child, die with hunger.

Though many times they would eat that, that2 a hog or a dog would hardly touch; yet by that God strengthened them to be a scourge to His people.

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3. 1 Samuel 15.32. Agag, king of Amalek, was defeated by Saul and thought himself spared, but was then slain by Samuel.

The chief and commonest food was ground nuts. They eat also nuts and acorns, artichokes, lily roots, ground beans, and several other weeds and roots, that I know not.

They would pick up old bones, and cut them to pieces at the joints, and if they were full of worms and maggots, they would scald them over the "re to make the vermin come out, and then boil them, and drink up the liquor, and then beat the great ends of them in a mortar, and so eat them. They would eat horse’s guts, and ears, and all sorts of wild birds which they could catch; also bear, venison, beaver, tortoise, frogs, squirrels, dogs, skunks, rattle- snakes; yea, the very bark of trees; besides all sorts of creatures, and provi- sion which they plundered from the En glish. I can but stand in admiration to see the wonderful power of God in providing for such a vast number of our enemies in the wilderness, where there was nothing to be seen, but from hand to mouth. Many times in a morning, the generality of them would eat up all they had, and yet have some further supply against they wanted. It is said, “Oh, that my People had hearkened to me, and Israel had walked in my ways, I should soon have subdued their Enemies, and turned my hand against their Adversaries” (Psalm 81.13–14). But now our perverse and evil carriages in the sight of the Lord, have so offended Him, that instead of turning His hand against them, the Lord feeds and nourishes them up to be a scourge to the whole land.

5. Another thing that I would observe is the strange providence of God, in turning things about when the Indians was at the highest, and the En glish at the lowest. I was with the enemy eleven weeks and "ve days, and not one week passed without the fury of the enemy, and some desolation by "re and sword upon one place or other. They mourned (with their black faces) for their own losses, yet triumphed and rejoiced in their inhumane, and many times dev ilish cruelty to the En glish. They would boast much of their victo- ries; saying that in two hours time they had destroyed such a captain and his com pany at such a place; and boast how many towns they had destroyed, and then scoff, and say they had done them a good turn to send them to Heaven so soon. Again, they would say this summer that they would knock all the rogues in the head, or drive them into the sea, or make them dy the country; thinking surely, Agag- like, “The bitterness of Death is past.”3 Now the heathen begins to think all is their own, and the poor Christians’ hopes to fail (as to man) and now their eyes are more to God, and their hearts sigh heavenward; and to say in good earnest, “Help Lord, or we perish.” When the Lord had brought His people to this, that they saw no help in anything but Himself; then He takes the quarrel into His own hand; and though they had made a pit, in their own imaginations, as deep as hell for the Christians that summer, yet the Lord hurled themselves into it. And the Lord had not so many ways before to preserve them, but now He hath as many to destroy them.

But to return again to my going home, where we may see a remarkable change of providence. At "rst they were all against it, except my husband would come for me, but afterwards they assented to it, and seemed much to rejoice in it; some asked me to send them some bread, others some tobacco,

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4. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego refused to worship false gods and were cast into a "ery fur- nace but saved from death by an angel (Daniel

3.13–30). 5. Refreshed.

others shaking me by the hand, offering me a hood and scarf to ride in; not one moving hand or tongue against it. Thus hath the Lord answered my poor desire, and the many earnest requests of others put up unto God for me. In my travels an Indian came to me and told me, if I were willing, he and his squaw would run away, and go home along with me. I told him no: I was not willing to run away, but desired to wait God’s time, that I might go home qui- etly, and without fear. And now God hath granted me my desire. O the wonderful power of God that I have seen, and the experience that I have had. I have been in the midst of those roaring lions, and savage bears, that feared neither God, nor man, nor the devil, by night and day, alone and in com pany, sleeping all sorts together, and yet not one of them ever offered me the least abuse of unchastity to me, in word or action. Though some are ready to say I speak it for my own credit; but I speak it in the presence of God, and to His Glory. God’s power is as great now, and as suf"cient to save, as when He preserved Daniel in the lion’s den; or the three children in the "ery furnace.4 I may well say as his Psalm 107.12, “Oh give thanks unto the Lord for he is good, for his mercy endureth for ever.” Let the redeemed of the Lord say so, whom He hath redeemed from the hand of the enemy, espe- cially that I should come away in the midst of so many hundreds of enemies quietly and peaceably, and not a dog moving his tongue. So I took my leave of them, and in coming along my heart melted into tears, more than all the while I was with them, and I was almost swallowed up with the thoughts that ever I should go home again. About the sun going down, Mr. Hoar, and myself, and the two Indians came to Lancaster, and a solemn sight it was to me. There had I lived many comfortable years amongst my relations and neighbors, and now not one Christian to be seen, nor one house left stand- ing. We went on to a farm house that was yet standing, where we lay all night, and a comfortable lodging we had, though nothing but straw to lie on. The Lord preserved us in safety that night, and raised us up again in the morn- ing, and carried us along, that before noon, we came to Concord. Now was I full of joy, and yet not without sorrow; joy to see such a lovely sight, so many Christians together, and some of them my neighbors. There I met with my brother, and my brother- in- law, who asked me, if I knew where his wife was? Poor heart! he had helped to bury her, and knew it not. She being shot down by the house was partly burnt, so that those who were at Boston at the desolation of the town, and came back afterward, and buried the dead, did not know her. Yet I was not without sorrow, to think how many were looking and longing, and my own children amongst the rest, to enjoy that deliverance that I had now received, and I did not know whether ever I should see them again. Being recruited5 with food and raiment we went to Boston that day, where I met with my dear husband, but the thoughts of our dear children, one being dead, and the other we could not tell where, abated our comfort each to other. I was not before so much hemmed in with the merci- less and cruel heathen, but now as much with pitiful, tender- hearted and compassionate Christians. In that poor, and distressed, and beggarly condi- tion I was received in; I was kindly entertained in several houses. So much love I received from several (some of whom I knew, and others I knew not)

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6. Worldly goods and gifts. 7. Jeremiah 31.16.

that I am not capable to declare it. But the Lord knows them all by name. The Lord reward them sevenfold into their bosoms of His spirituals, for their temporals.6 The twenty pounds, the price of my redemption, was raised by some Boston gentlemen, and Mrs. Usher, whose bounty and religious char- ity, I would not forget to make mention of. Then Mr. Thomas Shepard of Charlestown received us into his house, where we continued eleven weeks; and a father and mother they were to us. And many more tender- hearted friends we met with in that place. We were now in the midst of love, yet not without much and frequent heaviness of heart for our poor children, and other relations, who were still in afdiction. The week following, after my coming in, the governor and council sent forth to the Indians again; and that not without success; for they brought in my sister, and goodwife Kettle. Their not knowing where our children were was a sore trial to us still, and yet we were not without secret hopes that we should see them again. That which was dead lay heavier upon my spirit, than those which were alive and amongst the heathen: thinking how it suffered with its wounds, and I was no way able to relieve it; and how it was buried by the heathen in the wilderness from among all Christians. We were hurried up and down in our thoughts, sometime we should hear a report that they were gone this way, and some- times that; and that they were come in, in this place or that. We kept inquiring and listening to hear concerning them, but no certain news as yet. About this time the council had ordered a day of public thanksgiving. Though I thought I had still cause of mourning, and being unsettled in our minds, we thought we would ride toward the eastward, to see if we could hear anything concerning our children. And as we were riding along (God is the wise disposer of all things) between Ipswich and Rowley we met with Mr.  William Hubbard, who told us that our son Joseph was come in to Major Waldron’s, and another with him, which was my sister’s son. I asked him how he knew it? He said the major himself told him so. So along we went till we came to Newbury; and their minister being absent, they desired my husband to preach the thanksgiving for them; but he was not willing to stay there that night, but would go over to Salisbury, to hear further, and come again in the morning, which he did, and preached there that day. At night, when he had done, one came and told him that his daughter was come in at Providence. Here was mercy on both hands. Now hath God ful- "lled that precious Scripture which was such a comfort to me in my dis- tressed condition. When my heart was ready to sink into the earth (my children being gone, I could not tell whither) and my knees trembling under me, and I was walking through the valley of the shadow of death; then the Lord brought, and now has ful"lled that reviving word unto me: “Thus saith the Lord, Refrain thy voice from weeping, and thine eyes from tears, for thy Work shall be rewarded, saith the Lord, and they shall come again from the Land of the Enemy.”7 Now we were between them, the one on the east, and the other on the west. Our son being nearest, we went to him "rst, to Portsmouth, where we met with him, and with the Major also, who told us he had done what he could, but could not redeem him under seven pounds, which the good people thereabouts were pleased to pay. The Lord reward the major, and all the rest, though unknown to me, for their labor of

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8. Compassionate. 9. Either blueberries or huckleberries.

1. Ecclesiastes 10.19.

love. My sister’s son was redeemed for four pounds, which the council gave order for the payment of. Having now received one of our children, we has- tened toward the other. Going back through Newbury my husband preached there on the Sabbath day; for which they rewarded him many fold.

On Monday we came to Charlestown, where we heard that the governor of Rhode Island had sent over for our daughter, to take care of her, being now within his jurisdiction; which should not pass without our acknowl- edgments. But she being nearer Rehoboth than Rhode Island, Mr. New- man went over, and took care of her and brought her to his own house. And the goodness of God was admirable to us in our low estate, in that He raised up passionate8 friends on every side to us, when we had nothing to recom- pense any for their love. The Indians were now gone that way, that it was apprehended dangerous to go to her. But the carts which carried provision to the En glish army, being guarded, brought her with them to Dorchester, where we received her safe. Blessed be the Lord for it, for great is His power, and He can do whatsoever seemeth Him good. Her coming in was after this manner: she was traveling one day with the Indians, with her basket at her back; the com pany of Indians were got before her, and gone out of sight, all except one squaw; she followed the squaw till night, and then both of them lay down, having nothing over them but the heavens and under them but the earth. Thus she traveled three days together, not knowing whither she was going; having nothing to eat or drink but water, and green hirtle- berries.9 At last they came into Providence, where she was kindly entertained by sev- eral of that town. The Indians often said that I should never have her under twenty pounds. But now the Lord hath brought her in upon free- cost, and given her to me the second time. The Lord make us a blessing indeed, each to others. Now have I seen that Scripture also ful"lled, “If any of thine be driven out to the outmost parts of heaven, from thence will the Lord thy God gather thee, and from thence will he fetch thee. And the Lord thy God will put all these curses upon thine enemies, and on them which hate thee, which persecuted thee” (Deuteronomy 30.4–7). Thus hath the Lord brought me and mine out of that horrible pit, and hath set us in the midst of tender- hearted and compassionate Christians. It is the desire of my soul that we may walk worthy of the mercies received, and which we are receiving.

Our family being now gathered together ( those of us that were living), the South Church in Boston hired an house for us. Then we removed from Mr. Shephard’s, those cordial friends, and went to Boston, where we con- tinued about three- quarters of a year. Still the Lord went along with us, and provided graciously for us. I thought it somewhat strange to set up house- keeping with bare walls; but as Solomon says, “Money answers all things”1 and that we had through the benevolence of Christian friends, some in this town, and some in that, and others; and some from Eng land; that in a little time we might look, and see the house furnished with love. The Lord hath been exceeding good to us in our low estate, in that when we had neither house nor home, nor other necessaries, the Lord so moved the hearts of these and those towards us, that we wanted neither food, nor raiment for ourselves or ours: “ There is a Friend which sticketh closer than a Brother” (Proverbs

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2. “He should have fed them also with the "nest of the wheat: and with honey out of the rock should I have satis"ed thee” (Psalm 81.16). 3. “And bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it; and let us eat, and be merry” (Luke 15.23).

4. Cf. Ecclesiastes 1.2. “Vanity”: emptiness, futility. 5. Burdens. 6. Psalm 119.71.

18.24). And how many such friends have we found, and now living amongst? And truly such a friend have we found him to be unto us, in whose house we lived, viz. Mr. James Whitcomb, a friend unto us near hand, and afar off.

I can remember the time when I used to sleep quietly without workings in my thoughts, whole nights together, but now it is other ways with me. When all are fast about me, and no eye open, but His who ever waketh, my thoughts are upon things past, upon the awful dispensation of the Lord towards us, upon His wonderful power and might, in carry ing of us through so many dif- "culties, in returning us in safety, and suffering none to hurt us. I remember in the night season, how the other day I was in the midst of thousands of enemies, and nothing but death before me. It is then hard work to persuade myself, that ever I should be satis"ed with bread again. But now we are fed with the "nest of the wheat, and, as I may say, with honey out of the rock.2 Instead of the husk, we have the fatted calf.3 The thoughts of these things in the particulars of them, and of the love and goodness of God towards us, make it true of me, what David said of himself, “I watered my Couch with my tears” (Psalm 6.6). Oh! the wonderful power of God that mine eyes have seen, affording matter enough for my thoughts to run in, that when others are sleep- ing mine eyes are weeping.

I have seen the extreme vanity of this world:4 One hour I have been in health, and wealthy, wanting nothing. But the next hour in sickness and wounds, and death, having nothing but sorrow and afdiction.

Before I knew what afdiction meant, I was ready sometimes to wish for it. When I lived in prosperity, having the comforts of the world about me, my relations by me, my heart cheerful, and taking little care for anything, and yet seeing many, whom I preferred before myself, under many trials and afdictions, in sickness, weakness, poverty, losses, crosses,5 and cares of the world, I should be sometimes jealous least I should have my portion in this life, and that Scripture would come to my mind, “For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every Son whom he receiveth” (Hebrews 12.6). But now I see the Lord had His time to scourge and chasten me. The por- tion of some is to have their afdictions by drops, now one drop and then another; but the dregs of the cup, the wine of astonishment, like a sweeping rain that leaveth no food, did the Lord prepare to be my portion. Afdiction I wanted, and afdiction I had, full mea sure (I thought), pressed down and running over. Yet I see, when God calls a person to anything, and through never so many dif"culties, yet He is fully able to carry them through and make them see, and say they have been gainers thereby. And I hope I can say in some mea sure, as David did, “It is good for me that I have been afdicted.”6 The Lord hath showed me the vanity of these outward things. That they are the vanity of vanities, and vexation of spirit, that they are but a shadow, a blast, a bubble, and things of no continuance. That we must rely on God Himself, and our whole dependance must be upon Him. If trou ble from smaller matters begin to arise in me, I have something at hand to check myself with, and say, why am I troubled? It was but the other day that if I had

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had the world, I would have given it for my freedom, or to have been a servant to a Christian. I have learned to look beyond pres ent and smaller trou bles, and to be quieted under them. As Moses said, “Stand still and see the salva- tion of the Lord” (Exodus 14.13).

1682

EDWARD TAYLOR c. 1642–1729

E dward Taylor’s poetry was known only by a select circle in his own day. It was passed down in manuscript through his family for generations, until his great- grand son donated the manuscript volume to the Beinecke library, at Yale Univer- sity, in 1883. Five de cades later, the literary scholar Thomas H. Johnson located the manuscript there. After Johnson edited The Poetical Works of Edward Taylor (1939), the Puritan poet and his work became the object of sustained critical attention.

Taylor’s lack of print publication in his lifetime did not mean that he thought his work unworthy. Manuscript publication remained a common practice long after the printing press had become widely available. In the seventeenth century, manuscript was a popu lar medium for coterie poetry, or poems shared exclusively with a small group of associates. The most eminent coterie poet may be John Donne (1572–1631), the Anglican minister whom many regard as the "nest practitioner of Metaphysical poetry, an intellectual style that induenced Taylor. Donne authorized the print publication of just seven of his poems; his other 187 poems circulated exclusively in manuscript during his lifetime.

Even less of Taylor’s poetry was printed in his own day— just a few fragments, notably the "nal two stanzas of “Upon Wedlock, and Death of Children,” which Cotton Mather included at the end of a sermon that was published in London in 1689. Scholars think that Mather acquired those stanzas from a letter that Taylor wrote to his college friend Samuel Sewall, rather than from a compendium of poems. Taylor may have been less a coterie poet than a private one who wrote verses for his own satisfaction and inspiration. Yet he cared enough about future readers to copy his poems into a four- hundred- page leather- bound book, which he passed down to his descendants. Today, a number of pages from Taylor’s manuscript can be viewed online at the Beinecke Library Web site.

As a youth, Taylor was schooled in En glish religious poetry, which he later adapted to his circumstances as the minister of a small New Eng land village. He was prob ably born in Sketchly, Leicestershire County, Eng land, and the dialect of that farming country gives some of his poems provincial charm. His father was a yeoman farmer— not a gentleman with a large estate but an in de pen dent land- holder with title to his farm. Taylor taught school for a time, perhaps after some university training. Then in 1668, rather than sign an oath of loyalty to the Church of Eng land, he sailed to New Eng land. He preferred self- exile in what he once called a “howling wilderness” to either compromising his religious princi ples as a Puritan or suffering the substantial legal consequences of refusing to do so. Once in Mas sa chu setts, he attended Harvard College, where he prepared himself for the ministry.

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1. The full title is Preparatory Meditations before my Approach to the Lord’s Supper. Chie"y upon the Doctrine preached upon the Day of Adminis- tration [of Communion]. Taylor administered communion once a month to those members of his congregation who had made a declaration of

their faith. He wrote these meditations in pri- vate; they are primarily the result of his contem- plation of the biblical texts that served as the basis for the communion sermon. A total of 217 meditations survive, dating from 1682 to 1725. 2. Glory (Scottish).

In 1671 Taylor became the minister and physician in the frontier town of West"eld, Mas sa chu setts, roughly a hundred miles west of Boston. After a delay caused partly by King Philip’s War (1675–76); see the Mary Rowlandson headnote), he settled in and remained at West"eld for the rest of his life, also serving as a public servant. He married twice and had fourteen children, suffering the loss of many who died in infancy. Taylor also involved himself in the intellectual life and religious controver- sies of the colony. He strictly observed the “old” New Eng land way, which called for a prospective church member to give a public account of conversion, and he fought against a movement to drop that requirement.

Taylor’s grand son Ezra Stiles, who served as the president of Yale, described him as “a man of small stature, but "rm; of quick Passions, yet serious and grave.” Like most Harvard- trained ministers, Taylor knew Latin, Hebrew, and Greek, and his peers regarded him as a good preacher. His extensive library included theology, such as works of Augustine, and religious histories including Foxe’s Book of Martyrs (1563); natu ral sciences and history, including Sir Walter Raleigh’s History of the World (1614); and a great many works by New Eng land authors, including a substantial number of Cotton Mather’s publications and the 1678 edition of Anne Bradstreet’s poems.

Taylor worked in vari ous poetic genres, including personal lyr ics, elegies on the deaths of public "gures, and translations of the psalms. His verses most closely resemble those of the early Metaphysical poet George Herbert. Delighting in puns, paradoxes, and a rich profusion of meta phors and images, the Metaphysical wits explored the nature of language and its capacity to express spiritual meanings, as Taylor does in “Huswifery” and Preparatory Meditations. Taylor’s God’s Determina- tions is a long poem in the tradition of the medieval debate. “Upon Wedlock, and Death of Children” uses knotty wordplay to express emotional pain and the search for meaning and solace. Other poems, such as “Upon a Wasp Chilled with Cold,” combine naturalistic detail with spiritual meaning in a more direct style. The follow- ing se lections suggest Taylor’s considerable range, which places him squarely in the distinguished tradition of seventeenth- century religious lyric poetry.

All of the following texts are from Poems of Edward Taylor (1960), edited by Don- ald E. Stanford.

From Preparatory Meditations1

Prologue

Lord, Can a Crumb of Dust the Earth outweigh, Outmatch all mountains, nay, the Crystal sky? Embosom in’t designs that shall Display And trace into the Boundless Deity? Yea, hand a Pen whose moisture doth guide o’er 5 Eternal Glory with a glorious glore.2

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3. I.e., imagination. 4. In ancient Jerusalem, the hill on which King Solomon built his temple; the City of God on Earth. 1. “The Jews then murmured at him, because he said, I am the bread which came down from heaven. And they said, Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? how is it then that he saith, I came down from heaven? Jesus therefore answered[,] . . . Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me

hath everlasting life. I am that bread of life” (John 6.41–48). Jesus offers a “New Covenant of Faith” in place of the “Old Covenant of Works,” which Adam broke when he disobeyed God’s commandment (Genesis 1–3). 2.  I.e., discerning, by means of “divine astron- omy,” the towers of heaven. Taylor goes on to suggest an invisible golden path extends from this world to the gates of Heaven. 3. I.e., the soul, which is like a bird kept in the body’s cage.

If it its Pen had of an Angel’s Quill, And sharpened on a Precious Stone ground tight, And dipped in liquid Gold, and moved by Skill In Crystal leaves should golden Letters write, 10 It would but blot and blur, yea, jag, and jar Unless Thou mak’st the Pen, and Scrivener.

I am this Crumb of Dust which is designed To make my Pen unto Thy Praise alone, And my dull Fancy3 I would gladly grind 15 Unto an Edge on Zion’s4 Precious Stone. And Write in Liquid Gold upon Thy Name My Letters till Thy glory forth doth "ame.

Let not th’ attempts break down my Dust, I pray, Nor laugh Thou them to scorn but pardon give. 20 Inspire this crumb of Dust till it display Thy Glory through’t: and then Thy dust shall live. Its failings then Thou’lt overlook, I trust, They being Slips slipped from Thy Crumb of Dust.

Thy Crumb of Dust breathes two words from its breast, 25 That Thou wilt guide its pen to write aright To Prove Thou art, and that Thou art the best And show Thy Properties to shine most bright. And then Thy Works will shine as "owers on Stems Or as in Jewelry Shops, do gems. 30

c. 1682 1939

Meditation 8 (First Series)

John 6.51. I am the Living Bread.1

I kenning through Astronomy Divine The World’s bright Battlement,2 wherein I spy A Golden Path my Pencil cannot line, From that bright Throne unto my Threshold lie. And while my puzzled thoughts about it pour, 5 I "nd the Bread of Life in’t at my door.

When that this Bird of Paradise3 put in This Wicker Cage (my Corpse) to tweedle praise

4. Here, the interior of the body, the heart, the intestines, or the location of sympathetic emo- tions. 5. Turned over. 1. The subject of this “debate” poem is made clear in the full title: God’s determinations touch- ing His Elect [i.e., those divinely chosen for salva- tion]: and the Elect’s combat in their conversion, and coming up to God in Christ, together with the

comfortable effects thereof. In this group of poems, Taylor explores the pro gress of the human soul from the creation of the world and the fall from grace to the redemption of the Christian soul through Jesus Christ’s Cruci"xion: Christ’s mercy triumphs over justice— the punishment that humanity deserves for disobedience— and the soul is " nally carried to heaven to share in the joys of the Resurrection.

Had pecked the Fruit forbade: and so did ding Away its Food; and lost its golden days; 10 It fell into Celestial Famine sore: And never could attain a morsel more.

Alas! alas! Poor Bird, what wilt thou do? The Creatures’ "eld no food for Souls e’er gave. And if thou knock at Angels’ doors they show 15 An Empty Barrel: they no soul bread have. Alas! Poor Bird, the World’s White Loaf is done. And cannot yield thee here the smallest Crumb.

In this sad state, God’s Tender Bowels4 run Out streams of Grace: and He to end all strife 20 The Purest Wheat in Heaven His dear- dear son Grinds, and kneads up into this Bread of Life. Which Bread of Life from Heaven down came and stands Dished on Thy Table up by Angels’ Hands.

Did God mold up this Bread in Heaven, and bake, 25 Which from His Table came, and to thine goeth? Doth He bespeak thee thus, This Soul Bread take? Come Eat thy "ll of this thy God’s White Loaf? It’s Food too "ne for Angels, yet come, take And Eat thy "ll. It’s Heaven’s Sugar Cake. 30

What Grace is this knead in this Loaf? This thing Souls are but petty things it to admire. Ye Angels, help: This "ll would to the brim Heav’ns whelmed- down5 Crystal meal Bowl, yea and higher. This Bread of Life dropped in thy mouth, doth Cry: 35 Eat, Eat me, Soul, and thou shalt never die.

June 8, 1684 1939

From God’s Determinations1

The Preface

In"nity, when all things it beheld In Nothing, and of Nothing all did build,

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2. Grooved. 3. “Where wast thou when I laid the founda- tions of the earth? declare, if thou hast under- standing. Who hath laid the mea sures thereof, if thou knowest? or who hath stretched the line upon it? Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? or who laid the corner stone thereof; When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy? Or who shut up the sea with doors, when it brake forth, as if it had issued out of the womb?” (Job 38.4–8).

4. Encircled, bound around. 5. Emerald green. 6. The border of woven material that prevents unraveling. 7. A ball of wool that would unravel if it were not kept in a box. 8. Lanterns. 9. Outmea sure. 1. Switch. 2. Made.

Upon what Base was "xed the Lathe wherein He turned this Globe, and riggalled2 it so trim? Who blew the Bellows of His Furnace Vast? 5 Or held the Mold wherein the world was Cast? Who laid its Corner Stone?3 Or whose Command? Where stand the Pillars upon which it stands? Who Laced and Filleted4 the earth so "ne, With Rivers like green Ribbons Smaragdine?5 10 Who made the Sea’s its Selvage,6 and its locks Like a Quilt Ball7 within a Silver Box? Who Spread its Canopy? Or Curtains Spun? Who in this Bowling Alley bowled the Sun? Who made it always when it rises set 15 To go at once both down, and up to get? Who th’ Curtain rods made for this Tapestry? Who hung the twinkling Lanthorns8 in the Sky? Who? who did this? or who is He? Why, know It’s Only Might Almighty this did do. 20 His hand hath made this noble work which Stands His Glorious Handi work not made by hands. Who spake all things from Nothing; and with ease Can speak all things to Nothing, if He please. Whose Little "n ger at His plea sure Can 25 Out mete9 ten thousand worlds with half a Span: Whose Might Almighty can by half a looks Root up the rocks and rock the hills by the roots. Can take this mighty World up in His hand, And shake it like a Squitchen1 or a Wand. 30 Whose single Frown will make the Heavens shake Like as an aspen leaf the Wind makes quake. Oh! what a might is this Whose single frown Doth shake the world as it would shake it down? Which All from Nothing fet,2 from Nothing, All: 35 Hath All on Nothing set, lets Nothing fall. Gave All to Nothing Man indeed, whereby Through Nothing man all might Him Glorify. In Nothing then embossed the brightest Gem More precious than all preciousness in them. 40 But Nothing man did throw down all by Sin: And darkened that lightsome Gem in him. That now his Brightest Diamond is grown Darker by far than any Coalpit Stone.

c. 1685 1939

1. Flower bed. 2. Polished, shining. 3. I.e., wedding’s. 4. Alexander the Great cut the Gordian knot devised by the king of Phyrgia when he learned that anyone who could undo it would rule Asia. 5. Cuttings. 6. Bloom. 7. Emit. 8. Stem, stalk.

9. I.e., broke out. Samuel Taylor was born on August 27, 1675, and lived to maturity. 1. To the other. 2. Elizabeth Taylor was born on December 27, 1676, and died on December 25, 1677. 3. James Taylor was born on October 12, 1678, and lived to maturity. 4. Abigail Taylor was born on August 6, 1681, and died on August 22, 1682.

Upon Wedlock, and Death of Children

A Curious Knot1 God made in Paradise, And drew it out enameled2 neatly Fresh. It was the True- Love Knot, more sweet than spice, And set with all the dowers of Grace’s dress. It’s Wedden’s3 Knot, that ne’re can be untied: 5 No Alexander’s Sword4 can it divide.

The slips5 here planted, gay and glorious grow: Unless an Hellish breath do singe their Plumes. Here Primrose, Cowslips, Roses, Lilies blow6 With Violets and Pinks that void7 perfumes: 10 Whose beauteous leaves o’erlaid with Honey Dew, And Chanting birds Chirp out sweet Music true.

When in this Knot I planted was, my Stock8 Soon knotted, and a manly dower out brake.9 And after it, my branch again did knot, 15 Brought out another Flower, its sweet- breathed mate. One knot gave one tother1 the tother’s place. Whence Chuckling smiles fought in each other’s face.

But Oh! a glorious hand from glory came Guarded with Angels, soon did crop this dower2 20 Which almost tore the root up of the same, At that unlooked for, Dolesome, darksome hour. In Prayer to Christ perfumed it did ascend, And Angels bright did it to heaven ’tend.

But pausing on’t, this sweet perfumed my thought: 25 Christ would in Glory have a Flower, Choice, Prime, And having Choice, chose this my branch forth brought. Lord take’t. I thank Thee, Thou tak’st ought of mine: It is my pledge in glory, part of me Is now in it, Lord, glori"ed with Thee. 30

But praying o’re my branch, my branch did sprout, And bore another manly dower, and gay,3 And after that another, sweet brake out, The which the former hand soon got away. But Oh! the tortures, Vomit, screechings, groans, 35 and six week’s Fever would pierce hearts like stones.4

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1. The northern constellation the Big Dipper, also called Ursa Major, or the Great Bear. 2. The torpedo is a "sh, like a stingray, that dis- charges a shock to one who touches it, causing numbness. 3. The sun personi"ed. 4. I.e., small.

5. Head. 6. Remedies, prescriptions. “Apothecary’s Shop”: a drugstore or pharmacy. 7. Contain, encompass. 8. Her dark curved. 9. Enclose, fasten.

Grief o’er doth dow: and nature fault would "nd Were not Thy Will, my Spell, Charm, Joy, and Gem: That as I said, I say, take, Lord, they’re Thine. I piecemeal pass to Glory bright in them. 40 In joy, may I sweet dowers for glory breed, Whether thou get’st them green, or lets them seed.

c. 1682 1939

Upon a Wasp Chilled with Cold

The Bear that breathes the Northern blast1 Did numb, Torpedo- like,2 a Wasp Whose stiffened limbs encramped, lay bathing In Sol’s3 warm breath and shine as saving, Which with her hands she chafes and stands 5 Rubbing her Legs, Shanks, Thighs, and hands. Her petty4 toes, and "n gers’ ends Nipped with this breath, she out extends Unto the Sun, in great desire To warm her digits at that "re. 10 Doth hold her Temples in this state Where pulse doth beat, and head doth ache. Doth turn, and stretch her body small, Doth Comb her velvet Capital.5 As if her little brain pan were 15 A Volume of Choice precepts clear. As if her satin jacket hot Contained Apothecary’s Shop Of Nature’s receipts,6 that prevails To remedy all her sad ails, 20 As if her velvet helmet high Did turret7 rationality. She fans her wing up to the Wind As if her Pettycoat were lined, With reason’s deece, and hoists sails 25 And humming dies in thankful gales Unto her dun Curled8 palace Hall Her warm thanks offering for all.

Lord, clear my misted sight that I May hence view Thy Divinity, 30 Some sparks whereof Thou up dost hasp9

1. Body. 2. Coarse- clothed. 3. Trimmed or embellished, as with fur. 1. House keeping; here, weaving. 2. In lines 2–6, Taylor refers to the working parts of a spinning wheel. “Distaff ’:’ holds the raw wool or dax. “Flyers”: regulate the spinning. “Spool”: twists the yarn. “Reel”: takes up the "n- ished thread. 3. I.e., be like a spool or bobbin. 4. Where cloth is beaten and cleansed with

fuller’s earth, or soap. 5. Glossy, sparkling. “Pinked”: adorned. 6. In Taylor’s Treatise Concerning the Lord’s Sup- per, he considers the signi"cance of the sacrament of communion and takes as his text a passage from the New Testament: “And he saith unto him, Friend, how camest thou in hither not having a wedding garment? And he was speechless” (Mat- thew 22.12). Taylor argues that the wedding gar- ment is the proper sign of the regenerate (spiritually reborn) Christian.

Within this little downy Wasp In whose small Corporation1 we A school and a schoolmaster see, Where we may learn, and easily "nd 35 A nimble Spirit bravely mind Her work in every limb: and lace It up neat with a vital grace, Acting each part though ne’er so small Here of this Fustian2 animal, 40 Till I enravished Climb into The Godhead on this Ladder do, Where all my pipes inspired upraise An Heavenly music furred3 with praise.

1960

Huswifery1

Make me, O Lord, Thy Spinning Wheel complete.2 Thy Holy Word my Distaff make for me. Make mine Affections Thy Swift Flyers neat And make my Soul Thy holy Spool to be. My conversation make to be Thy Reel 5 And reel the yarn thereon spun of Thy Wheel.

Make me Thy Loom then, knit therein this Twine: And make Thy Holy Spirit, Lord, wind quills:3 Then weave the Web Thyself. The yarn is "ne. Thine Ordinances make my Fulling Mills.4 10 Then dye the same in Heavenly Colors Choice, All pinked with Varnished5 Flowers of Paradise.

Then clothe therewith mine Understanding, Will, Affections, Judgment, Conscience, Memory, My Words, and Actions, that their shine may "ll 15 My ways with glory and Thee glorify. Then mine apparel shall display before Ye That I am Clothed in Holy robes for glory.6

1939

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309

SAMUEL SEWALL 1652–1730

S amuel Sewall belonged to a network of New Eng land intellectuals that included the poet-minister Edward Taylor, who had been Sewall’s classmate at Harvard College, and the Boston polymath Cotton Mather. Sewall began his diary during his time at Harvard (1667–71), and he continued it until the year before his death. The diary is an ancient genre, its name derived from the Latin diarium, from dies for “day.” The semiformal diary in En glish began to dourish after the Reformation, as self- redection became an integral feature of everyday life for many people. Sewall’s diary, "rst published in the nineteenth century, offers insights into both daily life in upper- class colonial Boston and events that transformed Mas sa chu setts from a Puri- tan colony to a stronghold of “Yankee” ingenuity, commerce, and philanthropy. The diary also provides Sewall’s perspective on some of the most sensational issues of the day, including the Salem witchcraft trials, and it redects the "rst stirrings of the debate over slavery. Sewall was involved in both controversies, serving as a judge in the witchcraft proceedings and later offering a public apology for his role; and pub- lishing The Selling of Joseph (1700), an early antislavery tract.

Sewall was born in Eng land, but his parents had lived in Mas sa chu setts before their marriage, and by the time he was nine the family had returned to the Bay Col- ony. After his schooling, he chose commerce and the law over the ministry. In 1676 Sewall married Hannah Hull, the only surviving child of the wealthy Boston gold- smith and merchant John Hull, and moved into Hull’s Boston house, where he lived until his death. John Hull entrusted his extensive business interests to his son- in- law, and after Hull’s death in 1684 Sewall became a central "gure in Boston’s thriving mercantile life.

In 1678, the Mas sa chu setts General Court (that is, the Bay Colony’s legislature) appointed Sewall to manage the Boston printing press. The "rst text he issued was John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Pro gress (1678), an induential allegory about a hero named Christian. During the nearly three years that Sewall ran the press, he published of"- cial documents, works by impor tant Puritan thinkers, and some of his own essays.

In 1692, Sewall became one of the justices of the Superior Court of Judicature, a position he held for more than thirty- "ve years, the last eleven as chief justice. Ear- lier that same year, he was appointed to the special court inquiring into reported instances of witchcraft in Salem and other towns. The court tried dozens of cases and condemned a number of people to death. Public opinion soon turned against the court’s standards of evidence. When two of his children died, Sewall feared that the deaths might be divine punishment for his involvement in the trials. He formally apologized in church for his part in the witchcraft tragedy in 1697.

When The Selling of Joseph appeared three years later, Sewall reported, he received “frowns and harsh words” from his fellow townspeople, including the merchant and slaveholder John Saf"n, who published the pamphlet A Brief and Candid Answer the following year. Sewall delayed acknowledging this answer until he “saw a very severe act passing [the General Court] against Indians and Negroes” in 1705. He returned to the controversy, arranging to reprint an article from an En glish periodical arguing that the slave trade was “especially contrary to the great Law of Chris tian ity.” Though Sewall remained opposed to interracial marriage, his willingness to pro- mote the antislavery cause makes him a signi"cant "gure in the emerging abolition- ist movement.

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1. The text is from The Diary of Samuel Sewall (1973), edited by M. Halsey Thomas. To preserve the davor of Sewall’s style, the text has been only slightly modernized. The dates, however, have been changed to conform to the modern calendar. 2. Abbreviation for videlicet: that is to say, namely (Latin). 3. Peter, one of Jesus’ original twelve disciples,

is buried in Rome. 4. The biblical Book of Revelation. “Pareus”: David Pareus (1548-1622), a German theologian and biblical commentator and one of Sewall’s favorite authors. 5. A legal petition. 6. Wearing high- heeled shoes. 7. Morning (Latin).

From The Diary of Samuel Sewall1

Satterday, Jany 2d[, 1686.] Last night had a very unusual Dream; viz.2 That our Savior in the dayes of his Flesh when upon Earth, came to Boston and abode here sometime, and moreover that He Lodged in that time at Father Hull’s; upon which in my Dream had two Redections, One was how much more Boston had to say than Rome boasting of Peter’s being there.3 The other a sense of great Res pect that I ought to have shewed Father Hull since Christ chose when in town, to take up His Quarters at his House. Admired the goodness and Wisdom of Christ in coming hither and spending some part of His short Life here. The Chronological absurdity never came into my mind, as I remember. Jany 1, 1688, "nished reading the Godly Learned ingenious Pareus on the Revelation.4

Sabbath, Augt. 10th[, 1690.] Went to see Cous. [Daniel] Quinsey; read the 102. Psal. and begin 103. pray’d, and so went home. Put up a Bill5 at his request. Just after Contribution in the After noon, was call’d out, Cousin being very bad, so far as I could perceive. He desired me to pray, which I did: Afterward sent for Mr. [Samuel] Willard, and He pray’d, then Cousin pull’d his hand out of the Bed, and gave it to Mr. Willard. Seem’d to pray himself; but I could hear little except Jesus Christ; breath’d quick and hard, till at last abated and He quietly expired about Seven aclock. Mother Hull and I being there. I have parted with a cordial fast Friend, such an one as I shall hardly "nd. The Lord "t me for my Change and help me to wait till it come. Cousin was concern’d what he should doe for Patience, but God graciously furnish’d him, and has now translated Him to that State and place wherein He has no occasion for any.

Tuesday, Augt. 12[, 1690.] About 7. p.m. we lay the Body of Cous. Daniel Quinsey in my Father’s Tomb. Mr. Serjeant, Dummer, H. Usher, Davis, Wil- liams, Conney, Bearers. I led the Widow, then the Children, next, Mr. T. Brat- tle, Mis. Shepard, H. Newman, Mistress Margaret, Mr. Willard, Mother Hull, Mr. Parson, my wife and so on. Note. My wife was so ill could hardly get home, taking some harm in going in Pattens6 or some wrench, so had a great dux of Blood, which amaz’d us both, at last my wife bade me call Mrs. Ellis, then Mother Hull, then the Midwife, and throw the Goodness of God was brought to Bed of a Daughter between 3. and four aclock, Aug. 13th, 1690. mane7 Mrs. Elisabeth Weeden, Midwife. Had not Women nor other prepara- tions as usually, being wholly surpris’d, my wife expecting to have gone a Moneth longer.

* * * Augt. 17[, 1690.] Mr. Willard keeps his Sabbath at Roxbury, and so the

Baptism of my little Daughter is deferred to the next Lord’s Day.

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8. I.e., be true believers and speak the language of Judah. Children of Jews who married Ashdod women were unable to speak the language of their fathers.

9. I.e., willingness to perform the least digni"ed kinds of childcare. 1. Eve ning. 2. Previous be hav ior.

Sabbath- day, August the four and twentieth, 1690. I publish my little Daughter’s name to be Judith, held her up for Mr. Willard to baptize her. She cried not at all, though a pretty deal of water was poured on her by Mr. Willard when He baptized her: Six others were baptized at the same time; Capt. Davis’s Son James, and a grown person, Margaret Clifford, two of them. I named my Daughter Judith for the sake of her Grand mother and great Grand mother, who both wore that Name, and the Signi"cation of it very good: The Lord grant that we may have great cause to praise Him on her account and help her to speak the Jews Language and to forget that of Ashdod,8 Nehemiah 13.24. And that she may follow her Grand mother Hull, as she follows Christ, being not slothfull in Business, fervent in Spirit, serv- ing the Lord. Her Prayers and Painstaking for all my Children are inces- sant, voluntary, with condescension to the meanest Ser vices9 night and day: that I judg’d I could in justice doe no less than endeavor her remembrance by putting her Name on one of her Grand- Daughters. I have now had my health and opportunity to offer up Nine Children to God in Baptisme. Mr. Tho. Thacher baptized the two eldest; John and Samuel; Mr. Samuel Willard baptized the Seven younger. Lord grant that I who have thus sol- emnly and frequently named the name of the Lord Jesus, may depart from Iniquity; and that mine may be more His than Mine, or their own.

Sept. 20[, 1690.] * * * My little Judith languishes and moans, ready to die.

Sabbath, Sept. 21[, 1690.] About 2 mane, I rise, read some Psalms and pray with my dear Daughter. Between 7. and 8. (Mr. Moodey preaches in the Forenoon,) I call Mr. Willard, and he prays. Told Mr. Walter of her condi- tion * * * desiring him to give her a Lift towards heaven. Mr. Baily sat with me in the After noon. I acquainted Him. Between 7. and 8. in the eve ning the child died, and I hope sleeps in Jesus.

Sept. 22[, 1690.] In the even,1 Mr. Moodey, Allen, Mather come from Mrs. Clark’s Funeral to see us. Mr. Moodey and I went before the other came, to neighbor Hord, who lay dying; where also Mr. Allen came in. Nurse Hord told her Husband who was there, and what he had to say; whether he desir’d them to pray with him: He said with some earnestness, Hold your tongue, which was repeated three times to his wive’s repeated intreaties; once he said, Let me alone, or, be quiet, ( whether that made a fourth or was one of the three do not remember) and, My Spirits are gon. At last Mr. Moodey took him up pretty roundly and told him he might with the same labor have given a pertinent answer. When were ready to come away Mr. Moodey bid him put forth a little Breath to ask prayer, and said twas the last time had to speak to him; At last ask’d him, doe you desire prayer, shall I pray with you, He answer’d, Ay for the Lord’s sake, and thank’d Mr. Moodey when had done. His former carriage2 was very startling and amazing to us. About One at night he died. About 11. aclock I supposed to hear neighbor Mason at prayer with him, just as I and my wife were going to bed. Mr. Allen prayed with us when came from said Hord’s.

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3. Here, meaning minister. 4. Simon Bradstreet’s second wife (i.e., not the poet Anne). 5. Sewall represented the town of West"eld in the General Court of Mas sa chu setts. 6. Sewall’s thirteen- year- old son, boarding at school. 7. Woe (Latin). On May 24, 1692, Governor Wil- liam Phips (1651–1695) appointed Sewall one of the seven councilors of a court of Oyer and Ter- miner (i.e., to hear and determine) to judge those accused of witchcraft in Salem. The court met in

Salem on June 2, and Bridget Bishop was hanged on June 10. On June 30, they met again, and "ve more accused were executed on July 19. Unfortu- nately for us, Sewall kept his entries regarding the trials at Salem to a minimum. 8. Cary was given protection in New York. 9. I.e., John Proctor. 1. Vigorously. 2. Refusing to enter a plea. Corey was eighty years old at the time. Heavy stones were placed on him until he died.

Sept. 23[, 1690.] Tuesday, between 5. and  6. Sir3 Moodey carries the Body of my dear Judith to the Tomb, Solomon Rainsford receives it on the Stairs and sets it in. On the Cof"n is the year 1690. made with little nails. Govr Bradstreet and Lady,4 Mrs. Moodey, Mather the Mother, Mr. Win- throp, Richards here, with many others; Ministers, Willard, Moodey, Mather.

June 2d, 1691. Mr. Edward Taylor puts his Son James to Mr. Steward, Shop- keeper of Ipswich, for Seven years, to serve him as an Apprentice, Term to begin the "rst of July next. Mr. Taylor desires me to represent himself in making the Indenture,5 if Mr. Steward desire the accomplishment of it befor He comes down again.

Monday, Dec. 7th[, 1691.] I ride to New- Cambridge to see Sam.6 He could hardly speak to me, his affections were so mov’d, having not seen me for above a fortnight; his Cough is still very bad, much increas’d by his going to Cambridge on foot in the night. * * *

April 11th, 1692. Went to Salem, where, in the Meeting- house, the per- sons accused of Witchcraft were examined; was a very great Assembly; ’twas awfull to see how the afdicted persons were agitated. Mr. Noyes pray’d at the beginning, and Mr. Higginson concluded. [In the margin], Væ,7 Væ, Væ, Witchcraft.

July 30, 1692. Mrs. Cary makes her escape out of Cambridge- Prison, who was Committed for Witchcraft.8

Thorsday, Augt. 4[, 1692.] At Salem, Mr.  Water house brings the news of the desolation at Jamaica, June 7th. 1700 persons kill’d, besides the Loss of Houses and Goods by the Earthquake.

Augt. 19th, 1692. * * * This day [in the margin, Dolefull Witchcraft] George Burrough, John Willard, Jn° Procter,9 Martha Carrier and George Jacobs were executed at Salem, a very great number of Spectators being pres- ent. Mr. Cotton Mather was there, Mr. Sims, Hale, Noyes, Chiever, &c. All of them said they were innocent, Carrier and all. Mr. Mather says they all died by a Righ teous Sentence. Mr. Burrough by his Speech, Prayer, protes- tation of his Innocence, did much move unthinking persons, which occa- sions their speaking hardly1 concerning his being executed.

Augt. 25[, 1692.] Fast at the old [First] Church, respecting the Witchcraft, Drought, &c.

Monday, Sept. 19, 1692. About noon, at Salem, Giles Corey was press’d to death for standing Mute;2 much pains was used with him two days, one after another, by the Court and Capt. Gardner of Nantucket who had been of his acquaintance: but all in vain.

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3. Putnam was twelve when she, along with her mother, made accusations against “witches.” 4. A ship. 5. Confession of witchcraft automatically set the accused free. 6. Knob. 7. Saying grace. 8. The be hav ior of Adam after the fall, when he tried to hide from God (see Genesis 3).

9. It has a year’s growth. 1. Place. 2. Squares. 3. The tavern in Lynn, Mas sa chu setts, which is north of Boston. Milton is south of Boston. 4. The Mas sa chu setts General Court made Jan- uary 14, 1697, a day of fasting to atone for the events at Salem. Sewall publicly confessed his error and guilt.

Sept. 20[, 1692.] Now I hear from Salem that about 18 years agoe, he was suspected to have stamped and press’d a man to death, but was cleared. Twas not remembred till Anne Putnam was told of it by said Corey’s Spectre the Sabbath- day night before Execution.3

Sept. 20, 1692. The Swan4 brings in a rich French Prize of about 300 Tuns, laden with Claret, White Wine, Brandy, Salt, Linnen Paper, &c.

Sept. 21[, 1692.] A petition is sent to Town in behalf of Dorcas Hoar, who now confesses: Accordingly an order is sent to the Sheriff to forbear her Exe- cution, notwithstanding her being in the Warrant to die to morrow. This is the "rst condemned person who has confess’d.5

Nov. 6[, 1692.] Joseph threw a knop6 of Brass and hit his Sister Betty on the forhead so as to make it bleed and swell; upon which, and for his play- ing at Prayer- time, and eating when Return Thanks,7 I whipd him pretty smartly. When I "rst went in (call’d by his Grand mother) he sought to shadow and hide himself from me behind the head of the Cradle: which gave me the sorrowfull remembrance of Adam’s carriage.8

Apr. 16, 1695. My Appletree which I nourish from a kernel, has the growth of 16949 and is now scarce Ten inches high; removd it this Spring into the room1 of a young Appletree that dyed.

* * * Monday, April 29, 1695. The morning is very warm and Sunshiny; in the

After noon there is Thunder and Lightening, and about 2 p.m. a very extraor- dinary Storm of Hail, so that the ground was made white with it, as with the blossoms when fallen; ’twas as bigg as pistoll and Musquet Bullets; It broke of the Glass of the new House about 480 Quarrels2 of the Front; of Mr. Sergeant’s about as much; Col. Shrimpton, Major General, Govr Brad- street, New Meeting house, Mr. Willard, &c. Mr. Cotton Mather dined with us, and was with me in the new Kitchen when this was; He had just been mentioning that more Minister Houses than others proportionably had been smitten with Lightening; enquiring what the meaning of God should be in it. Many Hail- Stones broke throw the Glass and dew to the middle of the Room, or farther: People afterward Gazed upon the House to see its Ruins. I got Mr. Mather to pray with us after this awfull Providence; He told God He had broken the brittle part of our house, and prayd that we might be ready for the time when our Clay- Tabernacles should be broken. Twas a sorrowfull thing to me to see the house so far undon again before twas "nish’d. It seems at Milton on the one hand, and at Lewis’s3 on the other, there was no Hail.

Jany 15[, 1697.] * * * Copy of the Bill I put up on the Fast day;4 giving it to Mr. Willard as he pass’d by, and standing up at the reading of it, and bow- ing when "nished; in the After noon.

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5. On May 22, 1696, Sewall buried a premature son born dead, and on December 23 his daughter Sarah died. When his son Samuel read from Matthew 12.7 (“But if ye had known what this meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacri"ce, ye would not have condemned the guiltless”) it did “awfully bring to mind,” Sewall noted, “the Salem tragedy.” 6. Elizabeth Fitch, who died in 1689. The Mr. Fitch about to be mentioned may have been one

of her relatives. 7. Elizabeth Tappan (or Toppan) was Sewall’s niece. 8. Gloves were sent as an invitation to a funeral. 9. A memorial gift. 1. Paul Baynes, A Commentary upon the First Chapter of the Epistle of Saint Paul. Written to the Ephesians (1618). 2. Forty shillings (£2, a considerable sum in those days).

Samuel Sewall, sensible of the reiterated strokes of God upon himself and family5 and being sensible, that as to the Guilt contracted, upon the open- ing of the late Commission of Oyer and Terminer at Salem (to which the order for this Day relates) he is, upon many accounts, more concerned than any that he knows of, Desires to take the Blame and Shame of it, Asking pardon of Men, And especially desiring prayers that God, who has an Unlim- ited Authority, would pardon that Sin and all other his Sins; personal and Relative: And according to his in"nite Benignity, and Soveraignty, Not Visit the Sin of him, or of any other, upon himself or any of his, nor upon the Land: But that He would powerfully defend him against all Temptations to Sin, for the future; and vouchsafe him the Ef"cacious, Saving Conduct of his Word and Spirit.

July 15, 1698. Mr. Edward Taylor comes to our house from West"eld. Mon- day, July 18[, 1698.] I walk’d with Mr. Edward Taylor upon Cotton Hill, thence to Becon Hill, the Pasture, along the Stone- wall: As came back, we sat down on the great Rock, and Mr. Taylor told me his courting his "rst wife,6 and Mr. Fitch his story of Mr. Dod’s prayer to God to bring his Affec- tion to close with a person pious, but hard- favored. Has God answered me in "nding out one Godly and "t for me, and shall I part for fancy? When came home, my wife gave me Mr. Tappan’s Letter concerning Eliza,7 which caus’d me to redect on Mr. Taylor’s Discourse. And his Prayer was for pardon of error in our ways— which made me think whether it were not best to over- look all, and go on. This day John Ive, "shing in great Spiepond, is arrested with mortal sickness which renders him in a manner speechless and sense- less; dies next day; buried at Charlestown on the Wednesday. Was a very debauched, atheistical man. I was not at his Funeral. Had Gloves sent me,8 but the knowledge of his notoriously wicked life made me sick of going; and Mr. Mather, the president, came in just as I was ready to step out, and so I staid at home, and by that means lost a Ring:9 but hope had no loss. Follow thou Me, was I suppose more complied with, than if had left Mr. Mather’s com pany to go to such a Funeral.

Fourth- day, June 19, 1700. * * * Having been long and much dissatis"ed with the Trade of fetching Negros from Guinea; at last I had a strong Incli- nation to Write something about it; but it wore off. At last reading Bayne, Ephes.1 about servants, who mentions Blackamoors; I began to be uneasy that I had so long neglected doing any thing. When I was thus thinking, in came Bror Belknap to shew me a Petition he intended to pres ent to the GenL Court for the freeing a Negro and his wife, who were unjustly held in Bond- age. And there is a Motion by a Boston Committee to get a Law that all Importers of Negros shall pay 40s2 per head, to discourage the bringing of

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3. Work toward their slaves’ conversion to Chris- tian ity. 4. The Selling of Joseph was published "ve days later. 5. See his headnote, above. 6. Judge of morals (Latin). 7. The Protestant theologian John Calvin’s Insti-

tutes of the Christian Religion (1536). In this chapter, “How to Use the Pres ent Life, and the Comforts of It,” Calvin recommends naturalness and moderation. 8. I.e., a minister who cuts off his hair scorns the law of nature and therefore should not be allowed to preach.

them. And Mr. C. Mather resolves to publish a sheet to exhort Masters to labor their Conversion.3 Which makes me hope that I was call’d of God to Write this Apology4 for them; Let his Blessing accompany the same.

Tuesday, June 10th[, 1701.] Having last night heard that Josiah Willard had cut off his hair (a very full head of hair) and put on a Wigg, I went to him this morning. Told his Mother what I came about, and she call’d him. I enquired of him what Extremity had forced him to put off his own hair, and put on a Wigg? He answered, none at all. But said that his Hair was streight, and that it parted behinde. Seem’d to argue that men might as well shave their hair off their head, as off their face. I answered men were men before they had hair on their faces, (half of mankind have never any). God seems to have ordain’d our Hair as a Test, to see whether we can bring our minds to be content to be at his "nding: or whether we would be our own Carvers, Lords, and come no more at Him. If disliked our Skin, or Nails; ’tis no Thanks to us, that for all that, we cut them not off: Pain and danger restrain us. Your Calling is to teach men self Denial. Twill be displeasing and burdensom to good men: And they that care not what men think of them care not what God thinks of them. Father, Bror Simon, Mr. Pemberton, Mr. [Michael] Wigglesworth,5 Oakes, Noyes (Oliver), Brattle of Cambridge their example. Allow me to be so far a Censor Morum6 for this end of the Town. Pray’d him to read the Tenth Chapter of the Third book of Calvins Institutions.7 I read it this morning in course, not of choice. Told him that it was condemn’d by a Meeting of Ministers at Northampton in Mr. [Solo- mon] Stoddards house, when the said Josiah was there. Told him of the Solemnity of the Covenant which he and I had lately entered into, which put me upon discoursing to him. He seem’d to say would leave off his Wigg when his hair was grown. I spake to his Father of it a day or two after: He thank’d me that had discoursed his Son, and told me that when his hair was grown to cover his ears, he promis’d to leave off his Wigg. If he had known of it, would have forbidden him. His Mother heard him talk of it; but was afraid positively to forbid him; lest he should do it, and so be more faulty.

Sabbath, Novr 30[, 1701.] * * * I spent this Sabbath at Mr. Colman’s, partly out of dislike to Mr. Josiah Willard’s cutting off his Hair, and wearing a Wigg: He preach’d for Mr. Pemberton in the morning; He that contemns the Law of Nature, is not "t to be a publisher of the Law of Grace.8 * * *

Lord’s Day, June 10, 1705. The Learned and pious Mr. Michael Wiggles- worth dies at Malden about 9. m. Had been sick about 10. days of a Fever; 73 years and 8 moneths old. He was the Author of the Poem entituled The Day of Doom, which has been so often printed: and was very useful as a Physician.

* * *

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9. May God turn aside all bad things (Latin). 1. I.e, interred: buried.

2. One who leads the congregation in singing. 3. Praise God (Latin).

Lords day, Decr 17[, 1727.] I was surprised to hear Mr. Thacher of Milton, my old Friend, pray’d for as dangerously Sick. Next day. Decr 18, 1727. I am inform’d by Mr. Gerrish, that my dear friend died last night; which I doubt bodes ill to Milton and the Province, his dying at this Time, though in the 77th year of his Age. Deus avertat Omen!9

Friday, Decr 22[, 1727.] the day after the Fast, was inter’d.1 Bearers Revd Mr. Nehemiah Walter, Mr. Joseph Baxter; Mr. John Swift, Mr. SamL Hunt; Mr. Joseph Sewall, Mr. Thomas Prince. I was inclin’d before, and having a pair of Gloves sent me, I determined to go to the Funeral, if the Weather prov’d favorable, which it did, and I hired Blake’s Coach with four Horses; my Son, Mr. Cooper and Mr. Prince went with me. Refresh’d there with Meat and Drink; got thither about half an hour past one. It was sad to see [death] triumphed over my dear Friend! I rode in my Coach to the Burying place; not being able to get nearer by reason of the many Horses. From thence went directly up the Hill where the Smith’s Shop, and so home very comfortably and easily, the ground being molli"ed. But when I came to my own Gate, going in, I fell down, a board slipping under my Left foot, my right Legg raised off the skin, and put me to a great deal of pain, especially when ’twas washed with Rum. It was good for me that I was thus Afdicted that my spirit might be brought into a frame more suitable to the Solemnity, which is apt to be too light; and by the loss of some of my Skin, and blood I might be awakened to prepare for my own Dissolution. Mr. Walter prayed before the Corps was carried out. I had a pair of Gloves sent me before I went, and a Ring given me there. Mr. Millar, the Church of Eng land Minis- ter, was there. At this Funeral I heard of the death of my good old Tenant Capt Nathan Niles, that very Friday morn. I have now been at the Interment of 4 of my Class- mates. First, the Rev’d Mr. William Adams at Dedham, Midweek, Augt. 19, 1685. Second, Mr. John Bowles, at Roxbury, March 31, 1691. Was one of his Bearers. Third, Capt. Samuel Phips at Charlestown. He was laid in his Son- in- Law Lemmon’s Tomb. Had a good pair of Gloves, and a gold Ring. He was Clerk of the Court and Register many years. Clerk to his death, and his Son succeeded him. Was Præcentor2 many years to the congregation. Inter’d Augt. 9, 1725. Fourth, the Rev’d Mr. Thachar at Mil- ton. Now I can go to no more Funerals of my Classmates; nor none be at mine; for the survivers, the Rev’d Mr. Samuel Mather at Windsor, and the Revd Mr. Taylor at West"eld, [are] one Hundred Miles off, and are extremly enfeebled. I humbly pray that CHRIST may be graciously pres ent with us all Three both in Life, and in Death, and then we shall safely and Comfortably walk through the shady valley that leads to Glory.

Lords- day, Decr 24th[, 1727.] am kept from the solemn Assembly by my bruised Shin.

October 19, 1728. Seeing this to be the same day of the week and Moneth that the Wife of my youth expired Eleven years agoe, it much affected me. I writ to my dear Son Mr. Joseph Sewall of it, desiring him to come and dine with me: or however that he would call some time to join my Condolence. He came about Noon and made an excellent Prayer in the East Chamber. Laus Deo.3 I told him of the death of the Widow Wheeler yesterday morning,

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4. Handle. 5. Same place, the day, Sunday (Latin). 1. A public remonstrance or statement. The text is derived from the "rst edition (1700). 2. Translated from De Conscientia, et eius iure, vel casibus (1623), by the En glish theologian Wil- liam Ames, who was the main source for Puritan ecclesiastical ideas. The last quotation in The Sell- ing of Joseph, in Ames’s Latin original, includes

this same passage. 3. Renters subject to immediate expulsion from rental property, as opposed to those holding a long- term lease. Here and throughout this open- ing passage, Sewall uses language derived from con temporary property law and practice as well as from the Bible. “Broad Seal”: seal of Eng land, af"xed to land grants and patents.

which he had not heard of. When Sam came to read, I wrap’d up a Silver Cup with one ear,4 weighing about 3 ounces and  12 Grains, to give his Mother, which I had promis’d her. A Minister’s Wife, I told her, ought not to be without such a one. I went to looke [for] silver to make such a one, and unexpectedly met with one ready made.

Ditto, die, feria Septima.5 I gave my dear Wife a Book of 7 Sermons, which had been my Daughter Hannah’s, for whom she had labored beyond mea sure.

1673–1729

1878–82

The Selling of Joseph: A Memorial1

Forasmuch as Liberty is in real value next unto Life: None ought to part with it themselves, or deprive others of it, but upon most mature Consideration.2

The Numerousness of Slaves at this day in the Province, and the Uneasi- ness of them under their Slavery, hath put many upon thinking whether the Foundation of it be "rmly and well laid; so as to sustain the Vast Weight that is built upon it. It is most certain that all Men, as they are the Sons of Adam, are Coheirs; and have equal Right unto Liberty, and all other out- ward Comforts of Life. God hath given the Earth [with all its Commodities] unto the Sons of Adam, Psal 115.16. And hath made of One Blood, all Nations of Men, for to dwell on all the face of the Earth, and hath determined the Times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation: That they should seek the Lord. Forasmuch then as we are the Offspring of GOD &c. Act 17.26, 27, 29. Now although the Title given by the last ADAM, doth in"nitely better Men[’]s Estates, respecting GOD and themselves; and grants them a most bene"cial and inviolable Lease under the Broad Seal of Heaven, who were before only Tenants at Will:3 Yet through the Indulgence of GOD to our First Parents after the Fall, the outward Estate of all and every of their Children, remains the same, as to one another. So that Originally, and Naturally, there is no such thing as Slavery. Joseph was rightfully no more a Slave to his Breth- ren, than they were to him: and they had no more Authority to Sell him, than they had to Slay him. And if they had nothing to do to Sell him; the Ishmaelites bargaining with them, and paying down Twenty pieces of Silver could not make a Title. Neither could Potiphar have any better Interest in him than the Ishmaelites had. Gen. 37.20, 27, 28. For he that shall in this case plead Alteration of Property, seems to have forfeited a great part of his own claim to Humanity. There is no proportion between Twenty Pieces of Silver, and LIBERTY. The Commodity it self is the Claimer. If Arabian Gold

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4. More precious than all the gold (Latin). 5. Let the buyer beware! (Latin). 6. Foreign, not intrinsic. 7. “Train bands” were companies of militia. Sewall implies that black members of these mili- tias were taking the places of white men.

8. Famous in the Bible for their courtship and abiding love. 9. I.e., extramarital sex was subject to "nes in Mas sa chu setts and other colonies. 1. Account.

be imported in any quantities, most are afraid to meddle with it, though they might have it at easy rates; lest if it should have been wrongfully taken from the Owners, it should kindle a "re to the Consumption of their whole Estate. ’tis pity there should be more Caution used in buying a Horse, or a little life- less dust; than there is in purchasing Men and Women: Whenas they are the Offspring of GOD, and their Liberty is,

. . . . . . . . . Auro pretiosior Omni.4

And seeing GOD hath said, He that Stealeth a Man and Selleth him, or if he be found in his hand, he shall surely be put to Death. Exod. 21.16. This Law being of Everlasting Equity, wherein Man Stealing is ranked amongst the most atrocious of Capital Crimes: What louder Cry can there be made of that Celebrated Warning,

Caveat Emptor!5

And all things considered, it would conduce more to the Welfare of the Prov- ince, to have White Servants for a Term of Years, than to have Slaves for Life. Few can endure to hear of a Negro’s being made free; and indeed they can seldom use their freedom well; yet their continual aspiring after their forbidden Liberty, renders them Unwilling Servants. And there is such a dis- parity in their Conditions, Colour & Hair, that they can never embody with us, and grow up into orderly Families, to the Peopling of the Land: but still remain in our Body Politick as a kind of extravasat6 Blood. As many Negro men as there are among us, so many empty places there are in our Train Bands, and the places taken up of Men that might make Husbands for our Daughters.7 And the Sons and Daughters of New Eng land would become more like Jacob, and Rachel,8 if this Slavery were thrust quite out of doors. Moreover it is too well known what Temptations Masters are under, to con- nive at the Fornication of their Slaves; lest they should be obliged to "nd them Wives, or pay their Fines.9 It seems to be practically pleaded that they might be Lawless; ’tis thought much of, that the Law should have Satisfac- tion for their Thefts, and other Immoralities; by which means, Holiness to the Lord, is more rarely engraven upon this sort of Servitude. It is likewise most la men ta ble to think, how in taking Negros out of Africa, and Selling of them here, That which GOD has joyned together men do boldly rend asunder; Men from their Country, Husbands from their Wives, Parents from their Children. How horrible is the Uncleanness, Mortality, if not Murder, that the Ships are guilty of that bring great Crouds of these miserable Men, and Women. Methinks, when we are bemoaning the barbarous Usage of our Friends and Kinsfolk in Africa: it might not be unseasonable to enquire whether we are not culpable in forcing the Africans to become Slaves amongst our selves. And it may be a question whether all the Bene"t received by Negro Slaves, will balance the Accompt1 of Cash laid out upon them; and for the

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2. I.e., Ham, the second son of Noah and the father of Cush as well as of Canaan. In Genesis 9.25, Noah says, “Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren.” Apologists for slavery often insisted that Ham was the ances- tor of the African peoples. 3. Abbreviation for videlicet: that is to say, namely (Latin). 4. See Pareus (Latin); David Pareus (1548–1622) was a German theologian and biblical commenta-

tor and one of Sewall’s favorite authors. 5. From book 2 (lines 235–36) of Metamorpho- ses, by the ancient Roman poet Ovid: Then it was, as men think, that the people of Ethiopia became dark- skinned, for the blood was called to the surface of their bodies (by the heat) (Latin). 6. Joseph was sold into slavery in Egypt by his brothers. The story appears in Genesis 37. “For . . . known”: i.e., for all we know.

Redemption of our own enslaved Friends out of Africa. Besides all the Per- sons and Estates that have perished there.

Obj. 1. These Blackamores are of the Posterity of Cham,2 and therefore are under the Curse of Slavery. Gen. 9.25, 26, 27.

Answ. Of all Of"ces, one would not begg this; viz.3 Uncall’d for, to be an Executioner of the Vindictive Wrath of God; the extent and duration of which is to us uncertain. If this ever was a Commission; How do we know but that it is long since out of Date? Many have found it to their Cost, that a Prophetical Denunciation of Judgment against a Person or People, would not warrant them to indict that evil. If it would, Hazael might jus- tify himself in all he did against his Master, and the Israelites, from 2 Kings 8.10, 12.

But it is pos si ble that by cursory reading, this Text may have been mis- taken. For Canaan is the Person Cursed three times over, without the men- tioning of Cham. Good Expositors suppose the Curse entaild on him, and that this Prophesie was accomplished in the Extirpation of the Canaanites, and in the Servitude of the Gibeonites. Vide Pareum.4 Whereas the Black- mores are not descended of Canaan, but of Cush. Psal. 68.31. Princes shall come out of Egypt, Ethiopia shall soon stretch out her hands unto God. Under which Names, all Africa may be comprehended; and their Promised Con- version ought to be prayed for. Jer. 13.23. Can the Ethiopian change his skin? This shows that Black Men are the Posterity of Cush: Who time out of mind have been distinguished by their Colour. And for want of the true, Ovid assigns a fabulous cause of it.

Sanguine tum credunt in corpora summa vocato Æthiopum populus nigrum traxisse colorem.

Metamorph. lib. 2.5

Obj. 2. The Nigers are brought out of a Pagan Country, into places where the Gospel is Preached.

Answ. Evil must not be done, that good may come of it. The extraordinary and comprehensive Bene"t accruing to the Church of God, and to Joseph personally, did not rectify his brethren[’]s Sale of him.

Obj. 3. The Africans have Wars one with another: Our Ships bring lawful Captives taken in those Wars.

Answ. For ought is known, their Wars are much such as were between Jacob’s Sons and their Brother Joseph.6 If they be between Town and Town; Provincial, or National: Every War is upon one side Unjust. An Unlawful War can’t make lawful Captives. And by Receiving, we are in danger to pro- mote, and partake in their Barbarous Cruelties. I am sure, if some Gentle- men should go down to the Brewsters to take the Air, and Fish: And a stronger

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7. A coastal town near Boston. The Brewsters are a group of islands at the outer entrance to Boston Harbor. 8. Since the eigh teenth century, this injunction has been known as the Golden Rule. 9. Conceive. 1. Ephesians 2.12–14: “At that time ye were without Christ, being aliens from the common- wealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world: But now in Christ Jesus ye who some- times were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us.”

2. As long as it is voluntary, the total servitude of one Christian to another is often enough lawful on the part of the servant because it arises from his necessity. But on the part of the master who is the agent in procuring and managing [the ser- vant], it is scarcely legal, for it does not conform to the general rule: Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them (Latin). 3. Total servitude, when used as a punishment, can have no place in law, unless for an offense so grave that it is deserving of the severest pen- alty: for liberty by common estimate is next in importance to life itself, and by many is placed even higher than life (Latin); from Ames’s De Conscientia.

party from Hull7 should Surprise them, and Sell them for Slaves to a Ship outward bound: they would think themselves unjustly dealt with; both by Sellers and Buyers. And yet ’tis to be feared, we have no other kind of Title to our Nigers. Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the Law and the Prophets. Matt. 7.12.8

Obj. 4. Abraham had Servants bought with his Money, and born in his House.

Answ. Until the Circumstances of Abraham’s purchase be recorded, no Argument can be drawn from it. In the mean time, Charity obliges us to conclude, that He knew it was lawful and good.

It is Observable that the Israelites were strictly forbidden the buying, or selling one another for Slaves. Levit. 25. 39. 46. Jer. 34 8. . . . . . . 22. And GOD gaged His Blessing in lieu of any loss they might conceipt9 they suf- fered thereby. Deut. 15. 18. And since the partition Wall is broken down, inordinate Self love should likewise be demolished.1 GOD expects that Chris- tians should be of a more Ingenuous and benign frame of spirit. Christians should carry it to all the World, as the Israelites were to carry it one towards another. And for men obstinately to persist in holding their Neighbours and Brethren under the Rigor of perpetual Bondage, seems to be no proper way of gaining Assurance that God has given them Spiritual Freedom. Our Blessed Saviour has altered the Mea sures of the ancient Love- Song, and set it to a most Excellent New Tune, which all ought to be ambitious of Learning. Matt. 5.43, 44 John 13.34. These Ethiopians, as black as they are; seeing they are the Sons and Daughters of the First Adam, the Brethren and Sisters of the Last ADAM, and the Offspring of GOD; They ought to be treated with a Res pect agreeable.

Servitus perfecta voluntaria, inter Christianum & Christianum, ex parte servi patientis sæpe est licita, quia est necessaria: sed ex parte domini agentis, & procurando & exercendo, vix potest esse licita: quia non convenit regulæ illi generali: Quæcunque volueritis ut faciant vobis homines, ita & vos facite eis.2 Matt. 7. 12.

Perfecta servitus pœnæ, non potest jure locum habere, nisi ex delicto gravi quod ultimum supplicium aliquo modo meretur: quia Libertas ex naturali æsti- matione proxime accedit ad vitam ipsam, & eidem a multis præferri solet.3

Ames. Cas. Consc. Lib. 5. Cap. 23. Thes. 2, 3.

1700

321

COTTON MATHER 1663–1728

C otton Mather’s writings represent the peak of New Eng land Puritan intellectual life in its baroque phase: ornate, with a hint of de cadence. The sense of a world- view a bit past its prime and straining to recover preeminence emerges from many accounts of his life and writings. Mather was the grand son of Richard Mather and John Cotton, leading "rst- generation ministers in the Mas sa chu setts Bay Colony, and the son of another prominent minister, Increase Mather. These men published fre- quently on theology, church polity, history, and the natu ral sciences. Young Cotton Mather shouldered the burden of this inheritance, viewing it as a precious legacy for the colony and, indeed, all of humanity, but he did so at some personal cost. He stam- mered badly as a youth, and while he was able to overcome that debility well enough to become a minister, throughout his life he continued to suffer from ner vous disor- ders that today we would prob ably call anxiety and depression. He had a reputation for being pushy and dif"cult, and he alienated people with extreme be hav ior, even when he acted with the best intentions.

Tutored by his father, this precocious eldest son of a distinguished family was admitted to Harvard College at the unusually young age of twelve. At Mather’s gradu- ation, in 1678, President Urian Oakes told the commencement audience that his hope was great that “in this youth, Cotton and Mather shall, in fact as well as name, join together and once more appear in life”— a reference to the young man’s illustri- ous grand fathers. Later, the pressures associated with living up to his family heritage mounted. In 1685, his father began a long term as the president of Harvard, and for four years starting in the late 1680s he served as New Eng land’s envoy to Eng land, where he renegotiated favorable terms for the colonial charter. These were remark- able accomplishments for any child to attempt to equal.

Mather remained for much of his adult life in his father’s shadow. He studied medi- cine when it seemed that his stammer would prevent him from taking a pulpit, then began serving as his father’s assistant pastor at Boston’s Second Church after Increase became the president of Harvard. Cotton was later thwarted in his desire to follow his father into the Harvard presidency, a source of lingering bitterness to him. He " nally became pastor at the Second Church after his father’s death, only "ve years before he himself died. Frustrated professionally in certain ways, Mather devoted his consider- able energy to the transatlantic republic of letters, involving himself in the major intel- lectual questions of his day and writing on a wide variety of topics.

Mather experienced further disappointment and tragedy in his personal life. His "rst two wives died, and his third wife became mentally ill. Of his "fteen children, only six survived to adulthood, and just two lived until his death. His extended family put uncomfortable demands on his "nancial resources. Despite these considerable respon- sibilities, he was passionately committed to the common good as he understood it, and he took great satisfaction in organ izing socie ties for building churches, supporting schools for the children of slaves, and working to establish funds for indigent clergy. During Benjamin Franklin’s early years in Boston, he learned a great deal from Mather about public ser vice, and those insights became central to Franklin’s life and writings.

Mather published over four hundred works. Some of his most engaging writings deal with the witchcraft trials at Salem, which exemplify central tensions between the Puritan worldview and an emerging, science- based modern order. Mather was only indirectly involved in the prosecutions. His writings on the subject, in works

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1. In May 1692, Governor William Phips of Mas- sa chu setts appointed a Court of Oyer and Termi- ner (“hear and determine”) in the cases against some nineteen people in Salem accused of witch- craft. Mather had long been interested in the subject of witchcraft, and in this work, written at the request of the judges, he describes the case against the accused. Mather, like many others, saw the evidence of witchcraft as the dev il’s work,

a last- ditch effort to undermine the Puritan ideal. He was skeptical of much of the evidence used against the accused, especially as the trials pro- ceeded in the summer of 1692, but like a number of prominent individuals in the community, he made no public protest. The work was "rst pub- lished in 1693; this text is from the reprint published by John Russell Smith in 1862.

such as The Won ders of the Invisible World (1693), contain both an apocalyptic nar- rative of Satan’s assaults on godly New Eng land and more neutral descriptions of the supposed super natu ral manifestations and the legal proceedings designed to stamp them out. Mather embraced the natu ral sciences warmly enough to earn election in 1713 into London’s prestigious Royal Society, an organ ization founded in 1660 to promote scienti"c investigation of the natu ral world. His later writings included a medical compendium, and he took a public stand in favor of inoculation during Boston’s smallpox epidemic in 1721–22. These facets of Mather’s intellec- tual life are not as contradictory as they may appear. He studied the phenomena associated with witchcraft in much the same manner as he sought to understand other physical, mental, and spiritual phenomena.

While these publications suggest a major aspect of Mather’s thought, his historical writings are what have earned him a signi"cant place in American literary history. The title page of Magnalia Christi Americana (1702) describes this epic work as an “ecclesiastical history of New Eng land.” In its seven volumes, however, Mather’s his- tory focuses not only on the New Eng land churches and Harvard, where its ministers were trained, but also on representative lives of leading "gures, accounts of the colo- ny’s Indian wars, and much else. His biographical sketches, modeled on the "rst- century Greek and Roman historian Plutarch and on Christian hagiographies (i.e., saint’s lives), pres ent some of his most compelling writing. His biographies of William Bradford, the longtime governor of the Plymouth Colony, and John Winthrop, leader of the Mas sa chu setts Bay Colony, are among his "nest literary achievements. The Magnalia also includes Mather’s experiments in popu lar forms such as the captivity tale, a genre that his father had helped usher into being through his involvement with Mary Rowlandson’s narrative. The younger Mather contributed to the form with his account of Hannah Dustan’s experiences as a captive, “A Notable Exploit.”

By the time Mather was writing his history of New Eng land, the issues that seemed most pressing to his parishioners were po liti cal and social rather than theological. Mather defended the old order of church authority against the encroachment of an increasingly secular world, noting in a diary entry for 1700 that “ there was hardly any but my father and myself to appear in defense of our invaded churches.” But he also recast the Puritan perspective in ethical terms, producing what in essence were “con- duct books” (represented here by se lections from Bonifacius [1710], later reprinted as Essays to Do Good). These works show him seeking to replace or augment the ever- fragile po liti cal power of the clergy with moral chastisement and persuasion. Here again, Mather shared an interest with Benjamin Franklin, whose Poor Richard’s Almanack (1732–58) offers similar lessons in a more secular idiom. In a society adjusting to new realities, Mather was a worldly Puritan.

From The Won ders of the Invisible World1

[A People of God in the Devil’s Territories]

The New En glanders are a people of God settled in those, which were once the dev il’s territories; and it may easily be supposed that the devil was exceedingly disturbed, when he perceived such a people here accomplishing

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2. After Jesus was baptized, he fasted in the des- ert for forty days; there, the devil tempted him and offered him the world (Luke 4). 3. Ephesus was an ancient city in Asia Minor, famous for its temples to the goddess Diana. When Saint Paul preached there, he received hos- tile treatment, and riots followed the sermons of  missionaries who attempted to convert the

Ephesians. 4. Stone of help (Hebrew, literal trans.); a com- memorative monument like the one Samuel erected to note victory over the Philistines (1 Samuel 7.12). 5. I.e., after the mischiefs were attempted there, and later partly overcome.

the promise of old made unto our blessed Jesus, that He should have the utmost parts of the earth for His possession.2 There was not a greater uproar among the Ephesians, when the Gospel was "rst brought among them,3 than there was among the powers of the air ( after whom those Ephe- sians walked) when "rst the silver trumpets of the Gospel here made the joyful sound. The devil thus irritated, immediately tried all sorts of methods to overturn this poor plantation: and so much of the church, as was ded into this wilderness, immediately found the serpent cast out of his mouth a dood for the carry ing of it away. I believe that never were more satanical devices used for the unsettling of any people under the sun, than what have been employed for the extirpation of the vine which God has here planted, casting out the heathen, and preparing a room before it, and causing it to take deep root, and "ll the land, so that it sent its boughs unto the Atlantic Sea eastward, and its branches unto the Connecticut River westward, and the hills were covered with a shadow thereof. But all those attempts of hell have hitherto been abortive, many an Ebenezer4 has been erected unto the praise of God, by his poor people here; and having obtained help from God, we continue to this day. Wherefore the devil is now making one attempt more upon us; an attempt more dif"cult, more surprising, more snarled with unintelligible circumstances than any that we have hitherto encountered; an attempt so critical, that if we get well through, we shall soon enjoy hal- cyon days with all the vultures of hell trodden under our feet. He has wanted his incarnate legions to persecute us, as the people of God have in the other hemi sphere been persecuted: he has therefore drawn forth his more spiritual ones to make an attack upon us. We have been advised by some credible Christians yet alive, that a malefactor, accused of witchcraft as well as mur- der, and executed in this place more than forty years ago, did then give notice of an horrible plot against the country by witchcraft, and a founda- tion of witchcraft then laid, which if it were not seasonably discovered, would prob ably blow up, and pull down all the churches in the country. And we have now with horror seen the discovery of such a witchcraft! An army of dev ils is horribly broke in upon the place which is the center, and after a sort, the "rst- born of our En glish settlements: and the houses of the good people there are "lled with the doleful shrieks of their children and servants, tormented by invisible hands, with tortures altogether preternatu- ral. After the mischiefs there endeavored, and since in part conquered,5 the terrible plague of evil angels hath made its pro gress into some other places, where other persons have been in like manner diabolically handled. These our poor afdicted neighbors, quickly after they become infected and infested with these demons, arrive to a capacity of discerning those which they con- ceive the shapes of their troublers; and notwithstanding the great and just suspicion that the demons might impose the shapes of innocent persons in their spectral exhibitions upon the sufferers (which may perhaps prove no

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6. Tricks. 7. I.e., having been requested by the judges to write about the trials.

small part of the witch- plot in the issue), yet many of the persons thus rep- resented, being examined, several of them have been convicted of a very damnable witchcraft: yea, more than one [and] twenty have confessed, that they have signed unto a book, which the devil showed them, and engaged in his hellish design of bewitching and ruining our land. We know not, at least I know not, how far the delusions of Satan may be interwoven into some circumstances of the confessions; but one would think all the rules of under- standing human affairs are at an end, if after so many most voluntary harmo- nious confessions, made by intelligent persons of all ages, in sundry towns, at several times, we must not believe the main strokes wherein those confes- sions all agree: especially when we have a thousand preternatural things every day before our eyes, wherein the confessors do acknowledge their con- cernment, and give demonstration of their being so concerned. If the dev ils now can strike the minds of men with any poisons of so "ne a composition and operation, that scores of innocent people shall unite, in confessions of a crime, which we see actually committed, it is a thing prodigious, beyond the won ders of the former ages, and it threatens no less than a sort of a dissolu- tion upon the world. Now, by these confessions ’tis agreed that the devil has made a dreadful knot of witches in the country, and by the help of witches has dreadfully increased that knot: that these witches have driven a trade of commissioning their confederate spirits to do all sorts of mischiefs to the neighbors, whereupon there have ensued such mischievous consequences upon the bodies and estates of the neighborhood, as could not other wise be accounted for: yea, that at prodigious witch- meetings, the wretches have pro- ceeded so far as to concert and consult the methods of rooting out the Chris- tian religion from this country, and setting up instead of it perhaps a more gross diabolism than ever the world saw before. And yet it will be a thing little short of miracle, if in so spread a business as this, the devil should not get in some of his juggles,6 to confound the discovery of all the rest.

* * * But I shall no longer detain my reader from his expected entertainment,

in a brief account of the trials which have passed upon some of the male- factors lately executed at Salem, for the witchcrafts whereof they stood con- victed. For my own part, I was not pres ent at any of them; nor ever had I any personal prejudice at the persons thus brought upon the stage; much less at the surviving relations of those persons, with and for whom I would be as hearty a mourner as any man living in the world: The Lord comfort them! But having received a command so to do,7 I can do no other than shortly relate the chief matters of fact, which occurred in the trials of some that were executed, in an abridgment collected out of the court papers on this occasion put into my hands. You are to take the truth, just as it was; and the truth will hurt no good man. There might have been more of these, if my book would not thereby have swollen too big; and if some other worthy hands did not perhaps intend something further in these collections; for which cause I have only singled out four or "ve, which may serve to illustrate the

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8. Aware. 9. I.e., the defendant in court. 1. I.e., a year ago last March. 2. I.e., literally, not meta phor ically, press his

face against the revolving sandstone used for grinding, smoothing, etc. 3. Pus; infected matter. “Lanced”: cut open.

way of dealing, wherein witchcrafts use to be concerned; and I report matters not as an advocate, but as an historian.

* * * [The Trial of Martha Carrier]

at the court of oyer and terminer, held by adjournment at salem, august 2, 1692

I. Martha Carrier was indicted for the bewitching certain persons, accord- ing to the form usual in such cases, pleading not guilty to her indictment; there were "rst brought in a considerable number of the bewitched persons who not only made the court sensible8 of an horrid witchcraft committed upon them, but also deposed that it was Martha Carrier, or her shape, that grievously tormented them, by biting, pricking, pinching and choking of them. It was further deposed that while this Carrier was on her examina- tion before the magistrates, the poor people were so tortured that every one expected their death upon the very spot, but that upon the binding of Car- rier they were eased. Moreover the look of Carrier then laid the afdicted people for dead; and her touch, if her eye at the same time were off them, raised them again: which things were also now seen upon her trial. And it was testi"ed that upon the mention of some having their necks twisted almost round, by the shape of this Carrier, she replied, “It’s no matter though their necks had been twisted quite off.”

II. Before the trial of this prisoner, several of her own children had frankly and fully confessed not only that they were witches themselves, but that this their mother had made them so. This confession they made with great shows of repentance, and with much demonstration of truth. They related place, time, occasion; they gave an account of journeys, meetings and mischiefs by them performed, and were very credible in what they said. Nevertheless, this evidence was not produced against the prisoner at the bar,9 inasmuch as there was other evidence enough to proceed upon.

III. Benjamin Abbot gave his testimony that last March was a twelve- month,1 this Carrier was very angry with him, upon laying out some land near her husband’s: her expressions in this anger were that she would stick as close to Abbot as the bark stuck to the tree; and that he should repent of it afore seven years came to an end, so as Doctor Prescot should never cure him. These words were heard by others besides Abbot himself; who also heard her say, she would hold his nose as close to the grindstone2 as ever it was held since his name was Abbot. Presently after this, he was taken with a swelling in his foot, and then with a pain in his side, and exceedingly tor- mented. It bred into a sore, which was lanced by Doctor Prescot, and sev- eral gallons of corruption3 ran out of it. For six weeks it continued very bad, and then another sore bred in the groin, which was also lanced by Doctor Prescot. Another sore then bred in his groin, which was likewise cut, and

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4. Sunday.

put him to very great misery: he was brought unto death’s door, and so remained until Carrier was taken, and carried away by the constable, from which [that] very day he began to mend, and so grew better every day, and is well ever since.

Sarah Abbot also, his wife, testi"ed that her husband was not only all this while afdicted in his body, but also that strange, extraordinary and unac- countable calamities befell his cattle; their death being such as they could guess at no natu ral reason for.

IV. Allin Toothaker testi"ed that Richard, the son of Martha Carrier, hav- ing some difference with him, pulled him down by the hair of the head. When he rose again he was going to strike at Richard Carrier but fell down dat on his back to the ground, and had not power to stir hand or foot, until he told Carrier he yielded; and then he saw the shape of Martha Carrier go off his breast.

This Toothaker had received a wound in the wars; and he now testi"ed that Martha Carrier told him he should never be cured. Just afore the appre- hending of Carrier, he could thrust a knitting needle into his wound four inches deep; but presently after her being seized, he was thoroughly healed.

He further testi"ed that when Carrier and he some times were at vari- ance, she would clap her hands at him, and say he should get nothing by it; whereupon he several times lost his cattle, by strange deaths, whereof no natu ral causes could be given.

V. John Rogger also testi"ed that upon the threatening words of this malicious Carrier, his cattle would be strangely bewitched; as was more particularly then described.

VI. Samuel Preston testi"ed that about two years ago, having some dif- ference with Martha Carrier, he lost a cow in a strange, preternatural, unusual manner; and about a month after this, the said Carrier, having again some difference with him, she told him he had lately lost a cow, and it should not be long before he lost another; which accordingly came to pass; for he had a thriving and well- kept cow, which without any known cause quickly fell down and died.

VII. Phebe Chandler testi"ed that about a fortnight before the apprehen- sion of Martha Carrier, on a Lordsday,4 while the Psalm was singing in the Church, this Carrier then took her by the shoulder and shaking her, asked her, where she lived: she made her no answer, although as Carrier, who lived next door to her father’s house, could not in reason but know who she was. Quickly after this, as she was at several times crossing the "elds, she heard a voice, that she took to be Martha Carrier’s, and it seemed as if it was over her head. The voice told her she should within two or three days be poisoned. Accordingly, within such a little time, one half of her right hand became greatly swollen and very painful; as also part of her face: whereof she can give no account how it came. It continued very bad for some days; and several times since she has had a great pain in her breast; and been so seized on her legs that she has hardly been able to go. She added that lately, going well to the house of God, Richard, the son of Martha Carrier, looked very earnestly upon her, and immediately her hand, which had formerly

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5. A strap that goes around a wheel.

been poisoned, as is abovesaid, began to pain her greatly, and she had a strange burning at her stomach; but was then struck deaf, so that she could not hear any of the prayer, or singing, till the two or three last words of the Psalm.

VIII. One Foster, who confessed her own share in the witchcraft for which the prisoner stood indicted, af"rmed that she had seen the prisoner at some of their witch- meetings, and that it was this Carrier, who persuaded her to be a witch. She confessed that the devil carried them on a pole to a witch- meeting; but the pole broke, and she hanging about Carrier’s neck, they both fell down, and she then received an hurt by the fall, whereof she was not at this very time recovered.

IX. One Lacy, who likewise confessed her share in this witchcraft, now testi"ed, that she and the prisoner were once bodily pres ent at a witch- meeting in Salem Village; and that she knew the prisoner to be a witch, and to have been at a diabolical sacrament, and that the prisoner was the undo- ing of her and her children by enticing them into the snare of the devil.

X. Another Lacy, who also confessed her share in this witchcraft, now tes- ti"ed, that the prisoner was at the witch- meeting, in Salem Village, where they had bread and wine administered unto them.

XI. In the time of this prisoner’s trial, one Susanna Sheldon in open court had her hands unaccountably tied together with a wheel- band5 so fast that without cutting, it could not be loosed: it was done by a specter; and the sufferer af"rmed it was the prisoner’s.

Memorandum. This rampant hag, Martha Carrier, was the person of whom the confessions of the witches, and of her own children among the rest, agreed that the devil had promised her she should be Queen of Hebrews.

1692 1693

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1. A History of the Wonderful Works of Christ in Amer i ca (Latin). Mather’s book is subtitled The ecclesiastical History of New Eng land from its #rst planting, in the year 1620, unto the year of our Lord, 1698. The "rst of the Magnalia’s seven books is concerned with the landing of the "rst Eu ro pe ans in Amer i ca and the founding and his- tory of the New Eng land settlements. The sec- ond pres ents lives of governors of New Eng land, including the lives of Bradford and Winthrop (also see their headnotes, above). The third pre- sents lives of sixty famous “Divines, by whose ministry the churches of New Eng land have been planted and continued.” Other books con- tain a history of Harvard College, a rec ord of church ordinances passed in synods, and a rec ord of “illustrious” and “wonderous” events that have been witnessed by people in New Eng land. The work was "rst published in London in 1702; this text is from that edited by Thomas Robbins (1853–55), with translations from the Hebrew, Greek, and Latin by Lucius F. Robinson. 2. The Second Galeazzo (Latin). Galeazzo Car-

accioli (1517–1586) was a Neapolitan nobleman who converted to Calvinism and moved to Geneva, Switzerland, where John Calvin’s indu- ence was strong. 3. His vigilance defends the sleep of all; his labor, their rest; his industry, their pleasures; and his diligence, their leisure (Latin). 4. During the reign of Mary Tudor (1553–58), an effort was made to restore Roman Catholi- cism to the position of a national Church, and a number of Protestants were executed. 5. Bradford (1510?–1555), burned at the stake with Leaf on July 1, 1555, for their unorthodox religious views. Their story was well known from John Foxe’s Book of Martyrs (1563). 6. Followed Mary Tudor to the throne (1558– 1603) and by virtue of the Act of Uniformity pre- scribed traditional church ritual. 7. A number of En glish Puritans went to Hol- land to form their own churches without being accused of treason. 8. Farming. “Meanly”: in poverty.

From Magnalia Christi Americana1

Galeacius Secundus:2 The Life of William Bradford, Esq., Governor of Plymouth Colony

Omnium Somnos illius vigilantia defendit; omnium otium, illius Labor; omnium Delicias, illius Industria; omnium vacationem, illius occupatio.3

It has been a matter of some observation, that although Yorkshire be one of the largest shires in Eng land; yet for all the "res of martyrdom which were kindled in the days of Queen Mary,4 it afforded no more fuel than one poor leaf; namely, John Leaf, an apprentice, who suffered for the doctrine of the Reformation at the same time and stake with the famous John Bradford.5 But when the reign of Queen Elizabeth6 would not admit the reformation of worship to proceed unto those degrees, which were proposed and pur- sued by no small number of the faithful in those days, Yorkshire was not the least of the shires in Eng land that afforded suffering witnesses thereunto. The churches there gathered were quickly molested with such a raging per- secution, that if the spirit of separation in them did carry them unto a fur- ther extreme than it should have done, one blamable cause thereof will be found in the extremity of that persecution. Their trou bles made that cold country too hot for them, so that they were under a necessity to seek a retreat in the Low Countries;7 and yet the watchful malice and fury of their adver- saries rendered it almost impossible for them to "nd what they sought. For them to leave their native soil, their lands and their friends, and go into a strange place, where they must hear foreign language, and live meanly and hardly, and in other employments than that of husbandry,8 wherein they had been educated, these must needs have been such discouragements as could have been conquered by none, save those who sought "rst the kingdom of God, and the righ teousness thereof. But that which would have made these discouragements the more unconquerable unto an ordinary faith, was the

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9. Ports in northeast Eng land. “Divers”: several. 1. I.e., the Netherlands. 2. King of Judah (c. 638–608 b.c.e.), who was ignorant of the book of the law of the God of

Israel and worshiped false gods (2 Kings 22f.). “Anno”: in the year (Latin). Auster"eld is in York- shire. 3. I.e., made his education dependent on.

terrible zeal of their enemies to guard all ports, and search all ships, that none of them should be carried off. I will not relate the sad things of this kind then seen and felt by this people of God; but only exemplify those trials with one short story. Divers of these people having hired a Dutchman, then lying at Hull, to carry them over to Holland, he promised faithfully to take them in, between Grimsby and Hull;9 but they coming to the place a day or two too soon, the appearance of such a multitude alarmed the of"cers of the town adjoining, who came with a great body of soldiers to seize upon them. Now it happened that one boat full of men had been carried aboard, while the women were yet in a bark that lay aground in a creek at low water. The Dutchman perceiving the storm that was thus beginning ashore, swore by the sacrament that he would stay no longer for any of them; and so taking the advantage of a fair wind then blowing, he put out to sea for Zeeland.1 The women thus left near Grimsby- common, bereaved of their husbands, who had been hurried from them, and forsaken of their neighbors, of whom none durst in this fright stay with them, were a very rueful spectacle; some crying for fear, some shaking for cold, all dragged by troops of armed and angry men from one Justice to another, till not knowing what to do with them, they even dismissed them to shift as well as they could for themselves. But by their singular afdictions, and by their Christian be hav iors, the cause for which they exposed themselves did gain considerably. In the meantime, the men at sea found reason to be glad that their families were not with them, for they were surprised with an horrible tempest, which held them for fourteen days together, in seven whereof they saw not sun, moon or star, but were driven upon the coast of Norway. The mari ners often despaired of life, and once with doleful shrieks gave over all, as thinking the vessel was found ered: but the vessel rose again, and when the mari ners with sunk hearts often cried out, “We sink! we sink!” the passengers, without such distraction of mind, even while the water was running into their mouths and ears, would cheer- fully shout, “Yet, Lord, thou canst save! Yet, Lord, thou canst save!” And the Lord accordingly brought them at last safe unto their desired haven: and not long after helped their distressed relations thither after them, where indeed they found upon almost all accounts a new world, but a world in which they found that they must live like strangers and pilgrims.

Among these devout people was our William Bradford, who was born Anno 1588, in an obscure village called Auster"eld, where the people were as unacquainted with the Bible, as the Jews do seem to have been with part of it in the days of Josiah;2 a most ignorant and licentious people, and like unto their priest. Here, and in some other places, he had a comfortable inheri- tance left him of his honest parents, who died while he was yet a child, and cast him on the education,3 "rst of his grandparents, and then of his uncles, who devoted him, like his ancestors, unto the affairs of husbandry. Soon a long sickness kept him, as he would afterwards thankfully say, from the van- ities of youth, and made him the "tter for what he was afterwards to undergo. When he was about a dozen years old, the reading of the Scriptures began to

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4. A Puritan minister (d. 1616) in the town of Scrooby, who settled in Amsterdam with the Scrooby Separatists. 5. One who denies what he formerly professed. “Professors”: i.e., those who declared their Sepa-

ratist faith. 6. I.e., struck out at him and tried to make him change his beliefs. 7. In Eng land.

cause great impressions upon him; and those impressions were much assisted and improved, when he came to enjoy Mr. Richard Clifton’s4 illuminating ministry, not far from his abode; he was then also further befriended, by being brought into the com pany and fellowship of such as were then called professors, though the young man that brought him into it did after become a profane and wicked apostate.5 Nor could the wrath of his uncles, nor the scoff of his neighbors, now turned upon him, as one of the Puritans, divert him from his pious inclinations.

At last, beholding how fearfully the evangelical and apostolical church- form, whereinto the churches of the primitive times were cast by the good spirit of God, had been deformed by the apostacy of the succeeding times; and what little pro gress the Reformation had yet made in many parts of Christendom towards its recovery, he set himself by reading, by discourse, by prayer, to learn whether it was not his duty to withdraw from the com- munion of the parish- assemblies, and engage with some society of the faith- ful, that should keep close unto the written Word of God, as the rule of their worship. And after many distresses of mind concerning it, he took up a very deliberate and understanding resolution, of doing so; which resolution he cheerfully prosecuted, although the provoked rage of his friends tried all the ways imaginable to reclaim him from it, unto all whom his answer was:

Were I like to endanger my life, or consume my estate by any ungodly courses, your counsels to me were very seasonable; but you know that I have been diligent and provident in my calling, and not only desirous to augment what I have, but also to enjoy it in your com pany; to part from which will be as great a cross as can befall me. Nevertheless, to keep a good conscience, and walk in such a way as God has prescribed in His Word; is a thing which I must prefer before you all, and above life itself. Wherefore, since ’tis for a good cause that I am like to suffer the disasters which you lay before me, you have no cause to be either angry with me, or sorry for me; yea, I am not only willing to part with every thing that is dear to me in this world for this cause, but I am also thankful that God has given me an heart so to do, and will accept me so to suffer for Him.

Some lamented him, some derided him, all dissuaded him: nevertheless, the more they did it, the more "xed he was in his purpose to seek the ordi- nances of the Gospel, where they should be dispensed with most of the com- manded purity; and the sudden deaths of the chief relations which thus lay at him,6 quickly after convinced him what a folly it had been to have quitted his profession, in expectation of any satisfaction from them. So to Holland he attempted a removal.

Having with a great com pany of Christians hired a ship to transport them for Holland, the master per"diously betrayed them into the hands of those persecutors, who rided and ransacked their goods, and clapped their persons into prison at Boston,7 where they lay for a month together. But Mr. Bradford being a young man of about eigh teen, was dismissed sooner than the rest, so

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8. Wife. 9. Puritans did not observe Christmas as a holi-

day. “Abroad”: publicly. 1. Luke 4.4.

that within a while he had opportunity with some others to get over to Zee- land, through perils, both by land and sea not inconsiderable; where he was not long ashore ere a viper seized on his hand— that is, an of"cer— who car- ried him unto the magistrates, unto whom an envious passenger had accused him as having ded out of Eng land. When the magistrates understood the true cause of his coming thither, they were well satis"ed with him; and so he repaired joyfully unto his brethren at Amsterdam, where the dif"culties to which he afterwards stooped in learning and serving of a Frenchman at the working of silks, were abundantly compensated by the delight wherewith he sat under the shadow of our Lord, in His purely dispensed ordinances. At the end of two years, he did, being of age to do it, convert his estate in Eng land into money; but setting up for himself, he found some of his designs by the Providence of God frowned upon, which he judged a correction bestowed by God upon him for certain decays of internal piety, whereinto he had fallen; the consumption of his estate he thought came to prevent a con- sumption in his virtue. But after he had resided in Holland about half a score years, he was one of those who bore a part in that hazardous and generous enterprise of removing into New Eng land, with part of the En glish church at Leyden, where, at their "rst landing, his dearest consort8 accidently falling overboard, was drowned in the harbor; and the rest of his days were spent in the ser vices, and the temptations, of that American wilderness.

Here was Mr. Bradford, in the year 1621, unanimously chosen the governor of the plantation; the dif"culties whereof were such, that if he had not been a person of more than ordinary piety, wisdom and courage, he must have sunk under them. He had, with a laudable industry, been laying up a trea sure of experiences, and he had now occasion to use it; indeed, nothing but an expe- rienced man could have been suitable to the necessities of the people. The potent nations of the Indians, into whose country they were come, would have cut them off, if the blessing of God upon his conduct had not quelled them; and if his prudence, justice and moderation had not overruled them, they had been ruined by their own distempers. One specimen of his demeanor is to this day particularly spoken of. A com pany of young fellows that were newly arrived were very unwilling to comply with the governor’s order for working abroad on the public account; and therefore on Christmas Day, when he had called upon them, they excused themselves, with a pretense that it was against their con- science to work such a day.9 The governor gave them no answer, only that he would spare them till they were better informed; but by and by he found them all at play in the street, sporting themselves with vari ous diversions; where- upon commanding the instruments of their games to be taken from them, he effectually gave them to understand that it was against his conscience that they should play whilst others were at work, and that if they had any devotion to the day, they should show it at home in the exercises of religion, and not in the streets with pastime and frolics; and this gentle reproof put a "nal stop to all such disorders for the future.

For two years together after the beginning of the colony, whereof he was now governor, the poor people had a great experiment of “man’s not living by bread alone”;1 for when they were left all together without one morsel of

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2. Greek phi los o pher (427?–347 b.c.e.). Much of Plato’s Republic concerns his ideals of commu- nity and government. “Propriety”: i.e., property. “Common stock”: property held in common. 3. En glish investors. 4. In Eu rope, states were declared as either Protestant or Catholic. In France, the Edict of

Nantes (1598) provided liberty of conscience for all without denying the authority of the Crown. 5. Robert Browne (c. 1550–1633) was a Separat- ist clergyman and identi"ed with Congregational- ism, a system whereby each church is in de pen dent of any national Church.

bread for many months, one after another, still the good Providence of God relieved them, and supplied them, and this for the most part out of the sea. In this low condition of affairs, there was no little exercise for the prudence and patience of the governor, who cheerfully bore his part in all; and, that industry might not dag, he quickly set himself to settle propriety among the new planters, foreseeing that while the whole country labored upon a com- mon stock, the husbandry and business of the plantation could not dourish, as Plato2 and others long since dreamed that it would if a community were established. Certainly, if the spirit which dwelt in the old Puritans, had not inspired these new planters, they had sunk under the burden of these dif- "culties; but our Bradford had a double portion of that spirit.

The plantation was quickly thrown into a storm that almost overwhelmed it, by the unhappy actions of a minister sent over from Eng land by the adven- turers3 concerned for the plantation; but by the blessing of Heaven on the conduct of the governor, they weathered out that storm. Only the adventurers, hereupon breaking to pieces, threw up all their concernments with the infant colony; whereof they gave this as one reason, that the planters dissembled with his Majesty and their friends in their petition, wherein they declared for a church discipline, agreeing with the French and others of the reforming churches in Eu rope.4 Whereas ’twas now urged, that they had admitted into their communion a person who at his admission utterly renounced the churches of Eng land, (which person, by the way, was that very man who had made the complaints against them) and therefore, though they denied the name of Brownists,5 yet they were the thing. In answer hereunto, the very words written by the governor were these:

Whereas you tax us with dissembling about the French discipline, you do us wrong, for we both hold and practice the discipline of the French and other Reformed Churches (as they have published the same in the Harmony of Confessions) according to our means, in effect and sub- stance. But whereas you would tie us up to the French discipline in every circumstance, you derogate from the liberty we have in Christ Jesus. The Apostle Paul would have none to follow him in any thing, but wherein he follows Christ; much less ought any Christian or church in the world to do it. The French may err, we may err, and other churches may err, and doubtless do in many circumstances. That honor therefore belongs only to the infallible Word of God, and pure Testament of Christ, to be pro- pounded and followed as the only rule and pattern for direction herein to all churches and Christians. And it is too great arrogancy for any man or church to think that he or they have so sounded the Word of God unto the bottom, as precisely to set down the church’s discipline without error in substance or circumstance, that no other without blame may digress or differ in any thing from the same. And it is not dif"cult to show that the reformed churches differ in many circumstances among themselves.

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6. By the time the movement for reform had come to an end, the movement for separating ended in dissension and mutual recrimination, with par tic u lar churches arguing they were more pure than the others. Two En glish Puritans even baptized themselves on the grounds that there were no churches pure enough to baptize them. 7. Thomas Prince (1600–1673). For Edward

Winslow, see the “First Encounters” cluster. 8. The Hebrew lawgiver and prophet who led the Israelites out of Egypt into Canaan. 9.  I.e., those who are not indentured servants and are able to work for themselves. 1. Unlike the Puritans, Anabaptists opposed the baptism of children and advocated separation of Church and state.

By which words it appears how far he was free from that rigid spirit of separation, which broke to pieces the Separatists themselves in the Low Countries, unto the great scandal of the reforming churches.6 He was indeed a person of a well- tempered spirit, or else it had been scarce pos si ble for him to have kept the affairs of Plymouth in so good a temper for thirty- seven years together; in every one of which he was chosen their governor, except the three years wherein Mr. Winslow, and the two years wherein Mr. Prince,7 at the choice of the people, took a turn with him.

The leader of a people in a wilderness had need be a Moses;8 and if a Moses had not led the people of Plymouth Colony, where this worthy person was the governor, the people had never with so much una nim i ty and importunity still called him to lead them. Among many instances thereof, let this one piece of self- denial be told for a memorial of him, wheresoever this history shall be considered: the patent of the colony was taken in his name, running in these terms: “To William Bradford, his heirs, associates, and assigns,” but when the number of the freemen9 was much increased, and many new town- ships erected, the General Court there desired of Mr. Bradford that he would make a surrender of the same into their hands, which he willingly and pres- ently assented unto, and con"rmed it according to their desire by his hand and seal, reserving no more for himself than was his proportion, with others, by agreement. But as he found the Providence of Heaven many ways recompensing his many acts of self- denial, so he gave this testimony to the faithfulness of the Divine Promises: that he had forsaken friends, houses and lands for the sake of the Gospel, and the Lord gave them him again. Here he prospered in his estate; and besides a worthy son which he had by a former wife, he had also two sons and a daughter by another, whom he married in this land.

He was a person for study as well as action; and hence, notwithstanding the dif"culties through which he passed in his youth, he attained unto a notable skill in languages: the Dutch tongue was become almost as vernacular to him as the En glish; the French tongue he could also manage; the Latin and the Greek he had mastered; but the Hebrew he most of all studied, because he said he would see with his own eyes the ancient oracles of God in their native beauty. He was also well skilled in history, in antiquity, and in philosophy; and for theology he became so versed in it, that he was an irrefragable disputant against the errors, especially those of Anabaptism,1 which with trou ble he saw rising in his colony; wherefore he wrote some signi"cant things for the confu- tation of those errors. But the crown of all was his holy, prayerful, watchful, and fruitful walk with God, wherein he was very exemplary.

At length he fell into an indispositon of body, which rendered him unhealthy for a whole winter; and as the spring advanced, his health yet more declined; yet he felt himself not what he counted sick, till one day, in the night after which, the God of Heaven so "lled his mind with ineffable

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2. In 2 Corinthians 12.2–4, the Apostle Paul describes a man (himself) who experienced a moment in which he “was caught up into para- dise, and heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter.” 3. Oh, that such an end of life might come to me (Latin). 4. Shepherd and provider of the human dock (Greek). 1. The American Nehemiah (Latin). As gover- nor of Judea, the biblical Nehemiah rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem (Nehemiah 1.3).

2. Epistulae ad Familiares 12.25.5, by the Roman orator Cicero (106–43 b.c.e.): what ever winds may blow, this art of ours can never be lost (Latin). 3. Spartan reformer (ninth century b.c.e.), who reshaped the constitution of Greece and made the nation an ef"cient military state. 4. Numa Pompilius (715–673 b.c.e.), second legendary king of Rome. 5. Greek biographer (c. 46–120 c.e.), best known for his lives of notable Greeks and Romans.

consolations, that he seemed little short of Paul, rapt up unto the unutter- able entertainments of Paradise.2 The next morning he told his friends that the good spirit of God had given him a pledge of his happiness in another world, and the "rst fruits of his eternal glory; and on the day following he died, May 9, 1657, in the 69th year of his age— lamented by all the colonies of New Eng land as a common blessing and father to them all.

O mihi si Similis Contingat Clausula Vitae!3 Plato’s brief description of a governor, is all that I will now leave as his

character, in an

epitaph. NομεBς Tροψbς dγAλης dνθρωπAνης4

Men are but docks: Bradford beheld their need, And long did them at once both rule and feed.

1702

Nehemias Americanus:1 The Life of John Winthrop, Esq., Governor of the Mas sa chu setts Colony

Quicunque Venti erunt, Ars nostra certe non aberit. — Cicero2

Let Greece boast of her patient Lycurgus,3 the lawgiver, by whom diligence, temperance, fortitude, and wit were made the fashions of a therefore long- lasting and renowned commonwealth: let Rome tell of her devout Numa,4 the lawgiver, by whom the most famous commonwealth saw peace triumph- ing over extinguished war and cruel plunders; and murders giving place to the more mollifying exercises of his religion. Our New Eng land shall tell and boast of her Winthrop, a lawgiver as patient as Lycurgus, but not admit- ting any of his criminal disorders; as devout as Numa, but not liable to any of his heathenish madnesses; a governor in whom the excellencies of Chris- tian ity made a most improving addition unto the virtues, wherein even with- out those he would have made a parallel for the great men of Greece, or of Rome, which the pen of a Plutarch5 has eternized.

A stock of heroes by right should afford nothing but what is heroical; and nothing but an extreme degeneracy would make anything less to be expected from a stock of Winthrops. Mr. Adam Winthrop, the son of a worthy

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6. I.e., notable for. Mather refers here to Win- throp’s grand father (1498–1562), father (1548– 1623), and uncle William (1529–1582). 7. John Philpot (1516–1555), a Puritan martyr burned at the stake, is included in John Foxe’s Book of Martyrs (1563). Henry VIII (1491–1547) founded the Church of Eng land and was despised by Puritans. Mary Tudor (1516–1558), who rees- tablished Roman Catholicism in Eng land in 1555, was also hated by Puritans. 8. Should read January 12, 1588. 9. I.e., he would have preferred to study for the ministry and read John Calvin’s Institutes (1536) rather than prepare for the law by reading Lord Chief Justice Edward Coke’s Institutes of En glish Law (1628–44).

1. Worship of false gods (Latin). “Prosopolatria”: face worship (Latin, literal trans.); i.e., hero wor- ship. 2. I.e., in the parlance of En glish law, hearing (“oyer”) all the evidence came before judging (“terminer”). “Seven arts”: a classical education consisted of the trivium (grammar, rhe toric, and logic) and the quadrivium (arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy). 3. Daniel was saved from the Babylonian lions by his faith (Daniel 6.23). King Solomon’s throne had carved lions on both sides (1 Kings 10.19– 20). 4. Moses was the Hebrew lawgiver and prophet who led the Israelities out of Egypt into Canaan.

gentleman wearing the same name, was himself a worthy, a discreet, and a learned gentleman, particularly eminent for skill in the law, nor without remark for6 love to the gospel, under the reign of King Henry VIII, and brother to a memorable favorer of the Reformed religion in the days of Queen Mary, into whose hands the famous martyr Philpot committed his papers, which afterwards made no inconsiderable part of our martyr- books.7 This Mr. Adam Winthrop had a son of the same name also, and of the same endowments and employments with his father; and this third Adam Winthrop was the father of that renowned John Winthrop, who was the father of New Eng land, and the founder of a colony, which, upon many accounts, like him that founded it, may challenge the "rst place among the En glish glories of Amer i ca. Our John Winthrop, thus born at the mansion- house of his ancestors, at Groton in Suf- folk, on June  12, 1587,8 enjoyed afterwards an agreeable education. But though he would rather have devoted himself unto the study of Mr.  John Calvin, than of Sir Edward Cook;9 nevertheless, the accomplishments of a lawyer were those wherewith heaven made his chief opportunities to be ser viceable.

Being made, at the unusually early age of eigh teen, a justice of peace, his virtues began to fall under a more general observation; and he not only so bound himself to the be hav ior of a Christian, as to become exemplary for a conformity to the laws of Chris tian ity in his own conversation, but also dis- covered a more than ordinary mea sure of those qualities which adorn an of"cer of humane society. His justice was impartial, and used the balance to weigh not the cash, but the case of those who were before him: prosopo- latria he reckoned as bad as idolatria.1 His wisdom did exquisitely temper things according to the art of governing, which is a business of more con- trivance than the seven arts of the schools; oyer still went before terminer in all his administrations.2 His courage made him dare to do right, and "tted him to stand among the lions that have sometimes been the supporters of the throne.3 All which virtues he rendered the more illustrious, by embla- zoning them with the constant liberality and hospitality of a gentleman. This made him the terror of the wicked, and the delight of the sober, the envy of the many, but the hope of those who had any hopeful design in hand for the common good of the nation and the interests of religion.

Accordingly, when the noble design of carry ing a colony of chosen people into an American wilderness was by some eminent persons undertaken, this eminent person was, by the consent of all, chosen for the Moses,4 who must

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5. I.e., En glish pounds. 6. Approximately the same number of years that Winthrop lived in Mas sa chu setts: 18.6. In astronomy, a “node” is either of two diametrically opposite points at which the orbit (or revolution) of a planet intersects the ecliptic. 7. “For if a man know not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the church of God?” (1 Timothy 3.5). 8.  I.e., although he did not take the sermon

down in shorthand. “Lectures”: days on which less formal sermons were delivered. 9. Concern, care. 1. In chapter  23 of the fourth book of New En glish Canaan (1637), by Thomas Morton (see his headnote, above). 2. George Cleaves settled in Maine in 1630 and returned to Eng land in 1636. Archbishop Wil- liam Laud (1573–1645) was an enemy of the Puritans.

be the leader of so great an undertaking: and indeed nothing but a Mosaic spirit could have carried him through the temptations, to which either his farewell to his own land, or his travel in a strange land, must needs expose a gentleman of his education. Wherefore, having sold a fair estate of six or seven hundred5 a year, he transported himself with the effects of it into New Eng land in the year 1630, where he spent it upon the ser vice of a famous plantation, founded and formed for the seat of the most reformed Chris tian- ity: and continued there, condicting with temptations of all sorts, as many years as the nodes of the moon take to dispatch a revolution.6 Those per- sons were never concerned in a new plantation, who know not that the unavoidable dif"culties of such a thing will call for all the prudence and patience of a mortal man to encounter therewithal; and they must be very insensible of the induence, which the just wrath of heaven has permitted the dev ils to have upon this world, if they do not think that the dif"culties of a new plantation, devoted unto the evangelical worship of our Lord Jesus Christ, must be yet more than ordinary. How prudently, how patiently, and with how much resignation to our Lord Jesus Christ, our brave Winthrop waded through these dif"culties, let posterity consider with admiration. And know, that as the picture of this their governor was, after his death, hung up with honor in the State House of his country, so the wisdom, courage, and holy zeal of his life, were an example well worthy to be copied by all that shall succeed him in government.

Were he now to be considered only as a Christian, we might therein pro- pose him as greatly imitable. He was a very religious man; and as he strictly kept his heart, so he kept his house, under the laws of piety;7 there he was every day constant in holy duties, both morning and eve ning, and on the Lord’s days, and lectures, though he wrote not after the preacher,8 yet such was his attention, and such his retention in hearing, that he repeated unto his family the sermons which he had heard in the congregation. But it is chiedy as a governor that he is now to be considered. Being the governor over the considerablest part of New Eng land, he maintained the "gure and honor of his place with the spirit of a true gentleman; but yet with such oblig- ing condescension9 to the circumstances of the colony, that when a certain troublesome and malicious calumniator, well known in those times, printed his libelous nicknames upon the chief persons here, the worst nickname he could "nd for the governor was John Temperwell;1 and when the calumnies of that ill man caused the Archbishop to summon one Mr. Cleaves before the King, in hopes to get some accusation from him against the country,2 Mr. Cleaves gave such an account of the governor’s laudable carriage in all re spects, and the serious devotion wherewith prayers were both publicly and privately made for his Majesty, that the King expressed himself most highly

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3. By slow degrees (Latin). 4. I.e., without imputing any ill will on the part of another. 5. Both the governor of Samaria, Sanballat, and a Persian of"cer, Tobijah, opposed the rebuild- ing of the walls of Jerusalem (Nehemiah 2.10, 4.7).

6. From the Loci Communes, by the Protestant reformer Martin Luther (1483–1546): a man in authority is a target at which Satan and the world launch all their darts (Latin). 7. “But what went ye out for to see? A man clothed in soft raiment? behold, they that wear soft cloth- ing are in kings’ houses” (Matthew 11.8).

pleased therewithal, only sorry that so worthy a person should be no better accommodated than with the hardships of Amer i ca. He was, indeed, a gov- ernor, who had most exactly studied that book which, pretending to teach politics, did only contain three leaves, and but one word in each of those leaves, which word was, Moderation. Hence, though he were a zealous enemy to all vice, yet his practice was according to his judgment thus expressed: “In the infancy of plantations, justice should be administered with more lenity than in a settled state; because people are more apt then to trans- gress; partly out of ignorance of new laws and orders, partly out of oppres- sion of business, and other straits. [Lento Gradu]3 was the old rule; and if the strings of a new instrument be wound up unto their height, they will quickly crack.” But when some leading and learned men took offense at his conduct in this matter, and upon a conference gave it in as their opinion, “That a stricter discipline was to be used in the beginning of a plantation, than after its being with more age established and con"rmed,” the governor being readier to see his own errors than other men’s, professed his purpose to endeavor their satisfaction with less of lenity in his administrations. At that conference there were drawn up several other articles to be observed between the governor and the rest of the magistrates, which were of this import: That the magistrates, as far as might be, should aforehand ripen their consultations, to produce that una nim i ty in their public votes, which might make them liker to the voice of God; that if differences fell out among them in their public meetings, they should speak only to the case, without any redection,4 with all due modesty, and but by way of question; or desire the deferring of the cause to further time; and after sentence to imitate privately no dislike; that they should be more familiar, friendly and open unto each other, and more frequent in their visitations, and not any way expose each other’s in"rmities, but seek the honor of each other, and all the court; that one magistrate shall not cross the proceedings of another, without "rst advis- ing with him; and that they should in all their appearances abroad, be so circumstanced as to prevent all contempt of authority; and that they should support and strengthen all under- of"cers. All of which articles were observed by no man more than by the governor himself.

But whilst he thus did, as our New En glish Nehemiah, the part of a ruler in managing the public affairs of our American Jerusalem, when there were Tobijahs and Sanballats enough to vex him,5 and give him the experiment of Luther’s observation, Omnis qui regit est tanquam signum, in quod omnia jacula, Satan et Mundus dirigunt;6 he made himself still an exacter parallel unto that governor of Israel, by doing the part of a neighbor among the dis- tressed people of the new plantation. To teach them the frugality necessary for those times, he abridged himself of a thousand comfortable things, which he had allowed himself elsewhere: his habit was not that soft raiment, which would have been disagreeable to a wilderness;7 his table was not covered with

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8. Job 29.13. 9. Francis Higginson (1587–1630) died after only a year’s residence in Salem. His “aged son” John (1616–1708) wrote an “Attestation” pre"xed to the Magnalia. 1. “Yea, they spake against God; they said, Can God furnish a table in the wilderness?” (Psalm 78.19). 2. “And the famine was over all the face of the earth: And Joseph opened all the store houses, and sold unto the Egyptians; and the famine waxed sore in the land of Egypt” (Genesis 41.56). 3. “Cast thy bread upon the waters: for thou shalt "nd it after many days” (Ecclesiastes 11.1).

4. Old Style. The pres ent (Gregorian), calendar, designating January 1 as the "rst day of the year, was adopted in Eng land in 1752. Earlier, March 25 had served as the "rst day of the cal- endar year. 5. Then the governing body of Mas sa chu setts. “I have shewed you all things, how that so labour- ing ye ought to support the weak, and to remem- ber the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said, It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20.35). 6. Several. 7. I.e., were needy.

the superduities that would have invited unto sensualities: water was com- monly his own drink, though he gave wine to others. But at the same time his liberality unto the needy was even beyond mea sure generous; and therein he was continually causing “the blessing of him that was ready to perish to come upon him, and the heart of the widow and the orphan to sing for joy,”8 but none more than those of deceased ministers, whom he always treated with a very singular compassion; among the instances whereof we still enjoy with us the worthy and now aged son of that Reverend Higginson, whose death left his family in a wide world soon after his arrival here, publicly acknowledging the charitable Winthrop for his foster- father.9 It was often- times no small trial unto his faith, to think how a table for the people should be furnished when they "rst came into the wilderness!1 and for very many of the people his own good works were needful, and accordingly employed for the answering of his faith. Indeed, for a while the governor was the Joseph, unto whom the whole body of the people repaired when their corn failed them,2 and he continued relieving of them with his open- handed boun- ties, as long as he had any stock to do it with; and a lively faith to see the return of the “bread after many days,”3 and not starve in the days that were to pass till that return should be seen, carried him cheerfully through those expenses.

Once it was observable that, on February 5, 1630,4 when he was distrib- uting the last handful of the meal in the barrel unto a poor man distressed by the “wolf at the door,” at that instant they spied a ship arrived at the har- bor’s mouth, laden with provisions for them all. Yea, the governor some- times made his own private purse to be the public: not by sucking into it, but by squeezing out of it; for when the public trea sure had nothing in it, he did himself defray the charges of the public. And having learned that lesson of our Lord, “that it is better to give than to receive,” he did, at the General Court,5 when he was a third time chosen governor, make a speech unto this purpose: That he had received gratuities from divers6 towns, which he accepted with much comfort and content; and he had likewise received civil- ities from par tic u lar persons, which he could not refuse without incivility in himself: nevertheless, he took them with a trembling heart, in regard of God’s word, and the conscience of his own in"rmities; and therefore he desired them that they would not hereafter take it ill if he refused such pres- ents for the time to come. ’Twas his custom also to send some of his family upon errands unto the houses of the poor, about their mealtime, on purpose to spy whether they wanted;7 and if it were found that they wanted, he would make that the opportunity of sending supplies unto them. And there was

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8.  I.e., I’ll hassle, persecute or trou ble, or even thrash him. 9. Meagerly. 1. From The Republic, by the Greek phi los o pher Plato (427?–347 b.c.e.). 2. “Woe unto you, when all men shall speak well of you! for so did their fathers to the false prophets”

(Luke 6.26). 3. “Again, I consider all travail, and every right work, that for this a man is envied of his neigh- bour. This is also vanity and vexation of spirit” (Ecclesiastes 4.4). 4. “Wrath is cruel, and anger is outrageous; but who is able to stand before envy?” (Proverbs 27.4).

one passage of his charity that was perhaps a little unusual: in an hard and long winter, when wood was very scarce at Boston, a man gave him a pri- vate information that a needy person in the neighborhood stole wood some- times from his pile; whereupon the governor in a seeming anger did reply, “Does he so? I’ll take a course with him;8 go, call that man to me; I’ll war- rant you I’ll cure him of stealing.” When the man came, the governor con- sidering that if he had stolen, it was more out of necessity than disposition, said unto him, “Friend, it is a severe winter, and I doubt you are but meanly9 provided for wood; wherefore I would have you supply yourself at my wood- pile till this cold season be over.” And he then merrily asked his friends whether he had not effectually cured this man of stealing his wood.

One would have imagined that so good a man could have had no enemies, if we had not had a daily and woeful experience to convince us that good- ness itself will make enemies. It is a wonderful speech of Plato (in one of his books, De Republica), “For the trial of true virtue, ’tis necessary that a good man μηδAν αδικp, δοξαν εχει την μεγιστην dδικιας: Though he do no unjust thing, should suffer the infamy of the greatest injustice.”1 The gover- nor had by his unspotted integrity procured himself a great reputation among the people; and then the crime of popularity was laid unto his charge by such, who were willing to deliver him from the danger of having all men speak well of him.2 Yea, there were persons eminent both for "gure and for number, unto whom it was almost essential to dislike every thing that came from him; and yet he always maintained an amicable correspondence with them; as believing that they acted according to their judgment and con- science, or that their eyes were held by some temptation in the worst of all their oppositions. Indeed, his right works were so many, that they exposed him unto the envy of his neighbors,3 and of such power was that envy, that sometimes he could not stand before it; but it was by not standing that he most effectually withstood it all.4 Great attempts were sometimes made among the freemen to get him left out from his place in the government upon little pretenses, lest by the too frequent choice of one man, the gov- ernment should cease to be by choice; and with a par tic u lar aim at him, sermons were preached at the anniversary Court of Election, to dissuade the freemen from choosing one man twice together. This was the reward of his extraordinary ser viceableness! But when these attempts did succeed, as they sometimes did, his profound humility appeared in that equality of mind, wherewith he applied himself cheerfully to serve the country in what- ever station their votes had allotted for him. And one year when the votes came to be numbered, there were found six less for Mr. Winthrop than for another gentleman who then stood in competition: but several other persons regularly tendering their votes before the election was published, were, upon a very frivolous objection, refused by some of the magistrates that were afraid lest the election should at last fall upon Mr. Winthrop: which,

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5. In 1478, an impor tant member of the Medici family was assassinated by one of the Piazzis, and all Italy became involved in the war that fol- lowed. “Forwardness”: brashness. “Paroxisms”: paroxysms; "ts of rage. 6. He is prudent who is patient (Latin), a maxim attributed to Sir Edward Coke. 7. “A sound heart is the life of the desh: but envy the rottenness of the bones” (Proverbs 14.30). 8. William of Saint Amour (d. 1272), bishop of Paris and a satirist.

9. Patience. 1. Despised. Theodosius Flavius I (346–395 c.e.) was a Christian Roman emperor. 2. Thomas Dudley (1576–1653), who several times served as governor of the Mas sa chu setts Bay Colony. 3. Humility. 4. Sir Henry Vane returned to Eng land in 1637; he was sympathetic toward the views expressed by the followers of Anne Hutchinson.

though it was well perceived, yet such was the self- denial of this patriot, that he would not permit any notice to be taken of the injury. But these trials were nothing in comparison of those harsher and harder treats which he some- times had from the forwardness of not a few in the days of their paroxisms; and from the faction of some against him, not much unlike that of the Piazzi in Florence against the family of the Medicis:5 all of which he at last con- quered by conforming to the famous Judge’s motto, Prudens qui Patiens.6 The oracles of God have said, “Envy is rottenness to the bones;”7 and Gulielmus Parisiensis8 applies it unto rulers, who are as it were the bones of the socie ties which they belong unto: “Envy,” says he, “is often found among them, and it is rottenness unto them.” Our Winthrop encountered this envy from others, but conquered it, by being free from it himself.

Were it not for the sake of introducing the exemplary skill of this wise man, at giving soft answers, one would not choose to relate those instances of wrath which he had sometimes to encounter with; but he was for his gen- tleness, his forbearance, and longanimity,9 a pattern so worthy to be writ- ten after, that something must here be written of it. He seemed indeed never to speak any other language than that of Theodosius: “If any man speak evil of the governor, if it be through lightness, ’tis to be contemned;1 if it be through madness, ’tis to be pitied; if it be through injury, ’tis to be remit- ted.” Behold, reader, the “meekness of wisdom” notably exempli"ed! There was a time when he received a very sharp letter from a gentleman who was a member of the Court,2 but he delivered back the letter unto the messen- gers that brought it, with such a Christian speech as this: “I am not willing to keep such a matter of provocation by me!” Afterwards the same gentle- man was compelled by scarcity of provisions to send unto him that he would sell him some of his cattle; whereupon the governor prayed him to accept what he had sent for as a token of his good will; but the gentleman returned him this answer: “Sir, your overcoming of yourself hath overcome me:” and afterwards gave demonstration of it.

The French have a saying that “Un honesté homme, est un homme mesle!”— a good man is a mixed man; and there hardly ever was a more sen- sible mixture of those two things, resolution and condescension,3 than in this good man. There was a time when the Court of Election being, for fear of tumult, held at Cambridge, May 17, 1637, the sectarian part of the country, who had the year before gotten a governor more unto their mind,4 had a proj- ect now to have confounded the election, by demanding that the court would consider a petition then tendered before their proceeding thereunto. Mr. Win- throp saw that this was only a trick to throw all into confusion, by putting off the choice of the governor and assistants until the day should be over; and therefore he did, with a strenuous resolution, procure a disappointment unto

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5. Weapons that are a combination spear and battle-ax. 6. Both Antinomianism and Familism (a word derived from an En glish religious sect called the Family of Love) hold the regenerate (i.e., “born- again”) self above ecclesiastical and civil law. 7. Indict. 8. Aeneid 1.59–60, by the Roman poet Virgil (70–19 b.c.e.): “Rack sea and land and sky with

mingled wrath. / In the wild tumult of their stormy path.” 9. Consulted. 1. “But Jesus called them unto him, and said, Ye know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them, and they that are great exer- cise authority upon them. But it shall not be so among you: but whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister.”

that mischievous and ruinous contrivance. Nevertheless, Mr.  Winthrop himself being by the voice of the freemen in this exigency chosen the gov- ernor, and all of the other party left out, that ill- affected party discovered the dirt and mire, which remained with them, after the storm was over; particularly the sergeants, whose of"ce ’twas to attend the governor, laid down their halberds;5 but such was the condescension of this governor, as to take no pres ent notice of this anger and contempt, but only order some of his own servants to take the halberds; and when the country manifested their deep resentments of the affront thus offered him, he prayed them to overlook it. But it was not long before a compensation was made for these things by the doubled re spects which were from all parts paid unto him. Again, there was a time when the suppression of an Antinomian and Familis- tical faction,6 which extremely threatened the ruin of the country, was gen- erally thought much owing unto this renowned man; and therefore when the friends of that faction could not wreak7 their dis plea sure on him with any politic vexations, they set themselves to do it by ecclesiastical ones. Accordingly, when a sentence of banishment was passed on the ringleaders of those disturbances, who

— — Maria et Terras, Cœlumque profundum, Quippe ferant Rapidi, secum vertantque per Auras;8

many at the church of Boston, who were then that way too much inclined, most earnestly solicited the elders of that church, whereof the governor was a member, to call him forth as an offender, for passing of that sentence. The elders were unwilling to do any such thing; but the governor understanding the ferment among the people took that occasion to make a speech in the congregation to this effect:

Brethren: Understanding that some of you have desired that I should answer for an offense lately taken among you; had I been called upon so to do, I would, "rst, have advised9 with the ministers of the country, whether the church had power to call in question the civil court; and I would, secondly, have advised with the rest of the court, whether I might discover their counsels unto the church. But though I know that the reverend Elders of this church, and some others, do very well appre- hend that the church cannot inquire into the proceedings of the court; yet, for the satisfaction of the weaker, who do not apprehend it, I will declare my mind concerning it. If the church have any such power, they have it from the Lord Jesus Christ; but the Lord Jesus Christ hath dis- claimed it, not only by practice, but also by precept, which we have in his gospel, Matt. xx. 25, 26.1 It is true, indeed, that magistrates, as they are church- members, are accountable unto the church for their failings; but that is when they are out of their calling. When Uzziah would go

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2. Asa, the third king of Judea, put the prophet Hanani in prison when he accused Asa of not relying on the Lord (2 Chronicles 16.7–10). Uzziah, king of Judea, was afdicted with leprosy when he tried to burn incense on the altar despite the protests of the priests (2 Chronicles 26.18). 3. Ishmael was the son of Abraham and Hagar,

who was a servant of Abraham’s wife. Abraham sent Hagar and Ishmael into the wilderness at his wife’s insistence (Genesis 16.1–16, 21.9–14). 4. “To silence sunk the thunder of the wave” (Aeneid 1.154). 5. Pushing too hard. 6. Overturned. “Coneys”: rabbits.

offer incense in the temple, the of"cers of the church called him to an account, and withstood him; but when Asa put the prophet in prison,2 the of"cers of the church did not call him to an account for that. If the magistrate shall in a private way wrong any man, the church may call him to an account for it; but if he be in pursuance of a course of justice, though the thing that he does be unjust, yet he is not account- able for it before the church. As for myself, I did nothing in the causes of any of the brethren but by the advice of the Elders of the church. Moreover, in the oath which I have taken there is this clause: “In all cases wherein you are to give your vote, you shall do as in your judgment and conscience you shall see to be just, and for the public good.” And I am satis"ed, it is most for the glory of God, and the public good, that there has been such a sentence passed; yea, those brethren are so divided from the rest of the country in their opinions and practices, that it cannot stand with the public peace for them to continue with us; Abraham saw that Hagar and Ishmael must be sent away.3

By such a speech he marvelously convinced, satis"ed and molli"ed the uneasy brethren of the church; Sic cunctus Pelagi cecidit Fragor4— —. And after a little patient waiting, the differences all so wore away, that the church, merely as a token of re spect unto the governor when he had newly met with some losses in his estate, sent him a pres ent of several hundreds of pounds.

Once more there was a time when some active spirits among the deputies of the colony, by their endeavors not only to make themselves a Court of Judicature, but also to take away the negative by which the magistrates might check their votes, had like by over- driving5 to have run the whole govern- ment into something too demo cratical. And if there was a town in Spain undermined by coneys, another town in Thrace destroyed by moles, a third in Greece ranversed6 by frogs, a fourth in Germany subverted by rats; I must on this occasion add, that there was a country in Amer i ca like to be con- founded by a swine. A certain stray sow being found, was claimed by two several persons with a claim so equally maintained on both sides, that after six or seven years’ hunting the business from one court unto another, it was brought at last into the General Court, where the "nal determination was “that it was impossible to proceed unto any judgment in the case.” However, in the debate of this matter, the negative of the upper- house upon the lower in that court was brought upon the stage; and agitated with so hot a zeal, that a little more, and all had been in the "re. In these agitations, the governor was informed that an offense had been taken by some eminent persons at certain passages in a discourse by him written thereabout; whereupon, with his usual condescendency, when he next came into the General Court, he made a speech of this import:

I understand that some have taken offense at something that I have lately written; which offense I desire to remove now, and begin this year

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7. “He speaks— but ere the word is said, / Each mounting billow droops its head, / And brighten- ing clouds one moment stay / To pioneer return- ing day” (Aeneid 1.142–43). 8. “He that hath knowledge spareth his words: and a man of understanding is of an excellent spirit” (Proverbs 17.27). 9. Julius Caesar (100–44 b.c.e.), Roman general and statesman. “In "ne”: in conclusion. Alexander

the Great (356–323 b.c.e.), king of Macedonia. Hannibal (247–183 b.c.e.), Cartha ginian general. 1. “And if” is an archaic form of if. Cato (234– 149 b.c.e.) was a Roman orator. 2. About twenty- "ve miles south of Boston; these challenges to authority were made against the captain of the town militia, who was appointed by the state authorities. 3. I.e., a delusion in judgment.

in a reconciled state with you all. As for the matter of my writing, I had the concurrence of my brethren; it is a point of judgment which is not at my own disposing. I have examined it over and over again by such light as God has given me, from the rules of religion, reason and cus- tom; and I see no cause to retract anything of it: wherefore I must enjoy my liberty in that, as you do yourselves. But for the manner, this, and all that was blameworthy in it, was wholly my own; and whatsoever I might allege for my own justi"cation therein before men, I wave it, as now setting myself before another Judgment seat. However, what I wrote was upon great provocation, and to vindicate myself and others from great aspersion; yet that was no suf"cient warrant for me to allow any distemper of spirit in myself; and I doubt I have been too prodigal of my brethren’s reputation; I might have maintained my cause without cast- ing any blemish upon others, when I made that my conclusion, “And now let religion and sound reason give judgment in the case;” it looked as if I arrogated too much unto myself, and too little to others. And when I made that profession, “That I would maintain what I wrote before all the world,” though such words might modestly be spoken, yet I perceive an unbeseeming pride of my own heart breathing in them. For these failings, I ask pardon of God and man.

Sic ait, et dicto citius Tumida Æquora placat, Collectasque fugat Nubes, Solemque reducit.7

This acknowledging disposition in the governor made them all acknowl- edge that he was truly “a man of an excellent spirit.”8 In "ne, the victories of an Alexander, an Hannibal, or a Cæsar9 over other men were not so glori- ous as the victories of this great man over himself, which also at last proved victories over other men.

But the stormiest of all the trials that ever befell this gentleman was in the year 1645, when he was, in title, no more than deputy governor of the colony. If the famous Cato were forty- four times called into judgment but as often acquitted; let it not be wondered, and if1 our famous Winthrop were one time so. There happening certain seditious and mutinous practices in the town of Hingham,2 the deputy governor, as legally as prudently, interposed his authority for the checking of them: whereupon there followed such an enchantment3 upon the minds of the deputies in the General Court, that upon a scandalous petition of the delinquents unto them, wherein a pretended invasion made upon the liberties of the people was complained of, the deputy governor was most irregularly called forth unto an ignominious hearing before them in a vast assembly; whereto with a sagacious humilitude he consented, although he showed them how he might have refused it. The result of that hearing was, that notwithstanding the touchy jealousy of the people about

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4. “But ye should say, Why persecute we him, seeing the root of the matter is found in me?” (Job 19.28). 5. End, outcome. 6. Miriam, Moses’ sister, was punished for chal- lenging his choice in a wife: “And the Lord said unto Moses, If her father had but spit in her face, should she not be ashamed seven days? let her be

shut out from the camp seven days, and after that let her be received in again” (Numbers 12.14). 7. Contract, formal agreement. 8. Want, like. 9. From Heauton Timorumenos 3.1.74, by the Roman dramatist Terence (c. 190–159 b.c.e.): “We are all the worse for it” (Latin).

their liberties lay at the bottom of all this prosecution, yet Mr. Winthrop was publicly acquitted, and the offenders were severally "ned and censured. But Mr. Winthrop then resuming the place of deputy governor on the bench, saw cause to speak unto the root of the matter after this manner:4

I shall not now speak anything about the past proceedings of this Court, or the persons therein concerned. Only I bless God that I see an issue5 of this troublesome affair. I am well satis"ed that I was publicly accused, and that I am now publicly acquitted. But though I am justi- "ed before men, yet it may be the Lord hath seen so much amiss in my administrations, as calls me to be humbled; and indeed for me to have been thus charged by men, is itself a matter of humiliation, whereof I desire to make a right use before the Lord. If Miriam’s father spit in her face, she is to be ashamed.6 But give me leave, before you go, to say something that may rectify the opinions of many people, from whence the distempers have risen that have lately prevailed upon the body of this people. The questions that have troubled the country have been about the authority of the magistracy, and the liberty of the people. It is you who have called us unto this of"ce; but being thus called, we have our authority from God; it is the ordinance of God, and it hath the image of God stamped upon it; and the contempt of it has been vindicated by God with terrible examples of his vengeance. I entreat you to consider, that when you choose magistrates, you take them from among your- selves, “men subject unto like passions with yourselves.” If you see our in"rmities, redect on your own, and you will not be so severe censurers of ours. We count him a good servant who breaks not his covenant:7 the covenant between us and you is the oath you have taken of us, which is to this purpose, “that we shall govern you, and judge your causes, according to God’s laws, and our own, according to our best skill.” As for our skill, you must run the hazard of it; and if there be an error, not in the will, but only in skill, it becomes you to bear it. Nor would I have you to mistake in the point of your own liberty. There is a liberty of cor- rupt nature, which is affected both by men and beasts, to do what they list;8 and this liberty is inconsistent with authority, impatient of all restraint; by this liberty, Sumus Omnes Deteriores,9 ’tis the grand enemy of truth and peace, and all the ordinances of God are bent against it. But there is a civil, a moral, a federal liberty, which is the proper end and object of authority; it is a liberty for that only which is just and good; for this liberty you are to stand with the hazard of your very lives; and whatsoever crosses it is not authority, but a distemper thereof. This lib- erty is maintained in a way of subjection to authority; and the authority set over you will in all administrations for your good be quietly submit- ted unto, by all but such as have a disposition to shake off the yoke, and

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1. Ship. 2. By yielding the point (Latin). 3. John Wilson (c. 1591–1667). 4. Better on foot go, than a wicked horse to ride (adage). “Servants on horse back”: a reference to Ecclesiastes 10.7 (“I have seen servants upon horses, and princes walking as servants upon the earth”). The Book of Ecclesiastes was mistakenly attributed to Solomon.

5. If we come into collision, we break (Latin). 6. Ralph Smith (1590–1661), Plymouth’s "rst minister (1629–36), and Roger Williams, who briedy assisted him (see Williams’s headnote, above), were both Separatists. 7. I.e., they reserved the title “Goodman” for those who were regenerate “saints” in full good stand- ing with the church.

lose their true liberty, by their murmuring at the honor and power of authority.

The spell that was upon the eyes of the people being thus dissolved, their distorted and enraged notions of things all vanished; and the people would not afterwards entrust the helm of the weather- beaten bark1 in any other hands but Mr. Winthrop’s until he died.

Indeed, such was the mixture of distant qualities in him, as to make a most admirable temper; and his having a certain greatness of soul, which rendered him grave, generous, courageous, resolved, well- applied, and every way a gentleman in his demeanor, did not hinder him from taking sometimes the old Roman’s way to avoid confusions, namely, Cedendo;2 or from discouraging some things which are agreeable enough to most that wear the name of gen- tlemen. Hereof I will give no instances, but only oppose two passages of his life.

In the year 1632, the governor, with his pastor, Mr. Wilson,3 and some other gentlemen, to settle a good understanding between the two colonies, traveled as far as Plymouth, more than forty miles, through an howling wil- derness, no better accommodated in those early days than the princes that in Solomon’s time saw “servants on horse back,” or than genus and species in the old epigram, “ going on foot.”4 The dif"culty of the walk was abundantly com- pensated by the honorable, "rst reception, and then dismission, which they found from the rulers of Plymouth, and by the good correspondence thus established between the new colonies, who were like the doating bottles wearing this motto: Si Collidimur Frangimur.5 But there were at this time in Plymouth two ministers,6 leavened so far with the humors of the rigid Sepa- ration, that they insisted vehemently upon the unlawfulness of calling any unregenerate man by the name of “Goodman Such- an- One,”7 until by their indiscreet urging of this whimsy, the place began to be disquieted. The wiser people being troubled at these trides, they took the opportunity of Governor Winthrop’s being there, to have the thing publicly propounded in the congre- gation; who in answer thereunto, distinguished between a theological and a moral goodness; adding, that when juries were "rst used in Eng land, it was usual for the crier, after the names of persons "t for that ser vice were called over, to bid them all, “Attend, good men and true;” whence it grew to be a civil custom in the En glish nation, for neighbors living by one another, to call one another “Goodman Such- an- One;” and it was [a] pity now to make a stir about a civil custom, so innocently introduced. And that speech of Mr. Win- throp’s put a lasting stop to the little, idle, whimsical conceits, then begin- ning to grow obstreperous.

Nevertheless, there was one civil custom used in (and in few but) the En glish nation, which this gentleman did endeavor to abolish in this coun- try; and that was, the usage of drinking to one another. For although by

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8. Never urge the reluctant to drink (Greek, Latin). Plutarch (c. 46–120 c.e.) writes about the Spartan king Cleomenes III (r. 235–222 b.c.e.) in his Parallel Lives. 9. I.e., Church fathers. 1. It is a deadly sin to challenge another to a drinking match, and it is impious to accept such challenges (Latin). “Casuists”: sophists; theologi- cal quibblers. 2. From Amores 3.4.17, by the Roman poet Ovid (43 b.c.e.– c. 17 c.e.): “A bias toward the forbidden usage” (Latin). 3. “Many are the afdictions of the righ teous: but

the Lord delivereth him of them all” (Psalm 34.19). 4. He no longer belonged to himself, after the Republic had once made him her chief magis- trate (Latin). 5. Injudicious. 6. Winthrop married Mary Forth (1583–1615) in 1606. They had six children but only one, John (b. 1606), survived his father. “Much Stambridge”: now known as Great Stambridge. 7. Winthrop married Thomasine Clopton (1583–1616) in 1615 and Margaret Tyndal in 1618.

drinking to one another, no more is meant than an act of courtesy, when one going to drink, does invite another to do so too, for the same ends with himself, nevertheless the governor (not altogether unlike to Cleomenes, of whom ’tis reported by Plutarch, dκοντι οDδεις ποτηριον προσϕερε, Nolenti poculum nunquam prœbuit,)8 considered the impertinency and insigni"- cancy of this usage, as to any of those ends that are usually pretended for it; and that indeed it ordinarily served for no ends at all, but only to provoke persons unto unseasonable and perhaps unreasonable drinking, and at last produce that abominable health- drinking, which the Fathers of old9 so severely rebuked in the pagans, and which the Papists themselves do con- demn, when their casuists pronounce it, Peccatum mortale, provocare ad Æquales Calices, et Nefas Respondere.1 Wherefore in his own most hospi- table house he left it off; not out of any silly or stingy fancy, but merely that by his example a greater temperance, with liberty of drinking, might be rec- ommended, and sundry incon ve niences in drinking avoided; and his example accordingly began to be much followed by the sober people in this country, as it now also begins among persons of the highest rank in the En glish nation itself; until an order of court came to be made against that ceremony in drinking, and then, the old wont violently returned, with a Nitimur in Vetitum.2

Many were the afdictions of this righ teous man!3 He lost much of his estate in a ship, and in an house, quickly after his coming to New Eng land, besides the prodigious expense of it in the dif"culties of his "rst coming hither. Afterwards his assiduous application unto the public affairs, (wherein Ipse se non habuit, postquam Republica eum Gubernatorem habere cœpit)4 made him so much to neglect his own private interests, that an unjust5 stew- ard ran him £2,500 in debt before he was aware; for the payment whereof he was forced, many years before his decease, to sell the most of what he had left unto him in the country. Albeit, by the observable blessings of God upon the posterity of this liberal man, his children all of them came to fair estates, and lived in good fashion and credit. Moreover, he successively buried three wives; the "rst of which was the daughter and heiress of Mr. Forth, of Much Stambridge in Essex, by whom he had “wisdom with an inheritance;” and an excellent son.6 The second was the daughter of Mr. William Clopton, of Lon- don, who died with her child, within a very little while. The third was the daughter of the truly worshipful Sir John Tyndal,7 who made it her whole care to please, "rst God, and then her husband; and by whom he had four sons, which survived and honored their father. And unto all these, the addi- tion of the distempers, ever now and then raised in the country, procured

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8. A fourth- century Egyptian believed to have accomplished much while still young. 9. I.e., when he was "fty- six. “ Grand climacteri- cal”; age sixty- three. 1. From Elegies 1.210–11, by the sixth- century Roman poet Maximianus: “I am not what I was in form or face, / In healthful color or in vigorous pace” (Latin). 2. “For I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand” (2 Timothy 4.6).

3. In his anger after the Fall, God tells the devil (in the form of a serpent): “And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel” (Genesis 3.15). 4. “I once judged others, but now trembling stand / Before a dread tribunal, to be judged” (Latin). 5. John Cotton (1584–1652), Mather’s grand- father and namesake.

unto him a very singular share of trou ble; yea, so hard was the mea sure which he found even among pious men, in the temptations of a wilder- ness, that when the thunder and lightning had smitten a windmill whereof he was owner, some had such things in their heads as publicly to reproach this charitablest of men as if the voice of the Almighty had rebuked, I know not what oppression, which they judged him guilty of; which things I would not have mentioned, but that the instances may fortify the expectations of my best readers for such afdictions.

He that had been for his attainments, as they said of the blessed Macarius,8 a παιδαριογερων, (an old man, while a young one,) and that had in his young days met with many of those ill days, whereof he could say, he had “ little plea sure in them;” now found old age in its in"rmities advancing ear- lier upon him, than it came upon his much longer- lived progenitors. While he was yet seven years off of that which we call “the grand climacterical,”9 he felt the approaches of his dissolution; and "nding he could say,

Non Habitus, non ipse Color, non Gressus Euntis, Non Species Eadem, quæ fuit ante, manet.1

He then wrote this account of himself: “Age now comes upon me, and in"r- mities therewithal, which makes me apprehend, that the time of my depar- ture out of this world is not far off.2 However, our times are all in the Lord’s hand, so as we need not trou ble our thoughts how long or short they may be, but how we may be found faithful when we are called for.” But at last when that year came, he took a cold which turned into a fever, whereof he lay sick about a month, and in that sickness, as it hath been observed, that there was allowed unto the serpent the “bruising of the heel;”3 and accordingly at the heel or the close of our lives the old serpent will be nibbling more than ever in our lives before; and when the devil sees that we shall shortly be, “where the wicked cease from troubling,” that wicked one will trou ble us more than ever; so this eminent saint now underwent sharp condicts with the tempter, whose wrath grew great, as the time to exert it grew short; and he was buf- feted with the disconsolate thoughts of black and sore desertions, wherein he could use that sad repre sen ta tion of his own condition:

Nuper eram Judex; Jam Judicor; Ante Tribunal Subsistens paveo; Judicor ipse modo.4

But it was not long before those clouds were dispelled, and he enjoyed in his holy soul the great consolations of God! While he thus lay ripening for heaven, he did out of obedience unto the ordinance of our Lord send for the Elders of the church to pray with him; yea, they and the whole church fasted as well as prayed for him; and in that fast the venerable Cotton5 preached on Psalm 35.13–14: “When they were sick, I humbled myself with fasting; I

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6. King David’s friends and counselors joined Absalom in his revolt against his father (2 Sam- uel). “Physic”: medicine. 7. Separate. 8. The aged patriarch Jacob was the second son of Isaac and Rebekah. He called his sons about him and told them what would befall them “in the last days” of the world (Genesis 49). 9. “For David, after he had served his own gen- eration by the will of God, fell on sleep, and was laid unto his fathers” (Acts 13.36).

1. Christian emperor of Rome (d. 375 c.e.). 2. Jewish historian (37–100? c.e.) and author of Antiquities of the Jews, where the following quo- tation appears (book II, ch. 5). 3. He was by nature a man at once benevolent and just: most zealous for the honor of his coun- trymen and to them he left an imperishable monument— the walls of New Eng land (Latin). This Latin paraphrase of the Greek that pre- cedes it substitutes New Eng land for Jerusalem.

behaved myself as though he had been my friend or brother; I bowed down heavi ly, as one that mourned for his mother.” From whence I "nd him rais- ing that observation, “The sickness of one that is to us as a friend, a brother, a mother, is a just occasion of deep humbling our souls with fasting and prayer;” and making this application:

Upon this occasion we are now to attend this duty for a governor, who has been to us as a friend in his counsel for all things, and help for our bodies by physic, for our estates by law, and of whom there was no fear of his becoming an enemy, like the friends of David:6 a governor who has been unto us as a brother; not usurping authority over the church; often speaking his advice, and often contradicted, even by young men, and some of low degree; yet not replying, but offering satisfaction also when any supposed offenses have arisen; a governor who had been unto us as a mother, parent- like distributing his goods to brethren and neigh- bors at his "rst coming; and gently bearing our in"rmities without tak- ing notice of them.

Such a governor, after he had been more than ten several7 times by the people chosen their governor, was New Eng land now to lose; who having, like Jacob, "rst left his counsel and blessing with his children gathered about his bedside;8 and, like David, “served his generation by the will of God,”9 he “gave up the ghost,” and fell asleep on March 26, 1649. Having like the dying Emperor Valentinian,1 this above all his other victories for his triumphs, his overcoming of himself.

The words of Josephus2 about Nehemiah, the governor of Israel, we will now use upon this governor of New Eng land, as his

epitaph

’Aνηρ ’εγενετο χρηστος την ϕυσιν, και δικαιος. Kαι περι τους ομοεθνεις ϕιλοτιμοτατος MνημεPον αιωνιον αυτω καταλιπων, τα τpν ’Iεροσολυμων τειχη.

vir fuit indole bonus, ac justus: et popularium gloriae amantissimus: quibus eternum reliquit monumentum,

Novanglorum Moenia.3

1702

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1. The leader was a woman (Latin). 2. I.e., having been con"ned to bed after the birth of a child. 3. I.e., one of his children. 4. About seven hundred feet. 5. I.e., to heaven. From Ecclesiastes 12.5:

“ Because man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go about the streets.” 6. Proverbs 12.10: “A righ teous man regardeth the life of his beast: but the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel.”

A Notable Exploit: Dux Fœmina Facti1

On March 15, 1697, the savages made a descent upon the skirts of Haver- hill, murdering and captivating about thirty- nine persons, and burning about half a dozen houses. In this broil, one Hannah Dustan, having lain in2 about a week, attended with her nurse, Mary Neff, a body of terrible Indians drew near unto the house where she lay, with designs to carry on their bloody dev- astations. Her husband hastened from his employments abroad unto the relief of his distressed family; and "rst bidding seven of his eight children (which were from two to seventeen years of age) to get away as fast as they could unto some garrison in the town, he went in to inform his wife of the horrible distress come upon them. Ere she could get up, the "erce Indians were got so near, that, utterly despairing to do her any ser vice, he ran out after his children; resolving that on the horse which he had with him, he would ride away with that3 which he should in this extremity "nd his affections to pitch most upon, and leave the rest unto the care of the Divine Providence. He overtook his children, about forty rod4 from his door; but then such was the agony of his parental affections, that he found it impossible for him to distin- guish any one of them from the rest; wherefore he took up a courageous reso- lution to live and die with them all. A party of Indians came up with him; and now, though they "red at him, and he "red at them, yet he manfully kept at the rear of his little army of unarmed children, while they marched off with the pace of a child of "ve years old; until, by the singular providence of God, he arrived safe with them all unto a place of safety about a mile or two from his house. But his house must in the mean time have more dismal tragedies acted at it. The nurse, trying to escape with the newborn infant, fell into the hands of the formidable savages; and those furious tawnies coming into the house, bid poor Dustan to rise immediately. Full of astonishment, she did so; and sitting down in the chimney with an heart full of most fearful expecta- tion, she saw the raging dragons ride all that they could carry away, and set the house on "re. About nineteen or twenty Indians now led these away, with about half a score other En glish captives; but ere they had gone many steps, they dashed out the brains of the infant against a tree; and several of the other captives, as they began to tire in the sad journey, were soon sent unto their long home;5 the savages would presently bury their hatchets in their brains, and leave their carcasses on the ground for birds and beasts to feed upon. However, Dustan (with her nurse) notwithstanding her pres ent condition, traveled that night about a dozen miles, and then kept up with their new mas- ters in a long travel of an hundred and "fty miles, more or less, within a few days ensuing, without any sensible damage in their health, from the hardships of their travel, their lodging, their diet, and their many other dif"culties.

These two poor women were now in the hands of those whose “tender mer- cies are cruelties;”6 but the good God, who hath all “hearts in his own

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7. Proverbs 21.1: “The king’s heart is in the hand of the Lord.” 8. Hannah, sorrowful because she could not have children, “pour[ed] out [her] soul before the Lord,” who thereafter allowed her to give birth to Samuel (1 Samuel 1.15). 9. A site on the Merrimack River in central New

Hampshire, north of Concord. 1. Jael’s brutal murder of the warrior Sisera is recounted in Judges 4–5. 2. Based on Judges 5.27, which describes Sisera’s death after Jael drives a tent stake through his head while he sleeps.

hands,”7 heard the sighs of these prisoners, and gave them to "nd unexpected favor from the master who hath laid claim unto them. That Indian family consisted of twelve persons; two stout men, three women, and seven children; and for the shame of many an En glish family, that has the character of prayerless upon it, I must now publish what these poor women assure me. ’Tis this: in obedience to the instructions which the French have given them, they would have prayers in their family no less than thrice every day; in the morning, at noon, and in the eve ning; nor would they ordinarily let their children eat or sleep, without "rst saying their prayers. Indeed, these idola- ters were, like the rest of their whiter brethren, persecutors, and would not endure that these poor women should retire to their En glish prayers, if they could hinder them. Nevertheless, the poor women had nothing but fervent prayers to make their lives comfortable or tolerable; and by being daily sent out upon business, they had opportunities, together and asunder to do like another Hannah, in “pouring out their souls before the Lord.”8 Nor did their praying friends among ourselves forbear to “pour out” supplications for them. Now, they could not observe it without some won der, that their Indian mas- ter sometimes when he saw them dejected, would say unto them, “What need you trou ble yourself? If your God will have you delivered, you shall be so!” And it seems our God would have it so to be. This Indian family was now traveling with these two captive women (and an En glish youth taken from Worcester, a year and a half before), unto a rendezvous of savages, which they call a town, some where beyond Penacook,9 and they still told these poor women that when they came to this town, they must be stripped, and scourged, and run the gauntlet through the whole army of Indians. They said this was the fashion when the captives "rst came to a town; and they derided some of the faint- hearted En glish, which, they said, fainted and swooned away under the torments of this discipline. But on April 30, while they were yet, it may be, about an hundred and "fty miles from the Indian town, a little before break of day, when the whole crew was in a dead sleep, (reader, see if it prove not so!) one of these women took up a resolution to imitate the action of Jael upon Sisera,1 and being where she had not her own life secured by any law unto her, she thought she was not forbidden by any law to take away the life of the murderers by whom her child had been butchered. She heartened the nurse and the youth to assist her in this enterprise; and all furnishing themselves with hatchets for the purpose, they struck such home blows upon the heads of their sleeping oppressors, that ere they could any of them strug gle into any effectual re sis tance, “at the feet of these poor prisoners, they bowed, they fell, they lay down; at their feet they bowed, they fell; where they bowed, there they fell down dead.”2 Only one squaw escaped, sorely wounded, from them in the dark; and one boy, whom they reserved asleep, intending to bring him away with them, suddenly waked, and scuttled away from this desolation. But cutting off the

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3. Francis Nicholson (1655–1728), at the time governor of Mary land, had served as lieutenant governor of the Dominion of New Eng land in the previous de cade. A scalp bounty in effect in Mas- sa chu setts had been rescinded before Dustan’s capture, but a petition to the government signed

by her husband, Thomas, secured twenty- "ve pounds for Hannah and the same amount to be split by Neff and the “En glish youth,” Samuel Len- nardson. 1. The text is derived from Bonifacius : An Essay upon the Good (1710).

scalps of the ten wretches, they came off, and received #fty pounds from the General Assembly of the province, as a recompense of their action; besides which, they received many “pres ents of congratulation” from their more pri- vate friends: but none gave them a greater taste of bounty than Col o nel Nicholson the Governor of Mary land, who, hearing of their action, sent them a very generous token of his favor.3

1702

Bonifacius1

From Essays to Do Good

§ 1. Such Glorious Things are Spoken in the Oracles of our Good God, concerning them who Devise Good, that, A Book of Good Devices, may very reasonably demand Attention and Ac cep tance from them that have any Impressions of the most Reasonable Religion upon them. I am Devising Such a Book; but at the same time Offering a Sorrowful Demonstration, That if men would Set themselves to Devise Good, a world of Good might be done, more than there is, in this Pres ent Evil World. It is very sure, The World has Need Enough. There Needs abundance to be done, That the Great GOD and His CHRIST may be more Known and Serv’d in the World; and that the Errors which are Impediments to the Ac know ledg ments wherewith men ought to Glorify their Creator and Redeemer, may be Recti"ed. There needs abun- dance to be done, That the Evil Manners of the World, by which men are drowned in Perdition, may be Reformed; and mankind rescued from the Epi- demical Corruption and Slavery which has overwhelmed it. There needs abundance to be done, That the Miseries of the World may have Remedies and Abatements provided for them; and that miserable people may be Relieved and Comforted. The world has according to the Computation of Some, above Seven hundred millions of people now Living in it. What an ample Field among all these, to Do Good upon! In a word, The Kingdom of God in the World, Calls for Innumerable Ser vices from us. To Do SUCH THINGS is to Do Good. Those men Devise Good, who Shape any Devices to do Things of Such a Tendency; whether the Things be of a Spiritual Importance, or of a Temporal. You see, Sirs, the General matter, appearing as Yet, but as a Chaos, which is to be wrought upon. Oh! that the Good Spirit of God may now fall upon us, and carry on the Glorious work which lies before us!

§ 2. Tis to be Supposed, my Readers will readily grant, That it is an Excel- lent, a Virtuous, a Laudable Thing to be full of Devices, to bring about Such Noble Purposes. For any man to Deride, or to Despise my Proposal, That we Resolve and Study to Do as much Good in the World as we can, would be so black a Character, that I am not willing to make a Supposal of it in any of

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2. By a common mistake in the early days, what the followers of Christ were called. 3. Origen Adamantius (185–254 c.e.), early Christian theologian and scholar, wrote of this “spiritual taste” in De Principiis, prob ably com- posed in the years 212–15.

4. From “A Letter Concerning Enthusiasm,” part of Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times (1711), a famous work by the worldly En glish phi los o pher Anthony Ashley Cooper, third earl of Shaftesbury (1671–1713).

those with [whom] I am Concerned. Let no man pretend unto the Name of, A Christian, who does not Approve the proposal of, A Perpetual Endeavor to Do Good in the World. What pretension can Such a man have to be, A Fol- lower of the Good One? The Primitive Christians gladly accepted and improved the Name, when the Pagans by a mistake Styled them, Chrestians;2 Because it Signi"ed, Useful Ones. The Christians who have no Ambition to be So, Shall be condemned by the Pagans; among whom it was a Term of the Highest Honor, to be termed, A Benefactor; to have Done Good, was accounted Honorable. The Phi los o pher being asked why Every one desired so much to look upon a Fair Object! he answered, That it was a Question of a Blind man. If any man ask, as wanting the Sense of it, What is it worth the while to Do Good in the world! I must Say, It Sounds not like the Ques- tion of a Good man. The Aιθησιs πνευματικη, as Origen3 calls it, the Spiri- tual Taste of every Good Man will make him have an unspeakable Relish for it. Yea, Unworthy to be discoursed as a Man, is he, who is not for, Doing of Good among Men. An Enemy to the Proposal, That mankind, may be the bet- ter for us, deserves to be Reckoned, little better than, A Common Enemy of Mankind. How Cogently do I bespeak, a Good Reception of what is now designed! I produce not only Religion, but even Humanity itself, as full of a Fiery Indignation against the Adversaries of the Design. Excuse me, Sirs; I declare, that if I could have my choice, I would never Eat or Drink, or Walk, with such an one, as long as I Live; or, Look on him as any other than one by whom Humanity itself is Debased and Blemished. A very Wicked Writer, has yet found himself compell’d by the Force of Reason, to publish this Confes- sion. To Love the Public, to Study an Universal Good, and to Promote the Interest of the whole World, as far as is in our Power, is surely the Highest of Goodness, and makes that Temper, which we call Divine. And, he goes on. Is the Doing of Good for Glories Sake so Divine a thing? (Alas, Too much Humane, Sir!) Or, Is it not a Diviner to Do Good, even where it may be thought Inglorious? Even unto the Ingrateful, and unto those who are wholly Insensible of the Good they receive!4 A man must be far gone in Wickedness, who will open his Mouth, against such Maxims and Actions! A better Pen has Remark’d it; yea, the man must be much a Stranger in History, who has not made the Remark. To Speak Truth, and to Do Good, were in the Esteem even of the Hea- then World, most God- like Qualities. God forbid, That in the Esteem of the Christian World, for those Qualities, there should be any Abatement!

§ 3. I Won’t yet propose the Reward of Well- doing, and the glorious Things which the Mercy and Truth of God will do, for them who Devise Good; Because I would have to do with such, as will esteem it, a Suf"cient Reward unto itself. I will imagine that Generous Ingenuity, in my Readers, which will dispose them to count themselves well- Rewarded in the Thing itself, if God will Accept them to Do Good in the World. It is an Invaluable Honor, To Do Good; It is an Incomparable Plea sure. A Man must Look upon himself as Digni#ed and Grati#ed by GOD, when an Opportunity to Do Good is put

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5. Psalm 122.1. 6.  I.e., those who receive kindly advice about opportunities for doing good reciprocate with similar advice of their own. 7. Nabal, a man who was “churlish and evil in his doings,” was of the other wise honorable “house of Caleb” (1 Samuel 25.3). 8. John Stoughton (d. 1639), En glish Puritan preacher, made this point on the opening page of “The Happiness of Peace,” one of his Choice Ser-

mons (1640). However, as David Levin points out in his edition of Bonifacius, Mather edited Stoughton’s prose so as to remove his original references to King James I and his courtiers, before whom the sermon was delivered. 9. Two cannon balls joined by chain, an espe- cially destructive shot. 1. A place where the Israelites, pausing on their dight from Egypt, wept when an angel reproved them for their backsliding (Judges 2).

into his Hands. He must Embrace it with Rapture, as enabling him directly to answer the Great END of his Being. He must manage it with Rapturous Delight, as a most Suitable Business, as a most Precious Privilege. He must Sing in those Ways of the Lord, wherein he cannot but "nd himself, while he is Doing of Good. As the Saint of Old Sweetly Sang, I was glad, when they said unto me, Let us go into the House of the Lord.5 Thus ought we to be Glad, when any Opportunity to Do Good, is offered unto us. We should need no Arguments, to make us Entertain the Offer; but we should Naturally dy into the Matter, as most agreeable to the Divine Nature whereof we are made Partakers. It should Oblige us wonderfully! An Ingot of Gold presented unto us, not more Obliging! Think, Sirs, Now I Enjoy what I Am for! Now I Attain what I Wish for! Some Servants of God have been so Strongly Disposed this way, that they have cheerfully made a Tender of any Recompense that could be desired, (yea, rather than fail, a Pecuniary one,) unto any Friend that would Think for them, and Supply the Barrenness of their Thoughts, and Suggest unto them any Special and proper Methods, wherein they may be Ser viceable. Certainly, To Do Good is a thing that brings its own Recom- pense, in the Opinion of those, who reckon a kind Information of a Point wherein they may Do Good, worthy to be by them requited with a Recom- pense to the Informer.6 I will only Say; If any of you are Strangers unto such a Disposition as this, to Look upon an Opportunity to Do Good, as a thing that Enriches you, and to Look upon yourselves as Enriched, and Favored of God, when He does Employ you to Do Good: I have done with you. I would pray them, to lay the Book aside; It will disdain to carry on any further Conversa- tion with ’em! It handles a Subject on which the Wretches of the House of Caleb,7 will not be conversed withal. It is content with one of Dr. Stoughton’s Introductions: It is Enough to me, that I Speak to wise men, whose Reason shall be my Rhe toric, to Christians, whose Conscience shall be my Eloquence.8

§ 4. Tho’ the Assertion dy never so much like a Chain- Shot,9 among us and Rake down all before it, I will again, and again Assert it; That we might every One of us do more Good than we do. And therefore, This is the FIRST, PROPOSAL, to be made unto us; To be Exceedingly Humbled, that we have done so Little Good in the World. I am not Uncharitable, in saying; I know not that Assembly of Christians upon Earth, which ought not to be a Bochim,1 in this consideration. Oh! Tell me, what Utopia, I shall "nd it in! Sirs, Let us begin to bring forth some Good Fruit, by Lamenting our own Great Unfruit- fulness. Verily, Sins of Omission must be Confessed and Bewailed; else we add unto the Number of them. The most Useful Men in the World, have gone out of it, crying to God, Lord, Let my Sins of Omission be Forgiven to me! Men that have made more than ordinary Conscience about well- Spending of their Time, have had their Death- bed made uneasy by this Redection; The Loss of Time now Sits heavy upon me. Be sure, All Unregenerate Persons, are, as our

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2. See Philemon 1.11. 3. Brass cauldrons were a "xture of Solomon’s temple; in them, animals were cleansed for sac- ri"ce. Mather condates this fact with the lan-

guage of Psalm 6.6: “I am weary with my groaning; all the night make I my bed to swim; I water my couch with my tears.” 4. Matthew 21.19.

Bible has told us, Unpro#table Persons.2 ’Tis not for nothing that the Com- parison of Thorns, and Briars, has been used, to Teach us, what they are. An Unrenewed Sinner, alas, he never did One Good Work in all his Life! In all his Life, did I Say? You must give me that word again! He is Dead while he Lives; he is Dead in Sins; he has never yet begun to Live unto God: and, as is he, so are all the Works of his Hands; They are Dead Works. Ah! Wretched Good- for- nothing. Won der, Won der at the Patience of Heaven, which yet forbears Cut- ting down, such a Cumberer of the Ground. The best, and the "rst Advice, to be given unto such Persons, is, Immediately to do their best, that they may get out of their woeful Unregeneracy. Let them Immediately Acknowledge the Necessity of their Turning to God, but how Unable they are to do it, and how Unworthy that God should make them Able. Immediately let them lift up their Cry unto Sovereign Grace, to Quicken them; and let them then Try, whether they cannot with Quickened Souls, Plead the Sacri#ce and Righ- teousness of a Glorious CHRIST for their Happy Reconciliation to God; Seri- ously Resolve upon a Life of Obedience to God, and Serious Religion; and Resign themselves up unto the Holy Spirit, that he may possess them, Instruct them, Strengthen them, and for His Name Sake lead them in the paths of Holi- ness. There will no Good be done, till this be done. The very First- born of all Devices to Do Good, is in being Born again, and in Devising Means, that a Banished Soul may no longer be Expelled from the presence of God. But you that have been brought home to God, have Sad cause, not only to deplore the Dark Days of your Unregeneracy, wherein you did none but the Unfruitful Works of Darkness; but also, that you have done so Little, since God has Quick- ened you and Enabled you, to Do, the Things that should be done. How Little, How Little have you Lived up, to the Strains of Gratitude, which might have been justly Expected, since God has brought you into His Marvellous Light! The best of us may mourn in our Complaint; Lord, How Little Good have I done, to what I might have done! Let the Sense of this cause us to Loathe and Judge ourselves before the Lord: Let it "ll us with Shame, and Abase us won- derfully! How can we do any other, than with David, even make a Cauldron of our couch, and a Bath of our Tears, when we consider how little Good we have done!3 Oh! That our Heads were Waters, because they have been so Dry of all Thoughts to Do Good! Oh! That our Eyes were a Fountain of Tears, because they have been so little upon the Look out for Objects and Methods to Do Good upon! For the Pardon of this Evil- doing, Let us Fly to the Great Sacri#ce; which is our only Expiation. Plead the Blood of that Lamb of God, whose Uni- versal Usefulness is One of those admirable Properties, for which He has been called, A Lamb. The Pardon of our Barrenness at Good Works being thus obtained, by Faith in that Blood which cleanses from all Sin, that is the way for us to be rescued from a Condemnation to Perpetual Barrenness. The dreadful Sentence of, Let no Fruit grow on thee forever! will be reversed and prevented, by such a Pardon.4 Sirs, A True, Right, Evangelical Procedure to Do Good, must have this Repentance laid in the Foundation of it! We do not Handle the Matter Wisely, if a Foundation be not laid thus Low, and in the deepest Self- Abasement.

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5. Come to be. 6. See Acts 12.6–7, where the prisoner is the apostle Peter. 7. Lesser. 8. Pope Gregory the First (c. 540–604) con-

fessed to being “sunk into the world” in the auto- biographical epistle that opens his famous commentary on the Book of Job, known as Magna Moralia (written 578–95). 9. Origin.

§ 5. How full, how full of Devices are we, for our own Secular Advantage! And how Expert in Devising many Little Things, to be done for ourselves! We apply our Thoughts, with a mighty Assiduity, unto the Old Question, What shall I Eat and Drink, and wherewithal shall I be clothed? It is with a very strong Application of our Thoughts, that we Study, what we shall do for ourselves, in our Marriages, in our Voyages, in our Bargains, and in many, many other concerns, wherein we are Solicitous to have our condition easy. We Solicitously Contrive, that we may accomplish Good Bargains, and that we may Steer clear of ten thousand Inconveniencies, to which, without some Contrivance, we may lie obnoxious. The Business of our Personal Callings we carry on with Numberless Thoughts, how we may Do Well, in what is to be done. To accomplish our Temporal Business, in affairs that cannot be Numbered, we #nd out Witty Inventions. But, O Rational, Immortal Heaven- born SOUL; Are thy wondrous Faculties capable of no Greater Improve- ments, no better Employments? Why should a Soul of such High Capacities, a Soul that may arrive to be5 clothed in the Bright Scarlet of Angels, yet Embrace a Dunghill! O let a Blush coloring beyond Scarlet, be thy clothing for thy being found so meanly occupied! Alas, In the Multitude of thy Thoughts within thee, hast thou no Dispositions to Raise thy Soul, unto Some thoughts, What may be done for GOD, and CHRIST, and for my own SOUL, and for the most Considerable Interests? How many Hundreds of Thoughts have we, How to obtain or secure Some Tride for ourselves; to One, How we may Serve the interests of the Glorious LORD, and of His People in the World? How can we now pretend, that we Love Him, or, that a carnal, and a Crim- inal Self- Love, has not the Dominion over us? I again come in, upon a Soul of an Heavenly Extract, and Smite it, as the Angel did the Sleeping Pris- oner;6 Awake, Shake off thy Shackles, lie no longer fettered in a Base con#ne- ment unto nothing but a Meaner7 Sort of Business. Assume and Assert the Liberty of now and then Thinking on the Noblest Question in the World; What Good may I do in the World? There was a Time, when it was complain’d by no less a man, than Gregory the Great (the Bishop of Rome) I am Sunk into the World!8 It may be the complaint of a Soul, that minds all other things, and rarely calls to mind that Noblest Question. Ah! Star, fall’n from Heav’n, and chok’d in Dust, Rise and Soar up to something answerable to thy Original.9 Begin a Course of Thoughts, which when begun, will be like a Resurrection from the Dead. They which dwell in the Dust, Wake and Sing, and a Little anticipate the Life which we are to Live at the Resurrection of the Dead, when they Livelily set themselves to Think; How may I be a Blessing in the World? And, What may I do, that Righ teousness, may more dwell in the World?

* * *

1710

356

JONATHAN EDWARDS 1703–1758

A pivotal "gure in American literary history, the Puritan minister Jonathan Edwards created a fresh prose style that integrated con temporary theories of sensation with traditional Calvinist theology. Edwards spoke and wrote in a man- ner designed to give his audiences an almost visceral sense of spiritual realities. To appreciate his achievements as a religious writer, it may be helpful to consider how Edwards’s focus on sensation distinguishes his prose from that of his older con- temporary Cotton Mather. In many ways, Edwards and Mather were engaged in the same proj ect, that is, updating the Calvinist tradition for their own time. Born forty years apart, both men were members of power ful New Eng land religious dynasties, and they were also both active members of the Atlantic- world republic of letters, with an interest in the latest scienti"c ideas. As a writer, however, Mather fre- quently oriented himself toward the past, creating the baroque style that reached its apex in Magnalia Christi Americana (1702). Edwards focused instead on giving his audiences an immediate experience of “divine things” that could rival and even exceed the perceptions conveyed by the physical senses. The appeal of his rhe toric of sensation, as it has been called, was its capacity to make invisible things vividly pres ent. Those things might be the theological tenets and spiritual experiences that Edwards held to be divine truths, or they might be the life stories of young girls and women (including his wife, Sarah Pierpont Edwards) that appealed to readers of the novel, a genre becoming prominent in Edwards’s lifetime. Edwards is a central "g- ure in American literary history, then, because of the way his works induenced the development of both religious and secular prose.

Born in East Windsor, Connecticut, a town not far from the major city of Hart- ford, Edwards was the son of the Reverend Timothy Edwards and Esther Stoddard Edwards. Edwards’s mother was the daughter of the Reverend Solomon Stoddard, of Northampton, Mas sa chu setts, one of the most induential "gures in the religious life of New Eng land. Stoddard’s gifted grand son, the only male child in a family of eleven children, was groomed to be his heir. Studious and dutiful, Edwards showed remarkable gifts of observation and exposition from a young age. When he was eleven, he wrote an essay, still very readable, on the dying spider. At thirteen, he was admitted to Yale College, in New Haven; he stayed on to read theology for two years after his graduation. He was determined to perfect himself, and in one of his early notebooks he resolved “never to lose one moment of time, but to improve it in the most pro"table way” he could. As a student, he always rose at four in the morning, studied thirteen hours a day, and reserved part of each day for walking. Edwards varied this routine little, even when— after two years in New York City, assisting at a Presbyterian church—he went to Northampton to assist his grand father in his church. In 1727, he married Sarah Pierpont, a young woman from a leading New Haven clerical family. Two years later, Solomon Stoddard died, and Edwards suc- ceeded him. In the twenty- four years that Edwards lived in Northampton, he ful- "lled his duties as the pastor of a growing congregation and delivered brilliant sermons, wrote some of his most impor tant books— concerned primarily with de"n- ing true religious experience— and raised his eleven children.

Until the mid-1740s, his relations with the town were harmonious. This period included the early years of the Great Awakening, when a spirit of revivalism trans- formed complacent believers all along the eastern seaboard, beginning in 1734. At

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"rst, Edwards could do no wrong. His meeting house was "lled with converts, and his works describing the revivals were widely published and distributed on both sides of the Atlantic. But in his attempt to restore the church to the position of authority it held in the years of his grand father’s ministry, Edwards went too far. He berated people for becoming too secularized, named backsliders from his pulpit— including members of the best families in town— and tried to return to the old order of com- munion, permitting the sacrament to be taken only by those who had publicly declared themselves to be saved. Throughout the Connecticut River Valley, people were tired of religious controversy, and the hysterical be hav ior of a few fanatics turned many against the spirit of revivalism. On June 22, 1750, by a vote of two hun- dred to twenty, Edwards was dismissed from his church. Although the congregation had dif"culty naming a successor, they preferred to have no sermons rather than let Edwards preach.

For the next seven years, Edwards served as missionary to the Housatonic Indi- ans in Stockbridge, Mas sa chu setts, a town thirty- "ve miles west of Northampton. Founded after the 1735 Treaty of Deer"eld, Stockbridge was a product of the chronic imperial warfare— between British, French, and Native forces— that disrupted west- ern New Eng land throughout Edwards’s lifetime. At Stockbridge, Edwards wrote his monumental treatises on free will and on true virtue as “that consent, propen- sity, and union of heart to Being in general, that is immediately exercised in a gen- eral good will.” Edwards then received, very reluctantly, a call to become president of the College of New Jersey ( later renamed Prince ton University) after the Rever- end Aaron Burr, Sr.— Edwards’s son- in- law, who had been serving as the new col- lege’s president— died of fever and overwork. However, just three months after his arrival in Prince ton, Edwards died of smallpox, the result of his inoculation to pre- vent infection.

All of Edwards’s work is of a piece and, in essence, readily graspable. He was try- ing to restore to his congregation and to his readers that original sense of religious commitment that he felt had been lost since the "rst days of the Puritan exodus to Amer i ca, and he wanted to do this by transforming his congregation from mere believers who understood the logic of Christian doctrine to converted Christians who were genuinely moved by the princi ples of their belief. Edwards wrote that he read the work of the En glish phi los o pher John Locke (1632–1704) with more plea- sure “than the greedy miser "nds when gathering up handfuls of silver and gold, from some newly discovered trea sure.” Locke con"rmed Edwards’s conviction that people must do more than comprehend religious ideas; they must be moved by them and come to know them experientially: the difference, as he says, is like that between reading the word “"re” and actually being burned. Basic to this newly felt belief is the recognition that nothing that an individual can do warrants his or her salvation, that people are motivated entirely by self- love, and only supernatural grace alters their natu ral depravity. Edwards says that he experienced several steps toward real Christian commitment but that his true conversion came only when he had achieved a “full and constant sense of the absolute sovereignty of God, and a delight in that sovereignty.”

The word “delight” reminds us that Edwards was trying to inculcate and describe a religious feeling that approximates a physical sensation. He held that divine grace produced a new sense in the religious convert, which he sometimes analogized to taste. He believed this new sense would enable the convert to respond to God in more vital ways. “Delight” further links him to the transatlantic community of those who recognized sentiment as the basic emotion that connects individuals to one another. In his patient and lucid prose, Edwards became a master at the art of per- suading his congregants and readers that they could— and must— possess an intense awareness of humanity’s precarious condition and experience the joys and pleasures of grace.

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1. Because of Edwards’s reference to an eve ning in January 1739, he must have written this essay after that date. Edwards’s reasons for writing it are not known, and it was not published in his lifetime. After his death, his friend Samuel Hop- kins had access to his manuscripts and prepared The Life and Character of the Late Rev. Mr. Jona- than Edwards, which was published in 1765. In that volume, the “Personal Narrative” appeared in section IV as the chapter “An Account of His Conversion, Experiences, and Religious Exer- cises, Given by Himself.” The text here is from Works of Jonathan Edwards (1998), vol. 16, edited

by George Claghorn. 2. I.e., spiritual awakenings, renewals. “Exer- cises”: agitations. 3. Emotionally aroused, as opposed to merely understanding rationally the arguments for Chris- tian faith. 4. “As a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to his folly” (Proverbs 26.11). 5. Edwards was an undergraduate at Yale from 1716 to 1720 and a divinity student from 1720 to 1722. 6. A respiratory disorder.

Personal Narrative1

I had a variety of concerns and exercises about my soul from my childhood; but had two more remarkable seasons of awakening2 before I met with that change, by which I was brought to those new dispositions, and that new sense of things, that I have since had. The "rst time was when I was a boy, some years before I went to college, at a time of remarkable awakening in my father’s congregation. I was then very much affected3 for many months, and concerned about the things of religion, and my soul’s salvation; and was abundant in duties. I used to pray "ve times a day in secret, and to spend much time in religious talk with other boys; and used to meet with them to pray together. I experienced I know not what kind of delight in religion. My mind was much engaged in it, and had much self- righteous plea sure; and it was my delight to abound in religious duties. I, with some of my schoolmates joined together, and built a booth in a swamp, in a very secret and retired place, for a place of prayer. And besides, I had par tic u lar secret places of my own in the woods, where I used to retire by myself; and used to be from time to time much affected. My affections seemed to be lively and easily moved, and I seemed to be in my ele ment, when engaged in religious duties. And I am ready to think, many are deceived with such affections, and such a kind of delight, as I then had in religion, and mistake it for grace.

But in pro cess of time, my convictions and affections wore off; and I entirely lost all those affections and delights, and left off secret prayer, at least as to any constant per for mance of it; and returned like a dog to his vomit, and went on in ways of sin.4

Indeed, I was at some times very uneasy, especially towards the latter part of the time of my being at college.5 Till it pleased God, in my last year at college, at a time when I was in the midst of many uneasy thoughts about the state of my soul, to seize me with a pleurisy;6 in which he brought me nigh to the grave, and shook me over the pit of hell.

But yet, it was not long after my recovery, before I fell again into my old ways of sin. But God would not suffer me to go on with any quietness; but I had great and violent inward strug gles: till after many condicts with wicked inclinations, and repeated resolutions, and bonds that I laid myself under by a kind of vows to God, I was brought wholly to break off all former wicked ways, and all ways of known outward sin; and to apply myself to seek my salvation, and practice the duties of religion: but without that kind of affec- tion and delight, that I had formerly experienced. My concern now wrought more by inward strug gles and condicts, and self- redections. I made seeking

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7. I.e., truly redeeming, capable of making the penitent a “saint.” 8. “Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will

have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth” (Romans 9.18). 9. Lifted.

my salvation the main business of my life. But yet it seems to me, I sought after a miserable manner: which has made me sometimes since to question, whether ever it issued in that which was saving;7 being ready to doubt, whether such miserable seeking was ever succeeded. But yet I was brought to seek salvation, in a manner that I never was before. I felt a spirit to part with all things in the world, for an interest in Christ. My concern continued and prevailed, with many exercising things and inward strug gles; but yet it never seemed to be proper to express my concern that I had, by the name of terror.

From my childhood up, my mind had been wont to be full of objections against the doctrine of God’s sovereignty, in choosing whom He would to eternal life and rejecting whom he pleased; leaving them eternally to per- ish, and be everlastingly tormented in hell. It used to appear like a horrible doctrine to me. But I remember the time very well, when I seemed to be con- vinced, and fully satis"ed, as to this sovereignty of God, and his justice in thus eternally disposing of men, according to his sovereign plea sure. But never could give an account, how, or by what means, I was thus convinced; not in the least imagining, in the time of it, nor a long time after, that there was any extraordinary induence of God’s Spirit in it: but only that now I saw further, and my reason apprehended the justice and reasonableness of it. However, my mind rested in it; and it put an end to all those cavils and objec- tions, that had till then abode with me, all the preceeding part of my life. And there has been a wonderful alteration in my mind, with re spect to the doctrine of God’s sovereignty, from that day to this; so that I scarce ever have found so much as the rising of an objection against God’s sovereignty, in the most absolute sense, in showing mercy on whom he will show mercy, and hardening and eternally damning whom he will.8 God’s absolute sover- eignty, and justice, with re spect to salvation and damnation, is what my mind seems to rest assured of, as much as of anything that I see with my eyes; at least it is so at times. But I have oftentimes since that "rst conviction, had quite another kind of sense of God’s sovereignty, than I had then. I have often since, not only had a conviction, but a delightful conviction. The doc- trine of God’s sovereignty has very often appeared, an exceeding pleasant, bright and sweet doctrine to me: and absolute sovereignty is what I love to ascribe to God. But my "rst conviction was not with this.

The "rst that I remember that ever I found anything of that sort of inward, sweet delight in God and divine things, that I have lived much in since, was on reading those words, 1 Tim. 1.17, “Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honor and glory for ever and ever, Amen.” As I read the words, there came into my soul, and was as it were diffused through it, a sense of the glory of the divine being, a new sense, quite dif- fer ent from anything I ever experienced before. Never any words of Scrip- ture seemed to me as these words did. I thought with myself, how excellent a Being that was; and how happy I should be, if I might enjoy that God, and be wrapt9 up to God in heaven, and be as it were swallowed up in him. I kept saying, and as it were singing over these words of Scripture to myself; and went to prayer, to pray to God that I might enjoy him; and prayed in a

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manner quite dif fer ent from what I used to do, with a new sort of affection. But it never came into my thought, that there was anything spiritual, or of a saving nature in this.

From about that time, I began to have a new kind of apprehensions and ideas of Christ, and the work of redemption, and the glorious way of salva- tion by him. I had an inward, sweet sense of these things, that at times came into my heart; and my soul was led away in pleasant views and contempla- tions of them. And my mind was greatly engaged, to spend my time in read- ing and meditating on Christ; and the beauty and excellency of his person, and the lovely way of salvation, by free grace in him. I found no books so delightful to me, as those that treated of these subjects. Those words (Cant. 2:1) used to be abundantly with me: “I am the rose of Sharon, the lily of the valleys.” The words seemed to me, sweetly to represent, the loveliness and beauty of Jesus Christ. And the whole book of Canticles1 used to be pleas- ant to me; and I used to be much in reading it, about that time. And found, from time to time, an inward sweetness, that used, as it were, to carry me away in my contemplations; in what I know not how to express other wise, than by a calm, sweet abstraction of soul from all the concerns o[f] this world; and a kind of vision, or "xed ideas and imaginations, of being alone in the mountains, or some solitary wilderness, far from all mankind, sweetly conversing with Christ, and wrapt and swallowed up in God. The sense I had of divine things, would often of a sudden as it were, kindle up a sweet burning in my heart; an ardor of my soul, that I know not how to express.

Not long after I "rst began to experience these things, I gave an account to my father, of some things that had passed in my mind. I was pretty much affected by the discourse we had together. And when the discourse was ended, I walked abroad alone, in a solitary place in my father’s pasture, for contemplation. And as I was walking there, and looked up on the sky and clouds; there came into my mind, a sweet sense of the glorious majesty and grace of God, that I know not how to express. I seemed to see them both in a sweet conjunction: majesty and meekness joined together: it was a sweet and gentle, and holy majesty; and also a majestic meekness; an awful sweet- ness; a high, and great, and holy gentleness.

After this my sense of divine things gradually increased, and became more and more lively, and had more of that inward sweetness. The appearance of every thing was altered: there seemed to be, as it were, a calm, sweet cast, or appearance of divine glory, in almost every thing. God’s excellency, his wis- dom, his purity and love, seemed to appear in every thing; in the sun, moon and stars; in the clouds, and blue sky; in the grass, dowers, trees; in the water, and all nature; which used greatly to "x my mind. I often used to sit and view the moon, for a long time; and so in the daytime, spent much time in viewing the clouds and sky, to behold the sweet glory of God in these things: in the meantime, singing forth with a low voice, my contemplations of the Creator and Redeemer. And scarce anything, among all the works of nature, was so sweet to me as thunder and lightning. Formerly, nothing had been so terrible to me. I used to be a person uncommonly terri"ed with thun- der: and it used to strike me with terror, when I saw a thunderstorm rising. But now, on the contrary, it rejoiced me. I felt God at the "rst appearance

1. I.e., Song of Solomon.

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2. Condition of being. 3. I.e., exclaimed suddenly, blurted out sponta-

neously. 4. Feelingly.

of a thunderstorm. And used to take the opportunity at such times, to "x myself to view the clouds, and see the lightnings play, and hear the majestic and awful voice of God’s thunder: which often times was exceeding enter- taining, leading me to sweet contemplations of my great and glorious God. And while I viewed, used to spend my time, as it always seemed natu ral to me, to sing or chant forth my meditations; to speak my thoughts in solilo- quies, and speak with a singing voice.

I felt then a great satisfaction as to my good estate.2 But that did not con- tent me. I had vehement longings of soul after God and Christ, and after more holiness; wherewith my heart seemed to be full, and ready to break: which often brought to my mind, the words of the Psalmist, Ps. 119:28, “My soul breaketh for the longing it hath.” I often felt a mourning and lamenting in my heart, that I had not turned to God sooner, that I might have had more time to grow in grace. My mind was greatly "xed on divine things; I was almost perpetually in the contemplation of them. Spent most of my time in thinking of divine things, year after year. And used to spend abundance of my time, in walking alone in the woods, and solitary places, for meditation, soliloquy and prayer, and converse with God. And it was always my manner, at such times, to sing forth my contemplations. And was almost constantly in ejaculatory3 prayer, wherever I was. Prayer seemed to be natu ral to me; as the breath, by which the inward burnings of my heart had vent.

The delights which I now felt in things of religion, were of an exceeding dif fer ent kind, from those forementioned, that I had when I was a boy. They were totally of another kind; and what I then had no more notion or idea of, than one born blind has of pleasant and beautiful colors. They were of a more inward, pure, soul- animating and refreshing nature. Those former delights, never reached the heart; and did not arise from any sight of the divine excellency of the things of God; or any taste of the soul- satisfying, and life- giving good, there is in them.

My sense of divine things seemed gradually to increase, till I went to preach at New York; which was about a year and a half after they began. While I was there, I felt them, very sensibly,4 in a much higher degree, than I had done before. My longings after God and holiness, were much increased. Pure and humble, holy and heavenly Chris tian ity, appeared exceeding ami- able to me. I felt in me a burning desire to be in every thing a complete Chris- tian; and conformed to the blessed image of Christ: and that I might live in all things, according to the pure, sweet and blessed rules of the gospel. I had an eager thirsting after pro gress in these things. My longings after it, put me upon pursuing and pressing after them. It was my continual strife day and night, and constant inquiry, how I should be more holy, and live more holily, and more becoming a child of God, and disciple of Christ. I sought an increase of grace and holiness, and that I might live an holy life, with vastly more earnestness, than ever I sought grace, before I had it. I used to be continually examining myself, and studying and contriving for likely ways and means, how I should live holily, with far greater diligence and ear- nestness, than ever I pursued anything in my life: but with too great a dependence on my own strength, which afterwards proved a great damage

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5. “Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein” (Mark 10.15).

to me. My experience had not then taught me, as it has done since, my extreme feebleness and impotence, every manner of way; and the innumer- able and bottomless depths of secret corruption and deceit, that there was in my heart. However, I went on with my eager pursuit after more holiness; and sweet conformity to Christ.

The Heaven I desired was a heaven of holiness; to be with God, and to spend my eternity in divine love, and holy communion with Christ. My mind was very much taken up with contemplations on heaven, and the enjoyments of those there; and living there in perfect holiness, humility and love. And it used at that time to appear a great part of the happiness of heaven, that there the saints could express their love to Christ. It appeared to me a great clog and hindrance and burden to me, that what I felt within, I could not express to God, and give vent to, as I desired. The inward ardor of my soul, seemed to be hindered and pent up, and could not freely dame out as it would. I used often to think, how in heaven, this sweet princi ple should freely and fully vent and express itself. Heaven appeared to me exceeding delightful as a world of love. It appeared to me, that all happiness consisted in living in pure, humble, heavenly, divine love.

I remember the thoughts I used then to have of holiness. I remember I then said sometimes to myself, I do certainly know that I love holiness, such as the gospel prescribes. It appeared to me, there was nothing in it but what was ravishingly lovely. It appeared to me, to be the highest beauty and ami- ableness, above all other beauties: that it was a divine beauty; far purer than anything here upon earth; and that every thing else, was like mire, "lth and de"lement, in comparison of it.

Holiness, as I then wrote down some of my contemplations on it, appeared to me to be of a sweet, pleasant, charming, serene, calm nature. It seemed to me, it brought an inexpressible purity, brightness, peacefulness and ravish- ment to the soul: and that it made the soul like a "eld or garden of God, with all manner of pleasant dowers; that is all pleasant, delightful and undis- turbed; enjoying a sweet calm, and the gently vivifying beams of the sun. The soul of a true Christian, as I then wrote my meditations, appeared like such a little white dower, as we see in the spring of the year; low and humble on the ground, opening its bosom, to receive the pleasant beams of the sun’s glory; rejoicing as it were, in a calm rapture; diffusing around a sweet fragrancy; standing peacefully and lovingly, in the midst of other dowers round about; all in like manner opening their bosoms, to drink in the light of the sun.

There was no part of creature- holiness, that I then, and at other times, had so great a sense of the loveliness of, as humility, brokenness of heart and poverty of spirit: and there was nothing that I had such a spirit to long for. My heart, as it were, panted after this to lie low before GOD, and in the dust; that I might be nothing, and that God might be all; that I might become as a little child.5

While I was there at New York, I sometimes was much affected with redec- tions on my past life, considering how late it was, before I began to be truly religious; and how wickedly I had lived till then: and once so as to weep abundantly, and for a considerable time together.

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6. Wethers"eld, Connecticut, is very close to Windsor.

7. Westchester and Saybrook are in New York and Connecticut, respectively.

On January 12, 1722–3, I made a solemn dedication of myself to God, and wrote it down; giving up myself, and all that I had to God; to be for the future in no re spect my own; to act as one that had no right to himself, in any re spect. And solemnly vowed to take God for my whole portion and felic- ity; looking on nothing else as any part of my happiness, nor acting as if it were: and his law for the constant rule of my obedience; engaging to "ght with all my might, against the world, the desh and the devil, to the end of my life. But have reason to be in"nitely humbled, when I consider, how much I have failed of answering my obligation.

I had then abundance of sweet religious conversation in the family where I lived, with Mr. John Smith, and his pious mother. My heart was knit in affection to those, in whom were appearances of true piety; and I could bear the thoughts of no other companions, but such as were holy, and the disci- ples of the blessed Jesus.

I had great longings for the advancement of Christ’s kingdom in the world. My secret prayer used to be in great part taken up in praying for it. If I heard the least hint of anything that happened in any part of the world, that appeared to me, in some re spect or other, to have a favorable aspect on the interest of Christ’s kingdom, my soul eagerly catched at it; and it would much animate and refresh me. I used to be earnest to read public newsletters, mainly for that end; to see if I could not "nd some news favorable to the interest of religion in the world.

I very frequently used to retire into a solitary place, on the banks of Hud- son’s River, at some distance from the city, for contemplation on divine things, and secret converse with God; and had many sweet hours there. Sometimes Mr. Smith and I walked there together, to converse of the things of God; and our conversation used much to turn on the advancement of Christ’s kingdom in the world, and the glorious things that God would accomplish for his church in the latter days.

I had then, and at other times, the greatest delight in the holy Scriptures, of any book whatsoever. Oftentimes in reading it, every word seemed to touch my heart. I felt an harmony between something in my heart, and those sweet and power ful words. I seemed often to see so much light, exhibited by every sentence, and such a refreshing ravishing food communicated, that I could not get along in reading. Used oftentimes to dwell long on one sentence, to see the won ders contained in it; and yet almost every sentence seemed to be full of won ders.

I came away from New York in the month of April 1723, and had a most bitter parting with Madam Smith and her son. My heart seemed to sink within me, at leaving the family and city, where I had enjoyed so many sweet and pleasant days. I went from New York to Weathers"eld6 by water. As I sailed away, I kept sight of the city as long as I could; and when I was out of sight of it, it would affect me much to look that way, with a kind of melancholy mixed with sweetness. However, that night after this sorrowful parting, I was greatly comforted in God at Westchester, where we went ashore to lodge: and had a pleasant time of it all the voyage to Saybrook.7 It was sweet to me to think of meeting dear Christians in heaven, where we should never part more.

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8. In the Book of Revelation, the symbol of Christ. 9. A town in Mas sa chu setts, twenty- "ve miles from Boston.

1. I.e., intense, passionate, uncontrollable. 2. Psalm 130.6. 3. Contentment. “This town”: Northampton.

At Saybrook we went ashore to lodge on Saturday, and there kept sabbath; where I had a sweet and refreshing season, walking alone in the "elds.

After I came home to Windsor, remained much in a like frame of my mind, as I had been in at New York; but only sometimes felt my heart ready to sink, with the thoughts of my friends at New York. And my refuge and support was in contemplations on the heavenly state; as I "nd in my diary of May 1, 1723. It was my comfort to think of that state, where there is fulness of joy; where reigns heavenly, sweet, calm and delightful love, without alloy; where there are continually the dearest expressions of this love; where is the enjoy- ment of the persons loved, without ever parting; where these persons that appear so lovely in this world, will really be inexpressibly more lovely, and full of love to us. And how sweetly will the mutual lovers join together to sing the praises of God and the Lamb!8 How full will it "ll us with joy, to think, that this enjoyment, these sweet exercises will never cease or come to an end; but will last to all eternity!

Continued much in the same frame in the general, that I had been in at New York, till I went to New Haven, to live there as Tutor of the College; having some special season of uncommon sweetness: particularly once at Bolton,9 in a journey from Boston, walking out alone in the "elds. After I went to New Haven, I sunk in religion; my mind being diverted from my eager and violent1 pursuits after holiness, by some affairs that greatly per- plexed and distracted my mind.

In September 1725, was taken ill at New Haven; and endeavoring to go home to Windsor, was so ill at the North Village, that I could go no further: where I lay sick for about a quarter of a year. And in this sickness, God was pleased to visit me again with the sweet induences of his spirit. My mind was greatly engaged there on divine, pleasant contemplations, and longings of soul. I observed that those who watched with me, would often be looking out for the morning, and seemed to wish for it. Which brought to my mind those words of the Psalmist, which my soul with sweetness made its own language, “My soul waiteth for the Lord more than they that watch for the morning: I say, more than they that watch for the morning.”2 And when the light of the morning came, and the beams of the sun came in at the win- dows, it refreshed my soul from one morning to another. It seemed to me to be some image of the sweet light of God’s glory.

I remember, about that time, I used greatly to long for the conversion of some that I was concerned with. It seemed to me, I could gladly honor them, and with delight be a servant to them, and lie at their feet, if they were but truly holy.

But sometime after this, I was again greatly diverted in my mind, with some temporal concerns, that exceedingly took up my thoughts, greatly to the wounding of my soul: and went on through vari ous exercises, that it would be tedious to relate, that gave me much more experience of my own heart, than ever I had before.

Since I came to this town, I have often had sweet complacency3 in God in views of his glorious perfections, and the excellency of Jesus Christ. God

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4. Edwards alludes to Psalm 23.2: “He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.”

has appeared to me, a glorious and lovely being, chiedy on the account of his holiness. The holiness of God has always appeared to me the most lovely of all his attributes. The doctrines of God’s absolute sovereignty, and free grace, in showing mercy to whom he would show mercy; and man’s absolute dependence on the operations of God’s Holy Spirit, have very often appeared to me as sweet and glorious doctrines. These doctrines have been much my delight. God’s sovereignty has ever appeared to me, as great part of his glory. It has often been sweet to me to go to God, and adore him as a sovereign God, and ask sovereign mercy of him.

I have loved the doctrines of the gospel: they have been to my soul like green pastures.4 The gospel has seemed to me to be the richest trea sure; the trea sure that I have most desired, and longed that it might dwell richly in me. The way of salvation by Christ, has appeared in a general way, glori- ous and excellent, and most pleasant and beautiful. It has often seemed to me, that it would in a great mea sure spoil heaven, to receive it in any other way. That text has often been affecting and delightful to me, Is. 32:2, “A man shall be an hiding place from the wind, and a covert from the tem- pest,” etc.

It has often appeared sweet to me, to be united to Christ; to have him for my head, and to be a member of his body: and also to have Christ for my teacher and prophet. I very often think with sweetness and longings and pantings of soul, of being a little child, taking hold of Christ, to be led by him through the wilderness of this world. That text, Matt. 18 at the begin- ning, has often been sweet to me, “Except ye be converted, and become as little children,” etc. I love to think of coming to Christ, to receive salvation of him, poor in spirit, and quite empty of self; humbly exalting him alone; cut entirely off from my own root, and to grow into, and out of Christ: to have God in Christ to be all in all; and to live by faith in the Son of God, a life of humble, unfeigned con"dence in him. That Scripture has often been sweet to me, Ps. 115:1, “Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto thy name give glory, for thy mercy, and for thy truth’s sake.” And those words of Christ, Luke 10:21, “In that hour Jesus rejoiced in spirit, and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes: even so Father, for so it seemed good in thy sight.” That sovereignty of God that Christ rejoiced in, seemed to me to be worthy to be rejoiced in; and that rejoicing of Christ, seemed to me to show the excellency of Christ, and the spirit that he was of.

Sometimes only mentioning a single word, causes my heart to burn within me: or only seeing the name of Christ, or the name of some attribute of God. And God has appeared glorious to me, on account of the Trinity. It has made me have exalting thoughts of God, that he subsists in three persons; Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

The sweetest joys and delights I have experienced, have not been those that have arisen from a hope of my own good estate; but in a direct view of the glorious things of the gospel. When I enjoy this sweetness, it seems to carry me above the thoughts of my own safe estate. It seems at such times

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5. Rejoiced. 6. “My beloved is white and ruddy, the chiefest among ten thousand” (Song of Solomon 5.10).

7. In the year (Latin). 8. Regard for those of lesser status.

a loss that I cannot bear, to take off my eye from the glorious, pleasant object I behold without me, to turn my eye in upon myself, and my own good estate.

My heart has been much on the advancement of Christ’s kingdom in the world. The histories of the past advancement of Christ’s kingdom, have been sweet to me. When I have read histories of past ages, the pleasantest thing in all my reading has been, to read of the kingdom of Christ being promoted. And when I have expected in my reading, to come to any such thing, I have lotted5 upon it all the way as I read. And my mind has been much enter- tained and delighted, with the Scripture promises and prophecies, of the future glorious advancement of Christ’s kingdom on earth.

I have sometimes had a sense of the excellent fullness of Christ, and his meetness and suitableness as a Savior; whereby he has appeared to me, far above all, the chief of ten thousands.6 And his blood and atonement has appeared sweet, and his righ teousness sweet; which is always accompanied with an ardency of spirit, and inward strugglings and breathings and groan- ings, that cannot be uttered, to be emptied of myself, and swallowed up in Christ.

Once, as I rid out into the woods for my health, anno7 1737; and having lit from my horse in a retired place, as my manner commonly has been, to walk for divine contemplation and prayer; I had a view, that for me was extraordinary, of the glory of the Son of God; as mediator between God and man; and his wonderful, great, full, pure and sweet grace and love, and meek and gentle condescension.8 This grace, that appeared to me so calm and sweet, appeared great above the heavens. The person of Christ appeared ineffably excellent, with an excellency great enough to swallow up all thought and conception. Which continued, as near as I can judge, about an hour; which kept me, the bigger part of the time, in a dood of tears, and weeping aloud. I felt withal, an ardency of soul to be, what I know not other wise how to express, than to be emptied and annihilated; to lie in the dust, and to be full of Christ alone; to love him with a holy and pure love; to trust in him; to live upon him; to serve and follow him, and to be totally wrapt up in the fullness of Christ; and to be perfectly sancti"ed and made pure, with a divine and heavenly purity. I have several other times, had views very much of the same nature, and that have had the same effects.

I have many times had a sense of the glory of the third person in the Trin- ity, in his of"ce of Sancti"er; in his holy operations communicating divine light and life to the soul. God in the communications of his Holy Spirit, has appeared as an in"nite fountain of divine glory and sweetness; being full and suf"cient to "ll and satisfy the soul: pouring forth itself in sweet com- munications, like the sun in its glory, sweetly and pleasantly diffusing light and life.

I have sometimes had an affecting sense of the excellency of the word of God, as a word of life; as the light of life; a sweet, excellent, life- giving word: accompanied with a thirsting after that word, that it might dwell richly in my heart.

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9. I.e., retire to his study. 1. The name used for God in the Old Testament.

I have often since I lived in this town, had very affecting views of my own sinfulness and vileness; very frequently so as to hold me in a kind of loud weeping, sometimes for a considerable time together: so that I have often been forced to shut myself up.9 I have had a vastly greater sense of my wick- edness, and the badness of my heart, since my conversion, than ever I had before. It has often appeared to me, that if God should mark iniquity against me, I should appear the very worst of all mankind; of all that have been since the beginning of the world of this time: and that I should have by far the lowest place in hell. When others that have come to talk with me about their soul concerns, have expressed the sense they have had of their own wicked- ness, by saying that it seemed to them, that they were as bad as the devil himself; I thought their expressions seemed exceeding faint and feeble, to represent my wickedness. I thought I should won der, that they should con- tent themselves with such expressions as these, if I had any reason to imag- ine, that their sin bore any proportion to mine. It seemed to me, I should won der at myself, if I should express my wickedness in such feeble terms as they did.

My wickedness, as I am in myself, has long appeared to me perfectly inef- fable, and in"nitely swallowing up all thought and imagination; like an in"- nite deluge, or in"nite mountains over my head. I know not how to express better, what my sins appear to me to be, than by heaping in"nite upon in"- nite, and multiplying in"nite by in"nite. I go about very often, for this many years, with these expressions in my mind, and in my mouth, “In"nite upon in"nite. In"nite upon in"nite!” When I look into my heart, and take a view of my wickedness, it looks like an abyss in"nitely deeper than hell. And it appears to me, that were it not for free grace, exalted and raised up to the in"nite height of all the fullness and glory of the great Jehovah,1 and the arm of his power and grace stretched forth, in all the majesty of his power, and in all the glory of his sovereignty; I should appear sunk down in my sins in"nitely below hell itself, far beyond sight of every thing, but the piercing eye of God’s grace, that can pierce even down to such a depth, and to the bottom of such an abyss.

And yet, I ben’t in the least inclined to think, that I have a greater convic- tion of sin than ordinary. It seems to me, my conviction of sin is exceeding small, and faint. It appears to me enough to amaze me, that I have no more sense of my sin. I know certainly, that I have very little sense of my sinful- ness. That my sins appear to me so great, don’t seem to me to be, because I have so much more conviction of sin than other Christians, but because I am so much worse, and have so much more wickedness to be convinced of. When I have had these turns of weeping and crying for my sins, I thought I knew in the time of it, that my repentance was nothing to my sin.

I have greatly longed of late, for a broken heart, and to lie low before God. And when I ask for humility of God, I can’t bear the thoughts of being no more humble, than other Christians. It seems to me, that though their degrees of humility may be suitable for them; yet it would be a vile self- exaltation in me, not to be the lowest in humility of all mankind. Others speak of their longing to be humbled to the dust. Though that may be a proper expres-

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1. When Edwards was twenty and his future wife thirteen, he inscribed this tribute on the dyleaf of a book. It was "rst published in Sereno E. Dwight’s The Life of President Edwards (1829). The text here is from Works of Jonathan Edwards (1998), vol. 16, edited by George Claghorn.

sion for them, I always think for myself, that I ought to be humbled down below hell. ’Tis an expression that it has long been natu ral for me to use in prayer to God. I ought to lie in"nitely low before God.

It is affecting to me to think, how ignorant I was, when I was a young Christian, of the bottomless, in"nite depths of wickedness, pride, hy po c- risy and deceit left in my heart.

I have vastly a greater sense, of my universal, exceeding dependence on God’s grace and strength, and mere good plea sure, of late, than I used for- merly to have; and have experienced more of an abhorrence of my own righ teousness. The thought of any comfort or joy, arising in me, on any consideration, or redection on my own amiableness, or any of my per for- mances or experiences, or any goodness of heart or life, is nauseous and detestable to me. And yet I am greatly afdicted with a proud and self- righteous spirit; much more sensibly, than I used to be formerly. I see that serpent ris- ing and putting forth its head, continually, everywhere, all around me.

Though it seems to me, that in some re spects I was a far better Christian, for two or three years after my "rst conversion, than I am now; and lived in a more constant delight and plea sure: yet of late years, I have had a more full and constant sense of the absolute sovereignty of God, and a delight in that sovereignty; and have had more of a sense of the glory of Christ, as a mediator, as revealed in the Gospel. On one Saturday night in par tic u lar, had a par tic u lar discovery of the excellency of the gospel of Christ, above all other doctrines; so that I could not but say to myself; “This is my chosen light, my chosen doctrine”: and of Christ, “This is my chosen prophet.” It appeared to me to be sweet beyond all expression, to follow Christ, and to be taught and enlightened and instructed by him; to learn of him, and live to him.

Another Saturday night, January 1738–9, had such a sense, how sweet and blessed a thing it was, to walk in the way of duty, to do that which was right and meet to be done, and agreeable to the holy mind of God; that it caused me to break forth into a kind of a loud weeping, which held me some time; so that I was forced to shut myself up, and fasten the doors. I could not but as it were cry out, “How happy are they which do that which is right in the sight of God! They are blessed indeed, they are the happy ones!” I had at the same time, a very affecting sense, how meet and suitable it was that God should govern the world, and order all things according to his own plea sure; and I rejoiced in it, that God reigned, and that his will was done.

c. 1740 1765

On Sarah Pierpont1

They say there is a young lady in [New Haven] who is beloved of that almighty Being, who made and rules the world, and that there are certain seasons in which this great Being, in some way or other invisible, comes to her and "lls her mind with exceeding sweet delight, and that she hardly cares for any-

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1. Edwards "rst transcribed his wife’s narrative, then revised his transcription for inclusion in Some Thoughts Concerning the Pres ent Revival of

Religion (1742). 2. Abbreviation for videlicet: that is to say, namely (Latin).

thing, except to meditate on him— that she expects after a while to be received up where he is, to be raised up out of the world and caught up into heaven; being assured that he loves her too well to let her remain at a dis- tance from him always. There she is to dwell with him, and to be ravished with his love, favor and delight, forever. Therefore, if you pres ent all the world before her, with the richest of its trea sures, she disregards it and cares not for it, and is unmindful of any pain or afdiction. She has a strange sweet- ness in her mind, and sweetness of temper, uncommon purity in her affec- tions; is most just and praiseworthy in all her actions; and you could not persuade her to do anything thought wrong or sinful, if you would give her all the world, lest she should offend this great Being. She is of a wonderful sweetness, calmness and universal benevolence of mind; especially after those times in which this great God has manifested himself to her mind. She will sometimes go about, singing sweetly, from place to [place]; and seems to be always full of joy and plea sure; and no one knows for what. She loves to be alone, and to wander in the "elds and on the mountains, and seems to have someone invisible always conversing with her.

1723 1829

Sarah Edwards’s Narrative1

I have been particularly acquainted with many persons that have been the subjects of the high and extraordinary transports of the pres ent day; and in the highest transports of any of the instances that I have been acquainted with, and where the affections of admiration, love and joy, so far as another could judge, have been raised to a higher pitch than in any other instances I have observed or been informed of, the following things have been united: viz.2 a very frequent dwelling, for some considerable time together, in such views of the glory of the divine perfections, and Christ’s excellencies, that the soul in the meantime has been as it were perfectly overwhelmed, and swallowed up with light and love and a sweet solace, rest and joy of soul, that was altogether unspeakable; and more than once continuing for "ve or six hours together, without any interruption, in that clear and lively view or sense of the in"nite beauty and amiableness of Christ’s person, and the heav- enly sweetness of his excellent and transcendent love; so that (to use the person’s own expressions) the soul remained in a kind of heavenly Elysium, and did as it were swim in the rays of Christ’s love, like a little mote swim- ming in the beams of the sun, or streams of his light that come in at a win dow; and the heart was swallowed up in a kind of glow of Christ’s love, coming down from Christ’s heart in heaven, as a constant stream of sweet light, at the same time the soul all dowing out in love to him; so that there seemed to be a constant dowing and redowing from heart to heart. The soul dwelt on high, and was lost in God, and seemed almost to leave the body;

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3. George White"eld (1714–1770) and Gilbert Tennent (1703–1764), induential revivalists.

dwelling in a pure delight that fed and satis"ed the soul; enjoying plea sure without the least sting, or any interruption, a sweetness that the soul was lost in; so that (so far as the judgment and word of a person of discretion may be taken, speaking upon the most deliberate consideration) what was enjoyed in each single minute of the whole space, which was many hours, was undoubtedly worth more than all the outward comfort and plea sure of the whole life put together; and this without being in any trance, or being at all deprived of the exercise of the bodily senses: and the like heavenly delight and unspeakable joy of soul, enjoyed from time to time, for years together; though not frequently so long together, to such an height: extraordinary views of divine things, and religious affections, being frequently attended with very great effects on the body, nature often sinking under the weight of divine discoveries, the strength of the body taken away, so as to deprive of all ability to stand or speak; sometimes the hands clinched, and the desh cold, but senses still remaining; animal nature often in a great emotion and agitation, and the soul very often, of late, so overcome with great admiration, and a kind of omnipotent joy, as to cause the person (wholly unavoidably) to leap with all the might, with joy and mighty exultation of soul; the soul at the same time being so strongly drawn towards God and Christ in heaven, that it seemed to the person as though soul and body would, as it were of themselves, of necessity mount up, leave the earth and ascend thither.

These effects on the body did not begin now in this wonderful season, that they should be owing to the induence of the example of the times, but about seven years ago; and began in a much higher degree, and greater fre- quency, near three years ago, when there was no such enthusiastical sea- son, as many account this, but it was a very dead time through the land. They arose from no distemper catched from Mr. White"eld or Mr. Tennent,3 because they began before either of them came into the country; they began, as I said, near three years ago, in a great increase, upon an extraordinary self- dedication, and renunciation of the world, and resignation of all to God, made in a great view of God’s excellency, and high exercise of love to him, and rest and joy in him; since which time they have been very frequent; and began in a yet higher degree, and greater frequency, about a year and [a] half ago, upon another new resignation of all to God, with a yet greater fer- vency and delight of soul; since which time the body has been very often fainting with the love of Christ; and began in a much higher degree still, the last winter, upon another resignation and ac cep tance of God, as the only portion and happiness of the soul, wherein the whole world, with the dear- est enjoyments in it, were renounced as dirt and dung, and all that is pleas- ant and glorious, and all that is terrible in this world, seemed perfectly to vanish into nothing, and nothing to be left but God, in whom the soul was perfectly swallowed up, as in an in"nite ocean of blessedness: since which time there have often been great agitations of body, and an unavoidable leap- ing for joy; and the soul as it were dwelling almost without interruption, in a kind of paradise; and very often, in high transports, disposed to speak of those great and glorious things of God and Christ, and the eternal world, that are in view, to others that are pres ent, in a most earnest manner, and

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4. I.e., Jonathan. 5. Roughly equivalent to “hysteria.”

6. Being emotionally overcome.

with a loud voice, so that it is next to impossible to avoid it: these effects on the body not arising from any bodily distemper or weakness, because the greatest of all have been in a good state of health. This great rejoicing has been a rejoicing with trembling, i.e. attended with a deep and lively sense of the greatness and majesty of God, and the person’s own exceeding littleness and vileness: spiritual joys in this person never were attended, either formerly or lately, with the least appearance of any laughter or lightness of counte- nance, or manner of speaking; but with a peculiar abhorrence of such appear- ances in spiritual rejoicings, especially since joys have been greatest of all. These high transports when they have been past, have had abiding effects in the increase of the sweetness, rest and humility that they have left upon the soul; and a new engagedness of heart to live to God’s honor, and watch and "ght against sin. And these things not in one that is in the giddy age of youth, nor in a new convert, and unexperienced Christian, but in one that was converted above twenty- seven years ago; and neither converted nor edu- cated in that enthusiastical town of Northampton (as some may be ready to call it), but in a town and family that none that I4 know of suspected of enthusiasm; and in a Christian that has been long, in an uncommon man- ner, growing in grace, and rising, by very sensible degrees, to higher love to God, and weanedness from the world, and mastery over sin and temptation, through great trials and condicts, and long continued struggling and "ght- ing with sin, and earnest and constant prayer and labor in religion, and enga- gedness of mind in the use of all means, attended with a great exactness of life: which growth has been attended, not only with a great increase of reli- gious affections, but with a wonderful alteration of outward be hav ior, in many things, vis i ble to those who are most intimately acquainted, so as lately to have become as it were a new person; and particularly in living so much more above the world, and in a greater degree of steadfastness and strength in the way of duty and self- denial, maintaining the Christian condict against temptations, and conquering from time to time under great trials; persist- ing in an unmoved, untouched calm and rest; under the changes and acci- dents of time.

The person had formerly in lower degrees of grace, been subject to unsteadiness, and many ups and downs, in the frame of mind; the mind being under great disadvantages, through a vapory habit of body,5 and often subject to melancholy, and at times almost overborne with it, it having been so even from early youth: but strength of grace, and divine light has of a long time, wholly conquered these disadvantages, and carried the mind in a constant manner, quite above all such effects of vapors.6 Since that resigna- tion spoken of before, made near three years ago, every thing of that nature seems to be overcome and crushed by the power of faith and trust in God, and resignation to him; the person has remained in a constant uninterrupted rest, and humble joy in God, and assurance of his favor, without one hour’s melancholy or darkness, from that day to this; vapors have had great effects on the body, such as they used to have before, but the soul has been always out of their reach. And this steadfastness and constancy has remained

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7. Cf. Romans 12.10. 8. As opposed to the elect who were not mem- bers of a congregation. “Sensible”: deeply felt.

9. A reference to the Lamb of God, i.e., Jesus Christ.

through great outward changes and trials; such as times of the most extreme pain, and apparent hazard of immediate death. What has been felt in late great transports is known to be nothing new in kind, but to be of the same nature with what was felt formerly, when a little child of about "ve or six years of age; but only in a vastly higher degree. These transporting views and rapturous affections are not attended with any enthusiastic disposition to follow impulses, or any supposed prophetical revelations; nor have they been observed to be attended with any appearance of spiritual pride, but very much of a contrary disposition, an increase of a spirit of humility and meek- ness, and a disposition in honor to prefer others.7 And ’tis worthy to be remarked, that at a time remarkably distinguished from all others, wherein discoveries and holy affections were evidently at the greatest height that ever happened, the greatness and clearness of divine light being overwhelming, and the strength and sweetness of divine love altogether overpowering, which began early in the morning of the Holy Sabbath, and lasted for days together, melting all down in the deepest humility and poverty of spirit, reverence and resignation, and the sweetest meekness, and universal benevolence; I say, ’tis worthy to be observed, that there were these two things in a remarkable manner felt at that time, viz. a peculiar sensible aversion to a judging others that were professing Christians of good standing in the vis i ble8 church, that they were not converted, or with re spect to their degrees of grace; or at all intermeddling with that matter, so much as to determine against and con- demn others in the thought of the heart; it appearing hateful, as not agree- ing with that lamb- like9 humility, meekness, gentleness and charity, which the soul then, above other times, saw the beauty of, and felt a disposition to. The disposition that was then felt was, on the contrary, to prefer others to self, and to hope that they saw more of God and loved him better; though before, under smaller discoveries and feebler exercises of divine affection, there had been felt a disposition to censure and condemn others. And another thing that was felt at that time, was a very great sense of the importance of moral social duties, and how great a part of religion lay in them: there was such a new sense and conviction of this, beyond what had been before, that it seemed to be as it were a clear discovery then made to the soul. But in general, there has been a very great increase of a sense of these two things, as divine views and divine love have increased.

The things already mentioned have been attended also with the following things, viz. an extraordinary sense of the awful majesty and greatness of God, so as oftentimes to take away the bodily strength; a sense of the holi- ness of God, as of a dame in"nitely pure and bright, so as sometimes to over- whelm soul and body; a sense of the piercing all- seeing eye of God, so as sometimes to take away the bodily strength; and an extraordinary view of the in"nite terribleness of the wrath of God, which has very frequently been strongly impressed on the mind, together with a sense of the ineffable mis- ery of sinners that are exposed to this wrath, that has been overbearing: sometimes the exceeding pollution of the person’s own heart, as a sink of all manner of abomination, and a nest of vipers, and the dreadfulness of an

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1. Psalm 85.10. 2. God made the Covenant of Works with Adam, who then broke it. Jesus Christ made the Cove-

nant of Grace with fallen humanity, declaring that believers in him would be saved. 3. Exodus 3.14.

eternal hell of God’s wrath, opened to view both together; with a clear view of a desert of that misery, without the least degree of divine pity, and that by the pollution of the best duties; yea, only by the pollution and irrever- ence, and want of humility that attended once speaking of the holy name of God, when done in the best manner that ever it was done; the strength of the body very often taken away with a deep mourning for sin, as committed against so holy and good a God, sometimes with an affecting sense of actual sin, sometimes especially indwelling sin, sometimes the consideration of the sin of the heart as appearing in a par tic u lar thing, as for instance, in that there was no greater forwardness and readiness to self- denial for God and Christ, that had so denied himself for us; yea, sometimes the consideration of sin that was in only speaking one word concerning the in"nitely great and holy God, has been so affecting as to overcome the strength of nature: very great sense of the certain truth of the great things revealed in the Gos- pel; an overwhelming sense of the glory of the work of redemption, and the way of salvation by Jesus Christ; the glorious harmony of the divine attri- butes appearing therein, as that wherein “mercy and truth are met together, and righ teousness and peace have kissed each other”;1 a sight of the fulness and glorious suf"ciency of Christ, that has been so affecting as to overcome the body: a constant immovable trust in God through Christ, with a great sense of his strength and faithfulness, the sureness of his covenant,2 and the immutability of his promises, so that the everlasting mountains and per- petual hills have appeared as mere shadows to these things: sometimes the suf"ciency and faithfulness of God as the covenant God of his people, appearing in these words, “I am that I am,” 3 in so affecting a manner as to overcome the body: a sense of the glorious, unsearchable, unerring wisdom of God in his works, both of creation and providence, so as to swallow up the soul, and overcome the strength of the body: a sweet rejoicing of soul at the thoughts of God’s being in"nitely and unchangeably happy, and an exult- ing gladness of heart that God is self- suf"cient, and in"nitely above all dependence, and reigns over all, and does his will with absolute and uncon- trollable power and sovereignty; a sense of the glory of the Holy Spirit, as the great Comforter, so as to overwhelm both soul and body; only mention- ing the word, “the Comforter,” has immediately taken away all strength; that word, as the person expressed it, seemed great enough to "ll heaven and earth: a most vehement and passionate desire of the honor and glory of God’s name; a sensible, clear and constant preference of it not only to the person’s own temporal interest, but spiritual comfort in this world; and a willingness to suffer the hidings of God’s face, and to live and die in darkness and hor- ror if God’s honor should require it, and to have no other reward for it but that God’s name should be glori"ed, although so much of the sweetness of the light of God’s countenance had been experienced: a great lamenting of ingratitude, and the lowness of the degree of love to God, so as to deprive of bodily strength; and very often vehement longings and faintings after more love to Christ, and greater conformity to him; especially longing after these two things, viz. to be more perfect in humility and adoration; the desh

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4. Job 15.26. A buckler is a shield, and the boss is the convex side of the shield.

and heart seems often to cry out for a lying low before God, and adoring him with greater love and humility: the thoughts of the perfect humility with which the saints in heaven worship God, and fall down before his throne, have often overcome the body, and set it into a great agitation.

A great delight in singing praises to God and Jesus Christ, and longing that this pres ent life may be, as it were, one continued song of praise to God; longing, as the person expressed it, to sit and sing this life away; and an over- coming plea sure in the thoughts of spending an eternity in that exercise: a living by faith to a great degree; a constant and extraordinary distrust of own strength and wisdom; a great dependence on God for his help, in order to the per for mance of anything to God’s ac cep tance, and being restrained from the most horrid sins, and running upon God, even on his neck, and “on the thick bosses of his bucklers”:4 such a sense of the black ingratitude of true saints’ coldness and deadness in religion, and their setting their hearts on the things of this world, as to overcome the bodily frame: a great longing that all the children of God might be lively in religion, fervent in their love, and active in the ser vice of God; and when there have been appearances of it in others, rejoicing so in beholding the pleasing sight, that the joy of soul has been too great for the body: taking plea sure in the thoughts of watching and striving against sin, and "ghting through the way to heaven, and "lling up this life with hard labor, and bearing the cross for Christ, as an opportu- nity to give God honor; not desiring to rest from labors till arrived in heaven, but abhorring the thoughts of it, and seeming astonished that God’s own children should be backward to strive and deny themselves for God: earnest longings that all God’s people might be clothed with humility and meekness, like the Lamb of God, and feel nothing in their hearts but love and compas- sion to all mankind; and great grief when anything to the contrary seems to appear in any of the children of God, as any bitterness, or "erceness of zeal, or censoriousness, or redecting uncharitably on others, or disputing with any appearance of heat of spirit; a deep concern for the good of others’ souls; a melting compassion to those that looked on themselves as in a state of nature, and to saints under darkness, so as to cause the body to faint: an universal benevolence to mankind, with a longing as it were to embrace the whole world in the arms of pity and love; ideas of suffering from enemies the utmost conceivable rage and cruelty, with a disposition felt to fervent love and pity in such a case, so far as it could be realized in thought; fainting with pity to the world that lies in ignorance and wickedness; sometimes a disposition felt to a life given up to mourning alone in a wilderness over a lost and miserable world; compassion towards them being often to that degree, that would allow of no support or rest, but in going to God, and pouring out the soul in prayer for them; earnest desires that the work of God that is now in the land, may be carried on, and that with greater purity, and freedom from all bitter zeal, censoriousness, spiritual pride, hot disputes, etc.

A vehement and constant desire for the setting up of Christ’s kingdom through the earth, as a kingdom of holiness, purity, love, peace and happi- ness to mankind: the soul often entertained with unspeakable delight, and bodily strength overborne at the thoughts of heaven as a world of love, where

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5. As if.

love shall be the saints’ eternal food, and they shall dwell in the light of love, and swim in an ocean of love, and where the very air and breath will be noth- ing but love; love to the people of God, or God’s true saints, as such that have the image of Christ, and as those that will in a very little time shine in his perfect image, that has been attended with that endearment and one- ness of heart, and that sweetness and ravishment of soul, that has been alto- gether inexpressible; the strength very often taken away with longings that others might love God more, and serve God better, and have more of his comfortable presence, than the person that was the subject of these long- ings, desiring to follow the whole world to heaven, or that every one should go before, and be higher in grace and happiness, not by this person’s dimi- nution, but by others’ increase: a delight in conversing of things of religion, and in seeing Christians together, talking of the most spiritual and heav- enly things in religion, in a lively and feeling manner, and very frequently overcome with the plea sure of such conversation: a great sense often expressed, of the importance of the duty of charity to the poor, and how much the generality of Christians come short in the practice of it: a great sense of the need God’s ministers have of much of the Spirit of God, at this day especially; and most earnest longings and wrestlings with God for them, so as to take away the bodily strength: the greatest, fullest, longest contin- ued, and most constant assurance of the favor of God, and of a title to future glory, that ever I saw any appearance of in any person, enjoying, especially of late (to use the person’s own expression) the riches of full assurance: for- merly longing to die with something of impatience, but lately, since that resignation forementioned about three years ago, an uninterrupted entire resignation to God with re spect to life or death, sickness or health, ease or pain, which has remained unchanged and unshaken, when actually under extreme and violent pains, and in times of threatenings of immediate death; but though there be this patience and submission, yet the thoughts of death and the day of judgment are always exceeding sweet to the soul. This resig- nation is also attended with a constant resignation of the lives of dearest earthly friends; and sometimes when some of their lives have been immi- nently threatened, often expressing the sweetness of the liberty of having wholly left the world, and renounced all for God, and having nothing but God, in whom is an in"nite fulness.

These things have been attended with a constant sweet peace and calm and serenity of soul, without any cloud to interrupt it; a continual rejoicing in all the works of God’s hands, the works of nature, and God’s daily works of providence, all appearing with a sweet smile upon them; a wonderful access to God by prayer, as it were5 seeing him, and sensibly immediately conversing with him, as much oftentimes (to use the person’s own expres- sions) as if Christ were here on earth, sitting on a vis i ble throne, to be approached to and conversed with; frequent, plain, sensible and immediate answers of prayer; all tears wiped away; all former trou bles and sorrows of life forgotten, and all sorrow and sighing ded away, excepting grief for past sins and for remaining corruption, and that Christ is loved no more, and that God is no more honored in the world, and a compassionate grief towards

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6. Those who profess faith. 7. Family. 8. John Wesley (1703-1790) and his brother, Charles (1707-1788), were En glish clergymen

instrumental in founding Methodism. 9. Aware. 1. I.e., in super"cialities. 2. I.e., through poor clothing.

fellow creatures; a daily sensible doing and suffering every thing for God for a long time past, eating for God, and working for God, and sleeping for God, and bearing pain and trou ble for God, and doing all as the ser vice of love, and so doing it with a continual, uninterrupted cheerfulness, peace and joy. “Oh how good,” said the person once, “is it to work for God in the daytime, and at night to lie down under his smiles!” High experiences and religious affections in this person have not been attended with any disposition at all to neglect the necessary business of a secular calling, to spend the time in reading and prayer, and other exercises of devotion; but worldly business has been attended with great alacrity, as part of the ser vice of God: the person declaring that it being done thus, ’tis found to be as good as prayer. These things have been accompanied with an exceeding concern and zeal for moral duties, and that all professors6 may with them adorn the doctrine of God their Saviour; and an uncommon care to perform relative7 and social duties, and a noted eminence in them; a great inoffensiveness of life and conversa- tion in the sight of others; a great meekness, gentleness and benevolence of spirit and be hav ior; and a great alteration in those things that formerly used to be the person’s failings; seeming to be much overcome and swallowed up by the late great increase of grace, to the observation of those that are most conversant and most intimately acquainted: in times of the brightest light and highest dights of love and joy, "nding no disposition to any opinion of being now perfectly free from sin (agreeable to the notion of the Wesleys and their followers,8 and some other high pretenders to spirituality in these days); but exceedingly the contrary: at such times especially, seeing how loathsome and polluted the soul is, soul and body and every act and word appearing like rottenness and corruption in that pure and holy light of God’s glory: not slighting instruction or means of grace any more for having had great discoveries; on the contrary, never more sensible9 of the need of instruc- tion than now. And one thing more may be added, viz. that these things have been attended with a par tic u lar dislike of placing religion much in dress,1 and spending much zeal about those things that in themselves are matters of indifference, or an affecting to shew humility and devotion by a mean habit,2 or a demure and melancholy countenance, or anything singu- lar and superstitious.

Now if such things are enthusiasm, and the fruits of a distempered brain, let my brain be evermore possessed of that happy distemper! If this be dis- traction, I pray God that the world of mankind may be all seized with this benign, meek, bene"cent, beati"cal, glorious distraction!

1742

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1. Edwards delivered this sermon in Northamp- ton; it was published the following year at the request of his congregation. The text here is from The Works of Jonathan Edwards (1829–30), vol. 6, edited by Sereno E. Dwight. 2. Simon, son of Jona; also known as the Apostle Peter. 3. Matthew 16.14. Elias is the name used in the

New Testament for the prophet Elijah. 4. Abbreviation for videlicet: that is to say, namely (Latin). 5. A sect hostile to Jesus and known for their arrogance and pride (Matthew 9.9–13). “Scribes”: interpreters of the Jewish law. “Q.d.”: abbrevia- tion for quasi dicat: as if he should say (Latin).

A Divine and Supernatural Light1

immediately imparted to the soul by the spirit of god, shown to be both a scriptural and rational doctrine

Matthew 16.17 And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona;2 for "esh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven.

Christ addresses these words to Peter upon occasion of his professing his faith in Him as the Son of God. Our Lord was inquiring of His disciples, whom men said that He was; not that He needed to be informed, but only to introduce and give occasion to what follows. They answer that some said He was John the Baptist, and some Elias, and others Jeremias, or one of the prophets.3 When they had thus given an account whom others said that He was, Christ asks them, whom they said that He was? Simon Peter, whom we "nd always zealous and forward, was the "rst to answer: he readily replied to the question, Thou art Christ, the Son of the living God.

Upon this occasion, Christ says as He does to him and of him in the text: in which we may observe.

1. That Peter is pronounced blessed on this account.— Blessed art thou— “Thou art an happy man, that thou art not ignorant of this, that I am Christ, the Son of the living God. Thou art distinguishingly happy. Others are blinded, and have dark and deluded apprehensions, as you have now given an account, some thinking that I am Elias, and some that I am Jeremias, and some one thing, and some another: but none of them thinking right, all of them are misled. Happy art thou, that art so distinguished as to know the truth in this matter.”

2. The evidence of this his happiness declared, viz.,4 That God, and He only, had revealed it to him. This is an evidence of his being blessed.

First. As it shows how peculiarly favored he was of God above others; q.d., “How highly favored art thou, that others, wise and great men, the scribes, Pharisees,5 and rulers, and the nation in general, are left in darkness, to fol- low their own misguided apprehensions; and that thou shouldst be singled out, as it were, by name, that My heavenly Father should thus set His love on thee, Simon Bar- jona.— This argues thee blessed, that thou shouldst thus be the object of God’s distinguishing love.”

Secondly. It evidences his blessedness also, as it intimates that this knowl- edge is above any that desh and blood can reveal. “This is such knowledge as only my Father which is in heaven can give. It is too high and excellent to be communicated by such means as other knowledge is. Thou art blessed, that thou knowest what God alone can teach thee.”

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6. This Bible passage refers to God’s command to the people of Israel to make proper garments for Aaron’s priesthood.

7. Literally, turning something to pro"t; here, the lesson to be learned.

The original of this knowledge is here declared, both negatively and pos- itively. Positively, as God is here declared the author of it. Negatively, as it is declared, that desh and blood had not revealed it. God is the author of all knowledge and understanding whatsoever. He is the author of all moral pru- dence, and of the skill that men have in their secular business. Thus it is said of all in Israel that were wise- hearted and skilled in embroidering, that God had "lled them with the spirit of wisdom. Exodus 28.3.6

God is the author of such knowledge; yet so that desh and blood reveals it. Mortal men are capable of imparting the knowledge of human arts and sciences, and skill in temporal affairs. God is the author of such knowledge by those means: desh and blood is employed as the mediate or second cause of it; He conveys it by the power and induence of natu ral means. But this spiritual knowledge, spoken of in the text, is what God is the author of, and none else: He reveals it, and desh and blood reveals it not. He imparts this knowledge immediately, not making use of any intermediate natu ral causes, as He does in other knowledge.

What had passed in the preceding discourse naturally occasioned Christ to observe this; because the disciples had been telling how others did not know Him, but were generally mistaken about him, divided and confounded in their opinions of Him: but Peter had declared his assured faith, that He was the Son of God. Now it was natu ral to observe how it was not desh and blood that had revealed it to him, but God; for if this knowledge were depen- dent on natu ral causes or means, how came it to pass that they, a com pany of poor "shermen, illiterate men, and persons of low education, attained to the knowledge of the truth, while the Scribes and Pharisees, men of vastly higher advantages, and greater knowledge and sagacity, in other matters, remained in ignorance? This could be owing only to the gracious distinguish- ing induence and revelation of the Spirit of God. Hence, what I would make the subject of my pres ent discourse from these words, is this:

Doctrine

That there is such a thing as a spiritual and divine light, immediately imparted to the soul by God, of a dif fer ent nature from any that is obtained by natu ral means. And on this subject I would,

I. Show what this divine light is. II. How it is given immediately by God, and not obtained by natu ral means. III. Show the truth of the doctrine. And then conclude with a brief improvement.7

I. I would show what this spiritual and divine light is. And in order to it would show,

First, In a few things, what it is not. And here, 1. Those convictions that natu ral men may have of their sin and misery,

is not this spiritual and divine light. Men, in a natu ral condition, may have

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8. Those who are not yet saved. 9. Here, a living Christian who has passed from mere understanding of Christ’s doctrine to heart- felt commitment; such people were often called

“vis i ble saints.” 1. “ These be they who separate themselves, sen- sual, having not the Spirit.”

convictions of the guilt that lies upon them, and of the anger of God, and their danger of divine vengeance. Such convictions are from the light of truth. That some sinners have a greater conviction of their guilt and misery than others is because some have more light, or more of an apprehension of truth than others. And this light and conviction may be from the Spirit of God; the Spirit convinces men of sin; but yet nature is much more concerned in it than in the communication of that spiritual and divine light that is spo- ken of in the doctrine; it is from the Spirit of God only as assisting natu ral princi ples, and not as infusing any new princi ples. Common grace differs from special in that it induences only by assisting of nature, and not by imparting grace, or bestowing anything above nature. The light that is obtained is wholly natu ral, or of no superior kind to what mere nature attains to, though more of that kind be obtained than would be obtained if men were left wholly to themselves; or, in other words, common grace only assists the faculties of the soul to do that more fully which they do by nature, as natu ral conscience or reason will by mere nature make a man sensible of guilt, and will accuse and condemn him when he has done amiss. Conscience is a princi ple natu ral to men; and the work that it doth naturally, or of itself, is to give an apprehension of right and wrong, and to suggest to the mind the relation that there is between right and wrong and a retribution. The Spirit of God, in those convictions which unregenerate men8 sometimes have, assists conscience to do this work in a further degree than it would do if they were left to themselves. He helps it against those things that tend to stupify it, and obstruct its exercise. But in the renewing and sanctifying work of the Holy Ghost, those things are wrought in the soul that are above nature, and of which there is nothing of the like kind in the soul by nature; and they are caused to exist in the soul habitually, and according to such a stated constitution or law, that lays such a foundation for exercises in a continued course, as is called a princi ple of nature. Not only are remaining princi ples assisted to do their work more freely and fully, but those princi ples are restored that were utterly destroyed by the fall; and the mind thenceforward habitually exerts those acts that the dominion of sin had made it as wholly destitute of as a dead body is of vital acts.

The Spirit of God acts in a very dif fer ent manner in the one case, from what He doth in the other. He may, indeed, act upon the mind of a natu ral man, but He acts in the mind of a saint9 as an indwelling vital princi ple. He acts upon the mind of an unregenerate person as an extrinsic occasional agent; for, in acting upon them, He doth not unite himself to them: for, notwithstanding all His induences that they may possess, they are still sen- sual, having not the Spirit. Jude 19.1 But He unites himself with the mind of a saint, takes him for His temple, actuates and induences him as a new supernatural princi ple of life and action. There is this difference, that the Spirit of God, in acting in the soul of a godly man, exerts and communi- cates Himself there in His own proper nature. Holiness is the proper nature

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2. Genesis 1.2. 3. Satan, a fallen angel, is also known as Lucifer (from the Latin for “bringing light” and originally associated with the morning star, Venus).

4. People who erroneously claim to be inspired by the spirit of God. 5. Emotionally arousing.

of the Spirit of God. The Holy Spirit operates in the minds of the godly, by uniting Himself to them, and living in them, and exerting His own nature in the exercise of their faculties. The Spirit of God may act upon a creature, and yet not in acting communicate Himself. The Spirit of God may act upon inanimate creatures, as, the Spirit moved upon the face of the waters,2 in the beginning of the creation; so the Spirit of God may act upon the minds of men many ways, and communicate Himself no more than when He acts upon an inanimate creature. For instance, He may excite thoughts in them, may assist their natu ral reason and understanding, or may assist other natu ral princi ples, and this without any union with the soul, but may act, as it were, upon an external object. But as He acts in His holy indu- ences and spiritual operations, He acts in a way of peculiar communication of Himself; so that the subject is thence denominated spiritual.

2. This spiritual and divine light does not consist in any impression made upon the imagination. It is no impression upon the mind, as though one saw anything with the bodily eyes. It is no imagination or idea of an out- ward light or glory, or any beauty of form or countenance, or a vis i ble luster or brightness of any object. The imagination may be strongly impressed with such things; but this is not spiritual light. Indeed when the mind has a lively discovery of spiritual things, and is greatly affected with the power of divine light, it may, and prob ably very commonly doth, much affect the imagination; so that impressions of an outward beauty or brightness may accompany those spiritual discoveries. But spiritual light is not that impres- sion upon the imagination, but an exceedingly dif fer ent thing. Natu ral men may have lively impressions on their imaginations; and we cannot deter- mine but that the devil, who transforms himself into an angel of light,3 may cause imaginations of an outward beauty, or vis i ble glory, and of sounds and speeches, and other such things; but these are things of a vastly infe- rior nature to spiritual light.

3. This spiritual light is not the suggesting of any new truths or proposi- tions not contained in the word of God. This suggesting of new truths or doctrines to the mind, in de pen dent of any antecedent revelations of those propositions, either in word or writing, is inspiration; such as the prophets and apostles had, and such as some enthusiasts4 pretend to. But this spiri- tual light that I am speaking of, is quite a dif fer ent thing from inspiration. It reveals no new doctrine, it suggests no new proposition to the mind, it teaches no new thing of God, or Christ, or another world, not taught in the Bible, but only gives a due apprehension of those things that are taught in the word of God.

4. It is not every affecting5 view that men have of religious things that is this spiritual and divine light. Men by mere princi ples of nature are capable of being affected with things that have a special relation to religion as well as other things. A person by mere nature, for instance, may be liable to be affected with the story of Jesus Christ, and the sufferings he underwent, as well as by any other tragical story. He may be the more affected with it from

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6. Fanciful, imaginary. 7. I.e., evil.

8. Aware.

the interest he conceives mankind to have in it. Yea, he may be affected with it without believing it; as well as a man may be affected with what he reads in a romance, or sees acted in a stage play. He may be affected with a lively and eloquent description of many pleasant things that attend the state of the blessed in heaven, as well as his imagination be entertained by a romantic6 description of the pleasantness of fairyland, or the like. And a common belief of the truth of such things, from education or other wise, may help forward their affection. We read in Scripture of many that were greatly affected with things of a religious nature, who yet are there repre- sented as wholly graceless, and many of them very ill7 men. A person there- fore may have affecting views of the things of religion, and yet be very destitute of spiritual light. Flesh and blood may be the author of this; one man may give another an affecting view of divine things with but common assistance; but God alone can give a spiritual discovery of them.— But I proceed to show.

Secondly, Positively what this spiritual and divine light is. And it may be thus described: A true sense of the divine excellency of the

things revealed in the word of God, and a conviction of the truth and real ity of them thence arising. This spiritual light primarily consists in the former of these, viz., a real sense and apprehension of the divine excellency of things revealed in the word of God. A spiritual and saving conviction of the truth and real ity of these things, arises from such a sight of their divine excellency and glory; so that this conviction of their truth is an effect and natu ral consequence of this sight of their divine glory. There is therefore in this spiritual light,

1. A true sense of the divine and superlative excellency of the things of religion; a real sense of the excellency of God and Jesus Christ, and of the work of redemption, and the ways and works of God revealed in the gospel. There is a divine and superlative glory in these things; an excellency that is of a vastly higher kind, and more sublime nature than in other things; a glory greatly distinguishing them from all that is earthly and temporal. He that is spiritually enlightened truly apprehends and sees it, or has a sense of it. He does not merely rationally believe that God is glorious, but he has a sense of the gloriousness of God in his heart. There is not only a rational belief that God is holy, and that holiness is a good thing, but there is a sense of the loveliness of God’s holiness. There is not only a speculatively judging that God is gracious, but a sense how amiable God is on account of the beauty of this divine attribute.

There is a twofold knowledge of good of which God has made the mind of man capable. The "rst, that which is merely notional; as when a person only speculatively judges that anything is, which by the agreement of mankind, is called good or excellent, viz., that which is most to general advantage, and between which and a reward there is a suitableness,— and the like. And the other is, that which consists in the sense of the heart; as when the heart is sensible8 of plea sure and delight in the presence of the idea of it. In the former is exercised merely the speculative faculty, or the

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understanding, in distinction from the will or disposition of the soul. In the latter, the will, or inclination, or heart, are mainly concerned.

Thus there is a difference between having an opinion, that God is holy and gracious, and having a sense of the loveliness and beauty of that holi- ness and grace. There is a difference between having a rational judgment that honey is sweet, and having a sense of its sweetness. A man may have the former, that knows not how honey tastes; but a man cannot have the latter unless he has an idea of the taste of honey in his mind. So there is a difference between believing that a person is beautiful, and having a sense of his beauty. The former may be obtained by hearsay, but the latter only by seeing the countenance. When the heart is sensible of the beauty and ami- ableness of a thing, it necessarily feels plea sure in the apprehension. It is implied in a person’s being heartily sensible of the loveliness of a thing, that the idea of it is pleasant to his soul; which is a far dif fer ent thing from hav- ing a rational opinion that it is excellent.

2. There arises from this sense of the divine excellency of things contained in the word of God, a conviction of the truth and real ity of them; and that, either indirectly or directly.

First, Indirectly, and that two ways: 1. As the prejudices of the heart, against the truth of divine things, are

hereby removed; so that the mind becomes susceptive of the due force of rational arguments for their truth. The mind of man is naturally full of prej- udices against divine truth. It is full of enmity against the doctrines of the gospel; which is a disadvantage to those arguments that prove their truth, and causes them to lose their force upon the mind. But when a person has discovered to him the divine excellency of Christian doctrines, this destroys the enmity, removes those prejudices, sancti"es the reason, and causes it to lie open to the force of arguments for their truth.

Hence was the dif fer ent effect that Christ’s miracles had to convince the disciples, from what they had to convince the Scribes and Pharisees. Not that they had a stronger reason, or had their reason more improved; but their reason was sancti"ed, and those blinding prejudices, that the Scribes and Pharisees were under, were removed by the sense they had of the excel- lency of Christ, and his doctrine.

It not only removes the hindrances of reason, but positively helps reason. It makes even the speculative notions more lively. It engages the attention of the mind, with more "xedness and intenseness to that kind of objects; which causes it to have a clearer view of them, and enables it more clearly to see their mutual relations, and occasions it to take more notice of them. The ideas themselves that other wise are dim and obscure are by this means impressed with the greater strength, and have a light cast upon them, so that the mind can better judge of them. As he that beholds objects on the face of the earth, when the light of the sun is cast upon them, is under greater advantage to discern them in their true forms and natu ral relations, than he that sees them in a dim twilight.

The mind, being sensible of the excellency of divine objects, dwells upon them with delight; and the powers of the soul are more awakened and enliv- ened to employ themselves in the contemplation of them, and exert them- selves more fully and much more to the purpose. The beauty of the objects draws on the faculties, and draws forth their exercises; so that reason itself

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9. “But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost: In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is

the image of God, should shine unto them.” 1. “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face.”

is under far greater advantages for its proper and free exercises, and to attain its proper end, free of darkness and delusion.— But,

Secondly, A true sense of the divine excellency of the things of God’s word doth more directly and immediately convince us of their truth; and that because the excellency of these things is so superlative. There is a beauty in them so divine and godlike, that it greatly and evidently distinguishes them from things merely human, or that of which men are the inventors and authors; a glory so high and great, that when clearly seen, commands assent to their divine real ity. When there is an actual and lively discovery of this beauty and excellency, it will not allow of any such thought as that it is the fruit of men’s invention. This is a kind of intuitive and immediate evi- dence. They believe the doctrines of God’s word to be divine, because they see a divine, and transcendent, and most evidently distinguishing glory in them; such a glory as, if clearly seen, does not leave room to doubt of their being of God, and not of men.

Such a conviction of the truths of religion as this, arising from a sense of their divine excellency, is included in saving faith. And this original of it is that by which it is most essentially distinguished from that common assent, of which unregenerate men are capable.

II. I proceed now to the second thing proposed, viz., to show how this light is immediately given by God, and not obtained by natu ral means. And here,

1. It is not intended that the natu ral faculties are not used in it. They are the subject of this light: and in such a manner, that they are not merely pas- sive, but active in it. God, in letting in this light into the soul, deals with man according to his nature, and makes use of his rational faculties. But yet this light is not the less immediately from God for that; the faculties are made use of as the subject, and not as the cause. As the use we make of our eyes in beholding vari ous objects, when the sun arises, is not the cause of the light that discovers those objects to us.

2. It is not intended that outward means have no concern in this affair. It is not in this affair, as in inspiration, where new truths are suggested; for, by this light is given only a due apprehension of the same truths that are revealed in the word of God, and therefore it is not given without the word. The gospel is employed in this affair. This light is the “light of the glorious gospel of Christ” (2 Corinthians 4.3–4).9 The gospel is as a glass, by which this light is conveyed to us (1 Corinthians 13.12): “Now we see through a glass.”1— But,

3. When it is said that this light is given immediately by God, and not obtained by natu ral means, hereby is intended that it is given by God with- out making use of any means that operate by their own power or natu ral force. God makes use of means; but it is not as mediate causes to produce this effect. There are not truly any second causes of it; but it is produced by God immediately. The word of God is no proper cause of this effect, but is made use of only to convey to the mind the subject matter of this saving

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instruction: And this indeed it doth convey to us by natu ral force or indu- ence. It conveys to our minds these doctrines; it is the cause of a notion of them in our heads, but not of the sense of their divine excellency in our hearts. Indeed a person cannot have spiritual light without the word. But that does not argue, that the word properly causes that light. The mind can- not see the excellency of any doctrine, unless that doctrine be "rst in the mind; but seeing the excellency of the doctrine may be immediately from the Spirit of God; though the conveying of the doctrine, or proposition, itself, may be by the word. So that the notions which are the subject matter of this light are conveyed to the mind by the word of God; but that due sense of the heart, wherein this light formally consists, is immediately by the Spirit of God. As, for instance, the notion that there is a Christ, and that Christ is holy and gracious, is conveyed to the mind by the word of God: But the sense of the excellency of Christ, by reason of that holiness and grace, is nevertheless, immediately the work of the Holy Spirit.— I come now,

III. To show the truth of the doctrine; that is, to show that there is such a thing as that spiritural light that has been described, thus immediately let into the mind by God. And here I would show, briedy, that this doctrine is both scriptural and rational.

First, It is scriptural. My text is not only full to the purpose, but it is a doctrine with which the Scripture abounds. We are there abundantly taught, that the saints differ from the ungodly in this; that they have the knowledge of God, and a sight of God, and of Jesus Christ. I shall mention but few texts out of many: 1 John 3.6: “Whosoever sinneth, hath not seen him, nor known him.” 3 John 11: “He that doeth good, is of God: but he that doeth evil, hath not seen God.” John 14.19: “The world seeth me no more; but ye see me.” John 17.3: “And this is eternal life, that they might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent.” This knowledge, or sight of God and Christ, cannot be a mere speculative knowl- edge, because it is spoken of as that wherein they differ from the ungodly. And by these scriptures, it must not only be a dif fer ent knowledge in degree and circumstances, and dif fer ent in its effects, but it must be entirely dif- fer ent in nature and kind.

And this light and knowledge is always spoken of as immediately given of God; Matthew 11.25–27: “At that time, Jesus answered and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes. Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in thy sight. All things are delivered unto me of my Father: and no man knoweth the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him.” Here this effect is ascribed exclu- sively to the arbitrary operation and gift of God bestowing this knowledge on whom He will, and distinguishing those with it who have the least natu- ral advantage or means for knowledge, even babes, when it is denied to the wise and prudent. And imparting this knowledge is here appropriated to the Son of God, as His sole prerogative. And again, 2 Corinthians 4.6: “For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God, in the face of Jesus Christ.” This plainly shows, that there is a discovery of the divine super- lative glory and excellency of God and Christ, peculiar to the saints: and,

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2. The waters of the Red Sea divided for the Israelites in their exodus from Egypt (Exodus 14.21). 3. The agreement between Jesus Christ and

those who believe in him that they would be saved; also known as the Covenant of Faith, as distinct from the Covenant of Works, which Adam broke.

also, that it is as immediately from God, as light from the sun, and that it is the immediate effect of His power and will. For it is compared to God’s creating the light by his power ful word in the beginning of the creation; and is said to be by the Spirit of the Lord, in the 18th verse of the preceding chapter. God is spoken of as giving the knowledge of Christ in conversion, as of what before was hidden and unseen; Galatians 1.15–16: “But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother’s womb, and called me by his grace, to reveal his son in me.” The scripture also speaks plainly of such a knowledge of the word of God, as has been described as the immediate gift of God; Psalm 119.18: “Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold won- drous things out of thy law.” What could the Psalmist mean, when he begged of God to open his eyes? Was he ever blind? Might he not have resort to the law, and see every word and sentence in it when he pleased? And what could he mean by those wondrous things? Were they the wonder- ful stories of the creation, and deluge, and Israel’s passing through the Red Sea,2 and the like? Were not his eyes open to read these strange things when he would? Doubtless, by wondrous things in God’s law, he had re spect to those distinguishing and wonderful excellencies, and marvelous mani- festations of the divine perfections and glory contained in the commands and doctrines of the word, and those works and counsels of God that were there revealed. So the scripture speaks of a knowledge of God’s dispensa- tion, and covenant of mercy,3 and way of grace towards His people, as pecu- liar to the saints, and given only by God; Psalm 25.14: “The secret of the Lord is with them that fear him; and he will show them his covenant.”

And that a true and saving belief of the truth of religion is that which arises from such a discovery is, also, what the scripture teaches. As John 6.40: “And this is the will of him that sent me, that every one who seeth the Son, and believeth on him, may have everlasting life”; where it is plain that a true faith is what arises from a spiritual sight of Christ. And John 17.6–8: “I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world. Now, they have known, that all things whatsoever thou hast given me, are of thee. For I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me, and they have received them, and have known surely, that I came out from thee, and they have believed that thou didst send me”; where Christ’s manifesting God’s name to the disciples, or giving them the knowledge of God, was that whereby they knew that Christ’s doctrine was of God, and that Christ Himself proceeded from Him, and was sent by Him. Again, John 12.44–46: “Jesus cried, and said, He that believeth on me, believeth not on me but on him that sent me. And he that seeth me, seeth him that sent me. I am come a light into the world, that whosoever believeth on me, should not abide in darkness.” Their believing in Christ, and spiritually see- ing Him, are parallel.

Christ condemns the Jews, that they did not know that He was the Messiah, and that His doctrine was true, from an inward distinguishing taste and relish of what was divine, in Luke 12.56–57. He having there blamed

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4. Capable of being grasped by the mind, understandable. 5. In Matthew 17.1–8, Christ appeared to Peter,

James, and John shining “as the sun” and his garments “white as the light.” 6. See Revelation 4.

the Jews, that, though they could discern the face of the sky and of the earth, and signs of the weather, that yet they could not discern those times—or, as it is expressed in Matthew, the signs of those times— adds, “yea, and why even of your ownselves, judge ye not what is right?” i.e., without extrinsic signs. Why have ye not that sense of true excellency, whereby ye may distin- guish that which is holy and divine? Why have ye not that savor of the things of God, by which you may see the distinguishing glory, and evident divinity of me and my doctrine?

The apostle Peter mentions it as what gave him and his companions good and well- grounded assurance of the truth of the gospel, that they had seen the divine glory of Christ. 2 Peter 1.16: “For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eye- witnesses of his majesty.” The apostle has re spect to that vis i ble glory of Christ which they saw in His trans"gura- tion. That glory was so divine, having such an ineffable appearance and semblance of divine holiness, majesty, and grace, that it evidently denoted Him to be a divine person. But if a sight of Christ’s outward glory might give a rational assurance of His divinity, why may not an apprehension of His spiritual glory do so too? Doubtless Christ’s spiritual glory is in itself as distinguishing, and as plainly shows His divinity, as His outward glory— nay, a great deal more, for His spiritual glory is that wherein His divinity consists; and the outward glory of His trans"guration showed Him to be divine, only as it was a remarkable image or repre sen ta tion of that spiritual glory. Doubtless, therefore, he that has had a clear sight of the spiritual glory of Christ, may say, “I have not followed cunningly devised fables, but have been an eyewitness of His majesty, upon as good grounds as the apos- tle, when he had re spect to the outward glory of Christ that he had seen.” But this brings me to what was proposed next, viz., to show that,

Secondly, This doctrine is rational.4 1. It is rational to suppose, that there is really such an excellency in divine

things—so transcendent and exceedingly dif fer ent from what is in other things— that if it were seen, would most evidently distinguish them. We cannot rationally doubt but that things divine, which appertain to the supreme Being, are vastly dif fer ent from things that are human; that there is a high, glorious, and godlike excellency in them that does most remarkably difference them from the things that are of men, insomuch that if the difference were but seen, it would have a convincing, satisfying indu- ence upon anyone that they are divine. What reason can be offered against it unless we would argue that God is not remarkably distinguished in glory from men.

If Christ should now appear to any one as he did on the mount at His trans"guration,5 or if He should appear to the world in His heavenly glory, as He will do at the Day of Judgment,6 without doubt, His glory and majesty would be such as would satisfy every one that He was a divine person, and that His religion was true; and it would be a most reasonable, and well grounded conviction too. And why may there not be that stamp of divinity

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7. Composition. 8. Low, unethical.

or divine glory on the word of God, on the scheme and doctrine of the gospel, that may be in like manner distinguishing and as rationally convincing, provided it be but seen? It is rational to suppose, that when God speaks to the world, there should be something in His word vastly dif fer ent from men’s word. Supposing that God never had spoken to the world, but we had notice that He was about to reveal Himself from heaven and speak to us immediately Himself, or that He should give us a book of His own inditing;7 after what manner should we expect that He would speak? Would it not be rational to suppose, that His speech would be exceeding dif fer ent from men’s speech, that there should be such an excellency and sublimity in His word, such a stamp of wisdom, holiness, majesty, and other divine perfec- tions, that the word of men, yea of the wisest of men, should appear mean8 and base in comparison of it? Doubtless it would be thought rational to expect this, and unreasonable to think other wise. When a wise man speaks in the exercise of His wisdom, there is something in every thing He says, that is very distinguishable from the talk of a little child. So, without doubt, and much more is the speech of God, to be distinguished from that of the wisest of men; agreeable to Jeremiah 23.28–29. God, having there been reproving the false prophets that prophesied in his name, and pretended that what they spake was His word, when indeed it was their own word, says, “The prophet that hath a dream, let him tell a dream; and he that hath my word let him speak my word faithfully: what is the chaff to the wheat? saith the Lord. Is not my word like as a "re? saith the Lord: and like a ham- mer that breaketh the rock in pieces?”

2. If there be such a distinguishing excellency in divine things, it is ratio- nal to suppose that there may be such a thing as seeing it. What should hinder but that it may be seen? It is no argument that there is no such dis- tinguishing excellency, or that it cannot be seen, because some do not see it, though they may be discerning men in temporal matters. It is not ratio- nal to suppose, if there be any such excellency in divine things, that wicked men should see it. Is it rational to suppose that those whose minds are full of spiritual pollution, and under the power of "lthy lusts, should have any relish or sense of divine beauty or excellency; or that their minds should be susceptive of that light that is in its own nature so pure and heav- enly? It need not seem at all strange that sin should so blind the mind, see- ing that men’s par tic u lar natu ral tempers and dispositions will so much blind them in secular matters; as when men’s natu ral temper is melancholy, jealous, fearful, proud, or the like.

3. It is rational to suppose that this knowledge should be given immedi- ately by God, and not be obtained by natu ral means. Upon what account should it seem unreasonable that there should be any immediate communi- cation between God and the creature? It is strange, that men should make any matter of dif"culty of it. Why should not He that made all things still have something immediately to do with the things that He has made? Where lies the great dif"culty, if we own the being of a God, and that He created all things out of nothing, of allowing some immediate induence of God on the creation still? And if it be reasonable to suppose it with re spect

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9. I.e., it is through reason that God communicates grace via things and persons (i.e., “means”).

to any part of the creation, it is especially so with re spect to reasonable, intelligent creatures; who are next to God in the gradation of the dif fer ent orders of beings, and whose business is most immediately with God; and reason teaches that man was made to serve and glorify his Creator. And if it be rational to suppose that God immediately communicates Himself to man in any affair, it is in this. It is rational to suppose that God would reserve that knowledge and wisdom, which is of such a divine and excellent nature, to be bestowed immediately by Himself, and that it should not be left in the power of second causes. Spiritual wisdom and grace is the high- est and most excellent gift that ever God bestows on any creature; in this, the highest excellency and perfection of a rational creature consists. It is also im mensely the most impor tant of all divine gifts: it is that wherein man’s happiness consists, and on which his everlasting welfare depends. How rational is it to suppose that God, however He has left lower gifts to second causes, and in some sort in their power, yet should reserve this most excellent, divine, and impor tant of all divine communications in His own hands to be bestowed immediately by Himself, as a thing too great for second causes to be concerned in. It is rational to suppose that this blessing should be immediately from God, for there is no gift or bene"t that is in itself so nearly related to the divine nature. Nothing which the creature receives is so much a participation of the Deity; it is a kind of emanation of God’s beauty, and is related to God as the light is to the sun. It is, therefore, congruous and "t, that when it is given of God, it should be immediately from Himself, and by Himself, according to His own sovereign will.

It is rational to suppose, that it should be beyond man’s power to obtain this light by the mere strength of natu ral reason; for it is not a thing that belongs to reason to see the beauty and loveliness of spiritual things; it is not a speculative thing, but depends on the sense of the heart. Reason, indeed, is necessary, in order to it, as it is by reason only that we are become the subjects of the means of it; which means, I have already shown to be necessary in order to it, though they have no proper causal induence in the affair.9 It is by reason that we become possessed of a notion of those doc- trines that are the subject matter of this divine light or knowledge; and reason may many ways be indirectly and remotely an advantage to it. Rea- son has also to do in the acts that are immediately consequent on this dis- covery: for, seeing the truth of religion from hence, is by reason, though it be but by one step, and the inference be immediate. So reason has to do in that accepting of and trusting in Christ that is consequent on it. But if we take reason strictly— not for the faculty of mental perception in general, but for ratiocination, or a power of inferring by arguments— the perceiving of spiritual beauty and excellency no more belongs to reason than it belongs to the sense of feeling to perceive colors, or to the power of seeing to per- ceive the sweetness of food. It is out of reason’s province to perceive the beauty or loveliness of anything; such a perception does not belong to that faculty. Reason’s work is to perceive truth and not excellency. It is not ratio- cination that gives men the perception of the beauty and amiableness of a countenance, though it may be many ways indirectly an advantage to it; yet

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it is no more reason that immediately perceives it than it is reason that per- ceives the sweetness of honey; it depends on the sense of the heart. Reason may determine that a countenance is beautiful to others, it may determine that honey is sweet to others, but it will never give me a perception of its sweetness.

I will conclude with a very brief improvement of what has been said. First, this doctrine may lead us to redect on the goodness of God, that

has so ordered it, that a saving evidence of the truth of the Gospel is such as is attainable by persons of mean capacities and advantages, as well as those that are of the greatest parts and learning. If the evidence of the Gos- pel depended only on history and such reasonings as learned men only are capable of, it would be above the reach of far the greatest part of mankind. But persons with an ordinary degree of knowledge are capable, without a long and subtle train of reasoning, to see the divine excellency of the things of religion; they are capable of being taught by the Spirit of God, as well as learned men. The evidence that is this way obtained is vastly better and more satisfying than all that can be obtained by the arguings of those that are most learned and greatest masters of reason. And babes are as capable of knowing these things as the wise and prudent; and they are often hid from these when they are revealed to those. 1 Corinthians 1.26–27: “For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men, after the desh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called. But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world.”

Secondly, This doctrine may well put us upon examining ourselves, whether we have ever had this divine light let into our souls. If there be such a thing, doubtless it is of great importance whether we have thus been taught by the Spirit of God; whether the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, hath shined unto us, giving us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ; whether we have seen the Son, and believed on Him, or have that faith of gospel doc- trines which arises from a spiritual sight of Christ.

Thirdly, All may hence be exhorted earnestly to seek this spiritual light. To induence and move to it, the following things may be considered.

1. This is the most excellent and divine wisdom that any creature is capa- ble of. It is more excellent than any human learning; it is far more excellent than all the knowledge of the greatest phi los o phers or statesmen. Yea, the least glimpse of the glory of God in the face of Christ doth more exalt and ennoble the soul than all the knowledge of those that have the greatest speculative understanding in divinity without grace. This knowledge has the most noble object that can be, viz., the divine glory and excellency of God and Christ. The knowledge of these objects is that wherein consists the most excellent knowledge of the angels, yea, of God Himself.

2. This knowledge is that which is above all others sweet and joyful. Men have a great deal of plea sure in human knowledge, in studies of natu ral things; but this is nothing to that joy which arises from this divine light shin- ing into the soul. This light gives a view of those things that are im mensely the most exquisitely beautiful and capable of delighting the eye of the under- standing. The spiritual light is the dawning of the light of glory in the heart. There is nothing so power ful as this to support persons in afdiction, and to give the mind peace and brightness in this stormy and dark world.

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1. Draw us away. 2. Union. 1. Edwards delivered this sermon in En"eld, Connecticut, a town about thirty miles south of Northampton. According to Benjamin Trumbull’s A Complete History of Connecticut (1797, 1818), Edwards read his sermon in a level voice with his sermon book in his left hand, and in spite of his calm, “ there was such a breathing of distress, and weeping, that the preacher was obliged to speak to the people and desire silence, that he might be heard.” The text here is from The Works of Jona- than Edwards (1829–30), vol. 7, edited by Sereno E. Dwight. 2. “To me belongeth vengeance, and recom-

pense; their foot shall slide in due time: for the day of their calamity is at hand, and the things that shall come upon them make haste.” 3. I.e., the Ten Commandments. 4. “For they are a nation void of counsel, neither is there any understanding in them” (Deuteron- omy 32.28). 5. “For their vine is of the vine of Sodom, and the "elds of Gomorrah: their grapes are grapes of gall, their clusters are bitter: Their wine is the poison of dragons, and the cruel venom of asps” (Deuteronomy 32.32–33). Sodom and Gomorrah were wicked cities destroyed by a rain of "re and sulfur from heaven (Genesis 19.24).

3. This light is such as effectually induences the inclination and changes the nature of the soul. It assimilates our nature to the divine nature, and changes the soul into an image of the same glory that is beheld. 2 Corinthi- ans 3.18: “But we all with open face, beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image, from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.” This knowledge will wean1 from the world, and raise the inclination to heavenly things. It will turn the heart to God as the foun- tain of good, and to choose Him for the only portion. This light, and this only, will bring the soul to a saving close2 with Christ. It conforms the heart to the gospel, morti"es its enmity and opposition against the scheme of salva- tion therein revealed; it causes the heart to embrace the joyful tidings, and entirely to adhere to, and acquiesce in, the revelation of Christ as our Savior; it causes the whole soul to accord and symphonize with it, admitting it with entire credit and re spect, cleaving to it with full inclination and affec- tion; and it effectually disposes the soul to give up itself entirely to Christ.

4. This light, and this only, has its fruit in an universal holiness of life. No merely notional or speculative understanding of the doctrines of reli- gion will ever bring to this. But this light, as it reaches the bottom of the heart, and changes the nature, so it will effectually dispose to an universal obedience. It shows God as worthy to be obeyed and served. It draws forth the heart in a sincere love to God, which is the only princi ple of a true, gra- cious, and universal obedience, and it convinces of the real ity of those glorious rewards that God has promised to them that obey Him.

1733 1734

Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God1

Deuteronomy 32.35 Their foot shall slide in due time.2

In this verse is threatened the vengeance of God on the wicked unbelieving Israelites, who were God’s vis i ble people, and who lived under the means of grace,3 but who, notwithstanding all God’s wonderful works towards them, remained (as in verse 28)4 void of counsel, having no understanding in them. Under all the cultivations of heaven, they brought forth bitter and poison- ous fruit, as in the two verses next preceding the text.5 The expression I have

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6. Lack. 7. I.e., rescue others.

chosen for my text, “Their foot shall slide in due time,” seems to imply the following things, relating to the punishment and destruction to which these wicked Israelites were exposed.

1. That they were always exposed to destruction; as one that stands or walks in slippery places is always exposed to fall. This is implied in the man- ner of their destruction coming upon them, being represented by their foot sliding. The same is expressed, Psalm 73.18: “Surely thou didst set them in slippery places; thou castedst them down into destruction.”

2. It implies that they were always exposed to sudden unexpected destruc- tion. As he that walks in slippery places is every moment liable to fall, he cannot foresee one moment whether he shall stand or fall the next; and when he does fall, he falls at once without warning: which is also expressed in Psalm 73.18–19: “Surely thou didst set them in slippery places; thou cast- edst them down into destruction: How are they brought into desolation as in a moment!”

3. Another thing implied is, that they are liable to fall of themselves, with- out being thrown down by the hand of another; as he that stands or walks on slippery ground needs nothing but his own weight to throw him down.

4. That the reason why they are not fallen already, and do not fall now, is only that God’s appointed time is not come. For it is said that when that due time, or appointed times comes, their foot shall slide. Then they shall be left to fall, as they are inclined by their own weight. God will not hold them up in these slippery places any longer, but will let them go; and then, at that very instant, they shall fall into destruction; as he that stands on such slip- pery declining ground, on the edge of a pit, he cannot stand alone, when he is let go he immediately falls and is lost.

The observation from the words that I would now insist upon is this. “ There is nothing that keeps wicked men at any one moment out of hell, but the mere plea sure of God.” By the mere plea sure of God, I mean His sover- eign plea sure, His arbitrary will, restrained by no obligation, hindered by no manner of dif"culty, any more than if nothing else but God’s mere will had in the least degree, or in any re spect whatsoever, any hand in the pres- ervation of wicked men one moment. The truth of this observation may appear by the following considerations.

1. There is no want6 of power in God to cast wicked men into hell at any moment. Men’s hands cannot be strong when God rises up. The strongest have no power to resist Him, nor can any deliver7 out of His hands. He is not only able to cast wicked men into hell, but He can most easily do it. Sometimes an earthly prince meets with a great deal of dif"culty to subdue a rebel, who has found means to fortify himself, and has made himself strong by the numbers of his followers. But it is not so with God. There is no for- tress that is any defense from the power of God. Though hand join in hand, and vast multitudes of God’s enemies combine and associate themselves, they are easily broken in pieces. They are as great heaps of light chaff before the whirlwind; or large quantities of dry stubble before devouring dames. We "nd it easy to tread on and crush a worm that we see crawling on the earth; so it is easy for us to cut or singe a slender thread that any thing

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8. A legal phrase referring to the phase after an arraignment, when the accused is sent to trial. Here, it means condemned.

9. Sharpened. 1. “Or if he shall ask an egg, will he offer him a scorpion?”

hangs by: thus easy is it for God, when he pleases, to cast His enemies down to hell. What are we, that we should think to stand before Him, at whose rebuke the earth trembles, and before whom the rocks are thrown down?

2. They deserve to be cast into hell; so that divine justice never stands in the way, it makes no objection against God’s using His power at any moment to destroy them. Yea, on the contrary, justice calls aloud for an in"nite pun- ishment of their sins. Divine justice says of the tree that brings forth such grapes of Sodom, “Cut it down, why cumbereth it the ground?” Luke 13.7. The sword of divine justice is every moment brandished over their heads, and it is nothing but the hand of arbitrary mercy, and God’s will, that holds it back.

3. They are already under a sentence of condemnation to hell. They do not only justly deserve to be cast down thither, but the sentence of the law of God, that eternal and immutable rule of righ teousness that God has "xed between Him and mankind, is gone out against them, and stands against them; so that they are bound over8 already to hell. John 3.18: “He that believeth not is condemned already.” So that every unconverted man prop- erly belongs to hell; that is his place; from thence he is, John 8.23: “Ye are from beneath.” And thither he is bound; it is the place that justice, and God’s word, and the sentence of his unchangeable law assign to him.

4. They are now the objects of that very same anger and wrath of God that is expressed in the torments of hell. And the reason why they do not go down to hell at each moment is not because God, in whose power they are, is not then very angry with them as He is with many miserable creatures now tormented in hell, who there feel and bear the "erceness of His wrath. Yea, God is a great deal more angry with great numbers that are now on earth: yea, doubtless, with many that are now in this congregation, who it may be are at ease, than He is with many of those who are now in the dames of hell.

So that it is not because God is unmindful of their wickedness, and does not resent it, that He does not let loose His hand and cut them off. God is not altogether such an one as themselves, though they may imagine Him to be so. The wrath of God burns against them, their damnation does not slum- ber; the pit is prepared, the "re is made ready, the furnace is now hot, ready to receive them; the dames do now rage and glow. The glittering sword is whet,9 and held over them, and the pit hath opened its mouth under them.

5. The devil stands ready to fall upon them, and seize them as his own, at what moment God shall permit him. They belong to him; he has their souls in his possession, and under his dominion. The Scripture represents them as his goods, Luke 11.12.1 The dev ils watch them; they are ever by them at their right hand; they stand waiting for them, like greedy hungry lions that see their prey, and expect to have it, but are for the pres ent kept back. If God should withdraw His hand, by which they are restrained, they would in one moment dy upon their poor souls. The old serpent is gaping for them; hell opens its mouth wide to receive them; and if God should permit it, they would be hastily swallowed up and lost.

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2. “But the wicked are like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt.” 3. Job 38.11.

4. I.e., unregenerate, unsaved. 5. “Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that dieth by day” (Psalm 91.5).

6. There are in the souls of wicked men those hellish princi ples reigning that would presently kindle and dame out into hell "re, if it were not for God’s restraints. There is laid in the very nature of carnal men a foundation for the torments of hell. There are those corrupt princi ples, in reigning power in them, and in full possession of them, that are seeds of hell "re. These princi ples are active and power ful, exceeding violent in their nature, and if it were not for the restraining hand of God upon them, they would soon break out, they would dame out after the same manner as the same corrup- tions, the same enmity does in the hearts of damned souls, and would beget the same torments as they do in them. The souls of the wicked are in Scrip- ture compared to the troubled sea, Isaiah 57.20.2 For the pres ent, God restrains their wickedness by His mighty power, as He does the raging waves of the troubled sea, saying, “Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further;”3 but if God should withdraw that restraining power, it would soon carry all before it. Sin is the ruin and misery of the soul; it is destructive in its nature; and if God should leave it without restraint, there would need nothing else to make the soul perfectly miserable. The corruption of the heart of man is immoderate and boundless in its fury; and while wicked men live here, it is like "re pent up by God’s restraints, whereas if it were let loose, it would set on "re the course of nature; and as the heart is now a sink of sin, so if sin was not restrained, it would immediately turn the soul into a "ery oven, or a furnace of "re and brimstone.

7. It is no security to wicked men for one moment that there are no vis i ble means of death at hand. It is no security to a natu ral4 man that he is now in health and that he does not see which way he should now immediately go out of the world by any accident, and that there is no vis i ble danger in any re spect in his circumstances. The manifold and continual experience of the world in all ages, shows this is no evidence that a man is not on the very brink of eternity, and that the next step will not be into another world. The unseen, unthought-of ways and means of persons going suddenly out of the world are innumerable and inconceivable. Unconverted men walk over the pit of hell on a rotten covering, and there are innumerable places in this cover- ing so weak that they will not bear their weight, and these places are not seen. The arrows of death dy unseen at noonday;5 the sharpest sight cannot discern them. God has so many dif fer ent unsearchable ways of taking wicked men out of the world and sending them to hell, that there is nothing to make it appear that God had need to be at the expense of a miracle, or go out of the ordinary course of His providence, to destroy any wicked man at any moment. All the means that there are of sinners going out of the world are so in God’s hands, and so universally and absolutely subject to His power and determination, that it does not depend at all the less on the mere will of God whether sinners shall at any moment go to hell than if means were never made use of or at all concerned in the case.

8. Natu ral men’s prudence and care to preserve their own lives, or the care of others to preserve them, do not secure them a moment. To this, divine

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6. The original covenant God made with Adam is called the Covenant of Works; the second cov- enant Jesus Christ made with fallen humanity— declaring that if they believed in him they would

be saved—is called the Covenant of Grace. 7. I.e., Christ, who mediated between God and humanity by taking upon himself the sins of the world and suffering for them.

providence and universal experience do also bear testimony. There is this clear evidence that men’s own wisdom is no security to them from death; that if it were other wise we should see some difference between the wise and politic men of the world, and others, with regard to their liableness to early and unexpected death: but how is it in fact? Ecclesiastes 2.16: “How dieth the wise man? even as the fool.”

9. All wicked men’s pains and contrivance which they use to escape hell, while they continue to reject Christ, and so remain wicked men, do not secure them from hell one moment. Almost every natu ral man that hears of hell, datters himself that he shall escape it; he depends upon himself for his own security; he datters himself in what he has done, in what he is now doing, or what he intends to do. Every one lays out matters in his own mind how he shall avoid damnation, and datters himself that he contrives well for himself, and that his schemes will not fail. They hear indeed that there are but few saved, and that the greater part of men that have died hereto- fore are gone to hell; but each one imagines that he lays out matters better for his own escape than others have done. He does not intend to come to that place of torment; he says within himself that he intends to take effec- tual care, and to order matters so for himself as not to fail.

But the foolish children of men miserably delude themselves in their own schemes, and in con"dence in their own strength and wisdom; they trust to nothing but a shadow. The greater part of those who heretofore have lived under the same means of grace, and are now dead, are undoubtedly gone to hell; and it was not because they were not as wise as those who are now alive: it was not because they did not lay out matters as well for themselves to secure their own escape. If we could speak with them, and inquire of them, one by one, whether they expected when alive, and when they used to hear about hell, ever to be the subjects of that misery, we doubtless, should hear one and another reply, “No, I never intended to come here: I had laid out matters other wise in my mind; I thought I should contrive well for myself: I  thought my scheme good. I intended to take effectual care; but it came upon me unexpected; I did not look for it at that time, and in that manner; it came as a thief: Death outwitted me: God’s wrath was too quick for me. Oh, my cursed foolishness! I was dattering myself, and pleasing myself with vain dreams of what I would do hereafter; and when I was saying, peace and safety, then suddenly destruction came upon me.”

10. God has laid Himself under no obligation by any promise to keep any natu ral man out of hell one moment. God certainly has made no promises either of eternal life or of any deliverance or preservation from eternal death but what are contained in the covenant of grace,6 the promises that are given in Christ, in whom all the promises are yea and amen. But surely they have no interest in the promises of the covenant of grace who are not the children of the covenant, who do not believe in any of the promises, and have no inter- est in the Mediator of the covenant.7

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8. Matthew 7.7: “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall "nd; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.” “Pretended”: claimed.

9. Awe- inspiring. 1. Aware.

So that, what ever some have imagined and pretended about promises made to natu ral men’s earnest seeking and knocking,8 it is plain and mani- fest that what ever pains a natu ral man takes in religion, what ever prayers he makes, till he believes in Christ, God is under no manner of obligation to keep him a moment from eternal destruction.

So that, thus it is that natu ral men are held in the hand of God, over the pit of hell; they have deserved the "ery pit, and are already sentenced to it; and God is dreadfully provoked. His anger is as great towards them as to those that are actually suffering the executions of the "erceness of His wrath in hell, and they have done nothing in the least to appease or abate that anger, neither is God in the least bound by any promise to hold them up one moment; the devil is waiting for them, hell is gaping for them, the dames gather and dash about them, and would fain lay hold on them, and swallow them up; the "re pent up in their own hearts is struggling to break out: and they have no interest in any Mediator, there are no means within reach that can be any security to them. In short, they have no refuge, nothing to take hold of; all that preserves them every moment is the mere arbitrary will, and uncovenanted, unobliged forbearance of an incensed God.

Application

The use of this awful9 subject may be for awakening unconverted persons in this congregation. This that you have heard is the case of every one of you that are out of Christ. That world of misery, that lake of burning brim- stone, is extended abroad under you. There is the dreadful pit of the glow- ing dames of the wrath of God; there is hell’s wide gaping mouth open; and you have nothing to stand upon, nor any thing to take hold of; there is noth- ing between you and hell but the air; it is only the power and mere plea sure of God that holds you up.

You prob ably are not sensible1 of this; you "nd you are kept out of hell, but do not see the hand of God in it; but look at other things, as the good state of your bodily constitution, your care of your own life, and the means you use for your own preservation. But indeed these things are nothing; if God should withdraw His hand, they would avail no more to keep you from falling, than the thin air to hold up a person that is suspended in it.

Your wickedness makes you as it were heavy as lead, and to tend down- wards with great weight and pressure towards hell; and if God should let you go, you would immediately sink and swiftly descend and plunge into the bottomless gulf, and your healthy constitution, and your own care and pru- dence, and best contrivance, and all your righ teousness, would have no more induence to uphold you and keep you out of hell, than a spider’s web would have to stop a fallen rock. Were it not for the sovereign plea sure of God, the earth would not bear you one moment; for you are a burden to it; the cre- ation groans with you; the creature is made subject to the bondage of your corruption, not willingly; the sun does not willingly shine upon you to give you light to serve sin and Satan; the earth does not willingly yield her increase

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2. Romans 8.20: “For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope.”

3. Studies; rooms for meditation. “Affections”: feelings.

to satisfy your lusts; nor is it willingly a stage for your wickedness to be acted upon; the air does not willingly serve you for breath to maintain the dame of life in your vitals, while you spend your life in the ser vice of God’s ene- mies. God’s creatures are good, and were made for men to serve God with, and do not willingly subserve to any other purpose, and groan when they are abused to purposes so directly contrary to their nature and end. And the world would spew you out, were it not for the sovereign hand of Him who hath subjected it in hope.2 There are black clouds of God’s wrath now hang- ing directly over your heads, full of the dreadful storm, and big with thun- der; and were it not for the restraining hand of God, it would immediately burst forth upon you. The sovereign plea sure of God, for the pres ent, stays His rough wind; other wise it would come with fury, and your destruction would come like a whirlwind, and you would be like the chaff of the sum- mer threshing door.

The wrath of God is like great waters that are dammed for the pres ent; they increase more and more, and rise higher and higher, till an outlet is given; and the longer the stream is stopped, the more rapid and mighty is its course when once it is let loose. It is true that judgment against your evil works has not been executed hitherto; the doods of God’s vengeance have been withheld; but your guilt in the meantime is constantly increasing, and you are every day trea suring up more wrath; the waters are constantly ris- ing, and waxing more and more mighty; and there is nothing but the mere plea sure of God that holds the waters back, that are unwilling to be stopped, and press hard to go forward. If God should only withdraw His hand from the doodgate, it would immediately dy open, and the "ery doods of the "erce- ness and wrath of God, would rush forth with inconceivable fury, and would come upon you with omnipotent power; and if your strength were ten thou- sand times greater than it is, yea, ten thousand times greater than the strength of the stoutest, sturdiest devil in hell, it would be nothing to withstand or endure it.

The bow of God’s wrath is bent, and the arrow made ready on the string, and justice bends the arrow at your heart, and strains the bow, and it is noth- ing but the mere plea sure of God, and that of an angry God, without any promise or obligation at all, that keeps the arrow one moment from being made drunk with your blood. Thus all you that never passed under a great change of heart, by the mighty power of the Spirit of God upon your souls, all you that were never born again, and made new creatures, and raised from being dead in sin, to a state of new, and before altogether unexperi- enced light and life, are in the hands of an angry God. However you may have reformed your life in many things, and may have had religious affec- tions, and may keep up a form of religion in your families and closets,3 and in the house of God, it is nothing but His mere plea sure that keeps you from being this moment swallowed up in everlasting destruction. However unconvinced you may now be of the truth of what you hear, by and by you will be fully convinced of it. Those that are gone from being in the like circumstances with you see that it was so with them; for destruction came

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suddenly upon most of them; when they expected nothing of it and while they were saying, peace and safety: now they see that those things on which they depended for peace and safety, were nothing but thin air and empty shadows.

The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider or some loathsome insect over the "re, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: His wrath towards you burns like "re; He looks upon you as worthy of noth- ing else but to be cast into the "re; He is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in His sight; you are ten thousand times more abominable in His eyes than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours. You have offended Him in"nitely more than ever a stubborn rebel did his prince; and yet it is noth- ing but His hand that holds you from falling into the "re every moment. It is to be ascribed to nothing else, that you did not go to hell the last night; that you was suffered to awake again in this world, after you closed your eyes to sleep. And there is no other reason to be given, why you have not dropped into hell since you arose in the morning, but that God’s hand has held you up. There is no other reason to be given why you have not gone to hell, since you have sat here in the house of God, provoking His pure eyes by your sinful wicked manner of attending His solemn worship. Yea, there is nothing else that is to be given as a reason why you do not this very moment drop down into hell.

O sinner! Consider the fearful danger you are in: it is a great furnace of wrath, a wide and bottomless pit, full of the "re of wrath, that you are held over in the hand of that God, whose wrath is provoked and incensed as much against you, as against many of the damned in hell. You hang by a slender thread, with the dames of divine wrath dashing about it, and ready every moment to singe it, and burn it asunder; and you have no interest in any Mediator, and nothing to lay hold of to save yourself, nothing to keep off the dames of wrath, nothing of your own, nothing that you ever have done, nothing that you can do, to induce God to spare you one moment. And con- sider here more particularly.

1. Whose wrath it is: it is the wrath of the in"nite God. If it were only the wrath of man, though it were of the most potent prince, it would be com- paratively little to be regarded. The wrath of kings is very much dreaded, especially of absolute monarchs, who have the possessions and lives of their subjects wholly in their power, to be disposed of at their mere will. Proverbs 20.2: “The fear of a king is as the roaring of a lion: Whoso provoketh him to anger, sinneth against his own soul.” The subject that very much enrages an arbitrary prince is liable to suffer the most extreme torments that human art can invent, or human power can indict. But the greatest earthly poten- tates in their greatest majesty, and strength, and when clothed in their great- est terrors, are but feeble, despicable worms of the dust, in comparison of the great and almighty Creator and King of heaven and earth. It is but little that they can do, when most enraged, and when they have exerted the utmost of their fury. All the kings of the earth, before God, are as grasshoppers; they are nothing, and less than nothing: both their love and their hatred is to be despised. The wrath of the great King of kings, is as much more ter- rible than theirs, as His majesty is greater. Luke 12.4–5: “And I say unto you, my friends, Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that, have no more that they can do. But I will forewarn you whom you shall fear: fear

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4. “He treadeth the winepress of the "erceness and wrath of Almighty God.” 5. The name used for God in the Old Testament.

6. “But ye have set at nought all my counsel, and would none of my reproof: I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock you when your fear cometh.”

him, which after he hath killed, hath power to cast into hell: yea, I say unto you, Fear him.”

2. It is the "erceness of His wrath that you are exposed to. We often read of the fury of God; as in Isaiah 59.18: “According to their deeds, accordingly he will repay fury to his adversaries.” So Isaiah 66.15: “For behold, the Lord will come with "re, and with his chariots like a whirlwind, to render his anger with fury, and his rebuke with dames of "re.” And in many other places. So, Revelation 19.15: we read of “the wine press of the "erceness and wrath of Almighty God.”4 The words are exceeding terrible. If it had only been said, “the wrath of God,” the words would have implied that which is in"nitely dreadful: but it is “the "erceness and wrath of God.” The fury of God! the "erceness of Jehovah!5 Oh, how dreadful must that be! Who can utter or conceive what such expressions carry in them! But it is also “the "erceness and wrath of Almighty God.” As though there would be a very great manifestation of His almighty power in what the "erceness of His wrath should indict, as though omnipotence should be as it were enraged, and exerted, as men are wont to exert their strength in the "erceness of their wrath. Oh! then, what will be the consequence! What will become of the poor worms that shall suffer it! Whose hands can be strong? And whose heart can endure? To what a dreadful, inexpressible, inconceivable depth of misery must the poor creature be sunk who shall be the subject of this!

Consider this, you that are here pres ent that yet remain in an unregener- ate state. That God will execute the "erceness of His anger implies that He will indict wrath without any pity. When God beholds the ineffable extrem- ity of your case, and sees your torment to be so vastly disproportioned to your strength, and sees how your poor soul is crushed, and sinks down, as it were, into an in"nite gloom; He will have no compassion upon you, He will not forbear the executions of His wrath, or in the least lighten His hand; there shall be no moderation or mercy, nor will God then at all stay His rough wind; He will have no regard to your welfare, nor be at all careful lest you should suffer too much in any other sense, than only that you shall not suf- fer beyond what strict justice requires. Nothing shall be withheld because it is so hard for you to bear. Ezekiel 8.18: “Therefore will I also deal in fury: mine eye shall not spare, neither will I have pity; and though they cry in mine ears with a loud voice, yet I will not hear them.” Now God stands ready to pity you; this is a day of mercy; you may cry now with some encourage- ment of obtaining mercy. But when once the day of mercy is past, your most la men ta ble and dolorous cries and shrieks will be in vain; you will be wholly lost and thrown away of God as to any regard to your welfare. God will have no other use to put you to, but to suffer misery; you shall be continued in being to no other end; for you will be a vessel of wrath "tted to destruction; and there will be no other use of this vessel, but to be "lled full of wrath. God will be so far from pitying you when you cry to Him, that it is said He will only “laugh and mock.” Proverbs 1.25–26, etc.6

How awful are those words, Isaiah 63.3, which are the words of the great God: “I will tread them in mine anger, and will trample them in my fury,

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7. Abbreviation for videlicet: that is to say, namely (Latin). 8. See Daniel 3.1–30.

and their blood shall be sprinkled upon my garments, and I will stain all my raiment.” It is perhaps impossible to conceive of words that carry in them greater manifestations of these three things, viz.,7 contempt, and hatred, and "erceness of indignation. If you cry to God to pity you, He will be so far from pitying you in your doleful case, or showing you the least regard or favor, that instead of that, He will only tread you under foot. And though He will know that you cannot bear the weight of omnipotence treading upon you, yet He will not regard that, but He will crush you under His feet with- out mercy; He will crush out your blood, and make it dy and it shall be sprinkled on His garments, so as to stain all His raiment. He will not only hate you, but He will have you in the utmost contempt: no place shall be thought "t for you, but under His feet to be trodden down as the mire of the streets.

3. The misery you are exposed to is that which God will indict to that end, that He might show what that wrath of Jehovah is. God hath had it on His heart to show to angels and men both how excellent His love is, and also how terrible His wrath is. Sometimes earthly kings have a mind to show how terrible their wrath is, by the extreme punishments they would execute on those that would provoke them. Nebuchadnezzar, that mighty and haughty monarch of the Chaldean empire, was willing to show his wrath when enraged with Shadrach, Meshech, and Abednego; and accordingly gave orders that the burning "ery furnace should be heated seven times hotter than it was before; doubtless, it was raised to the utmost degree of "erce- ness that human art could raise it.8 But the great God is also willing to show His wrath, and magnify His awful majesty and mighty power in the extreme sufferings of His enemies. Romans 9.22: “What if God, willing to show his wrath, and to make his power known, endure with much long- suffering the vessels of wrath "tted to destruction?” And seeing this is His design, and what He has determined, even to show how terrible the restrained wrath, the fury and "erceness of Jehovah is, He will do it to effect. There will be something accomplished and brought to pass that will be dreadful with a witness. When the great and angry God hath risen up and executed His awful vengeance on the poor sinner, and the wretch is actually suffering the in"nite weight and power of His indignation, then will God call upon the  whole universe to behold that awful majesty and mighty power that is to be seen in it. Isaiah 33.12–14: “And the people shall be as the burnings of lime, as thorns cut up shall they be burnt in the "re. Hear ye that are far off, what I have done; and ye that are near, acknowledge my might. The sin- ners in Zion are afraid; fearfulness hath surprised the hypocrites,” etc.

Thus it will be with you that are in an unconverted state, if you continue in it; the in"nite might, and majesty, and terribleness of the omnipotent God shall be magni"ed upon you, in the ineffable strength of your torments. You shall be tormented in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb; and when you shall be in this state of suffering, the glorious inhabitants of heaven shall go forth and look on the awful spectacle, that they may see what the wrath and "erceness of the Almighty is; and when they have seen it, they will fall down and adore that great power and majesty.

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9. “Who knoweth the power of thine anger? even according to thy fear, so is thy wrath” (Psalm 90.11).

Isaiah 66.23–24: “And it shall come to pass, that from one new moon to another, and from one sabbath to another, shall all desh come to worship before me, saith the Lord. And they shall go forth and look upon the car- casses of the men that have transgressed against me; for their worm shall not die, neither shall their "re be quenched, and they shall be an abhorring unto all desh.”

4. It is everlasting wrath. It would be dreadful to suffer this "erceness and wrath of Almighty God one moment; but you must suffer it to all eternity. There will be no end to this exquisite horrible misery. When you look for- ward, you shall see a long forever, a boundless duration before you, which will swallow up your thoughts, and amaze your soul; and you will absolutely despair of ever having any deliverance, any end, any mitigation, any rest at all. You will know certainly that you must wear out long ages, millions of millions of ages, in wrestling and condicting with this almighty merciless vengeance; and then when you have so done, when so many ages have actu- ally been spent by you in this manner, you will know that all is but a point to what remains. So that your punishment will indeed be in"nite. Oh, who can express what the state of a soul in such circumstances is! All that we can possibly say about it gives but a very feeble, faint repre sen ta tion of it; it is inexpressible and inconceivable: For “who knows the power of God’s anger?”9

How dreadful is the state of those that are daily and hourly in the danger of this great wrath and in"nite misery! But this is the dismal case of every soul in this congregation that has not been born again, however moral and strict, sober and religious, they may other wise be. Oh that you would con- sider it, whether you be young or old! There is reason to think that there are many in this congregation now hearing this discourse that will actually be the subjects of this very misery to all eternity. We know not who they are, or in what seats they sit, or what thoughts they now have. It may be they are now at ease, and hear all these things without much disturbance, and are now dattering themselves that they are not the persons, promising themselves that they shall escape. If they knew that there was one person, and but one, in the whole congregation, that was to be the subject of this misery, what an awful thing would it be to think of! If we knew who it was, what an awful sight would it be to see such a person! How might all the rest of the congre- gation lift up a la men ta ble and bitter cry over him! But, alas! instead of one, how many is it likely will remember this discourse in hell? And it would be a won der, if some that are now pres ent should not be in hell in a very short time, even before this year is out. And it would be no won der if some persons, that now sit here, in some seats of this meeting house, in health, quiet and secure, should be there before tomorrow morning. Those of you that " nally continue in a natu ral condition, that shall keep out of hell lon- gest will be there in a little time! your damnation does not slumber; it will come swiftly, and, in all probability, very suddenly upon many of you. You have reason to won der that you are not already in hell. It is doubtless the case of some whom you have seen and known, that never deserved hell

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1. A town in the neighborhood [Edwards’s note]. 2. I.e., not among the chosen people, the saved.

3. Cf. Ecclesiastes 1.2.

more than you, and that heretofore appeared as likely to have been now alive as you. Their case is past all hope; they are crying in extreme misery and perfect despair; but here you are in the land of the living and in the house of God, and have an opportunity to obtain salvation. What would not those poor damned hopeless souls give for one day’s opportunity such as you now enjoy!

And now you have an extraordinary opportunity, a day wherein Christ has thrown the door of mercy wide open, and stands in calling and crying with a loud voice to poor sinners; a day wherein many are docking to Him, and pressing into the kingdom of God. Many are daily coming from the east, west, north and south; many that were very lately in the same miserable con- dition that you are in are now in a happy state, with their hearts "lled with love to Him who has loved them, and washed them from their sins in His own blood, and rejoicing in hope of the glory of God. How awful is it to be left behind at such a day! To see so many others feasting, while you are pin- ing and perishing! To see so many rejoicing and singing for joy of heart, while you have cause to mourn for sorrow of heart, and howl for vexation of spirit! How can you rest one moment in such a condition? Are not your souls as precious as the souls of the people at Suf"eld,1 where they are docking from day to day to Christ?

Are there not many here who have lived long in the world, and are not to this day born again? and so are aliens from the commonwealth of Israel,2 and have done nothing ever since they have lived, but trea sure up wrath against the day of wrath? Oh, sirs, your case, in an especial manner, is extremely dangerous. Your guilt and hardness of heart is extremely great. Do you not see how generally persons of your years are passed over and left, in the pres ent remarkable and wonderful dispensation of God’s mercy? You had need to consider yourselves, and awake thoroughly out of sleep. You can- not bear the "erceness and wrath of the in"nite God. And you, young men, and young women, will you neglect this precious season which you now enjoy, when so many others of your age are renouncing all youthful vani- ties,3 and docking to Christ? You especially have now an extraordinary oppor- tunity; but if you neglect it, it will soon be with you as with those persons who spent all the precious days of youth in sin, and are now come to such a dreadful pass in blindness and hardness. And you, children, who are uncon- verted, do not you know that you are going down to hell, to bear the dread- ful wrath of that God, who is now angry with you every day and every night? Will you be content to be the children of the devil, when so many other children in the land are converted, and are become the holy and happy children of the King of kings?

And let every one that is yet of Christ, and hanging over the pit of hell, whether they be old men and women, or middle- aged, or young people, or little children, now hearken to the loud calls of God’s word and providence. This acceptable year of the Lord, a day of such great favors to some, will doubtless be a day of as remarkable vengeance to others. Men’s hearts harden,

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4. Those whom God has chosen to save. 5. In Acts 2, the Apostle Peter admonishes a crowd to repent and be converted, saying, “Save yourselves from this untoward generation. Then they that gladly received his word were baptized: and the same day there were added unto them about three thousand souls” (Acts 2.40–41). 6. I.e., during “the great outpouring of the

Spirit,” as in a revival, the elect will respond positively to God’s call. 7. “And now also the ax is laid unto the root of the trees: therefore every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the "re” (Matthew 3.10). 8. Genesis 19.17.

and their guilt increases apace at such a day as this, if they neglect their souls; and never was there so great danger of such person being given up to hardness of heart and blindness of mind. God seems now to be hastily gath- ering in His elect4 in all parts of the land; and prob ably the greater part of adult persons that ever shall be saved, will be brought in now in a little time, and that it will be as it was on the great outpouring of the Spirit upon the Jews in the apostles’ days;5 the election will obtain,6 and the rest will be blinded. If this should be the case with you, you will eternally curse this day, and will curse the day that ever you was born, to see such a season of the pouring out of God’s Spirit, and will wish that you had died and gone to hell before you had seen it. Now undoubtedly it is, as it was in the days of John the Baptist, the ax is in an extraordinary manner laid at the root of the trees,7 that every tree which brings not forth good fruit, may be hewn down and cast into the "re.

Therefore, let every one that is out of Christ, now awake and dy from the wrath to come. The wrath of Almighty God is now undoubtedly hanging over a great part of this congregation: Let every one dy out of Sodom: “Haste and escape for your lives, look not behind you, escape to the mountain, lest you be consumed.”8

Sunday, July 8, 1741.

1741

403

American Lit er a ture and the Va ri e ties of Religious Expression

T he religious revivals that Jonathan Edwards helped launch in 1734 reached a new level when the Reverend George White"eld began touring the colonies in the late 1730s. Writing in his Autobiography of White"eld’s arrival in Philadelphia in 1739, Benjamin Franklin noted the popu lar En glish preacher’s ability to draw “Multitudes of all Sects and Denominations.” This inclusive religious impulse led to the construction of a meeting house “expressly for the use of any Preacher of any religious Persuasion who might desire to say something to the People of Philadelphia.” Even a missionary sent “to preach Mohametanism [i.e., Islam] to us,” Franklin remarked, “would "nd a Pulpit in his Ser vice.” The building eventually fell into disuse, and Franklin worked to repurpose it for the Acad emy of Philadelphia, a secondary school that evolved into the University of Pennyslvania. Yet the princi ple of religious inclusion embodied in the meeting house remained an impor tant ele ment in Franklin’s thought, punctuat- ing his redections on how religion factored in his own life and in the life of the nation that was emerging even as he wrote these passages in late 1788 or early 1789.

Born in Puritan Boston and a longtime resident of Philadelphia (known as the Quaker City), Franklin was an experienced navigator of religious differences. The Quaker faith that is so prominent in Philadelphia emerged in Eng land during the En glish Civil Wars (1642–51), when state control over speech, printing, and religious worship was loosened. Among the central princi ples distinguishing Quak- ers from traditional Protestants is the belief that the Bible is only one instance of the Word of God, which Quakers hold to be continuously expressed as an ongoing divine revelation in every individual, women equally with men, and made accessible through a faculty known as the Inner Light. In New Eng land, this belief in the supremacy of immediate revelation made the Quakers deeply unpopular with Puri- tan leaders, who based their own challenge to religious authority on the centrality of Scripture. In the 1650s, the Mas sa chu setts Bay Colony outlawed Quakerism, and around 1660 colonial of"cials executed four Quakers (including Mary Dyer, a former associate of John Winthrop’s antagonist Anne Hutchinson), who came to be known as the Boston Martyrs. Despite such setbacks, the Quakers were more successful than many other radical Protestant groups at establishing a lasting institutional presence, in no small part through the efforts of the En glish preacher George Fox (1624–1691), who guided their transition from a loosely or ga nized movement into the Religious Society of Friends. In 1681, Fox’s associate William Penn received a royal charter to establish the colony of Pennsylvania as a haven of religious toleration.

Early Quakers practiced distinctive forms of expression related to their under- standing of the Inner Light. The most pronounced of these verbal habits was their use of “plain speech,” including the deliberately archaic use of “thee” and “thou” for “you.” They were also known for encouraging women to preach. In the se lections included here by Elizabeth Ashbridge and John Woolman, belief in the Inner Light and a commitment to plain speech are translated into language and narrative. A dif fer ent aspect of Quakerism is represented in the poem here by Francis Daniel Pastorius, whose multilingual writings focus on the potential for language to foster unity within diversity. A number of prominent later American writers were indu- enced by Quakerism, including Charles Brockden Brown, James Fenimore Cooper, and Walt Whitman.

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In Protestant writings, the Roman Catholic Church is often presented as a spiri- tual antagonist— characterized, for example, as the Antichrist or the Whore of Baby- lon. Anti- Catholic imagery in New Eng land colonial lit er a ture tends to be closely tied to imperial rivalries with France and Spain. This po liti cal and spiritual compe- tition was bound up with the development of rival print cultures and the production of literary works. In 1539, the "rst press in the Amer i cas was established in Mexico City, a century before the press in Cambridge, Mas sa chu setts. Spanish Amer i ca developed a thriving print culture encompassing religious works, some at least partly in indigenous languages, as well as secular texts. The writings of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, who spent much of her life at a convent in Mexico City, demon- strate familiarity with both the secular and the religious poetic traditions of impe- rial Spain. Sor Juana, a con temporary of the Puritan poet Anne Bradstreet, employed distinctive themes and images tied to her religious orientation.

The Jesuit Relations are a dif fer ent kind of literary enterprise altogether. Origi- nally written in French, the Relations include reports in the form of letters sent from the missions of New France to the Paris headquarters of the Society of Jesus (i.e., the Jesuits). Filled with tales of the mission enterprise that can be surprising in their adventurousness and, at times, their vio lence, the printed Relations were received with great interest. The corporate authorship of these annual reports marks a distinction from the more individualist traditions of Puritan and Quaker writing. A Jesuit superior synthesized the reports from original letters and in- person accounts, as was the case with the Isaac Jogues narrative included here. Later works in the Jesuit tradition included saintly biographies— also known as hagiographies— represented by the chronicle of Kateri Tekakwitha’s life.

While there are sizable bodies of Catholic and Quaker writing from pre-1820 North Amer i ca, there is only a small archive of works by Jewish writers. The development of Jewish writing in the Western Hemi sphere can be traced to events that took place in 1492. The year of Columbus’s voyage was also the year when Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain completed the Reconquista (reconquest) of the Iberian Peninsula from the Islamic Moors. Moorish Spain had sometimes been a place of peaceful interactions between people of the major Abrahamic religions, with Christians, Jews, and Mus- lims living in comfortable proximity. Two months after defeating the Moors, however, the Spanish monarchs promulgated the Alhambra Decree, which declared that Span- ish Jews had to make a dif"cult choice: either convert to Chris tian ity or be forced to leave Spain. The extinction of Spanish Jewry was an unusually thorough instance of practices that had been prevalent throughout Eu rope for centuries. King Edward I of Eng land had expelled that country’s Jewish population in 1290. Oliver Cromwell orchestrated the opening of Eng land to Jews in 1656— a shift in policy that Roger Williams supported in print and put into practice in the Providence Colony. Jewish communities in British North Amer i ca grew slowly, and those who wanted to practice their religion faced numerous challenges. Rebecca Samuel was an eighteenth- century Jewish immigrant to the United States, prob ably from Germany. Included here are letters she wrote to her parents in 1791—the year that the First Amendment to the Constitution was adopted, establishing freedom of religion. They capture some of the complexities of Jewish life in the early United States, redecting positively and nega- tively on the experience of being a religious outsider.

The two additional se lections address indigenous religion in dif fer ent ways. John Marrant’s popu lar narrative of 1785 describes his life as a free black youth in Charleston, South Carolina, where a chance exposure to the eloquence of George White"eld led to his conversion. Marrant’s description of how he came to convert a Cherokee “king,” while himself adopting Cherokee dress, captures the multiethnic dynamics of Protestant revivalism. In an 1805 address to the Christian missionary Jacob Cram, the Seneca chief Sagoyewatha pointedly rejects the logic of Christian conversion, asking to have indigenous beliefs respected and to be given an opportu-

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nity to judge the effects of Chris tian ity on the be hav ior of its white converts. Widely republished, Sagoyewatha’s counternarrative of colonial settlement seems to have resonated with both Native and white audiences. The popularity of this speech shows that the desire for freedom of religion extended in many directions.

THE JESUIT RELATIONS

The Society of Jesus, or Jesuits, is a Roman Catholic religious order founded in 1534 by Ignatius of Loyola (1491–1556), a knight at the Spanish court of Ferdi- nand and Isabella. The Jesuit Relations is the name of a group of publications from the Jesuits’ missionary proj ect in New France. Published annually in Paris between 1632 and 1673, The Jesuit Relations narrated the major events of the year, including descriptions of indigenous life, chronicles of wars and epidemics, and accounts of stirring journeys and dramatic martyrdoms.

The "rst of the following two se lections, relating the torture of Father Isaac Jogues (1607–1646) by Mohawks at the town of Gandaouague (Caughnawaga, New York), is drawn from the Relation of 1647. Father Jérôme Lalemant (1593–1673), the Provincial Superior of the Jesuits in Canada from 1645 to 1650, based his account on Jogues’s spoken and written descriptions of the events represented here, which took place in 1642. After returning to France following these occurences, Jogues chose to return to North Amer i ca, where he was later killed. The Church later named Jogues as the "rst of the “North American martyrs,” a group of six Jesuit priests and two lay assistants who died while pursuing missionary activities in the 1640s.

The second se lection is not from The Jesuit Relations proper but from History and General Description of New France (1744), by the Jesuit priest and writer P. F. X. Charlevoix (1682–1761). The subject of this hagiographic narrative is a young Mohawk woman, Kateri Tekakwitha (1656–1680), from what is now central New York. When she was around twenty, Tekakwitha (or Tegahkouita, as the name is ren- dered here) converted to Catholicism and moved to a Jesuit mission near Montreal. The narrative was translated into several languages, including En glish. In 2012, Tekakwitha became the "rst Native American to be canonized by the Roman Catho- lic Church.

Both se lections are from The Jesuit Relations: Natives and Missionaries in Seventeenth- Century North Amer i ca (2000), edited by Allan Greer. The bracketed insertions are Greer’s.

406

JÉRÔME LALEMANT

From How Father Isaac Jogues Was Taken by the Iroquois, and What He Suffered on His First Entrance

into Their Country

Father Isaac Jogues was born to a worthy family of the city of Orléans.1 After he gave some evidence of his virtue in our society, he was sent to New France in the year 1636. In that very year, he went up to the Huron country, where he remained until the thirteenth of June in the year 1642, when he was sent to Quebec upon the affairs of that impor tant and ardu- ous mission.

From that time until his death, there occurred many remarkable things, of which one cannot without guilt deprive the public since they are honor- able to God and full of consolation for souls who love to suffer for Jesus Christ. What has been said of his labors in the earlier Relations came, for the most part, from some Indians who had been companions in his suffer- ings. But what I am about to set down issued forth from his own pen and his own lips: It was necessary to use a superior’s authority, along with gen- tle persuasion in our personal conversations, in order to discover that which the very low esteem in which he held himself kept concealed in a profound silence.

Sometime before his departure from the Hurons in order to come to Que- bec, "nding himself alone before the Blessed Sacrament,2 he prostrated himself to the ground, beseeching our Lord to grant him the favor and grace of suffering for His glory. This answer was engraved in the depth of his soul, with a certainty similar to that which faith gives us: Exaudita est oratio tua; #et tibi sicut à me petisti. Confortare et esto robustus, “Thy prayer is heard; what thou hast asked of me is granted thee. Be courageous and steadfast.” The effects which followed have shown that these words, which were always pres ent for him in all his sufferings, were genuinely substantial, words which issued from the lips of Him for whom saying and doing are one and the same thing.

Reverend Father Jérôme Lalemant, at that time superior of the mission among the Hurons, knowing nothing of this, sent for him and proposed to him the journey to Quebec. This would be a frightful voyage on account of the dif"culty of the route, and very dangerous because of the ambushes of the Iroquois, who every year massacred a considerable number of the Indi- ans allied to the French. Let us hear him [ Father Jogues] speak upon this subject and upon the outcome of his journey.

“Authority having made me a simple proposition, and not a command, to go down to Quebec, I offered myself with all my heart. I was all the more

1. A city in north central France, south of Paris. 2. In Roman Catholicism, the bread and wine made sacred in a cele bration called the Eucharist, or Holy Communion; sometimes, as here, dis-

played on an altar. Catholics consider the Blessed Sacrament the actual desh and blood of Jesus Christ.

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3. Muzzle- loaded "rearms. 4. Nonclerical Jesuit missionary (1608–1642);

like Jogues, one of the North American martyrs of the Roman Catholic Church.

willing, since other wise some of our fathers who were much better than I might have been exposed to the perils and hazards that we all anticipate. And so we set out, in danger from the moment of our departure. We were obliged to disembark forty times, and forty times to carry our boats and all our baggage amid the rapids and waterfalls that one encounters on this jour- ney of about three hundred leagues. Although the Indians who were con- ducting us were very skillful, we nevertheless incurred some disasters, to the great peril of our lives and with some loss of our small baggage. At last, thirty- "ve days after our departure from the Huron country, we arrived much fatigued at Three Rivers, and from there we descended to Quebec. We blessed God throughout for His goodness in preserving us. Our business being "nished in "fteen days, we observed the Feast of Saint Ignace, and the next day, the "rst of August of the same year, 1642, we left Three Rivers to return to the country whence we had come.

“The "rst day was favorable to us, but the second caused us to fall into the hands of the Iroquois. We were forty persons, distributed in several canoes. The one that kept the vanguard discovered on the banks of the great river some tracks of men, recently imprinted on the sand and clay, and gave us warning. We put to shore. Some said that these were enemy tracks; others were sure that they were footprints of the Algonquins, our allies. In the midst of this argument, Eustache Ahatsistari, to whom all the others deferred on account of his exploits in arms and his virtue, exclaimed: ‘Be they friends or enemies, it matters not. I notice by their tracks that they are not in greater number than we, so let us then advance without fear.’ We had made less than half a league when the enemy, concealed among the grass and bushes, rose with a great outcry and discharged a volley of shots at our canoes. The noise of their arquebuses3 so greatly frightened some of our Hurons that they aban- doned their canoes and weapons and all their supplies to dee into the woods. This discharge had done us no great harm: No lives were lost, and only one Huron was shot through the hand. Our canoes, however, were bro- ken in several places. We were four French, one of whom was in the rear and escaped with the Hurons, who abandoned him before approaching the enemy. Eight or ten [Hurons], both Christians and catechumens, joined us. We led them in a short prayer as they bravely faced the enemy, and though it was thirty men against twelve or fourteen, our people held on valiantly. But when they saw another band of forty Iroquois, who had been in ambush on the opposite shore of the river, coming to attack them, they lost courage, and those who were not then caught up in the "ghting abandoned their com- rades and took to their heels. No longer sustained by those who followed him, a Frenchman named René Goupil4 (whose death is precious before God) was surrounded and captured, along with some of the most courageous Hurons.

“I was watching this disaster,” says the father, “from a place very favor- able for concealing me from the sight of the enemy, being able to hide myself in thickets and among very tall and dense reeds; but this thought could never enter my mind. ‘Could I really,’ I said to myself, ‘abandon our French and

leave those good neophytes and those poor catechumens, without giving them the succor that the church of my God has entrusted to me?’ Flight seemed horrible to me. ‘It must be,’ I said in my heart, ‘that my body suffer the "re of earth in order to deliver these poor souls from the dames of Hell. It must die a transient death, in order to procure for them an eternal life.’ Having reached a decision without great opposition from my mind, I called one of the Iroquois who had remained to guard the prisoners. This man per- ceived me but hesitated to approach, for fear of some ambush. ‘Come,’ I said, ‘be not afraid. Take me to the Frenchman and the Hurons whom you hold captive.’ He advanced, seized me, and placed me in the number of those whom the world calls miserable. Tenderly embracing the Frenchman, I said to him: ‘My dear brother, God treats us in a strange manner, but He is the master and he has done what has seemed best in his sight; he has followed his good plea sure. May His holy name be blessed forever.’ This good young man at once made his confession, and I gave him absolution. I then approached the Hurons to instruct and baptize them. As more fugitives were being brought in by their pursuers every minute, I heard these too in confession, making Christians of those who had not been baptized. Fi nally, they brought that worthy Christian captain Eustache, who, on seeing me, exclaimed: ‘Ah! My father, I swore and promised to you that I would live or die with you.’ The sight of him pierced my heart. I do not remember what words I said to him.

“Another Frenchman, named Guillaume Couture, seeing that the Hurons were giving way, escaped like them into those great forests, and, as he was agile, he was soon out of the enemy’s grasp. But he was seized with remorse because he had forsaken his father and his comrade. He stopped quite short, deliberating whether he should go on or retrace his steps. The fear of being regarded as treacherous made him turn around, and there he found himself facing "ve big Iroquois, one of whom was aiming a gun at him. The arque- bus mis"red, but the Frenchman did not fail to "nd his own mark and shot him dead on the spot. His shot spent, the four other Iroquois fell upon him like enraged lions, or rather like demons. They stripped him naked, beat him black- and- blue with clubs, and tore out his "ngernails with their teeth, crush- ing the bleeding ends to cause him more pain. Fi nally, they pierced through one of his hands with a knife and led him, tied and bound in this sad plight, to the place where we were. When I recognized him, I broke away from my guards and embraced him. ‘Courage, my dear brother and friend,’ I urged him. ‘Offer your pains and anguish to God on behalf of these men who tor- ment you. We must not shrink back. Let us instead suffer bravely for His holy name. His glory was our only object in this journey.’ The Iroquois were at "rst quite bewildered before these endearments, then, imagining perhaps that I was applauding this young man for killing one of their captains, they fell upon me with a mad fury. They stabbed at me and beat me and over- whelmed me with blows from their war clubs, dinging me to the ground, half- dead. When I began to catch my breath, the men who had not partici- pated in the beating came up and used their teeth to tear out my "ngernails. Then they took turns biting the ends of my two index "n gers, and with the nails gone, this caused me excruciating pain, as if they were being ground and crushed between two stones until small bone splinters began to protrude. The good René Goupil was given the same treatment, though they did not at that point do any harm to the Hurons. They were angry with the French

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because of the latter’s unwillingness the year before to accept the peace conditions they had been willing to offer.

“When the hunters had returned from their chase after a human quarry and the party had reassembled, these barbarians divided up their booty among themselves, rejoicing in their prey with great shouts of joy. As I saw them engrossed in examining and distributing our spoils, I sought also for my share. I went round to all the captives, baptizing those who were not yet baptized, encouraging these poor wretches to suffer steadfastly, in the assur- ance that their reward would far exceed the severity of their torments. I ascertained, on this round of visits, that we were twenty- two captives, not counting three Hurons killed on the spot. An old man, aged eighty years, having just received holy baptism, said to the Iroquois who were command- ing him to embark: ‘It is too late for an old man like me to go visiting for- eign countries. I can "nd death here if you refuse me life.’ These words were hardly out of his mouth before they felled him.

“And so we set out, led off to a country truly foreign, where our Lord favored us with a share of His cross. During the thirteen days that we spent on that journey, I suffered bodily torments almost unendurable and, in the soul, mor- tal anguish: hunger, the "ercely burning sun, the threats and hatred of those leopards, and the pain of our wounds, which, in the absence of any dressing, became putrid and worm infested. All this certainly caused us much distress. But these things seemed light to me in comparison with an inward sadness

Jesuit martyrdom. This famous tableau of Jesuit martyrdom, which was widely repro- duced, combines three separate scenes. The Jesuit missionaries being tortured and killed are Isaac Jogues, Gabriel Lalemant (1610–1649), and Jean de Brébeuf (1596–1625).

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that I felt at the sight of our "rst and most ardent Huron Christians. I had expected them to be the pillars of that rising church, and I saw them become the victims of death. Seeing the path to salvation closed for such a long time to so many nations, people who perish every day for want of succor, made me die every hour in the depth of my soul. It is a very hard thing, a cruel thing, to see the triumph of the dev ils over whole nations redeemed with so much love and ransomed in the currency of a blood so adorable.

* * *

1647

P. F. X. DE CHARLEVOIX

From Catherine Tegahkouita: An Iroquois Virgin

New France has had her apostles and martyrs, and has given the church saints in all conditions, and I do not hesitate to say that they would have done honor to the primitive ages of Chris tian ity. Several I have made known so far as the course of this history permitted me. The lives of some have been published, but God— who exalted his glory during their lifetime by the great things that he effected through them; by the luster which their sanc- tity has diffused over this vast continent; by the courage which he inspired in them to found with untold toil a new Christendom amid the most fearful barbarism, and to cement it with their blood— chose none of these to have all the riches of his power and mercy displayed on their tombs. Instead he conferred this honor on a young neophyte, almost unknown to the whole coun- try during her life. For more than sixty years she has been regarded as the protectress of Canada, and it has been impossible to oppose a kind of cult publicly rendered to her.

This holy virgin, so celebrated under the name of Catherine Tegahkouita, was born in 1656 at Gandaouagué, a town in the Mohawk canton,1 of a hea- then Iroquois father and a Christian Algonquin mother. She lost her mother at the age of four and was still quite young when her father died, leaving her to the care of one of her aunts and under the control of an uncle who had the chief authority in his village. The smallpox which she had in her infancy having weakened her sight, she was long compelled as it were to remain in the corner of a cabin, her eyes being unable to stand the light, and this retirement was the "rst source of her happiness. What she did at "rst out of necessity, she continued to do by choice, thereby avoiding what- ever could cause her to lose that moral purity so dif"cult to preserve amid idolatrous and then very dissolute youth.

1. Gandaouagué (“ castle” or “forti"ed place” in Mohawk) is an alternative name for the historic Mohawk village of Caughnawaga, on the Mohawk

River in central New York. The French ran a mis- sion there for around a de cade in the late 1600s.

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2. Alexandre de Prouville de Tracy (c. 1600– 1670), French military commander, served as lieutenant- general of New France in 1663–67 and led victorious campaigns against the Iroquois and

the Mohawk. 3. Jesuit priest (1641–1710). 4. Not lacking (conviction; i.e., her faith was strong).

As soon as she saw herself of age to act, she took on herself almost all the toil of the house hold, and this shielded her from two dangers fatal to most Indian girls— that is, private conversations and idleness. Her relatives, how- ever, wished her to use the decorations common to young persons of her sex, and although she yielded from simple compliance with their wishes, and with all pos si ble repugnance, it was a matter of much scruple to her when, favored by the light of faith, she learned how dangerous it is to seek to please men.

The "rst knowledge that she acquired of Chris tian ity was imparted by some missionaries sent to the Iroquois after Monsieur de Tracy’s expedition.2 On their way they passed through the town where she lived and were received at her cabin. She was appointed to take care of them and waited on them in a manner that surprised them. She had herself, on beholding them, been moved by an impulse that excited sentiments in her heart, regarded subse- quently by her as the "rst sparks of the heavenly "re which later indamed her so completely. The fervor and recollection of those religious in their devo- tions inspired her with the desire of praying with them, and she informed them of it. They understood much more than she expressed. They instructed her in the Christian truth, as far as the short stay that they made in that town permitted them, and left her with a regret that she heartily recipro- cated. Sometime after, a match [marriage] was proposed to her, but as she showed strong opposition, her relatives did not press it. However, they soon returned to the charge, and to save themselves the trou ble of overcoming her re sis tance, they, without mentioning it to her, betrothed her to a young man who at once went to her cabin and sat down beside her. To ratify the marriage, it only required that she should remain near the husband selected for her, such being the way of these tribes, but she abruptly left the cabin and protested that she would not return till he withdrew. This conduct brought her much ill treatment, which she endured with unalterable patience. She was more sensitive to the reproach made that she lacked affection for her kindred, that she hated her nation and gave all her attachment to that to which her mother belonged. But nothing could overcome her repugnance for the state of life in which they sought to involve her.

Meanwhile Father Jacques de Lamberville3 arrived at Gandaouagué, with orders to found a mission there. Tegahkouita then felt her former desires to become a Christian revive, but she was still for some time with- out mentioning it, either out of re spect for her uncle, who did not relish our religion, or from pure timidity. At last an opportunity came for avowing her conviction, and she was not wanting.4 A wound in the foot kept her in the cabin, while all the other women were busy harvesting the Indian corn. Father de Lamberville, compelled to suspend his public instructions, which no one would attend, took this time to visit the cabins and instruct those who were con"ned there by age or in"rmity. One day he entered the cabin of Tegahkouita.

Unable to dissemble the joy that this visit caused her, she did not hesitate to open her mind to the missionary in the presence of two or three women,

Kateri Tekakwitha. The Native American Christian woman in this painting may be Kateri Tekakwitha. The artist has not been "rmly identi"ed but may be Father Claude Chauchietiène (1645–1709), a Jesuit missionary.

5. Then, territory in Montreal, Quebec, given to the Jesuits by the French Crown as a reserve for the protection of newly converted Mohawks.

6. Before baptizing her (regeneration meaning spiritual rebirth).

who were in com pany with her, on her design of embracing Chris tian ity. She added that she would have great obstacles to overcome but that nothing appalled her. The energy with which she spoke, the courage she displayed, and a certain modest yet resolute air that lighted up her countenance at once told the missionary that his new proselyte would not be an ordinary Chris- tian. Accordingly, he carefully taught her many things that he did not explain to all preparing for baptism. God doubtless infuses into hearts of which he has especially reserved possession a sort of purely spiritual sympathy, form- ing even in this life the sacred bond which will unite them hereafter in the abode of glory. Father de Lamberville, whom I knew well, was one of the most holy missionaries of New France. He died at Sault St. Louis,5 spent with toil and austerity, and, if I may use the expression, in the arms of Char- ity. He often declared that in his "rst interview with Tegahkouita, he thought he could discern that God had great designs as to that virgin, yet he would not exercise any haste in conferring baptism on her. He adopted in her case all the precautions that experience had shown to be necessary to make sure [of the sincerity and commitment] of the Indians before admin- istering the sacrament of regeneration.6

* * * * * * She was baptized on Easter Sunday, 1676, and received the name of

Catherine. The grace of the sacrament, received into a heart which her uprightness

and innocence had so well prepared, produced wondrous effects. What ever impression the missionary already had of the young Iroquois maiden, he was astonished to "nd in her, immediately after baptism, not a neophyte need- ing to be con"rmed in the faith, but a soul "lled with the most precious gifts of Heaven who had to be guided in the most sublime spiritual ways. At the outset her virtue excited the admiration even of the people who were least inclined to imitate her. Those on whom she depended allowed her to follow every impulse of her zeal, though this freedom did not last long. The innocence of her life, the precautions which she took to avoid all that could in the least affect it, and especially her extreme reserve as to what ever could in the slightest degree offend purity, appeared to the young men of her village as a reproach toward the dissolute life they led, and many laid snares for her with the sole view of dimming a virtue which dazzled them.

On the other hand, although she had relaxed nothing in her domestic occupations and was ever found ready to give her ser vices to all, her rela- tives were displeased to see her devote all her free time to prayer. In order to prevent her from suspending on Sundays and holidays the work which the church forbids on those days consecrated to the Lord, they made her pass them without food. Seeing, however, that they gained nothing by this course, they had recourse to still more violent means. They often mistreated her shamefully: When she went to the chapel, they sent young men after her to jeer and pelt her with stones, and men who

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were drunk, or who pretended to be drunk, rushed upon her as though they intended to take her life. But, undismayed by these arti"ces and acts of vio lence, she continued her devotions as though she enjoyed the most perfect liberty.

One day when she was in her cabin, a young man entered abruptly, with dashing eyes, brandishing his hatchet as if intending to tomahawk her. At this sight she displayed no emotion and bowed down her head to receive the blow; but the madman, seized at this instant by a panic fear, ded as pre- cipitately as though pursued by a war party. These "rst storms were suc- ceeded by a still more dangerous persecution. Catherine’s aunt was a woman of morose disposition who was displeased with all that her niece did to sat- isfy her, for the simple reason that she could "nd nothing to reprove. One day the virtuous neophyte happened to call the husband of this woman by his own name, instead of calling him Father, as usual. Her aunt imagined, or pretended to believe, that this familiar mode of speaking showed an improper connection between the uncle and niece, and she hastened on the spot to Father de Lamberville to assert that she had surprised Catherine soliciting her husband to sin. The father promised to examine the case, and when he learned on what this atrocious accusation rested, he gave the slan- derer a rebuke that covered her with confusion; reactions against the priest’s reproaches only resulted in further vexation for the innocent girl.

* * * She felt well only at the foot of the altar, where, buried in profound con-

templation and shedding torrents of tears, whose inexhaustible fountain was His love and the wound it had indicted on her heart, she often so forgot the wants7 of her body as not even to feel the cold which benumbed her whole frame. She always came from this contemplation with a renewed love of suf- fering, and it is dif"cult to conceive how ingenious her mind was in invent- ing means to crucify her desh. Sometimes she walked barefoot on the ice and snow until she lost all feeling. Sometimes she covered her bed with thorns. She rolled for three days in succession on branches of thorns, which pierced deeply into her desh, causing inexpressible pain. Another time she burned her feet, as war captives are burned, wishing thus to brand herself as a slave of Christ. But the solidity of her virtue is best seen in the unalter- able gentleness, patience, joy even, that she manifested in the sufferings she experienced in her last days.

* * * On Wednesday morning she received the sacred anointing,8 and about

three o’clock in the after noon she expired after a gentle agony of half an hour, retaining complete consciousness and sound judgment until her last sigh. Thus lived, and thus in her twenty- "fth [sic actually her twenty- fourth] year died, Catherine Tegahkouita. The example of her most holy life had produced a very great fervor among the Iroquois of Sault St. Louis. The won ders that God soon began to work in favor of those who had recourse to

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7. Needs. 8. Extreme unction, a Christian sacrament given to a critically ill person.

her intercession are still at this day, for these neophytes and indeed for all of New France, a power ful motive to serve in spirit and in truth so liberal a Master, who, without re spect of persons, lavishes his most precious gifts on those who abandon themselves to Him without reserve.

* * * Thus New France, like the capital of Old France, beheld the glory of a

poor Indian girl and of a shepherdess [Ste. Genevieve]9 shining above that of so many apostolic men who were martyrs and other saints of all condi- tions of life, God doubtless wishing for our instruction and the consolation of the humble to glorify His saints in proportion to their smallness and obscurity on earth.

1744

9. According to legend, this young shepherdess (c. 422–512) devoted her life to God. After mov- ing from outside Paris into the city, she prac-

ticed penitence and austerity, and her prayers protected Paris from the invading forces of Attila the Hun.

SOR JUANA INÉS DE LA CRUZ

S or Juana Inés de la Cruz (c. 1651–1695) was a proli"c, celebrated, and some-times controversial writer, who spent most of her adult life as a cloistered sister in the Convent of the Order of St.  Jérôme, in Mexico City (Sor is Spanish for “ Sister”). Born out of wedlock to a Spanish father and a Creole (i.e., Spanish American– born) mother in San Miguel Neplantla, Mexico, Juana showed an early appetite for learning and great fa cil i ty with languages, including Greek, Latin, and the Aztec language, Nahuatl. She wrote her "rst poem when she was eight, and her other early works include several poems in Nahuatl. Determined to devote herself to her studies rather than to marry, Juana entered a convent in 1669 and remained there until her death, from the plague. Her life in the convent was very full. She entertained distinguished guests; taught music and drama; served as the convent’s archivist and accountant; and had her own study and library, where she focused on music, philosophy, and the natu ral sciences. In the 1680s, Juana served as an un of"cial court poet. Her works include verse plays, commissioned religious ser vices, and writings for state festivals. Her verse— occasional poetry, secular love lyr ics, and religious poetry— displays mastery of the Baroque style (highly ornate, richly symbolic), often coupled with rigorously logical philosophical themes.

Love Opened a Mortal Wound1

Love opened a mortal wound. In agony, I worked the blade to make it deeper. Please, I begged, let death come quick.

1. The text is from Sor Juana’s Love Poems (1997), translated by Joan Larkin and Jaime Manrique.

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FRANCIS DANIEL PASTORIUS

F rancis Daniel Pastorius (1651– c. 1720) was a man of many interests, language and lit er a ture prominent among them. Born in Bavaria, Germany, Pastorius traveled to the Philadelphia Colony in 1683, and from his friend William Penn, the colony’s proprietor, he purchased 15,000 acres that became the site of the German- town settlement (now a Philadelphia neighborhood). In 1688, he was one of four authors of the Germantown Protest, the "rst colonial document to oppose slavery.

Pastorius was a skilled linguist and an avid reader and writer who assembled a substantial library. At his death, he left behind many works in manuscript in addi-

Wild, distracted, sick, 5 I counted, counted all the ways love hurt me. One life, I thought— a thousand deaths.

Blow after blow, my heart couldn’t survive this beating. 10 Then— how can I explain it?

I came to my senses. I said, Why do I suffer? What lover ever had so much plea sure?

Suspend, Singer Swan1

Suspend, singer swan, the sweet strain: see how the lord that Delphi2 sees exchanges for you the gentle lyre for pipe and to Admetus3 makes a pastoral sound.

As gentle song, though strong, moved 5 stones and tamed the wrath of hell, so it retreats, abashed, when you are heard: your instrument blames the church itself.

For though the works of ancient builders cannot match its columns, 10 nothing’s greater than your song

when your clear voice strikes its stones, and your sweet tones surpass it, dwarf it, while making it grow the more.

1. The text is from poets . org. Trans. Michael Smith. 2. An ancient Greek town near Mount Parnassus; site of a famous oracle of Apollo, the god of

music, poetry, truth, and prophecy, among other things. 3. In Greek my thol ogy, the king of Pherae, in Thessaly; befriended by Apollo.

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ELIZABETH ASHBRIDGE

The life of Elizabeth Ashbridge (1713–1755) was full of tumult, adventure, and spiritual seeking. It began in Eng land, where she was born Elizabeth Sampson to Anglican parents, and ended in Ireland, where she had gone to preach as a Quaker minister. She spent much of her adulthood in Britain’s North American colonies. Her odyssey involved repeated changes in her religious af"liation, culminating in her permanent embrace of Quakerism.

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tion to his publications. His writings included “The Bee- hive,” a monumental com- monplace book in manuscript that brings together extracts from his wide reading in classical and modern texts along with his own verses. Pastorius expressed a strong interest in identifying under lying commonalities that could be used to create har- monious socie ties. He understood the sources of harmony to be fundamentally spiritual and mediated by language.

[In These Seven Languages]1

In these Seven Languages I this my Book2 do own, Friend, if thou "nd it, Send the same to Germantown; Thy Recompense shall be the half of half a Crown:3 But, tho’ it be no more than half the half of this, Pray! Be Content therewith, & think it not amiss. 5 Yea and if, when thou com’st, my Cash perhaps is gone, (For Money is thus scarce, that often I have none) A Cup of Drink may do: Or else, alas! thou must Trust unto me a while, As I to Others Trust, Who failing make me fail: A thing extreme unjust! 10 To which I have no lust; But must per Force, poor Dust.

Freund, Was du #ndest, wiedergieb, Sonst hālt man dich vor einen Dieb In diesem; und in jenem Leben Folgt anders nichts als Höllen- pein. 15 Gott Selbst hat disz Gesetz gegeben Zu thun, wie man Gethan will seyn.4 Quod Tibi vis "eri, hoc facias Alijs.5

c. after 1696 1897

1. The text is from Marion Dexter Learned, The Life of Francis Daniel Pastorius, The Founder of Germantown (1908). 2. I.e., his commonplace book known as “The Bee-hive.” 3. A very small sum (a crown being an old Brit- ish coin). 4. Friend, What thou "ndest, return / Other-

wise you will be considered a thief / In this and in the next life / Nothing follows but the pains of hell. / God Himself has given this command / To do unto others as you would have them do onto you (German). 5. What ever you should wish would be done to you, do this unto others (Latin).

1. The text is from Some Account of the Early Part of the Life of Elizabeth Ashbridge, Who Died, in the Truth’s Ser vice, at the House of Robert Lecky, in the County of Carlow, Ireland, the 16th of the 5th Month, 1755. Written by Herself (1807). 2. Psalm 119.71. “David”: second king of

ancient Israel, traditionally considered the author of Psalms. 3. A county in northwest Eng land. 4. Ecclesiastes 11.1: “Cast thy bread upon the waters: for thou shalt "nd it after many days.” 5. Deeply respectful or reverential.

One of the attractions of the Quakers was their ac cep tance of women’s spiritual leadership. As an induential minister, Ashbridge associated with John Woolman (see the next headnote) and other leading Friends. In 1746, "ve years after the death of her second husband, she married Aaron Ashbridge. She composed her autobiography around 1745, and it circulated in manuscript before being published in Eng land in 1774. The Account offers a remarkable view of its author’s spiritual and physical journeys, including the re sis tance that her second husband posed to her embrace of Quakerism and to her preaching, and of the transatlantic faith com- munities that were an impor tant feature of colonial life.

From Some Account of the Early Part of the Life of Elizabeth Ashbridge1

My life having been attended with many uncommon occurrences, I have thought proper to make some remarks on the dealings of divine goodness with me. I have often had cause, with David, to say, “It is good for me that I have been afdicted;”2 and most earnestly I desire that they who read the following lines may take warning, and shun the evils into which I have been drawn.

I was born at Middlewich, in Cheshire,3 in the year 1713, of honest par- ents, named Thomas and Mary Sampson. My father bore a good character, but he was not so strictly religious as my mother, who was a pattern of virtue to me. I was my father’s only child; but my mother had a son and a daughter by a former husband. Soon after I was born, my father went to sea, and, fol- lowing his profession, which was that of a surgeon, made many long voy- ages. He continued in his sea- faring course of life till I was twelve years old, so that the care of the early part of my education devolved upon my mother; and she discharged her duty, in endeavouring to imbue my mind with the princi ples of virtue. I have had reason to be thankful that I was blest with such a parent; her good advice and counsel to me have been as bread cast upon the waters.4 She was an instructive example to all who knew her, and generally beloved; but, alas! as soon as the time came, when she might reasonably expect the bene"t from her labours, and have had com- fort in me, I deserted her. In my childhood I had an awful5 regard for reli- gion and religious people, particularly for ministers, all of whom I believed to be good men and beloved of God, which I earnestly wished to be my own case. I had also great tenderness for the poor, remembering that I had read they were beloved of the Lord. This I supposed to mean such as were poor in temporal things; whom I often visited in their cottages, and used to think that they were better off than myself; yet, if I had money, or any thing suit- able for a gift, I bestowed it on them, recollecting that they who gave to such, lent unto the Lord. I made remarks on those who pretended to religion; and,

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when I heard people swear, I was troubled; for my mother told me that, if I used any naughty words, God would not love me.

I observed that there were several dif fer ent religious socie ties;6 this I often thought of, and wept with desires that I might be directed to the one which it would be best for me to join. In this frame of mind passed my younger years. I was sometimes guilty of the faults common among children, but was always sorry for what I had done amiss; and, till I was fourteen years of age, I was as innocent as most children. About this time, my sorrows (which have continued, for the greatest part of my life, ever since) began, by my giving way to a foolish passion, in setting my affections on a young man, who, with- out the leave of my parents, courted me till I consented to marry him; and, with sorrow of heart, I relate, that I suffered myself to be carried off in the night. We were married. My parents made all pos si ble search for me, as soon as I was missing, but it was in vain. This precipitate act plunged me into much sorrow. I was soon smitten with remorse for thus leaving my parents, whose right it was to have disposed of me to their content, or who, at least, ought to have been consulted. But I was soon chastised for my disobedience, and convinced of my error. In "ve months, I was stripped of the darling of my heart, and left a young and disconsolate widow. I was now without a home. My husband had derived his livelihood only from his trade, which was that of a stocking weaver; and my father was so displeased that he would do nothing for me. My dear mother had some compassion for me, and kept

6. Faiths, or denominations.

Quaker church. This wood engraving of a Quaker church in Philadelphia portrays a woman speaking to a congregation of both men and women. Most Christian denomina- tions severely restricted women’s speech to such mixed audiences.

7. Guilt. 8. Lacking in seriousness. 9. Peculiarity. 1. In the omitted passage, Ashbridge describes adventures, physical and spiritual, that took her to parts of Britain and the northeastern colonies. Trent- town: Trenton, New Jersey, across the Del-

aware River from Philadelphia. 2. I.e., kinswoman, relative. 3. Religious autobiography by this founder of Quakerism, published in 1694. 4. Formal agreement. 5. Satan.

me among the neighbours. Afterwards, by her advice, I went to a relation of hers, at Dublin. We hoped that my absence would soften my father’s rigour; but he continued indexible; he would not send for me back, and I dared not to return unless he did.

The relation I went to reside with was one of the people called Quakers. His habits were so very dif fer ent to what I had been accustomed to, that the visit proved disagreeable to me. I had been brought up in the way of the Church of Eng land, and though, as I have said, I had a religious education, yet I was allowed to sing and dance, which my cousin would not permit. The great vivacity of my natu ral disposition would not, in this instance, suffer me to give way to the gloomy sense of sorrow and conviction;7 and therefore my pres ent restraints had a wrong effect. I became more wild and airy8 than ever; my cousin often reproved me; but I then thought his conduct was the result of singularity9 and would not bear it, or be controlled. Having a distant relation in the West of Ireland, I went to him. I now enjoyed all the liberty I wished; for, what rendered me disagreeable to my other kinsman, was quite pleasing to this. Between these two relations I spent three years and three months.

* * * I went from Trent- town to Philadelphia by water,1 and from thence to my

uncle’s on horse back. My uncle was dead, and my aunt married again; yet, both she and her husband received me in the kindest manner. I had scarcely been three hours in the house, before my opinion of these people began to alter. I perceived a book lying upon the table, and, being fond of reading, took it up; my aunt observed me, and said, “Cousin,2 that is a Quaker’s book.” She saw I was not a Quaker, and supposed I would not like it. I made her no answer, but queried with myself, what can these people write about? I have heard that they deny the scriptures, and have no other bible than George Fox’s Journal,3— denying, also, all the holy ordinances. But, before I had read two pages, my heart burned within me, and, for fear I should be seen, I went into the garden. I sat down, and, as the piece was short, read it before I returned, though I was often obliged to stop to give vent to my tears. The fulness of my heart produced the involuntary exclamation of, “My God, must I, if ever I come to the knowledge of thy truth, be of this man’s opinion, who has sought thee as I have done; and must I join this people, to whom, a few hours ago, I preferred the papists. O, thou God of my salvation, and of my life, who hath abundantly manifested thy long suffering and tender mercy, in redeeming me as from the lowest hell, I beseech thee to direct me in the right way, and keep me from error; so will I perform my covenant,4 and think nothing too near to part with for thy name’s sake. O, happy people, thus beloved of God!” After having collected myself, I washed my face, that it might not be perceived I had been weeping. In the night I got but little sleep; the enemy of mankind5 haunted me with his insinuations, by suggesting that

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6. Those whom God has chosen to be saved. 7. Quaker meetings typically involve periods of silence until a member feels moved to speak. 8. Ashbridge felt hypocritical for having criti- cized a devout woman, perhaps a Quaker or a woman who had violated sanctions against female preachers.

9. Rather than wearing the attire some Quakers adopted, known as plain dress, she wore fancier clothing to disguise her Quaker leanings. 1. Ashbridge’s husband objects to her use of the archaic form of the second- person pronoun, which she employs following Quaker practice.

I was one of those that wavered, and not steadfast in faith; and advancing several texts of scripture against me, as that, in the latter days, there should be those who would deceive the very elect;6 that of such were the people I was among, and that I was in danger of being deluded. Warned in this man- ner, (from the right source as I thought,) I resolved to be aware of those deceivers, and, for some weeks, did not touch one of their books. The next day, being the "rst of the week, I was desirous of going to church, which was distant about four miles; but, being a stranger, and having no one to go with me, I gave up all thoughts of that, and, as most of the family were going to meeting, I went there with them. As we sat in silence,7 I looked over the meeting, and said to myself, “How like fools these people sit; how much bet- ter would it be to stay at home, and read the Bible, or some good book, than come here and go to sleep.” As for me I was very drowsy; and, while asleep, had nearly fallen down. This was the last time I ever fell asleep in a meet- ing. I now began to be lifted up with spiritual pride, and to think myself better than they; but this disposition of mind did not last long. It may seem strange that, after living so long with one of this society at Dublin, I should yet be so much a stranger to them. In answer, let it be considered that, while I was there, I never read any of their books, nor went to one meeting; besides, I had heard such accounts of them, as made me think that, of all socie ties, they were the worst. But he who knows the sincerity of the heart, looked on my weakness with pity; I was permitted to see my error, and shown that these were the people I ought to join.

* * * I loved to go to meetings, but did not love to be seen going on week- days,

and therefore went to them, from my school, through the woods. Notwith- standing all my care, the neighbours, (who were not friends,) soon began to revile me with the name of Quaker; adding, that they supposed I intended to be a fool, and turn preacher. Thus did I receive the same censure, which, about a year before, I had passed on one of the handmaids of the Lord in Boston. I was so weak, that I could not bear the reproach.8 In order to change their opinion, I went into greater excess of apparel than I had freedom to do,9 even before I became acquainted with friends. In this condition I con- tinued till my husband came, and then began the trial of my faith.

Before he reached me, he heard I was turned Quaker; at which he stamped, and said, “I had rather have heard she was dead, well as I love her; for, if it be so, all my comfort is gone. He then came to me; it was after an absence of four months; I got up and said to him, “My dear, I am glad to see thee.” At this, he dew into a great rage, exclaiming, “The devil thee, thee, thee, don’t thee me.”1 I endeavoured, by every mild means, to pacify him; and, at length, got him "t to speak to my relations. As soon after this as we were alone, he said to me, “And so I see your Quaker relations have made you one;” I replied, that they had not, (which was true,) I never told them how it was

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with me. He said he would not stay amongst them; and, having found a place to his mind, hired, and came directly back to fetch me, walking, in one after noon, thirty miles to keep me from meeting the next day, which was "rst day. He took me, after resting this day, to the place where he had hired, and to lodgings he had engaged at the house of a churchwarden. This man was a bitter enemy of Friends, and did all he could to irritate my hus- band against them.

Though I did not appear like a friend,2 they all believed me to be one. When my husband and he used to be making their diversions and reviling, I sat in silence, though now and then an involuntary sigh broke from me; at which he would say, “ There, did not I tell you your wife was a Quaker, and she will become a preacher.” On such an occasion as this, my husband once came up to me, in a great rage, and shaking his hand over me, said, “You had better be hanged in that day.” I was seized with horror, and again plunged into despair, which continued nearly three months. I was afraid that, by denying the Lord, the heavens would be shut against me. I walked much alone in the woods, and there, where no eye saw, or ear heard me, lamented my miserable condition. Often have I wandered, from morning till night, without food. I was brought so low that my life became a burden to me; and the devil seemed to vaunt that, though the sins of my youth were forgiven me, yet now I had committed an unpardonable sin, and hell would inevita- bly be my portion, and my torments would be greater than if I had hanged myself at "rst.

* * * Thus, for some time, I had to go eight miles on foot to meeting, which I

never thought hard.3 My husband had a horse, but he would not suffer me to ride on it; nor, when my shoes were worn out, would he let me have a new pair; but, though he hoped, on this account, to keep me from meeting, it did not hinder me:— I have tied them- round with strings to keep them on.

Finding that all the means he had yet used could not alter my resolutions, he several times struck me with severe blows. I endeavoured to bear all with patience, believing that the time would come when he would see I was in the right. Once he came up to me, took out his penknife, and said, “If you offer to go to meeting to- morrow, with this knife I’ll cripple you, for you shall not be a Quaker.” I made him no answer. In the morning, I set out as usual; he did not attempt to harm me. Having despaired of recovering me himself, he ded, for help, to the priest, whom he told, that I had been a very religious woman, in the way of the Church of Eng land, of which I was a member, and had a good certi"cate from Long Island;4 that I was now bewitched, and had turned Quaker, which almost broke his heart; and, therefore, he desired that, as he5 was one who had the care of souls, he would come and pay me a visit, and use his endeavours to reclaim me, which he hoped, by the bless- ing of God, would be done. The priest consented, and "xed the time for his coming, which was that day two weeks, as he said he could not come sooner. My husband came home extremely pleased, and told me of it. I replied, with

2. I.e., did not wear plain dress. 3. For many months, Ashbridge’s husband con- tinued to oppose her membership in the Society of Friends.

4. In New York. 5. I.e., the priest; the following “he” and “his” refer to the priest as well.

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a smile, I trusted I should be enabled to give a reason for the hope within me; yet I believed, at the same time, that the priest would never trou ble him- self about me, which proved to be the case. * * *

This day, as usual, I had gone to meeting on foot. While my husband (as he afterwards told me) was lying on the bed, these words crossed his mind: “Lord, where shall I dy to shun thee,” &c. upon which he arose, and, seeing it rain, got the horse and set off to fetch me, arriving just as the meeting broke up. I got on horse back as quickly as pos si ble, lest he should hear I had been speaking; he did hear of it nevertheless, and, as soon as we were in the woods, began with saying, “Why do you mean thus to make my life unhappy? What, could you not be a Quaker, without turning fool in this manner?” I answered in tears, “My dear, look on me with pity, if thou hast any; canst thou think that I, in the bloom of my days, would bear all that thou knowest of, and much that thou knowest not of, if I did not feel it my duty.” These words touched him, and, he said, “Well, I’ll e’en give you up; I see it wont avail to strive; if it be of God I cannot overthrow it; and, if of yourself, it will soon fall.” I saw the tears stand in his eyes, at which I was overcome with joy, and began already to reap the fruits of my obedience. But my trials were not yet over. The time appointed for the priest to visit me arrived, but no priest appeared. My husband went to fetch him, but he refused, saying he was busy, which so displeased my husband that he never went to hear him again, and, for some time, went to no place of worship.

* * * * * * One day he said to me, “I would go to meeting, only I’m afraid I shall

hear your clack, which I cannot bear.” I used no persuasions. When meeting- time came, he got the horse, took me behind him, and went. For several months, if he saw me offer to rise, he went out; till, one day, I rose before he was aware and then, as he afterwards owned, he was ashamed to do it.

From this time, he left off the practice, and never hindered me from going to meeting.

ca. 1745 1774

JOHN WOOLMAN

In the cata log of American writers, John Woolman (1720–1772) stands out as a model of integrity, decency, and forthrightness. He was born on his family’s farm in Burlington County, New Jersey, a few miles east of Philadelphia, and attended school in Mount Holly, New Jersey, where he later set up in business for himself. Woolman’s success in business offended his Quaker belief in simplicity, and he deliberately cut back his commercial dealings. While writing a bill of sale for a slave, Woolman "rst became aware of the condict between public law and private con- science that was to absorb him for the rest of his life. Although he tells us that on that "rst occasion he remained silent, “gave way,” and wrote the bill of sale, he never made that mistake again. The next time, he informed the owner that slavery and a

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religious conscience were incompatible. Woolman thereafter found his true vocation in “speaking up” fellow Quakers in their homes and at assemblies. In his “conversa- tions” with Quakers, Woolman warned of dangers: materialist society, exploitation of workers, military conscription, paying taxes to support wars, and above all, cor- ruptions caused by slavery.

Woolman knew Elizabeth Ashbridge and was familiar with her autobiographical narrative when he wrote his own. First published in 1774, and consistently in print ever since, Woolman’s Journal has been admired not only for the life and tempera- ment it reveals but also for the directness and simplicity of its style.

From The Journal of John Woolman1

[Early Life and Vocation]

I have often felt a motion of love to leave some hints in writing of my experi- ence of the goodness of God, and now, in the thirty- sixth year of my age, I begin this work. I was born in Northampton, in Burlington County in West Jersey, a.d. 1720, and before I was seven years old I began to be acquainted with the operations of divine love. Through the care of my parents, I was taught to read near as soon as I was capable of it, and as I went from school one Seventh Day,2 I remember, while my companions went to play by the way, I went forward out of sight; and sitting down, I read the twenty- second chapter of the Revelations: “He showed me a river of water, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and the Lamb, etc.”3 And in reading it my mind was drawn to seek after that pure habitation which I then believed God had prepared for His servants. The place where I sat and the sweetness that attended my mind remains fresh in my memory.

This and the like gracious visitations4 had that effect upon me, that when boys used ill language it troubled me, and through the continued mercies of God I was preserved from it. The pious instructions of my parents were often fresh in my mind when I happened amongst wicked children, and was of use to me. My parents, having a large family of children, used frequently on First Days after meeting5 to put us to read in the Holy Scriptures or some religious books, one after another, the rest sitting by without much conver- sation, which I have since often thought was a good practice. From what I had read and heard, I believed there had been in past ages people who walked in uprightness before God in a degree exceeding any that I knew, or heard of, now living; and the apprehension of there being less steadiness and "rm- ness amongst people in this age than in past ages often troubled me while I was a child.

I had a dream about the ninth year of my age as follows: I saw the moon rise near the west and run a regular course eastward, so swift that in about

1. The text is from The Journal and Major Essays of John Woolman (1971), edited by Phillips  P. Mouton. 2. I.e., Saturday. Quakers substituted numbers for the days of the week both for the sake of sim- plicity and to discard the names of the pagan gods (e.g., Saturday was named in honor of the Roman god Saturn).

3. Revelation 22.1. 4. I.e., similar moments when he felt God’s pres- ence again. 5. Quakers refer to their assemblies as “meet- ings” and their church as a “meeting house.” It is the custom for worshipers to remain silent until someone is moved to speak.

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6. Full of awe. 7. I.e., sun snake, an imaginary creature. 8. Proverbs 12.10.

9. Undutifully, ungraciously. 1. Frivolous, unthinking.

a quarter of an hour she reached our meridian, when there descended from her a small cloud on a direct line to the earth, which lighted on a pleasant green about twenty yards from the door of my father’s house (in which I thought I stood) and was immediately turned into a beautiful green tree. The moon appeared to run on with equal swiftness and soon set in the east, at which time the sun arose at the place where it commonly does in the sum- mer, and shining with full radiance in a serene air, it appeared as pleasant a morning as ever I saw.

All this time I stood still in the door in an awful6 frame of mind, and I observed that as heat increased by the rising sun, it wrought so powerfully on the little green tree that the leaves gradually withered; and before noon it appeared dry and dead. There then appeared a being, small of size, full of strength and resolution, moving swift from the north, southward, called a sun worm.7

Another thing remarkable in my childhood was that once, going to a neigh- bor’s house, I saw on the way a robin sitting on her nest; and as I came near she went off, but having young ones, dew about and with many cries expressed her concern for them. I stood and threw stones at her, till one striking her, she fell down dead. At "rst I was pleased with the exploit, but after a few minutes was seized with horror, as having in a sportive way killed an inno- cent creature while she was careful for her young. I beheld her lying dead and thought those young ones for which she was so careful must now per- ish for want of their dam to nourish them; and after some painful consider- ations on the subject, I climbed up the tree, took all the young birds and killed them, supposing that better than to leave them to pine away and die miserably, and believed in this case that Scripture proverb was ful"lled, “The tender mercies of the wicked are cruel.”8 I then went on my errand, but for some hours could think of little else but the cruelties I had committed, and was much troubled.

Thus He whose tender mercies are over all His works hath placed a princi- ple in the human mind which incites to exercise goodness toward every living creature; and this being singly attended to, people become tenderhearted and sympathizing, but being frequently and totally rejected, the mind shuts itself up in a contrary disposition.

About the twelfth year of my age, my father being abroad, my mother reproved me for some misconduct, to which I made an undutiful reply; and the next First Day as I was with my father returning from meeting, he told me he understood I had behaved amiss to my mother and advised me to be more careful in future. I knew myself blameable, and in shame and confu- sion remained silent. Being thus awakened to a sense of my wickedness, I felt remorse in my mind, and getting home I retired and prayed to the Lord to forgive me, and do not remember that I ever after that spoke unhand- somely9 to either of my parents, however foolish in other things.

Having attained the age of sixteen years, I began to love wanton1 com- pany, and though I was preserved from profane language or scandalous con- duct, still I perceived a plant in me which produced much wild grapes. Yet

2. Cf. Ecclesiastes 1.2. “Want”: lack. 3. I.e., ultimate spiritual real ity. 4. I.e., those ideals basic to the Religious Soci- ety of Friends.

5. Cf. Ecclesiastes 9.11. 6. Religious experience. 7. Satan. 8. Jeremiah 3.25.

my merciful Father forsook me not utterly, but at times through His grace I was brought seriously to consider my ways, and the sight of my backsliding affected me with sorrow. But for want of rightly attending to the reproofs of instruction, vanity was added to vanity,2 and repentance to repentance; upon the whole my mind was more and more alienated from the Truth,3 and I has- tened toward destruction. While I meditate on the gulf toward which I trav- eled and redect on my youthful disobedience, for these things I weep; mine eye runneth down with water.

Advancing in age the number of my acquaintance increased, and thereby my way grew more dif"cult. Though I had heretofore found comfort in read- ing the Holy Scriptures and thinking on heavenly things, I was now estranged therefrom. I knew I was going from the dock of Christ and had no resolution to return; hence serious redections were uneasy to me and youthful vanities and diversions my greatest plea sure. Running in this road I found many like myself, and we associated in that which is reverse to true friendship.4

But in this swift race5 it pleased God to visit me with sickness, so that I doubted of recovering. And then did darkness, horror, and amazement with full force seize me, even when my pain and distress of body was very great. I thought it would have been better for me never to have had a being than to see the day which I now saw. I was "lled with confusion, and in great afdiction both of mind and body I lay and bewailed myself. I had not con"- dence to lift up my cries to God, whom I had thus offended, but in a deep sense of my great folly I was humbled before Him, and at length that Word which is as a "re and a hammer broke and dissolved my rebellious heart. And then my cries were put up in contrition, and in the multitude of His mercies I found inward relief, and felt a close engagement that if He was pleased to restore my health, I might walk humbly before Him.

After my recovery this exercise6 remained with me a considerable time; but by degrees giving way to youthful vanities, they gained strength, and get- ting with wanton young people I lost ground. The Lord had been very gra- cious and spoke peace to me in the time of my distress, and I now most ungratefully turned again to folly, on which account at times I felt sharp reproof but did not get low enough to cry for help. I was not so hardy as to commit things scandalous, but to exceed in vanity and promote mirth was my chief study. Still I retained a love and esteem for pious people, and their com pany brought an awe upon me.

My dear parents several times admonished me in the fear of the Lord, and their admonition entered into my heart and had a good effect for a season, but not getting deep enough to pray rightly, the tempter7 when he came found entrance. I remember once, having spent a part of the day in wantonness, as I went to bed at night there lay in a win dow near my bed a Bible, which I opened, and "rst cast my eye on the text, “We lie down in our shame, and our confusion covers us.”8 This I knew to be my case, and meeting with so unexpected a reproof, I was somewhat affected with it and went to bed under remorse of conscience, which I soon cast off again.

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9. I.e., live mindfully of Christ and in humility. 1. Desolate places. 2. Ezekiel was a priest and prophet to whom God said, “Son of man, I have made thee a watchman

unto the house of Israel: therefore hear the word at my mouth, and give them warning from me” (Ezekiel 3.17).

Thus time passed on; my heart was replenished with mirth and wanton- ness, while pleasing scenes of vanity were presented to my imagination till I attained the age of eigh teen years, near which time I felt the judgments of God in my soul like a consuming "re, and looking over my past life the pros- pect was moving. I was often sad and longed to be delivered from those vanities; then again my heart was strongly inclined to them, and there was in me a sore condict. At times I turned to folly, and then again sorrow and confusion took hold of me. In a while I resolved totally to leave off some of my vanities, but there was a secret reserve in my heart of the more re"ned part of them, and I was not low enough to "nd true peace. Thus for some months I had great trou ble, there remaining in me an unsubjected will which rendered my labors fruitless, till at length through the merciful continuance of heavenly visitations I was made to bow down in spirit before the Lord.

I remember one eve ning I had spent some time in reading a pious author, and walking out alone I humbly prayed to the Lord for His help, that I might be delivered from all those vanities which so ensnared me. Thus being brought low, He helped me; and as I learned to bear the cross9 I felt refresh- ment to come from His presence; but not keeping in that strength which gave victory, I lost ground again, the sense of which greatly affected me; and I sought deserts1 and lonely places and there with tears did confess my sins to God and humbly craved help of Him. And I may say with reverence He was near to me in my trou bles, and in those times of humiliation opened my ear to discipline.

* * * About the twenty- third year of my age, I had many fresh and heavenly

openings in re spect to the care and providence of the Almighty over his crea- tures in general, and over man as the most noble amongst those which are vis i ble. And being clearly convinced in my judgment that to place my whole trust in God was best for me, I felt renewed engagements that in all things I might act on an inward princi ple of virtue and pursue worldly business no further than as Truth opened my way therein.

About the time called Christmas I observed many people from the coun- try and dwellers in town who, resorting to the public houses, spent their time in drinking and vain sports, tending to corrupt one another, on which account I was much troubled. At one house in par tic u lar there was much disorder, and I believed it was a duty laid on me to go and speak to the mas- ter of that house. I considered I was young and that several el derly Friends in town had opportunity to see these things, and though I would gladly have been excused, yet I could not feel my mind clear.

The exercise was heavy, and as I was reading what the Almighty said to Ezekiel respecting his duty as a watchman,2 the matter was set home more clearly; and then with prayer and tears I besought the Lord for His assis- tance, who in loving- kindness gave me a resigned heart. Then at a suitable opportunity I went to the public house, and seeing the man amongst a com- pany, I went to him and told him I wanted to speak with him; so we went

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JOHN MARRANT

J ohn Marrant (1755-1791) was born in New York City into a free black family. While he was still a child, the family moved to Florida and then Georgia. When he was eleven they moved again, settling in Charleston, South Carolina. There Marrant studied music for two years and began learning a trade. He was thirteen when he heard a sermon by the evangelist George White"eld that transformed his life and led to the adventures in his narrative. A Narrative of the Lord’s Wonderful Dealings with John Marrant, a Black was im mensely popu lar, printed at least twenty- one times between 1785 and 1835, and read on both sides of the Atlantic. An “as- told-to” text transcribed and edited by the Reverend William Aldridge, the Narrative shares features of several narrative traditions— conversion, Indian cap- tivity, and slave— and thus encapsulates the pervasive role that themes of capture and liberation played in several of early Amer i ca’s most popu lar and induential literary genres. Some of the narrative’s appeal came from its improbable story of the spiritually motivated adventures of a free black teenager.

aside, and there in the fear and dread of the Almighty I expressed to him what rested on my mind, which he took kindly, and afterward showed more regard to me than before. In a few years after, he died middle- aged, and I often thought that had I neglected my duty in that case it would have given me great trou ble, and I was humbly thankful to my gracious Father, who had supported me herein.

My employer, having a Negro woman, sold her and directed me to write a bill of sale, the man being waiting who bought her. The thing was sudden, and though the thoughts of writing an instrument of slavery for one of my fellow creatures felt uneasy,3 yet I remembered I was hired by the year, that it was my master who directed me to do it, and that it was an el derly man, a member of our Society, who bought her; so through weakness I gave way and wrote it, but at the executing [of] it, I was so afdicted in my mind that I said before my master and the Friend that I believed slavekeeping to be a practice inconsistent with the Christian religion. This in some degree abated my uneasiness, yet as often as I redected seriously upon it I thought I should have been clearer if I had desired to be excused from it as a thing against my conscience, for such it was. And some time after this a young man of our Society spake to me to write an instrument of slavery, he hav- ing lately taken a Negro into his house. I told him I was not easy to write it, for though many kept slaves in our Society, as in others, I still believed the practice was not right, and desired to be excused from writing [it]. I spoke to him in good will, and he told me that keeping slaves was not altogether agreeable to his mind, but that the slave being a gift made to his wife, he had accepted of her.

1774

3. I.e., it contradicted his sense of right, so he felt ill at ease with his conscience.

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1. The text is from the fourth edition of A Narra- tive of the Lord’s Wonderful Dealings with John Marrant, a Black (Now Going to Preach the Gos- pel in Nova Scotia) Born in New- York, in North Amer i ca (1785?). 2. Marrant was staying in Charleston with his mother and siblings, but the visit was going badly. In the preceding passage, they tormented him about his newfound faith, and he considered suicide, but he realized that “if I did destroy myself I could not come where God was.” 3. The En glish theologian Isaac Watts (1674– 1748) is known as the father of En glish hymnody.

4. Marrant traveled alone “in the desart” (des- ert, or wilderness), sleeping in trees and growing progressively weaker. At one point, he describes being reduced to eating deer grass and "nding it “the best meal I ever had in my life.” He writes, “I continued travelling on for nine days, feeding upon grass, and not knowing whither I was going; but the Lord Jesus Christ was very pres ent, and that comforted me through all.” His account echoes Jesus’ time in the wilderness (Matthew 4.1–11, Luke 4.1–13, Mark 1.12–13). 5. I.e., having sold skins in winter.

From A Narrative of the Lord’s Wonderful Dealings with John Marrant, a Black1

* * * * * * I rose one morning very early, to get a little quietness and retirement, I went into the woods, and staid till eight o’clock in the morning; upon my return I found them all at breakfast;2 I passed by them, and went up- stairs without any interruption; I went upon my knees to the Lord, and returned him thanks; then I took up a small pocket Bible and one of Dr. Watts’s hymn books,3 and passing by them went out without one word spoken by any of us. After spending some time in the "elds I was persuaded to go from home altogether. Accordingly I went over the fence, about half a mile from our house, which divided the inhabited and cultivated parts of the country from the wilderness. I continued travelling in the desert all day without the least inclination of returning back.4 * * * As I was going on, and musing upon the goodness of the Lord, an Indian hunter, who stood at some distance, saw me; he hid himself behind a tree; but as I passed along he bolted out, and put his hands on my breast, which surprised me a few moments. He then asked me where I was going? I answered I did not know; but where the Lord was pleased to guide me. Having heard me praising God before I came up to him, he enquired who I was talking to? I told him I was talking to my Lord Jesus; he seemed surprised, and asked me where he was? for he did not see him there. I told him he could not be seen with bodily eyes. After a little more talk, he insisted upon taking me home; but I refused, and added, that I would die rather than return home. He then asked me if I knew how far I was from home? I answered, I did not know; you are 55 miles and a half, says he, from home. He farther asked me how I did to live? I said I was supported by the Lord. He asked me how I slept? I answered, the Lord pro- vided me with a bed every night; he further enquired what preserved me from being devoured by the wild beasts? I replied, the Lord Jesus Christ kept me from them. He stood astonished, and said, you say the Lord Jesus Christ do this, and do that, and do every thing for you, he must be a very "ne man, where is he? I replied, he is here pres ent. To this he made me no answer, only said, I know you, and your mother and sister, and upon a little further conversation I found he did know them, having been used in winter to sell skins5 in our town. This alarmed me, and I wept for fear he would take me home by force; but when he saw me so affected, he said he would not take me home if I would go with him. I objected against that, for fear he would

rob me of my comfort and communion with God: But at last, being much pressed, I consented to go. Our employment for ten weeks and three days, was killing deer, and taking off their skins by day, which we afterwards hung on the trees to dry till they were sent for; the means of defence and security against our nocturnal enemies, always took up the eve nings: We collected a number of large bushes, and placed them nearly in a circular form, which uniting at the extremity, afforded us both a verdant covering, and a suf"cient shelter from the night dews. What moss we could gather was strewed upon the ground, and this composed our bed. A "re was kindled in the front of our temporary lodging room, and fed with fresh fuel all night, as we slept and watched by turns; and this was our defence from the dreadful animals, whose shining eyes and tremendous roar we often saw and heard during the night.

By constant conversation with the hunter, I acquired a fuller knowledge of the Indian tongue: This, together with the sweet communion I enjoyed with God, I have considered as a preparation for the great trial I was soon after to pass through.

The hunting season being now at an end, we left the woods, and directed our course towards a large Indian town, belonging to the Cherokee nation; and having reached it, I said to the hunter, they will not suffer6 me to enter in. He replied, as I was with him, nobody would interrupt me.

There was an Indian forti"cation all round the town, and a guard placed at each entrance. The hunter passed one of these without molestation, but I was stopped by the guard and examined. They asked me where I came from, and what was my business there? My companion of the woods attempted to speak for me, but was not permitted; he was taken away, and I saw him no more. I was now surrounded by about 50 men, and carried to one of their chiefs to be examined by him. When I came before him, he asked me what was my business there? I told him I came there with a hunter, whom I met with in the woods. He replied, “Did I not know that whoever came there without giving a better account of themselves than I did, was to be put to death?” I said I did not know it. Observing that I answered him so readily in his own language, he asked me where I learnt it? To this I returned no answer, but burst out into a dood of tears; and calling upon my Lord Jesus. At this he stood astonished, and expressed a concern for me, and said I was young. He asked me who my Lord Jesus was? To this I gave him no answer, but continued praying and weeping. Addressing himself to the of"- cer who stood by him, he said he was sorry; but it was the law, and it must not be broken. I was then ordered to be taken away, and put into a place of con"nement. They led me from their court into a low dark place, and thrust me into it, very dreary and dismal; they made fast the door, and set a watch. The judge sent for the executioner, and gave him his warrant for my execu- tion in the after noon of the next day. The executioner came, and gave me notice of it, which made me very happy, as the near prospect of death made me hope for a speedy deliverance from the body: And truly this dungeon became my chapel, for the Lord Jesus did not leave me in this great trou ble, but was very pres ent, so that I continued blessing him, and singing his praises all night without ceasing: The watch hearing the noise, informed the exe- cutioner that somebody had been in the dungeon with me all night; upon

6. Allow.

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7. “ These pegs were to be kindled at the oppo- site end from the body” [Marrant’s note].

8. See Daniel 6. “Three children . . . furnace”: see Daniel 3.

which he came in to see and to examine, with a great torch lighted in his hand, who it was I had with me; but "nding nobody, he turned round, and asked me who it was? I told him it was the Lord Jesus Christ; but he made no answer, turned away, went out, and locked the door. At the hour appointed for my execution I was taken out, and led to the destined spot, amidst a vast number of people. I praised the Lord all the way we went, and when we arrived at the place I understood the kind of death I was to suffer, yet, blessed be God, none of those things moved me. The executioner shewed me a bas- ket of turpentine wood, stuck full of small pieces, like skewers; he told me I was to be stripped naked, and laid down in the basket, and these sharp pegs were to be stuck into me, and then set on "re, and when they had burnt to my body,7 I was to be turned on the other side, and served in the same manner, and then to be taken by four men and thrown into the dame, which was to "nish the execution. I burst into tears, and asked what I had done to deserve so cruel a death! To this he gave me no answer. I cried out, Lord, if it be thy will that it should be so, thy will be done: I then asked the execu- tioner to let me go to prayer; he asked me to whom? I answered, to the Lord my God; he seemed surprized, and asked me where he was? I told him he was pres ent; upon which he gave me leave. I desired them all to do as I did, so I fell down upon my knees, and mentioned to the Lord his delivering of the three children in the "ery furnace, and of Daniel in the lion’s den,8 and had close communion with God. I prayed in En glish a considerable time, and about the middle of my prayer, the Lord impressed a strong desire upon my mind to turn into their language, and pray in their tongue. I did so, and with remarkable liberty, which wonderfully affected the people. One circum- stance was very singular, and strikingly displays the power and grace of God. I believe the executioner was savingly converted to God. He rose from his knees, and embraced me round the middle, and was unable to speak for about "ve minutes; the "rst words he expressed, when he had utterance, were, “No man shall hurt thee till thou hast been to the king.”

I was taken away immediately, and as we passed along, and I was redect- ing upon the deliverance which the Lord had wrought out for me, and hear- ing the praises which the executioner was singing to the Lord, I must own I was utterly at a loss to "nd words to praise him. I broke out in these words, what can’t the Lord Jesus do! and what power is like unto his! I will thank thee for what is passed, and trust thee for what is to come. I will sing thy praise with my feeble tongue whilst life and breath shall last, and when I fail to sound thy praises here, I hope to sing them round thy throne above: And thus, with unspeakable joy, I sung two verses of Dr. Watts’s hymns:

“My God, the spring of all my joys, The life of my delights; The glory of my brightest days, And comfort of my nights. In darkest shades, if thou appear, My dawning is begun; Thou art my soul’s bright morning star, And thou my rising sun.”

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9. Isaiah 53 begins “Who hath believed our report? And to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed?” Matthew 26 describes Jesus’ actions before his Cruci"xion. 1. “Or what those parts were which seemed to affect me so much, not knowing what I read, as

he did not understand the En glish language” [Marrant’s note]. 2. Genesis 42.36. 3. Who will hinder or prevent it? Cf. Isaiah 44.13.

Passing by the judge’s door, he stopped us, and asked the executioner why he brought me back? The man fell upon his knees, and begged he would permit me to be carried before the king, which being granted, I went on, guarded by two hundred soldiers with bows and arrows. After many wind- ings I entered the king’s outward chamber, and after waiting some time he came to the door, and his "rst question was, how came I there? I answered, I came with a hunter whom I met with in the woods, and who persuaded me to come there. He then asked me how old I was? I told him not "fteen. He asked me how I was supported before I met with this man? I answered, by the Lord Jesus Christ, which seemed to confound him. He turned round, and asked me if he lived where I came from? I answered, yes, and here also. He looked about the room, and said he did not see him; but I told him I felt him. The executioner fell upon his knees, and intreated the king, and told him what he had felt of the same Lord. At this instant the king’s eldest daughter came into the chamber, a person about 19 years of age, and stood at my right- hand. I had a Bible in my hand, which she took out of it, and having opened it, she kissed it; and seemed much delighted with it. When she had put it into my hand again; the king asked me what it was? and I told him, the name of my God was recorded there; and, after several questions, he bid me read it; which I did, particularly the 53d chapter of Isaiah, in the most solemn manner I was able; and also the 26th chapter of Matthew’s Gospel;9 and when I pronounced the name of Jesus, the par tic u lar effect it had upon me was observed by the king. When I had "nished reading, he asked me why I read those names1 with so much reverence? I told him, because the Being to whom those names belonged made heaven and earth, and I and he; this he denied. I then pointed to the sun, and asked him who made the sun, and moon, and stars, and preserved them in their regular order? He said there was a man in their town that did it. I laboured as much as I could to convince him to the contrary. His daughter took the book out of my hand a second time; she opened it, and kissed it again; her father bid her give it to me, which she did; but said, with much sorrow, the book would not speak to her. The executioner then fell upon his knees, and begged the king to let me go to prayer, which being granted, we all went upon our knees, and now the Lord displayed his glorious power. In the midst of the prayer some of them cried out, particularly the king’s daughter, and the man who ordered me to be executed, and several others seemed under deep conviction of sin: This made the king very angry; he called me a witch, and commanded me to be thrust into the prison, and to be exe- cuted the next morning. This was enough to make me think, as old Jacob once did, “All these things are against me;”2 for I was dragged away, and thrust into the dungeon with much indignation; but God, who never for- sakes his people, was with me. Though I was weak in body, yet was I strong in the spirit: The Lord works, and who shall let it?3 The executioner went to the king, and assured him, that if he put me to death, his daughter would never be well. They used the skill of all their doctors that after noon and

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night; but physical prescriptions were useless. In the morning the executioner came to me, and, without opening the prison door, called to me, and hear- ing me answer, said, “Fear not, thy God who delivered thee yesterday, will deliver thee to- day.” This comforted me very much, especially to "nd he could trust the Lord. Soon after I was fetched out; I thought it was to be executed; but they led me away to the king’s chamber with much bodily weakness, having been without food two days. When I came into the king’s presence, he said to me, with much anger, if I did not make his daughter and that man well, I should be laid down and chopped into pieces before him. I was not afraid, but the Lord tried my faith sharply. The king’s daughter and the other person were brought out into the outer chamber, and we went to prayer; but the heavens were locked up to my petitions. I besought the Lord again, but received no answer: I cried again, and he was intreated. He said, “Be it to thee as thou wilt;”4 the Lord appeared most lovely and glorious; the king himself was awakened, and the others set at liberty. A great change took place among the people; the king’s house became God’s house; the soldiers were ordered away, and the poor con- demned prisoner had perfect liberty, and was treated like a prince. Now the Lord made all my enemies to become my great friends. I remained nine weeks in the king’s palace, praising God day and night: I was never out but three days all the time. I had assumed the habit of the country, and was dressed much like the king, and nothing was too good for me. The king would take off his golden ornaments, his chain and bracelets, like a child, if I objected to them, and lay them aside. Here I learnt to speak their tongue in the highest stile.5

1785

4. In Matthew 15.28, Jesus says this to a woman from Canaan. He has agreed to cast a devil out of her daughter. 5. Eventually, Marrant had a dramatic home-

coming at his mother’s house. At the end of the Narrative, he is in London and preparing to depart for Nova Scotia.

REBECCA SAMUEL

L ike her con temporary Abigail Adams, Rebecca Alexander Samuel (d. 1790s) wrote letters that offer a fascinating glimpse into her cultural milieu. In Samu- el’s case, that milieu involved Jewish life in the early republic. Little is known about Samuel apart from her letters. She and her husband, Hyman Samuel, a silver- smith and watchmaker, lived in southern cities and towns including Petersburg, Virginia; Baltimore, Mary land; and Charleston, South Carolina. They prob ably came originally from Germany and may have spent time in Eng land. Writing in the German Jewish dialect of Yiddish to her parents, in Hamburg, Germany, Samuel described vari ous challenges that her family experienced in practicing their faith and sustaining their religious identity. Samuel also emphasized her appreciation for the absence of religious coercion in the United States and the relative ac cep tance that they found in the southern states.

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1. The texts are from Jacob Rader Marcus, Amer- ican Jewry Documents: Eigh teenth Century (1959). Bracketed material is by Marcus.

2. The year according to the Hebrew calendar. “Shebat”: variant spelling of Shabbat, the Hebrew word for Sabbath.

Letters to Her Parents1

Petersburg, January 12, 1791, Wednesday, 8th [7th?] Shebat, 5551.2

Dear and Worthy Parents: I received your dear letter with much plea sure and therefrom understand

that you are in good health, thank God, and that made us especially happy. The same is not lacking with us— may we live to be a hundred years. Amen.

Dear parents, you complain that you do not receive any letters from us, and my mother- in- law writes the same. I don’t know what’s going on. I have writ- ten more letters than I have received from you. Whenever I can and have an opportunity, I give letters to take along, and I send letters by post when I do not have any other opportunity. It is already six months since we received let- ters from you and from London. The last letter you sent was through Sender [Alexander], and it was the beginning of the month of Ab [July, 1790] when we received it. Now you can realize that we too have been somewhat worried. We are completely isolated here. We do not have any friends, and when we do not hear from you for any length of time, it is enough to make us sick. I hope that I will get to see some of my family. That will give me some satisfaction.

You write me that Mr. Jacob Renner’s son Reuben is in Philadelphia and that he will come to us. People will not advise him to come to Virginia. When the Jews of Philadelphia or New York hear the name Virginia, they get nasty. And they are not wrong! It won’t do for a Jew. In the "rst place it is an unhealthful district, and we are only human. God forbid, if anything should happen to us, where would we be thrown? There is no cemetery in the whole of Virginia. In Richmond, which is twenty- two miles from here, there is a Jewish community consisting of two quorums [twenty men], and the two cannot muster a quarter [quorum when needed?].

You cannot imagine what kind of Jews they have here [in Virginia]. They were all German itinerants who made a living by begging in Germany. They came to Amer i ca during the war, as soldiers, and now they can’t recognize themselves.

One can make a good living here, and all live at peace. Anyone can do what he wants. There is no rabbi in all of Amer i ca to excommunicate any- one. This is a blessing here; Jew and Gentile are as one. There is no galut [“exile,” rejection of Jews] here. In New York and Philadelphia there is more galut. The reason is that there are too many German Gentiles and Jews there. The German Gentiles cannot forsake their anti- Jewish prejudice; and the German Jews cannot forsake their disgraceful conduct; and that’s what makes the galut.

[Rebecca Samuel]

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3. This undated letter was written before 1796, the year that Samuel moved from Petersburg to Charleston.

4. Hebrew term for the person who ritually slaughters animals according to Jewish law, pro- ducing kosher meat.

Dear Parents: I hope my letter will ease your mind. You can now be reassured and send

me one of the family to Charleston, South Carolina.3 This is the place to which, with God’s help, we will go after Passover. The whole reason why we are leaving this place is because of [lack of] Yehudishkeit [Jewishness].

Dear parents, I know quite well you will not want me to bring up my children like Gentiles. Here they cannot become anything else. Jewishness is pushed aside here. There are here [in Petersburg] ten or twelve Jews, and they are not worthy of being called Jews. We have a shohet4 here who goes to market and buys terefah [nonkosher] meat and then brings it home. On Rosh Ha- Shanah [New Year] and on Yom Kippur [“the Day of Atonement”] the people worshipped here without one sefer torah [“Scroll of the Law”], and not one of them wore the tallit [a large prayer shawl worn in the syna- gogue] or the arba kanfot [the small set of fringes worn on the body], except Hyman and my Sammy’s godfather. The latter is an old man of sixty, a man from Holland. He has been in Amer i ca for thirty years already; for twenty years he was in Charleston, and he has been living here for four years. He does not want to remain here any longer and will go with us to Charleston. In that place there is a blessed community of three hundred Jews.

You can believe me that I crave to see a synagogue to which I can go. The way we live now is no life at all. We do not know what the Sabbath and the holidays are. On the Sabbath all the Jewish shops are open; and they do

Touro Synagogue. Built in 1763, the Touro Synagogue, in Newport, Rhode Island, is the oldest surviving synagogue building in North Amer i ca. Here, rabbis read a Torah scroll on the bima (altar).

business on that day as they do throughout the whole week. But ours we do not allow to open. With us there is still some Sabbath. You must believe me that in our house we all live as Jews as much as we can.

As for the Gentiles [?], we have nothing to complain about. For the sake of a livelihood we do not have to leave here. Nor do we have to leave because of debts. I believe ever since Hyman has grown up that he has not had it so good. You cannot know what a wonderful country this is for the common man. One can live here peacefully. Hyman made a clock that goes very accu- rately, just like the one in the Buchenstrasse in Hamburg. Now you can imagine what honors Hyman has been getting here. In all Virginia there is no clock [like this one], and Virginia is the greatest province in the whole of Amer i ca, and Amer i ca is the largest section of the world. Now you know what sort of a country this is. It is not too long since Virginia was discov- ered. It is a young country. And it is amazing to see the business they do in this little Petersburg. At times as many as a thousand hogsheads of tobacco arrive at one time, and each hogshead contains 1,000 and sometimes 1,200 pounds of tobacco. The tobacco is shipped from here to the whole world.

When Judah [my brother?] comes here, he can become a watchmaker and a goldsmith, if he so desires. Here it is not like Germany where a watch- maker is not permitted to sell silverware. [The contrary is true in this coun- try.] They do not know other wise here. They expect a watchmaker to be a silversmith here. Hyman has more to do in making silverware than with watchmaking. He has a journeyman, a silversmith, a very good artisan, and he, Hyman, takes care of the watches. This work is well paid here, but in Charleston, it pays even better.

All the people who hear that we are leaving give us their blessings. They say that it is sinful that such blessed children should be brought up here in Petersburg. My children cannot learn anything here, nothing Jewish, noth- ing of general culture. My Schoene [my daughter], God bless her, is already three years old. I think it is time that she should learn something, and she has a good head to learn. I have taught her the bedtime prayers and grace after meals in just two lessons. I believe that no one among the Jews here can do as well as she. And my Sammy [born in 1790], God bless him, is already beginning to talk.

I could write more. However, I do not have any more paper. I remain, your devoted daughter and servant,

Rebecca, the wife of Hayyim, the son of Samuel the Levite

I send my family, my . . . [ mother- in- law?] and all my friends and good friends, my regards.

SAGOYEWATHA

The name of the Seneca leader Sagoyewatha (1758?–1830) means roughly “he keeps them awake,” apparently referring to his considerable abilities as an ora- tor. He was also known by the En glish name Red Jacket, after the coat that the

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British awarded him for his ser- vices as a message runner during the Revolutionary War. Follow- ing the War of 1812, he negoti- ated with the United States government to protect Seneca lands in western New York. Among many noteworthy ora- tions, his most famous speech was the reply he gave to the mis- sionary Jacob Cram in 1805 out- lining what has been called a “separatist” position— the notion that while the ways of white Christians may be "ne for them, they are not necessarily equally "ne for nonwhite indigenous peoples, who have their own reli- gious beliefs.

Pres ent at Red Jacket’s speech was Erastus Granger, who had been appointed the postmaster and Indian agent at Buffalo Creek by President Thomas Jefferson. Granger’s immediate subordinate was Joseph Parrish, who prob ably served as translator, as he had done on other occasions. Who- ever transcribed the translation of Red Jacket’s speech— perhaps Granger or Parrish— it appeared in the April 1809 issue of the Monthly Anthology and Boston Review, a miscellaneous magazine, and was reprinted many times throughout the nineteenth century.

Reply to the Missionary Jacob Cram1

Friend and Brother: It was the will of the Great Spirit that we should meet together this day. He orders all things, and has given us a "ne day for our Council. He has taken his garment from before the sun, and caused it to shine with brightness upon us. Our eyes are opened, that we see clearly; our ears are unstopped, that we have been able to hear distinctly the words you have spoken. For all these favors we thank the Great Spirit; and Him only.

Brother: This council "re was kindled by you. It was at your request that we came together at this time. We have listened with attention to what you have said. You requested us to speak our minds freely. This gives us great joy; for we now consider that we stand upright before you, and can speak what we think. All have heard your voice, and all speak to you now as one man. Our minds are agreed.

1. The text is from William Leete Stone, The Life and Times of Red- Jacket, or Sa- go- ye- wat- ha: Being the Sequel to the History of the Six Nations (1841).

Portrait of Sagoyewatha. Sagoyewatha dealt with American presidents from Washington (1789–97) to Jackson (1829–37), delivering major addresses to Washington, Adams, and Monroe in an effort to protect his people’s lands.

2. Rum [Stone’s note].

Brother: You say you want an answer to your talk before you leave this place. It is right you should have one, as you are a great distance from home, and we do not wish to detain you. But we will "rst look back a little, and tell you what our fathers have told us, and what we have heard from the white people.

Brother: Listen to what we say. There was a time when our forefathers owned this great island. Their seats extended from the rising to the setting sun. The Great Spirit had made it for the use of Indians. He had created the buffalo, the deer, and other animals for food. He had made the bear and the beaver. Their skins served us for clothing. He had scattered them over the country, and taught us how to take them. He had caused the earth to produce corn for bread. All this He had done for his red children, because He loved them. If we had some disputes about our hunting ground, they were generally settled without the shedding of much blood. But an evil day came upon us. Your forefathers crossed the great water and landed on this island. Their numbers were small. They found friends and not enemies. They told us they had ded from their own country for fear of wicked men, and had come here to enjoy their religion. They asked for a small seat. We took pity on them, granted their request; and they sat down amongst us. We gave them corn and meat; they gave us poison2 in return.

The white people, Brother, had now found our country. Tidings were car- ried back, and more came amongst us. Yet we did not fear them. We took them to be friends. They called us brothers. We believed them and gave them a larger seat. At length their numbers had greatly increased. They wanted more land; they wanted our country. Our eyes were opened, and our minds became uneasy. Wars took place. Indians were hired to "ght against Indi- ans, and many of our people were destroyed. They also brought strong liquor amongst us. It was strong and power ful, and has slain thousands.

Brother: Our seats were once large and yours were small. You have now become a great people, and we have scarcely a place left to spread our blan- kets. You have got our country, but are not satis"ed; you want to force your religion upon us.

Brother: Continue to listen. You say that you are sent to instruct us how to worship the Great Spirit agreeably to his mind, and, if we do not take hold of the religion which you white people teach, we shall be unhappy here- after. You say that you are right and we are lost. How do we know this to be true? We understand that your religion is written in a book. If it was intended for us as well as you, why has not the Great Spirit given to us, and not only to us, but why did he not give to our forefathers, the knowledge of that book, with the means of understanding it rightly? We only know what you tell us about it. How shall we know when to believe, being so often deceived by the white people?

Brother: You say there is but one way to worship and serve the Great Spirit. If there is but one religion, why do you white people differ so much about it? Why not all agreed, as you can all read the book?

Brother: We do not understand these things. We are told that your reli- gion was given to your forefathers, and has been handed down from father to son. We also have a religion, which was given to our forefathers, and has

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been handed down to us their children. We worship in that way. It teaches us to be thankful for all the favors we receive; to love each other, and to be united. We never quarrel about religion.

Brother: The Great Spirit has made us all, but He has made a great dif- ference between his white and red children. He has given us dif fer ent com- plexions and dif fer ent customs. To you He has given the arts. To these He has not opened our eyes. We know these things to be true. Since He has made so great a difference between us in other things, why may we not con- clude that he has given us a dif fer ent religion according to our understand- ing? The Great Spirit does right. He knows what is best for his children; we are satis"ed.

Brother: We do not wish to destroy your religion, or take it from you. We only want to enjoy our own.

* * * Brother: We are told that you have been preaching to the white people

in this place. These people are our neighbors. We are acquainted with them. We will wait a little while, and see what effect your preaching has upon them. If we "nd it does them good, makes them honest and less disposed to cheat Indians, we will then consider again of what you have said.

Brother: You have now heard our answer to your talk, and this is all we have to say at pres ent. As we are going to part, we will come and take you by the hand, and hope the Great Spirit will protect you on your journey, and return you safe to your friends.

1805 1809

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 1706–1790

T o a remarkable extent, the writings of Benjamin Franklin represent the meta-morphosis of New Eng land literary culture from “Puritan” to “Yankee.” They also helped inaugurate the new national sensibility that emerged after the American Revolution. These regional and national transformations can be traced in Poor Richard’s Almanac, in his po liti cal writings, and above all in The Autobiography, which pres ents the personal history and philosophy behind Franklinian self- fashioning. The Autobiography begins by tracing the family’s origins to the En glish Midlands, where they were “franklins”— nonaristocractic landowners— and dis- senting Protestants in a region profoundly disrupted by the En glish Civil Wars (1642–51). This family history of property owner ship and concern for religious and civil liberties sets the stage for the life story that unfolds in sections, which Frank- lin produced from the eve of the American Revolution to shortly after the rati"ca- tion of the United States Constitution and the inauguration of President George Washington. Because he was writing during these tumultuous times, when he was

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much occupied with public business, Franklin was able to carry his story only to his "fty- second year. Despite the narrative’s incompleteness, Franklin’s popu lar fame, the signi"cance of his rise from obscure origins, and his lively prose style helped transform this loosely knit set of consecutive fragments into an iconic work.

Franklin’s father, Josiah, was a maker of candles and soap who moved to Boston in 1682 from Ecton, Northamptonshire, Eng land. He married Abiah Folger, whose father, Peter, was a poet, a linguist, and a missionary to the indigenous inhabitants of Nantucket Island. Benjamin was the tenth son in a family of "fteen children, and Josiah, who took pride in his Protestant ancestry, enrolled his son in Boston Gram- mar School as a preparation for the ministry. His plans were too "nancially ambi- tious, however, and Benjamin was forced to leave school and work for his father. The younger Franklin hated his father’s occupation, however, and threatened to run away to sea.

A compromise was reached, and when Benjamin was twelve he was apprenticed to his brother James, a printer. This trade was a good "t for the young man, who loved books and reading and liked to write. In 1722, James unwittingly published his younger brother’s "rst essay, when he printed an editorial left on his desk signed “Silence Dogood,” the "rst in a series that Franklin produced over several months. The central theme of these letters is the promotion of the public interest, which Franklin had absorbed from Cotton Mather’s Essays to Do Good (1710; excerpted earlier in this volume). When his brother was imprisoned in 1722 for offending Mas sa chu setts of"cials, Franklin published the paper by himself.

The next year, however, Franklin broke with his brother and ran away to Philadel- phia, an act of de"ance that in his later telling accumulated symbolic power as a pre- cursor to the Revolution. At seventeen, with little money in his pocket but already an expert printer, he made his way in the world, subject to numerous “errata”—as he liked to call his mistakes, using the publisher’s term— but con"dent that he could pro"t from lessons learned. His most serious error was in trusting Pennsylvania gov- ernor Sir William Keith, who in 1724 sent him to London by falsely promising to sponsor a new newspaper. During his time in the British capital, Franklin worked as a typesetter and experimented with free thought, even publishing a pamphlet on the topic that he later had to explain in his Autobiography. He returned to the colonies two years later, at the very moment when print culture experienced a remarkable expan- sion and the printer came to play a major public role as a disseminator of information. Franklin, ever an astute businessman, turned this development to his advantage.

Franklin had an uncanny instinct for success and knew that commercialism demanded that anyone in business assume a public persona. He taught himself French, Spanish, Italian, and Latin and yet was shrewd enough to realize that people did not like to do business with merchants who put on airs. He dressed plainly and sometimes carried his own paper in a wheelbarrow through Philadelphia streets to assure prospective customers that he was hardworking and not above doing things for himself. By the time he was twenty- four, he was the sole owner of a successful print- ing shop as well as the editor and publisher of the Pennsylvania Gazette. He "rst offered his Poor Richard’s Almanac for sale in 1733 and made it an American institution, preaching hard work and thrift, and "lling it with maxims for achieving wealth.

Another of Franklin’s popu lar writings was his pseudonymously published “Speech of Miss Polly Baker,” which enjoyed transatlantic circulation and indicated his unusu- ally progressive views of women for his time. Franklin had already experimented with a female persona in his Silence Dogood letters, and in 1744 he had produced an edi- tion of Samuel Richardson’s novel Pamela: or, Virtue Rewarded (1740), which portrays a young servant woman who resists the sexual overtures of her master, until he eventu- ally marries her. Franklin, who wanted to promote the growth of the colonial popula- tion, somewhat wryly turns the tables in Polly Baker’s speech to the court, where she calls for a change in the laws that punished women who bore children outside of mar- riage and argues that in cases of illegitimate birth, men should share equal blame with

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women. These themes of the unjust and unequal punishment directed at  women who violated the sexual norms of the day were emerging as central concerns in popu lar novels such as Richardson’s Cla ris sa (1748), Susanna Rowson’s Charlotte Temple (1791), and Hannah Webster Foster’s The Coquette (1797; reprinted in full later in this volume). Franklin’s inter- est in this issue was not purely intel- lectual or literary. In 1730, he had established a common- law marriage with Deborah Read, the daughter of his "rst landlady, and they went on to have two children. Around the time he married Read, Franklin fathered an illegitimate child, and Deborah accepted Franklin’s son William into the house hold.

Before he retired from business at age forty- two, Franklin had founded a library, in ven ted a stove, estab- lished a "re com pany, subscribed to an acad emy that would become the University of Pennsylvania, and served as secretary to the American Philosophical Society. In retirement, he intended to devote himself to pub- lic affairs and his lifelong passion for the natu ral sciences, especially the phenomena of sound, vapors, earth- quakes, and electricity. Franklin’s observations on electricity were pub- lished in London in 1751, and despite his disclaimers in The Autobiography, they won him the applause of British scientists. His inquiring mind was challenged most by the mechanics of the world’s seemingly ordinary phenomena, and he was convinced that his mind’s rational powers could solve riddles that had puzzled humankind for centuries. Frank- lin believed that people were naturally innocent, that all the mysteries that charmed the religious mind could be explained in ways that would promote human well- being, and that education, properly undertaken, would transform people’s lives and set them free from the tyrannies of Church and monarchy. Franklin had no illusions about the “errata” of humankind, but his editorial metaphor— unlike, say, the word “sins”— suggests that human nature can progressively change.

Franklin’s later years were spent at diplomatic tables in London, Paris, and Phila- delphia, where his gift for irony served him well. He was a born diplomat— detached, adaptable, witty, urbane, charming, and clever— and of the slightly more than forty years left to him after his retirement, more than half were spent abroad. In 1757 he went to Eng land to represent the colonies, and he stayed for "ve years. After a brief period in Philadelphia as a legislator, Franklin returned to Eng land as a colonial representative, and there, in 1768, he began to doubt the possibility of compromise with the British government. Parliament can make all laws for the colonies or none,

Almanac for 1739. Writing under the pseudonym Richard Saunders, Franklin became famous for the aphorisms included in his im mensely popu lar Poor Richard’s Almanac.

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he said, and “I think the arguments for the latter more numerous and weighty, than those for the former.” When he returned to Philadelphia in May 1775, he was cho- sen as a representative to the Second Continental Congress, and he served on the committee to draft the Declaration of In de pen dence. In October 1776, he was appointed minister to France, where he successfully negotiated a treaty of allegiance and became something of a cult hero. He was a member of the American del e ga tion to the Paris peace conference, and he signed the Treaty of Paris, which of"cially ended the Revolutionary War in 1781.

Franklin protested his too- long stay in Eu rope and returned to Philadelphia in 1785, serving as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention. At that time, he acted on the antislavery beliefs that he had come to embrace, joining and eventually serv- ing as president for the Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery and the Relief of Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage in Philadelphia. By the time he died, he had become one of the most beloved Americans. Twenty thousand people attended his funeral, and editions of his works began appearing almost immediately. He remained a cultural hero well into the nineteenth century, and his reputation helped spawn rags- to- riches tales, such as those of Horatio Alger.

By the early twentieth century, Franklin had become a "gure for intellectuals to diagnose rather than emulate. In his study The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905), the German sociologist Max Weber criticized Franklin as a lead- ing theorist of the secularized asceticism that Weber found at the heart of the cap i tal- ist economic system. In Classic Studies in American Lit er a ture (1923), the British novelist D. H. Lawrence, induenced by the psychoanalytic theories of Sigmund Freud, charged Franklin with indifference to the darker recesses of the soul. To these read- ers, Franklin’s capacity for detachment suggests emotional and social inauthenticity, extending to the economic oppression of others and the repression of central ele- ments of the self. Yet Franklin the secular ascetic was just one side of a man known for both his devotion to the public good at home and his high living at the French court. When Lawrence mocks the "nal precept in Franklin’s “Art of Virtue”—to cul- tivate humility, Franklin writes, one should “imitate Jesus and Socrates”—he seem- ingly takes Franklin at face value, missing the ironic wit that makes Franklin’s works so challenging and pleas ur able. As is clear in The Autobiography, Franklin was a deliberate prose stylist who followed such distinguished British models as Joseph Addison and Richard Steele, John Bunyan, Daniel Defoe, and Jonathan Swift. A reading of Franklin’s "nest prose reveals a multifaceted and agile writer alert to the best and worst in humankind— including himself.

The Way to Wealth1

Preface to Poor Richard Improved

Courteous Reader, I have heard that nothing gives an author so great plea sure, as to "nd his

works respectfully quoted by other learned authors. This plea sure I have sel- dom enjoyed; for though I have been, if I may say it without vanity, an emi- nent author of almanacs annually now a full quarter of a century, my brother

1. The text is from The Writings of Benjamin Franklin (1905), edited by Albert Henry Smyth. Franklin wrote this essay for the twenty- "fth anniversary issue of his Almanac, the "rst issue of which, under the "ctitious editorship of “Rich- ard Saunders,” appeared in 1733. For this essay,

Franklin brought together the best of his maxims in the guise of a speech by Father Abraham. It is frequently reprinted as “The Way to Wealth” but is also known by earlier titles: “Poor Richard Improved” and “ Father Abraham’s Speech.”

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2. Auction or sale.

authors in the same way, for what reason I know not, have ever been very sparing in their applauses, and no other author has taken the least notice of me, so that did not my writings produce me some solid pudding, the great de"ciency of praise would have quite discouraged me.

I concluded at length, that the people were the best judges of my merit; for they buy my works; and besides, in my rambles, where I am not person- ally known, I have frequently heard one or other of my adages repeated with “as Poor Richard says” at the end on ’t; this gave me some satisfaction, as it showed not only that my instructions were regarded, but discovered likewise some re spect for my authority; and I own, that to encourage the practice of remembering and repeating those wise sentences, I have sometimes quoted myself with great gravity.

Judge, then, how much I must have been grati"ed by an incident I am going to relate to you. I stopped my horse lately where a great number of people were collected at a vendue2 of merchant goods. The hour of sale not being come, they were conversing on the badness of the times and one of the com pany called to a plain clean old man, with white locks, “Pray, Father Abraham, what think you of the times? Won’t these heavy taxes quite ruin the country? How shall we be ever able to pay them? What would you advise us to?” Father Abraham stood up, and replied, “If you’d have my advice, I’ll give it you in short, for a word to the wise is enough, and many words won’t #ll a bushel, as Poor Richard says.” They joined in desiring him to speak his mind, and gathering round him, he proceeded as follows:

“Friends,” says he, “and neighbors, the taxes are indeed very heavy, and if those laid on by the government were the only ones we had to pay, we might more easily discharge them; but we have many others, and much more griev- ous to some of us. We are taxed twice as much by our idleness, three times as much by our pride, and four times as much by our folly; and from these taxes the commissioners cannot ease or deliver us by allowing an abatement. However, let us hearken to good advice, and something may be done for us; God helps them that help themselves, as Poor Richard says, in his Almanac of 1733.

“It would be thought a hard government that should tax its people one- tenth part of their time, to be employed in its ser vice. But idleness taxes many of us much more, if we reckon all that is spent in absolute sloth, or doing of nothing, with that which is spent in idle employments, or amuse- ments, that amount to nothing. Sloth, by bringing on diseases, absolutely shortens life. Sloth, like rust, consumes faster than labor wears; while the used key is always bright, as Poor Richard says. But dost thou love life, then do not squander time, for that’s the stuff life is made of, as Poor Richard says. How much more than is necessary do we spend in sleep, forgetting that the sleep- ing fox catches no poultry and that there will be sleeping enough in the grave, as Poor Richard says.

“If time be of all things the most precious, wasting time must be, as Poor Richard says, the greatest prodigality; since, as he elsewhere tells us, lost time is never found again; and what we call time enough, always proves little enough: let us then up and be doing, and doing to the purpose; so by diligence shall

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3. I.e., industriousness. 4. I.e., of water. 5. I.e., two dif fer ent things.

6. Flee. 7. Wardrobe.

we do more with less perplexity. Sloth makes all things dif#cult, but indus- try3 all easy, as Poor Richard says; and he that riseth late must trot all day, and shall scarce overtake his business at night; while laziness travels so slowly, that poverty soon overtakes him, as we read in Poor Richard, who adds, drive thy business, let not that drive thee, and early to bed, and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.

“So what signi"es wishing and hoping for better times. We may make these times better, if we bestir ourselves. Industry need not wish, as Poor Richard says, and he that lives upon hope will die fasting. There are no gains without pains; then help hands, for I have no lands, or if I have, they are smartly taxed. And, as Poor Richard likewise observes, he that hath a trade hath an estate; and he that hath a calling, hath an of#ce of pro#t and honor; but then the trade must be worked at, and the calling well followed, or neither the estate nor the of"ce will enable us to pay our taxes. If we are industrious, we shall never starve; for, as Poor Richard says, at the workingman’s house hunger looks in, but dares not enter. Nor will the bailiff or the constable enter, for industry pays debts, while despair increaseth them, says Poor Richard. What though you have found no trea sure, nor has any rich relation left you a legacy, diligence is the mother of good luck, as Poor Richard says, and God gives all things to industry. Then plow deep, while sluggards sleep, and you shall have corn to sell and to keep, says Poor Dick. Work while it is called today, for you know not how much you may be hindered tomorrow, which makes Poor Richard says, one today is worth two tomorrows, and farther, have you somewhat to do tomorrow, do it today. If you were a servant, would you not be ashamed that a good master should catch you idle? Are you then your own master, be ashamed to catch yourself idle, as Poor Dick says. When there is so much to be done for yourself, your family, your country, and your gracious king, be up by peep of day; let not the sun look down and say, inglo- rious here he lies. Handle your tools without mittens; remember that the cat in gloves catches no mice, as Poor Richard says. ’Tis true there is much to be done, and perhaps you are weak- handed, but stick to it steadily; and you will see great effects, for constant dropping4 wears away stones, and by diligence and patience the mouse ate in two the cable; and little strokes fell great oaks, as Poor Richard says in his Almanac, the year I cannot just now remember.

“Methinks I hear some of you say, ‘must a man afford himself no leisure?’ I will tell thee, my friend, what Poor Richard says, employ thy time well, if thou meanest to gain leisure; and, since thou art not sure of a minute, throw not away an hour. Leisure is time for doing something useful; this leisure the diligent man will obtain, but the lazy man never; so that, as Poor Richard says a life of leisure and a life of laziness are two things.5 Do you imagine that sloth will afford you more comfort than labor? No, for as Poor Richard says, trou ble springs from idleness, and grievous toil from needless ease. Many without labor, would live by their wits only, but they break for want of stock. Whereas industry gives comfort, and plenty, and re spect: "y6 pleasures, and they’ll follow you. The diligent spinner has a large shift;7 and now I have a sheep and a cow, every- body bids me good morrow; all of which is well said by Poor Richard.

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8. Moves. 9. Lack.

1. A silver coin worth about four pence. 2. Gambling.

“But with our industry, we must likewise be steady, settled, and careful, and oversee our own affairs with our own eyes, and not trust too much to others; for, as Poor Richard says

I never saw an oft- removed tree, Nor yet an oft- removed family, That throve so well as those that settled be.

And again, three removes8 is as bad as a #re; and again, keep thy shop, and thy shop will keep thee; and again, if you would have your business done, go; if not, send. And again,

He that by the plow would thrive, Himself must either hold or drive.

And again, the eye of a master will do more work than both his hands; and again, want9 of care does us more damage than want of knowledge; and again, not to oversee workmen is to leave them your purse open. Trusting too much to others’ care is the ruin of many; for, as the Almanac says, in the affairs of this world, men are saved, not by faith, but by the want of it; but a man’s own care is pro"table; for, saith Poor Dick, learning is to the studious, and riches to the careful, as well as power to the bold, and heaven to the virtuous, and farther, if you would have a faithful servant, and one that you like, serve your- self. And again, he adviseth to circumspection and care, even in the smallest matters, because sometimes a little neglect may breed great mischief; add- ing, for want of a nail the shoe was lost; for want of a shoe the horse was lost; and for want of a horse the rider was lost, being overtaken and slain by the enemy; all for want of care about a horse shoe nail.

“So much for industry, my friends, and attention to one’s own business; but to these we must add frugality, if we would make our industry more cer- tainly successful. A man may, if he knows not how to save as he gets, keep his nose all his life to the grindstone, and die not worth a groat1 at last. A fat kitchen makes a lean will, as Poor Richard says; and

Many estates are spent in the getting, Since women for tea forsook spinning and knitting, And men for punch forsook hewing and splitting.

If you would be wealthy, says he, in another Almanac, think of saving as well as of getting: the Indies have not made Spain rich, because her outgoes are greater than her incomes.

“Away then with your expensive follies, and you will not then have so much cause to complain of hard times, heavy taxes, and chargeable families; for, as Poor Dick says,

Women and wine, game2 and deceit, Make the wealth small and the wants great.

And farther, what maintains one vice would bring up two children. You may think perhaps, that a little tea, or a little punch now and then, diet a little more costly, clothes a little "ner, and a little entertainment now and then,

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3. Delicacies, luxuries. “Mickle”: lot. 4. Restricting. 5. A Latin version of the proverb just quoted.

6. Foolish. 7. Every.

can be no great matter; but remember what Poor Richard says, many a little makes a mickle; and farther, Beware of little expenses; a small leak will sink a great ship; and again, who dainties3 love shall beggars prove; and moreover, fools make feasts, and wise men eat them.

“ Here you are all got together at this vendue of "neries and knicknacks. You call them goods; but if you do not take care, they will prove evils to some of you. You expect they will be sold cheap, and perhaps they may for less than they cost; but if you have no occasion for them, they must be dear to you. Remember what Poor Richard says; buy what thou hast no need of, and ere long thou shalt sell thy necessaries. And again, at a great penny- worth pause a while: he means, that perhaps the cheapness is apparent only, and not real; or the bargain, by straightening4 thee in thy business, may do thee more harm than good. For in another place he says, many have been ruined by buying good pennyworths. Again, Poor Richard says, ’tis foolish to lay out money in a purchase of repentance; and yet this folly is practiced every day at vendues, for want of minding the Almanac. Wise men, as Poor Dick says, learn by others’ harms, fools scarcely by their own; but felix quem faciunt ali- ena pericula cautum.5 Many a one, for the sake of "nery on the back, have gone with a hungry belly, and half- starved their families. Silks and satins, scarlet and velvets, as Poor Richard says, put out the kitchen #re.

“ These are not the necessaries of life; they can scarcely be called the con- ve niences; and yet only because they look pretty, how many want to have them! The arti"cial wants of mankind thus become more numerous than the natu ral; and, as Poor Dick says, for one poor person, there are an hun- dred indigent. By these, and other extravagancies, the genteel are reduced to poverty, and forced to borrow of those whom they formerly despised, but who through industry and frugality have maintained their standing; in which case it appears plainly, that a plowman on his legs is higher than a gentle- man on his knees, as Poor Richard says. Perhaps they have had a small estate left them, which they knew not the getting of; they think, “ ’Tis day, and will never be night”; that a little to be spent out of so much is not worth minding; a child and a fool, as Poor Richard says, imagine twenty shillings and twenty years can never be spent but, always taking out of the meal- tub, and never putting in, soon comes to the bottom; as Poor Dick says, when the well’s dry, they know the worth of water. But this they might have known before, if they had taken his advice; if you would know the value of money, go and try to borrow some; for, he that goes a- borrowing goes a- sorrowing; and indeed so does he that lends to such people, when he goes to get it in again. Poor Dick farther advises, and says,

Fond6 pride of dress is sure a very curse; E’er7 fancy you consult, consult your purse.

And again, pride is as loud a beggar as want, and a great deal more saucy. When you have bought one "ne thing, you must buy ten more, that your appearance may be all of a piece; but Poor Dick says, ’tis easier to suppress

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8. Jail. 9. In Chris tian ity, Lent is the period of roughly

six weeks before Easter. Poor Richard is saying debt would make that period feel shorter.

the #rst desire, than to satisfy all that follow it. And ’tis as truly folly for the poor to ape the rich, as for the frog to swell, in order to equal the ox.

Great estates may venture more, But little boats should keep near shore.

’Tis, however, a folly soon punished; for pride that dines on vanity sups on contempt, as Poor Richard says. And in another place, pride breakfasted with plenty, dined with poverty, and supped with infamy. And after all, of what use is this pride of appearance, for which so much is risked so much is suf- fered? It cannot promote health, or ease pain; it makes no increase of merit in the person, it creates envy, it hastens misfortune.

What is a butter"y? At best He’s but a caterpillar dressed. The gaudy fop’s his picture just,

as Poor Richard says. “But what madness must it be to run in debt for these superduities! We

are offered, by the terms of this vendue, six months’ credit; and that perhaps has induced some of us to attend it, because we cannot spare the ready money, and hope now to be "ne without it. But, ah, think what you do when you run in debt; you give to another power over your liberty. If you cannot pay at the time, you will be ashamed to see your creditor; you will be in fear when you speak to him; you will make poor pitiful sneaking excuses, and by degrees come to lose your veracity, and sink into base downright lying; for, as Poor Richard says, the second vice is lying, the #rst is running in debt. And again, to the same purpose, lying rides upon debt’s back. Whereas a free- born En glishman ought not to be ashamed or afraid to see or speak to any man living. But poverty often deprives a man of all spirit and virtue: ’tis hard for an empty bag to stand upright, as Poor Richard truly says.

“What would you think of that prince, or that government, who should issue an edict forbidding you to dress like a gentleman or a gentlewoman, on pain of imprisonment or servitude? Would you not say, that you were free, have a right to dress as you please, and that such an edict would be a breach of your privileges, and such a government tyrannical? And yet you are about to put yourself under that tyranny, when you run in debt for such dress! Your creditor has authority, at his plea sure to deprive you of your liberty, by con- "ning you in gaol8 for life, or to sell you for a servant, if you should not be able to pay him! When you have got your bargain, you may, perhaps, think little of payment; but creditors, Poor Richard tells us, have better memories than debtors; and in another place says, creditors are a superstitious sect, great observers of set days and times. The day comes round before you are aware, and the demand is made before you are prepared to satisfy it, or if you bear your debt in mind, the term which at "rst seemed so long will, as it lessens, appear extremely short. Time will seem to have added wings to his heels as well as shoulders. Those have a short Lent, saith Poor Richard, who owe money to be paid at Easter.9 Then since, as he says, The borrower is a slave to the lender, and the debtor to the creditor, disdain the chain, preserve your

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1. Earn. 2. A substance much sought by alchemists, thought to transform base metals into gold.

3. The Old Testament patriarch whose faith was tested by suffering. 4. Expensive.

freedom; and maintain your inde pen den cy: be industrious and free; be frugal and free. At pres ent, perhaps, you may think yourself in thriving cir- cumstances, and that you can bear a little extravagance without injury; but,

For age and want, save while you may; No morning sun lasts a whole day,

as Poor Richard says. Gain may be temporary and uncertain, but ever while you live, expense is constant and certain; and ’tis easier to build two chim- neys than to keep one in fuel, as Poor Richard says. So, rather go to bed sup- perless than rise in debt.

Get1 what you can, and what you get hold; ’Tis the stone that will turn all your lead into gold,

as Poor Richard says. And when you have got the phi los o pher’s stone,2 sure you will no longer complain of bad times, or the dif"culty of paying taxes.

“This doctrine, my friends, is reason and wisdom; but after all, do not depend too much upon your own industry, and frugality, and prudence, though excellent things, for they may all be blasted without the blessing of heaven; and therefore, ask that blessing humbly, and be not uncharitable to those that at pres ent seem to want it, but comfort and help them. Remem- ber, Job3 suffered, and was afterwards prosperous.

“And now to conclude, experience keeps a dear4 school, but fools will learn in no other, and scarce in that; for it is true, we may give advice, but we can- not give conduct, as Poor Richard says: however, remember this, they that won’t be counseled, can’t be helped, as Poor Richard says: and farther, that, if you will not hear reason, she’ll surely rap your knuckles.”

Thus the old gentleman ended his harangue. The people heard it, and approved the doctrine, and immediately practiced the contrary, just as if it had been a common sermon; for the vendue opened, and they began to buy extravagantly, notwithstanding his cautions and their own fear of taxes. I found the good man had thoroughly studied my almanacs, and digested all I had dropped on these topics during the course of "ve and twenty years. The frequent mention he made of me must have tired any one else, but my vanity was wonderfully delighted with it, though I was conscious that not a tenth part of the wisdom was my own, which he ascribed to me, but rather the gleanings I had made of the sense of all ages and nations. However, I resolved to be the better for the echo of it; and though I had at "rst deter- mined to buy stuff for a new coat, I went away resolved to wear my old one a little longer. Reader, if thou wilt do the same, thy pro"t will be as great as mine. I am, as ever, thine to serve thee,

Richard Saunders July 7, 1757

1757 1758

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1. The text is from Gentleman’s Magazine (London), April 1747.

The Speech of Miss Polly Baker1

The Speech of Miss Polly Baker, Before a Court of Judicature, at Connecticut in New Eng land, Where She Was Prosecuted

the Fifth Time for Having a Bastard Child; Which In"uenced the Court to Dispense with Her Punishment, and Induced One of Her

Judges to Marry Her the next Day

May it please the Honourable Bench to indulge me a few Words: I am a poor unhappy Woman; who have no Money to Fee Lawyers to plead for me, being hard put to it to get a tolerable Living. I shall not trou ble your Honours with long Speeches; for I have not the presumption to expect, that you may, by any Means, be prevailed on to deviate in your Sentence from the Law, in my Favour. All I humbly hope is, that your Honours would charitably move the Governor’s Goodness on my Behalf, that my Fine may be remitted. This is the Fifth Time, Gentlemen, that I have been dragg’d before your Courts on the same Account; twice I have paid heavy Fines, and twice have been brought to public Punishment, for want of Money to pay those Fines. This may have been agreeable to the Laws; I do not dispute it: But since Laws are sometimes unreasonable in themselves, and therefore repealed; and others bear too hard on the Subject in par tic u lar Circumstances; and there- fore there is left a Power somewhere to dispense with the Execution of them; I take the Liberty to say, that I think this Law, by which I am punished, is both unreasonable in itself, and particularly severe with regard to me, who have always lived an inoffensive Life in the Neighbourhood where I was born, and defy my Enemies (if I have any) to say I ever wrong’d Man, Woman, or Child. Abstracted from the Law, I cannot conceive (may it please your Honours) what the Nature of my Offence is. I have brought Five "ne Children into the World, at the Risque of my Life: I have maintained them well by my own Industry, without burthening the Township, and could have done it better, if it had not been for the heavy Charges and Fines I have paid. Can it be a Crime (in the Nature of Things I mean) to add to the Number of the King’s Subjects, in a new Country that really wants People? I own I should think it rather a Praise worthy, than a Punishable Action. I have debauch’d no other Woman’s Husband, nor inticed any innocent Youth: These Things I never was charged with; nor has any one the least cause of Complaint against me, unless, perhaps the Minister, or the Justice, because I have had Children without being Married, by which they have miss’d a Wedding Fee. But, can even this be a Fault of mine? I appeal to your Honours. You are pleased to allow I don’t want Sense; but I must be stupid to the last Degree, not to pre- fer the honourable State of Wedlock, to the Condition I have lived in. I always was, and still am, willing to enter into it; I doubt not my Behaving well in it, having all the Industry, Frugality, Fertility, and Skill in Oecon- omy, appertaining to a good Wife’s Character. I defy any Person to say I ever Refused an Offer of that Sort: On the contrary, I readily Consented to the only Proposal of Marriage that ever was made me, which was when I was a Virgin; but too easily con"ding in the Person’s Sincerity that made it, I

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2. (*) Turning to some Gentlemen of the Assembly, then in Court [Franklin’s note].

unhappily lost my own Honour, by trusting to his; for he got me with Child, and then forsook me: That very Person you all know; he is now become a Magistrate of this County; and I had hopes he would have appeared this Day on the Bench, and have endeavoured to moderate the Court in my Favour; then I should have scorn’d to have mention’d it; but I must Complain of it as unjust and unequal, that my Betrayer and Undoer, the "rst Cause of all my Faults and Miscarriages (if they must be deemed such) should be advanced to Honour and Power, in the same Government that punishes my Misfortunes with Stripes and Infamy. I shall be told, ’tis like, that were there no Act of Assembly in the Case, the Precepts of Religion are violated by my Transgressions. If mine, then, is a religious Offence, leave it, Gentlemen, to religious Punishments. You have already excluded me from all the Comforts of your Church Communion: Is not that suf"cient? You believe I have offended Heaven, and must suffer eternal Fire: Will not that be suf"cient? What need is there, then, of your additional Fines and Whippings? I own, I do not think as you do; for, if I thought, what you call a Sin, was really such, I would not presumptuously commit it. But how can it be believed, that Heaven is angry at my having Children, when, to the little done by me towards it, God has been pleased to add his divine Skill and admirable Work- manship in the Formation of their Bodies, and crown’d it by furnishing them with rational and immortal Souls? Forgive me Gentlemen, if I talk a little extravagantly on these Matters; I am no Divine: But if you, great Men, (*)2 must be making Laws, do not turn natu ral and useful Actions into Crimes, by your Prohibitions. Redect a little on the horrid Consequences of this Law in par tic u lar: What Numbers of procur’d Abortions! and how many distress’d Mothers have been driven, by the Terror of Punishment and pub- lic Shame, to imbrue, contrary to Nature, their own trembling Hands in the Blood of their helpless Offspring! Nature would have induc’d them to nurse it up with a Parent’s Fondness. ’Tis the Law therefore, ’tis the Law itself that is guilty of all these Barbarities and Murders. Repeal it then, Gentlemen; let it be expung’d for ever from your Books: And on the other hand, take into your wise Consideration, the great and growing Number of Batchelors in the Country, many of whom, from the mean Fear of the Expence of a  Family, have never sincerely and honourably Courted a Woman in their Lives; and by their Manner of Living, leave unproduced (which I think is little better than Murder) Hundreds of their Posterity to the Thousandth Generation. Is not theirs a greater Offence against the Public Good, than mine? Compel them then, by a Law, either to Marry, or pay double the Fine of Fornication every Year. What must poor young Women do, whom Cus- tom has forbid to solicit the Men, and who cannot force themselves upon Husbands, when the Laws take no Care to provide them any, and yet severely punish if they do their Duty without them? Yes, Gentlemen, I venture to call it a Duty; ’tis the Duty of the "rst and great Command of Nature, and of Nature’s God, Increase and multiply: A Duty, from the steady Per for mance of which nothing has ever been able to deter me; but for it’s Sake, I have hazarded the Loss of the public Esteem, and frequently incurr’d public Dis-

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1. The text is from The Writings of Benjamin Franklin (1905), edited by Albert Henry Smyth. 2. I.e., this satire purports to be a document delivered to Wills Hill (1718–1793), "rst Earl of Hillsborough, in 1768, when he became secre-

tary of state to the colonies, a position he held until 1772. 3. Cheating. 4. Here, American supporters of in de pen dence from Britain.

grace and Punishment; and therefore ought, in my humble Opinion, instead of a Whipping, to have a Statue erected to my Memory.

1747

Rules by Which a Great Empire May Be Reduced to a Small One1

Presented to a Late Minister, When He Entered upon His Administration.2

An ancient Sage boasted, that, tho’ he could not "ddle, he knew how to make a great city of a little one. The science that I, a modern simpleton, am about to communicate, is the very reverse.

I address myself to all ministers who have the management of extensive dominions, which from their very greatness are become troublesome to gov- ern, because the multiplicity of their affairs leaves no time for #ddling.3

I. In the "rst place, gentlemen, you are to consider, that a great empire, like a great cake, is most easily diminished at the edges. Turn your atten- tion, therefore, "rst to your remotest provinces; that, as you get rid of them, the next may follow in order.

II. That the possibility of this separation may always exist, take special care the provinces are never incorporated with the mother country; that they do not enjoy the same common rights, the same privileges in commerce; and that they are governed by severer laws, all of your enacting, without allowing them any share in the choice of the legislators. By carefully making and pre- serving such distinctions, you will (to keep to my simile of the cake) act like a wise gingerbread- baker, who, to facilitate a division, cuts his dough half through in those places where, when baked, he would have it broken to pieces.

III. Those remote provinces have perhaps been acquired, purchased, or conquered, at the sole expense of the settlers, or their ancestors, without the aid of the mother country. If this should happen to increase her strength, by their growing numbers, ready to join in her wars; her commerce, by their growing demand for her manufactures; or her naval power, by greater employ- ment for her ships and seamen, they may prob ably suppose some merit in this, and that it entitles them to some favor; you are therefore to forget it all, or resent it, as if they had done you injury. If they happen to be zealous whigs,4 friends of liberty, nurtured in revolution princi ples, remember all that to their prejudice, and resolve to punish it; for such princi ples, after a revo- lution is thoroughly established, are of no more use; they are even odious and abominable.

IV. However peaceably your colonies have submitted to your government, shown their affection to your interests, and patiently borne their grievances; you are to suppose them always inclined to revolt, and treat them accordingly.

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5. Broken gamblers or speculators. 6. I.e., shysters. “Proctors”: civil lawyers. 7. I.e., at your plea sure. “Solicitors”: lawyers. Newgate was a London prison. The phrase

“Newgate solicitors” may be akin to “ambulance chasers.” 8. I.e., give them noble titles.

Quarter troops among them, who by their insolence may provoke the rising of mobs, and by their bullets and bayonets suppress them. By this means, like the husband who uses his wife ill from suspicion, you may in time con- vert your suspicions into realities.

V. Remote provinces must have Governors and Judges, to represent the Royal Person, and execute everywhere the delegated parts of his of"ce and authority. You ministers know, that much of the strength of government depends on the opinion of the people; and much of that opinion on the choice of rulers placed immediately over them. If you send them wise and good men for governors, who study the interest of the colonists, and advance their pros- perity, they will think their King wise and good, and that he wishes the welfare of his subjects. If you send them learned and upright men for Judges, they will think him a lover of justice. This may attach your provinces more to his government. You are therefore to be careful whom you recommend for those of"ces. If you can "nd prodigals, who have ruined their fortunes, broken gamesters or stockjobbers,5 these may do well as governors; for they will prob ably be rapacious, and provoke the people by their extortions. Wran- gling proctors and pettifogging lawyers,6 too, are not amiss; for they will be for ever disputing and quarrelling with their little parliaments. If withal they should be ignorant, wrong- headed, and insolent, so much the better. Attor- neys’ clerks and Newgate solicitors will do for Chief Justices, especially if they hold their places during your plea sure;7 and all will contribute to impress those ideas of your government, that are proper for a people you would wish to renounce it.

VI. To con"rm these impressions, and strike them deeper, whenever the injured come to the capital with complaints of maladministration, oppres- sion, or injustice, punish such suitors with long delay, enormous expense, and a "nal judgment in favor of the oppressor. This will have an admirable effect every way. The trou ble of future complaints will be prevented, and Governors and Judges will be encouraged to farther acts of oppression and injustice; and thence the people may become more disaffected, and at length desperate.

VII. When such Governors have crammed their coffers, and made them- selves so odious to the people that they can no longer remain among them, with safety to their persons, recall and reward them with pensions. You may make them baronets8 too, if that respectable order should not think "t to resent it. All will contribute to encourage new governors in the same prac- tice, and make the supreme government, detestable.

VIII. If, when you are engaged in war, your colonies should vie in liberal aids of men and money against the common enemy, upon your simple req- uisition, and give far beyond their abilities, redect that a penny taken from them by your power is more honorable to you, than a pound presented by their benevolence; despise therefore their voluntary grants, and resolve to harass them with novel taxes. They will prob ably complain to your parlia- ments, that they are taxed by a body in which they have no representative,

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9. Emphasizing. 1. I.e., Muslims. “Habeas Corpus”: you should have the body (Latin, literal trans.); the right to know what one is charged with. “Papists”:

Roman Catholics. 2. Payments for ser vices rendered. 3. I.e., to deport, as criminals were to the Amer- ican colonies.

and that this is contrary to common right. They will petition for redress. Let the Parliaments dout their claims, reject their petitions, refuse even to suf- fer the reading of them, and treat the petitioners with the utmost contempt. Nothing can have a better effect in producing the alienation proposed; for though many can forgive injuries, none ever forgave contempt.

IX. In laying these taxes, never regard the heavy burthens those remote people already undergo, in defending their own frontiers, supporting their own provincial governments, making new roads, building bridges, churches, and other public edi"ces, which in old countries have been done to your lands by your ancestors, but which occasion constant calls and demands on the purses of a new people. Forget the restraints you lay on their trade for your own bene"t, and the advantage a mono poly of this trade gives your exacting merchants. Think nothing of the wealth those merchants and your manufacturers acquire by the colony commerce; their increased ability thereby to pay taxes at home; their accumulating, in the price of their com- modities, most of those taxes, and so levying them from their consuming customers; all this, and the employment and support of thousands of your poor by the colonists, you are entirely to forget. But remember to make your arbitrary tax more grievous to your provinces, by public declarations import- ing9 that your power of taxing them has no limits; so that when you take from them without their consent one shilling in the pound, you have a clear right to the other nineteen. This will prob ably weaken every idea of security in their property, and convince them, that under such a government they have nothing they can call their own; which can scarce fail of producing the hap- piest consequences!

X. Possibly, indeed, some of them might still comfort themselves, and say, “Though we have no property, we have yet something left that is valuable; we have constitutional liberty, both of person and of conscience. This King, these Lords, and these Commons, who it seems are too remote from us to know us, and feel for us, cannot take from us our Habeas Corpus right, or our right of trial by a jury of our neighbors; they cannot deprive us of the exercise of our religion, alter our ecclesiastical constitution, and compel us to be Papists, if they please, or Mahometans.”1 To annihilate this comfort, begin by laws to perplex their commerce with in"nite regulations, impossi- ble to be remembered and observed; ordain seizures of their property for every failure; take away the trial of such property by Jury, and give it to arbi- trary Judges of your own appointing, and of the lowest characters in the country, whose salaries and emoluments2 are to arise out of the duties or condemnations, and whose appointments are during plea sure. Then let there be a formal declaration of both Houses, that opposition to your edicts is trea- son, and that any person suspected of treason in the provinces may, accord- ing to some obsolete law, be seized and sent to the metropolis of the empire for trial; and pass an act, that those there charged with certain other offenses, shall be sent away in chains from their friends and country to be tried in the same manner for felony. Then erect a new Court of Inquisition among them, accompanied by an armed force, with instructions to transport3 all

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4. Cases that were formerly appealed directly to the king.

such suspected persons; to be ruined by the expense, if they bring over evi- dences to prove their innocence, or be found guilty and hanged, if they can- not afford it. And, lest the people should think you cannot possibly go any farther, pass another solemn declaratory act, “that King, Lords, Commons had, hath, and of right ought to have, full power and authority to make stat- utes of suf"cient force and validity to bind the unrepresented provinces in all cases whatsoever.” This will include spiritual with temporal, and, taken together, must operate wonderfully to your purpose; by convincing them, that they are at pres ent under a power something like that spoken of in the scriptures, which can not only kill their bodies, but damn their souls to all eternity, by compelling them, if it pleases, to worship the Dev il.

XI. To make your taxes more odious, and more likely to procure re sis tance, send from the capital a board of of"cers to superintend the collection, com- posed of the most indiscreet, ill- bred, and insolent you can "nd. Let these have large salaries out of the extorted revenue, and live in open, grating lux- ury upon the sweat and blood of the industrious; whom they are to worry continually with groundless and expensive prosecutions before the above- mentioned arbitrary revenue Judges; all at the cost of the party prosecuted, tho’ acquitted, because the King is to pay no costs. Let these men, by your order, be exempted from all the common taxes and burthens of the prov- ince, though they and their property are protected by its laws. If any reve- nue of"ces are suspected of the least tenderness for the people, discard them. If others are justly complained of, protect and reward them. If any of the under of"cers behave so as to provoke the people to drub them, promote those to better of"ces: this will encourage others to procure for themselves such pro"table drubbings, by multiplying and enlarging such provocations, and all will work towards the end you aim at.

XII. Another way to make your tax odious, is to misapply the produce of it. If it was originally appropriated for the defense of the provinces, the better support of government, and the administration of justice, where it may be necessary, then apply none of it to that defense, but bestow it where it is not necessary, in augmented salaries or pensions to every governor, who has distinguished himself by his enmity to the people, and by calumniating them to their sovereign. This will make them pay it more unwillingly, and be more apt to quarrel with those that collect it and those that imposed it, who will quarrel again with them, and all shall contribute to your main purpose, of making them weary of your government.

XIII. If the people of any province have been accustomed to support their own Governors and Judges to satisfaction, you are to apprehend that such Governors and Judges may be thereby induenced to treat the people kindly, and to do them justice. This is another reason for applying part of that rev- enue in larger salaries to such Governors and Judges, given, as their com- missions are, during your plea sure only; forbidding them to take any salaries from their provinces; that thus the people may no longer hope any kindness from their Governors, or (in Crown cases)4 any justice from their Judges. And, as the money thus misapplied in one province is extorted from all, prob- ably all will resent the misapplication.

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5. I.e., dissolutions of these provincial parliaments. 6. Customs of"cers who boarded a ship before it

docked. 7. I.e., liars.

XIV. If the parliaments of your provinces should dare to claim rights, or complain of your administration, order them to be harrassed with repeated dissolutions.5 If the same men are continually returned by new elections, adjourn their meetings to some country village, where they cannot be accom- modated, and there keep them during plea sure; for this, you know, is your prerogative; and an excellent one it is, as you may manage it to promote discontents among the people, diminish their re spect, and increase their dis- affection.

XV. Convert the brave, honest of"cers of your navy into pimping tide- waiters6 and colony of"cers of the customs. Let those, who in time of war fought gallantly in defense of the commerce of their countrymen, in peace be taught to prey upon it. Let them learn to be corrupted by great and real smugglers; but (to show their diligence) scour with armed boats every bay, harbor, river, creek, cove, or nook throughout the coast of your colonies; stop and detain every coaster, every wood- boat, every "sherman, tumble their cargoes and even their ballast inside out and upside down; and, if a penn’orth of pins is found unentered, let the whole be seized and con"scated. Thus shall the trade of your colonists suffer more from their friends in time of peace, than it did from their enemies in war. Then let these boats’ crews land upon every farm in their way, rob the orchards, steal the pigs and the poultry, and insult the inhabitants. If the injured and exasperated farmers, unable to procure other justice, should attack the aggressors, drub them, and burn their boats; you are to call this high treason and rebellion, order deets and armies into their country, and threaten to carry all the offenders three thousand miles to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. O! this will work admirably!

XVI. If you are told of discontents in your colonies, never believe that they are general, or that you have given occasion for them; therefore do not think of applying any remedy, or of changing any offensive mea sure. Redress no grievance, lest they should be encouraged to demand the redress of some other grievance. Grant no request that is just and reasonable, lest they should make another that is unreasonable. Take all your informations of the state of the colonies from your Governors and of"cers in enmity with them. Encourage and reward these leasing- makers;7 secrete their lying accusations, lest they should be confuted; but act upon them as the clearest evidence; and believe nothing you hear from the friends of the people: suppose all their complaints to be in ven ted and promoted by a few factious demagogues, whom if you could catch and hang, all would be quiet. Catch and hang a few of them accordingly; and the blood of the Martyrs shall work miracles in favor of your purpose.

XVII. If you see rival nations rejoicing at the prospect of your disunion with your provinces, and endeavoring to promote it; if they translate, pub- lish, and applaud all the complaints of your discontented colonists, at the same time privately stimulating you to severer mea sures, let not that alarm or offend you. Why should it, since you all mean the same thing?

XVIII. If any colony should at their own charge erect a fortress to secure their port against the deets of a foreign enemy, get your Governor to betray

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8. Enough. 9. Abbreviation for Quod erat demonstrandum: which was to be demonstrated (Latin); the usual conclusion to a geometry prob lem. In other words, “I have proved my point.” 1. The text is from The Writings of Benjamin Franklin (1905), edited by Albert Henry Smyth.

The title is taken from an edition of this pam- phlet published in London without Franklin’s permission in 1784. Franklin’s title was Advice to Such As Would Remove to Amer i ca, and he used this title when he published his own edition in France in the same year. “Remove”: move.

that fortress into your hands. Never think of paying what it cost the country, for that would look, at least, like some regard for justice; but turn it into a citadel to awe the inhabitants and curb their commerce. If they should have lodged in such fortress the very arms they bought and used to aid you in your conquests, seize them all; it will provoke like ingratitude added to rob- bery. One admirable effect of these operations will be, to discourage every other colony from erecting such defenses, and so your enemies may more easily invade them; to the great disgrace of your government, and of course the furtherance of your proj ect.

XIX. Send armies into their country under pretense of protecting the inhabitants; but, instead of garrisoning the forts on their frontiers with those troops, to prevent incursions, demolish those forts, and order the troops into the heart of the country, that the savages may be encouraged to attack the frontiers, and that the troops may be protected by the inhabitants. This will seem to proceed from your ill will or your ignorance, and contribute farther to produce and strengthen an opinion among them, that you are no longer #t to govern them.

XX. Lastly, invest the General of your army in the provinces, with great and unconstitutional powers, and free him from the control of even your own Civil Governors. Let him have troops enow8 under his command, with all the fortresses in his possession; and who knows but (like some provin- cial Generals in the Roman empire, and encouraged by the universal dis- content you have produced) he may take it into his head to set up for himself? If he should, and you have carefully practiced these few excellent rules of mine, take my word for it, all the provinces will immediately join him; and you will that day (if you have not done it sooner) get rid of the trou ble of governing them, and all the plagues attending their commerce and connec- tion from henceforth and for ever.

Q. E. D.9

1773

Information to Those Who Would Remove to Amer i ca1

Many persons in Eu rope, having directly or by letters, expressed to the writer of this, who is well acquainted with North Amer i ca, their desire of trans- porting and establishing themselves in that country; but who appear to have formed, through ignorance, mistaken ideas and expectations of what is to be obtained there; he thinks it may be useful, and prevent incon ve nient, expensive, and fruitless removals and voyages of improper persons, if he gives

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2. I.e., of aristocratic birth. 3. I.e., a material equality.

4. Medicine.

some clearer and truer notions of that part of the world, than appear to have hitherto prevailed.

He "nds it is imagined by numbers, that the inhabitants of North Amer- i ca are rich, capable of rewarding, and disposed to reward, all sorts of inge- nuity; that they are at the same time ignorant of all the sciences, and consequently, that strangers, possessing talents in the belles- lettres, "ne arts, etc., must be highly esteemed, and so well paid, as to become easily rich themselves; that there are also abundance of pro"table of"ces to be disposed of, which the natives are not quali"ed to "ll; and that, having few persons of family among them, strangers of birth2 must be greatly respected, and of course easily obtain the best of those of"ces, which will make all their for- tunes; that the governments too, to encourage emigrations from Eu rope, not only pay the expense of personal transportation, but give lands gratis to strangers, with Negroes to work for them, utensils of husbandry, and stocks of cattle. These are all wild imaginations; and those who go to Amer i ca with expectations founded upon them will surely "nd themselves disappointed.

The truth is, that though there are in that country few people so misera- ble as the poor of Eu rope, there are also very few that in Eu rope would be called rich; it is rather a general happy mediocrity3 that prevails. There are few great proprietors of the soil, and few tenants; most people cultivate their own lands, or follow some handicraft or merchandise; very few rich enough to live idly upon their rents or incomes, or to pay the high prices given in Eu rope for paintings, statues, architecture, and the other works of art, that are more curious than useful. Hence the natu ral geniuses, that have arisen in Amer i ca with such talents, have uniformly quitted that country for Eu rope, where they can be more suitably rewarded. It is true, that letters and math- ematical knowledge are in esteem there, but they are at the same time more common than is apprehended; there being already existing nine colleges or universities, viz., four in New Eng land, and one in each of the provinces of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Mary land, and Virginia, all furnished with learned professors; besides a number of smaller academies; these edu- cate many of their youth in the languages, and those sciences that qualify men for the professions of divinity, law, or physic.4 Strangers indeed are by no means excluded from exercising those professions; and the quick increase of inhabitants everywhere gives them a chance of employ, which they have in common with the natives. Of civil of"ces, or employments, there are few; no superduous ones, as in Eu rope; and it is a rule established in some of the states, that no of"ce should be so pro"table as to make it desirable. The 36th Article of the Constitution of Pennsylvania, runs expressly in these words: “As every freeman, to preserve his in de pen dence, (if he has not a suf"cient estate) ought to have some profession, calling, trade, or farm, whereby he may honestly subsist, there can be no necessity for, nor use in, establishing of"ces of pro"t; the usual effects of which are dependence, and servility, unbecoming freemen, in the possessors and ex pec tants; faction, contention, corruption, and disorder among the people. Wherefore, whenever an of"ce, through increase of fees or other wise, becomes so pro"table, as to occasion many to apply for it, the pro"ts ought to be lessened by the legislature.”

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5. I.e., the Revolutionary War. 6. Manual laborer. “Husbandman”: farmer. 7. Craftspeople who convert hides into leather. “Turners”: latheworkers. 8. “. . . born / Merely to eat up the corn.”— Watts [Franklin’s note]. The En glish theologian Isaac Watts (1674–1748) is known as the father of

En glish hymnody. Franklin is quoting from memory Watts’s paraphrase of Epistles 1.2.27, by the ancient Roman poet Horace. The Latin liter- ally means “born to consume the fruits (of the earth).” 9. I.e., never- never land. “Lubberland”: a land of laziness.

These ideas prevailing more or less in all the United States, it cannot be worth any man’s while, who has a means of living at home, to expatriate himself, in hopes of obtaining a pro"table civil of"ce in Amer i ca; and, as to military of"ces, they are at an end with the war,5 the armies being disbanded. Much less is it advisable for a person to go thither, who has no other quality to recommend him but his birth. In Eu rope it has indeed its value; but it is a commodity that cannot be carried to a worse market than that of Amer- i ca, where people do not inquire concerning a stranger, what is he? but, what can he do? If he has any useful art, he is welcome; and if he exercises it, and behaves well, he will be respected by all that know him; but a mere man of quality, who, on that account, wants to live upon the public, by some of"ce or salary, will be despised and disregarded. The husbandman is in honor there, and even the mechanic,6 because their employments are useful. The people have a saying, that God Almighty is Himself a mechanic, the great- est in the universe; and He is respected and admired more for the variety, ingenuity, and utility of His handyworks, than for the antiquity of His family. They are pleased with the observation of a Negro, and frequently mention it, that Boccarorra (meaning the white men) make de black man workee, make de horse workee, make de ox workee, make eberyting workee; only de hog. He, de hog, no workee; he eat, he drink, he walk about, he go to sleep when he please; he libb like a gentleman. According to these opinions of the Ameri- cans, one of them would think himself more obliged to a genealogist, who could prove for him that his ancestors and relations for ten generations had been plowmen, smiths, carpenters, turners, weavers, tanners,7 or even shoe- makers, and consequently that they were useful members of society; than if he could only prove that they were gentlemen, doing nothing of value, but living idly on the labor of others, mere fruges consumere nati,8 and other- wise good for nothing, till by their death their estates, like the carcass of the Negro’s gentleman hog, come to be cut up.

With regard to encouragements for strangers from government, they are really only what are derived from good laws and liberty. Strangers are wel- come, because there is room enough for them all, and therefore the old inhabitants are not jealous of them; the laws protect them suf"ciently, so that they have no need for the patronage of great men; and every one will enjoy securely the pro"ts of his industry. But, if he does not bring a fortune with him, he must work and be industrious to live. One or two years’ resi- dence gives him all the rights of a citizen; but the government does not at pres ent, what ever it may have done in former times, hire people to become settlers, by paying their passages, giving land, Negroes, utensils, stock, or any other kind of emolument whatsoever. In short, Amer i ca is the land of labor, and by no means what the En glish call Lubberland, and the French Pays de Cocagne,9 where the streets are said to be paved with half- peck loaves,

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1. One guinea equals a pound plus a shilling (one twentieth of a pound), so this would be about eight to eleven pounds, or roughly twenty to thirty dollars in today’s currency. 2. Farm.

3. Those who have served their apprenticeship and are paid by the day. 4. To be skillful in what ever they undertake in the way of a vocation.

the houses tiled with pancakes, and where the fowls dy about ready roasted, crying come eat me!

Who then are the kind of persons to whom an emigration to Amer i ca may be advantageous? And what are the advantages they may reasonably expect?

Land being cheap in that country, from the vast forests still void of inhab- itants, and not likely to be occupied in an age to come, insomuch that the property of an hundred acres of fertile soil full of wood may be obtained near the frontiers, in many places, for eight or ten guineas,1 hearty young laboring men, who understand the husbandry of corn and cattle, which is nearly the same in that country as in Eu rope, may easily establish themselves there. A little money saved of the good wages they receive there, while they work for others, enables them to buy the land and begin their plantation,2 in which they are assisted by the good will of their neighbors, and some credit. Multitudes of poor people from Eng land, Ireland, Scotland, and Ger- many, have by this means in a few years become wealthy farmers, who, in their own countries, where all the lands are fully occupied, and the wages of labor low, could never have emerged from the poor condition wherein they were born.

From the salubrity of the air, the healthiness of the climate, the plenty of good provisions, and the encouragement to early marriages by the certainty of subsistence in cultivating the earth, the increase of inhabitants by natu- ral generation is very rapid in Amer i ca, and becomes still more so by the accession of strangers; hence there is a continual demand for more artisans of all the necessary and useful kinds, to supply those cultivators of the earth with houses, and with furniture and utensils of the grosser sorts, which can- not so well be brought from Eu rope. Tolerably good workmen in any of those mechanic arts are sure to "nd employ, and to be well paid for their work, there being no restraints preventing strangers from exercising any art they understand, nor any permission necessary. If they are poor, they begin "rst as servants or journeymen;3 and if they are sober, industrious, and fru- gal, they soon become masters, establish themselves in business, marry, raise families, and become respectable citizens.

Also, persons of moderate fortunes and capitals, who, having a number of children to provide for, as desirous of bringing them up to industry,4 and to secure estates for their posterity, have opportunities of doing it in Amer- i ca, which Eu rope does not afford. There they may be taught and practice pro"table mechanic arts, without incurring disgrace on that account, but on the contrary acquiring re spect by such abilities. There small capitals laid out in lands, which daily become more valuable by the increase of people, afford a solid prospect of ample fortunes thereafter for those children. The writer of this has known several instances of large tracts of land, bought, on what was then the frontier of Pennsylvania, for ten pounds per hundred acres, which after 20 years, when the settlements had been extended far beyond them, sold readily, without any improvement made upon them, for

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5. I.e., a large- scale industry. 6. I.e., woven into cloth.

three pounds per acre. The acre in Amer i ca is the same with the En glish acre, or the acre of Normandy.

Those, who desire to understand the state of government in Amer i ca, would do well to read the constitutions of the several states, and the Arti- cles of Confederation that binds the whole together for general purposes, under the direction of one assembly, called the Congress. These constitu- tions have been printed, by order of Congress, in Amer i ca; two editions of them have also been printed in London; and a good translation of them into French has lately been published at Paris.

Several of the princes of Eu rope having of late years, from an opinion of advantage to arise by producing all commodities and manufactures within their own dominions, so as to diminish or render useless their importations, have endeavored to entice workmen from other countries by high salaries, privileges, etc. Many persons, pretending to be skilled in vari ous great man- ufactures, imagining that Amer i ca must be in want of them, and that the Congress would prob ably be disposed to imitate the prince above mentioned, have proposed to go over, on condition of having their passages paid, lands given, salaries appointed, exclusive privileges for terms of years, etc. Such persons, on reading the Articles of Confederation, will "nd, that the Con- gress have no power committed to them, or money out into their hands, for such purposes; and that if any such encouragement is given, it must be by the government of some separate state. This, however, has rarely been done in Amer i ca; and, when it has been done, it has rarely succeeded, so as to establish a manufacture,5 which the country was not yet so ripe for as to encourage private persons to set it up; labor being generally too dear there, and hands dif"cult to be kept together, every one desiring to be a master, and the cheapness of lands inclining many to leave trades for agriculture. Some indeed have met with success, and are carried on to advantage; but they are generally such as require only a few hands, or wherein great part of the work is performed by machines. Things that are bulky, and of so small value as not well to bear the expense of freight, may often be made cheaper in the country, than they can be imported; and the manufacture of such things will be pro"table wherever there is a suf"cient demand. The farmers in Amer i ca produce indeed a good deal of wool and dax; and none is exported, it is all worked up;6 but it is in the way of domestic manufacture, for the use of the family. The buying up quantities of wool and dax, with the design to employ spinners, weavers, etc., and form great establishments, producing quantities of linen and woollen goods for sale, has been several times attempted in dif fer ent provinces; but those proj ects have generally failed, goods of equal value being imported cheaper. And when the governments have been solicited to support such schemes by encouragements, in money, or by imposing duties on importation of such goods, it has been generally refused, on this princi ple, that, if the country is ripe for the manufacture, it may be carried on by private persons to advantage; and if not, it is a folly to think of forcing Nature. Great establishments of manufacture require great numbers of poor to do the work for small wages; these poor are to be found in Eu rope, but will not be found in Amer i ca, till the lands are all taken up

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7. I.e., prudent money man ag ers. 8. Calculate; add up the "gures in a column.

and cultivated, and the excess of people, who cannot get land, want employ- ment. The manufacture of silk, they say, is natu ral in France, as that of cloth in Eng land, because each country produces in plenty the "rst material; but if Eng land will have a manufacture of silk as well as that of cloth, and France one of cloth as well as that of silk, these unnatural operations must be sup- ported by mutual prohibitions, or high duties on the importation of each other’s goods; by which means the workmen are enabled to tax the home consumer by greater prices, while the higher wages they receive makes them neither happier nor richer, since they only drink more and work less. There- fore the governments in Amer i ca do nothing to encourage such proj ects. The people, by this means, are not imposed on, either by the merchant or mechanic. If the merchant demands too much pro"t on imported shoes, they buy of the shoemaker; and if he asks too high a price, they take them of the merchant; thus the two professions are checks on each other. The shoe- maker, however, has, on the whole, considerable pro"t upon his labor in Amer i ca, beyond what he had in Eu rope, as he can add to his price a sum nearly equal to all the expenses of freight and commission, risk or insurance, etc., necessarily charged by the merchant. And the case is the same with the workmen in every other mechanic art. Hence it is, that artisans gener- ally live better and more easily in Amer i ca than in Eu rope; and such as are good economists7 make a comfortable provision for age, and for their children. Such may, therefore, remove with advantage to Amer i ca.

In the long- settled countries of Eu rope, all arts, trades, professions, farms, etc., are so full, that it is dif"cult for a poor man, who has children, to place them where they may gain, or learn to gain, a decent livelihood. The arti- sans, who fear creating future rivals in business, refuse to take apprentices, but upon conditions of money, maintenance, or the like, which the parents are unable to comply with. Hence the youth are dragged up in ignorance of every gainful art, and obliged to become soldiers, or servants, or thieves, for a subsistence. In Amer i ca, the rapid increase of inhabitants takes away that fear of rivalship, and artisans willingly receive apprentices from the hope of pro"t by their labor, during the remainder of the time stipulated, after they shall be instructed. Hence it is easy for poor families to get their children instructed; for the artisans are so desirous of apprentices, that many of them will even give money to the parents, to have boys from ten to "fteen years of age bound apprentices to them till the age of twenty- one; and many poor parents have, by that means, on their arrival in the country, raised money enough to buy land suf"cient to establish themselves, and to subsist the rest of their family by agriculture. These contracts for apprentices are made before a magistrate, who regulates the agreement according to reason and justice, and, having in view the formation of a future useful citizen, obliges the master to engage by a written indenture, not only that, during the time of ser vice stipulated, the apprentice shall be duly provided with meat, drink, apparel, washing, and lodging, and, at its expiration, with a complete new suit of clothes, but also that he shall be taught to read, write, and cast accounts;8 and that he shall be well instructed in the art or profession of his master, or some other, by which he may afterwards gain a livelihood, and be

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9. Lack of religious belief. 1. The text is from The Writings of Benjamin Franklin (1905), edited by Albert Henry Smyth. 2. In Franklin’s time, not only unmannerly

be hav ior but also, more broadly, unsophisticated and uncivilized be hav ior. “Politeness”: not just mannerly be hav ior but also sophisticated and civilized be hav ior.

able in his turn to raise a family. A copy of this indenture is given to the apprentice or his friends, and the magistrate keeps a rec ord of it, to which recourse may be had, in case of failure by the master in any point of per for- mance. This desire among the masters, to have more hands employed in working for them, induces them to pay the passages of young persons, of both sexes, who, on their arrival, agree to serve them one, two, three, or four years; those, who have already learned a trade, agreeing for a shorter term, in proportion to their skill, and the consequent immediate value of their ser vice; and those, who have none, agreeing for a longer term, in consider- ation of being taught an art their poverty would not permit them to acquire in their own country.

The almost general mediocrity of fortune that prevails in Amer i ca oblig- ing its people to follow some business for subsistence, those vices, that arise usually from idleness, are in a great mea sure prevented. Industry and con- stant employment are great preservatives of the morals and virtue of a nation. Hence bad examples to youth are more rare in Amer i ca, which must be a comfortable consideration to parents. To this may be truly added, that seri- ous religion, under its vari ous denominations, is not only tolerated, but respected and practiced. Atheism is unknown there; in"delity9 rare and secret; so that persons may live to a great age in that country, without hav- ing their piety shocked by meeting with either an atheist or an in"del. And the Divine Being seems to have manifested His approbation of the mutual forbearance and kindness with which the dif fer ent sects treat each other, by the remarkable prosperity with which He has been pleased to favor the whole country.

1782 1784

Remarks Concerning the Savages of North Amer i ca1

Savages we call them, because their manners differ from ours, which we think the perfection of civility; they think the same of theirs.

Perhaps, if we could examine the manners of dif fer ent nations with impar- tiality, we should "nd no people so rude, as to be without any rules of politeness; nor any so polite, as not to have some remains of rudeness.2

The Indian men, when young, are hunters and warriors; when old, coun- selors; for all their government is by counsel of the sages; there is no force, there are no prisons, no of"cers to compel obedience, or indict punishment. Hence they generally study oratory, the best speaker having the most indu- ence. The Indian women till the ground, dress the food, nurse and bring up the children, and preserve and hand down to posterity the memory of pub- lic transactions. These employments of men and women are accounted natu- ral and honorable. Having few arti"cial wants, they have abundance of leisure for improvement by conversation. Our laborious manner of life,

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3. The Iroquois confederacy, consisting of the Seneca, Cayuga, Oneida, Onondaga, Mohawk, and Tuscarora tribes. “Anno”: in the year (Latin).

compared with theirs, they esteem slavish and base; and the learning, on which we value ourselves, they regard as frivolous and useless. An instance of this occurred at the Treaty of Lancaster, in Pennsylvania, anno 1744, between the government of Virginia and the Six Nations.3 After the princi- pal business was settled, the commissioners from Virginia acquainted the Indians by a speech, that there was at Williamsburg a college, with a fund for educating Indian youth; and that, if the Six Nations would send down half a dozen of their young lads to that college, the government would take care that they should be well provided for, and instructed in all the learning of the white people. It is one of the Indian rules of politeness not to answer a public proposition the same day that it is made; they think it would be treating it as a light matter, and that they show it re spect by taking time to consider it, as of a matter impor tant. They therefore deferred their answer till the day following; when their speaker began, by expressing their deep sense of the kindness of the Virginia government, in making them that offer; “for we know,” says he, “that you highly esteem the kind of learning taught in those Colleges, and that the maintenance of our young men, while with you, would be very expensive to you. We are convinced, therefore, that you mean to do us good by your proposal; and we thank you heartily. But you, who are wise, must know that dif fer ent nations have dif fer ent concep- tions of things; and you will therefore not take it amiss, if our ideas of this kind of education happen not to be the same with yours. We have had some experience of it; several of our young people were formerly brought up at the colleges of the northern provinces; they were instructed in all your sci- ences; but, when they came back to us, they were bad runners, ignorant of every means of living in the woods, unable to bear either cold or hunger, knew neither how to build a cabin, take a deer, or kill an enemy, spoke our language imperfectly, were therefore neither "t for hunters, warriors, nor counselors; they were totally good for nothing. We are however not the less obliged by your kind offer, though we decline accepting it; and, to show our grateful sense of it, if the gentlemen of Virginia will send us a dozen of their sons, we will take great care of their education, instruct them in all we know, and make men of them.”

Having frequent occasions to hold public councils, they have acquired great order and decency in conducting them. The old men sit in the fore- most ranks, the warriors in the next, and the women and children in the hindmost. The business of the women is to take exact notice of what passes, imprint it in their memories (for they have no writing), and communicate it to their children. They are the rec ords of the council, and they preserve tra- ditions of the stipulations in treaties 100 years back; which, when we com- pare with our writings, we always "nd exact. He that would speak, rises. The rest observe a profound silence. When he has "nished and sits down, they leave him 5 or 6 minutes to recollect, that, if he has omitted anything he intended to say, or has anything to add, he may rise again and deliver it. To interrupt another, even in common conversation, is reckoned highly inde- cent. How dif fer ent this from the conduct of a polite British House of Com- mons, where scarce a day passes without some confusion, that makes the

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speaker hoarse in calling to order; and how dif fer ent from the mode of con- versation in many polite companies of Eu rope, where, if you do not deliver your sentence with great rapidity, you are cut off in the middle of it by the impatient loquacity of those you converse with, and never suffered to "nish it!

The politeness of these savages in conversation is indeed carried to excess, since it does not permit them to contradict or deny the truth of what is asserted in their presence. By this means they indeed avoid disputes; but then it becomes dif"cult to know their minds, or what impression you make upon them. The missionaries who have attempted to convert them to Chris tian- ity all complain of this as one of the great dif"culties of their mission. The Indians hear with patience the truths of the Gospel explained to them, and give their usual tokens of assent and approbation; you would think they were convinced. No such matter. It is mere civility.

A Swedish minister, having assembled the chiefs of the Susquehanah Indi- ans, made a sermon to them, acquainting them with the principal historical facts on which our religion is founded; such as the fall of our "rst parents by eating an apple, the coming of Christ to repair the mischief, His mira- cles and suffering, etc. When he had "nished, an Indian orator stood up to thank him. “What you have told us,” he says, “is all very good. It is indeed bad to eat apples. It is better to make them all into cider. We are much obliged by your kindness in coming so far, to tell us these things which you have heard from your mothers. In return, I will tell you some of those we have heard from ours. In the beginning, our fathers had only the desh of animals to subsist on; and if their hunting was unsuccessful, they were starving. Two of our young hunters, having killed a deer, made a "re in the woods to broil some part of it. When they were about to satisfy their hunger, they beheld a beautiful young woman descend from the clouds, and seat herself on that hill, which you see yonder among the blue mountains. They said to each other, it is a spirit that has smelled our broiling venison, and wishes to eat of it; let us offer some to her. They presented her with the tongue; she was pleased with the taste of it, and said, ‘Your kindness shall be rewarded; come to this place after thirteen moons, and you shall "nd something that will be of great bene"t in nourishing you and your children to the latest genera- tions.’ They did so, and, to their surprise, found plants they had never seen before; but which, from that ancient time, have been constantly cultivated among us, to our great advantage. Where her right hand had touched the ground, they found maize; where her left hand had touched it, they found kidney- beans; and where her backside had sat on it, they found tobacco.” The good missionary, disgusted with this idle tale, said, “What I delivered to you were sacred truths; but what you tell me is mere fable, "ction, and falsehood.” The Indian, offended, replied, “My brother, it seems your friends have not done you justice in your education; they have not well instructed you in the rules of common civility. You saw that we, who understand and practice those rules, believed all your stories; why do you refuse to believe ours?”

When any of them come into our towns, our people are apt to crowd round them, gaze upon them, and incommode them, where they desire to be pri- vate; this they esteem great rudeness, and the effect of the want of instruc- tion in the rules of civility and good manners. “We have,” say they, “as much

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4. Cry out; announce themselves. 5. I.e., hospitality.

curiosity as you, and when you come into our towns, we wish for opportuni- ties of looking at you, but for this purpose we hide ourselves behind bushes, where you are to pass, and never intrude ourselves into your com pany.”

Their manner of entering one another’s village has likewise its rules. It is reckoned uncivil in traveling strangers to enter a village abruptly, without giving notice of their approach. Therefore, as soon as they arrive within hear- ing, they stop and hollow,4 remaining there till invited to enter. Two old men usually come out to them, and lead them in. There is in every village a vacant dwelling, called the stranger’s house. Here they are placed, while the old men go round from hut to hut, acquainting the inhabitants, that strang- ers are arrived, who are prob ably hungry and weary; and every one sends them what he can spare of victuals, and skins to repose on. When the strangers are refreshed, pipes and tobacco are brought; and then, but not before, conversation begins, with inquiries who they are, whither bound, what news, etc.; and it usually ends with offers of ser vice, if the strangers have occasion of guides, or any necessaries for continuing their journey; and nothing is exacted for the entertainment.5

The same hospitality, esteemed among them as a principal virtue, is prac- ticed by private persons; of which Conrad Weiser, our interpreter, gave me the following instances. He had been naturalized among the Six Nations, and spoke well the Mohawk language. In going through the Indian country, to carry a message from our Governor to the Council at Onondaga, he called at the habitation of Canassatego, an old acquaintance, who embraced him, spread furs for him to sit on, placed before him some boiled beans and venison, and mixed some rum and water for his drink. When he was well refreshed, and had lit his pipe, Canassatego began to converse with him; asked how he had fared the many years since they had seen each other; whence he then came; what occasioned the journey, etc. Conrad answered all his questions; and when the discourse began to dag, the Indian, to con- tinue it, said, “Conrad, you have lived long among the white people, and know something of their customs; I have been sometimes at Albany, and have observed, that once in seven days they shut up their shops, and assem ble all in the great house; tell me what it is for? What do they do there?” “They meet there,” says Conrad, “to hear and learn good things.” “I do not doubt,” says the Indian, “that they tell you so; they have told me the same; but I doubt the truth of what they say, and I will tell you my reasons. I went lately to Albany to sell my skins and buy blankets, knives, powder, rum, etc. You know I used generally to deal with Hans Hanson; but I was a little inclined this time to try some other merchant. However, I called "rst upon Hans, and asked him what he would give for beaver. He said he could not give any more than four shillings a pound; ‘but,’ says he, ‘I cannot talk on business now; this is the day when we meet together to learn good things, and I am going to the meeting.’ So I thought to myself, ‘Since we cannot do any business today, I may as well go to the meeting too,’ and I went with him. There stood up a man in black, and began to talk to the people very angrily. I did not understand what he said; but, perceiving that he looked much at me and at

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6. “It is remarkable that in all ages and coun- tries hospitality has been allowed as the virtue of those whom the civilized were pleased to call barbarians. The Greeks celebrated the Scythi- ans for it. The Saracens possessed it eminently, and it is to this day the reigning virtue of the wild Arabs. St. Paul, too, in the relation of his

voyage and shipwreck on the island of Melité says “the barbarous people showed us no little kindness; for they kindled a "re, and received us every one, because of the pres ent rain, and because of the cold” [Franklin’s note; the Apos- tle Paul relates his visit to Melita in Acts 28].

Hanson, I imagined he was angry at seeing me there; so I went out, sat down near the house, struck "re, and lit my pipe, waiting till the meeting should break up. I thought too, that the man had mentioned something of beaver, and I suspected it might be the subject of their meeting. So, when they came out, I accosted my merchant. ‘Well, Hans,’ says I, ‘I hope you have agreed to give more than four shillings a pound.’ ‘No,’ says he, ‘I cannot give so much; I cannot give more than three shillings and sixpence.’ I then spoke to sev- eral other dealers, but they all sung the same song,— three and sixpence,— three and sixpence. This made it clear to me, that my suspicion was right; and, that what ever they pretended of meeting to learn good things, the real purpose was to consult how to cheat Indians in the price of beaver. Con- sider but a little, Conrad, and you must be of my opinion. If they met so often to learn good things, they would certainly have learned some before this time. But they are still ignorant. You know our practice. If a white man, in traveling through our country, enters one of our cabins, we all treat him as I treat you; we dry him if he is wet, we warm him if he is cold, we give him meat and drink, that he may allay his thirst and hunger; and we spread soft furs for him to rest and sleep on; we demand nothing in return. But, if I go into a white man’s house at Albany, and ask for victuals and drink, they say, ‘Where is your money?’ and if I have none, they say, ‘Get out, you Indian dog.’ You see they have not yet learned those little good things, that we need no meetings to be instructed in, because our mothers taught them to us when we were children; and therefore it is impossible their meetings should be, as they say, for any such purpose, or have any such effect; they are only to con- trive the cheating of Indians in the price of beaver.”6

1784

The Autobiography Franklin worked on the manuscript of The Autobiogra- phy on four dif fer ent occasions over a period of nineteen years. The "rst part is addressed to his son William Franklin (1731–1813), governor of New Jersey when Franklin was writing this section. Franklin was visiting the country home of Bishop Jonathan Shipley at Twyford, a village about "fty miles from London. He began writ- ing on July 30 and "nished on or about August 13, 1771. Franklin did not return to the manuscript until about thirteen years later, when he was living in France and serving as minister of the newly formed United States. He wrote the last two sections in August 1788 and the winter of 1789–90, stopping because of illness. The account goes up only to 1758, so it does not cover Franklin’s great triumphs as a diplomat and public servant.

In 1791, the Paris publisher Jacques Buisson issued the "rst part of The Auto- biography in a French translation. William Temple Franklin, Franklin’s grand son and secretary, published a London edition of 1818 that included the "rst three parts in En glish. Temple Franklin had accidentally traded his handwritten manuscript of

1. I.e., the remaining representatives of his family. Franklin and his son toured Eng land in 1758 and visited ancestral homes at Ecton and Banbury.

the full text for an incomplete copy. It was not until 1868 that the American lawyer and statesman John Bigelow published all four parts of the autobiography, in a more reliable edition based on a manuscript that he bought in France.

The text reprinted here is the "rst one taken directly from the manuscript (other editors have merely corrected earlier printed texts). It was established by J. A. Leo Lemay and Paul Zall for their 1986 Norton Critical Edition of The Autobiography and is here reprinted with permission. The text has been modernized only slightly. All manuscript abbreviations and symbols have been expanded. The editors omitted short dashes, which Franklin often wrote after sentences, and punctuation marks that “have been clearly superseded by revisions or additions.” Careless slips have been corrected silently but are noted in the section on emendations in their text. Lemay and Zall generously let the editors of this anthology consult their footnotes and biographical sketches. Also helpful were the edition of Leonard  W. Labaree et al. (1964) and Joyce E. Chaplin’s revised Norton Critical Edition (2012).

The Autobiography

[Part One]

Twyford, at the Bishop of St. Asaph’s 1771

Dear Son, I have ever had a Plea sure in obtaining any little Anecdotes of my Ances-

tors. You may remember the Enquiries I made among the Remains of my Relations1 when you were with me in Eng land; and the Journey I took for that purpose. Now imagining it may be equally agreeable to you to know the Circumstances of my Life, many of which you are yet unacquainted with; and expecting a Week’s uninterrupted Leisure in my pres ent Country Retire- ment, I sit down to write them for you. To which I have besides some other Inducements. Having emerg’d from the Poverty and Obscurity in which I was born and bred, to a State of Afduence and some Degree of Reputation in the World, and having gone so far thro’ Life with a considerable Share of Felicity, the conducting Means I made use of, which, with the Blessing of God, so well succeeded, my Posterity may like to know, as they may "nd some of them suitable to their own Situations, and therefore "t to be imitated. That Felicity, when I redected on it, has induc’d me sometimes to say, that were it offer’d to my Choice, I should have no Objection to a Repetition of the same Life from its Beginning, only asking the Advantage Authors have in a second Edition to correct some Faults of the "rst. So would I if I might, besides correcting the Faults, change some sinister Accidents and Events of it for others more favorable, but tho’ this were denied, I should still accept the Offer. However, since such a Repetition is not to be expected, the Thing most like living one’s Life over again, seems to be a Recollection of that Life; and to make that Recollection as durable as pos si ble, the putting it down in Writing. Hereby, too, I shall indulge the Inclination so natu ral in old Men, to be talking of themselves and their own past Actions, and I shall indulge it, without being troublesome to others who thro’ re spect to Age might think

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2. I.e., a backhanded stroke; a term used in dueling with rapiers. 3. A “franklin” was a freeholder— a land owner

not of noble birth. 4. Here a note [Franklin had intended to insert a note here].

themselves oblig’d to give me a Hearing, since this may be read or not as any one pleases. And lastly, (I may as well confess it, since my Denial of it will be believ’d by no body) perhaps I shall a good deal gratify my own Van- ity. Indeed I scarce ever heard or saw the introductory Words, Without Vanity I may say, etc. but some vain thing immediately follow’d. Most People dislike Vanity in others what ever Share they have of it themselves, but I give it fair Quarter wherever I meet with it, being persuaded that it is often productive of Good to the Possessor and to others that are within his Sphere of Action: And therefore in many Cases it would not be quite absurd if a Man were to thank God for his Vanity among the other Comforts of Life.

And now I speak of thanking God, I desire with all Humility to acknowl- edge, that I owe the mention’d Happiness of my past Life to his kind Provi- dence, which led me to the Means I us’d and gave them Success. My Belief of This, induces me to hope, tho’ I must not presume, that the same Good- ness will still be exercis’d towards me in continuing that Happiness, or in enabling me to bear a fatal Reverso,2 which I may experience as others have done, the Complexion of my future Fortune being known to him only: and in whose Power it is to bless to us even our Afdictions.

The Notes one of my Uncles (who had the same kind of Curiosity in col- lecting Family Anecdotes) once put into my Hands, furnish’d me with sev- eral Particulars, relating to our Ancestors. From those Notes I learned that the Family had liv’d in the same Village, Ecton in Northamptonshire, for 300 Years, and how much longer he knew not, (perhaps from the Time when the Name Franklin that before was the Name of an Order of People,3 was assum’d by them for a Surname, when others took Surnames all over the Kingdom)4 on a Freehold of about 30 Acres, aided by the Smith’s Business which had continued in the Family till his Time, the eldest Son being always bred to that Business. A Custom which he and my Father both followed as to their eldest Sons. When I search’d the Register at Ecton, I found an Account of their Births, Marriages and Burials, from the Year 1555 only, there being no Register kept in that Parish at any time preceding. By that Register I perceiv’d that I was the youn gest Son of the youn gest Son for 5 Generations back. My Grand father Thomas, who was born in 1598, lived at Ecton till he grew too old to follow Business longer, when he went to live with his Son John, a Dyer at Banbury in Oxfordshire, with whom my Father serv’d an Apprenticeship. There my Grand father died and lies buried. We saw his Gravestone in 1758. His eldest Son Thomas liv’d in the House at Ecton, and left it with the Land to his only Child, a Daughter, who with her Husband, one Fisher of Wellingborough, sold it to Mr. Isted, now Lord of the Manor there.

My Grand father had 4 Sons that grew up, viz., Thomas, John, Benjamin and Josiah. I will give you what Account I can of them at this distance from my Papers, and if those are not lost in my Absence, you will among them "nd many more Particulars. Thomas was bred a Smith under his Father, but being ingenious, and encourag’d in Learning (as all his Brothers likewise

5. An honori"c originally extended to a young man of gentle birth but extended as a courtesy to any gentleman. 6. A professional copier of documents. 7. Until 1752, Eng land used the Julian calendar, in which the new year began on March  25. Because the Julian calendar did not have leap years, it had fallen behind the astronomical year; the En glish skipped eleven days when adopting the Gregorian calendar. Franklin’s birthday is either January 6, 1705–06, Old Style, or Janu- ary 17, 1706, New Style. 8. The passage of the soul, upon death, to another’s body. 9. The terms “folio,” “quarto,” and “octavo” desig-

nate book sizes from large to small. A single sheet of paper folded once makes a folio, or four sides for printing; a quarto is obtained if the sheet is folded again; an octavo is the sheet folded once more. 1. Here insert it [Franklin’s note, but he did not include the example]. 2. Mary Tudor (1516–1558; reigned 1553–58) tried to restore Roman Catholicism as the national Church. 3. Also known as the “Geneva” version, trans- lated by Reformed En glish Protestants living in Switzerland; this version, used by the Puritans, was outlawed by the Church of Eng land. 4. A small, four- legged stool.

were,) by an Esquire5 Palmer then the principal Gentleman in that Parish, he quali"ed himself for the Business of Scrivener,6 became a considerable Man in the County Affairs, was a chief Mover of all public Spirited Undertak- ings for the County or Town of Northampton and his own Village, of which many Instances were told us at Ecton, and he was much taken Notice of and patroniz’d by the then Lord Halifax. He died in 1702, Jan. 6, old Stile,7 just 4 Years to a Day before I was born. The Account we receiv’d of his Life and Character from some old People at Ecton, I remember struck you as some- thing extraordinary from its Similarity to what you knew of mine. Had he died on the same Day, you said one might have suppos’d a Transmigration.8

John was bred a Dyer, I believe of Woollens. Benjamin was bred a Silk Dyer, serving an Apprenticeship at London. He was an ingenious Man. I remember him well, for when I was a Boy he came over to my Father in Bos- ton, and lived in the House with us some Years. He lived to a great Age. His Grand son Samuel Franklin now lives in Boston. He left behind him two Quarto9 Volumes, Manuscript of his own Poetry, consisting of little occa- sional Pieces address’d to his Friends and Relations, of which the following sent to me, is a Specimen.1 He had form’d a Shorthand of his own, which he taught me, but never practicing it I have now forgot it. I was nam’d after this Uncle, there being a par tic u lar Affection between him and my Father. He was very pious, a great Attender of Sermons of the best Preachers, which he took down in his Shorthand and had with him many Volumes of them. He was also much of a Politician, too much perhaps for his Station. There fell lately into my Hands in London a Collection he had made of all the principal Pamphlets relating to Public Affairs from 1641 to 1717. Many of the Vol- umes are wanting, as appears by the Numbering, but there still remains 8 Volumes Folio, and 24 in Quarto and Octavo. A Dealer in old Books met with them, and knowing me by my sometimes buying of him, he brought them to me. It seems my Uncle must have left them here when he went to Amer i ca, which was above 50 Years since. There are many of his Notes in the Margins.

This obscure Family of ours was early in the Reformation, and continu’d Protestants thro’ the Reign of Queen Mary,2 when they were sometimes in Danger of Trou ble on Account of their Zeal against Popery. They had got an En glish Bible,3 and to conceal and secure it, it was fastened open with Tapes under and within the Frame of a Joint Stool.4 When my Great Great Grand- father read in it to his Family, he turn’d up the Joint Stool upon his Knees, turning over the Leaves then under the Tapes. One of the Children stood at

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5. An of"cer of an ecclesiastical court, in this case a court established to eliminate heresy. 6. Charles II (1630–1685) reigned from 1660 to 1685. 7. Secret and illegal meetings of Nonconform- ists, outlawed in 1664. Nonconformists refused to adopt the rituals and acknowledge the hierar- chy of the Church of Eng land.

8. More correctly, October 1683. 9. Cotton Mather’s ecclesiastical history (excerpted earlier in this volume) was published in London in 1702; the quotation is properly “an Able Godly En glishman.” 1. Sectarians; believers or followers of a par tic u- lar religious teaching. 2. In the Island of Nantucket [Franklin’s note].

the Door to give Notice if he saw the Apparitor5 coming, who was an Of"- cer of the Spiritual Court. In that Case the Stool was turn’d down again upon its feet, when the Bible remain’d conceal’d under it as before. This Anecdote I had from my Uncle Benjamin. The Family continu’d all of the Church of Eng land till about the End of Charles the Second’s Reign,6 when some of the Ministers that had been outed for Nonconformity, holding Con- venticles7 in Northamptonshire, Benjamin and Josiah adher’d to them, and so continu’d all their Lives. The rest of the Family remain’d with the Epis- copal Church.

Josiah, my Father, married young, and carried his Wife with three Children unto New Eng land, about 1682.8 The Conventicles having been forbidden by Law, and frequently disturbed, induced some considerable Men of his Acquaintance to remove to that Country, and he was prevail’d with to accom- pany them thither, where they expected to enjoy their Mode of Religion with Freedom. By the same Wife he had 4 Children more born there, and by a second Wife ten more, in all 17, of which I remember 13 sitting at one time at his Table, who all grew up to be Men and Women, and married. I was the youn gest Son and the youn gest Child but two, and was born in Bos- ton, New Eng land.

My Mother the second Wife was Abiah Folger, a Daughter of Peter Fol- ger, one of the "rst Settlers of New Eng land, of whom honorable mention is made by Cotton Mather, in his Church History of that Country, (entitled Magnalia Christi Americana) as a godly learned En glishman, if I remember the Words rightly.9 I have heard that he wrote sundry small occasional Pieces, but only one of them was printed which I saw now many Years since. It was written in 1675, in the homespun Verse of that Time and People, and address’d to those then concern’d in the Government there. It was in favor of Liberty of Conscience, and in behalf of the Baptists, Quakers, and other Sectaries,1 that had been under Persecution; ascribing the Indian Wars and other Distresses that had befallen the Country to that Persecution, as so many Judgments of God, to punish so heinous an Offence; and exhorting a Repeal of those uncharitable Laws. The whole appear’d to me as written with a good deal of Decent Plainness and manly Freedom. The six last conclud- ing Lines I remember, tho’ I have forgotten the two "rst of the Stanza, but the Purport of them was that his Censures proceeded from Goodwill, and therefore he would be known as the Author,

because to be a Libeler, (says he) I hate it with my Heart. From Sherburne Town2 where now I dwell, My Name I do put here, Without Offence, your real Friend, It is Peter Folgier.

3. I.e., as if his son were the tenth part of his income, traditionally given to the Church. 4. Here, his system of shorthand. 5. Maker of candles and soap.

6. Steer. 7. Enterprising. 8. Ants.

My elder Brothers were all put Apprentices to dif fer ent Trades. I was put to the Grammar School at Eight Years of Age, my Father intending to devote me as the Tithe3 of his Sons to the Ser vice of the Church. My early Readi- ness in learning to read (which must have been very early, as I do not remem- ber when I could not read) and the Opinion of all his Friends that I should certainly make a good Scholar, encourag’d him in this Purpose of his. My Uncle Benjamin too approv’d of it, and propos’d to give me all his Short- hand Volumes of Sermons, I suppose as a Stock to set up with, if I would learn his Character.4 I continu’d however at the Grammar School not quite one Year, tho’ in that time I had risen gradually from the Middle of the Class of that Year to be the Head of it, and farther was remov’d into the next Class above it, in order to go with that into the third at the End of the Year. But my Father in the meantime, from a View of the Expense of a College Edu- cation which, having so large a Family, he could not well afford, and the mean Living many so educated were afterwards able to obtain, Reasons that he gave to his Friends in my Hearing, altered his "rst Intention, took me from the Grammar School, and sent me to a School for Writing and Arith- metic kept by a then famous Man, Mr. George Brownell, very successful in his Profession generally, and that by mild encouraging Methods. Under him I acquired fair Writing pretty soon, but I fail’d in the Arithmetic, and made no Pro gress in it.

At Ten Years old, I was taken home to assist my Father in his Business, which was that of a Tallow Chandler and Soap- Boiler.5 A Business he was not bred to, but had assumed on his Arrival in New Eng land and on "nding his Dying Trade would not maintain his Family, being in little Request. Accordingly I was employed in cutting Wick for the Candles, "lling the Dip- ping Mold, and the Molds for cast Candles, attending the Shop, going of Errands, etc. I dislik’d the Trade and had a strong Inclination for the Sea; but my Father declar’d against it; however, living near the Water, I was much in and about it, learned early to swim well, and to manage Boats, and when in a Boat or Canoe with other Boys I was commonly allow’d to govern,6 espe- cially in any case of Dif"culty; and upon other Occasions I was generally a Leader among the Boys, and sometimes led them into Scrapes, of which I will mention one Instance, as it shows an early projecting7 public Spirit, tho’ not then justly conducted. There was a Salt Marsh that bounded part of the Mill Pond, on the Edge of which at Highwater, we us’d to stand to "sh for Minnows. By much Trampling, we had made it a mere Quagmire. My Pro- posal was to build a Wharf there "t for us to stand upon, and I show’d my Comrades a large Heap of Stones which were intended for a new House near the Marsh, and which would very well suit our Purpose. Accordingly in the Eve ning when the Workmen were gone, I assembled a Number of my Play- fellows, and working with them diligently like so many Emmets,8 sometimes two or three to a Stone, we brought them all away and built our little Wharf. The next Morning the Workmen were surpris’d at Missing the Stones; which

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9. Privileged. I.e., consistent and paid.

were found in our Wharf; Enquiry was made after the Removers; we were discovered and complain’d of; several of us were corrected by our Fathers; and tho’ I pleaded the Usefulness of the Work, mine convinc’d me that noth- ing was useful which was not honest.

I think you may like to know something of his Person and Character. He had an excellent Constitution of Body, was of middle Stature, but well set and very strong. He was ingenious, could draw prettily, was skill’d a little in Music and had a clear pleasing Voice, so that when he play’d Psalm Tunes on his Violin and sung withal as he some times did in an Eve ning after the Business of the Day was over, it was extremely agreeable to hear. He had a mechanical Genius too, and on occasion was very handy in the Use of other Tradesmen’s Tools. But his great Excellence lay in a sound Understanding, and solid Judgment in prudential Matters, both in private and public Affairs. In the latter indeed he was never employed, the numerous Family he had to educate and the Straitness of his Circumstances, keeping him close to his Trade, but I remember well his being frequently visited by leading People, who consulted him for his Opinion on Affairs of the Town or of the Church he belong’d to and show’d a good deal of Res pect for his Judgment and Advice. He was also much consulted by private Persons about their Affairs when any Dif"culty occur’d, and frequently chosen an Arbitrator between contending Parties. At his Table he lik’d to have as often as he could, some sensible Friend or Neighbor, to converse with, and always took care to start some ingenious or useful Topic for Discourse, which might tend to improve the Minds of his Children. By this means he turn’d our Attention to what was good, just, and prudent in the Conduct of Life; and little or no Notice was ever taken of what related to the Victuals on the Table, whether it was well or ill drest, in or out of season, of good or bad davor, preferable or infe- rior to this or that other thing of the kind; so that I was brought up in such a perfect Inattention to those Matters as to be quite Indifferent what kind of Food was set before me; and so unobservant of it, that to this Day, if I am ask’d I can scarce tell, a few Hours after Dinner, what I din’d upon. This has been a Con ve nience to me in traveling, where my Companions have been sometimes very unhappy for want of a suitable Grati"cation of their more delicate because better instructed Tastes and Appetites.

My Mother had likewise an excellent Constitution. She suckled all her 10 Children. I never knew either my Father or Mother to have any Sickness but that of which they died, he at 89 and she at 85 Years of age. They lie buried together at Boston, where I some Years since plac’d a Marble stone over their Grave with this Inscription:

Josiah Franklin And Abiah his Wife Lie here interred. They lived lovingly together in Wedlock Fifty- "ve Years. Without an Estate or any gainful9 Employment, By constant Labor and Industry,

1. Abbreviation for ætatis: aged (Latin). 2. John Franklin (1690–1756), Franklin’s favor- ite brother, later became postmaster of Boston. 3. Woodworkers, bricklayers, latheworkers, brass- workers. 4. The En glish preacher John Bunyan (1628– 1688) published Pilgrim’s Pro gress in 1678; his lit- erary works were enormously popu lar and

available in cheap one- shilling editions. Pilgrim’s Pro gress is an allegory in which the hero, Chris- tian, dees the City of Destruction and makes his way to the Celestial City with the help of charac- ters such as Mr. Worldly- Wiseman, Faithful, and Hopeful. 5. A pseudonym for Nathaniel Crouch (c. 1632– 1725), a popu lar izer of British history.

With God’s Blessing, They maintained a large Family Comfortably; And brought up thirteen Children, And seven Grandchildren Reputably. From this Instance, Reader, Be encouraged to Diligence in thy Calling, And distrust not Providence. He was a pious and prudent Man, She a discreet and virtuous Woman. Their youn gest Son, In "lial Regard to their Memory, Places this Stone. J.F. born 1655— Died 1744. Ætat1 89 A.F. born 1667— died 1752— —85.

By my rambling Digressions I perceive myself to be grown old. I us’d to write more methodically. But one does not dress for private Com pany as for a public Ball. ’Tis perhaps only Negligence.

To return. I continu’d thus employ’d in my Father’s Business for two Years, that is till I was 12 Years old; and my Brother John who was bred to that Business having left my Father, married and set up for himself at Rhode Island,2 there was all Appearance that I was destin’d to supply his Place and be a Tallow Chandler. But my Dislike to the Trade continuing, my Father was under Apprehensions that if he did not "nd one for me more agreeable, I should break away and get to Sea, as his Son Josiah had done to his great Vexation. He therefore sometimes took me to walk with him, and see Join- ers, Bricklayers, Turners, Braziers,3 etc. at their Work, that he might observe my Inclination, and endeavor to "x it on some Trade or other on Land. It has ever since been a Plea sure to me to see good Workmen handle their Tools; and it has been useful to me, having learned so much by it, as to be able to do little Jobs myself in my House, when a Workman could not readily be got; and to construct little Machines for my Experiments while the Intention of making the Experiment was fresh and warm in my Mind. My Father at last "x’d upon the Cutler’s Trade, and my Uncle Benjamin’s Son Samuel who was bred to that Business in London being about that time establish’d in Boston, I was sent to be with him some time on liking. But his Expectations of a Fee with me displeasing my Father, I was taken home again.

From a Child I was fond of Reading, and all the little Money that came into my Hands was ever laid out in Books. Pleas’d with the Pilgrim’s Pro- gress, my "rst Collection was of John Bunyan’s Works,4 in separate little Vol- umes. I afterwards sold them to enable me to buy R. Burton’s5 Historical

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6. Peddlers’ books, hence inexpensive. 7. Parallel Lives, by the Greek biographer Plu- tarch (c. 46–120 c.e.), about noted Greek and Roman "gures. 8. Cotton Mather’s Bonifacius: An Essay upon the Good. Essay on Proj ects, by the En glish writer Daniel Defoe (1659?–1731), offers sugges- tions for economic improvement. 9. Type. 1. Apprenticed. 2. A contract binding him to work for his brother for nine years. James Franklin (1697–1735) had learned the printer’s trade in Eng land.

3. I.e., be paid for each day’s work, having served his apprenticeship. 4. Mr. Matthew Adams [Franklin’s note]. 5. Exceptionally "ne. 6. The full texts of these ballads are lost; George Worthylake, light house keeper on Beacon Island, Boston Harbor, and his wife and daughter were drowned on November 3, 1718. The pirate Black- beard, Edward Teach, was killed off the Caro- lina coast on November 22, 1718. 7. Grub Street in London was inhabited by poor literary hacks who churned out poems of topical interest.

Collections; they were small Chapmen’s Books6 and cheap, 40 or 50 in all. My Father’s little Library consisted chiedy of Books in polemic Divinity, most of which I read, and have since often regretted, that at a time when I had such a Thirst for Knowledge, more proper Books had not fallen in my Way, since it was now resolv’d I should not be a Clergyman. Plutarch’s Lives7 there was, in which I read abundently, and I still think that time spent to great Advantage. There was also a Book of Defoe’s called an Essay on Proj ects and another of Dr. Mather’s call’d Essays to do Good,8 which perhaps gave me a Turn of Thinking that had an Induence on some of the principal future Events of my Life.

This Bookish Inclination at length determin’d my Father to make me a Printer, tho’ he had already one Son, (James) of that Profession. In 1717 my Brother James return’d from Eng land with a Press and Letters9 to set up his Business in Boston. I lik’d it much better than that of my Father, but still had a Hankering for the Sea. To prevent the apprehended Effect of such an Inclination, my Father was impatient to have me bound1 to my Brother. I stood out some time, but at last was persuaded and signed the Indentures,2 when I was yet but 12 Years old. I was to serve as an Apprentice till I was 21 Years of Age, only I was to be allow’d Journeyman’s Wages3 during the last Year. In a little time I made great Pro"ciency in the Business, and became a useful Hand to my Brother. I now had Access to better Books. An Acquain- tance with the Apprentices of Booksellers enabled me sometimes to borrow a small one, which I was careful to return soon and clean. Often I sat up in my Room reading the greatest Part of the Night, when the Book was borrow’d in the Eve ning and to be return’d early in the Morning lest it should be miss’d or wanted. And after some time an ingenious Tradesman4 who had a pretty5 Collection of Books, and who frequented our Printing- House, took Notice of me, invited me to his Library, and very kindly lent me such Books as I chose to read. I now took a Fancy to Poetry, and made some little Pieces. My Brother, thinking it might turn to account encourag’d me, and put me on composing two occasional Ballads. One was called the Light House Trag- edy, and contain’d an Account of the drowning of Capt. Worthilake with his Two Daughters; the other was a Sailor Song on the Taking of Teach or Black- beard the Pirate.6 They were wretched Stuff, in the Grubstreet Ballad Style,7 and when they were printed he sent me about the Town to sell them. The "rst sold wonderfully, the Event being recent, having made a great Noise. This datter’d my Vanity. But my Father discourag’d me, by ridiculing my Per- for mances, and telling me Verse- makers were generally Beggars; so I escap’d being a Poet, most prob ably a very bad one. But as Prose Writing

8. Scottish Presbyterians were noted for their argumentative nature. 9. Punctuation. Spelling and punctuation were not standardized at this time. 1. An En glish periodical published daily from March 1, 1711, to December 6, 1712, and revived

in 1714. It contained essays by Joseph Addison (1672–1719) and Richard Steele (1672–1729) and addressed itself primarily to matters of lit er a ture and morality. Its aim was to “enliven morality with wit” and “temper wit with morality.” 2. Meter.

has been of great Use to me in the Course of my Life, and was a principal Means of my Advancement, I shall tell you how in such a Situation I acquir’d what little Ability I have in that Way.

There was another Bookish Lad in the Town, John Collins by Name, with whom I was intimately acquainted. We sometimes disputed, and very fond we were of Argument, and very desirous of confuting one another. Which disputatious Turn, by the way, is apt to become a very bad Habit, making People often extremely disagreeable in Com pany, by the Contradiction that is necessary to bring it into Practice, and thence, besides souring and spoil- ing the Conversation, is productive of Disgusts and perhaps Enmities where you may have occasion for Friendship. I had caught it by reading my Father’s Books of Dispute about Religion. Persons of good Sense, I have since observ’d, seldom fall into it, except Lawyers, University Men, and Men of all Sorts that have been bred at Edinburgh.8 A Question was once some how or other started between Collins and me, of the Propriety of educating the Female Sex in Learning, and their Abilities for Study. He was of Opinion that it was improper; and that they were naturally unequal to it. I took the contrary Side, perhaps a little for Dispute sake. He was naturally more elo- quent, had a ready Plenty of Words, and sometimes as I thought bore me down more by his Fluency than by the Strength of his Reasons. As we parted without settling the Point, and were not to see one another again for some time, I sat down to put my Arguments in Writing, which I copied fair and sent to him. He answer’d and I replied. Three or four Letters of a Side had pass’d, when my Father happen’d to "nd my Papers, and read them. With- out entering into the Discussion, he took occasion to talk to me about the Manner of my Writing, observ’d that tho’ I had the Advantage of my Antag- onist in correct Spelling and pointing9 (which I ow’d to the Printing- House) I fell far short in elegance of Expression, in Method and in Perspicuity, of which he convinc’d me by several Instances. I saw the Justice of his Remarks, and thence grew more attentive to the Manner in Writing, and determin’d to endeavor at Improvement.

About this time I met with an odd Volume of the Spectator.1 I had never before seen any of them. I bought it, read it over and over, and was much delighted with it. I thought the Writing excellent, and wish’d if pos si ble to imitate it. With that View, I took some of the Papers, and making short Hints of the Sentiment in each Sentence, laid them by a few Days, and then with- out looking at the Book, tried to complete the Papers again, by expressing each hinted Sentiment at length and as fully as it had been express’d before, in any suitable Words that should come to hand.

Then I compar’d my Spectator with the Original, discover’d some of my Faults and corrected them. But I found I wanted a Stock of Words or a Read- iness in recollecting and using them, which I thought I should have acquir’d before that time, if I had gone on making Verses, since the continual Occasion for Words of the same Import but of dif fer ent Length, to suit the Mea sure,2

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3. Thomas Tryon, whose Way to Health, Wealth, and Happiness appeared in 1682; a digest titled Wisdom’s Dictates appeared in 1691. 4. I.e., cornmeal or oatmeal mush. 5. Edward Cocker’s Arithmetic, published in

1677, was reprinted twenty times by 1700. 6. John Seller published An Epitome of the Art of Navigation in 1681. Samuel Sturmy published The Mari ner’s Magazine: Or Sturmy’s Mathemati- cal and Practical Arts in 1699.

or of dif fer ent Sound for the Rhyme, would have laid me under a constant Necessity of searching for Variety, and also have tended to "x that Variety in my Mind, and make me Master of it. Therefore I took some of the Tales and turn’d them into Verse: And after a time, when I had pretty well forgot- ten the Prose, turn’d them back again. I also sometimes jumbled my Collec- tions of Hints into Confusion, and after some Weeks, endeavor’d to reduce them into the best Order, before I began to form the full Sentences, and complete the Paper. This was to teach me Method in the Arrangement of Thoughts. By comparing my Work afterwards with the original, I discover’d many faults and amended them; but I sometimes had the Plea sure of Fan- cying that in certain Particulars of small Import, I had been lucky enough to improve the Method or the Language and this encourag’d me to think I might possibly in time come to be a tolerable En glish Writer, of which I was extremely ambitious.

My Time for these Exercises and for Reading, was at Night after Work, or before Work began in the Morning; or on Sundays, when I contrived to be in the Printing- House alone, evading as much as I could the common Atten- dance on public Worship, which my Father used to exact of me when I was under his Care: And which indeed I still thought a Duty; tho’ I could not, as it seemed to me, afford the Time to practice it.

When about 16 Years of Age, I happen’d to meet with a Book written by one Tryon,3 recommending a Vegetable Diet. I determined to go into it. My Brother being yet unmarried, did not keep House, but boarded himself and his Apprentices in another Family. My refusing to eat Flesh occasioned an Inconveniency, and I was frequently chid for my singularity. I made myself acquainted with Tryon’s Manner of preparing some of his Dishes, such as Boiling Potatoes or Rice, making Hasty Pudding,4 and a few others, and then propos’d to my Brother, that if he would give me Weekly half the Money he paid for my Board, I would board myself. He instantly agreed to it, and I presently found that I could save half what he paid me. This was an addi- tional Fund for buying Books: But I had another Advantage in it. My Brother and the rest going from the Printing- House to their Meals, I remain’d there alone, and dispatching presently my light Repast, (which often was no more than a Biscuit or a Slice of Bread, a Handful of Raisins or a Tart from the Pastry Cook’s, and a Glass of Water) had the rest of the Time till their Return, for Study, in which I made the greater Pro gress from that greater Clearness of Head and quicker Apprehension which usually attend Temper- ance in Eating and Drinking. And now it was that being on some Occasion made asham’d of my Ignorance in Figures, which I had twice fail’d in learn- ing when at School, I took Cocker’s Book of Arithmetic,5 and went thro’ the whole by myself with great Ease. I also read Seller’s and Sturmy’s Books of Navigation,6 and became acquainted with the little Geometry they contain,

7. The En glish phi los o pher John Locke (1632– 1704) published An Essay Concerning Human Understanding in 1690. The phi los o phers Antoine Arnauld (1612–1694) and Pierre Nicole (1625?– 1695), of Port Royal, France, published the En glish edition of Logic: Or the Art of Thinking in 1687. It was originally published in Latin in 1662. 8. James Greenwood wrote An Essay towards a Practical En glish Grammar (1711). 9. I.e., in the form of a debate or dialectic, as practiced by the Greek phi los o pher Socrates (c.

470–399 b.c.e.). 1. Work by the Greek historian Xenophon (434?–355 b.c.e.) translated by Edward Bysshe in 1712. 2. Anthony Ashley Cooper, third Earl of Shaft- esbury (1671–1713), was a religious skeptic. Anthony Collins (1676–1729) argued that the world could satisfactorily be explained in terms of itself. Perhaps Franklin read Shaftesbury’s Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times (1711) and Collins’s A Discourse of Free Thinking (1713).

but never proceeded far in that Science. And I read about this Time Locke on Human Understanding and the Art of Thinking by Messrs. du Port Royal.7

While I was intent on improving my Language, I met with an En glish Grammar (I think it was Greenwood’s8) at the End of which there were two little Sketches of the Arts of Rhe toric and Logic, the latter "nishing with a Specimen of a Dispute in the Socratic Method.9 And soon after I procur’d Xenophon’s Memorable Things of Socrates,1 wherein there are many Instances of the same Method. I was charm’d with it, adopted it, dropped my abrupt Contradiction and positive Argumentation, and put on the humble Enquirer and Doubter. And being then, from reading Shaftesbury and Col- lins, became a real Doubter in many Points of our Religious Doctrine,2 I found this Method safest for myself and very embarrassing to those against whom I used it, therefore I took a Delight in it, practic’d it continually and grew very artful and expert in drawing People even of superior Knowledge into Concessions the Consequences of which they did not foresee, entan- gling them in Dif"culties out of which they could not extricate themselves, and so obtaining Victories that neither myself nor my Cause always deserved. I continu’d this Method some few Years, but gradually left it, retaining only the Habit of expressing myself in Terms of modest Dif"dence, never using when I advance any thing that may possibly be disputed, the Words, Certainly, undoubtedly, or any others that give the Air of Positiveness to an Opinion; but rather say, I conceive, or I apprehend a Thing to be so or so, It appears to me, or I should think it so or so for such and such Reasons, or I imagine it to be so, or it is so if I am not mistaken. This Habit I believe has been of great Advan- tage to me, when I have had occasion to inculcate my Opinions and persuade Men into Mea sures that I have been from time to time engag’d in promoting. And as the chief Ends of Conversation are to inform, or to be informed, to please or to persuade, I wish well- meaning sensible Men would not lessen their Power of doing Good by a Positive assuming Manner that seldom fails to dis- gust, tends to create Opposition, and to defeat every one of those Purposes for which Speech was given us, to wit, giving or receiving Information, or Plea- sure: For If you would inform, a positive dogmatical Manner in advancing your Sentiments, may provoke Contradiction and prevent a candid Attention. If you wish Information and Improvement from the Knowledge of others and yet at the same time express yourself as "rmly "x’d in your pres ent Opinions, modest sensible Men, who do not love Disputation, will prob ably leave you undisturb’d in the Possession of your Error; and by such a Manner you can seldom hope to recommend yourself in pleasing your Hearers, or to persuade those whose Concurrence you desire. Pope says, judiciously.

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3. Franklin is quoting from memory lines 574– 75 and  567 of An Essay on Criticism, by the En glish poet Alexander Pope (1688–1744). The "rst line should read, “Men must be taught as if you taught them not,” and the third, “And speak, tho’ sure, with seeming Dif"dence.” 4. Franklin is mistaken here: the lines are from

Went worth Dillon, fourth Earl of Roscommon (1633?–1685), from his Essay on Translated Verse, lines 113–14. The second line should read, “For want of decency is want of sense.” “Want”: lack. 5. Actually, the "fth; James Franklin’s paper appeared on August 7, 1721.

Men should be taught as if you taught them not, And things unknown propos’d as things forgot,

farther recommending it to us,

To speak tho’ sure, with seeming Dif#dence.3

And he might have coupled with this Line that which he has coupled with another, I think less properly,

For want of Modesty is want of Sense.

If you ask why less properly, I must repeat the Lines;

“Immodest Words admit of no Defence; For Want of Modesty is Want of Sense.”4

Now is not Want of Sense, (where a Man is so unfortunate as to want it) some Apology for his Want of Modesty? and would not the Lines stand more justly thus?

Immodest Words admit but this Defence, That Want of Modesty is Want of Sense.

This however I should submit to better Judgments. My Brother had in 1720 or 21, begun to print a Newspaper. It was the

second5 that appear’d in Amer i ca, and was called The New Eng land Cou- rant. The only one before it, was The Boston News Letter. I remember his being dissuaded by some of his Friends from the Undertaking, as not likely to succeed, one Newspaper being in their Judgment enough for Amer i ca. At this time 1771 there are not less than "ve and twenty. He went on however with the Undertaking, and after having work’d in composing the Types and printing off the Sheets I was employ’d to carry the Papers thro’ the Streets to the Customers. He had some ingenious Men among his Friends who amus’d themselves by writing little Pieces for this Paper, which gain’d it Credit, and made it more in Demand; and these Gentlemen often visited us. Hearing their Conversations, and their Accounts of the Approbation their Papers were receiv’d with, I was excited to try my Hand among them. But being still a Boy, and suspecting that my Brother would object to printing any Thing of mine in his Paper if he knew it to be mine, I contriv’d to dis- guise my Hand, and writing an anonymous Paper I put it in at Night under the Door of the Printing- House.

It was found in the Morning and communicated to his Writing Friends when they call’d in as Usual. They read it, commented on it in my Hearing, and I had the exquisite Plea sure, of "nding it met with their Approbation, and that in their dif fer ent Guesses at the Author none were named but Men of some Character among us for Learning and Ingenuity. I suppose now that I was rather lucky in my Judges: And that perhaps they were not really so

6. The Silence Dogood letters (April 12– October 8, 1722), the earliest essay series in Amer i ca.

7. Revealed.

very good ones as I then esteem’d them. Encourag’d however by this, I wrote and convey’d in the same Way to the Press several more Papers,6 which were equally approv’d, and I kept my Secret till my small Fund of Sense for such Per for mances was pretty well exhausted, and then I discovered7 it; when I began to be considered a little more by my Brother’s Acquaintance, and in a manner that did not quite please him, as he thought, prob ably with reason, that it tended to make me too vain. And perhaps this might be one Occa- sion of the Differences that we began to have about this Time. Tho’ a Brother, he considered himself as my Master, and me as his Apprentice; and accord- ingly expected the same Ser vices from me as he would from another; while I thought he demean’d me too much in some he requir’d of me, who from a Brother expected more Indulgence, Our Disputes were often brought before our Father, and I fancy I was either generally in the right, or else a better Pleader, because the Judgment was generally in my favor. But my Brother was passionate and had often beaten me, which I took extremely amiss; and thinking my Apprenticeship very tedious, I was continually wishing for

Early American print shop. “The Printer hath metal Letters in a great number put into Boxes (5). The Compositor (1) taketh them out one by one, and according to the Copy (which he hath fastened before him in a Visorum [2]) composeth words in a Composing- stick (3) till a Line be made; he putteth these in a Galley (4) till a Page (6) be made, and those again in a Form (7), and he locketh them up in Iron Chases (8) with Quoins (9) lest they should drop out, and putteth them under the Press (10). Then the Press- man beateth it over with Printer’s Ink, by means of Balls (11) spreadeth upon it the Papers put in the Frisket (12), which being put under the Spindle (14) on the Cof"n (13) and pressed down with a Bar (15) he maketh to take impression.” From Comensius’s Vis i ble World (1810), with thanks to James Green of the Library Com pany of Philadelphia.

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8. I fancy his harsh and tyrannical Treatment of me, might be a means of impressing me with that Aversion to arbitrary Power that has stuck to me thro’ my whole Life [Franklin’s note]. 9. On June  11, 1722, the Courant hinted that there was collusion between local authorities and pirates raiding off Boston Harbor. James Frank- lin was jailed from June 12 to July 7. “Assembly”:

Mas sa chu setts legislative body; the lower house, with representatives elected by towns of the Mas- sa chu setts General Court. 1. Insults, annoyances. 2. Satirizing. 3. The paper continued under Franklin’s name until 1726, three years after he left Boston.

some Opportunity of shortening it, which at length offered in a manner unexpected.8

One of the Pieces in our Newspaper, on some po liti cal Point which I have now forgotten, gave Offence to the Assembly. He was taken up, censur’d and imprison’d9 for a Month by the Speaker’s Warrant, I suppose because he would not discover his Author. I too was taken up and examin’d before the Council; but tho’ I did not give them any Satisfaction, they contented them- selves with admonishing me, and dismiss’d me; considering me perhaps as an Apprentice who was bound to keep his Master’s Secrets. During my Brother’s Con"nement, which I resented a good deal, notwithstanding our private Differences, I had the Management of the Paper, and I made bold to give our Rulers some Rubs1 in it, which my Brother took very kindly, while others began to consider me in an unfavorable Light, as a young Genius that had a Turn for Libeling and Satire.2 My Brother’s Discharge was accompa- nied with an Order of the House, (a very odd one) that James Franklin should no longer print the Paper called the New Eng land Courant. There was a Con- sultation held in our Printing- House among his Friends what he should do in this Case. Some propos’d to evade the Order by changing the Name of the Paper; but my Brother seeing Incon ve niences in that, it was " nally con- cluded on as a better Way, to let it be printed for the future under the Name of Benjamin Franklin. And to avoid the Censure of the Assembly that might fall on him, as still printing it by his Apprentice, the Contrivance was, that my old Indenture should be return’d to me with a full Discharge on the Back of it, to be shown on Occasion; but to secure to him the Bene"t of my Ser- vice I was to sign new Indentures for the Remainder of the Term, which were to be kept private. A very dimsy Scheme it was, but however it was immedi- ately executed, and the Paper went on accordingly under my Name for sev- eral Months.3 At length a fresh Difference arising between my Brother and me, I took upon me to assert my Freedom, presuming that he would not venture to produce the new Indentures. It was not fair in me to take this Advantage, and this I therefore reckon one of the "rst Errata of my Life: But the Unfairness of it weigh’d little with me, when under the Impressions of Resentment, for the Blows his Passion too often urg’d him to bestow upon me. Tho’ he was other wise not an ill- natur’d Man: Perhaps I was too saucy and provoking.

When he found I would leave him, he took care to prevent my getting Employment in any other Printing- House of the Town, by going round and speaking to every Master, who accordingly refus’d to give me Work. I then thought of going to New York as the nearest Place where there was a Printer: and I was the rather inclin’d to leave Boston, when I redected that I had already made myself a little obnoxious to the governing Party; and from the arbitrary Proceedings of the Assembly in my Brother’s Case it was likely I

4. One of the "rst American printers (1663–1752) and father of Andrew Bradford (1686–1742), Franklin’s future competitor in Philadelphia. 5. Perth Amboy, New Jersey. 6. In New York. “The Kill”: the Kill van Kull, a narrow channel that separates Staten Island, New York, from New Jersey. 7. Shaggy head of hair. 8. Engravings. See n. 4, p. 473.

9. Defoe (see n. 8, p. 474) published Robinson Crusoe in 1719, Moll Flanders in 1722, Religious Courtship in 1772, and The Family Instructor in 1715–18. 1. The En glish writer Samuel Richardson (1689–1761) published his novel Pamela: Or Virtue Rewarded in 1740. Franklin reprinted it in 1744 and in doing so published the "rst novel in Amer i ca.

might if I stay’d soon bring myself into Scrapes; and farther that my indis- creet Disputations about Religion began to make me pointed at with Horror by good People, as an In"del or Atheist; I determin’d on the Point: but my Father now siding with my Brother, I was sensible that if I attempted to go openly, Means would be used to prevent me. My Friend Collins therefore undertook to manage a little for me. He agreed with the Captain of a New York Sloop for my Passage, under the Notion of my being a young Acquain- tance of his that had got a naughty Girl with Child, whose Friends would compel me to marry her, and therefore I could not appear or come away pub- licly. So I sold some of my Books to raise a little Money, was taken on board privately, and as we had a fair Wind, in three Days I found myself in New York near 300 Miles from home, a Boy of but 17, without the least Recom- mendation to or Knowledge of any Person in the Place, and with very little Money in my Pocket.

My Inclinations for the Sea, were by this time worn out, or I might now have grati"ed them. But having a Trade, and supposing myself a pretty good Workman, I offer’d my Ser vice to the Printer of the Place, old Mr. William Bradford.4 He could give me no Employment, having little to do, and Help enough already: But, says he, my Son at Philadelphia has lately lost his prin- cipal Hand, Aquila Rose, by Death. If you go thither I believe he may employ you. Philadelphia was 100 Miles farther. I set out, however, in a Boat for Amboy;5 leaving my Chest and Things to follow me round by Sea. In crossing the Bay we met with a Squall that tore our rotten Sails to pieces, prevented our getting into the Kill, and drove us upon Long Island.6 In our Way a drunken Dutchman, who was a Passenger too, fell overboard; when he was sinking I reach’d thro’ the Water to his shock Pate7 and drew him up so that we got him in again. His Ducking sober’d him a little, and he went to sleep, taking "rst out of his Pocket a Book which he desir’d I would dry for him. It prov’d to be my old favorite Author Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Pro gress in Dutch, "nely printed on good Paper with copper Cuts,8 a Dress better than I had ever seen it wear in its own Language. I have since found that it has been translated into most of the Languages of Eu rope, and suppose it has been more generally read than any other Book except perhaps the Bible. Honest John was the "rst that I know of who mix’d Narration and Dialogue, a Method of Writing very engaging to the Reader, who in the most in ter est- ing Parts "nds himself as it were brought into the Com pany, and pres ent at the Discourse. Defoe in his Crusoe, his Moll Flanders, Religious Courtship, Family Instructor, and other Pieces, has imitated it with Success.9 And Rich- ardson has done the same in his Pamela,1 etc.

When we drew near the Island we found it was at a Place where there could be no Landing, there being a great Surf on the stony Beach. So we dropped Anchor and swung round towards the Shore. Some People came

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2. An opening in a ship’s deck, with a lid. 3. Then the capital of West Jersey, about eigh- teen miles north of Philadelphia. 4. Dr.  John Browne (c. 1667–1737), innkeeper in Bordentown, New Jersey, and a noted reli- gious skeptic as well as physician. 5. I.e., formal education.

6. In Scarronides, the En glish writer Charles Cotton (1630–1687) parodied the "rst and fourth books of the Aeneid, by the ancient Roman poet Virgil. Cotton’s opening lines are: “I sing the Man (read it who list), / A Trojan true as ever pissed.”

down to the Water Edge and hallow’d to us, as we did to them. But the Wind was so high and the Surf so loud, that we could not hear so as to under- stand each other. There were Canoes on the Shore, and we made Signs and hallow’d that they should fetch us, but they either did not understand us, or thought it impracticable. So they went away, and Night coming on, we had no Remedy but to wait till the Wind should abate, and in the mean time the Boatman and I concluded to sleep if we could, and so crowded into the Scuttle2 with the Dutchman who was still wet, and the Spray beating over the Head of our Boat, leak’d thro’ to us, so that we were soon almost as wet as he. In this Manner we lay all Night with very little Rest. But the Wind abating the next Day, we made a Shift to reach Amboy before Night, having been 30 hours on the Water without Victuals, or any Drink but a Bottle of "lthy Rum: The Water we sail’d on being salt.

In the Eve ning I found myself very feverish, and went ill to Bed. But hav- ing read somewhere that cold Water drank plentifully was good for a Fever, I follow’d the Prescription, sweat plentifully most of the Night, my Fever left me, and in the Morning crossing the Ferry, proceeded on my Journey, on foot, having 50 Miles to Burlington,3 where I was told I should "nd Boats that would carry me the rest of the Way to Philadelphia.

It rain’d very hard all the Day, I was thoroughly soak’d, and by Noon a good deal tir’d, so I stopped at a poor Inn, where I stayed all Night, beginning now to wish I had never left home. I cut so miserable a Figure too, that I found by the Questions ask’d me I was suspected to be some runaway Servant, and in danger of being taken up on that Suspicion. However I proceeded the next Day, and got in the Eve ning to an Inn within 8 or 10 Miles of Burlington, kept by one Dr. Browne.4

He entered into Conversation with me while I took some Refreshment, and "nding I had read a little, became very sociable and friendly. Our Acquaintance continu’d as long as he liv’d. He had been, I imagine, an itin- erant Doctor, for there was no Town in Eng land, or Country in Eu rope, of which he could not give a very par tic u lar Account. He had some Letters,5 and was ingenious, but much of an Unbeliever, and wickedly undertook some Years after to travesty the Bible in doggerel Verse as Cotton had done Vir- gil.6 By this means he set many of the Facts in a very ridicu lous Light, and might have hurt weak minds if his Work had been publish’d: but it never was. At his House I lay that Night, and the next Morning reach’d Burling- ton. But had the Morti"cation to "nd that the regular Boats were gone a little before my coming, and no other expected to go till Tuesday, this being Saturday. Wherefore I return’d to an old Woman in the Town of whom I had bought Gingerbread to eat on the Water, and ask’d her Advice; she invited me to lodge at her House till a Passage by Water should offer; and being tired with my foot Traveling, I accepted the Invitation. She understand- ing I was a Printer, would have had me stay at that Town and follow my

7. October 6, 1723. 8. Colonial money was extraordinarily heterogeneous, as Franklin’s “stock” here begins to indicate.

Business, being ignorant of the Stock necessary to begin with. She was very hospitable, gave me a Dinner of Ox Cheek with great Goodwill, accepting only of a Pot of Ale in return. And I thought myself "x’d till Tuesday should come. However walking in the Eve ning by the Side of the River a Boat came by, which I found was going towards Philadelphia with several People in her. They took me in, and as there was no Wind, we row’d all the Way; and about Midnight not having yet seen the City, some of the Com pany were con"- dent we must have pass’d it, and would row no farther, the others knew not where we were, so we put towards the Shore, got into a Creek, landed near an old Fence with the Rails of which we made a Fire, the Night being cold, in October, and there we remain’d till Daylight. Then one of the Com pany knew the Place to be Cooper’s Creek a little above Philadelphia, which we saw as soon as we got out of the Creek, and arriv’d there about 8 or 9 aClock, on the Sunday morning,7 and landed at the Market Street Wharf.

I have been the more par tic u lar in this Description of my Journey, and shall be so of my "rst Entry into that City, that you may in your Mind com- pare such unlikely Beginning with the Figure I have since made there. I was in my working Dress, my best Clothes being to come round by Sea. I was dirty from my Journey; my Pockets were stuff’d out with Shirts and Stock- ings; I knew no Soul, nor where to look for Lodging. I was fatigu’d with Trav- eling, Rowing and Want of Rest. I was very hungry, and my whole Stock of Cash consisted of a Dutch Dollar and about a Shilling in Copper.8 The lat- ter I gave the People of the Boat for my Passage, who at "rst refus’d it on Account of my Rowing; but I insisted on their taking it, a Man being some- times more generous when he has but a little Money than when he has plenty, perhaps thro’ Fear of being thought to have but little. Then I walk’d up the Street, gazing about, till near the Market House I met a Boy with Bread. I had made many a Meal on Bread, and inquiring where he got it, I went immediately to the Baker’s he directed me to in Second Street; and ask’d for Biscuit, intending such as we had in Boston, but they it seems were not made in Philadelphia, then I ask’d for a three- penny Loaf, and was told they had none such: so not considering or knowing the Difference of Money and the greater Cheapness nor the Names of his Bread, I bad him give me three pennyworth of any sort. He gave me accordingly three great Puffy Rolls. I was surpris’d at the Quantity, but took it, and having no Room in my Pock- ets, walk’d off, with a Roll under each Arm, and eating the other. Thus I went up Market Street as far as Fourth Street, passing by the Door of Mr. Read, my future Wife’s Father, when she standing at the Door saw me, and thought I made as I certainly did a most awkward ridicu lous Appear- ance. Then I turn’d and went down Chestnut Street and part of Walnut Street, eating my Roll all the Way, and coming round found myself again at Market Street Wharf, near the Boat I came in, to which I went for a Drought of the River Water, and being "ll’d with one of my Rolls, gave the other two to a Woman and her Child that came down the River in the Boat with us and were waiting to go farther. Thus refresh’d I walk’d again up the Street, which by this time had many clean dress’d People in it who were all walking

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9. Samuel Keimer (c. 1688–1742), a printer in London before moving to Philadelphia. 1. An instrument of adjustable width in which type is set before being put on a galley (an oblong, single- column tray). 2. Revealing.

3. Trickster, rationalizer. 4. An oversized type, not usable for books and newspapers. 5. Journeyman printer (c. 1695–1723) for Andrew Bradford; his son Joseph apprenticed with Franklin.

the same Way; I join’d them, and thereby was led into the great Meeting House of the Quakers near the Market. I sat down among them, and after looking round a while and hearing nothing said, being very drowsy thro’ Labor and want of Rest the preceding Night, I fell fast asleep, and continu’d so till the Meeting broke up, when one was kind enough to rouse me. This was therefore the "rst House I was in or slept in, in Philadelphia.

Walking again down towards the River, and looking in the Faces of People, I met a young Quaker Man whose Countenance I lik’d, and accosting him requested he would tell me where a Stranger could get Lodging. We were then near the Sign of the Three Mari ners. Here, says he, is one Place that entertains Strangers, but it is not a reputable House; if thee wilt walk with me, I’ll show thee a better. He brought me to the Crooked Billet in Water Street. Here I got a Dinner. And while I was eating it, several sly Questions were ask’d me, as it seem’d to be suspected from my youth and Appearance, that I might be some Runaway. After Dinner my Sleepiness return’d: and being shown to a Bed, I lay down without undressing, and slept till Six in the Eve ning; was call’d to Supper; went to Bed again very early and slept soundly till the next Morning. Then I made myself as tidy as I could, and went to Andrew Bradford the Printer’s. I found in the Shop the old Man his Father, whom I had seen at New York, and who traveling on horse back had got to Philadelphia before me. He introduc’d me to his Son, who receiv’d me civilly, gave me a Breakfast, but told me he did not at pres ent want a Hand, being lately supplied with one. But there was another Printer in town lately set up, one Keimer,9 who perhaps might employ me; if not, I should be welcome to lodge at his House, and he would give me a little Work to do now and then till fuller Business should offer.

The old Gentleman said, he would go with me to the new Printer: And when we found him, Neighbor, says Bradford, I have brought to see you a young Man of your Business, perhaps you may want such a One. He ask’d me a few Questions, put a Composing Stick1 in my Hand to see how I work’d, and then said he would employ me soon, tho’ he had just then nothing for me to do. And taking old Bradford whom he had never seen before, to be one of the Townspeople that had a Goodwill for him, enter’d into a Conver- sation on his pres ent Undertaking and Prospects; while Bradford not discov- ering2 that he was the other Printer’s Father; on Keimer’s Saying he expected soon to get the greatest Part of the Business into his own Hands, drew him on by artful Questions and starting little Doubts, to explain all his Views, what Interest he relied on, and in what manner he intended to pro- ceed. I who stood by and heard all, saw immediately that one of them was a crafty old Sophister,3 and the other a mere Novice. Bradford left me with Keimer, who was greatly surpris’d when I told him who the old Man was.

Keimer’s Printing- House I found, consisted of an old shatter’d Press and one small worn- out Font of En glish,4 which he was then using himself, com- posing in it an Elegy on Aquila Rose5 before- mentioned, an ingenious young

6. One who has charge of the rec ords, docu- ments, and correspondence of any or ga nized body ( here, the Pennsylvania legislative council). 7. Two shallow trays that contain uppercase and lowercase type. 8. Boarded. 9. An En glish sect that preached doomsday and

cultivated emotional "ts. 1. Ship’s captain (d. before 1743), husband of Franklin’s sister Mary. 2. City in Delaware. 3. Keith (1680–1749), lieutenant- governor of Pennsylvania and Delaware from 1717 to 1726, ded to Eng land in 1728 to escape creditors.

Man of excellent Character much respected in the Town, Clerk of the Assem- bly,6 and a pretty Poet. Keimer made Verses, too, but very indifferently. He could not be said to write them, for his Manner was to compose them in the Types directly out of his Head; so there being no Copy, but one Pair of Cases,7 and the Elegy likely to require all the Letter, no one could help him. I endeavor’d to put his Press (which he had not yet us’d, and of which he understood nothing) into Order "t to be work’d with; and promising to come and print off his Elegy as soon as he should have got it ready, I return’d to Bradford’s who gave me a little Job to do for the pres ent, and there I lodged and dieted.8 A few Days after Keimer sent for me to print off the Elegy. And now he had got another Pair of Cases, and a Pamphlet to reprint, on which he set me to work.

These two Printers I found poorly quali"ed for their Business. Bradford had not been bred to it, and was very illiterate; and Keimer tho’ something of a Scholar, was a mere Compositor, knowing nothing of Presswork. He had been one of the French Prophets9 and could act their enthusiastic Agitations. At this time he did not profess any par tic u lar Religion, but something of all on occasion; was very ignorant of the World, and had, as I afterwards found, a good deal of the Knave in his Composition. He did not like my Lodging at Bradford’s while I work’d with him. He had a House indeed, but without Furniture, so he could not lodge me: But he got me a Lodging at Mr. Read’s before- mentioned, who was the Owner of his House. And my Chest and Clothes being come by this time, I made rather a more respectable Appear- ance in the Eyes of Miss Read, than I had done when she "rst happen’d to see me eating my Roll in the Street.

I began now to have some Acquaintance among the young People of the Town, that were Lovers of Reading with whom I spent my Eve nings very pleasantly and gaining Money by my Industry and Frugality, I lived very agree- ably, forgetting Boston as much as I could, and not desiring that any there should know where I resided except my Friend Collins who was in my Secret, and kept it when I wrote to him. At length an Incident happened that sent me back again much sooner than I had intended.

I had a Brother- in- law, Robert Homes,1 Master of a Sloop that traded between Boston and Delaware. He being at New Castle2 40 Miles below Philadelphia, heard there of me, and wrote me a Letter, mentioning the Con- cern of my Friends in Boston at my abrupt Departure, assuring me of their Goodwill to me, and that every thing would be accommodated to my Mind if I would return, to which he exhorted me very earnestly. I wrote an Answer to his Letter, thank’d him for his Advice, but stated my Reasons for quitting Boston fully, and in such a Light as to convince him I was not so wrong as he had apprehended. Sir William Keith Governor of the Province,3 was then at New Castle, and Captain Homes happening to be in Com pany with him when my Letter came to hand, spoke to him of me, and show’d him the Letter.

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4. Disregard for difference in rank or station.

The Governor read it, and seem’d surpris’d when he was told my Age. He said I appear’d a young Man of promising Parts, and therefore should be encouraged: The Printers at Philadelphia were wretched ones, and if I would set up there, he made no doubt I should succeed; for his Part, he would pro- cure me the public Business, and do me every other Ser vice in his Power. This my Brother- in- Law afterwards told me in Boston. But I knew as yet nothing of it; when one Day Keimer and I being at Work together near the Win dow, we saw the Governor and another Gentleman (which prov’d to be Col o nel French, of New Castle) "nely dress’d, come directly across the Street to our House, and heard them at the Door.

Keimer ran down immediately, thinking it a Visit to him. But the Gover- nor enquir’d for me, came up, and with a Condescension4 and Politeness I had been quite unus’d to, made me many Compliments, desired to be acquainted with me, blam’d me kindly for not having made myself known to him when I "rst came to the Place, and would have me away with him to the Tavern where he was going with Col o nel French to taste as he said some excellent Madeira. I was not a little surpris’d, and Keimer star’d like a Pig poison’d. I went however with the Governor and Col o nel French, to a Tav- ern the Corner of Third Street, and over the Madeira he propos’d my Set- ting up my Business, laid before me the Probabilities of Success, and both he and Col o nel French assur’d me I should have their Interest and Indu- ence in procuring the Public- Business of both Governments. On my doubt- ing whether my Father would assist me in it, Sir William said he would give me a Letter to him, in which he would state the Advantages, and he did not doubt of prevailing with him. So it was concluded I should return to Boston in the "rst Vessel with the Governor’s Letter recommending me to my Father.

In the meantime the Intention was to be kept secret, and I went on work- ing with Keimer as usual, the Governor sending for me now and then to dine with him, a very great Honor I thought it, and conversing with me in the most affable, familiar, and friendly manner imaginable. About the End of April 1724, a little Vessel offer’d for Boston. I took Leave of Keimer as going to see my Friends. The Governor gave me an ample Letter, saying many dat- tering things of me to my Father, and strongly recommending the Proj ect of my setting up at Philadelphia, as a Thing that must make my Fortune. We struck on a Shoal in going down the Bay and sprung a Leak, we had a blus- tring time at Sea, and were oblig’d to pump almost continually, at which I took my Turn. We arriv’d safe however at Boston in about a Fortnight. I had been absent Seven Months and my Friends had heard nothing of me, for my Brother Homes was not yet return’d; and had not written about me. My unexpected Appearance surpris’d the Family; all were however very glad to see me and made me Welcome, except my Brother.

I went to see him at his Printing- House: I was better dress’d than ever while in his Ser vice, having a genteel new Suit from Head to foot, a Watch, and my Pockets lin’d with near Five Pounds Sterling in Silver. He receiv’d me not very frankly, look’d me all over, and turn’d to his Work again. The Journeymen were inquisitive where I had been, what sort of a Country it was, and how I lik’d it? I prais’d it much, and the happy Life I led in it;

5. A sidewalk peep show. Silver coins were rare in the colonies. 6. A Spanish dollar with which they could buy

drinks. “Grum”: glum, morose. 7. I.e., natu ral science. “Determination”: deci- sion.

expressing strongly my Intention of returning to it; and one of them asking what kind of Money we had there, I produc’d a handful of Silver and spread it before them, which was a kind of Raree- Show5 they had not been us’d to, Paper being the Money of Boston. Then I took an Opportunity of letting them see my Watch: and lastly, (my Brother still grum and sullen) I gave them a Piece of Eight to drink6 and took my Leave. This Visit of mine offended him extremely. For when my Mother some time after spoke to him of a Reconciliation, and of her Wishes to see us on good Terms together, and that we might live for the future as Brothers, he said, I had insulted him in such a Manner before his People that he could never forget or for- give it. In this however he was mistaken.

My Father receiv’d the Governor’s Letter with some apparent Surprise; but said little of it to me for some Days; when Captain Homes returning, he show’d it to him, ask’d if he knew Keith, and what kind of a Man he was: Adding his Opinion that he must be of small Discretion, to think of setting a Boy up in Business who wanted yet 3 Years of being at Man’s Estate. Homes said what he could in favor of the Proj ect; but my Father was clear in the Impropriety of it; and at last gave a dat Denial to it. Then he wrote a civil Letter to Sir William thanking him for the Patronage he had so kindly offered me, but declining to assist me as yet in Setting up, I being in his Opinion too young to be trusted with the Management of a Business so impor tant; and for which the Preparation must be so expensive.

My Friend and Companion Collins, who was a Clerk at the Post- Of"ce, pleas’d with the Account I gave him of my new Country, determin’d to go thither also: And while I waited for my Father’s Determination, he set out before me by Land to Rhode Island, leaving his Books which were a pretty Collection of Mathe matics and Natu ral Philosophy,7 to come with mine and me to New York where he propos’d to wait for me. My Father, tho’ he did not approve Sir William’s Proposition, was yet pleas’d that I had been able to obtain so advantageous a Character from a Person of such Note where I had resided, and that I had been so industrious and careful as to equip myself so handsomely in so short a time: therefore seeing no Prospect of an Accom- modation between my Brother and me, he gave his Consent to my Return- ing again to Philadelphia, advis’d me to behave respectfully to the People there, endeavor to obtain the general Esteem, and avoid lampooning and libeling to which he thought I had too much Inclination; telling me, that by steady Industry and a prudent Parsimony, I might save enough by the time I was One and Twenty to set me up, and that if I came near the Matter he would help me out with the Rest. This was all I could obtain, except some small Gifts as Tokens of his and my Mother’s Love, when I embark’d again for New York, now with their Approbation and their Blessing.

The Sloop putting in at Newport, Rhode Island, I visited my Brother John, who had been married and settled there some Years. He received me very affectionately, for he always lov’d me. A Friend of his, one Vernon, having some Money due to him in Pennsylvania, about 35 Pounds Currency, desired

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8. I.e., since we were. 9. Getting stupe"ed on. 1. To pay the rent he owed.

2. William Burnet (1688–1729), governor of New York and New Jersey from 1720 to 1728 and governor of Mas sa chu setts from 1728 to 1729.

I would receive it for him, and keep it till I had his Directions what to remit it in. Accordingly he gave me an Order. This afterwards occasion’d me a good deal of Uneasiness. At Newport we took in a Number of Passengers for New York: Among which were two young Women, Companions, and a grave, sen- sible Matron- like Quaker- Woman with her Attendants. I had shown an obliging Readiness to do her some little Ser vices which impress’d her I suppose with a degree of Goodwill towards me. Therefore when she saw a daily growing Familiarity between me and the two Young Women, which they appear’d to encourage, she took me aside and said, Young Man, I am concern’d for thee, as thou has no Friend with thee, and seems not to know much of the World, or of the Snares Youth is expos’d to; depend upon it those are very bad Women, I can see it in all their Actions, and if thee art not upon thy Guard, they will draw thee into some Danger: they are Strangers to thee, and I advise thee in a friendly Concern for thy Welfare, to have no Acquaintance with them. As I seem’d at "rst not to think so ill of them as she did, she mention’d some Things she had observ’d and heard that had escap’d my Notice; but now convinc’d me she was right. I thank’d her for her kind Advice, and promis’d to follow it. When we arriv’d at New York, they told me where they liv’d, and invited me to come and see them: but I avoided it. And it was well I did: For the next Day, the Captain miss’d a Sil- ver Spoon and some other Things that had been taken out of his Cabin, and knowing that these were a Couple of Strumpets, he got a Warrant to search their Lodgings, found the stolen Goods, and had the Thieves punish’d. So tho’ we had escap’d a sunken Rock which we scrap’d upon in the Passage, I thought this Escape of rather more Importance to me.

At New York I found my Friend Collins, who had arriv’d there some Time before me. We had been intimate from8 Children, and had read the same Books together. But he had the Advantage of more time for Reading, and Studying and a wonderful Genius for Mathematical Learning in which he far outstripped me. While I liv’d in Boston most of my Hours of Leisure for Conversation were spent with him, and he continu’d a sober as well as an industrious Lad; was much respected for his Learning by several of the Clergy and other Gentlemen, and seem’d to promise making a good Figure in Life: but during my Absence he had acquir’d a Habit of Sotting with9 Brandy; and I found by his own Account and what I heard from others, that he had been drunk every day since his Arrival at New York, and behav’d very oddly. He had gam’d too and lost his Money, so that I was oblig’d to dis- charge his Lodgings,1 and defray his Expences to and at Philadelphia: Which prov’d extremely incon ve nient to me. The then Governor of New York, Bur- net,2 Son of Bishop Burnet, hearing from the Captain that a young Man, one of his Passengers, had a great many Books, desired he would bring me to see him. I waited upon him accordingly, and should have taken Collins with me but that he was not sober. The Governor treated me with great Civil- ity, show’d me his Library, which was a very large one, and we had a good deal of Conversation about Books and Authors. This was the second Gover-

3. Drinking liquor. 4. The seat on which an oarsman sits. 5. Island in the British West Indies.

nor who had done me the Honor to take Notice of me, which to a poor Boy like me was very pleasing.

We proceeded to Philadelphia. I received on the Way Vernon’s Money, without which we could hardly have "nish’d our Journey. Collins wish’d to be employ’d in some Counting House; but whether they discover’d his Dram- ming3 by his Breath, or by his Be hav ior, tho’ he had some Recommendations, he met with no Success in any Application, and continu’d Lodging and Boarding at the same House with me and at my Expense. Knowing I had that Money of Vernon’s he was continually borrowing of me, still promising Repayment as soon as he should be in Business. At length he had got so much of it, that I was distress’d to think what I should do, in case of being call’d on to remit it. His Drinking continu’d, about which we sometimes quarrel’d, for when a little intoxicated he was very fractious. Once in a Boat on the Delaware with some other young Men, he refused to row in his Turn: I will be row’d home, says he. We will not row you, says I. You must, says he, or stay all Night on the Water, just as you please. The others said, Let us row; What signi"es it? But my Mind being soured with his other Conduct, I continu’d to refuse. So he swore he would make me row, or throw me over- board; and coming along stepping on the Thwarts4 towards me, when he came up and struck at me, I clapped my Hand under his Crotch, and rising, pitch’d him headforemost into the River. I knew he was a good Swimmer, and so was under little Concern about him; but before he could get round to lay hold of the Boat, we had with a few Strokes pull’d her out of his Reach. And ever when he drew near the Boat, we ask’d if he would row, striking a few Strokes to slide her away from him. He was ready to die with Vexation, and obstinately would not promise to row; however seeing him at last begin- ning to tire, we lifted him in; and brought him home dripping wet in the Eve ning. We hardly exchang’d a civil Word afterwards; and a West India Captain who had a Commission to procure a Tutor for the Sons of a Gentle- man at Barbados,5 happening to meet with him, agreed to carry him thither. He left me then, promising to remit me the "rst Money he should receive in order to discharge the Debt. But I never heard of him after.

The Breaking into this Money of Vernon’s was one of the "rst great Errata of my Life. And this Affair show’d that my Father was not much out in his Judgment when he suppos’d me too Young to manage Business of Impor- tance. But Sir William, on reading his Letter, said he was too prudent. There was great Difference in Persons, and Discretion did not always accompany Years, nor was Youth always without it. And since he will not set you up, says he, I will do it myself. Give me an Inventory of the Things necessary to be had from Eng land, and I will send for them. You shall repay me when you are able; I am resolv’d to have a good Printer here, and I am sure you must succeed. This was spoken with such an Appearance of Cordiality, that I had not the least doubt of his meaning what he said. I had hitherto kept the Proposition of my Setting up a Secret in Philadelphia, and I still kept it. Had it been known that I depended on the Governor, prob ably some Friend

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6. Thomas Annis, captain of the London Hope, the boat on which Franklin sailed to London in 1724.

7. Off the coast of Rhode Island. 8. Trapped. 9. Puzzles, dif"cult questions.

that knew him better would have advis’d me not to rely on him, as I after- wards heard it as his known Character to be liberal of Promises which he never meant to keep. Yet unsolicited as he was by me, how could I think his generous Offers insincere? I believ’d him one of the best Men in the World.

I presented him an Inventory of a little Printing- House, amounting by my Computation to about 100 Pounds Sterling. He lik’d it, but ask’d me if my being on the Spot in Eng land to choose the Types and see that every thing was good of the kind, might not be of some Advantage. Then, says he, when there, you may make Acquaintances and establish Correspondences in the Bookselling, and Stationery Way. I agreed that this might be advantageous. Then says he, get yourself ready to go with Annis;6 which was the annual Ship, and the only one at that Time usually passing between London and Philadelphia. But it would be some Months before Annis sail’d, so I continu’d working with Keimer, fretting about the Money Collins had got from me, and in daily Apprehensions of being call’d upon by Vernon, which however did not happen for some Years after.

I believe I have omitted mentioning that in my "rst Voyage from Boston, being becalm’d off Block Island,7 our People set about catching Cod and haul’d up a great many. Hitherto I had stuck to my Resolution of not eating animal Food; and on this Occasion, I consider’d with my Master Tryon, the taking every Fish as a kind of unprovok’d Murder, since none of them had or ever could do us any Injury that might justify the Slaughter. All this seem’d very reasonable. But I had formerly been a great Lover of Fish, and when this came hot out of the Frying Pan, it smelt admirably well. I balanc’d some time between Princi ple and Inclination: till I recollected, that when the Fish were opened, I saw smaller Fish taken out of their Stomachs: Then, thought I, if you eat one another, I don’t see why we mayn’t eat you. So I din’d upon Cod very heartily and continu’d to eat with other People, returning only now and then occasionally to a vegetable Diet. So con ve nient a thing it is to be a reasonable Creature, since it enables one to "nd or make a Reason for every- thing one has a mind to do.

Keimer and I liv’d on a pretty good familiar Footing and agreed tolerably well: for he suspected nothing of my Setting up. He retain’d a great deal of his old Enthusiasms, and lov’d an Argumentation. We therefore had many Disputations. I us’d to work him so with my Socratic Method, and had trapann’d8 him so often by Questions apparently so distant from any Point we had in hand, and yet by degrees led to the Point, and brought him into Dif"culties and Contradictions, that at last he grew ridiculously cautious, and would hardly answer me the most common Question, without asking "rst, What do you intend to infer from that? However it gave him so high an Opinion of my Abilities in the Confuting Way, that he seriously propos’d my being his Colleague in a Proj ect he had of setting up a new Sect. He was to preach the Doctrines, and I was to confound all Opponents. When he came to explain with me upon the Doctrines, I found several Conundrums9 which I objected to, unless I might have my Way a little too, and introduce some

1. “Ye shall not round the corners of your heads, neither shalt thou mar the corners of thy beard” (Leviticus 19.27). Keimer prob ably also wore his hair long. “Mosaic Law”: ancient law as revealed to the prophet Moses and set out in the "rst "ve books of the Old Testament. 2. “And the whole congregation of the children of Israel murmured against Moses and [the prophet] Aaron in the wilderness: And the children of

Israel said unto them, Would to God we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the desh pots, and when we did eat bread to the full” (Exodus 16.2–3). 3. Brockden (1683–1769) arrived in Philadel- phia in 1706. “Conveyancer”: one who draws up leases and deeds. 4. A river at Philadelphia.

of mine. Keimer wore his Beard at full Length, because somewhere in the Mosaic Law it is said, thou shalt not mar the Corners of thy Beard.1 He like- wise kept the seventh- day Sabbath; and these two Points were Essentials with him. I dislik’d both, but agreed to admit them upon Condition of his adopting the Doctrine of using no animal Food. I doubt, says he, my Con- stitution will not bear that. I assur’d him it would, and that he would be the better for it. He was usually a great Glutton, and I promis’d myself some Diversion in half- starving him. He agreed to try the Practice if I would keep him Com pany. I did so and we held it for three Months. We had our Vict- uals dress’d and brought to us regularly by a Woman in the Neighborhood, who had from me a List of 40 Dishes to be prepar’d for us at dif fer ent times, in all which there was neither Fish Flesh nor Fowl, and the Whim suited me the better at this time from the Cheapness of it, not costing us about 18 Pence Sterling each, per Week. I have since kept several Lents most strictly, leaving the common Diet for that, and that for the common, abruptly, with- out the least Incon ve nience: So that I think there is little in the Advice of making those Changes by easy Gradations. I went on pleasantly, but Poor Keimer suffer’d grievously, tir’d of the Proj ect, long’d for the Flesh Pots of Egypt, and order’d a roast Pig.2 He invited me and two Women Friends to dine with him, but it being brought too soon upon table, he could not resist the Temptation, and ate it all up before we came.

I had made some Courtship during this time to Miss Read. I had a great Res pect and Affection for her, and had some Reason to believe she had the same for me: but as I was about to take a long Voyage, and we were both very young, only a little above 18, it was thought most prudent by her Mother to prevent our going too far at pres ent, as a Marriage if it was to take place would be more con ve nient after my Return, when I should be as I expected set up in my Business. Perhaps too she thought my Expectations not so well founded as I imagined them to be.

My chief Acquaintances at this time were, Charles Osborne, Joseph Wat- son, and James Ralph;3 All Lovers of Reading. The two "rst were Clerks to an eminent Scrivener or Conveyancer in the Town, Charles Brockden; the other was Clerk to a Merchant. Watson was a pious sensible young Man, of great integrity. The others rather more lax in their Princi ples of Religion, particularly Ralph, who as well as Collins had been unsettled by me, for which they both made me suffer. Osborne was sensible, candid, frank, sin- cere, and affectionate to his Friends; but in literary Matters too fond of Crit- icizing. Ralph, was ingenious, genteel in his Manners, and extremely eloquent; I think I never knew a prettier Talker. Both of them great Admir- ers of Poetry, and began to try their Hands in little Pieces. Many pleasant Walks we four had together, on Sundays into the Woods near Skuylkill,4 where we read to one another and conferr’d on what we read. Ralph was

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5. Business agent. 6. I.e., of originality.

7. “He bowed the heavens also, and came down: and darkness was under his feet” (Psalm 18.9).

inclin’d to pursue the Study of Poetry, not doubting but he might become eminent in it and make his Fortune by it, alledging that the best Poets must when they "rst began to write, make as many Faults as he did. Osborne dis- suaded him, assur’d him he had no Genius for Poetry, and advis’d him to think of nothing beyond the Business he was bred to; that in the mercantile way tho’ he had no Stock, he might by his Diligence and Punctuality rec- ommend himself to Employment as a Factor,5 and in time acquire where- with to trade on his own Account. I approv’d the amusing oneself with Poetry now and then, so far as to improve one’s Language, but no farther. On this it was propos’d that we should each of us at our next Meeting produce a Piece of our own Composing, in order to improve by our mutual Observa- tions, Criticisms and Corrections. As Language and Expression was what we had in View, we excluded all Considerations of Invention,6 by agreeing that the Task should be a Version of the 18th Psalm, which describes the Descent of a Deity.7 When the Time of our Meeting drew nigh, Ralph call’d on me "rst, and let me know his Piece was ready. I told him I had been busy, and having little Inclination had done nothing. He then show’d me his Piece for my Opinion; and I much approv’d it, as it appear’d to me to have great Merit. Now, says he, Osborne never will allow the least Merit in any thing of mine, but makes 1000 Criticisms out of mere Envy. He is not so jealous of you. I wish therefore you would take this Piece, and produce it as yours. I will pretend not to have had time, and so produce nothing. We shall then see what he will say to it. It was agreed, and I immediately transcrib’d it that it might appear in my own hand. We met.

Watson’s Per for mance was read: there were some Beauties in it: but many Defects. Osborne’s was read: It was much better. Ralph did it Jus- tice, remark’d some Faults, but applauded the Beauties. He himself had nothing to produce. I was backward, seem’d desirous of being excus’d, had not had suf"cient Time to correct; etc., but no Excuse could be admitted, produce I must. It was read and repeated; Watson and Osborne gave up the Contest; and join’d in applauding it immoderately. Ralph only made some Criticisms and propos’d some Amendments, but I defended my Text. Osborne was against Ralph, and told him he was no better a Critic than Poet; so he dropped the Argument. As they two went home together, Osborne express’d himself still more strongly in favor of what he thought my Pro- duction, having restrain’d himself before as he said, lest I should think it Flattery. But who would have imagin’d, says he, that Franklin had been capable of such a Per for mance; such Painting, such Force! such Fire! He has even improv’d the Original! In his common Conversation, he seems to have no Choice of Words; he hesitates and blunders; and yet, good God, how he writes!

When we next met, Ralph discover’d the Trick we had played him, and Osborne was a little laughed at. This Transaction "x’d Ralph in his Resolu- tion of becoming a Poet. I did all I could to dissuade him from it, but he continu’d scribbling Verses, till Pope cur’d him. He became however a pretty

8. Ralph (c. 1705–1762) became a well- known po liti cal journalist after trying his hand at poetry. In the second edition of the Dunciad (1728), a poem that attacks ignorance of all kinds, Alexander Pope (see n. 3, p. 478) responded to the slur against him in Ralph’s poem Sawney. Pope wrote: “Silence, ye Wolves: while Ralph to Cynthia howls. / And makes Night hideous— Answer him ye Owls” (book 3, lines 159–60). In the 1742 edition, Pope included another dig at Ralph: “And see: The very Gazeteers give o’er, / Ev’n Ralph repents” (book 1, lines 215–16). 9. About 1728. 1. Osborne’s dates are unknown. 2. Always.

3. Patrick Bard, or Baird, resided in Philadel- phia as port physician after 1720. 4. Thomas Denham (d. 1728), merchant and benefactor, left Bristol, Eng land, in 1715. In 1735, Andrew Hamilton (c. 1676–1741), a Scottish- born lawyer who lived in Philadelphia, successfully defended a newspaper publisher against a libel charge, establishing a pre ce dent for freedom of the press in the colonies and earning the nickname “the Philadelphia lawyer” (now a catchphrase meaning an extremely competent lawyer). Hamil- ton’s son James (c. 1710–1783) served as gover- nor of Pennsylvania four times between 1748 and 1773.

good Prose Writer.8 More of him hereafter. But as I may not have occasion again to mention the other two, I shall just remark here, that Watson died in my Arms a few Years after,9 much lamented, being the best of our Set. Osborne went to the West Indies, where he became an eminent Lawyer and made Money, but died young.1 He and I had made a serious Agreement, that the one who happen’d "rst to die, should if pos si ble make a friendly Visit to the other, and acquaint him how he found things in that separate State. But he never ful"ll’d his Promise.

The Governor, seeming to like my Com pany, had me frequently to his House; and his Setting me up was always mention’d as a "x’d thing. I was to take with me Letters recommendatory to a Number of his Friends, besides the Letter of Credit to furnish me with the necessary Money for purchasing the Press and Types, Paper, etc. For these Letters I was appointed to call at dif fer ent times, when they were to be ready, but a future time was still2 named. Thus we went on till the ship whose Departure too had been sev- eral times postponed was on the Point of sailing. Then when I call’d to take my Leave and receive the Letters, his Secretary, Dr. Bard,3 came out to me and said the Governor was extremely busy, in writing, but would be down at New Castle before the Ship, and there the Letters would be delivered to me.

Ralph, tho’ married and having one Child, had determined to accompany me in this Voyage. It was thought he intended to establish a Correspondence, and obtain Goods to sell on Commission. But I found afterwards, that thro’ some Discontent with his Wife’s Relations, he purposed to leave her on their Hands, and never return again. Having taken leave of my Friends, and interchang’d some Promises with Miss Read, I left Philadelphia in the Ship, which anchor’d at New Castle. The Governor was there. But when I went to his Lodging, the Secretary came to me from him with the civilest Message in the World, that he could not then see me being engag’d in Business of the utmost Importance, but should send the Letters to me on board, wish’d me heartily a good Voyage and a speedy Return, etc. I return’d on board, a little puzzled, but still not doubting.

Mr. Andrew Hamilton, a famous Lawyer of Philadelphia, had taken Pas- sage in the same Ship for himself and Son: and with Mr. Denham a Quaker Merchant,4 and Messrs. Onion and Russel Masters of an Iron Work in Mary- land, had engag’d the Great Cabin; so that Ralph and I were forc’d to take up with a Berth in the Steerage: And none on board knowing us, were consid- ered as ordinary Persons. But Mr. Hamilton and his Son (it was James, since

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5. John Baskett (d. 1742). 6. William Riddlesden (d. before 1733), well known in Mary land as a man of “infamy.”

7. I.e., as a cosigner of a document and legally bound to be responsible for his debts.

Governor) return’d from New Castle to Philadelphia the Father being recall’d by a great Fee to plead for a seized Ship. And just before we sail’d Col o nel French coming on board, and showing me great Res pect, I was more taken Notice of, and with my Friend Ralph invited by the other Gentlemen to come into the Cabin, there being now Room. Accordingly we remov’d thither.

Understanding that Col o nel French had brought on board the Governor’s Dispatches, I ask’d the Captain for those Letters that were to be under my Care. He said all were put into the Bag together; and he could not then come at them; but before we landed in Eng land, I should have an Opportunity of picking them out. So I was satis"ed for the pres ent, and we proceeded on our Voyage. We had a sociable Com pany in the Cabin, and lived uncommonly well, having the Addition of all Mr. Hamilton’s Stores, who had laid in plen- tifully. In this Passage Mr. Denham contracted a Friendship for me that continued during his Life. The Voyage was other wise not a pleasant one, as we had a great deal of bad Weather.

When we came into the Channel, the Captain kept his Word with me, and gave me an Opportunity of examining the Bag for the Governor’s Let- ters. I found none upon which my Name was put, as under my Care; I pick’d out 6 or 7 that by the Handwriting I thought might be the promis’d Letters, especially as one of them was directed to Basket5 the King’s Printer, and another to some Stationer. We arriv’d in London the 24th of December, 1724. I waited upon the Stationer who came "rst in my Way, delivering the Letter as from Governor Keith. I don’t know such a Person, says he: but opening the Letter, O, this is from Riddlesden,6 I have lately found him to be a complete Rascal, and I will have nothing to do with him, nor receive any Letters from him. So putting the Letter into my Hand, he turn’d on his Heel and left me to serve some Customer. I was surprised to "nd these were not the Governor’s Letters. And after recollecting and comparing Circum- stances, I began to doubt his Sincerity. I found my Friend Denham, and opened the whole Affair to him. He let me into Keith’s Character, told me there was not the least Probability that he had written any Letters for me, that no one who knew him had the smallest Dependence on him, and he laughed at the Notion of the Governor’s giving me a Letter of Credit, having as he said no Credit to give. On my expressing some Concern about what I should do: He advis’d me to endeavor getting some Employment in the Way of my Business. Among the Printers here, says he, you will improve your- self; and when you return to Amer i ca, you will set up to greater Advantage.

We both of us happen’d to know, as well as the Stationer, that Riddlesden the Attorney, was a very Knave. He had half ruin’d Miss Read’s Father by drawing him in to be bound7 for him. By his Letter it appear’d, there was a secret Scheme on foot to the Prejudice of Hamilton, (Suppos’d to be then coming over with us,) and that Keith was concern’d in it with Riddlesden. Denham, who was a Friend of Hamilton’s, thought he ought to be acquainted with it. So when he arriv’d in Eng land, which was soon after, partly from Resentment and Ill- Will to Keith and Riddlesden, and partly from Goodwill to him: I waited on him, and gave him the Letter. He thank’d me cordially,

8. Members of the Penn family, headed by Wil- liam Penn (1644–1718), were the proprietors of Pennsylvania and its legal owners. “Constitu- ents”: those who appointed him their representa- tive; in this case, the Penn family, which retained control of Pennsylvania until the Revolution. 9. A street in London near St. Paul’s Cathedral. 1. Gold coins. 2. Robert Wilks (1665?–1732), an Irish actor, dominated London theater life from 1709 to 1730. 3. The center of the London printing business.

4. The Inner and Middle Temples were buildings in London that were centers for the legal profes- sion. “Hackney Writer”: copyist. 5. Just off Little Britain; a square known for its printers and typesetters. 6. Proceeded with dif"culty. 7. The En glish phi los o pher William Wollaston’s Religion of Nature Delineated was "rst printed privately in 1722. Its second edition (1724) sold so well that Franklin was here setting the type for a third edition (1725), not “the second edition.”

the Information being of Importance to him. And from that time he became my Friend, greatly to my Advantage afterwards on many Occasions.

But what shall we think of a Governor’s playing such pitiful Tricks, and imposing so grossly on a poor ignorant Boy! It was a Habit he had acquired. He wish’d to please every body; and having little to give, he gave Expecta- tions. He was other wise an ingenious sensible Man, a pretty good Writer, and a good Governor for the People, tho’ not for his Constituents the Pro- prietaries,8 whose Instructions he sometimes disregarded. Several of our best Laws were of his Planning, and pass’d during his Administration.

Ralph and I were inseparable Companions. We took Lodgings together in Little Britain9 at 3 shillings 6 pence per Week, as much as we could then afford. He found some Relations, but they were poor and unable to assist him. He now let me know his Intentions of remaining in London, and that he never meant to return to Philadelphia. He had brought no Money with him, the whole he could muster having been expended in paying his Passage. I had 15 Pistoles.1 So he borrowed occasionally of me, to subsist while he was looking out for Business. He "rst endeavor’d to get into the Play- house, believing himself quali"ed for an Actor; but Wilkes,2 to whom he applied, advis’d him candidly not to think of that Employment, as it was impossible he should succeed in it. Then he propos’d to Roberts, a Publisher in Paternoster Row,3 to write for him a Weekly Paper like the Spectator, on certain Conditions, which Roberts did not approve. Then he endeavor’d to get Employment as a Hackney Writer to copy for the Stationers and Lawyers about the Temple4 but could "nd no Vacancy.

I immediately got into Work at Palmer’s, then a famous Printing- House in Bartholomew Close;5 and here I continu’d near a Year. I was pretty dili- gent; but spent with Ralph a good deal of my Earnings in going to Plays and other Places of Amusement. We had together consum’d all my Pistoles, and now just rubb’d on6 from hand to mouth. He seem’d quite to forget his Wife and Child, and I by degrees my Engagements with Miss Read, to whom I never wrote more than one Letter, and that was to let her know I was not likely soon to return. This was another of the great Errata of my Life, which I should wish to correct if I were to live it over again. In fact, by our Expenses, I was constantly kept unable to pay my Passage.

At Palmer’s I was employ’d in Composing for the second Edition of Wol- laston’s Religion of Nature.7 Some of his Reasonings not appearing to me well- founded, I wrote a little metaphysical Piece, in which I made Remarks on them. It was entitled, A Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity, Plea sure and Pain. I inscrib’d it to my Friend Ralph. I printed a small Number. I occasion’d my being more consider’d by Mr. Palmer, as a young Man of some

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8. By denying the existence of virtue and vice, Franklin opened himself to accusations of atheism. 9. William Lyons, a surgeon and author of The Infallibility, Dignity, and Excellence of Human Judgment (1719). 1. Bernard Mandev ille (c. 1670–1733), a Dutch physician and man of letters residing in London, published The Fable of the Bees in 1723. 2. En glish mathematician and physicist (1642– 1727), best known for formulating theories of gravity, light, and color. Newton was president of

the Royal Society, the British national acad emy of science, from 1703 to 1727. Henry Pemberton was a friend of Newton’s and a member of the Society. Batson’s, in Cornhill, was a favorite meeting place of physicians. 3. Sloane (1660–1753), a physician and natural- ist, succeeded Newton as president of the Royal Society. His library and museum served as the basis for the pres ent collection at the British Museum. 4. Prob ably near St.  Bartholomew’s Church, London.

Ingenuity, tho’ he seriously expostulated with me upon the Princi ples of my Pamplet which to him appear’d abominable.8 My printing this Pamphlet was another Erratum.

While I lodg’d in Little Britain I made an Acquaintance with one Wilcox a Bookseller, whose Shop was at the next Door. He had an im mense Collec- tion of second- hand Books. Circulating Libraries were not then in Use; but we agreed that on certain reasonable Terms which I have now forgotten, I  might take, read and return any of his Books. This I esteem’d a great Advantage, and I made as much Use of it as I could.

My Pamphlet by some means falling into the Hands of one Lyons,9 a Sur- geon, Author of a Book entitled The Infallibility of Human Judgment, it occa- sioned an Acquaintance between us; he took great Notice of me, call’d on me often, to converse on these Subjects, carried me to the Horns a pale Ale- House in [blank] Lane, Cheapside, and introduc’d me to Dr. Mandev ille, Author of the Fable of the Bees1 who had a Club there, of which he was the Soul, being a most facetious entertaining Companion. Lyons too introduc’d me to Dr. Pemberton, at Batson’s Coffee House, who promis’d to give me an Opportunity some time or other of seeing Sir Isaac Newton,2 of which I was extremely desirous; but this never happened.

I had brought over a few Curiosities among which the principal was a Purse made of the Asbestos, which puri"es by Fire. Sir Hans Sloane heard of it, came to see me, and invited me to his House in Bloomsbury Square; where he show’d me all his Curiosities,3 and persuaded me to let him add that to the Number, for which he paid me handsomely.

In our House there lodg’d a young Woman, a Millener, who I think had a shop in the Cloisters.4 She had been genteelly bred, was sensible and lively, and of most pleasing Conversation. Ralph read Plays to her in the Eve nings, they grew intimate, she took another Lodging, and he follow’d her. They liv’d together some time, but he being still out of Business, and her Income not suf"cient to maintain them with her Child, he took a Resolution of going from London, to try for a Country School, which he thought himself well quali"ed to undertake, as he wrote an excellent Hand, and was a Master of Arithmetic and Accounts. This however he deem’d a Business below him, and con"dent of future better Fortune when he should be unwilling to have it known that he once was so meanly employ’d, he chang’d his Name, and did me the Honor to assume mine. For I soon after had a Letter from him, acquainting me, that he was settled in a small Village in Berkshire, I think it was, where he taught reading and writing to 10 or a dozen Boys at 6 pence each per Week, recommending Mrs. T. to my Care, and desiring me to write to him directing for Mr. Franklin Schoolmaster at such a Place. He continu’d

5. The En glish poet Edward Young (1683–1765) published the "rst four parts of Love of Fame, the Universal Passion in 1725. 6. Press belonging to John Watts (c. 1678–1763). 7. I.e., the workers do both the printing and

typesetting for it. 8. Type set and locked in metal frames. 9. With high alcohol content. 1. I.e., in poverty. 2. Welcome (French, literal trans.).

to write frequently, sending me large Specimens of an Epic Poem, which he was then composing, and desiring my Remarks and Corrections. These I gave him from time to time, but endeavor’d rather to discourage his Pro- ceeding. One of Young’s Satires was then just publish’d.5 I copied and sent him a great Part of it, which set in a strong Light the Folly of pursuing the Muses with any Hope of Advancement by them. All was in vain. Sheets of the Poem continu’d to come by every Post. In the mean time Mrs. T. having on his Account lost her Friends and Business, was often in Distresses, and us’d to send for me, and borrow what I could spare to help her out of them. I grew fond of her Com pany, and being at this time under no Religious Restraints, and presuming on my Importance to her, I attempted Familiari- ties, (another Erratum) which she repuls’d with a proper Resentment, and acquainted him with my Be hav ior. This made a Breach between us, and when he return’d again to London, he let me know he thought I had cancel’d all the Obligations he had been under to me. So I found I was never to expect his Repaying me what I lent to him or advanc’d for him. This was however not then of much Consequence, as he was totally unable. And in the Loss of his Friendship I found myself reliev’d from a Burden. I now began to think of getting a little Money beforehand; and expecting better Work, I left Palmer’s to work at Watts’s6 near Lincoln’s Inn Fields, a still greater Printing- House. Here I continu’d all the rest of my Stay in London.

At my "rst Admission into this Printing- House, I took to working at Press, imagining I felt a Want of the Bodily Exercise I had been us’d to in Amer- i ca, where Presswork is mix’d with Composing.7 I drank only Water; the other Workmen, near 50 in Number, were great Guzzlers of Beer. On occasion I carried up and down Stairs a large Form of Types8 in each hand, when others carried but one in both Hands. They won der’d to see from this and several Instances that the Water- American as they call’d me was stronger than them- selves who drunk strong9 Beer. We had an Alehouse Boy who attended always in the House to supply the Workmen. My Companion at the Press drank every day a Pint before Breakfast, a Pint at Breakfast with his Bread and Cheese; a Pint between Breakfast and Dinner; a Pint at Dinner; a Pint in the After noon about Six o’clock, and another when he had done his Day’s Work. I thought it a detestable Custom. But it was necessary, he suppos’d, to drink strong Beer that he might be strong to labor. I endeavor’d to convince him that the Bodily Strength afforded by Beer could only be in proportion to the Grain or Flour of the Barley dissolved in the Water of which it was made; that there was more Flour in a Penny- worth of Bread, and therefore if he would eat that with a Pint of Water, it would give him more Strength than a Quart of Beer. He drank on however, and had 4 or 5 Shillings to pay out of his Wages every Saturday Night for that muddling Liquor; an Expense I was free from. And thus these poor Dev ils keep themselves always under.1

Watts after some Weeks desiring to have me in the Composing- Room, I left the Pressmen. A new Bienvenu2 or Sum for Drink, being 5 Shillings,

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3. Typesetters. The workers set their own cus- toms, practices, and "nes. 4. Type set up for printing. “Sorts”: type, letters. 5. “A Printing House is always called a Chapel by the Workmen” [Franklin’s note].

6. One who makes fun of others. 7. Taking Monday off as if it were a religious holiday. 8. The Roman Catholic Chapel of St.  Anselm and St. Cecilia.

was demanded of me by the Compositors.3 I thought it an Imposition, as I had paid below. The Master thought so too, and forbad my Paying it. I stood out two or three Weeks, was accordingly considered as an Excommunicate, and had so many little Pieces of private Mischief done me, by mixing my Sorts, transposing my Pages, breaking my Matter,4 etc., etc. if I were ever so little out of the Room, and all ascrib’d to the Chapel5 Ghost, which they said ever haunted those not regularly admitted, that notwithstanding the Master’s Protection, I found myself oblig’d to comply and pay the Money; convinc’d of the Folly of being on ill Terms with those one is to live with continually. I was now on a fair Footing with them, and soon acquir’d con- siderable Induence. I propos’d some reasonable Alterations in their Chapel Laws, and carried them against all Opposition. From my Example a great Part of them, left their muddling Breakfast of Beer and Bread and Cheese, "nding they could with me be supplied from a neighboring House with a large Porringer of hot Water- gruel, sprinkled with Pepper, crumb’d with Bread, and a Bit of Butter in it, for the Price of a Pint of Beer, viz., three halfpence. This was a more comfortable as well as cheaper Breakfast, and kept their Heads clearer. Those who continu’d sotting with Beer all day, were often, by not paying, out of Credit at the Alehouse, and us’d to make Inter- est with me to get Beer, their Light, as they phras’d it, being out. I watch’d the Pay table on Saturday Night, and collected what I stood engag’d for them, having to pay some times near Thirty Shillings a Week on their Accounts. This and my being esteem’d a pretty good Riggite,6 that is a jocular verbal Satirist, supported my Consequence in the Society. My constant Attendance, (I never making a St. Monday),7 recommended me to the Master; and my uncommon Quickness at Composing, occasion’d my being put upon all Work of Dispatch, which was generally better paid. So I went on now very agreeably.

My Lodging in Little Britain being too remote, I found another in Duke Street opposite to the Romish Chapel.8 It was two pair of Stairs backwards at an Italian Ware house. A Widow Lady kept the House; she had a Daughter and a Maid Servant, and a Journeyman who attended the Ware house, but lodg’d abroad. After sending to enquire my Character at the House where I last lodg’d, she agreed to take me in at the same Rate, 3 Shillings 6 Pence per Week, cheaper as she said from the Protection she expected in having a Man lodge in the House. She was a Widow, an el derly Woman, had been bred a Protestant, being a Clergyman’s Daughter, but was converted to the Catholic Religion by her Husband, whose Memory she much revered, had lived much among People of Distinction, and knew a 1000 Anecdotes of them as far back as the Times of Charles the second. She was lame in her Knees with the Gout, and therefore seldom stirr’d out of her Room, so some- times wanted Com pany; and hers was so highly amusing to me that I was sure to spend an Eve ning with her whenever she desired it. Our Supper was only half an Anchovy each, on a very little Strip of Bread and Butter, and

9. According to tradition, as Christ bore the Cross, St. Veronica wiped his face with a cloth that miraculously retained the image of his face. 1. I.e., the cabinets of curiosities in Don Saltero’s, a coffee house in London’s Chelsea district. “Don Saltero” was James Salter, a former servant of Sir Hans Sloane to whom Sloane had given many

objects from his collection. “College”: i.e., Chel- sea Hospital, erected on the site of the former Chelsea College. 2. I.e., more than three miles. 3. I.e., in Melchisédech de Thevenot’s The Art of Swimming (1699).

half a Pint of Ale between us. But the Entertainment was in her Conversa- tion. My always keeping good Hours, and giving little Trou ble in the Family, made her unwilling to part with me; so that when I talk’d of a Lodging I had heard of, nearer my Business, for 2 Shillings a Week, which, intent as I now was on saving Money, made some Difference; she bid me not think of it, for she would abate me two Shillings a Week for the future, so I remain’d with her at 1 Shilling 6 Pence as long as I stayed in London.

In a Garret of her House there lived a Maiden Lady of 70 in the most retired Manner, of whom my Landlady gave me this Account, that she was a Roman Catholic, had been sent abroad when young and lodg’d in a Nunnery with an Intent of becoming a Nun: but the Country not agreeing with her, she return’d to Eng land, where there being no Nunnery, she had vow’d to lead the Life of a Nun as near as might be done in those Circum- stances: Accordingly She had given all her Estate to charitable Uses, reserv- ing only Twelve Pounds a year to live on, and out of this Sum she still gave a great deal in Charity, living herself on Watergruel only, and using no Fire but to boil it. She had lived many Years in that Garret, being permitted to remain there gratis by successive catholic Tenants of the House below, as they deem’d it a Blessing to have her there. A Priest visited her, to confess her every Day. I have ask’d her, says my Landlady, how she, as she liv’d, could possibly "nd so much Employment for a Confessor? O, says she, it is impossible to avoid vain Thoughts. I was permitted once to visit her: She was cheerful and polite, and convers’d pleasantly. The Room was clean, but had no other Furniture than a Mattress, a Table with a Cruci"x and Book, a Stool, which she gave me to sit on, and a Picture over the Chimney of St. Veronica, displaying her Handkerchief with the miraculous Figure of Christ’s bleeding Face on it,9 which she explain’d to me with great Serious- ness. She look’d pale, but was never sick, and I give it as another Instance on how small an Income Life and Health may be supported.

At Watts’s Printing- House I contracted an Acquaintance with an ingenious young Man, one Wygate, who having wealthy Relations, had been better edu- cated than most Printers, was a tolerable Latinist, spoke French, and lov’d Reading. I taught him, and a Friend of his, to swim at twice going into the River, and they soon became good Swimmers. They introduc’d me to some Gentlemen from the Country who went to Chelsea by Water to see the Col- lege and Don Saltero’s Curiosities.1 In our Return, at the Request of the Com pany, whose Curiosity Wygate had excited, I stripped and leaped into the River, and swam from near Chelsea to Blackfriars,2 performing on the Way many Feats of Activity both upon and under Water, that surpris’d and pleas’d those to whom they were Novelties. I had from a Child been ever delighted with this Exercise, had studied and practic’d all Thevenot’s Motions and Positions,3 added some of my own, aiming at the graceful and easy, as well as the Useful. All these I took this Occasion of exhibiting to the

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4. Settled part payment on his debts. 5. Conditions for accepting a declaration of

bankruptcy. 6. I.e., the "rst time the plates were cleared.

Com pany, and was much datter’d by their Admiration. And Wygate, who was desirous of becoming a Master, grew more and more attach’d to me on that account, as well as from the Similarity of our Studies. He at length propos’d to me traveling all over Eu rope together, supporting ourselves every where by working at our Business. I was once inclin’d to it. But men- tioning it to my good Friend Mr.  Denham, with whom I often spent an Hour when I had Leisure, he dissuaded me from it; advising me to think only of returning to Pennsylvania, which he was now about to do.

I must rec ord one Trait of this good Man’s Character. He had formerly been in Business at Bristol, but fail’d in Debt to a Number of People, com- pounded4 and went to Amer i ca. There, by a close Application to Business as a Merchant, he acquir’d a plentiful Fortune in a few Years. Returning to Eng land in the Ship with me, He invited his old Creditors to an Entertain- ment, at which he thank’d them for the easy Composition5 they had favor’d him with, and when they expected nothing but the Treat, every Man at the "rst Remove6 found under his Plate an Order on a Banker for the full Amount of the unpaid Remainder with Interest.

He now told me he was about to return to Philadelphia, and should carry over a great Quantity of Goods in order to open a Store there: He propos’d to take me over as his Clerk, to keep his Books (in which he would instruct me), copy his Letters, and attend the Store. He added, that as soon as I should be acquainted with mercantile Business he would promote me by sending me with a Cargo of Flour and Bread, etc., to the West Indies, and procure me Commissions from others; which would be pro"table, and if I manag’d well, would establish me handsomely. The Thing pleas’d me, for I was grown tired of London, remember’d with Plea sure the happy Months I had spent in Pennsylvania, and wish’d again to see it. Therefore I immediately agreed, on the Terms of Fifty Pounds a Year, Pennsylvania Money; less indeed than my then Gettings as a Compositor, but affording a better Prospect.

I now took Leave of Printing, as I thought for ever, and was daily employ’d in my new Business; going about with Mr. Denham among the Tradesmen, to purchase vari ous Articles, and see them pack’d up, doing Errands, calling upon Workmen to dispatch, etc., and when all was on board, I had a few Days’ Leisure. On one of these Days I was to my Surprise sent for by a great Man I knew only by Name, a Sir William Wyndham and I waited upon him. He had heard by some means or other of my Swimming from Chelsey to Blackfriars, and of my teaching Wygate and another young Man to swim in a few Hours. He had two Sons about to set out on their Travels; he wish’d to have them "rst taught Swimming; and propos’d to gratify me handsomely if I would teach them. They were not yet come to Town and my Stay was uncertain, so I could not undertake it. But from this Incident I thought it likely, that if I were to remain in Eng land and open a Swimming School, I might get a good deal of Money. And it struck me so strongly, that had the Overture been sooner made me, prob ably I should not so soon have returned to Amer i ca. After Many Years, you and I had something of more Importance

7. Franklin does not mention Charles Wyndham (1710–1763) again. Charles’s father, Sir William (1687–1740), was an En glish statesman and Member of Parliament. 8. Only the outline and preamble of Franklin’s

Plan survive. 9. Patrick Gordon (1644–1736), deputy gover- nor of Pennsylvania from 1726 to 1736. 1. End; i.e., resigned himself to death. 2. Oral.

to do with one of these Sons of Sir William Wyndham,7 become Earl of Egre- mont, which I shall mention in its Place.

Thus I spent about 18 Months in London. Most Part of the Time, I work’d hard at my Business, and spent but little upon myself except in seeing Plays, and in Books. My Friend Ralph had kept me poor. He owed me about 27 Pounds; which I was now never likely to receive; a great Sum out of my small Earnings. I lov’d him notwithstanding, for he had many amiable Qualities. Tho’ I had by no means improv’d my Fortune, I had pick’d up some very ingenious Acquaintance whose Conversation was of great Advantage to me, and I had read considerably.

We sail’d from Gravesend on the 23d of July 1726. For The Incidents of the Voyage, I refer you to my Journal, where you will "nd them all minutely related. Perhaps the most impor tant Part of that Journal is the Plan8 to be found in it which I formed at Sea for regulating my future Conduct in Life. It is the more remarkable, as being form’d when I was so young, and yet being pretty faithfully adhered to quite thro’ to old Age. We landed in Philadel- phia the 11th of October, where I found sundry Alterations. Keith was no longer Governor, being superseded by Major Gordon:9 I met him walking the Streets as a common Citizen. He seem’d a little asham’d at seeing me, but pass’d without saying anything. I should have been as much asham’d at seeing Miss Read, had not her Friends despairing with Reason of my Return, after the Receipt of my Letter, persuaded her to marry another, one Rogers, a Potter, which was done in my Absence. With him however she was never happy, and soon parted from him, refusing to cohabit with him, or bear his Name. It being now said that he had another Wife. He was a worthless Fel- low tho’ an excellent Workman which was the Temptation to her Friends. He got into Debt, and ran away in 1727 or 28, went to the West Indies, and died there. Keimer had got a better House, a Shop well supplied with Stationery, plenty of new Types, a number of Hands tho’ none good, and seem’d to have a great deal of Business.

Mr. Denham took a Store in Water Street, where we open’d our Goods. I attended the Business diligently, studied Accounts, and grew in a little Time expert at selling. We lodg’d and boarded together, he counsel’d me as a Father, having a sincere Regard for me: I respected and lov’d him: and we might have gone on together very happily: But in the Beginning of February 1726/7 when I had just pass’d my 21st Year, we both were taken ill. My Dis- temper was a Pleurisy, which very nearly carried me off: I suffered a good deal, gave up the Point1 in my own mind, and was rather disappointed when I found myself recovering; regretting in some degree that I must now some- time or other have all that disagreeable Work to do over again. I forget what his Distemper was. It held him a long time, and at length carried him off. He left me a small Legacy in a nuncupative2 Will, as a Token of his Kind- ness for me, and he left me once more to the wide World. For the Store was taken into the Care of his Executors, and my Employment under him ended:

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3. Meredith (c. 1696–1749) was later a business partner of Franklin’s. 4. Potts (d. 1758) was later a bookseller and an innkeeper. 5. I.e., handsome. 6. I.e., Keimer had paid for the Irishman’s pas- sage in exchange for his ser vice. 7. Webb (1708–1736?) was later a member of Franklin’s Junto (a small, select club for mutual improvement) and a printer.

8. A Welsh Quaker (1708–1760); later the "rst printer in Barbados. 9. Actor. 1. An evergreen shrub; gorse. “Gown”: academic robe worn regularly by Oxford students. “15 Guineas”: almost sixteen pounds. 2. An advertisement for free passage to the colo- nies for those who would work as indentured ser- vants.

My Brother- in- law Homes, being now at Philadelphia, advis’d my Return to my Business. And Keimer tempted me with an Offer of large Wages by the Year to come and take the Management of his Printing- House that he might better attend his Stationer’s Shop. I had heard a bad Character of him in London, from his Wife and her Friends, and was not fond of having any more to do with him. I tried for farther Employment as a Merchant’s Clerk; but not readily meeting with any, I clos’d again with Keimer.

I found in his House these Hands; Hugh Meredith3 a Welsh- Pennsylvanian, 30 Years of Age, bred to Country Work: honest, sensible, had a great deal of solid Observation, was something of a Reader, but given to drink: Stephen Potts,4 a young Country Man of full Age, bred to the Same, of uncommon natu ral Parts5 and great Wit and Humor, but a little idle. These he had agreed with at extreme low Wages, per Week, to be rais’d a Shilling every 3 Months, as they would deserve by improving in their Business, and the Expectation of these high Wages to come on hereafter was what he had drawn them in with. Meredith was to work at Press, Potts at Bookbinding, which he by Agreement, was to teach them, tho’ he knew neither one nor t’other. John— — — a wild Irishman brought up to no Business, whose Ser vice for 4 Years Keimer had purchas’d from the Captain of a Ship.6 He too was to be made a Pressman. George Webb,7 an Oxford Scholar, whose Time for 4 Years he had likewise bought, intending him for a Compositor: of whom more pres- ently. And David Harry,8 a Country Boy, whom he had taken Apprentice. I soon perceiv’d that the Intention of engaging me at Wages so much higher than he had been us’d to give, was to have these raw cheap Hands form’d thro’ me, and as soon as I had instructed them, then, they being all articled to him, he should be able to do without me. I went on however, very cheer- fully; put his Printing- House in Order, which had been in great Confusion, and brought his Hands by degrees to mind their Business and to do it better.

It was an odd Thing to "nd an Oxford Scholar in the Situation of a bought Servant. He was not more than 18 Years of Age, and gave me this Account of himself; that he was born in Gloucester, educated at a Grammar School there, had been distinguish’d among the Scholars for some apparent Supe- riority in performing his Part when they exhibited Plays; belong’d to the Witty Club there, and had written some Pieces in Prose and Verse which were printed in the Gloucester Newspapers. Thence he was sent to Oxford; there he continu’d about a Year, but not well- satis"ed, wishing of all things to see London and become a Player.9 At length receiving his Quarterly Allow- ance of 15 Guineas,1 instead of discharging his Debts, he walk’d out of Town, hid his Gown in a Furz Bush, and footed it to London, where having no Friend to advise him, he fell into bad Com pany, soon spent his Guineas, found no means of being introduc’d among the Players,2 grew necessitous,

3. Foundry for type (sorts). 4. Thomas James’s foundry. 5. Molds for casting type. “Puncheons”: stamp-

ing tools. 6. Jack- of- all- trades.

pawn’d his Clothes and wanted Bread. Walking the Street very hungry, and not knowing what to do with himself, a Crimp’s Bill was put into his Hand, offering immediate Entertainment and Encouragement to such as would bind themselves to serve in Amer i ca. He went directly, sign’d the Indentures, was put into the Ship and came over; never writing a Line to acquaint his Friends what was become of him. He was lively, witty, good- natur’d and a pleasant Companion, but idle, thoughtless and imprudent to the last Degree.

John the Irishman soon ran away. With the rest I began to live very agree- ably; for they all respected me, the more as they found Keimer incapable of instructing them, and that from me they learned something daily. We never work’d on a Saturday, that being Keimer’s Sabbath. So I had two Days for Reading. My Acquaintance with ingenious People in the Town increased. Keimer himself treated me with great Civility and apparent Regard; and nothing now made me uneasy but my Debt to Vernon, which I was yet unable to pay, being hitherto but a poor Economist. He however kindly made no Demand of it.

Our Printing- House often wanted Sorts, and there was no Letter Found er3 in Amer i ca. I had seen Types cast at James’s4 in London, but without much Attention to the Manner: However I now contriv’d a Mold, made use of the Letters we had as Puncheons, struck the Matrices5 in Lead, and thus sup- plied in a pretty tolerable way all De"ciencies. I also engrav’d several Things on occasion. I made the Ink, I was Warehouse- man and every thing, in short quite a Factotum.6

But however ser viceable I might be, I found that my Ser vices became every Day of less Importance, as the other Hands improv’d in the Business. And when Keimer paid my second Quarter’s Wages, he let me know that he felt them too heavy, and thought I should make an Abatement. He grew by degrees less civil, put on more of the Master, frequently found Fault, was captious and seem’d ready for an Out- breaking. I went on nevertheless with a good deal of Patience, thinking that his encumber’d Circumstances were partly the Cause. At length a Tride snapped our Connection. For a great Noise happening near the Court house, I put my Head out of the Win dow to see what was the Matter. Keimer being in the Street look’d up and saw me, call’d out to me in a loud Voice and angry Tone to mind my Business, adding some reproachful Words, that nettled me the more for their Publicity, all the Neighbors who were looking out on the same Occasion being Witnesses how I was treated. He came up immediately into the Printing- House, continu’d the Quarrel, high Words pass’d on both Sides, he gave me the Quarter’s Warning we had stipulated, expressing a Wish that he had not been oblig’d to so long a Warning: I told him his Wish was unnecessary for I would leave him that Instant; and so taking my Hat walk’d out of Doors; desiring Meredith whom I saw below to take care of some Things I left, and bring them to my Lodging.

Meredith came accordingly in the Eve ning, when we talk’d my Affair over. He had conceiv’d a great Regard for me, and was very unwilling that I should leave the House while he remain’d in it. He dissuaded me from returning to

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7. I.e., Boston. 8. City in New Jersey.

9. Highly emotional.

my native Country7 which I began to think of. He reminded me that Keimer was in debt for all he possess’d, that his Creditors began to be uneasy, that he kept his Shop miserably, sold often without Pro"t for ready Money, and often trusted without keeping Account. That he must therefore fail; which would make a Vacancy I might pro"t of. I objected my Want of Money. He then let me know, that his Father had a high Opinion of me, and from some Discourse that had pass’d between them, he was sure would advance Money to set us up, if I would enter into Partnership with him. My Time, says he, will be out with Keimer in the Spring. By that time we may have our Press and Types in from London: I am sensible I am no Workman. If you like it, Your Skill in the Business shall be set against the Stock I furnish; and we will share the Pro"ts equally. The Proposal was agreeable, and I consented. His Father was in Town, and approv’d of it, the more as he saw I had great Induence with his Son, had prevail’d on him to abstain long from Dram- drinking, and he hop’d might break him of that wretched Habit entirely, when we came to be so closely connected. I gave an Inventory to the Father, who carried it to a Merchant; the Things were sent for; the Secret was to be kept till they should arrive, and in the mean time I was to get Work if I could at the other Printing- House. But I found no Vacancy there, and so remain’d idle a few Days, when Keimer, on a Prospect of being employ’d to print some Paper- money, in New Jersey, which would require Cuts and vari ous Types that I only could supply, and apprehending Bradford might engage me and get the Job from him, sent me a very civil Message, that old Friends should not part for a few Words, the Effect of sudden Passion, and wishing me to return. Meredith persuaded me to comply, as it would give more Opportu- nity for his Improvement under my daily Instructions. So I return’d, and we went on more smoothly than for some time before. The New Jersey Job was obtain’d. I contriv’d a Copper- Plate Press for it, the "rst that had been seen in the Country. I cut several Ornaments and Checks for the Bills. We went together to Burlington,8 where I executed the Whole to Satisfaction, and he received so large a Sum for the Work, as to be enabled thereby to keep his Head much longer above Water.

At Burlington I made an Acquaintance with many principal People of the Province. Several of them had been appointed by the Assembly a Commit- tee to attend the Press, and take Care that no more Bills were printed than the Law directed. They were therefore by Turns constantly with us, and generally he who attended brought with him a Friend or two for Com pany. My Mind having been much more improv’d by Reading than Keimer’s, I suppose it was for that Reason my Conversation seem’d to be more valu’d. They had me to their Houses, introduc’d me to their Friends and show’d me much Civility, while he, tho’ the Master, was a little neglected. In truth he was an odd Fish, ignorant of common Life, fond of rudely opposing receiv’d Opinions, slovenly to extreme dirtiness, enthusiastic9 in some Points of Reli- gion, and a little Knavish withal. We continu’d there near 3 Months, and by that time I could reckon among my acquired Friends, Judge Allen, Samuel Bustill, the Secretary of the Province, Isaac Pearson, Joseph Cooper and

1. I.e., in the Congregational or Presbyterian way, as opposed to the Church of Eng land way. 2. Robert Boyle (1627–1691), En glish physicist and chemist, endowed a series of lectures for dis- cussing the existence of God and preaching against “in"dels.” Deism accepts a supreme being as the author of "nite existence, but denies Chris-

tian doctrines of revelation and supernaturalism. 3. The "rst line is not from the En glish poet John Dryden (1631–1700) but from Alexander Pope’s Essay on Man Epistle I, line 294; how- ever, Dryden’s line is close: “What ever is, is in its Causes just.” The rest of these lines are recalled accurately from Dryden’s Oedipus (3.1.244–48).

several of the Smiths, Members of Assembly, and Isaac Decow the Surveyor General. The latter was a shrewd sagacious old Man, who told me that he began for himself when young by wheeling Clay for the Brickmakers, learned to write after he was of Age, carried the Chain for Surveyors, who taught him Surveying, and he had now by his Industry acquir’d a good Estate; and says he, I foresee, that you will soon work this Man out of his Business and make a Fortune in it at Philadelphia. He had not then the least Intimation of my Intention to set up there or anywhere. These Friends were afterwards of great Use to me, as I occasionally was to some of them. They all continued their Regard for me as long as they lived.

Before I enter upon my public Appearance in Business, it may be well to let you know the then State of my Mind, with regard to my Princi ples and Morals, that you may see how far those induenc’d the future Events of my Life. My Parents had early given me religious Impressions, and brought me through my Childhood piously in the Dissenting Way.1 But I was scarce 15 when, after doubting by turns of several Points as I found them disputed in the dif fer ent Books I read, I began to doubt of Revelation itself. Some Books against Deism fell into my Hands; they were said to be the Substance of Ser- mons preached at Boyle’s Lectures.2 It happened that they wrought an Effect on me quite contrary to what was intended by them: For the Argu- ments of the Deists which were quoted to be refuted, appeared to me much Stronger than the Refutations. In short I soon became a thorough Deist. My Arguments perverted some others, particularly Collins and Ralph: but each of them having afterwards wrong’d me greatly without the least Compunc- tion, and recollecting Keith’s Conduct towards me, (who was another Free- thinker) and my own towards Vernon and Miss Read which at Times gave me great Trou ble, I began to suspect that this Doctrine tho’ it might be true, was not very useful. My London pamphlet, which had for its Motto those Lines of Dryden

— — Whatever is, is right Tho’ purblind Man Sees but a Part of The Chain, the nearest Link, His Eyes not carry ing to the equal Beam, That poizes all, above.3

And from the Attributes of God, his in"nite Wisdom, Goodness and Power concluded that nothing could possibly be wrong in the World, and that Vice and Virtue were empty Distinctions, no such Things existing: appear’d now not so clever a Per for mance as I once thought it; and I doubted whether some Error had not insinuated itself unperceiv’d into my Argument, so as to infect all that follow’d, as is common in metaphysical Reasonings. I grew convinc’d that Truth, Sincerity and Integrity in Dealings between Man and Man, were of the utmost Importance to the Felicity of Life, and I form’d written

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4. Godfrey (1704–1749) set glass for window- panes. He was also an optician and inventor.

5. A coin worth "ve shillings. 6. Eco nom ically declining.

Resolutions, (which still remain in my Journal Book) to practice them ever while I lived. Revelation had indeed no weight with me as such; but I entertain’d an Opinion, that tho’ certain Actions might not be bad because they were forbidden by it, or good because it commanded them; yet prob- ably those Actions might be forbidden because they were bad for us, or commanded because they were bene"cial to us, in their own Natures, all the Circumstances of things considered. And this Persuasion, with the kind hand of Providence, or some guardian Angel, or accidental favorable Cir- cumstances and Situations, or all together, preserved me (thro’ this danger- ous Time of Youth and the hazardous Situations I was sometimes in among Strangers, remote from the Eye and Advice of my Father) without any willful gross Immorality or Injustice that might have been expected from my Want of Religion. I say willful, because the Instances I have mentioned, had something of Necessity in them, from my Youth, Inexperience, and the Knav- ery of others. I had therefore a tolerable Character to begin the World with, I valued it properly, and determin’d to preserve it.

We had not been long return’d to Philadelphia, before the New Types arriv’d from London. We settled with Keimer, and left him by his Consent before he heard of it. We found a House to hire near the Market, and took it. To lessen the Rent, (which was then but 24 Pounds a Year tho’ I have since known it let for 70) we took in Thomas Godfrey a Glazier,4 and his Family, who were to pay a considerable Part of it to us, and we to board with them. We had scarce opened our Letters and put our Press in Order, before George House, an Acquaintance of mine, brought a Countryman to us; whom he had met in the Street enquiring for a Printer. All our Cash was now expended in the Variety of Particulars we had been obliged to procure, and this Countryman’s Five Shillings, being our First Fruits and coming so seasonably, gave me more Plea sure than any Crown5 I have since earn’d; and from the Gratitude I felt towards House, has made me often more ready than perhaps I should other wise have been to assist young Beginners.

There are Croakers in every Country always boding its Ruin. Such a one then lived in Philadelphia, a Person of Note, an el derly Man, with a wise Look and very grave Manner of Speaking. His Name was Samuel Mickle. This Gentleman, a Stranger to me, stopped one Day at my Door, and ask’d me if I was the young Man who had lately opened a new Printing- House: Being answer’d in the Af"rmative; He said he was sorry for me; because it was an expensive Undertaking, and the Expense would be lost, for Philadel- phia was a sinking6 Place, the People already half Bankrupts or near being so; all Appearances of the contrary such as new Buildings and the Rise of Rents, being to his certain Knowledge fallacious, for they were in fact among the Things that would soon ruin us. And he gave me such a Detail of Mis- fortunes now existing or that were soon to exist, that he left me half- melancholy. Had I known him before I engag’d in this Business, prob ably I never should have done it. This Man continu’d to live in this decaying Place, and to declaim in the same Strain, refusing for many Years to buy a House there, because all was going to Destruction, and at last I had the Plea sure

7. Certainty. “Warmth”: anger. 8. Breintnall (d. 1746) shared Franklin’s interest in science. 9. Godfrey in ven ted this instrument for mea sur- ing altitudes in navigation and astronomy— also known as the octant— around the same time as the En glish inventor John Hadley (1682–1744) did.

1. Nicholas Scull II (1687–1761). 2. Parsons (1701–1757) became surveyor general in 1741 and librarian of the Library Com pany— the "rst subscription library in North Amer i ca, an offshoot of the Junto. 3. A ship’s carpenter (d. 1766). 4. Franklin’s landlord for thirty- seven years. 5. Coleman lived from 1704 to 1769.

of seeing him give "ve times as much for one as he might have bought it for when he "rst began his Croaking.

I should have mention’d before, that in the Autumn of the preceding Year, I had form’d most of my ingenious Acquaintance into a Club, for mutual Improvement, which we call’d the Junto. We met on Friday Eve nings. The Rules I drew up, requir’d that every Member in his Turn should produce one or more Queries on any Point of Morals, Politics or Natu ral Philosophy, to be discuss’d by the Com pany, and once in three Months produce and read an Essay of his own Writing on any Subject he pleased. Our Debates were to be under the Direction of a President, and to be conducted in the sincere Spirit of Enquiry after Truth, without fondness for Dispute, or Desire of Vic- tory; and to prevent Warmth, all expressions of Positiveness7 in Opinion, or of direct Contradiction, were after some time made contraband and prohibited under small pecuniary Penalties. The "rst Members were, Joseph Breintnall, a Copier of Deeds for the Scriveners; a good- natur’d friendly middle- ag’d Man, a great Lover of Poetry, reading all he could meet with, and writing some that was tolerable; very ingenious in many little Nicknackeries, and of sensible Conversation.8 Thomas Godfrey, a self- taught Mathematician, great in his Way, and afterwards Inventor of what is now call’d Hadley’s Quadrant.9 But he knew little out of his way, and was not a pleasing Com- panion, as like most Great Mathematicians I have met with, he expected unusual Precision in every thing said, or was forever denying or distinguish- ing upon Trides, to the Disturbance of all Conversation. He soon left us. Nicholas Scull,1 a Surveyor, afterwards Surveyor- General, Who lov’d Books, and sometimes made a few Verses. William Parsons, bred a Shoemaker, but loving Reading, had acquir’d a considerable Share of Mathe matics, which he "rst studied with a View to Astrology that he afterwards laughed at. He also became Surveyor General.2 William Maugridge, a Joiner,3 and a most exquisite Mechanic, and a solid sensible Man. Hugh Meredith, Stephen Potts, and George Webb, I have Characteris’d before. Robert Grace,4 a young Gentleman of some Fortune, generous, lively and witty, a Lover of Punning and of his Friends. And William Coleman, then a Merchant’s Clerk, about my Age, who had the coolest clearest Head, the best Heart, and the exact- est Morals, of almost any Man I ever met with. He became afterwards a Merchant of great Note, and one of our Provincial Judges: Our Friendship continued without Interruption to his Death, upwards of 40 Years.5 And the Club continu’d almost as long and was the best School of Philosophy, Mor- als and Politics that then existed in the Province; for our Queries which were read the Week preceding their Discussion, put us on reading with Attention upon the several Subjects, that we might speak more to the purpose: and here too we acquired better Habits of Conversation, every- thing being studied in our Rules which might prevent our disgusting each other. From hence the long Continuance of the Club, which I shall have

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6. A book, of large size, with the main text in twelve- point type and the notes in ten- point type. 7. I.e., of type, returning letters to their cases so they may be used again. 8. Locked the type into its form and readied it

for printing. 9. A confused pile. 1. The American Weekly Mercury. 2. From February 4, 1728, to September  25, 1729.

frequent Occasion to speak farther of hereafter; But my giving this Account of it here, is to show something of the Interest I had, every one of these exerting themselves in recommending Business to us.

Breintnall particularly procur’d us from the Quakers, the Printing 40 Sheets of their History, the rest being to be done by Keimer: and upon this we work’d exceeding hard, for the Price was low. It was a Folio, Pro Patria Size, in Pica with Long Primer Notes.6 I compos’d of it a Sheet a Day, and Meredith work’d it off at Press. It was often 11 at Night and sometimes later, before I had "nish’d my Distribution7 for the next day’s Work: For the little Jobs sent in by our other Friends now and then put us back. But so determin’d I was to continue doing a Sheet a Day of the Folio, that one Night when having impos’d my Forms,8 I thought my Day’s Work over, one of them by accident was broken and two Pages reduc’d to Pie,9 I immediately distrib- uted and compos’d it over again before I went to bed. And this Industry vis- i ble to our Neighbors began to give us Character and Credit; particularly I was told, that mention being made of the new Printing Of"ce at the Mer- chants’ Every- night- Club, the general Opinion was that it must fail, there being already two Printers in the Place, Keimer and Bradford; but Doctor Baird (whom you and I saw many Years after at his native Place, St. Andrews in Scotland) gave a contrary Opinion; for the Industry of that Franklin, says he, is superior to anything I ever saw of the kind: I see him still at work when I go home from Club; and he is at Work again before his Neighbors are out of bed. This struck the rest, and we soon after had Offers from one of them to supply us with Stationery. But as yet we did not choose to engage in Shop Business.

I mention this Industry the more particularly and the more freely, tho’ it seems to be talking in my own Praise, that those of my Posterity who shall read it, may know the Use of that Virtue, when they see its Effects in my Favor throughout this Relation.

George Webb, who had found a Friend that lent him wherewith to pur- chase his Time of Keimer, now came to offer himself as a Journeyman to us. We could not then employ him, but I foolishly let him know, as a Secret, that I soon intended to begin a Newspaper, and might then have Work for him. My Hopes of Success as I told him were founded on this, that the then only Newspaper,1 printed by Bradford was a paltry thing, wretchedly manag’d, no way entertaining; and yet was pro"table to him. I therefore thought a good Paper could scarcely fail of good Encouragement. I requested Webb not to mention it, but he told it to Keimer, who immediately, to be beforehand with me, published Proposals for Printing one himself, on which Webb was to be employ’d. I resented this, and to counteract them, as I could not yet begin our Paper, I wrote several Pieces of Entertainment for Bradford’s Paper, under the Title of the Busy Body which Breintnall continu’d some Months.2 By this means the Attention of the Public was "x’d on that Paper, and

3. Franklin took over Keimer’s The Universal Instructor in All Arts and Sciences: and Pennsyl- vania Gazette in October 1729 and shortened the name to the Pennsylvania Gazette. 4. See n. 2, p. 488. 5. I.e., the Pennsylvania Assembly.

6. See n. 4, p. 493. 7. “I got his Son once £500” [Franklin’s note]. Franklin was able to get the legislature to pay Governor James Hamilton his salary when they were at odds with him.

Keimer’s Proposals which we burlesqu’d and ridicul’d, were disregarded. He began his Paper however, and after carry ing it on three Quarters of a Year, with at most only 90 Subscribers, he offer’d it to me for a Tride, and I hav- ing been ready some time to go on with it, took it in hand directly, and it prov’d in a few Years extremely pro"table to me.3

I perceive that I am apt to speak in the singular Number, though our Part- nership still continu’d. The Reason may be, that in fact the whole Manage- ment of the Business lay upon me. Meredith was no Compositor, a poor Pressman, and seldom sober. My Friends lamented my Connection with him, but I was to make the best of it.

Our "rst Papers made a quite dif fer ent Appearance from any before in the Province, a better Type and better printed: but some spirited Remarks of my Writing on the Dispute then going on between Governor Burnet4 and the Mas sa chu setts Assembly, struck the principal People, occasion’d the Paper and the Man ag er of it to be much talk’d of, and in a few Weeks brought them all to be our Subscribers. Their Example was follow’d by many, and our Number went on growing continually. This was one of the "rst good Effects of my having learned a little to scribble. Another was, that the lead- ing Men, seeing a Newspaper now in the hands of one who could also handle a Pen, thought it con ve nient to oblige and encourage me. Bradford still printed the Votes and Laws and other Public Business. He had printed an Address of the House5 to the Governor in a coarse blundering manner; We reprinted it elegantly and correctly, and sent one to every Member. They were sensible of the Difference, it strengthen’d the Hands of our Friends in the House, and they voted us their Printers for the Year ensuing.

Among my Friends in the House I must not forget Mr. Hamilton before- mentioned,6 who was then returned from Eng land and had a Seat in it. He interested himself7 for me strongly in that Instance, as he did in many others afterwards, continuing his Patronage till his Death. Mr. Vernon about this time put me in mind of the Debt I ow’d him: but did not press me. I wrote him an ingenuous Letter of Acknowl edgments, crav’d his Forbearance a little longer which he allow’d me, and as soon as I was able I paid the Principal with Interest and many Thanks. So that Erratum was in some degree corrected.

But now another Dif"culty came upon me, which I had never the least Reason to expect. Mr. Meredith’s Father, who was to have paid for our Printing- House according to the Expectations given me, was able to advance only one Hundred Pounds, Currency, which had been paid, and a Hundred more was due to the Merchant; who grew impatient and su’d us all. We gave Bail, but saw that if the Money could not be rais’d in time, the Suit must come to a Judgment and Execution, and our hopeful Prospects must with us be ruined, as the Press and Letters must be sold for Payment, perhaps at half- Price. In this Distress two true Friends whose Kindness I have never

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8. In the Pennsylvania Gazette, May 6 and 13, 1732. 9. More accurately, July 14, 1730. 1. Destroyed. In 1723, paper money had become so scarce that the Assembly issued new money

secured by real estate mortgages; when the mort- gages were paid off, the bills were “sunk.” But by 1729, the value of the currency was so low that the money was recalled before the mortgages were paid.

forgotten nor ever shall forget while I can remember anything, came to me separately unknown to each other, and without any Application from me, offering each of them to advance me all the Money that should be necessary to enable me to take the whole Business upon myself if that should be prac- ticable, but they did not like my continuing the Partnership with Meredith, who as they said was often seen drunk in the Streets, and playing at low Games in Alehouses, much to our Discredit. These two Friends were William Coleman and Robert Grace.

I told them I could not propose a Separation while any Prospect remain’d of the Merediths ful"lling their Part of our Agreement. Because I thought myself under great Obligations to them for what they had done and would do if they could. But if they " nally fail’d in their Per for mance, and our Part- nership must be dissolv’d, I should then think myself at Liberty to accept the Assistance of my Friends. Thus the matter rested for some time. When I said to my Partner, perhaps your Father is dissatis"ed at the Part you have undertaken in this Affair of ours, and is unwilling to advance for you and me what he would for you alone: If that is the Case, tell me, and I will resign the whole to you and go about my Business. No— says he, my Father has really been disappointed and is really unable; and I am unwilling to distress him farther. I see this is a Business I am not "t for. I was bred a Farmer, and it was a Folly in me to come to Town and put myself at 30 Years of Age an Apprentice to learn a new Trade. Many of our Welsh People are going to settle in North Carolina where Land is cheap: I am inclin’d to go with them, and follow my old Employment. You may "nd Friends to assist you. If you will take the Debts of the Com pany upon you, return to my Father the hundred Pound he has advanc’d, pay my little personal Debts, and give me Thirty Pounds and a new Saddle, I will relinquish the Partnership and leave the whole in your Hands. I agreed to this Proposal. It was drawn up in Writing, sign’d and seal’d immediately. I gave him what he demanded and he went soon after to Carolina; from whence he sent me next Year two long Letters, containing the best Account that had been given of that Country, the Climate, Soil, Husbandry, etc., for in those Matters he was very judicious. I printed them in the Papers,8 and they gave great Satisfac- tion to the Public.

As soon as he was gone, I recurr’d to my two Friends; and because I would not give an unkind Preference to either, I took half what each had offered and I wanted, of one, and half of the other; paid off the Com pany Debts, and went on with the Business in my own Name, advertising that the Part- nership was dissolved. I think this was in or about the Year 1729.9

About this Time there was a Cry among the People for more Paper- Money, only 15,000 Pounds being extant in the Province and that soon to be sunk.1 The wealthy Inhabitants oppos’d any Addition, being against all Paper Cur- rency, from an Apprehension that it would depreciate as it had done in New Eng land to the Prejudice of all Creditors. We had discuss’d this Point in our

2. Signs. 3. A Modest Inquiry into the Nature and Neces- sity of a Paper Currency (April 3, 1729). 4. Franklin received the contract to print money in 1731. 5. I.e., for Delaware, which had a separate legis-

lature but the same proprietary governor as Pennsylvania. 6. In July 1730. 7. Inexpensive paper pamphlets. 8. Thomas Whitmarsh (d. 1733) moved to South Carolina the next year.

Junto, where I was on the Side of an Addition, being persuaded that the "rst small Sum struck in 1723 had done much good, by increasing the Trade, Employment, and Number of Inhabitants in the Province, since I now saw all the old Houses inhabited, and many new ones building, where as I remember’d well, that when I "rst walk’d about the Streets of Philadelphia, eating my Roll, I saw most of the Houses in Walnut Street between Second and Front Streets with Bills2 on their Doors, to be let; and many likewise in Chestnut Street, and other Streets; which made me then think the Inhabit- ants of the City were one after another deserting it. Our Debates possess’d me so fully of the Subject, that I wrote and printed an anonymous Pamphlet on it, entitled, The Nature and Necessity of a Paper Currency.3 It was well receiv’d by the common People in general; but the Rich Men dislik’d it; for it increas’d and strengthen’d the Clamor for more Money; and they happen- ing to have no Writers among them that were able to answer it, their Oppo- sition slacken’d, and the Point was carried by a Majority in the House. My Friends there, who conceiv’d I had been of some Ser vice, thought "t to reward me, by employing me in printing the Money,4 a very pro"table Job, and a great Help to me. This was another Advantage gain’d by my being able to write. The Utility of this Currency became by Time and Experience so evident, as never afterwards to be much disputed, so that it grew soon to 55,000 Pounds, and in 1739 to 80,000 Pounds, since which it arose during War to upwards of 350,000 Pounds— Trade, Building and Inhabitants all the while increasing. Tho’ I now think there are Limits beyond which the Quan- tity may be hurtful.

I soon after obtain’d, thro’ my Friend Hamilton, the Printing of the New Castle Paper Money,5 another pro"table Job, as I then thought it; small Things appearing great to those in small Circumstances. And these to me were really great Advantages, as they were great Encouragements. He pro- cured me also the Printing of the Laws and Votes of that Government which continu’d in my Hands as long as I follow’d the Business.

I now open’d a little Stationer’s Shop.6 I had in it Blanks of all Sorts the correctest that ever appear’d among us, being assisted in that by my Friend Breintnall; I had also Paper, Parchment, Chapmen’s Books,7 etc. One Whit- marsh a Compositor I had known in London, an excellent Workman now came to me and work’d with me constantly and diligently,8 and I took an Apprentice the Son of Aquila Rose. I began now gradually to pay off the Debt I was under for the Printing- House. In order to secure my Credit and Char- acter as a Tradesman, I took care not only to be in Real ity Industrious and frugal, but to avoid all Appearances of the contrary. I dressed plainly; I was seen at no Places of idle Diversion; I never went out a- "shing or shooting; a Book, indeed, sometimes debauch’d me from my Work; but that was seldom, snug, and gave no Scandal: and to show that I was not above my Business, I sometimes brought home the Paper I purchas’d at the Stores, thro’ the Streets on a Wheelbarrow. Thus being esteem’d an industrious thriving

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9. I.e., the postal riders, or carriers. Franklin bribed them to have his papers delivered on the same day as Andrew Bradford’s. 1. Franklin succeeded Bradford as postmaster

of Philadelphia in October 1737. 2. Franklin’s expectations were not unusual: marriage arrangements often hinged on agree- able "nancial considerations.

young Man, and paying duly for what I bought, the Merchants who imported Stationery solicited my Custom, others propos’d supplying me with Books, and I went on swimmingly. In the mean time Keimer’s Credit and Business declining daily, he was at last forc’d to sell his Printing- House to satisfy his Creditors. He went to Barbados, and there lived some Years, in very poor Circumstances.

His Apprentice David Harry, whom I had instructed while I work’d with him, set up in his Place at Philadelphia, having bought his Materials. I was at "rst apprehensive of a power ful Rival in Harry, as his Friends were very able, and had a good deal of Interest. I therefore propos’d a Partnership to him; which he, fortunately for me, rejected with Scorn. He was very proud, dress’d like a Gentleman, liv’d expensively, took much Diversion and Plea- sure abroad, ran in debt, and neglected his Business, upon which all Busi- ness left him; and "nding nothing to do, he follow’d Keimer to Barbados; taking the Printing- House with him. There this Apprentice employ’d his for- mer Master as a Journeyman. They quarrel’d often. Harry went continually behind- hand, and at length was forc’d to sell his Types, and return to his Country Work in Pennsylvania. The Person that bought them employ’d Keimer to use them, but in a few years he died. There remain’d now no Com- petitor with me at Philadelphia, but the old one, Bradford, who was rich and easy, did a little Printing now and then by straggling Hands, but was not very anxious about the Business. However, as he kept the Post Of"ce, it was imagined he had better Opportunities of obtaining News, his Paper was thought a better Distributer of Advertisements than mine, and therefore had many more, which was a pro"table thing to him and a Disadvantage to me. For tho’ I did indeed receive and send Papers by the Post, yet the public Opinion was other wise; for what I did send was by Bribing the Riders9 who took them privately: Bradford being unkind enough to forbid it: which occasion’d some Resentment on my Part; and I thought so meanly of him for it, that when I afterwards came into his Situation,1 I took care never to imitate it.

I had hitherto continu’d to board with Godfrey who lived in Part of my House with his Wife and Children, and had one Side of the Shop for his Glazier’s Business, tho’ he work’d little, being always absorb’d in his Mathe- matics. Mrs. Godfrey projected a Match for me with a Relation’s Daughter, took Opportunities of bringing us often together, till a serious Courtship on my Part ensu’d, the Girl being in herself very deserving. The old Folks encourag’d me by continual Invitations to Supper, and by leaving us together, till at length it was time to explain. Mrs. Godfrey manag’d our little Treaty. I let her know that I expected as much Money with their Daughter as would pay off my Remaining Debt for the Printing- House, which I believe was not then above a Hundred Pounds.2 She brought me Word they had no such Sum to spare. I said they might mortgage their House in the Loan Of"ce. The Answer to this after some Days was, that they did not approve the Match; that on Enquiry of Bradford they had been inform’d the Printing Business

3. I.e., syphilis. 4. Because there was no proof that John Rogers, Deborah Read’s "rst husband, was dead, she and

Franklin entered into a common- law marriage without civil ceremony.

was not a pro"table one, the Types would soon be worn out and more wanted, that S. Keimer and D. Harry had fail’d one after the other, and I should prob ably soon follow them; and therefore I was forbidden the House, and the Daughter shut up.

Whether this was a real Change of Sentiment, or only Arti"ce, on a Supposition of our being too far engag’d in Affection to retract, and there- fore that we should steal a Marriage, which would leave them at Liberty to give or withhold what they pleas’d, I know not: But I suspected the latter, resented it, and went no more. Mrs. Godfrey brought me afterwards some more favorable Accounts of their Disposition, and would have drawn me on again: But I declared absolutely my Resolution to have nothing more to do with that Family. This was resented by the Godfreys, we differ’d, and they removed, leaving me the whole House, and I resolved to take no more Inmates. But this Affair having turn’d my Thoughts to Marriage, I look’d round me, and made Overtures of Acquaintance in other Places; but soon found that the Business of a Printer being generally thought a poor one, I was not to expect Money with a Wife unless with such a one, as I should not other wise think agreeable. In the mean time, that hard- to- be- govern’d Passion of Youth, had hurried me frequently into Intrigues with low Women that fell in my Way, which were attended with some Expense and great Incon ve nience, besides a continual Risk to my Health by a Distemper3 which of all Things I dreaded, tho’ by great good Luck I escaped it.

A friendly Correspondence as Neighbors and old Acquaintances, had con- tinued between me and Mrs. Read’s Family who all had a Regard for me from the time of my "rst Lodging in their House. I was often invited there and consulted in their Affairs, wherein I sometimes was of Ser vice. I pitied poor Miss Read’s unfortunate Situation, who was generally dejected, seldom cheerful, and avoided Com pany. I consider’d my Giddiness and Inconstancy when in London as in a great degree the Cause of her Unhappiness; tho’ the Mother was good enough to think the Fault more her own than mine, as she had prevented our Marrying before I went thither, and persuaded the other Match in my Absence. Our mutual Affection was revived, but there were now great Objections to our Union. That Match was indeed look’d upon as invalid, a preceding Wife being said to be living in Eng land; but this could not easily be prov’d, because of the Distance, etc. And tho’ there was a Report of his Death, it was not certain. Then, tho’ it should be true, he had left many Debts which his Successor might be call’d upon to pay. We ventured however, over all these Dif"culties, and I took her to Wife Sept. 1, 1730.4 None of the Inconveniencies happened that we had apprehended, she prov’d a good and faithful Helpmate, assisted me much by attending the Shop, we throve together, and have ever mutually endeavor’d to make each other happy. Thus I corrected that great Erratum as well as I could.

About this Time our Club meeting, not at a Tavern, but in a little Room of Mr. Grace’s set apart for that Purpose; a Proposition was made by me, that since our Books were often referr’d to in our Disquisitions upon the Queries, it might be con ve nient to us to have them all together where we

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1. Franklin wrote the second part of his auto- biography at the Hôtel de Valentenois, in Passy, a Paris suburb. He had been sent to Paris as one of the American representatives for the peace treaty that of"cially ended the war with Britain on September 3, 1783. Franklin remained in Paris until July 1785, when Thomas Jefferson succeeded him as a minister for trade agreements.

2. A Quaker merchant in Philadelphia (c. 1726– 1790). 3. James wrote his letter in 1782, when Britain was still at war with the colonies. 4. Franklin’s outline for his Autobiography, written in 1771; reprinted in the Yale University edition (1964).

met, that upon Occasion they might be consulted; and by thus clubbing our Books to a common Library, we should, while we lik’d to keep them together, have each of us the Advantage of using the Books of all the other Members, which would be nearly as bene"cial as if each owned the whole. It was lik’d and agreed to, and we "ll’d one End of the Room with such Books as we could best spare. The Number was not so great as we expected; and tho’ they had been of great Use, yet some Inconveniencies occurring for want of due Care of them, the Collection after about a Year was separated, and each took his Books home again.

And now I set on foot my "rst Proj ect of a public Nature, that for a Sub- scription Library. I drew up the Proposals, got them put into Form by our great Scrivener Brockden, and by the help of my Friends in the Junto, procur’d Fifty Subscribers of 40 Shillings each to begin with and 10 Shil- lings a Year for 50 Years, the Term our Com pany was to continue. We after- wards obtain’d a Charter, the Com pany being increas’d to 100. This was the Mother of all the North American Subscription Libraries now so numerous. It is become a great thing itself, and continually increasing. These Libraries have improv’d the general Conversation of the Americans, made the com- mon Tradesmen and Farmers as intelligent as most Gentlemen from other Countries, and perhaps have contributed in some degree to the Stand so generally made throughout the Colonies in Defense of their Privileges.

Memo. Thus far was written with the Intention express’d in the Beginning

and therefore contains several little family Anecdotes of no Importance to others. What follows was written many Years after in compliance with the Advice contain’d in these Letters, and accordingly intended for the Public. The Affairs of the Revolution occasion’d the Interruption.

[Part Two]1

letter from mr. abel james,2 with notes on my life, (received in paris)

My dear and honored Friend. I have often been desirous of writing to thee, but could not be

reconciled to the Thought that the Letter might fall into the Hands of the British,3 lest some Printer or busy Body should publish some Part of the Contents and give our Friends Pain and myself Censure.

Some Time since there fell into my Hands to my great Joy about 23 Sheets in thy own handwriting containing an Account of the Parentage and Life of thyself, directed to thy Son ending in the Year 1730 with which there were Notes4 likewise in thy writing, a Copy of which I enclose in Hopes it may be a means if thou continuedst it up to a later

5. En glish politician, the wealthy son (1751– 1835) of a West Indies merchant and Maine mother; during the Paris peace talks, unof"cial

emissary between the British prime minister Lord Shelburne (1737–1805; in of"ce 1782–83) and Franklin.

period, that the "rst and latter part may be put together; and if it is not yet continued, I hope thou wilt not delay it. Life is uncertain as the Preacher tells us, and what will the World say if kind, humane and benev- olent Ben Franklin should leave his Friends and the World deprived of so pleasing and pro"table a Work, a Work which would be useful and entertaining not only to a few, but to millions.

The Induence Writings under that Class have on the Minds of Youth is very great, and has no where appeared so plain as in our public Friends’ Journals. It almost insensibly leads the Youth into the Resolution of endeavoring to become as good and as eminent as the Journalist. Should thine for Instance when published, and I think it could not fail of it, lead the Youth to equal the Industry and Temperance of thy early Youth, what a Blessing with that Class would such a Work be. I know of no Character living nor many of them put together, who has so much in his Power as Thyself to promote a greater Spirit of Industry and early Attention to Business, Frugality and Temperance with the American Youth. Not that I think the Work would have no other Merit and Use in the World, far from it, but the "rst is of such vast Importance, that I know nothing that can equal it.

The foregoing letter and the minutes accompanying it being shown to a friend, I received from him the following:

letter from mr. benjamin vaughan5

My Dearest Sir, Paris, January 31, 1783. When I had read over your sheets of minutes of the principal incidents

of your life, recovered for you by your Quaker acquaintance; I told you I would send you a letter expressing my reasons why I thought it would be useful to complete and publish it as he desired. Vari ous concerns have for some time past prevented this letter being written, and I do not know whether it was worth any expectation: happening to be at leisure however at pres ent, I shall by writing at least interest and instruct myself; but as the terms I am inclined to use may tend to offend a person of your manners, I shall only tell you how I would address any other person, who was as good and as great as yourself, but less dif"dent. I would say to him, Sir, I solicit the history of your life from the following motives.

Your history is so remarkable, that if you do not give it, somebody else will certainly give it; and perhaps so as nearly to do as much harm, as your own management of the thing might do good.

It will moreover pres ent a table of the internal circumstances of your country, which will very much tend to invite to it settlers of virtuous and manly minds. And considering the eagerness with which such informa- tion is sought by them, and the extent of your reputation, I do not know of a more ef"cacious advertisement than your Biography would give.

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6. The Roman statesman historian Gaius Julius Caesar (100–44 b.c.e.) and Publius Cornelius Tacitus (c. 56 c.e.– c. 120). 7. Vaughan is referring to Franklin’s intention to write “a little work for the bene"t of youth” to be

called The Art of Virtue. Part Two of the Auto- biography is, in part, a response to Vaughan’s reminder. 8. Make our decision.

All that has happened to you is also connected with the detail of the manners and situation of a rising people; and in this re spect I do not think that the writings of Caesar and Tacitus6 can be more in ter est ing to a true judge of human nature and society.

But these, Sir, are small reasons in my opinion, compared with the chance which your life will give for the forming of future great men; and in conjunction with your Art of Virtue,7 (which you design to pub- lish) of improving the features of private character, and consequently of aiding all happiness both public and domestic.

The two works I allude to, Sir, will in par tic u lar give a noble rule and example of self- education. School and other education constantly pro- ceed upon false princi ples, and show a clumsy apparatus pointed at a false mark; but your apparatus is simple, and the mark a true one; and while parents and young persons are left destitute of other just means of estimating and becoming prepared for a reasonable course in life, your discovery that the thing is in many a man’s private power, will be invaluable!

Induence upon the private character late in life, is not only an indu- ence late in life, but a weak induence. It is in youth that we plant our chief habits and prejudices; it is in youth that we take our party8 as to profession, pursuits, and matrimony. In youth therefore the turn is given; in youth the education even of the next generation is given; in youth the private and public character is determined: and the term of life extending from youth to age, life ought to begin well from youth; and more especially before we take our party as to our principal objects.

But your Biography will not merely teach self- education, but the edu- cation of a wise man; and the wisest man will receive lights and improve his pro gress, by seeing detailed the conduct of another wise man. And why are weaker men to be deprived of such helps, when we see our race has been blundering on in the dark, almost without a guide in this par- tic u lar, from the farthest trace of time. Show then, Sir, how much is to be done, both to sons and fathers; and invite all wise men to become like yourself; and other men to become wise.

When we see how cruel statesmen and warriors can be to the humble race, and how absurd distinguished men can be to their acquaintance, it will be instructive to observe the instances multiply of paci"c acqui- escing manners; and to "nd how compatible it is to be great and domes- tic; enviable and yet good- humored.

The little private incidents which you will also have to relate, will have considerable use, as we want above all things, rules of prudence in ordi- nary affairs; and it will be curious to see how you have acted in these. It will be so far a sort of key to life, and explain many things that all men ought to have once explained to them, to give them a chance of becom- ing wise by foresight.

The nearest thing to having experience of one’s own, is to have other people’s affairs brought before us in a shape that is in ter est ing; this is sure to happen from your pen. Your affairs and management will have an air of simplicity or importance that will not fail to strike; and I am convinced you have conducted them with as much originality as if you had been conducting discussions in politics or philosophy; and what more worthy of experiments and system, (its importance and its errors considered) than human life!

Some men have been virtuous blindly, others have speculated fantas- tically, and others have been shrewd to bad purposes; but you, Sir, I am sure, will give under your hand, nothing but what is at the same moment, wise, practical, and good.

Your account of yourself (for I suppose the parallel I am drawing for Dr. Franklin, will hold not only in point of character but of private history), will show that you are ashamed of no origin; a thing the more impor tant, as you prove how little necessary all origin is to happi- ness, virtue, or greatness.

As no end likewise happens without a means, so we shall "nd, Sir, that even you yourself framed a plan by which you became considerable; but at the same time we may see that though the event is dattering, the means are as simple as wisdom could make them; that is, depending upon nature, virtue, thought, and habit.

Another thing demonstrated will be the propriety of every man’s waiting for his time for appearing upon the stage of the world. Our sensations being very much "xed to the moment, we are apt to forget that more moments are to follow the "rst, and consequently that man should arrange his conduct so as to suit the whole of a life. Your attri- bution appears to have been applied to your life, and the passing moments of it have been enlivened with content and enjoyment, instead of being tormented with foolish impatience or regrets. Such a conduct is easy for those who make virtue and themselves their standard, and who try to keep themselves in countenance by examples of other truly great men, of whom patience is so often the characteristic.

Your Quaker correspondent, Sir (for here again I will suppose the subject of my letter resembling Dr. Franklin,) praised your frugality, diligence, and temperance, which he considered as a pattern for all youth: but it is singular that he should have forgotten your modesty, and your disinterestedness, without which you never could have waited for your advancement, or found your situation in the mean time com- fortable; which is a strong lesson to show the poverty of glory, and the importance of regulating our minds.

If this correspondent had known the nature of your reputation as well as I do, he would have said; your former writings and mea sures would secure attention to your Biography, and Art of Virtue; and your Biography and Art of Virtue, in return, would secure attention to them. This is an advantage attendant upon a vari ous character, and which brings all that belongs to it into greater play; and it is the more useful, as perhaps more persons are at a loss for the means of improving their minds and characters, than they are for the time or the inclination to do it.

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But there is one concluding redection, Sir, that will show the use of your life as a mere piece of biography. This style of writing seems a little gone out of vogue, and yet it is a very useful one; and your specimen of it may be particularly ser viceable, as it will make a subject of comparison with the lives of vari ous public cut- throats and intriguers, and with absurd monastic self- tormentors, or vain literary triders. If it encourages more writings of the same kind with your own, and induces more men to spend lives "t to be written; it will be worth all Plutarch’s Lives9 put together.

But being tired of "guring to myself a character of which every feature suits only one man in the world, without giving him the praise of it; I shall end my letter, my dear Dr. Franklin, with a personal application to your proper self.

I am earnestly desirous then, my dear Sir, that you should let the world into the traits of your genuine character, as civil broils may other wise tend to disguise or traduce it. Considering your great age, the caution of your character, and your peculiar style of thinking, it is not likely that any one besides yourself can be suf"ciently master of the facts of your life, or the intentions of your mind.

Besides all this, the im mense revolution of the pres ent period, will necessarily turn our attention towards the author of it; and when virtu- ous princi ples have been pretended in it, it will be highly impor tant to show that such have really induenced; and, as your own character will be the principal one to receive a scrutiny, it is proper (even for its effects upon your vast and rising country, as well as upon Eng land and upon Eu rope), that it should stand respectable and eternal. For the further- ance of human happiness, I have always maintained that it is necessary to prove that man is not even at pres ent a vicious and detestable ani- mal; and still more to prove that good management may greatly amend him; and it is for much the same reason, that I am anxious to see the opinion established, that there are fair characters existing among the individuals of the race; for the moment that all men, without exception, shall be conceived abandoned, good people will cease efforts deemed to be hopeless, and perhaps think of taking their share in the scramble of life, or at least of making it comfortable principally for themselves.

Take then, my dear Sir, this work most speedily into hand: show your- self good as you are good, temperate as you are temperate; and above all things, prove yourself as one who from your infancy have loved jus- tice, liberty, and concord, in a way that has made it natu ral and consis- tent for you to have acted, as we have seen you act in the last seventeen years of your life. Let En glishmen be made not only to re spect, but even to love you. When they think well of individuals in your native country, they will go nearer to thinking well of your country; and when your countrymen see themselves well thought of by En glishmen, they will go nearer to thinking well of Eng land. Extend your views even further; do not stop at those who speak the En glish tongue, but after having set- tled so many points in nature and politics, think of bettering the whole race of men.

9. See 1st n. 7, p. 474.

As I have not read any part of the life in question, but know only the character that lived it, I write somewhat at hazard. I am sure however, that the life, and the treatise I allude to (on the Art of Virtue), will nec- essarily full"l the chief of my expectations; and still more so if you take up the mea sure of suiting these per for mances to the several views above stated. Should they even prove unsuccessful in all that a sanguine admirer of yours hopes from them, you will at least have framed pieces to interest the human mind; and whoever gives a feeling of plea sure that is innocent to man, has added so much to the fair side of a life other- wise too much darkened by anxiety, and too much injured by pain.

In the hope therefore that you will listen to the prayer addressed to you in this letter, I beg to subscribe myself, my dearest Sir, etc., etc.

Signed Benj. Vaughan.

continuation of the account of my life. begun at passy, 1784

It is some time since I receiv’d the above Letters, but I have been too busy till now to think of complying with the Request they contain. It might too be much better done if I were at home among my Papers, which would aid my Memory, and help to ascertain Dates. But my Return being uncertain, and having just now a little Leisure, I will endeavor to recollect and write what I can; if I live to get home, it may there be corrected and improv’d.

Not having any Copy here of what is already written, I know not whether an Account is given of the means I used to establish the Philadelphia public Library, which from a small Beginning is now become so considerable, though I remember to have come down to near the Time of that Transac- tion, 1730. I will therefore begin here, with an Account of it, which may be struck out if found to have been already given.

At the time I establish’d myself in Pennsylvania, there was not a good Bookseller’s Shop in any of the Colonies to the Southward of Boston. In New York and Philadelphia the Printers were indeed Stationers, they sold only Paper, etc., Almanacs, Ballads, and a few common School Books. Those who lov’d Reading were oblig’d to send for their Books from Eng land. The Mem- bers of the Junto had each a few. We had left the Alehouse where we "rst met, and hired a Room to hold our Club in. I propos’d that we should all of us bring our Books to that Room, where they would not only be ready to consult in our Conferences, but become a common Bene"t, each of us being at Liberty to borrow such as he wish’d to read at home. This was accord- ingly done, and for some time contented us. Finding the Advantage of this little Collection, I propos’d to render the Bene"t from Books more common by commencing a Public Subscription Library. I drew a Sketch of the Plan and Rules that would be necessary, and got a skillful Conveyancer Mr. Charles Brockden1 to put the whole in Form of Articles of Agreement to be sub- scribed, by which each Subscriber engag’d to pay a certain Sum down for the "rst Purchase of Books and an annual Contribution for increasing them.

1. Philadelphia’s leading drafter of legal documents (1683–1769). “Conveyancer”: an attorney who specializes in the transfer of real estate and property.

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2. Franklin had three children: William, born c. 1731; Francis, born in 1732; and Sarah, born in 1743. 3. Proverbs 22.29.

So few were the Readers at that time in Philadelphia, and the Majority of us so poor, that I was not able with great Industry to "nd more than Fifty Persons, mostly young Tradesmen, willing to pay down for this purpose Forty shillings each, and Ten Shillings per Annum. On this little Fund we began. The Books were imported. The Library was open one Day in the Week for lending them to the Subscribers, on their Promissory Notes to pay Double the Value if not duly returned. The Institution soon manifested its Utility, was imitated by other Towns and in other Provinces, the Libraries were aug- mented by Donations, Reading became fash ion able, and our People having no public Amusements to divert their Attention from Study became better acquainted with Books, and in a few Years were observ’d by Strangers to be better instructed and more intelligent than People of the same Rank generally are in other Countries.

When we were about to sign the above- mentioned Articles, which were to be binding on us, our Heirs, etc., for "fty Years, Mr. Brockden, the Scrivener, said to us, “You are young Men, but it is scarce probable that any of you will live to see the Expiration of the Term "x’d in this Instrument.” A Number of us, however, are yet living: But the Instrument was after a few Years rendered null by a Charter that incorporated and gave Perpetuity to the Com pany.

The Objections, and Reluctances I met with in Soliciting the Subscrip- tions, made me soon feel the Impropriety of presenting oneself as the Pro- poser of any useful Proj ect that might be suppos’d to raise one’s Reputation in the smallest degree above that of one’s Neighbors, when one has need of their Assistance to accomplish that Proj ect. I therefore put myself as much as I could out of sight, and stated it as a Scheme of a Number of Friends, who had requested me to go about and propose it to such as they thought Lovers of Reading. In this way my Affair went on more smoothly, and I ever after practic’d it on such Occasions; and from my frequent Successes, can heartily recommend it. The pres ent little Sacri"ce of your Vanity will after- wards be amply repaid. If it remains a while uncertain to whom the Merit belongs, someone more vain than yourself will be encourag’d to claim it, and then even Envy will be dispos’d to do you Justice, by plucking those assum’d Feathers, and restoring them to their right Owner.

This Library afforded me the Means of Improvement by constant Study, for which I set apart an Hour or two each Day; and thus repair’d in some Degree the Loss of the Learned Education my Father once intended for me. Reading was the only Amusement I allow’d myself. I spent no time in Taverns, Games, or Frolics of any kind. And my Industry in my Business continu’d as indefatigable as it was necessary. I was in debt for my Printing- House, I had a young Family2 coming on to be educated, and I had to contend with for Business two Printers who were establish’d in the Place before me. My Circumstances however grew daily easier: my original Habits of Frugality continuing. And My Father having among his Instructions to me when a Boy, frequently repeated a Proverb of Solomon, “Seest thou a Man diligent in his Calling, he shall stand before Kings, he shall not stand before mean Men.”3 I from thence consider’d Industry as a Means of obtaining Wealth

4. Louis XV and Louis XVI of France (reigned 1715–74 and 1774–92, respectively), George II and George III of Eng land (reigned 1727–60 and 1760–1820, respectively), and Christian VI of Denmark (reigned 1730–46). 5. More commonly: “He that will thrive must ask leave of his wife.”

6. Small bowl. 7. I.e., porcelain. 8. Silver. 9. Punishment. “Election”: God’s determining who is to be saved and who is to be damned. 1. Small contribution.

and Distinction, which encourag’d me: tho’ I did not think that I should ever literally stand before Kings, which however has since happened; for I have stood before "ve,4 and even had the honor of sitting down with one, the King of Denmark, to Dinner.

We have an En glish Proverb that says,

He that would thrive Must ask his Wife,5

it was lucky for me that I had one as much dispos’d to Industry and Fru- gality as myself. She assisted me cheerfully in my Business, folding and stitching Pamphlets, tending Shop, purchasing old Linen Rags for the Paper- makers, etc., etc. We kept no idle Servants, our Table was plain and simple, our Furniture of the cheapest. For instance my Breakfast was a long time Bread and Milk, (no Tea,) and I ate it out of a two penny earthen Porringer6 with a Pewter Spoon. But mark how Luxury will enter Families, and make a Pro gress, in Spite of Princi ple. Being Call’d one Morning to Breakfast, I found it in a China7 Bowl with a Spoon of Silver. They had been bought for me without my Knowledge by my Wife, and had cost her the enormous Sum of three and twenty Shillings, for which she had no other Excuse or Apology to make, but that she thought her Husband deserv’d a Silver Spoon and China Bowl as well as any of his Neighbors. This was the "rst Appearance of Plate8 and China in our House, which afterwards in a Course of Years as our Wealth increas’d, augmented gradu- ally to several Hundred Pounds in Value.

I had been religiously educated as a Presbyterian, and tho’ some of the Dogmas of that Persuasion, such as the Eternal Decrees of God, Election, Reprobation,9 etc., appear’d to me unintelligible, others doubtful, and I early absented myself from the Public Assemblies of the Sect, Sunday being my Studying- Day, I never was without some religious Princi ples; I never doubted, for instance, the Existence of the Deity, that he made the World, and govern’d it by his Providence; that the most acceptable Ser vice of God was the doing Good to Man; that our Souls are immortal; and that all Crime will be pun- ished and Virtue rewarded either here or hereafter; these I esteem’d the Essentials of every Religion, and being to be found in all the Religions we had in our Country I respected them all, tho’ with dif fer ent degrees of Res pect as I found them more or less mix’d with other Articles which without any Ten- dency to inspire, promote or con"rm Morality, serv’d principally to divide us and make us unfriendly to one another. This Res pect to all, with an Opinion that the worst had some good Effects, induc’d me to avoid all Discourse that might tend to lessen the good Opinion another might have of his own Reli- gion; and as our Province increas’d in People and new Places of worship were continually wanted, and generally erected by voluntary Contribution, my Mite1 for such purpose, what ever might be the Sect, was never refused.

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2. A paraphrase of Philippians 4.8. 3. Only the "rst part of Franklin’s two- part Articles of Belief and Acts of Religion survives.

Tho’ I seldom attended any Public Worship, I had still an Opinion of its Propriety, and of its Utility when rightly conducted, and I regularly paid my annual Subscription for the Support of the only Presbyterian Minister or Meeting we had in Philadelphia. He us’d to visit me sometimes as a Friend, and admonish me to attend his Administrations, and I was now and then prevail’d on to do so, once for "ve Sundays successively. Had he been, in my Opinion, a good Preacher perhaps I might have continued, notwithstand- ing the occasion I had for the Sunday’s Leisure in my Course of Study: But his Discourses were chiedy either polemic Arguments, or Explications of the peculiar Doctrines of our Sect, and were all to me very dry, uninteresting and unedifying, since not a single moral Princi ple was inculcated or enforc’d, their Aim seeming to be rather to make us Presbyterians than good Citizens. At length he took for his Text that Verse of the 4th Chapter of Philippians, Fi nally, Brethren, Whatsoever Things are true, honest, just, pure, lovely, or of good report, if there be any virtue, or any praise, think on these Things;2 and I imagin’d in a Sermon on such a Text, we could not miss of having some Morality: But he con"n’d himself to "ve Points only as meant by the Apos- tle, viz., 1. Keeping holy the Sabbath Day. 2. Being diligent in Reading the Holy Scriptures. 3. Attending duly the Public Worship. 4. Partaking of the Sacrament. 5. Paying a due Res pect to God’s Ministers. These might be all good Things, but as they were not the kind of good Things that I expected from that Text, I despaired of ever meeting with them from any other, was disgusted, and attended his Preaching no more. I had some Years before compos’d a little Liturgy or Form of Prayer for my own private Use, viz., in 1728, entitled, Articles of Belief and Acts of Religion.3 I return’d to the Use of this, and went no more to the public Assemblies. My Conduct might be blameable, but I leave it without attempting farther to excuse it, my pres ent purpose being to relate Facts, and not to make Apologies for them.

It was about this time that I conceiv’d the bold and arduous Proj ect of arriving at moral Perfection. I wish’d to live without committing any Fault at anytime; I would conquer all that either Natu ral Inclination, Custom, or Com pany might lead me into. As I knew, or thought I knew, what was right and wrong, I did not see why I might not always do the one and avoid the other. But I soon found I had undertaken a Task of more Dif"culty than I had imagined: While my Care was employ’d in guarding against one Fault, I was often surpris’d by another. Habit took the Advantage of Inattention. Inclination was sometimes too strong for Reason. I concluded at length, that the mere speculative Conviction that it was our Interest to be completely virtuous, was not suf"cient to prevent our Slipping, and that the contrary Habits must be broken and good Ones acquired and established, before we can have any Dependence on a steady uniform Rectitude of Conduct. For this purpose I therefore contriv’d the following Method.

In the vari ous Enumerations of the moral Virtues I had met with in my Reading, I found the Cata log more or less numerous, as dif fer ent Writers included more or fewer Ideas under the same Name. Temperance, for Example, was by some con"n’d to Eating and Drinking, while by others it

was extended to mean the moderating every other Plea sure, Appetite, Incli- nation or Passion, bodily or mental, even to our Avarice and Ambition. I propos’d to myself, for the sake of Clearness, to use rather more Names with fewer Ideas annex’d to each, than a few Names with more Ideas; and I included after Thirteen Names of Virtues all that at that time occurr’d to me as necessary or desirable, and annex’d to each a short Precept, which fully express’d the Extent I gave to its Meaning.

These Names of Virtues with their Precepts were

1. Temperance. Eat not to Dullness. Drink not to Elevation.

2. Silence. Speak not but what may bene"t others or yourself. Avoiding triding Con-

versation.

3. Order. Let all your Things have their Places. Let each Part of your Business

have its Time.

4. Resolution. Resolve to perform what you ought. Perform without fail what you

resolve.

5. Frugality. Make no Expense but to do good to others or yourself: i.e., Waste nothing.

6. Industry. Lose no Time. Be always employ’d in something useful. Cut off all

unnecessary Actions.

7. Sincerity. Use no hurtful Deceit. Think innocently and justly; and, if you speak;

speak accordingly.

8. Justice. Wrong none, by doing Injuries or omitting the Bene"ts that are your Duty.

9. Moderation. Avoid Extremes. Forbear resenting Injuries so much as you think they

deserve.

10. Cleanliness. Tolerate no Uncleanness in Body, Clothes or Habitation.

11. Tranquility. Be not disturbed at Trides, or Accidents common or unavoidable.

12. Chastity. Rarely use Venery but for Health or Offspring; Never to Dullness, Weak-

ness, or the Injury of your own or another’s Peace or Reputation.

13. Humility. Imitate Jesus and Socrates.

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4. I.e., making these virtues an integral part of his nature. 5. Greek phi los o pher and mathematician (c. 580– c. 500 b.c.e.). Franklin added a note here: “Insert those Lines that direct it in a Note,” and

wished to include verses translated: “Let sleep not close your eyes till you have thrice examined the transactions of the day: where have I strayed, what have I done, what good have I omitted?”

My intention being to acquire the Habitude4 of all these Virtues, I judg’d it would be well not to distract my Attention by attempting the whole at once, but to "x it on one of them at a time, and when I should be Master of that, then to proceed to another, and so on till I should have gone thro’ the thirteen. And as the previous Acquisition of some might facilitate the Acquisition of certain others, I arrang’d them with that View as they stand above. Temper- ance "rst, as it tends to procure that Coolness and Clearness of Head, which is so necessary where constant Vigilance was to be kept up, and Guard main- tained, against the unremitting Attraction of ancient Habits, and the Force of perpetual Temptations. This being acquir’d and establish’d, Silence would be more easy, and my Desire being to gain Knowledge at the same time that I improv’d in Virtue, and considering that in Conversation it was obtain’d rather by the Use of the Ears than of the Tongue, and therefore wishing to break a Habit I was getting into of Prattling, Punning and Joking, which only made me acceptable to triding Com pany, I gave Silence the second Place. This, and the next, Order, I expected would allow me more Time for attending to my Proj ect and my studies; Resolution once become habitual, would keep me "rm in my Endeavors to obtain all the subsequent Virtues; Frugality and Industry, by freeing me from my remaining Debt, and producing Afduence and In de pen dence would make more easy the Practice of Sincerity and Jus- tice, etc., etc. Conceiving then that agreeable to the Advice of Pythagoras5 in his Golden Verses, daily Examination would be necessary, I contriv’d the fol- lowing Method for conducting that Examination.

I made a little Book in which I allotted a Page for each of the Virtues. I rul’d each Page with red Ink so as to have seven Columns, one for each Day of the Week, marking each Column with a Letter for the Day. I cross’d these Columns with thirteen red Lines, marking the Beginning of each Line with the "rst Letter of one of the Virtues, on which Line and in its proper Column I might mark by a little black Spot every Fault I found upon Examination, to have been committed respecting that Virtue upon that Day.

I determined to give a Week’s strict Attention to each of the Virtues suc- cessively. Thus in the "rst Week my great Guard was to avoid every the least Offence against Temperance, leaving the other Virtues to their ordinary Chance, only marking every Eve ning the Faults of the Day. Thus if in the "rst Week I could keep my "rst Line marked T clear of Spots, I suppos’d the Habit of that Virtue so much strengthen’d and its opposite weaken’d, that I might venture extending my Attention to include the next, and for the following Week keep both Lines clear of Spots. Proceeding thus to the last, I could go thro’ a Course complete in Thirteen Weeks, and four Courses in a Year. And like him who having a Garden to weed, does not attempt to eradicate all the bad Herbs at once, which would exceed his Reach and his Strength, but works on one of the Beds at a time, and having accomplish’d the "rst pro- ceeds to a second; so I should have, (I hoped) the encouraging Plea sure of seeing on my Pages the Pro gress I made in Virtue, by clearing succes- sively my Lines of their Spots, till in the End by a Number of Courses, I

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6. Cato, a Tragedy 5.1.15–18, by the En glish writer Joseph Addison (1672–1719). Franklin also used these lines as an epigraph for his Arti- cles of Belief and Acts of Religion. 7. From Tusculan Disputations 5.2.5, by the Roman phi los o pher and orator Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 b.c.e.). Several lines are omitted

after vitiorum: Oh, philosophy, guide of life: Oh, searcher out of virtues and expeller of vices! . . . One day lived well and according to thy precepts is to be preferred to an eternity of sin (Latin). 8. The Seasons, “Winter,” lines 218–23, by the Scottish poet James Thomson (1700–1748).

should be happy in viewing a clean Book after a thirteen Weeks’ daily Examination.

This my little Book had for its Motto these Lines from Addison’s Cato,

Here will I hold: If there is a Pow’r above us, (And that there is, all Nature cries aloud Thro’ all her Works) he must delight in Virtue, And that which he delights in must be happy.6

Another from Cicero.

O Vitæ Philosophia Dux! O Virtutum indagatrix, expultrixque vitiorum! Unus dies bene, et ex præceptis tuis actus, peccanti immortalitati est anteponendus.7

Another from the Proverbs of Solomon speaking of Wisdom or Virtue;

Length of Days is in her right hand, and in her Left Hand Riches and Honors; Her Ways are Ways of Pleasantness, and all her Paths are Peace.

III, 16, 17

And conceiving God to be the Fountain of Wisdom, I thought it right and necessary to solicit his Assistance for obtaining it; to this End I form’d the following little Prayer, which was pre"x’d to my Tables of Examination, for daily Use.

O Power ful Goodness! bountiful Father! merciful Guide! Increase in me that Wisdom which discovers my truest Interests; Strengthen my Resolu- tions to perform what that Wisdom dictates. Accept my kind Of#ces to thy other Children, as the only Return in my Power for thy continual Favors to me.

I us’d also sometimes a little Prayer which I took from Thomson’s Poems, viz.,

Father of Light and Life, thou Good supreme, O teach me what is good, teach me thy self! Save me from Folly, Vanity and Vice, From every low Pursuit, and #ll my Soul With Knowledge, conscious Peace, and Virtue pure, Sacred, substantial, neverfading Bliss!8

The Precept of Order requiring that every Part of my Business should have its allotted Time, one Page in my little Book contain’d the following Scheme of Employment for the Twenty- four Hours of a natu ral Day.

I enter’d upon the Execution of this Plan for Self- examination, and continu’d it with occasional Intermissions for some time. I was surpris’d to "nd myself so much fuller of Faults than I had imagined, but I had the Satisfaction of see- ing them diminish. To avoid the Trou ble of renewing now and then my little

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9. I.e., the models in the printed book.

Book, which by scraping out the Marks on the Paper of old Faults to make room for new Ones in a new Course, became full of Holes: I transferr’d my Tables and Precepts to the Ivory Leaves of a Memorandum Book, on which the Lines were drawn with red Ink that made a durable Stain, and on those Lines I mark’d my Faults with a black Lead Pencil, which Marks I could easily wipe out with a wet Sponge. After a while I went thro’ one Course only in a Year, and afterwards only one in several Years; till at length I omitted them entirely, being employ’d in Voyages and Business abroad with a Multiplicity of Affairs, that interfered. But I always carried my little Book with me.

My Scheme of Order, gave me the most Trou ble, and I found, that tho’ it might be practicable where a Man’s Business was such as to leave him the Disposition of his Time, that of a Journeyman Printer for instance, it was not pos si ble to be exactly observ’d by a Master, who must mix with the World, and often receive People of Business at their own Hours. Order too, with regard to Places for Things, Papers, etc., I found extremely dif"cult to acquire. I had not been early accustomed to it, and having an exceeding good Memory, I was not so sensible of the Incon ve nience attending Want of Method. This Article therefore cost me so much painful Attention and my Faults in it vex’d me so much, and I made so little Pro gress in Amendment, and had such frequent Relapses, that I was almost ready to give up the Attempt, and content myself with a faulty Character in that re spect. Like the Man who in buying an Ax of a Smith my Neighbor, desired to have the whole of its Surface as bright as the Edge; the Smith consented to grind it bright for him if he would turn the Wheel. He turn’d while the Smith press’d the broad Face of the Ax hard and heavi ly on the Stone, which made the Turning of it very fatiguing. The Man came every now and then from the Wheel to see how the Work went on; and at length would take his Ax as it was without farther Grinding. No, says the Smith, Turn on, turn on; we shall have it bright by and by; as yet ’tis only speckled. Yes, says the Man; but— I think I like a speckled Ax best.— And I believe this may have been the Case with many who having for want of some such Means as I employ’d found the Dif"culty of obtaining good, and breaking bad Habits, in other Points of Vice and Virtue, have given up the Strug gle, and concluded that a speck- led Ax was best. For something that pretended to be Reason was every now and then suggesting to me, that such extreme Nicety as I exacted of myself might be a kind of Foppery in Morals, which if it were known would make me ridicu lous; that a perfect Character might be attended with the Incon- ve nience of being envied and hated; and that a benevolent Man should allow a few Faults in himself, to keep his Friends in Countenance.

In Truth I found myself incorrigible with re spect to Order; and now I am grown old, and my Memory bad, I feel very sensibly the want of it. But on the whole, tho’ I never arrived at the Perfection I had been so ambitious of obtaining, but fell far short of it, yet I was by the Endeavor made a better and a happier Man than I other wise should have been, if I had not attempted it; As those who aim at perfect Writing by imitating the engraved Copies,9 tho’ they never reach the wish’d for Excellence of those Copies, their Hand is mended by the Endeavor, and is tolerable while it continues fair and legible.

1. Observed. 2. “If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food, And one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and "lled: not-

withstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body; what doth it pro"t?”

And it may be well my Posterity should be informed, that to this little Arti- "ce, with the Blessing of God, their Ancestor ow’d the constant Felicity of his Life down to his 79th Year in which this is written. What Reverses may attend the Remainder is in the Hand of Providence: But if they arrive, the Redection on past Happiness enjoy’d ought to help his Bearing them with more Resignation. To Temperance he ascribes his long- continu’d Health, and what is still left to him of a good Constitution. To Industry and Frugality the early Easiness of his Circumstances, and Acquisition of his Fortune, with all that Knowledge which enabled him to be an useful Citizen, and obtain’d for him some Degree of Reputation among the Learned. To Sincerity and Justice the Con"dence of his Country, and the honorable Employs it conferr’d upon him. And to the joint Induence of the whole Mass of the Virtues, even in their imperfect State he was able to acquire them, all that Evenness of Temper, and that Cheerfulness in Conversation which makes his Com pany still sought for, and agreeable even to his younger Acquaintance. I hope there- fore that some of my Descendants may follow the Example and reap the Bene"t.

It will be remark’d1 that, tho’ my Scheme was not wholly without Reli- gion there was in it no Mark of any of the distinguishing Tenets of any par- tic u lar Sect. I had purposely avoided them; for being fully persuaded of the Utility and Excellency of my Method, and that it might be ser viceable to People in all Religions, and intending some time or other to publish it, I would not have anything in it that should prejudice anyone of any Sect against it. I purposed writing a little Comment on each Virtue, in which I would have shown the Advantages of possessing it, and the Mischiefs attend- ing its opposite Vice; and I should have called my Book the Art of Virtue, because it would have shown the Means and Manner of obtaining Virtue; which would have distinguish’d it from the mere Exhortation to be good, that does not instruct and indicate the Means; but is like the Apostle’s Man of verbal Charity, who only, without showing to the Naked and the Hungry how or where they might get Clothes or Victuals, exhorted them to be fed and clothed. James II, 15, 16.2

But it so happened that my Intention of writing and publishing this Comment was never ful"lled. I did indeed, from time to time put down short Hints of the Sentiments, Reasonings, etc., to be made use of in it; some of which I have still by me: But the necessary close Attention to private Busi- ness in the earlier part of Life, and public Business since, have occasioned my postponing it. For it being connected in my Mind with a great and extensive Proj ect that required the whole Man to execute, and which an unforeseen Succession of Employs prevented my attending to, it has hitherto remain’d un"nish’d.

In this Piece it was my Design to explain and enforce this Doctrine, that vicious Actions are not hurtful because they are forbidden, but forbidden because they are hurtful, the Nature of Man alone consider’d: That it was therefore every one’s Interest to be virtuous, who wish’d to be happy even in

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3. Suggested.

this World. And I should from this Circumstance ( there being always in the World a Number of rich Merchants, Nobility, States and Princes, who have need of honest Instruments for the Management of their Affairs, and such being so rare) have endeavored to convince young Persons, that no Qualities were so likely to make a poor Man’s Fortune as those of Probity and Integrity.

My List of Virtues contain’d at "rst but twelve: But a Quaker Friend hav- ing kindly inform’d me that I was generally thought proud; that my Pride show’d itself frequently in Conversation; that I was not content with being in the right when discussing any Point, but was overbearing and rather insolent; of which he convinc’d me by mentioning several Instances; I determined endeavoring to cure myself if I could of this Vice or Folly among the rest, and I added Humility to my List, giving an extensive Meaning to the Word. I cannot boast of much Success in acquiring the Real ity of this Virtue; but I had a good deal with regard to the Appearance of it. I made it a Rule to forbear all direct Contradiction to the Sentiments of others, and all positive Assertion of my own. I even forbid myself, agreeable to the old Laws of our Junto, the Use of every Word or Expression in the Language that imported3 a "x’d Opinion; such as certainly, undoubtedly, etc., and I adopted instead of them, I conceive, I apprehend, or I imagine a thing to be so or so, or it so appears to me at pres ent. When another asserted some- thing that I thought an Error, I denied myself the Plea sure of contradicting him abruptly, and of showing immediately some Absurdity in his Proposi- tion; and in answering I began by observing that in certain Cases or Cir- cumstances his Opinion would be right, but that in the pres ent case there appear’d or seem’d to me some Difference, etc., I soon found the Advantage of this Change in my Manners. The Conversations I engag’d in went on more pleasantly. The modest way in which I propos’d my Opinions, procur’d them a readier Reception and less Contradiction; I had less Morti"cation when I was found to be in the wrong, and I more easily prevail’d with others to give up their Mistakes and join with me when I happen’d to be in the right. And this Mode, which I at "rst put on, with some vio lence to natu ral Inclination, became at length so easy and so habitual to me, that perhaps for these Fifty Years past no one has ever heard a dogmatical Expression escape me. And to this Habit ( after my Character of Integrity) I think it principally owing, that I had early so much Weight with my Fellow Citi- zens, when I proposed new Institutions, or Alterations in the old; and so much Induence in public Councils when I became a Member. For I was but a bad Speaker, never eloquent, subject to much Hesitation in my choice of Words, hardly correct in Language, and yet I generally carried my Points.

In real ity there is perhaps no one of our natu ral Passions so hard to subdue as Pride. Disguise it, strug gle with it, beat it down, stide it, mortify it as much as one pleases, it is still alive, and will every now and then peep out and show itself. You will see it perhaps often in this History. For even if I could conceive that I had completely overcome it, I should prob ably be proud of my Humility.

Thus far written at Passy, 1784.

[Part Three]1

I am now about to write at home, August 1788, but cannot have the help expected from my Papers, many of them being lost in the War. I have how- ever found the following.

Having mentioned a great and extensive Proj ect which I had conceiv’d, it seems proper that some Account should be here given of that Proj ect and its Object. Its "rst Rise in my Mind appears in the following little Paper, accidentally preserv’d, viz.,

Observations on my Reading History in Library, May 9, 1731.

“That the great Affairs of the World, the Wars, Revolutions, etc., are car- ried on and effected by Parties.

“That the View of these Parties is their pres ent general Interest, or what they take to be such.

“That the dif fer ent Views of these dif fer ent Parties, occasion all Confusion. “That while a Party is carry ing on a general Design, each Man has his

par tic u lar private Interest in View. “That as soon as a Party has gain’d its general Point, each Member becomes

intent upon his par tic u lar Interest, which thwarting others, breaks that Party into Divisions, and occasions more Confusion.

“That few in Public Affairs act from a mere View of the Good of their Country, what ever they may pretend; and tho’ their Actings bring real Good to their Country, yet Men primarily consider’d that their own and their Country’s Interest was united, and did not act from a Princi ple of Benevolence.

“That fewer still in public Affairs act with a View to the Good of Mankind. “ There seems to me at pres ent to be great Occasion for raising an united

Party for Virtue, by forming the Virtuous and good Men of all Nations into a regular Body, to be govern’d by suitable good and wise Rules, which good and wise Men may prob ably be more unan i mous in their Obedience to, than common People are to common Laws.

“I at pres ent think, that whoever attempts this aright, and is well quali"ed, cannot fail of pleasing God, and of meeting with Success. B. F.”

Revolving this Proj ect in my Mind, as to be undertaken hereafter when my Circumstances should afford me the necessary Leisure, I put down from time to time on Pieces of Paper such Thoughts as occur’d to me respecting it. Most of these are lost; but I "nd one purporting to be the Substance of an intended Creed, containing as I thought the Essentials of every known Religion, and being free of every thing that might shock the Professors of any Religion. It is express’d in these Words, viz.,

“That there is one God who made all things. “That he governs the World by his Providence. “That he ought to be worshiped by Adoration, Prayer and Thanksgiving.

1. Franklin wrote the third part of his autobiography in Philadelphia between August 1788 and the end of May 1789.

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2. Selling. Poor Richard’s Almanac was "rst published on December 19, 1732. Richard Saun- ders was a London almanac maker of the seven-

teenth century. Franklin may also have had in mind a London almanac published from 1661 to 1776 called Poor Robin.

“But that the most acceptable Ser vice of God is doing Good to Man. “That the Soul is immortal. “And that God will certainly reward Virtue and punish Vice either here

or hereafter.” My Ideas at that time were, that the Sect should be begun and spread at

"rst among young and single Men only; that each Person to be initiated should not only declare his Assent to such Creed, but should have exercis’d himself with the Thirteen Weeks’ Examination and Practice of the Virtues as in the before- mention’d Model; that the Existance of such a Society should be kept a Secret till it was become considerable, to prevent Solicitations for the Admission of improper Persons; but that the Members should each of them search among his Acquaintance for ingenuous well- disposed Youths, to whom with prudent Caution the Scheme should be gradually communi- cated: That the Members should engage to afford their Advice, Assistance and Support to each other in promoting one another’s Interest, Business and Advancement in Life: That for Distinction we should be call’d the Society of the Free and Easy; Free, as being by the general Practice and Habit of the Virtues, free from the Dominion of Vice, and particularly by the Practice of Industry and Frugality, free from Debt, which exposes a Man to Con"nement and a Species of Slavery to his Creditors. This is as much as I can now rec- ollect of the Proj ect, except that I communicated it in part to two young Men, who adopted it with some Enthusiasm. But my then narrow Circum- stances, and the Necessity I was under of sticking close to my Business, occasion’d my Postponing the farther Prosecution of it at that time, and my multifarious Occupations public and private induc’d me to continue post- poning, so that it has been omitted till I have no longer Strength or Activity left suf"cient for such an Enterprise: Tho’ I am still of Opinion that it was a practicable Scheme, and might have been very useful, by forming a great Number of good Citizens: And I was not discourag’d by the seeming Mag- nitude of the Undertaking, as I have always thought that one Man of tolerable Abilities may work great Changes, and accomplish great Affairs among Mankind, if he "rst forms a good Plan, and, cutting off all Amusements or other Employments that would divert his Attention, makes the Execution of that same Plan his sole Study and Business.

In 1732 I "rst published my Almanac, under the Name of Richard Saun- ders; it was continu’d by me about 25 Years, commonly call’d Poor Richard’s Almanac. I endeavor’d to make it both entertaining and useful, and it accord- ingly came to be in such Demand that I reap’d considerable Pro"t from it, vending2 annually near ten Thousand. And observing that it was generally read, scarce any Neighborhood in the Province being without it, I consider’d it as a proper Vehicle for conveying Instruction among the common People, who bought scarce any other Books. I therefore "lled all the little Spaces that occur’d between the Remarkable Days in the Calendar, with Prover- bial Sentences, chiedy such as inculcated Industry and Frugality, as the Means of procuring Wealth and thereby securing Virtue, it being more dif- "cult for a Man in Want to act always honestly, as (to use here one of those

3. This is the famous preface to the twenty- "fth anniversary edition, called Father Abraham’s Speech or The Way to Wealth (see p. 442). 4. A sheet of paper, usually large, with printing

on only one side. 5. See n. 1, p. 475. 6. I.e., in the Pennsylvania Gazette, February 11 and 18, 1735.

Proverbs) it is hard for an empty Sack to stand upright. These Proverbs, which contained the Wisdom of many Ages and Nations, I assembled and form’d into a connected Discourse pre"x’d to the Almanac of 1757, as the Harangue of a wise old Man to the People attending an Auction.3 The bringing all these scatter’d Counsels thus into a Focus, enabled them to make greater Impres- sion. The Piece being universally approved was copied in all the Newspa- pers of the Continent, reprinted in Britain on a Broadside4 to be stuck up in Houses, two Translations were made of it in French, and great Numbers bought by the Clergy and Gentry to distribute gratis among their poor Parish- ioners and Tenants. In Pennsylvania, as it discouraged useless Expense in foreign Superduities, some thought it had its share of Induence in produc- ing that growing Plenty of Money which was observable for several Years after its Publication.

I consider’d my Newspaper also as another Means of communicating Instruction, and in that View frequently reprinted in it Extracts from the Spectator5 and other moral Writers, and sometimes publish’d little Pieces of my own which had been "rst compos’d for Reading in our Junto. Of these are a Socratic Dialogue tending to prove, that, what ever might be his Parts and Abilities, a vicious Man could not properly be called a Man of Sense. And a Discourse on Self- denial, showing that Virtue was not Secure, till its Practice became a Habitude, and was free from the Opposition of contrary Inclinations. These may be found in the Papers about the beginning of 1735.6 In the Conduct of my Newspaper I carefully excluded all Libeling and Per- sonal Abuse, which is of late Years become so disgraceful to our Country. Whenever I was solicited to insert anything of that kind, and the Writers pleaded as they generally did, the Liberty of the Press, and that a News- paper was like a Stage Coach in which any one who would pay had a Right to a Place, my Answer was, that I would print the Piece separately if desired, and the Author might have as many Copies as he pleased to distribute him- self, but that I would not take upon me to spread his Detraction, and that having contracted with my Subscribers to furnish them with what might be either useful or entertaining, I could not "ll their Papers with private Alter- cation in which they had no Concern without doing them manifest Injus- tice. Now many of our Printers make no scruple of gratifying the Malice of Individuals by false Accusations of the fairest Characters among ourselves, augmenting Animosity even to the producing of Duels, and are moreover so indiscrete as to print scurrilous Redections on the Government of neigh- boring States, and even on the Conduct of our best national Allies, which may be attended with the most pernicious Consequences. These Things I mention as a Caution to young Printers, and that they may be encouraged not to pollute their Presses and disgrace their Profession by such infamous Practices, but refuse steadily; as they may see by my Example, that such a Course of Conduct will not on the whole be injurious to their Interests.

In 1733, I sent one of my Journeymen to Charleston South Carolina where a Printer was wanting. I furnish’d him with a Press and Letters, on an Agree-

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7. In bookkeeping. 8. Samuel Hemphill, brought to North Amer i ca as assistant minister to the only regular Presby- terian minister in Philadelphia. 9. The governing body of the Presbyterian Church.

“Arraign’d him of”: charged him with. 1. A group of supporters. 2. James Foster (1697–1735), well- known London Baptist preacher.

ment of Partnership, by which I was to receive One Third of the Pro"ts of the Business, paying One Third of the Expense. He was a Man of Learning and honest, but ignorant in Matters of Account;7 and tho’ he sometimes made me Remittances, I could get no Account from him, nor any satisfactory State of our Partnership while he lived. On his Decease, the Business was contin- ued by his Widow, who being born and bred in Holland, where as I have been inform’d the Knowledge of Accounts makes a Part of Female Education, she not only sent me as clear a State as she could "nd of the Transactions past, but continu’d to account with the greatest Regularity and Exactitude every Quarter afterwards; and manag’d the Business with such Success that she not only brought up reputably a Family of Children, but at the Expiration of the Term was able to purchase of me the Printing- House and establish her Son in it. I mention this affair chiedy for the Sake of recommending that Branch of Education for our young Females, as likely to be of more Use to them and their Children in Case of Widowhood than either Music or Danc- ing, by preserving them from Losses by Imposition of crafty Men, and enabling them to continue perhaps a pro"table mercantile House with establish’d Cor- respondence till a Son is grown up "t to undertake and go on with it, to the lasting Advantage and enriching of the Family.

About the Year 1734, there arrived among us from Ireland, a young Pres- byterian Preacher named Hemphill,8 who delivered with a good Voice, and apparently extempore, most excellent Discourses, which drew together con- siderable Numbers of dif fer ent Persuasions, who join’d in admiring them. Among the rest I became one of his constant Hearers, his Sermons pleasing me as they had little of the dogmatical kind, but inculcated strongly the Prac- tice of Virtue, or what in the religious Style are called Good Works. Those however, of our Congregation, who considered themselves as orthodox Pres- byterians, disapprov’d his Doctrine, and were join’d by most of the old Clergy, who arraign’d him of Heterodoxy before the Synod,9 in order to have him silenc’d. I became his zealous Partisan, and contributed all I could to raise a Party1 in his Favor; and we combated for him a while with some Hopes of Success. There was much Scribbling pro and con upon the Occasion; and "nding that tho’ an elegant Preacher he was but a poor Writer, I lent him my Pen and wrote for him two or three Pamphlets, and one Piece in the Gazette of April 1735. Those Pamphlets, as is generally the Case with controversial Writings, tho’ eagerly read at the time, were soon out of Vogue, and I ques- tion whether a single Copy of them now exists.

During the Contest an unlucky Occurrence hurt his Cause exceedingly. One of our Adversaries having heard him preach a Sermon that was much admired, thought he had somewhere read that Sermon before, or at least a part of it. On Search he found that Part quoted at length in one of the Brit- ish Reviews, from a Discourse of Dr. Foster’s.2 This Detection gave many of our Party Disgust, who accordingly abandoned his Cause, and occasion’d our more speedy Discom"ture in the Synod. I stuck by him, however, as I rather approv’d his giving us good Sermons compos’d by others, than bad

3. I.e., a copy of the New Testament in Latin.

ones of his own Manufacture; tho’ the latter was the Practice of our com- mon Teachers. He afterwards acknowledg’d to me that none of those he preach’d were his own; adding that his Memory was such as enabled him to retain and repeat any Sermon after one Reading only. On our Defeat he left us, in search elsewhere of better Fortune, and I quitted the Congregation, never joining it after, tho’ I continu’d many Years my Subscription for the Support of its Ministers.

I had begun in 1733 to study Languages. I soon made myself so much a Master of the French as to be able to read the Books with Ease. I then undertook the Italian. An Acquaintance who was also learning it, us’d often to tempt me to play Chess with him. Finding this took up too much of the Time I had to spare for Study, I at length refus’d to play anymore, unless on this Condition, that the Victor in every Game, should have a Right to impose a Task, either in Parts of the Grammar to be got by heart, or in Translation, etc., which Tasks the Vanquish’d was to perform upon Honor before our next Meeting. As we play’d pretty equally we thus beat one another into that Language. I afterwards with a little Pains- taking acquir’d as much of the Spanish as to read their Books also.

I have already mention’d that I had only one Year’s Instruction in a Latin School, and that when very young, after which I neglected that Language entirely.— But when I had attained an Acquaintance with the French, Ital- ian and Spanish, I was surpris’d to "nd, on looking over a Latin Testament,3 that I understood so much more of that Language than I had imagined; which encouraged me to apply myself again to the Study of it, and I met with the more Success, as those preceding Languages had greatly smooth’d my Way. From these Circumstances I have thought, that there is some Incon- sistency in our common Mode of Teaching Languages. We are told that it is proper to begin "rst with the Latin, and having acquir’d that, it will be more easy to attain those modern languages which are deriv’d from it; and yet we do not begin with the Greek in order more easily to acquire the Latin. It is true, that if you can clamber and get to the Top of a Staircase without using the Steps, you will more easily gain them in descending: but certainly if you begin with the lowest you will with more Ease ascend to the Top. And I would therefore offer it to the Consideration of those who superintend the Educating of our Youth, whether, since many of those who begin with the Latin, quit the same after spending some Years, without having made any great Pro"ciency, and what they have learned becomes almost useless, so that their time has been lost, it would not have been better to have begun them with the French, proceeding to the Italian, etc., for tho’ after spend- ing the same time they should quit the Study of Languages, and never arrive at the Latin, they would however have acquir’d another Tongue or two that being in modern Use might be ser viceable to them in common Life.

After ten Years’ Absence from Boston, and having become more easy in my Circumstances, I made a Journey thither to visit my Relations, which I could not sooner well afford. In returning I call’d at Newport, to see my Brother then settled there with his Printing- House. Our former Differences were forgotten, and our Meeting was very cordial and affectionate. He was fast declining in his Health, and requested of me that in case of his Death

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4. Franklin’s son Francis died of smallpox because he was not inoculated against it due to

an intestinal disorder. 5. I.e., questions to be discussed.

which he apprehended not far distant, I would take home his Son, then but 10 Years of Age, and bring him up to the Printing Business. This I accord- ingly perform’d, sending him a few Years to School before I took him into the Of"ce. His Mother carried on the Business till he was grown up, when I assisted him with an Assortment of new Types, those of his Father being in a Manner worn out.— Thus it was that I made my Brother ample Amends for the Ser vice I had depriv’d him of by leaving him so early.

In 1736 I lost one of my Sons, a "ne Boy of 4 Years old, by the Smallpox taken in the common way. I long regretted bitterly and still regret that I had not given it to him by Inoculation.4 This I mention for the Sake of Parents, who omit that Operation on the Supposition that they should never forgive themselves if a Child died under it; my Example showing that the Regret may be the same either way, and that therefore the safer should be chosen.

Our Club, the Junto, was found so useful, and afforded such Satisfaction to the Members, that several were desirous of introducing their Friends, which could not well be done without exceeding what we had settled as a con ve nient Number, viz., Twelve. We had from the Beginning made it a Rule to keep our Institution a Secret, which was pretty well observ’d. The Inten- tion was, to avoid Applications of improper Persons for Admittance, some of whom perhaps we might "nd it dif"cult to refuse. I was one of those who were against any Addition to our Number, but instead of it made in Writing a Proposal, that every Member separately should endeavor to form a subordi- nate Club, with the same Rules respecting Queries,5 etc., and without informing them of the Connection with the Junto. The Advantages propos’d were the Improvement of so many more young Citizens by the Use of our Institutions; Our better Acquaintance with the general Sentiments of the Inhabitants on any Occasion, as the Junto- Member might propose what Que- ries we should desire, and was to report to Junto what pass’d in his separate Club; the Promotion of our par tic u lar Interests in Business by more extensive Recommendations; and the Increase of our Induence in public Affairs and our Power of doing Good by spreading thro’ the several Clubs the Sentiments of the Junto. The Proj ect was approv’d, and every Member undertook to form his Club: but they did not all succeed. Five or six only were completed, which were call’d by dif fer ent Names, as the Vine, the Union, the Band, etc. They were useful to themselves, and afforded us a good deal of Amusement, Infor- mation, and Instruction, besides answering in some considerable Degree our Views of induencing the public Opinion on par tic u lar Occasions, of which I shall give some Instances in course of time as they happened.

My "rst Promotion was my being chosen in 1736 Clerk of the General Assembly. The Choice was made that Year without Opposition, but the Year following when I was again propos’d (the Choice, like that of the Members being annual) a new Member made a long Speech against me in order to favor some other Candidate. I was however chosen; which was the more agreeable to me, as besides the Pay for immediate Ser vice as Clerk, the Place gave me a better Opportunity of keeping up an Interest among the Mem- bers, which secur’d to me the Business of Printing the Votes, Laws, Paper

6. Alexander Spotswood (1676–1740), En glish military leader, served as lieutenant governor of Virginia from 1710 to 1722 and deputy postmas- ter general for North Amer i ca from 1730 to 1739. 7. See n. 1, p. 512. During his last nine years as

postmaster Andrew Bradford did not submit accounts. 8. I.e., the night watch, or patrol. 9. Accompany. “House keepers”: heads of house- holds, homeowners. “Warn’d”: ordered, instructed.

Money, and other occasional Jobs for the Public, that on the whole were very pro"table. I therefore did not like the Opposition of this new Member, who was a Gentleman of Fortune, and Education, with Talents that were likely to give him in time great Induence in the House, which indeed afterwards happened. I did not however aim at gaining his Favor by paying any servile Res pect to him, but after some time took this other Method. Having heard that he had in his Library a certain very scarce and curious Book, I wrote a Note to him expressing my Desire of perusing that Book, and requesting he would do me the Favor of lending it to me for a few Days. He sent it immediately; and I return’d it in about a Week, with another Note express- ing strongly my Sense of the Favor. When we next met in the House he spoke to me, (which he had never done before) and with great Civility. And he ever afterwards manifested a Readiness to serve me on all Occasions, so that we became great Friends, and our Friendship continu’d to his Death. This is another Instance of the Truth of an old Maxim I had learned, which says, He that has once done you a Kindness will be more ready to do you another, than he whom you yourself have obliged. And it shows how much more pro"table it is prudently to remove, than to resent, return and continue inimical Proceedings.

In 1737, Col o nel Spotswood, late Governor of Virginia, and then Post- master General,6 being dissatis"ed with the Conduct of his Deputy at Philadelphia, respecting some Negligence in rendering, and Inexactitude of his Accounts, took from him the Commission and offered it to me.7 I accepted it readily, and found it of great Advantage; for tho’ the Salary was small, it facilitated the Correspondence that improv’d my Newspaper, increas’d the Number demanded, as well as the Advertisements to be inserted, so that it came to afford me a very considerable Income. My old Competi- tor’s Newspaper declin’d proportionably, and I was satis"ed without retal- iating his Refusal, while Postmaster, to permit my Papers being carried by the Riders. Thus He suffer’d greatly from his Neglect in due Accounting; and I mention it as a Lesson to those young Men who may be employ’d in managing Affairs for others that they should always render Accounts and make Remittances with great Clearness and Punctuality. The Character of observing Such a Conduct is the most power ful of all Recommendations to new Employments and Increase of Business.

I began now to turn my Thoughts a little to public Affairs, beginning however with small Matters. The City Watch8 was one of the "rst Things that I conceiv’d to want Regulation. It was managed by the Constables of the respective Wards in Turn. The Constable warn’d a Number of House- keepers to attend9 him for the Night. Those who chose never to attend paid him Six Shillings a Year to be excus’d, which was suppos’d to be for hiring Substitutes; but was in Real ity much more than was necessary for that purpose, and made the Constableship a Place of Pro"t. And the Constable for a little Drink often got such Ragamuf"ns about him as a Watch, that

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1. Actually, seventeen years later. 2. In the Pennsylvania Gazette, February 4, 1735.

3. The Union Fire Com pany articles of incorpo- ration were signed in December 1736.

reputable House keepers did not choose to mix with. Walking the Rounds too was often neglected, and most of the Night spent in Tippling. I thereupon wrote a Paper to be read in Junto, representing these Irregularities, but insisting more particularly on the In equality of this Six Shilling Tax of the Constables, respecting the Circumstances of those who paid it, since a poor Widow House keeper, all whose Property to be guarded by the Watch did not perhaps exceed the Value of Fifty Pounds, paid as much as the wealthiest Merchant who had Thousands of Pounds worth of Goods in his Stores. On the whole I proposed as a more effectual Watch, the Hiring of proper Men to serve constantly in that Business; and as a more equitable Way of supporting the Charge, the levying a Tax that should be proportion’d to Property. This Idea being approv’d by the Junto, was communicated to the other Clubs, but as arising in each of them. And tho’ the Plan was not immediately carried into Execution, yet by preparing the Minds of People for the Change, it paved the Way for the Law obtain’d a few Years after,1 when the Members of our Clubs were grown into more Induence.

About this time I wrote a Paper, ("rst to be read in Junto but it was after- wards publish’d)2 on the dif fer ent Accidents and Carelessnesses by which Houses were set on "re, with Cautions against them, and Means proposed of avoiding them. This was much spoken of as a useful Piece, and gave rise to a Proj ect, which soon followed it, of forming a Com pany for the more ready Extinguishing of Fires, and mutual Assistance in Removing and Secur- ing of Goods when in Danger.3 Associates in this Scheme were presently found amounting to Thirty. Our Articles of Agreement oblig’d every Mem- ber to keep always in good Order and "t for Use, a certain Number of Leather Buckets, with strong Bags and Baskets (for packing and transporting of Goods), which were to be brought to every Fire; and we agreed to meet once a Month and spend a social Eve ning together, in discoursing, and commu- nicating such Ideas as occurr’d to us upon the Subject of Fires as might be useful in our Conduct on such Occasions. The Utility of this Institution soon appear’d, and many more desiring to be admitted than we thought con ve- nient for one Com pany, they were advised to form another; which was accordingly done. And this went on, one new Com pany being formed after another, till they became so numerous as to include most of the Inhabitants who were Men of Property; and now at the time of my Writing this, tho’ upwards of Fifty Years since its Establishment, that which I "rst formed, called the Union Fire Com pany, still subsists and dourishes, tho’ the "rst Members are all deceas’d but myself and one who is older by a Year than I am. The small Fines that have been paid by Members for Absence at the Monthly Meetings, have been applied to the Purchase of Fire Engines, Lad- ders, Firehooks, and other useful Implements for each Com pany, so that I question whether there is a City in the World better provided with the Means of putting a Stop to beginning Condagrations; and in fact since these Insti- tutions, the City has never lost by Fire more than one or two Houses at a time, and the Flames have often been extinguish’d before the House in which they began has been half- consumed.

4. George White"eld (1714–1770), popu lar Methodist preacher whose visit to the colonies escalated the spiritual revival known as the Great Awakening (1730s–40s). 5. In London. 6. The building was called New Building and

was later used by the University of Pennsylvania, then called the Acad emy and College of Phila- delphia. “Mufti”: a judge who interprets Muslim religious law. 7. Bankrupt.

In 1739 arriv’d among us from Eng land the Rev. Mr. White"eld,4 who had made himself remarkable there as an itinerant Preacher. He was at "rst permitted to preach in some of our Churches; but the Clergy taking a Dis- like to him, soon refus’d him their Pulpits and he was oblig’d to preach in the Fields. The Multitudes of all Sects and Denominations that attended his Sermons were enormous and it was matter of Speculation to me who was one of the Number, to observe the extraordinary Induence of his Oratory on his Hearers, and how much they admir’d and respected him, notwith- standing his common Abuse of them, by assuring them they were naturally half Beasts and half Dev ils. It was wonderful to see the Change soon made in the Manners of our Inhabitants; from being thoughtless or indifferent about Religion, it seem’d as if all the World were growing Religious; so that one could not walk thro’ the Town in an Eve ning without Hearing Psalms sung in dif fer ent Families of every Street. And it being found incon ve nient to assem ble in the open Air, subject to its Inclemencies, the Building of a House to meet in was no sooner propos’d and Persons appointed to receive Contributions, but suf"cient Sums were soon receiv’d to procure the Ground and erect the Building which was 100 feet long and 70 broad, about the Size of Westminster Hall;5 and the Work was carried on with such Spirit as to be "nished in a much shorter time than could have been expected. Both House and Ground were vested in Trustees, expressly for the Use of any Preacher of any religious Persuasion who might desire to say something to the People of Philadelphia, the Design in building not being to accom- modate any par tic u lar Sect, but the Inhabitants in general, so that even if the Mufti of Constantinople were to send a Missionary to preach Maho- metanism to us, he would "nd a Pulpit at his Ser vice.6

Mr. White"eld, in leaving us, went preaching all the Way thro’ the Colo- nies to Georgia. The Settlement of that Province had lately been begun; but instead of being made with hardy industrious Husbandmen accustomed to  Labor, the only People "t for such an Enterprise, it was with Families of broken7 Shop keep ers and other insolvent Debtors, many of indolent and idle habits, taken out of the Jails, who being set down in the Woods, unquali"ed for clearing Land, and unable to endure the Hardships of a new Settlement, perished in Numbers, leaving many helpless Children unprovided for. The Sight of their miserable Situation inspired the benevolent Heart of Mr. White- "eld with the Idea of building an Orphan House there, in which they might be supported and educated. Returning northward he preach’d up this char- ity, and made large Collections;— for his Eloquence had a wonderful Power over the Hearts and Purses of his Hearers, of which I myself was an Instance. I did not disapprove of the Design, but as Georgia was then destitute of Mate- rials and Workmen, and it was propos’d to send them from Philadelphia at a great Expense, I thought it would have been better to have built the House here and brought the Children to it. This I advis’d, but he was resolute in his "rst Proj ect, and rejected my Counsel, and I thereupon refus’d to contribute.

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8. Thomas Hopkinson (1709–1751), a promi- nent Philadephia lawyer and public of"cial. 9. In 1739–41, Franklin printed a number of White"eld’s books and journals. 1. John Stephen Benezet (1683–1751) emigrated from Eu rope and became one of Philadelphia’s

leading citizens. He arrived in Philadelphia as a Quaker but joined the Moravian Church when he moved to Germantown. 2. Living church members who are believed to be saved.

I happened soon after to attend one of his Sermons, in the Course of which I perceived he intended to "nish with a Collection, and I silently resolved he should get nothing from me. I had in my Pocket a Handful of Copper Money, three or four silver Dollars, and "ve Pistoles in Gold. As he pro- ceeded I began to soften, and concluded to give the Coppers. Another Stroke of his Oratory made me asham’d of that, and determin’d me to give the Silver; and he "nish’d so admirably, that I emptied my Pocket wholly into the Collector’s Dish, Gold and all. At this Sermon there was also one of our Club, who being of my Sentiments respecting the Building in Georgia, and suspecting a Collection might be intended, had by Precaution emptied his Pockets before he came from home; towards the Conclusion of the Discourse however, he felt a strong Desire to give, and apply’d to a Neigh- bor who stood near him to borrow some Money for the Purpose. The Appli- cation was unfortunately to perhaps the only Man in the Com pany who had the "rmness not to be affected by the Preacher. His Answer was, At any other time, Friend Hopkinson,8 I would lend to thee freely; but not now; for thee seems to be out of thy right Senses.

Some of Mr. White"eld’s Enemies affected to suppose that he would apply these Collections to his own private Emolument; but I, who was intimately acquainted with him, (being employ’d in printing his Sermons and Journals,9 etc.) never had the least Suspicion of his Integrity, but am to this day decid- edly of Opinion that he was in all his Conduct, a perfectly honest Man. And methinks my Testimony in his Favor ought to have the more Weight, as we had no religious Connection. He us’d indeed sometimes to pray for my Conversion, but never had the Satisfaction of believing that his Prayers were heard. Ours was a mere civil Friendship, sincere on both Sides, and lasted to his Death.

The following Instance will show something of the Terms on which we stood. Upon one of his Arrivals from Eng land at Boston, he wrote to me that he should come soon to Philadelphia, but knew not where he could lodge when there, as he understood his old kind Host Mr. Benezet was remov’d to Germantown.1 My Answer was; You know my House, if you can make shift with its scanty Accommodations you will be most heartily welcome. He replied, that if I made that kind Offer for Christ’s sake, I should not miss of a Reward.— And I return’d, Don’t let me be mistaken; it was not for Christ’s sake, but for your sake. One of our common Acquaintance jocosely remark’d, that knowing it to be the Custom of the Saints,2 when they receiv’d any favor, to shift the Burthen of the Obligation from off their own Shoulders, and place it in Heaven, I had contriv’d to "x it on Earth.

The last time I saw Mr. White"eld was in London, when he consulted me about his Orphan House Concern, and his Purpose of appropriating it to the Establishment of a College.

He had a loud and clear Voice, and articulated his Words and Sentences so perfectly that he might be heard and understood at a great Distance, espe-

3. About "ve hundred feet from the court house. 4. I.e., vox audita perit, litera scripta manet: the spoken word passes away, the written word

remains (Latin). 5. Those devoted to him; disciples.

cially as his Auditors, however numerous, observ’d the most exact Silence. He preach’d one Eve ning from the Top of the Court House Steps, which are in the Middle of Market Street, and on the West Side of Second Street which crosses it at right angles. Both Streets were "ll’d with his Hearers to a considerable Distance. Being among the hindmost in Market Street, I had the Curiosity to learn how far he could be heard, by retiring backwards down the Street towards the River, and I found his Voice distinct till I came near Front Street,3 when some Noise in that Street, obscur’d it. Imagining then a Semicircle, of which my Distance should be the Radius, and that it were "ll’d with Auditors, to each of whom I allow’d two square feet, I com- puted that he might well be heard by more than Thirty Thousand. This reconcil’d me to the Newspaper Accounts of his having preach’d to 25,000 People in the Fields, and to the ancient Histories of Generals haranguing whole Armies, of which I had sometimes doubted.

By hearing him often I came to distinguish easily between Sermons newly compos’d, and those which he had often preach’d in the Course of his Trav- els. His Delivery of the latter was so improv’d by frequent Repetitions, that every Accent, every Emphasis, every Modulation of Voice, was so perfectly well turn’d and well plac’d, that without being interested in the Subject, one could not help being pleas’d with the Discourse, a Plea sure of much the same kind with that receiv’d from an excellent Piece of Music. This is an Advan- tage itinerant Preachers have over those who are stationary: as the latter can- not well improve their Delivery of a Sermon by so many Rehearsals.

His Writing and Printing from time to time gave great Advantage to his Enemies. Unguarded Expressions and even erroneous Opinions delivered in Preaching might have been afterwards explain’d, or quali"ed by supposing others that might have accompanied them; or they might have been denied; but litera scripta manet.4 Critics attack’d his Writings violently, and with so much Appearance of Reason as to diminish the Number of his Votaries,5 and prevent their Increase: So that I am of Opinion, if he had never written anything he would have left behind him a much more numerous and impor- tant Sect. And his Reputation might in that case have been still growing, even after his Death; as there being nothing of his Writings on which to found a Censure; and give him a lower Character, his Proselytes would be left at Liberty to feign for him as great a Variety of Excellencies, as their enthusiastic Admiration might wish him to have possessed.

My Business was now continually augmenting, and my Circumstances growing daily easier, my Newspaper having become very pro"table, as being for a time almost the only one in this and the neighboring Provinces. I experienc’d too the Truth of the Observation, that after getting the #rst hun- dred Pound, it is more easy to get the second: Money itself being of a proli"c Nature: The Partnership at Carolina having succeeded, I was encourag’d to engage in others, and to promote several of my Workmen who had behaved well, by establishing them with Printing- Houses in dif fer ent Colonies, on the same Terms with that in Carolina. Most of them did well, being enabled at the End of our Term, Six Years, to purchase the Types of me; and go on

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6. No such proposal exists, but it evidently included plans for using the New Building, built for White"eld. 7. Richard Peters (c. 1704–1776), called “the most learned man in Pennsylvania,” was an Anglican clergyman and the provincial secre- tary to the Penn family (see n. 8, p. 495). 8. I.e., he expected to make more money work- ing for the proprietor than running the Acad emy. 9. A Proposal for Promoting Useful Knowledge among the British Plantations in Amer i ca (May 14, 1743). The American Philosophical Society, cofounded by Franklin and the naturalist John Bartram, was the "rst learned society in North Amer i ca. Its "rst president was Thomas Hopkin-

son, discussed above. 1. War on Spain and France had been declared by Great Britain in 1739 and 1744, respectively. Colonial shipping was, therefore, subject to attack by privateers of Spain and France. The Treaty of Aix- la- Chapelle (1748) ended this danger. 2. George Thomas (c. 1695–1774), governor of Pennsylvania 1738–47. 3. Plain Truth; or, Serious Considerations on the Pres ent State of the City of Philadelphia, and Prov- ince of Pennsylvania, by a “tradesman of Phila- delphia” (November 17, 1747). 4. Charter, prob ably including the bylaws.

working for themselves, by which means several Families were raised. Part- nerships often "nish in Quarrels, but I was happy in this, that mine were all carried on and ended amicably; owing I think a good deal to the Precau- tion of having very explic itly settled in our Articles every thing to be done by or expected from each Partner, so that there was nothing to dispute, which Precaution I would therefore recommend to all who enter into Partner- ships, for what ever Esteem Partners may have for and Con"dence in each other at the time of the Contract, little Jealousies and Disgusts may arise, with Ideas of In equality in the Care and Burden of the Business, etc., which are attended often with Breach of Friendship and of the Connection, per- haps with Lawsuits and other disagreeable Consequences.

I had on the whole abundant Reason to be satis"ed with my being estab- lished in Pennsylvania. There were however two things that I regretted: There being no Provision for Defense, nor for a complete Education of Youth. No Militia nor any College. I therefore in 1743, drew up a Proposal6 for establishing an Acad emy; and at that time thinking the Rev. Mr. Peters,7 who was out of Employ, a "t Person to superintend such an Institution, I com- municated the Proj ect to him. But he having more pro"table Views in the Ser vice of the Proprietor,8 which succeeded, declin’d the Undertaking. And not knowing another at that time suitable for such a Trust, I let the Scheme lie a while dormant. I succeeded better the next Year, 1744, in proposing and establishing a Philosophical Society. The Paper I wrote for that purpose9 will be found among my Writings when collected.

With re spect to Defense, Spain having been several Years at War against Britain, and being at length join’d by France, which brought us into greater Danger,1 and the labored and long- continued Endeavors of our Governor Thomas2 to prevail with our Quaker Assembly to pass a Militia Law, and make other Provisions for the Security of the Province having proved abortive, I determined to try what might be done by a voluntary Association of the People. To promote this I "rst wrote and published a Pamphlet, entitled, plain truth,3 in which I stated our defenseless Situation in strong Lights, with the Neces- sity of Union and Discipline for our Defense, and promis’d to propose in a few Days an Association to be generally signed for that purpose. The Pamphlet had a sudden and surprising Effect. I was call’d upon for the Instrument4 of Association: And having settled the Draft of it with a few Friends, I appointed a Meeting of the Citizens in the large Building before- mentioned.

The House was pretty full. I had prepared a Number of printed Copies, and provided Pens and Ink dispers’d all over the Room. I harangu’d them a

5. Before his appointment as lieutenant col o nel of the Associated Regiment of Foot for Philadel- phia, Thomas Lawrence (1689–1754) had served as a city Councilman, an alderman, and three times as mayor. He later served two more times

as mayor. 6. Wall or platform on which guns are placed. 7. Battlements. 8. I.e., drinking vessels "lled to the brim. 9. Made known.

little on the Subject, read the Paper and explain’d it, and then distributed the Copies which were eagerly signed, not the least Objection being made. When the Com pany separated, and the Papers were collected we found above Twelve hundred Hands; and other Copies being dispers’d in the Country the Subscribers amounted at length to upwards of Ten Thousand. These all furnish’d themselves as soon as they could with Arms; form’d themselves into Companies, and Regiments, chose their own Of"cers, and met every Week to be instructed in the manual Exercise, and other Parts of military Discipline. The Women, by Subscriptions among themselves, provided Silk Colors, which they presented to the Companies, painted with dif fer ent Devices and Mottos which I supplied. The Of"cers of the Companies com- posing the Philadelphia Regiment, being met, chose me for their Col o nel; but conceiving myself un"t, I declin’d that Station, and recommended Mr. Law- rence, a "ne Person and Man of Induence, who was accordingly appointed.5 I then propos’d a Lottery to defray the Expense of Building a Battery6 below the Town, and furnishing it with Cannon. It "lled expeditiously and the Bat- tery was soon erected, the Merlons7 being fram’d of Logs and "ll’d with Earth. We bought some old Cannon from Boston, but these not being suf"- cient, we wrote to Eng land for more, soliciting at the same Time our Propri- etaries for some Assistance, tho’ without much Expectation of obtaining it.

Meanwhile Col o nel Lawrence, William Allen, Abraham Taylor, Esquires, and myself were sent to New York by the Associators, commission’d to borrow some Cannon of Governor Clinton. He at "rst refus’d us peremptorily: but at a Dinner with his Council where there was great Drinking of Madeira Wine, as the Custom at that Place then was, he soften’d by degrees, and said he would lend us Six. After a few more Bumpers8 he advanc’d to Ten. And at length he very good- naturedly conceded Eigh teen. They were "ne Cannon, 18 pounders, with their Carriages, which we soon transported and mounted on our Battery, where the Associators kept a nightly Guard while the War lasted: And among the rest I regularly took my Turn of Duty there as a common Soldier.

My Activity in these Operations was agreeable to the Governor and Coun- cil; they took me into Con"dence, and I was consulted by them in every Mea sure wherein their Concurrence was thought useful to the Association. Calling in the Aid of Religion, I propos’d to them the Proclaiming a Fast, to promote Reformation, and implore the Blessing of Heaven on our Under- taking. They embrac’d the Motion, but as it was the "rst Fast ever thought of in the Province, the Secretary had no Pre ce dent from which to draw the Proclamation. My Education in New Eng land, where a Fast is proclaim’d every Year, was here of some Advantage. I drew it in the accustomed Style, it was translated into German, printed in both Languages and divulg’d9 thro’ the Province. This gave the Clergy of the dif fer ent Sects an Opportunity of Induencing their Congregations to join in the Association; and it would prob- ably have been general among all but Quakers if the Peace had not soon interven’d.

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1. Franklin here neglects to mention that he applied for the position of clerk of the assembly in 1736 and for the deputy postmaster general- ship in 1751. 2. James Morris (1707–1751), prominent Phila-

delphia Quaker, assemblyman, and member of the Library Com pany (see n. 2, p. 507). 3. I.e., members of the Society of Friends, or Quakers. Paci"sm is a basic article of their faith.

It was thought by some of my Friends that by my Activity in these Affairs, I should offend that Sect, and thereby lose my Interest in the Assembly where they were a great Majority. A young Gentleman who had likewise some Friends in the House, and wish’d to succeed me as their Clerk, acquainted me that it was deci ded to displace me at the next Election, and he therefore in goodwill advis’d me to resign, as more consistent with my Honor than being turn’d out. My Answer to him was, that I had read or heard of some Public Man, who made it a Rule never to ask for an Of"ce, and never to refuse one when offer’d to him. I approve, says I, of his Rule, and will prac- tice it with a small Addition; I shall never ask, never refuse, nor ever resign an Of"ce.1 If they will have my Of"ce of Clerk to dispose of to another, they shall take it from me. I will not be giving it up, lose my Right of some time or other making Reprisals on my adversaries. I heard however no more of this. I was chosen again, unanimously as usual, at the next Election. Possibly as they dislik’d my late Intimacy with the Members of Council, who had join’d the Governors in all the Disputes about military Preparations with which the House had long been harass’d, they might have been pleas’d if I would volun- tarily have left them; but they did not care to displace me on Account merely of my Zeal for the Association; and they could not well give another Reason.

Indeed I had some Cause to believe, that the Defense of the Country was not disagreeable to any of them, provided they were not requir’d to assist in it. And I found that a much greater Number of them than I could have imagined, tho’ against offensive War, were clearly for the defensive. Many Pamphlets pro and con were publish’d on the Subject, and some by good Quakers in favor of Defense, which I believe convinc’d most of their younger People. A Transaction in our Fire Com pany gave me some Insight into their prevailing Sentiments. It had been propos’d that we should encourage the Scheme for building a Battery by laying out the pres ent Stock, then about Sixty Pounds, in Tickets of the Lottery. By our Rules no Money could be dispos’d of but at the next Meeting after the Proposal. The Com pany con- sisted of Thirty Members, of which Twenty- two were Quakers, and Eight only of other Persuasions. We eight punctually attended the Meeting; but tho’ we thought that some of the Quakers would join us, we were by no means sure of a Majority. Only one Quaker, Mr. James Morris,2 appear’d to oppose the Mea sure: He express’d much Sorrow that it had ever been propos’d, as he said Friends3 were all against it, and it would create such Discord as might break up the Com pany. We told him, that we saw no Reason for that; we were the Minority, and if Friends were against the Mea sure and outvoted us, we must and should, agreeable to the Usage of all Socie ties, submit.

When the Hour for Business arriv’d, it was mov’d to put the Vote. He allow’d we might then do it by the Rules, but as he could assure us that a Number of Members intended to be pres ent for the purpose of opposing it, it would be but candid to allow a little time for their appearing. While we were disputing this, a Waiter came to tell me two Gentlemen below desir’d

4. James Logan (1674–1751) moved to Philadel- phia in 1699 as William Penn’s secretary and oversaw Penn’s business for "fty years (see n. 8,

p. 495). 5. Actually two hundred and "fty.

to speak with me. I went down, and found they were two of our Quaker Members. They told me there were eight of them assembled at a Tavern just by; that they were determin’d to come and vote with us if there should be occasion, which they hop’d would not be the Case; and desir’d we would not call for their Assistance if we could do without it, as their Voting for such a Mea sure might embroil them with their Elders and Friends. Being thus secure of a Majority, I went up, and after a little seeming Hesitation, agreed to a Delay of another Hour. This Mr. Morris allow’d to be extremely fair. Not one of his opposing Friends appear’d, at which he express’d great Surprise; and at the Expiration of the Hour, we carried the Resolution Eight to one; And as of the 22 Quakers, Eight were ready to vote with us and, Thir- teen by their Absence manifested that they were not inclin’d to oppose the Mea sure, I afterwards estimated the Proportion of Quakers sincerely against Defense as one to twenty- one only. For these were all regular Members of that Society, and in good Reputation among them, and had due Notice of what was propos’d at that Meeting.

The honorable and learned Mr. Logan,4 who had always been of that Sect, was one who wrote an Address to them, declaring his Approbation of defen- sive War, and supporting his Opinion by many strong Arguments: He put into my Hands Sixty Pounds,5 to be laid out in Lottery Tickets for the Battery, with Directions to apply what Prizes might be drawn wholly to that Ser vice. He told me the following Anecdote of his old Master William Penn respecting Defense. He came over from Eng land, when a young Man, with that Proprietary, and as his Secretary. It was War Time, and their Ship was chas’d by an armed Vessel suppos’d to be an Enemy. Their Captain prepar’d for Defense, but told William Penn and his Com pany of Quakers, that he did not expect their Assistance, and they might retire into the Cabin; which they did, except James Logan, who chose to stay upon Deck, and was quarter’d to a Gun. The suppos’d Enemy prov’d a Friend; so there was no Fighting. But when the Secretary went down to communicate the Intelligence, William Penn rebuk’d him severely for staying upon Deck and undertaking to assist in defending the Vessel, contrary to the Princi ples of Friends, especially as it had not been required by the Captain. This Reproof being before all the Com pany, piqu’d the Secretary, who answer’d, I being thy Servant, why did thee not order me to come down: but thee was willing enough that I should stay and help to #ght the Ship when thee thought there was Danger.

My being many Years in the Assembly, the Majority of which were con- stantly Quakers, gave me frequent Opportunities of seeing the Embarrassment given them by their Princi ple against War, whenever Application was made to them by Order of the Crown to grant Aids for military Purposes. They were unwilling to offend Government on the one hand, by a direct Refusal, and their Friends the Body of Quakers on the other, by a Compliance con- trary to their Princi ples. Hence a Variety of Evasions to avoid Complying, and Modes of disguising the Compliance when it became unavoidable. The common Mode at last was to grant Money under the Phrase of its being for the King’s Use, and never to enquire how it was applied. But if the Demand

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6. The Fortress of Louisburg was built on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotià, to protect the St. Lawrence River approaches. It was captured in 1745 and returned to France in 1748 through the Treaty of Aix- la- Chapelle. 7. Philip Syng (1703–1789), silversmith and member of the Junto (see n. 7, p. 502). 8. In 1719, a group of German Baptists emi-

grated from the Netherlands to Pennsylvania. Welfare (1687–1741), also known as Wolfaert or Wohlfahrt, was a leader of a splinter group, the Seventh Day Baptist Community in Ephrata (now Lancaster), Pennsylvania. The German Baptists were called “Dunkers” because they believed in baptism by total immersion.

was not directly from the Crown, that Phrase was found not so proper, and some other was to be in ven ted. As when Powder was wanting, (I think it was for the Garrison at Louisburg,)6 and the Government of New Eng land solicited a Grant of some from Pennsylvania, which was much urg’d on the House by Governor Thomas, they could not grant Money to buy Powder, because that was an Ingredient of War, but they voted an Aid to New Eng land, of Three Thousand Pounds, to be put into the hands of the Gov- ernor, and appropriated it for the Purchasing of Bread, Flour, Wheat, or other Grain. Some of the Council desirous of giving the House still farther Embar- rassment, advis’d the Governor not to accept Provision, as not being the Thing he had demanded. But he replied, “I shall take the Money, for I understand very well their Meaning; Other Grain, is Gunpowder”; which he accordingly bought; and they never objected to it.

It was in Allusion to this Fact, that when in our Fire Com pany we feared the Success of our Proposal in favor of the Lottery, and I had said to my friend Mr. Syng,7 one of our Members, if we fail, let us move the Purchase of a Fire Engine with the Money; the Quakers can have no Objection to that: and then if you nominate me, and I you, as a Committee for that purpose, we will buy a great Gun, which is certainly a Fire- Engine: I see, says he, you have improv’d by being so long in the Assembly; your equivocal Proj ect would be just a Match for their Wheat or other grain.

These Embarrassments that the Quakers suffer’d from having establish’d and publish’d it as one of their Princi ples, that no kind of War was lawful, and which being once published, they could not afterwards, however they might change their minds, easily get rid of, reminds me of what I think a more prudent Conduct in another Sect among us; that of the Dunkers. I was acquainted with one of its Found ers, Michael Welfare, soon after it appear’d.8 He complain’d to me that they were grievously calumniated by the Zealots of other Persuasions, and charg’d with abominable Princi ples and Practices to which they were utter Strangers. I told him this had always been the case with new Sects; and that to put a Stop to such Abuse, I imagin’d it might be well to publish the Articles of their Belief and the Rules of their Discipline. He said that it had been propos’d among them, but not agreed to, for this Reason; “When we were "rst drawn together as a Society, says he, it had pleased God to enlighten our Minds so far, as to see that some Doctrines which we once esteemed Truths were Errors, and that others which we had esteemed Errors were real Truths. From time to time he has been pleased to afford us farther Light, and our Princi ples have been improving, and our Errors diminishing. Now we are not sure that we are arriv’d at the End of this Progression, and at the Perfection of Spiritual or Theological Knowl- edge; and we fear that if we should once print our Confession of Faith, we should feel ourselves as if bound and con"n’d by it, and perhaps be unwill- ing to receive farther Improvement; and our Successors still more so, as

9. Courts. 1. In 1756, ten paci"st Quakers resigned from their assembly seats and three refused to run for reelection. 2. However, not the stove known today as the Franklin stove. None of Franklin’s originals sur- vives.

3. Grace paid for the publication of this pam- phlet in 1744. 4. The ironmonger, or hardware merchant, was prob ably James Sharp, who took out such a pat- ent in 1781. “Assuming”: appropriating. 5. Published in 1749.

conceiving what we their Elders and Found ers had done, to be something sacred, never to be departed from.”

This Modesty in a Sect is perhaps a singular Instance in the History of Mankind, every other Sect supposing itself in Possession of all Truth, and that those who differ are so far in the Wrong: Like a Man traveling in foggy Weather: Those at some Distance before him on the Road he sees wrapped up in the Fog, as well as those behind him, and also the People in the Fields on each side; but near him all appears clear.— Tho’ in truth he is as much in the Fog as any of them. To avoid this kind of Embarrassment the Quakers have of late Years been gradually declining the public Ser vice in the Assembly and in the Magistracy.9 Choosing rather to quit their Power than their Princi ple.1

In Order of Time I should have mentioned before, that having in 1742 in ven ted an open Stove,2 for the better warming of Rooms and at the same time saving Fuel, as the fresh Air admitted was warmed in Entering, I made a Pres ent of the Model to Mr. Robert Grace, one of my early Friends, who having an Iron Furnace, found the Casting of the Plates for these Stoves a pro"table Thing, as they were growing in Demand. To promote that Demand I wrote and published a Pamphlet entitled, An Account of the New- In ven ted Pennsylvania Fire Places: Wherein their Construction and manner of Operation is particularly explained; their Advantages above every other Method of warming Rooms demonstrated; and all Objections that have been raised against the Use of them answered and obviated, etc.3 This Pamphlet had a good Effect. Governor Thomas was so pleas’d with the Construction of this Stove, as describ’d in it, that he offer’d to give me a Patent for the sole Vend- ing of them for a Term of Years; but I declin’d it from a Princi ple which has ever weigh’d with me on such Occasions, viz., That as we enjoy great Advan- tages from the Inventions of Others, we should be glad of an Opportunity to serve others by any Invention of ours, and this we should do freely and gener- ously. An Ironmonger in London, however, after assuming a good deal of my Pamphlet and working it up into his own, and making some small Changes in the Machine, which rather hurt its Operation, got a Patent for it there,4 and made as I was told a little Fortune by it. And this is not the only Instance of Patents taken out for my Inventions by others, tho’ not always with the same success: which I never contested, as having no Desire of pro"ting by Patents myself, and hating Disputes. The Use of these Fireplaces in very many Houses both of this and the neighboring Colonies, has been and is a great Saving of Wood to the Inhabitants.

Peace being concluded, and the Association Business therefore at an End, I turn’d my Thoughts again to the Affair of establishing an Acad emy. The "rst Step I took was to associate in the Design a Number of active Friends, of whom the Junto furnished a good Part; the next was to write and publish a Pamphlet entitled, Proposals relating to the Education of Youth in Pennsyl- vania.5 This I distributed among the principal Inhabitants gratis; and as soon as I could suppose their Minds a little prepared by the Perusal of it, I set on

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6. Actually, two thousand pounds. 7. Actually, January 1751.

foot a Subscription for Opening and Supporting an Acad emy; it was to be paid in Quotas yearly for Five Years; by so dividing it I judg’d the Sub- scription might be larger, and I believe it was so, amounting to no less (if I remember right) than Five thousand Pounds.6 In the Introduction to these Proposals, I stated their Publication not as an Act of mine, but of some public- spirited Gentlemen, avoiding as much as I could, according to my usual Rule, the presenting myself to the Public as the Author of any Scheme for their Bene"t.

The Subscribers, to carry the Proj ect into immediate Execution chose out of their Number Twenty- four Trustees, and appointed Mr. Francis, then Attorney General, and myself, to draw up Constitutions for the Government of the Acad emy, which being done and signed, an House was hired, Mas- ters engag’d and the Schools opened I think in the same Year 1749.7 The Scholars increasing fast, the House was soon found too small, and we were looking out for a Piece of Ground properly situated, with Intention to build, when Providence threw into our way a large House ready built, which with a few Alterations might well serve our purpose, this was the Building before- mentioned erected by the Hearers of Mr.  White"eld, and was obtain’d for us in the following Manner.

It is to be noted, that the Contributions to this Building being made by People of dif fer ent Sects, Care was taken in the Nomination of Trustees, in whom the Building and Ground was to be vested, that a Predominancy should not be given to any Sect, lest in time that Predominancy might be a means of appropriating the whole to the Use of such Sect, contrary to the original Intention; it was therefore that one of each Sect was appointed, viz., one Church- of- Eng land- man, one Presbyterian, one Baptist, one Moravian, etc. Those in case of Vacancy by Death were to "ll it by Election from among the Contributors. The Moravian happen’d not to please his Colleagues, and on his Death, they resolved to have no other of that Sect. The Dif"culty then was, how to avoid having two of some other Sect, by means of the new Choice. Several Persons were named and for that Reason not agreed to. At length one mention’d me, with the Observation that I was merely an honest Man, and of no Sect at all; which prevail’d with them to choose me.

The Enthusiasm which existed when the House was built, had long since abated, and its Trustees had not been able to procure fresh Contributions for paying the Ground Rent, and discharging some other Debts the Build- ing had occasion’d, which embarrass’d them greatly. Being now a Member of both Sets of Trustees, that for the Building and that for the Acad emy, I had good Opportunity of negotiating with both, and brought them " nally to an Agreement, by which the Trustees for the Building were to cede it to those of the Acad emy, the latter undertaking to discharge the Debt, to keep for- ever open in the Building a large Hall for occasional Preachers according to the original Intention, and maintain a Free School for the Instruction of poor Children. Writings were accordingly drawn, and on paying the Debts the Trustees of the Acad emy were put in Possession of the Premises, and by dividing the great and lofty Hall into Stories, and dif fer ent Rooms above and below for the several Schools, and purchasing some additional Ground, the

8. Hall (1714–1772), a Scottish printer, moved to Philadelphia in 1743 at Franklin’s invitation. 9. I.e., natu ral science. 1. Archibald Spencer (c. 1698–1760) was a phy- sician, natu ral scientist, and lecturer on electric- ity. Franklin heard his Boston lectures in 1743. 2. Franklin served as city councilman in 1748, justice of the peace in 1749, alderman in 1751, and

assemblyman in 1751. “Burgess”: representative sent by a town to a legislative body. 3. In a magic square, numbers are arranged so that the sums of each row— horizontal, vertical, and diagonal— are equal. A magic circle is a cir- cular con"guration of numbers whose additive values equal 180 or 360 when arranged in a pre- scribed way.

whole was soon made "t for our purpose, and the Scholars remov’d into the Building. The Care and Trou ble of agreeing with the Workmen, purchasing Materials, and superintending the Work fell upon me, and I went thro’ it the more cheerfully, as it did not then interfere with my private Business, having the Year before taken a very able, industrious and honest Partner, Mr. David Hall, with whose Character I was well acquainted, as he had work’d for me four Years.8 He took off my Hands all Care of the Printing- Of"ce, paying me punctually my Share of the Pro"ts. This Partnership con- tinued Eigh teen Years, successfully for us both.

The Trustees of the Acad emy after a while were incorporated by a Char- ter from the Governor; their Funds were increas’d by Contributions in Brit- ain, and Grants of Land from the Proprietaries, to which the Assembly has since made considerable Addition, and thus was established the pres ent Uni- versity of Philadelphia. I have been continued one of its Trustees from the Beginning, now near forty Years, and have had the very great Plea sure of seeing a Number of the Youth who have receiv’d their Education in it, distinguish’d by their improv’d Abilities, ser viceable in public Stations, and Ornaments to their Country.

When I disengag’d myself as above- mentioned from private Business, I datter’d myself that, by the suf"cient tho’ moderate Fortune I had acquir’d, I had secur’d Leisure during the rest of my Life, for Philosophical Studies9 and Amusements; I purchas’d all Dr. Spencer’s Apparatus, who had come from Eng land to lecture here;1 and I proceeded in my Electrical Experiments with great Alacrity; but the Public now considering me as a Man of Leisure, laid hold of me for their Purposes; every Part of our Civil Government, and almost at the same time, imposing some Duty upon me. The Governor put me into the Commission of the Peace; the Corporation of the City chose me of the Common Council, and soon after an Alderman; and the Citizens at large chose me a Burgess to represent them in Assembly.2 This latter Station was the more agreeable to me, as I was at length tired with sitting there to hear Debates in which as Clerk I could take no part, and which were often so unentertaining, that I was induc’d to amuse myself with making magic Squares, or Circles,3 or anything to avoid Weariness. And I conceiv’d my becoming a Member would enlarge my Power of doing Good. I would not however insinuate that my Ambition was not datter’d by all these Pro- motions. It certainly was. For considering my low Beginning they were great Things to me. And they were still more pleasing, as being so many spontaneous Testimonies of the public’s good Opinion, and by me entirely unsolicited.

The Of"ce of Justice of the Peace I tried a little, by attending a few Courts, and sitting on the Bench to hear Causes. But "nding that more knowledge of the Common Law than I possess’d, was necessary to act in that Station with Credit, I gradually withdrew from it, excusing myself by my being oblig’d

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4. In Pennsylvania. 5. Bond (1712–1784) was Franklin’s physician.

to attend the higher Duties of a Legislator in the Assembly. My Election to this Trust was repeated every Year for Ten Years, without my ever asking any Elector for his Vote, or signifying either directly or indirectly any Desire of being chosen. On taking my Seat in the House, my Son was appointed their Clerk.

The Year following, a Treaty being to be held with the Indians at Carlisle,4 the Governor sent a Message to the House, proposing that they should nominate some of their Members to be join’d with some Members of Coun- cil as Commissioners for that purpose. The House nam’d the Speaker (Mr. Norris) and myself; and being commission’d we went to Carlisle, and met the Indians accordingly. As those People are extremely apt to get drunk, and when so are very quarrelsome and disorderly, we strictly forbad the sell- ing any Liquor to them; and when they complain’d of this Restriction, we told them that if they would continue sober during the Treaty, we would give them Plenty of Rum when Business was over. They promis’d this; and they kept their Promise— because they could get no Liquor— and the Treaty was conducted very orderly, and concluded to mutual Satisfaction. They then claim’d and receiv’d the Rum. This was in the After noon. They were near 100 Men, Women and Children, and were lodg’d in temporary Cabins built in the Form of a Square just without the Town. In the Eve ning, hearing a great Noise among them, the Commissioners walk’d out to see what was the Matter. We found they had made a great Bon"re in the Middle of the Square. They were all drunk, Men and Women, quarreling and "ghting. Their dark- color’d Bodies, half naked, seen only by the gloomy Light of the Bon"re, running after and beating one another with Firebrands, accompanied by their horrid Yellings, form’d a Scene the most resembling our Ideas of Hell that could well be imagin’d. There was no appeasing the Tumult, and we retired to our Lodging. At Midnight a Number of them came thundering at our Door, demanding more Rum; of which we took no Notice. The next Day, sensible they had misbehav’d in giving us that Disturbance, they sent three of their old Counselors to make their Apology. The Orator acknowledg’d the Fault, but laid it upon the Rum; and then endeavor’d to excuse the Rum, by saying, “The great Spirit who made all things made every thing for some Use, and what ever Use he design’d anything for, that Use it should always be put to; Now, when he made Rum, he said, Let this be for Indians to get drunk with. And it must be so.— And indeed if it be the Design of Providence to extirpate these Savages in order to make room for Cultivators of the Earth, it seems not improbable that Rum may be the appointed Means. It has already annihilated all the Tribes who formerly inhabited the Seacoast.

In 1751 Dr. Thomas Bond, a par tic u lar Friend of mine,5 conceiv’d the Idea of establishing a Hospital in Philadelphia for the Reception and Cure of poor sick Persons, whether Inhabitants of the Province or Strangers. A very benef- icent Design, which has been ascrib’d to me, but was originally his. He was zealous and active in endeavoring to procure Subscriptions for it; but the Proposal being a Novelty in Amer i ca, and at "rst not well understood, he met with small Success. At length he came to me, with the Compliment that

6. Pennsylvania Gazette, August 8 and 15, 1751. Franklin also published Some Account of the Pennsyl- vania Hospital in 1754.

he found there was no such thing as carry ing a public- spirited Proj ect through, without my being concern’d in it; “for, says he, I am often ask’d by  those to whom I propose Subscribing, Have you consulted Franklin upon this Business? and what does he think of it? And when I tell them that I have not, (supposing it rather out of your Line,) they do not subscribe, but say they will consider of it.” I enquir’d into the Nature, and probable Utility of his Scheme, and receiving from him a very satisfactory Explanation, I not only subscrib’d to it myself, but engag’d heartily in the Design of Procuring Subscriptions from others. Previous however to the Solicitation, I endeav- ored to prepare the Minds of the People by writing on the Subject in the Newspapers,6 which was my usual Custom in such Cases, but which he had omitted. The Subscriptions afterwards were more free and generous, but beginning to dag, I saw they would be insuf"cient without some Assistance from the Assembly, and therefore propos’d to petition for it, which was done. The Country Members did not at "rst relish the Proj ect. They objected that it could only be ser viceable to the City, and therefore the Citizens should alone be at the Expense of it; and they doubted whether the Citizens them- selves generally approv’d of it: My Allegation on the contrary, that it met with such Approbation as to leave no doubt of our being able to raise 2000 Pounds by voluntary Donations, they considered as a most extravagant Supposition, and utterly impossible. On this I form’d my Plan; and asking Leave to bring in a Bill, for incorporating the Contributors, according to the Prayers of their Petition, and granting them a blank Sum of Money, which Leave was obtain’d chiedy on the Consideration that the House could throw the Bill out if they did not like it, I drew it so as to make the impor tant Clause a conditional One, viz., “And be it enacted by the Authority aforesaid That when the said Contributors shall have met and chosen their Man ag ers and Trea surer, and shall have raised by their Contributions a Capital Stock of 2000 Pounds Value, (the yearly Interest of which is to be applied to the Accommodating of the Sick Poor in the said Hospital, free of Charge for Diet, Attendance, Advice and Medicines) and shall make the same appear to the Satisfaction of the Speaker of the Assembly for the time being; that then it shall and may be law- ful for the said Speaker, and he is hereby required to sign an Order on the Provincial Trea surer for the Payment of Two Thousand Pounds in two yearly Payments, to the Trea surer of the said Hospital, to be applied to the Found- ing, Building and Finishing of the same.”— This Condition carried the Bill through; for the Members who had oppos’d the Grant, and now conceiv’d they might have the Credit of being charitable without the Expense, agreed to its Passage; And then in soliciting Subscriptions among the People we urg’d the conditional Promise of the Law as an additional Motive to give, since every Man’s Donation would be doubled. Thus the Clause work’d both ways. The subscriptions accordingly soon exceeded the requisite Sum, and we claim’d and receiv’d the Public Gift, which enabled us to carry the Design into Execution. A con ve nient and handsome Building was soon erected, the Institution has by constant Experience been found useful, and dourishes to this Day. And I do not remember any of my po liti cal Maneuvers, the Success

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7. Presbyterian preacher (1703–1764) in New Brunswick, New Jersey; like George White"eld, a leader of the Great Awakening. “Projector”:

someone with a proposal in mind. 8. Street cleaners. 9. Business, trade.

of which gave me at the time more Plea sure. Or that in after- thinking of it, I more easily excus’d myself for having made some Use of Cunning.

It was about this time that another Projector, the Revd. Gilbert Ten- nent,7 came to me, with a Request that I would assist him in procuring a Subscription for erecting a new Meeting house. It was to be for the Use of a Congregation he had gathered among the Presbyterians who were origi- nally Disciples of Mr. White"eld. Unwilling to make myself disagreeable to my fellow Citizens, by too frequently soliciting their Contributions, I abso- lutely refus’d. He then desir’d I would furnish him with a List of the Names of Persons I knew by Experience to be generous and public- spirited. I thought it would be unbecoming in me, after their kind Compliance with my Solicitations, to mark them out to be worried by other Beggars, and therefore refus’d also to give such a List. He then desir’d I would at least give him my Advice. That I will readily do, said I; and, in the "rst Place, I advise you to apply to all those whom you know will give something; next to those whom you are uncertain whether they will give anything or not; and show them the List of those who have given: and lastly, do not neglect those who you are sure will give nothing; for in some of them you may be mis- taken. He laugh’d, and thank’d me, and said he would take my Advice. He did so, for he ask’d of every body; and he obtain’d a much larger Sum than he expected, with which he erected the capacious and very elegant Meeting- house that stands in Arch Street.

Our City, tho’ laid out with a beautiful Regularity, the Streets large, straight, and crossing each other at right Angles, had the Disgrace of suffer- ing those Streets to remain long unpav’d, and in wet Weather the Wheels of heavy Carriages plough’d them into a Quagmire, so that it was dif"cult to cross them. And in dry Weather the Dust was offensive. I had liv’d near what was call’d the Jersey Market, and saw with Pain the Inhabitants wad- ing in Mud while purchasing their Provisions. A Strip of Ground down the middle of that Market was at length pav’d with Brick, so that being once in the Market they had "rm Footing, but were often over Shoes in Dirt to get there. By talking and writing on the Subject, I was at length instrumental in getting the Street pav’d with Stone between the Market and the brick’d Foot- Pavement that was on each Side next the Houses. This for some time gave an easy Access to the Market, dry- shod. But the rest of the Street not being pav’d, whenever a Carriage came out of the Mud upon this Pavement, it shook off and left its Dirt on it, and it was soon cover’d with Mire, which was not remov’d, the City as yet having no Scavengers.8 After some Enquiry I found a poor industrious Man, who was willing to undertake keeping the Pavement clean, by sweeping it twice a week and carry ing off the Dirt from before all the Neighbors’ Doors, for the Sum of Sixpence per Month, to be paid by each House. I then wrote and printed a Paper, setting forth the Advan- tages to the Neighborhood that might be obtain’d by this small Expense; the greater Ease in keeping our Houses clean, so much Dirt not being brought in by People’s Feet; the Bene"t to the Shops by more Custom,9 as Buyers could more easily get at them, and by not having in windy Weather the Dust

1. Franklin went to Eng land as an agent for the Pennsylvania Assembly to negotiate with Thomas and Richard Penn on the matter of taxing propri- etary estates in common with other property. 2. Quaker apothecary (d. 1759).

3. I.e., illuminating. 4. A garden and amusement park near London. 5. John Fothergill (1712–1780), a leader of the En glish Quakers and Franklin’s physician when he was in London.

blown in upon their Goods, etc., etc. I sent one of these Papers to each House, and in a Day or two went round to see who would subscribe an Agreement to pay these Sixpences. It was unanimously sign’d, and for a time well executed. All the Inhabitants of the City were delighted with the Clean- lines of the Pavement that surrounded the Market; it being a Con ve nience to all; and this rais’d a general Desire to have all the Streets paved; and made the People more willing to submit to a Tax for that purpose.

After some time I drew a Bill for Paving the City, and brought it into the Assembly. It was just before I went to Eng land in 17571 and did not pass till I was gone, and then with an Alteration in the Mode of Assessment, which I thought not for the better, but with an additional Provision for lighting as well as Paving the Streets, which was a great Improvement. It was by a pri- vate Person, the late Mr. John Clifton,2 his giving a Sample of the Utility of Lamps by placing one at his Door, that the People were "rst impress’d with the Idea of enlightening3 all the City. The Honor of this public Bene"t has also been ascrib’d to me, but it belongs truly to that Gentleman. I did but follow his Example; and have only some Merit to claim respecting the Form of our Lamps as differing from the Globe Lamps we at "rst were supplied with from London. Those we found incon ve nient in these re spects; they admitted no Air below, the Smoke therefore did not readily go out above, but circulated in the Globe, lodg’d on its Inside, and soon obstructed the Light they were intended to afford; giving, besides, the daily Trou ble of wip- ing them clean: and an accidental Stroke on one of them would demolish it, and render it totally useless. I therefore suggested the composing them of four dat Panes, with a long Funnel above to draw up the Smoke, and Crev- ices admitting Air below, to facilitate the Ascent of the Smoke. By this means they were kept clean, and did not grow dark in a few Hours as the London Lamps do, but continu’d bright till Morning; and an accidental Stroke would generally break but a single Pane, easily repair’d. I have sometimes won der’d that the Londoners did not, from the Effect Holes in the Bottom of the Globe Lamps us’d at Vauxhall,4 have in keeping them clean, learn to have such Holes in their Street Lamps. But those Holes being made for another pur- pose, viz., to communicate Flame more suddenly to the Wick, by a little Flax hanging down thro’ them, the other Use of letting in Air seems not to have been thought of.— And therefore, after the Lamps have been lit a few Hours, the Streets of London are very poorly illuminated.

The Mention of these Improvements puts me in mind of one I propos’d when in London, to Dr. Fothergill,5 who was among the best Men I have known, and a great Promoter of useful Proj ects. I had observ’d that the Streets when dry were never swept and the light Dust carried away, but it was suffer’d to accumulate till wet Weather reduc’d it to Mud, and then after lying some Days so deep on the Pavement that there was no Crossing but in Paths kept clean by poor People with Brooms, it was with great Labor rak’d together and thrown up into Carts open above, the Sides of which suffer’d some of the Slush at every jolt on the Pavement to shake out and fall,

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6. In London, near Charing Cross; Franklin lived there in 1757–62 and 1764–75.

7. Gutter.

sometimes to the Annoyance of Foot- Passengers. The Reason given for not sweeping the dusty Streets was, that the Dust would dy into the Win dows of Shops and Houses. An accidental Occurrence had instructed me how much Sweeping might be done in a little Time. I found at my Door in Craven Street6 one Morning a poor Woman sweeping my Pavement with a birch Broom. She appeared very pale and feeble as just come out of a Fit of Sick- ness. I ask’d who employ’d her to sweep there. She said, “Nobody; but I am very poor and in Distress, and I sweeps before Gentlefolkeses Doors, and hopes they will give me something.” I bid her sweep the whole Street clean and I would give her a Shilling. This was at 9 aClock. At 12 she came for the Shilling. From the Slowness I saw at "rst in her Working, I could scarce believe that the Work was done so soon, and sent my Servant to examine it, who reported that the whole Street was swept perfectly clean, and all the Dust plac’d in the Gutter which was in the Middle. And the next Rain wash’d it quite away, so that the Pavement and even the Kennel7 were per- fectly clean. I then judg’d that if that feeble Woman could sweep such a Street in 3 Hours, a strong active Man might have done it in half the time. And here let me remark the Con ve nience of having but one Gutter in such a narrow Street, running down its Middle, instead of two, one on each Side near the Footway. For Where all the Rain that falls on a Street runs from the Sides and meets in the middle, it forms there a Current strong enough to wash away all the Mud it meets with: But when divided into two Chan- nels, it is often too weak to cleanse either, and only makes the Mud it "nds more duid, so that the Wheels of Carriages and Feet of Horses throw and dash it up on the Foot Pavement which is thereby rendered foul and slip- pery, and sometimes splash it upon those who are walking. My Proposal communicated to the good Doctor, was as follows.

“For the more effectual cleaning and keeping clean the Streets of Lon- don and Westminster, it is proposed,

“That the several Watchmen be contracted with to have the Dust swept up in dry Seasons, and the Mud rak’d up at other Times, each in the several Streets and Lanes of his Round.

“That they be furnish’d with Brooms and other proper Instruments for these purposes, to be kept at their respective Stands, ready to furnish the poor People they may employ in the Ser vice.

“That in the dry Summer Months the Dust be all swept up into Heaps at proper Distances, before the Shops and Win dows of Houses are usually opened: when the Scavengers with close- covered Carts shall also carry it all away.

“That the Mud when rak’d up be not left in Heaps to be spread abroad again by the Wheels of Carriages and Trampling of Horses; but that the Scav- engers be provided with Bodies of Carts, not plac’d high upon Wheels, but low upon Sliders; with Lattice Bottoms, which being cover’d with Straw, will retain the Mud thrown into them, and permit the Water to drain from it, whereby it will become much lighter, Water making the greatest Part of its Weight. These Bodies of Carts to be plac’d at con ve nient Distances, and the

8. Printer and publisher of the Virginia Gazette (d. 1761).

9. A former British coin worth one quarter of a penny.

Mud brought to them in Wheelbarrows, they remaining where plac’d till the Mud is drain’d, and then Horses brought to draw them away.”

I have since had Doubts of the Practicability of the latter Part of this Proposal, on Account of the Narrowness of some Streets, and the Dif"culty of placing the Draining Sleds so as not to encumber too much the Passage: But I am still of Opinion that the former, requiring the dust to be swept up and carried away before the Shops are open, is very practicable in the Sum- mer, when the Days are long. For in walking thro’ the Strand and Fleet Street one Morning at 7 aClock I observ’d there was not one shop open tho’ it had been Daylight and the Sun up above three Hours. The Inhabitants of Lon- don choosing voluntarily to live much by Candle Light, and sleep by Sun- shine; and yet often complain, a little absurdly, of the Duty on Candles and the high Price of Tallow.

Some may think these triding Matters not worth minding or relating. But when they consider, that tho’ Dust blown into the Eyes of a single Person or into a single Shop on a windy Day, is but of small Importance, yet the great Number of the Instances in a populous City, and its frequent Repetitions give it Weight and Consequence; perhaps they will not censure very severely those who bestow some of Attention to Affairs of this seemingly low Nature. Human Felicity is produc’d not so much by great Pieces of good Fortune that seldom happen, as by little Advantages that occur every Day. Thus if you teach a poor young Man to shave himself and keep his Razor in order, you may contribute more to the Happiness of his Life than in giving him a 1000 Guineas. The Money will be soon spent, and the Regret only remaining of having foolishly consum’d it. But in the other Case he escapes the fre- quent Vexation of waiting for Barbers, and of their sometimes, dirty Fin gers, offensive Breaths and dull Razors. He shaves when most con ve nient to him, and enjoys daily the Plea sure of its being done with a good Instrument.— With these Sentiments I have hazarded the few preceding Pages, hoping they may afford Hints which some time or other may be useful to a City I love, having lived many Years in it very happily, and perhaps to some of our Towns in Amer i ca.

Having been for some time employed by the Postmaster General of Amer- i ca, as his Comptroller, in regulating the several Of"ces, and bringing the Of"cers to account, I was upon his Death in 1753 appointed jointly with Mr. William Hunter8 to succeed him by a Commission from the Postmaster General in Eng land. The American Of"ce had never hitherto paid anything to that of Britain. We were to have 600 Pounds a Year between us if we could make that Sum out of the Pro"ts of the Of"ce. To do this, a Variety of Improvements were necessary; some of these were inevitably at "rst expen- sive; so that in the "rst four Years the Of"ce became above 900 Pounds in debt to us. But it soon after began to repay us, and before I was displac’d, by a Freak of the Minister’s, of which I shall speak hereafter, we had brought it to yield three times as much clear Revenue to the Crown as the Post- Of"ce of Ireland. Since that imprudent Transaction, they have receiv’d from it,— Not one Farthing.9

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1. Actually, Harvard conferred the degree on July 25, 1753, and Yale on September 12. 2. At the start of the French and Indian War (1754–63), representatives from seven of the nine British colonies met with representatives from the Iroquois Confederacy (the Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, Mohawk, and Tuscarora tribes) to discuss a common defense. 3. It was customary to pres ent goods to the Indi- ans. “Governor Hamilton”: James (see n. 4,

p. 493). 4. Isaac Norris (1701–1766), John (not Thomas) Penn (1729–1795), Richard Peters (1704–1776). 5. I.e., engaging in negotiations outside Pennsyl- vania. 6. Alexander (1691–1756) and Archibald Ken- nedy (1685–1763) held public of"ces in New York, and Kennedy wrote The Importance of Gaining and Preserving the Friendship of the Indians (1751).

The Business of the Post- Of"ce occasion’d my taking a Journey this Year to New Eng land, where the College of Cambridge of their own Motion, pre- sented me with the Degree of Master of Arts. Yale College in Connecticut, had before made me a similar Compliment.1 Thus without studying in any College I came to partake of their Honors. They were Confer’d in Consideration of my Improvements and Discoveries in the electric Branch of Natu ral Philosophy.

In 1754, War with France being again apprehended, a Congress of Com- missioners from the dif fer ent Colonies, was by an Order of the Lords of Trade, to be assembled at Albany, there to confer with the Chiefs of the Six Nations, concerning the Means of defending both their Country and ours.2 Governor Hamilton, having receiv’d this Order, acquainted the House with it, requesting they would furnish proper Pres ents for the Indians to be given on this Occasion;3 and naming the Speaker (Mr. Norris) and myself, to join Mr. Thomas Penn and Mr. Secretary Peters,4 as Commissioners to act for Pennsylvania. The House approv’d the Nomination, and provided the Goods for the Pres ent, tho’ they did not much like treating out of the Province,5 and we met the other Commissioners and met at Albany about the Middle of June. In our Way thither, I projected and drew up a Plan for the Union of all the Colonies, under one Government so far as might be necessary for Defense, and other impor tant general Purposes. As we pass’d thro’ New York, I had there shown my Proj ect to Mr. James Alexander and Mr. Kennedy, two Gentlemen of great Knowledge in public Affairs,6 and being forti"ed by their Approbation I ventur’d to lay it before the Congress. It then appear’d that several of the Commissioners had form’d Plans of the same kind. A previ- ous Question was "rst taken whether a Union should be established, which pass’d in the Af"rmative unanimously. A Committee was then appointed, One Member from each Colony, to consider the several Plans and report. Mine happen’d to be prefer’d, and with a few Amendments was accordingly reported.

By this Plan, the general Government was to be administered by a Presi- dent General appointed and supported by the Crown, and a Grand Council to be chosen by the Representatives of the People of the several Colonies met in their respective Assemblies. The Debates upon it in Congress went on daily hand in hand with the Indian Business. Many Objections and Dif- "culties were started, but at length they were all overcome, and the Plan was unanimously agreed to, and Copies ordered to be transmitted to the Board of Trade and to the Assemblies of the several Provinces. Its Fate was singular. The Assemblies did not adopt it, as they all thought there was too much Prerogative in it; and in Eng land it was judg’d to have too much of the

7. “Too much Prerogative” means too much royal power was to be invested in the proposed gover- nor general of all the North American colonies. “Too much of the Demo cratic” means too much power was to be given to the proposed intercolo- nial legislature. 8. Po liti cal, Miscellaneous, and Philosophical Papers (1779). Labaree points out that Franklin has oversimpli"ed reasons for the failure of the Albany plan. The colonies feared the domination of any one colony and were wary of strong- willed

colonial assemblies and reluctant to see any one strong legislature emerge. 9. William Shirley (1694–1771), governor of Mas sa chu setts 1741–49 and 1753–56. 1. “Satire 10,” lines 1–2, by the ancient Roman writer Juvenal, translated by the seventeenth- century En glish writer John Dryden. 2. Totally rejected. 3. Robert Hunter Morris (c. 1700–1764), gover- nor of Pennsylvania 1754–56.

Demo cratic.7 The Board of Trade therefore did not approve of it; nor recom- mend it for the Approbation of his Majesty; but another Scheme was form’d (suppos’d better to answer the same Purpose) whereby the Governors of the Provinces with some Members of their respective Councils were to meet and order the raising of Troops, building of Forts, etc., etc., to draw on the Trea sury of Great Britain for the Expense, which was afterwards to be refunded by an Act of Parliament laying a Tax on Amer i ca. My Plan, with my Reasons in support of it, is to be found among my po liti cal Papers that are printed.8

Being the Winter following in Boston, I had much Conversation with Gov- ernor Shirley9 upon both the Plans. Part of what pass’d between us on the Occasion may also be seen among those Papers. The dif fer ent and contrary Reasons of dislike to my Plan, makes me suspect that it was really the true Medium; and I am still of Opinion it would have been happy for both Sides the Water if it had been adopted. The Colonies so united would have been suf- "ciently strong to have defended themselves; there would then have been no need of Troops from Eng land; of course the subsequent Pretense for Taxing Amer i ca, and the bloody Contest it occasioned, would have been avoided. But such Mistakes are not new; History is full of the Errors of States and Princes.

“Look round the habitable World, how few Know their own Good, or knowing it pursue.”1

Those who govern, having much Business on their hands, do not gener- ally like to take the Trou ble of considering and carry ing into Execution new Proj ects. The best public Mea sures are therefore seldom adopted from pre- vious Wisdom, but forc’d by the Occasion.

The Governor of Pennsylvania in sending it down to the Assembly, express’d his Approbation of the Plan “as appearing to him to be drawn up with great Clearness and Strength of Judgment, and therefore recommended it as well worthy their closest and most serious Attention.” The House how- ever, by the Management of a certain Member, took it up when I happen’d to be absent, which I thought not very fair, and reprobated2 it without pay- ing any Attention to it at all, to my no small Morti"cation.

In my Journey to Boston this Year I met at New York with our new Gov- ernor, Mr. Morris,3 just arriv’d there from Eng land, with whom I had been before intimately acquainted. He brought a Commission to supersede Mr. Hamilton, who, tir’d with the Disputes his Proprietary Instructions sub- jected him to, had resigned. Mr.  Morris ask’d me, if I thought he must expect as uncomfortable an Administration. I said, No; you may on the con- trary have a very comfortable one, if you will only take care not to enter into any Dispute with the Assembly; “My dear Friend, says he, pleasantly, how

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4. Franklin’s account of Pennsylvania politics during this period does not accurately redect some of the real bitterness. 5. In Don Quixote, a novel by the Spanish writer Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616), Sancho Panza

grieves at the prospect of ruling a kingdom of black people, then realizes he could sell his sub- jects. 6. At this time, Thomas Penn (1702–1775), son of William and uncle of John.

can you advise my avoiding Disputes. You know I love Disputing; it is one of my greatest Pleasures: However, to show the Regard I have for your Coun- sel, I promise you I will if pos si ble avoid them.” He had some Reason for loving to dispute, being eloquent, an acute Sophister, and therefore gener- ally successful in argumentative Conversation. He had been brought up to it from a Boy, his Father (as I have heard) accustoming his Children to dis- pute with one another for his Diversion while sitting at Table after Dinner. But I think the Practice was not wise, for in the Course of my Observation, these disputing, contradicting and confuting People are generally unfortu- nate in their Affairs. They get Victory sometimes, but they never get Good Will, which would be of more use to them. We parted, he going to Philadel- phia, and I to Boston. In returning, I met at New York with the Votes of the Assembly, by which it appear’d that notwithstanding his Promise to me, he and the House were already in high Contention, and it was a continual Battle between them, as long as he retain’d the Government.

I had my Share of it; for as soon as I got back to my Seat in the Assembly, I was put on every Committee for answering his Speeches and Messages, and by the Committees always desired to make the Drafts. Our Answers as well as his Messages were often tart, and sometimes indecently abusive. And as he knew I wrote for the Assembly, one might have imagined that when we met we could hardly avoid cutting Throats. But he was so good- natur’d a Man, that no personal Difference between him and me was occasion’d by the Contest, and we often din’d together.4 One After noon in the height of this public Quarrel, we met in the Street. “Franklin, says he, you must go home with me and spend the Eve ning. I am to have some Com pany that you will like;” and taking me by the Arm he led me to his House. In gay Conver- sation over our Wine after Supper he told us Jokingly that he much admir’d the Idea of Sancho Panza, who when it was propos’d to give him a Govern- ment, requested it might be a Government of Blacks, as then, if he could not agree with his People he might sell them.5 One of his Friends who sat next me, says, “Franklin, why do you continue to side with these damn’d Quakers? had not you better sell them? the Proprietor6 would give you a good Price.” The Governor, says I, had not yet black’d them enough. He had indeed labor’d hard to blacken the Assembly in all his Messages, but they wip’d off his Col- oring as fast as he laid it on, and plac’d it in return thick upon his own Face; so that "nding he was likely to be negri"ed himself, he as well as Mr. Ham- ilton, grew tir’d of the Contest, and quitted the Government.

These public Quarrels were all at bottom owing to the Proprietaries, our hereditary Governors; who when any Expense was to be incurr’d for the Defense of their Province, with incredible Meanness instructed their Dep- uties to pass no Act for levying the necessary Taxes, unless their vast Estates were in the same Act expressly excused; and they had even taken Bonds of those Deputies to observe such Instructions. The Assemblies for three Years held out against this Injustice. Tho’ constrain’d to bend at last. At length

7. The Pennsylvania Assembly had failed to get the colony’s proprietors to share the expense of government. In 1759, William Denny (1709– 1765), a former British Army captain who suc- ceeded Robert Hunter Morris as governor, was pressured into signing a bill that taxed proprie- tary estates. However, this tax was not enforced until 1775. Franklin does not "nish his account. 8. Morris was in of"ce 1754–56; Denny, 1756–59. 9. The colonists are planning to attack Fort Saint- Frédéric, a French outpost at Lake Cham- plain. The French controlled the territory to the north, and three British colonies (Mas sa chu-

setts, New Hampshire, and New York) controlled the territory to the south. Josiah Quincy (1710– 1784) was a wealthy Mas sa chu setts merchant. Thomas Pownall (1722–1805) served as gover- nor of New Jersey (1755–56) before becoming governor of Mas sa chu setts (1757–60). 1. The Loan Of"ce lent paper money authorized by legislative act and secured by mortgages on real estate. Interest was received on the loans. The Assembly was empowered to direct the expen- diture of these receipts. 2. A tax on articles made and used in the colo- nies.

Captain Denny, who was Governor Morris’s Successor, ventur’d to disobey those Instructions; how that was brought about I shall show hereafter.7

But I am got forward too fast with my Story; there are still some Transac- tions to be mentioned that happened during the Administration of Gover- nor Morris.8

War being, in a manner, commenced with France the Government of Mas sa chu setts Bay projected an Attack upon Crown Point, and sent Mr. Quincy to Pennsylvania, and Mr. Pownall, afterwards Governor Pownall, to New York to solicit Assistance.9 As I was in the Assembly, knew its Temper, and was Mr. Quincy’s Countryman, he applied to me for my Induence and Assistance. I dictated his Address to them which was well receiv’d. They voted an Aid of Ten Thousand Pounds, to be laid out in Provisions. But the Governor refusing his Assent to their Bill, (which included this with other Sums granted for the Use of the Crown) unless a Clause were inserted exempting the Proprietary Estate from bearing any Part of the Tax that would be necessary, the Assembly, tho’ very desirous of making their Grant to New Eng land effectual, were at a Loss how to accomplish it. Mr. Quincy laboured hard with the Governor to obtain his Assent, but he was obstinate. I then suggested a Method of doing the Business without the Governor, by Orders on the Trustees of the Loan- Of"ce, which by Law the Assembly had the Right of Drawing.1 There was indeed little or no Money at that time in the Of"ce, and therefore I propos’d that the Orders should be payable in a Year and to bear an Interest of Five percent. With these Orders I suppos’d the Provisions might easily be purchas’d. The Assembly with very little Hesita- tion adopted the Proposal. The Orders were immediately printed, and I was one of the Committee directed to sign and dispose of them. The Fund for Pay- ing them was the Interest of all the Paper Currency then extant in the Prov- ince upon Loan, together with the Revenue arising from the Excise,2 which being known to be more than suf"cient, they obtain’d instant Credit, and were not only receiv’d in Payment for the Provisions, but many money’d People who had Cash lying by them, vested it in those Orders, which they found advantageous, as they bore Interest while upon hand, and might on any Occasion be used as Money: So that they were eagerly all bought up, and in a few Weeks none of them were to be seen. Thus this impor tant Affair was by my means completed. Mr. Quincy return’d Thanks to the Assembly in a hand- some Memorial, went home highly pleas’d with the Success of his Embassy, and ever after bore for me the most cordial and affectionate Friendship.

The British Government not choosing to permit the Union of the Colonies, as propos’d at Albany, and to trust that Union with their Defense, lest they

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3. Edward Braddock (1695–1755), commander of the British forces in North Amer i ca in the French and Indian War.

4. In Pennsylvania. 5. At Fort Cumberland, in Mary land.

should thereby grow too military, and feel their own Strength, Suspicions and Jealousies at this time being entertain’d of them, sent over General Braddock3 with two Regiments of Regular En glish Troops for that pur- pose. He landed at Alexandria in Virginia, and thence march’d to Frederick Town in Mary land, where he halted for Carriages. Our Assembly apprehend- ing, from some Information, that he had conceived violent Prejudices against them, as averse to the Ser vice, wish’d me to wait upon him, not as from them, but as Postmaster General, under the guise of proposing to settle with him the Mode of conducting with most Celerity and Certainty the Dis- patches between him and the Governors of the several Provinces, with whom he must necessarily have continual Correspondence, and of which they propos’d to pay the Expense. My Son accompanied me on this Journey. We found the General at Frederick Town, waiting impatiently for the Return of those he had sent thro’ the back Parts of Mary land and Virginia to col- lect Waggons. I stayed with him several Days, Din’d with him daily, and had full Opportunity of removing all his Prejudices, by the Information of what the Assembly had before his Arrival actually done and were still willing to do to facilitate his Operations.

When I was about to depart, the Returns of Waggons to be obtain’d were brought in, by which it appear’d that they amounted only to twenty- "ve, and not all of those were in ser viceable Condition. The General and all the Of"cers were surpris’d, declar’d the Expedition was then at an End, being impossible, and exclaim’d against the Ministers for ignorantly landing them in a Country destitute of the Means of conveying their Stores, Baggage, etc., not less than 150 Waggons being necessary. I happen’d to say, I thought it was pity they had not been landed rather in Pennsylvania, as in that Country almost every Farmer had his Waggon. The General eagerly laid hold of my Words, and said, “Then you, Sir, who are a Man of Interest there, can prob ably procure them for us; and I beg you will undertake it.” I ask’d what Terms were to be offer’d the Owners of the Waggons; and I was desir’d to put on Paper the Terms that appear’d to me necessary. This I did, and they were agreed to, and a Commission and Instructions accordingly prepar’d immedi- ately. What those Terms were will appear in the Advertisement I publish’d as soon as I arriv’d at Lancaster,4 which being, from the great and sudden Effect it produc’d, a Piece of some Curiosity, I shall insert at length, as follows.

ADVERTISEMENT

Lancaster, April 26, 1755.

WHEREAS 150 Waggons, with 4 Horses to each Waggon, and 1500 Saddle or Pack- Horses are wanted for the Ser vice of his Majesty’s Forces now about to rendezvous at Wills’s Creek;5 and his Excellency General Braddock hath been pleased to empower me to contract for the Hire of the same; I hereby give Notice, that I shall attend for that Purpose at Lancaster from this Time till next Wednesday Eve ning; and at York from next Thursday Morning ’till

6. Tack, harnesses. 7. Objective.

8. Fodder.

Friday Eve ning; where I shall be ready to agree for Waggons and Teams, or single Horses, on the following Terms, viz.,

1st. That there shall be paid for each Waggon with 4 good Horses and a Driver, Fifteen Shillings per Diem: And for each able Horse with a Pack- Saddle or other Saddle and Furniture,6 Two Shillings per Diem. And for each able Horse without a Saddle, Eigh teen Pence per Diem.

2dly, That the Pay commence from the Time of their joining the Forces at Wills’s Creek (which must be on or before the twentieth of May ensuing) and that a reasonable Allowance be made over and above for the Time neces- sary for their traveling to Wills’s Creek and home again after their Discharge.

3dly, Each Waggon and Team, and every Saddle or Pack Horse is to be valued by indifferent7 Persons, chosen between me and the Owner, and in Case of the Loss of any Waggon, Team or other Horse in the Ser vice, the Price according to such Valuation, is to be allowed and paid.

4thly, Seven Days’ Pay is to be advanced and paid in hand by me to the Owner of each Waggon and Team, or Horse, at the Time of contracting, if required; and the Remainder to be paid by General Braddock, or by the Pay- master of the Army, at the Time of their Discharge, or from time to time as it shall be demanded.

5thly, No Drivers of Waggons, or Persons taking care of the hired Horses, are on any Account to be called upon to do the Duty of Soldiers, or be other- wise employ’d than in conducting or taking Care of their Carriages and Horses.

6thly, All Oats, Indian Corn or other Forage,8 that Waggons or Horses bring to the Camp more than is necessary for the Subsistence of the Horses, is to be taken for the Use of the Army, and a reasonable Price paid for it.

Note. My Son William Franklin, is empowered to enter into like Contracts with any Person in Cumberland County.

B. Franklin.

To the Inhabitants of the Counties of Lancaster, York, and Cumberland.

Friends and Countrymen, BEING occasionally at the Camp at Frederick a few Days since, I found

the General and Of"cers of the Army extremely exasperated, on Account of their not being supplied with Horses and Carriages, which had been expected from this Province as most able to furnish them; but thro’ the Dissensions between our Governor and Assembly, Money had not been provided nor any Steps taken for that Purpose.

It was proposed to send an armed Force immediately into these Counties, to seize as many of the best Carriages and Horses as should be wanted, and compel as many Persons into the Ser vice as would be necessary to drive and take care of them.

I apprehended that the Pro gress of a Body of Soldiers thro’ these Coun- ties on such an Occasion, especially considering the Temper they are in, and their Resentment against us, would be attended with many and great Incon-

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9. I.e., Franklin will be sorry because St. Clair will requisition the horses like a “hussar”— a type of cavalryman that, in eighteenth- century

Eu rope, had a reputation for pillage and mistreat- ment of civilians.

ve niences to the Inhabitants; and therefore more willingly undertook the Trou ble of trying "rst what might be done by fair and equitable Means.

The People of these back Counties have lately complained to the Assem- bly that a suf"cient Currency was wanting; you have now an Opportunity of receiving and dividing among you a very considerable Sum; for if the Ser- vice of this Expedition should continue (as it’s more than probable it will) for 120 Days, the Hire of these Waggons and Horses will amount to upwards of Thirty thousand Pounds, which will be paid you in Silver and Gold of the King’s Money.

The Ser vice will be light and easy, for the Army will scarce march above 12 Miles per Day, and the Waggons and Baggage Horses, as they carry those Things that are absolutely necessary to the Welfare of the Army, must march with the Army and no faster, and are, for the Army’s sake, always plac’d where they can be most secure, whether on a March or in Camp.

If you are really, as I believe you are, good and loyal Subjects to His Maj- esty, you may now do a most acceptable Ser vice, and make it easy to your- selves; for three or four of such as cannot separately spare from the Business of their Plantations a Waggon and four Horses and a Driver, may do it together, one furnishing the Waggon, another one or two Horses, and another the Driver, and divide the Pay proportionably between you. But if you do not this Ser vice to your King and Country voluntarily, when such good Pay and reasonable Terms are offered you, your Loyalty will be strongly sus- pected; the King’s Business must be done; so many brave Troops, come so far for your Defense, must not stand idle, thro’ your backwardness to do what may be reasonably expected from you; Waggons and Horses must be had; violent Mea sures will prob ably be used; and you will be to seek for a Recompense where you can "nd it, and your Case perhaps be little pitied or regarded.

I have no par tic u lar Interest in this Affair; as (except the Satisfaction of endeavouring to do Good and prevent Mischief) I shall have only my Labor for my Pains. If this Method of obtaining the Waggons and Horses is not like to succeed, I am oblig’d to send Word to the General in fourteen Days; and I suppose Sir John St. Clair the Hussar, with a Body of Soldiers, will immediately enter the Province, for the Purpose aforesaid, of which I shall be sorry to hear,9 because

I am,

very sincerely and truly your Friend and Well- wisher, B. Franklin

I receiv’d of the General about 800 Pounds to be disburs’d in Advance- money to the Waggon- Owners, etc.: but that Sum being insuf"cient, I advanc’d upwards of 200 Pounds more, and in two Weeks, the 150 Waggons with 259 carry ing Horses were on their March for the Camp. The Advertise- ment promised Payment according to the Valuation, in case any Waggon or Horse should be lost. The Owners however, alledging they did not know

1. Thomas Dunbar (d. 1767), who in 1755 replaced Braddock as commander of the North American forces. 2. Expensive. “Subalterns”: of"cers below the rank of captain. 3. William Franklin had been an of"cer in a colonial army brought together to resist French

Canada. 4. In this period, sugar was either loaf- shaped or cone- shaped. 5. Brown sugar. 6. In the eigh teenth century, a "ne black tea. 7. Rum.

General Braddock, or what Dependance might be had on his Promise, insisted on my Bond for the Per for mance, which I accordingly gave them.

While I was at the Camp, supping one Eve ning with the Of"cers of Col o nel Dunbar’s Regiment, he1 represented to me his Concern for the Subalterns, who he said were generally not in Afduence, and could ill afford in this dear2 Country to lay in the Stores that might be necessary in so long a March thro’ a Wilderness where nothing was to be purchas’d. I commiserated their Case, and resolved to endeavor procuring them some Relief. I said nothing however to him of my Intention, but wrote the next Morning to the Committee of Assembly, who had the Disposition of some public Money, warmly recom- mending the Case of these Of"cers to their consideration, and proposing that a Pres ent should be sent them of Necessaries and Refreshments. My Son, who had had some Experience of a Camp Life,3 and of its Wants, drew up a List for me, which I enclos’d in my Letter. The Committee approv’d, and used such Diligence, that conducted by my Son, the Stores arrived at the Camp as soon as the Waggons. They consisted of 20 Parcels, each containing

6 lb. Loaf Sugar4 6 lb. good Muscovado5 Ditto 1 lb. good Green Tea 1 lb. good Bohea6 Ditto 6 lb. good ground Coffee 6 lb. Choco late ½ Hundredweight best white Biscuit ½ lb. Pepper 1 Quart best white Wine Vinegar 1 Gloucester Cheese 1 Keg containing 20lb. good Butter 2 Doz. old Madeira Wine 2 Gallons Jamaica Spirits7 1 Bottle Flour of Mustard 2 well- cur’d Hams ½ Doz. dried Tongues 6 lb. Rice. 6 lb. Raisins.

These 20 Parcels well pack’d were plac’d on as many Horses, each Parcel with the Horse, being intended as a Pres ent for one Of"cer. They were very thankfully receiv’d, and the Kindness acknowledg’d by Letters to me from the Col o nels of both Regiments in the most grateful Terms. The Gen- eral too was highly satis"ed with my Conduct in procuring him the Wag- gons, etc., and readily paid my Account of Disbursements; thanking me repeatedly and requesting my farther Assistance in sending Provisions after him. I undertook this also, and was busily employ’d in it till we heard of his Defeat, advancing, for the Ser vice, of my own Money, upwards of 1000 Pounds

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8. The Battle of the Monongahela (also known as the Battle of the Wilderness or Braddock’s Defeat), in July 1755, nine miles south of pres ent- day Pittsburgh. Braddock died from wounds received in the battle. George Washington directed the colonial survivors in retreat. 9. I.e., the standing army. 1. French outpost at the intersection of the

Allegheny and Monongahela rivers, on the site of what is now Pittsburgh. 2. In Quebec. 3. Franklin may have in mind the campaign of the Marquis de Denonville against the Seneca tribe in 1687. The French were ambushed and forced to retreat. 4. I.e., Fort Duquesne.

Sterling, of which I sent him an Account. It came to his Hands luckily for me a few Days before the Battle,8 and he return’d me immediately an Order on the Paymaster for the round Sum of 1000 Pounds, leaving the Remain- der to the next Account. I consider this Payment as good Luck; having never been able to obtain that Remainder; of which more hereafter.

This General was I think a brave Man, and might prob ably have made a Figure as a good Of"cer in some Eu ro pean War. But he had too much self- con"dence, too high an Opinion of the Validity of Regular Troops,9 and too mean a One of both Americans and Indians. George Croghan, our Indian Interpreter, join’d him on his March with 100 of those People, who might have been of great Use to his Army as Guides, Scouts, etc., if he had treated them kindly; but he slighted and neglected them, and they gradually left him.

In Conversation with him one day, he was giving me some Account of his intended Pro gress. “ After taking Fort Duquesne,1 says he, I am to proceed to Niagara; and having taken that, to Frontenac,2 if the Season will allow time; and I suppose it will; for Duquesne can hardly detain me above three or four Days; and then I see nothing that can obstruct my March to Niagara.”— Having before revolv’d in my Mind the long Line his Army must make in their March, by a very narrow Road to be cut for them thro’ the Woods and Bushes; and also what I had read of a former Defeat of 1500 French who invaded the Iroquois Country,3 I had conceiv’d some Doubts, and some Fears for the Event of the Campaign. But I ventur’d only to say, To be sure, Sir, if you arrive well before Duquesne, with these "ne Troops so well provided with Artillery, that Place, not yet completely forti"ed, and as we hear with no very strong Garrison, can prob ably make but a short Re sis tance. The only Danger I apprehend of Obstruction to your March, is from Ambuscades of Indians, who by constant Practice are dextrous in lay- ing and executing them. And the slender Line near four Miles long, which your Army must make, may expose it to be attack’d by Surprise in its Flanks, and to be cut like a Thread into several Pieces, which from their Distance cannot come up in time to support each other.

He smil’d at my Ignorance, and replied, “ These Savages may indeed be a formidable Enemy to your raw American Militia; but, upon the King’s regu- lar and disciplin’d Troops, Sir, it is impossible they should make any Impres- sion.” I was conscious of an Impropriety in my Disputing with a military Man in Matters of his Profession, and said no more.— The Enemy however did not take the Advantage of his Army which I apprehended its long Line of March expos’d it to, but let it advance without Interruption till within 9 Miles of the Place,4 and then when more in a Body, (for it had just pass’d a River, where the Front had halted till all were come over) and in a more open Part of the Woods than any it had pass’d, attack’d its advanc’d Guard; by a heavy Fire from behind Trees and Bushes; which was the "rst Intelligence

5. William Shirley, Jr.  (1721–1755), son of the governor of Mas sa chu setts (see n. 9, p. 557). 6. More accurately, fourteen hundred and sixty- nine military were engaged, four hundred and "fty- six were killed, and "ve hundred and twenty were wounded.

7. I.e., those who ran away. 8. A more accurate estimate would be eight hun- dred. 9. I.e., supplies and equipment. 1. Patience. 2. Robert Orme (d. 1790).

the General had of an Enemy’s being near him. This Guard being disordered, the General hurried the Troops up to their Assistance, which was done in great Confusion thro’ Waggons, Baggage and Cattle; and presently the Fire came upon their Flank; the Of"cers being on Horse back were more easily distinguish’d, pick’d out as Marks, and fell very fast; and the Soldiers were crowded together in a Huddle, having or hearing no Orders, and standing to be shot at till two- thirds of them were killed, and then being seiz’d with a Panic the whole ded with Precipitation. The Waggoners took each a Horse out of his Team, and scamper’d; their Example was immediately follow’d by others, so that all the Waggons, Provisions, Artillery and Stores were left to the Enemy.

The General being wounded was brought off with Dif"culty, his Secre- tary Mr. Shirley5 was killed by his Side, and out of 86 Of"cers 63 were killed or wounded, and 714 Men killed out of 1100.6 These 1100 had been picked Men, from the whole Army, the Rest had been left behind with Col o nel Dun- bar, who was to follow with the heavier Part of the Stores, Provisions and Baggage. The Fliers,7 not being pursu’d, arriv’d at Dunbar’s Camp, and the Panic they brought with them instantly seiz’d him and all his People. And tho’ he had now above 1000 Men, and the Enemy who had beaten Brad- dock did not at most exceed 400,8 Indians and French together; instead of Proceeding and endeavoring to recover some of the lost Honor, he order’d all the Stores, Ammunitions, etc., to be destroy’d, that he might have more Horses to assist his Flight towards the Settlements, and less Lumber9 to remove. He was there met with Requests from the Governors of Virginia, Mary land and Pennsylvania, that he would post his Troops on the Frontiers so as to afford some Protection to the Inhabitants; but he continu’d his hasty March thro’ all the Country, not thinking himself safe till he arriv’d at Phil- adelphia, where the Inhabitants could protect him. This whole Transaction gave us Americans the "rst Suspicion that our exalted Ideas of the Prowess of British Regulars had not been well founded.

In their "rst March too, from their Landing till they got beyond the Set- tlements, they had plundered and stripped the Inhabitants, totally ruining some poor Families, besides insulting, abusing and con"ning the People if they remonstrated. This was enough to put us out of Conceit1 of such Defend- ers if we had really wanted any. How dif fer ent was the Conduct of our French Friends in 1781, who during a March thro’ the most inhabited Part of our Country, from Rhode Island to Virginia, near 700 Miles, occasion’d not the smallest Complaint for the Loss of a Pig, a Chicken, or even an Apple!

Captain Orme,2 who was one of the General’s Aides Camp, and being grievously wounded was brought off with him, and continu’d with him to his Death, which happen’d in a few Days, told me, that he was totally silent, all the "rst Day, and at Night only said, Who’d have thought it? that he was silent again the following Days, only saying at last, We shall better know how to deal with them another time; and died a few Minutes after.

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3. Scottish phi los o pher and historian (1711– 1776), later secretary to Francis Seymour- Conway (1719–1749), "rst Marquis of Hertford. 4. I.e., indentured servants, whose masters received no compensation while they were con- scripted.

5. Governor William Shirley, as commander- in- chief. 6. Document asking subscribers to contribute money. “Doctors Bond”: the brothers Thomas (1713–1784) and Phineas Bond (1717–1773), Philadelphia physicians.

The Secretary’s Papers with all the General’s Orders, Instructions and Correspondence falling into the Enemy’s Hands, they selected and trans- lated into French a Number of the Articles, which they printed to prove the hostile Intentions of the British Court before the Declaration of War. Among these I saw some Letters of the General to the Ministry speaking highly of the great Ser vice I had rendered the Army, and recommending me to their Notice. David Hume3 too, who was some Years after Secretary to Lord Harcourt when Minister in France, and afterwards to General Conway when Secretary of State, told me he had seen among the Papers in that Of"ce Letters from Braddock highly recommending me. But the Expedi- tion having been unfortunate, my Ser vice it seems was not thought of much Value, for those Recommendations were never of any Use to me.

As to Rewards from himself, I ask’d only one, which was, that he would give Orders to his Of"cers not to enlist any more of our bought servants,4 and that he would discharge such as had been already enlisted. This he read- ily granted, and several were accordingly return’d to their Masters on my Application. Dunbar, when the Command devolv’d on him, was not so gen- erous. He Being at Philadelphia on his Retreat, or rather Flight, I applied to him for the Discharge of the Servants of three poor Farmers of Lancaster County that he had enlisted, reminding him of the late General’s Orders on that head. He promis’d me, that if the Masters would come to him at Trenton, where he should be in a few Days on his March to New York, he would there deliver their Men to them. They accordingly were at the Expense and Trou- ble of going to Trenton, and there he refus’d to perform his Promise, to their great Loss and Disappointment.

As soon as the Loss of the Waggons and Horses was generally known, all the Owners came upon me for the Valuation which I had given Bond to pay. Their Demands gave me a great deal of Trou ble, my acquainting them that the Money was ready in the Paymaster’s Hands, but that Orders for paying it must "rst be obtained from General Shirley,5 and my assuring them that I had applied to that General by Letter, but he being at a Distance an Answer could not soon be receiv’d, and they must have Patience; all this was not suf"cient to satisfy, and some began to sue me. General Shirley at length reliev’d me from this terrible Situation, by appointing Commissioners to examine the Claims and ordering Payment. They amounted to near twenty Thousand Pound, which to pay would have ruined me.

Before we had the News of this Defeat, the two Doctors Bond came to me with a Subscription Paper,6 for raising Money to defray the Expense of a grand Firework, which it was intended to exhibit at a Rejoicing on receipt of the News of our Taking Fort Duquesne. I looked grave and said, “it would, I thought, be time enough to prepare for the Rejoicing when we knew we should have occasion to rejoice.”— They seem’d surpris’d that I did not imme- diately comply with their Proposal. “Why, the D— l,” says one of them, “you surely don’t suppose that the Fort will not be taken?” “I don’t know that it

7. Franklin’s bill was vetoed by the ministry on July 7, 1756. It provided exemption for conscien- tious objectors, made enlistment voluntary, and contained little in the way of military discipline. 8. “This Dialogue and the Militia Act are in the Gent. Magazine for February and March 1756”

[Franklin’s note]. Dialogue between X, Y, and Z "rst appeared in the Pennsylvania Gazette, December 18, 1755, and was reprinted in Gentle- man’s Magazine, March  26, 1756. The Militia Act appeared in Gentleman’s Magazine in Febru- ary 1756.

will not be taken; but I know that the Events of War are subject to great Uncertainty.”— I gave them the Reasons of my doubting. The Subscription was dropped, and the Projectors thereby miss’d that Morti"cation they would have under gone if the Firework had been prepared. Dr. Bond on some other Occasions afterwards said, that he did not like Franklin’s forebodings.

Governor Morris who had continually worried the Assembly with Message after Message before the Defeat of Braddock, to beat them into the making of Acts to raise Money for the Defense of the Province without Taxing among others the Proprietary Estates, and had rejected all their Bills for not having such an exempting Clause, now redoubled his Attacks, with more hope of Success, the Danger and Necessity being greater. The Assem- bly however continu’d "rm, believing they had Justice on their side, and that it would be giving up an essential Right, if they suffered the Governor to amend their Money- Bills. In one of the last, indeed, which was for granting 50,000 Pounds, his propos’d Amendment was only of a single Word; the Bill express’d that all Estates real and personal were to be taxed, those of the Proprietaries not excepted. His Amendment was; For not read only. A small but very material Alteration! However, when the News of this Disaster reach’d Eng land, our Friends there whom we had taken care to furnish with all the Assembly’s Answers to the Governor’s Messages, rais’d a Clamor against the Proprietaries for their Meanness and Injustice in giving their Gov- ernor such Instructions, some going so far as to say that by obstructing the Defense of their Province, they forfeited their Right to it. They were intimi- dated by this, and sent Orders to their Receiver General to add 5000 Pounds of their Money to what ever Sum might be given by the Assembly, for such Purpose. This being noti"ed to the House, was accepted in Lieu of their Share of a general Tax, and a new Bill was form’d with an exempting Clause which pass’d accordingly. By this Act I was appointed one of the Commissioners for disposing of the Money, 60,000 Pounds. I had been active in modelling it, and procuring its Passage: and had at the same time drawn a Bill for establishing and disciplining a voluntary Militia, which I carried thro’ the House without much Dif"culty, as Care was taken in it, to leave the Quakers at their Liberty.7

To promote the Association necessary to form the Militia, I wrote a Dia- logue,8 stating and answering all the Objections I could think of to such a Militia, which was printed and had as I thought great Effect. While the several Companies in the City and Country were forming and learning their Exercise, the Governor prevail’d with me to take Charge of our North- western Frontier, which was infested by the Enemy, and provide for the Defense of the Inhabitants by raising Troops, and building a Line of Forts. I undertook this military Business, tho’ I did not conceive myself well- quali"ed for it. He gave me a Commission with full Powers and a Parcel of blank Commissions for Of"cers to be given to whom I thought "t. I had but little Dif"culty in raising Men, having soon 560 under my Command. My Son who had in the preceding War been an Of"cer in the Army rais’d

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9. The Moravians, members of the Church of the United Brethren, emigrated from Saxony in 1735 and eventually established settlements in Pennsylvania: their headquarters in Bethlehem and a smaller mission, Gnadenhütten, in pres ent- day Lehighton. In November 1755, French- allied Natives decimated Gnadenhütten. On January 1, 1756, British troops protecting the area were killed by Natives. Franklin received his commission several days after the governor

learned of this second attack. 1. I.e., relieved the guard and kept careful watch. 2. I.e., northeastern Pennsylvania. The north- ern Delaware Indians were called Munsees or Minisinks. 3. The "ring mechanisms, which required prim- ing powder. 4. Actually, two of the eleven escaped.

against Canada, was my Aide de Camp, and of great Use to me. The Indians had burned Gnadenhut, a Village settled by the Moravians, and massacred the Inhabitants, but the Place was thought a good Situation for one of the Forts. In order to march thither, I assembled the Companies at Bethlehem, the chief Establishment of those People. I was surprised to "nd it in so good a Posture of Defense. The Destruction of Gnadenhut had made them apprehend Danger.9 The principal Buildings were defended by a Stockade: They had purchased a Quantity of Arms and Ammunition from New York, and had even plac’d Quantities of small Paving Stones between the Win- dows of their high Stone Houses, for their Women to throw down upon the Heads of any Indians that should attempt to force into them. The armed Brethren too, kept Watch, and reliev’d1 as methodically as in any Garrison Town. In Conversation with Bishop Spangenberg, I mention’d this my Sur- prise; for knowing they had obtain’d an Act of Parliament exempting them from military Duties in the Colonies, I had suppos’d they were conscien- tiously scrupulous of bearing Arms. He answer’d me, “That it was not one of their establish’d Princi ples; but that at the time of their obtaining that Act, it was thought to be a Princi ple with many of their People. On this Occasion, however, they to their Surprise found it adopted by but a few.” It seems they were either deceiv’d in themselves, or deceiv’d the Parliament. But Common Sense aided by pres ent Danger, will sometimes be too strong for whimsical Opinions.

It was the Beginning of January when we set out upon this Business of Building Forts. I sent one Detachment towards the Minisinks,2 with Instruc- tions to erect one for the Security of that upper Part of the Country; and another to the lower Part, with similar Instructions. And I concluded to go myself with the rest of my Force to Gnadenhut, where a Fort was thought more immediately necessary. The Moravians procur’d me "ve Waggons for our Tools, Stores, Baggage, etc. Just before we left Bethlehem, Eleven Farm- ers who had been driven from their Plantations by the Indians, came to me, requesting a supply of Fire Arms, that they might go back and fetch off their Cattle. I gave them each a Gun with suitable Ammunition. We had not march’d many Miles before it began to rain, and it continu’d raining all Day. There were no Habitations on the Road, to shelter us, till we arriv’d near Night, at the House of a German, where and in his Barn we were all hud- dled together as wet as Water could make us. It was well we were not attack’d in our March, for Our Ars were of the most ordinary Sort, and our Men could not keep their Gunlocks3 dry. The Indians are dextrous in Contriv- ances for that purpose, which we had not. They met that Day the eleven poor Farmers above- mentioned and kill’d Ten of them.4 The one who escap’d

5. The march from Bethlehem to Gnadenhütten took place from January 15 to 18, 1756.

6. The shaft that connects the front and rear axles.

inform’d that his and his Companions’ Guns would not go off, the Priming being wet with the Rain.

The next Day being fair, we continu’d our March and arriv’d at the desolated Gnadenhut.5 There was a Saw Mill near, round which were left several Piles of Boards, with which we soon hutted ourselves; an Operation the more necessary at that inclement Season, as we had no Tents. Our "rst Work was to bury more effectually the Dead we found there, who had been half interr’d by the Country People. The next Morning our Fort was plann’d and mark’d out, the Circumference mea sur ing 455 feet, which would require as many Palisades to be made of Trees one with another of a Foot Dia meter each. Our Axes, of which we had 70 were immediately set to work, to cut down Trees; and our Men being dextrous in the Use of them, great Dispatch was made. Seeing the Trees fall so fast, I had the Curiosity to look at my Watch when two Men began to cut at a Pine. In 6 Minutes they had it upon the Ground; and I found it of 14 Inches Dia meter. Each Pine made three Palisades of 18 Feet long, pointed at one End. While these were preparing, our other Men, dug a Trench all round of three feet deep in which the Palisades were to be planted, and our Waggons, the Body being taken off, and the fore and hind Wheels separated by taking out the Pin which united the two Parts of the Perch,6 we had 10 Carriages with two Horses each, to bring the Palisades from the Woods to the Spot. When they were set up, our Carpenters built a Stage of Boards all round within, about 6 Feet high, for the Men to stand on when to "re thro’ the Loopholes. We had one swivel Gun which we mounted on one of the Angles; and "red it as soon as "x’d, to let the Indians know, if any were within hearing, that we had such Pieces. And thus our Fort, (if such a magni"cent Name may be given to so miserable a Stockade) was "nished in a Week, tho’ it rain’d so hard every other Day that the Men could not work.

This gave me occasion to observe, that when Men are employ’d they are best contented. For on the Days they work’d they were good- natur’d and cheerful; and with the consciousness of having done a good Day’s work they spent the Eve nings jollily; but on the idle Days they were mutinous and quar- relsome; "nding fault with their Pork, the Bread, etc., and in continual ill- humor: which put me in mind of a Sea- Captain, whose Rule it was to keep his Men constantly at Work; and when his Mate once told him that they had done every thing, and there was nothing farther to employ them about; O, says he, make them scour the Anchor.

This kind of Fort, however contemptible, is a suf"cient Defense against Indians who have no Cannon. Finding ourselves now posted securely, and having a Place to retreat to on Occasion, we ventur’d out in Parties to scour the adjacent Country. We met with no Indians, but we found the Places on the neighboring Hills where they had lain to watch our Proceedings. There was an Art in their Contrivance of these Places that seems worth mention. It being Winter, a Fire was necessary for them. But a common Fire on the Surface of the Ground would by its Light have discover’d their Position at a Distance. They had therefore dug Holes in the Ground about three feet

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7. Charles Clinton Beatty (c. 1715–1772). 8. Quarter of a pint. 9. Fort Allen, the stockade built under Frank- lin’s supervision; Fort Norris, about "fteen miles northeast, and Fort Franklin, about "fteen

miles southwest. 1. William Clapham (d. 1763), a well- known frontiersman. 2. I.e., shared their produce communally.

Dia meter, and somewhat deeper. We saw where they had with their Hatch- ets cut off the Charcoal from the Sides of burned Logs lying in the Woods. With these Coals they had made small Fires in the Bottom of the Holes, and we observ’d among the Weeds and Grass the Prints of their Bodies made by their laying all around with their Legs hanging down in the Holes to keep their Feet warm, which with them is an essential Point. This kind of Fire, so manag’d, could not discover them either by its Light, Flame, Sparks or even Smoke. It appear’d that their Number was not great, and it seems they saw we were too many to be attack’d by them with Prospect of Advantage.

We had for our Chaplain a zealous Presbyterian Minister, Mr. Beatty,7 who complain’d to me that the Men did not generally attend his Prayers and Exhortations. When they enlisted, they were promis’d, besides Pay and Pro- visions, a Gill8 of Rum a Day, which was punctually serv’d out to them, half in the Morning and the other half in the Eve ning, and I observ’d they were as punctual in attending to receive it. Upon which I said to Mr. Beatty, “It is perhaps below the Dignity of your Profession to act as Steward of the Rum. But if you were to deal it out, and only just after Prayers, you would have them all about you.” He lik’d the Thought, undertook the Of"ce, and with the help of a few hands to mea sure out the Liquor executed it to Sat- isfaction; and never were Prayers more generally and more punctually attended, So that I thought this Method preferable to the Punishments indicted by some military Laws for Non- Attendance on Divine Ser vice.

I had hardly "nish’d this Business, and got my Fort well stor’d with Pro- visions, when I receiv’d a Letter from the Governor, acquainting me that he had called the Assembly, and wish’d my Attendance there, if the Posture of Affairs on the Frontiers was such that my remaining there was no longer necessary. My Friends too of the Assembly pressing me by their Letters to be if pos si ble at the Meeting, and my three intended Forts being now com- pleted,9 and the Inhabitants contented to remain on their Farms under that Protection, I resolved to return. The more willingly as a New Eng land Of"- cer, Col o nel Clapham,1 experienc’d in Indian War, being on a Visit to our Establishment, consented to accept the Command. I gave him a Commis- sion, and parading the Garrison had it read before them, and introduc’d him to them as an Of"cer who from his Skill in Military Affairs, was much more "t to command them than myself; and giving them a little Exhortation took my Leave. I was escorted as far as Bethlehem, where I rested a few Days, to recover from the Fatigue I had under gone. The "rst Night being in a good Bed, I could hardly sleep, it was so dif fer ent from my hard Lodging on the Floor of our Hut at Gnaden, wrapped only in a Blanket or two.

While at Bethlehem, I enquir’d a little into the Practices of the Moravi- ans. Some of them had accompanied me, and all were very kind to me. I found they work’d for a common Stock,2 ate at common Tables, and slept in common Dormitories, great Numbers together. In the Dormitories I observ’d Loopholes at certain Distances all along just under the Ceiling, which I

3. Oboes. 4. The militia elections were held from Decem- ber 22 to 24 and caused rioting when Governor Morris refused to accept balloting at the polls as valid. “Ensigns”: standard- bearers; the lowest

commissioned army grade. 5. Prob ably Thomas Bond. 6. Franklin was commissioned on February 23, 1756. In mid- October, Philadelphians were informed that the Militia Act had been rejected.

thought judiciously plac’d for Change of Air. I was at their Church, where I was entertain’d with good Music, the Organ being accompanied with Violins, Hautboys,3 Flutes, Clarinets, etc. I understood that their Sermons were not usually preached to mix’d Congregations of Men, Women and Children, as is our common Practice; but that they assembled sometimes the married Men, at other times their Wives, then the Young Men, the young Women, and the little Children, each Division by itself. The Sermon I heard was to the latter, who came in and were plac’d in Rows on Benches, the Boys under the Conduct of a young Man their Tutor, and the Girls conducted by a young Woman. The Discourse seem’d well adapted to their Capacities, and was delivered in a pleasing familiar Manner, coaxing them as it were to be good. They behav’d very orderly, but look’d pale and unhealthy, which made me suspect they were kept too much within- doors, or not allow’d suf"cient Exer- cise. I enquir’d concerning the Moravian Marriages, whether the Report was true that they were by Lot? I was told that Lots were us’d only in par- tic u lar Cases. That generally when a young Man found himself dispos’d to marry, he inform’d the Elders of his Class, who consulted the Elder Ladies that govern’d the young Women. As these Elders of the dif fer ent Sexes were well acquainted with the Tempers and Dispositions of their respective Pupils, they could best judge what Matches were suitable, and their Judgments were generally acquiesc’d in. But if for example it should happen that two or three young Women were found to be equally proper for the young Man, the Lot was then recurr’d to. I objected, If the Matches are not made by the mutual Choice of the Parties, some of them may chance to be very unhappy. And so they may, answer’d my Informer, if you let the Parties choose for themselves.— Which indeed I could not deny.

Being return’d to Philadelphia, I found the Association went on swim- mingly, the Inhabitants that were not Quakers having pretty generally come into it, form’d themselves into Companies, and chosen their Captains, Lieu- tenants and Ensigns according to the new Law.4 Dr. B.5 visited me, and gave me an Account of the Pains he had taken to spread a general good Lik- ing to the Law, and ascrib’d much to those Endeavors. I had had the Vanity to ascribe all to my Dialogue; However, not knowing but that he might be in the right, I let him enjoy his Opinion, which I take to be generally the best way in such Cases.— The Of"cers meeting chose me to be Col o nel of the Regiment; which I this time accepted. I forget how many Companies we had, but We paraded about 1200 well- looking Men, with a Com pany of Artil- lery who had been furnish’d with 6 brass Field Pieces, which they had become so expert in the Use of as to "re twelve times in a Minute. The "rst Time I review’d my Regiment, they accompanied me to my House, and would salute me with some Rounds "red before my Door, which shook down and broke several Glasses of my Electrical Apparatus. And my new Honor prov’d not much less brittle; for all our Commissions were soon after broke by a Repeal of the Law in Eng land.6

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7. Fawkener (1684–1758) was appointed postmaster general in 1745.

During the short time of my Col o nelship, being about to set out on a Jour- ney to Virginia, the Of"cers of my Regiment took it into their heads that it would be proper for them to escort me out of town as far as the Lower Ferry. Just as I was getting on Horse back, they came to my door, between 30 and 40, mounted, and all in their Uniforms. I had not been previously acquainted with the Proj ect, or I should have prevented it, being naturally averse to the assuming of State on any Occasion, and I was a good deal chagrin’d at their Appearance, as I could not avoid their accompanying me. What made it worse, was, that as soon as we began to move, they drew their Swords, and rode with them naked all the way. Somebody wrote an Account of this to the Proprietor, and it gave him great Offense. No such Honor had been paid him when in the Province; nor to any of his Governors; and he said it was only proper to Princes of the Blood Royal; which may be true for aught I know, who was, and still am, ignorant of the Etiquette, in such Cases. This silly Affair, however greatly increas’d his Rancor against me, which was before not a little, on account of my Conduct in the Assembly, respecting the Exemption of his Estate from Taxation, which I had always oppos’d very warmly, and not without severe Redections on his Meanness and Injustice in contending for it. He accus’d me to the Ministry as being the great Obsta- cle to the King’s Ser vice, preventing by my Induence in the House the proper Forming of the Bills for raising Money; and he instanc’d this Parade with my Of"cers as a Proof of my having an Intention to take the Government of the Province out of his Hands by Force. He also applied to Sir Everard Fawkener, then Post Master General,7 to deprive me of my Of"ce. But this had no other Effect, than to procure from Sir Everard a gentle Admonition.

Notwithstanding the continual Wrangle between the Governor and the House, in which I as a Member had so large a Share, there still subsisted a civil Intercourse between that Gentleman and myself, and we never had any personal Difference. I have sometimes since thought that his little or no Resentment against me for the Answers it was known I drew up to his Messages, might be the Effect of professional Habit, and that, being bred a Lawyer, he might consider us both as merely Advocates for contending Clients in a suit, he for the Proprietaries and I for the Assembly. He would therefore sometimes call in a friendly way to advise with me on dif"cult Points, and sometimes, tho’ not often, take my Advice. We acted in Concert to supply Braddock’s Army with Provisions, and When the shocking News arriv’d of his Defeat, the Governor sent in haste for me, to consult with him on Mea sures for preventing the Desertion of the back Counties. I forget now the Advice I gave, but I think it was, that Dunbar should be written to and prevail’d with if pos si ble to post his Troops on the Frontiers for their Protection, till by Reinforcements from the Colonies, he might be able to proceed on the Expedition.— And after my Return from the Frontier, he would have had me undertake the Conduct of such an Expedition with Provincial Troops, for the Reduction of Fort Duquesne, Dunbar and his Men being other wise employ’d; and he propos’d to commission me as Gen- eral. I had not so good an Opinion of my military Abilities as he profess’d to have; and I believe his Professions must have exceeded his real Sentiments:

8. Scienti"c. 9. See n. 1, p. 549. 1. The “Glass Tube” is a solid glass rod that, when rubbed with a cloth, produces electrical charges. Collinson (1694–1768), an En glish bot- anist and fellow of the Royal Society (the British national acad emy of science), is best known for his correspondence with Franklin about elec- tricity.

2. Ebenezer Kinnersley (1711–1778), English- born scientist and scholar. 3. John Mitchell (d. 1768), En glish physician and mapmaker. 4. Franklin seems to have underestimated the reception of his observations by En glish scien- tists, many of whom recognized them as impor- tant.

but prob ably he might think that my Popularity would facilitate the Raising of the Men, and my Induence in Assembly the Grant of Money to pay them;— and that, perhaps, without taxing the Proprietary Estate. Finding me not so forward to engage as he expected, the Proj ect was dropped: and he soon after left the Government, being superseded by Captain Denny.

Before I proceed in relating the Part I had in public Affairs under this new Governor’s Administration, it may not be amiss here to give some Account of the Rise and Pro gress of my Philosophical8 Reputation.

In 1746 being at Boston, I met there with a Dr. Spencer, who was lately arrived from Scotland, and show’d me some electric Experiments.9 They were imperfectly perform’d, as he was not very expert; but being on a Subject quite new to me, they equally surpris’d and pleas’d me. Soon after my Return to Philadelphia, our Library Com pany receiv’d from Mr. Peter Collinson, F.R.S. of London a Pres ent of a Glass Tube, with some Account of the Use of it in making such Experiments.1 I eagerly seiz’d the Opportunity of repeating what I had seen at Boston, and by much Practice acquir’d great Readiness in per- forming those also which we had an Account of from Eng land, adding a Num- ber of new Ones. I say much Practice, for my House was continually full for some time, with People who came to see these new Won ders. To divide a little this Incumbrance among my Friends, I caused a Number of similar Tubes to be blown at our Glass- House, with which they furnish’d themselves, so that we had at length several Performers. Among these the Principal was Mr. Kin- nersley,2 an ingenious Neighbor, who being out of Business, I encouraged to undertake showing the Experiments for Money, and drew up for him two Lectures, in which the Experiments were rang’d in such Order and accompa- nied with Explanations, in such Method, as that the foregoing should assist in Comprehending the following. He procur’d an elegant Apparatus for the pur- pose, in which all the little Machines that I had roughly made for myself, were nicely form’d by Instrument- makers. His Lectures were well attended and gave great Satisfaction; and after some time he went thro’ the Colonies exhib- iting them in every capital Town, and pick’d up some Money. In the West India Islands indeed it was with Dif"culty the Experiments could be made, from the general Moisture of the Air.

Oblig’d as we were to Mr. Collinson for his Pres ent of the Tube, etc., I thought it right he should be inform’d of our Success in using it, and wrote him several Letters containing Accounts of our Experiments. He got them read in the Royal Society, where they were not at "rst thought worth so much Notice as to be printed in their Transactions. One Paper which I wrote for Mr. Kinnersley, on the Sameness of Lightning with Electricity, I sent to Dr. Mitchel,3 an Acquaintance of mine, and one of the Members also of that Society; who wrote me word that it had been read but was laughed at by the Connoisseurs:4 The Papers however being shown to

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5. John Fothergill (1712–1780), En glish physician and fellow of the Royal Society. 6. Edward Cave (1691–1754), En glish publisher of Gentleman’s Magazine (1731–54). 7. To Franklin’s Experiments and Observations on Electricity (1751). 8. Money paid to an author for a manuscript. “Quarto Volume”: see n. 9, p. 469. 9. Georges- Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (1707–1788), French naturalist. 1. Thomas- François Dalibard (1703–1799), French naturalist.

2. Instructor, tutor. Jean- Antoine Nollet (1700– 1770), French scientist whose theories of electric- ity were corrected by Franklin’s experiments. 3. Jean- Baptiste Le Roy (1720–1800), French scientist who in ven ted the "rst practical genera- tor and perfected the lightning rod. 4. Pupil (French). “Mr.  B— —”: Mathurin- Jacques Brisson (1723–1806), French naturalist and translator of Joseph Priestley’s History and Pres ent State of Electricity (1767) into French. In this volume, he defended Nollet’s ideas against Franklin’s.

Dr.  Fothergill,5 he thought them of too much value to be stided, and advis’d the Printing of them. Mr. Collinson then gave them to Cave6 for publication in his Gentleman’s Magazine; but he chose to print them sepa- rately in a Pamphlet, and Dr. Fothergill wrote the Preface.7 Cave it seems judg’d rightly for his Pro"t; for by the Additions that arriv’d afterwards they swell’d to a Quarto Volume, which has had "ve Editions, and cost him nothing for Copy- money.8

It was however some time before those Papers were much taken Notice of in Eng land. A Copy of them happening to fall into the Hands of the Count de Buffon,9 a Phi los o pher deservedly of great Reputation in France, and indeed all over Eu rope, he prevail’d with M. Dalibard1 to translate them into French; and they were printed at Paris. The Publication offended the Abbé Nollet, Preceptor2 in Natu ral Philosophy to the Royal Family, and an able Experi- menter, who had form’d and publish’d a Theory of Electricity, which then had the general Vogue. He could not at "rst believe that such a Work came from Amer i ca, and said it must have been fabricated by his Enemies at Paris, to decry his System. Afterwards having been assur’d that there really existed such a Person as Franklin of Philadelphia, which he had doubted, he wrote and published a Volume of Letters, chiedy address’d to me, defending his Theory, and denying the Verity of my Experiments and of the Positions deduc’d from them. I once purpos’d answering the Abbé, and actually began the Answer. But on Consideration that my Writings contain’d only a Descrip- tion of Experiments, which any one might repeat and verify, and if not to be veri"ed could not be defended; or of Observations, offer’d as Conjectures, and not delivered dogmatically, therefore not laying me under any Obligation to defend them; and redecting that a Dispute between two Persons writing in dif fer ent Languages might be lengthened greatly by mistranslations, and thence misconceptions of one another’s Meaning, much of one of the Abbé’s Letters being founded on an Error in the Translation; I concluded to let my Papers shift for themselves; believing it was better to spend what time I could spare from public Business in making new Experiments, than in Disputing about those already made. I therefore never answer’d M. Nollet; and the Event gave me no Cause to repent my Silence; for my Friend M. le Roy3 of the Royal Acad emy of Sciences took up my Cause and refuted him, my Book was translated into the Italian, German and Latin Languages, and the Doctrine it contain’d was by degrees universally adopted by the Phi los o phers of Eu rope in preference to that of the Abbé, so that he liv’d to see himself the last of his Sect: except Mr. B— — his Elève4 and immediate Disciple.

What gave my Book the more sudden and general Celebrity, was the Suc- cess of one of its propos’d Experiments, made by Messrs. Dalibard and Delor,

5. In 1750, Franklin suggested placing a rod on a steeple to draw “electrical duid” from thun- derclouds and thus demonstrate that lightning involved electricity. Dalibard and his associate Delor ("rst name unknown) performed Franklin’s experiment on May 10, 1752, in Marly- la- Ville, France. 6. Edward Wright (d. 1761), Scottish (not En glish) physician and fellow of the Royal Soci- ety. “Histories of Electricity”: e.g., Priestley’s. 7. William Watson (1715–1787), physician and scientist, had developed a theory of electricity similar to Franklin’s. In 1756, he nominated

Franklin for membership in the Royal Society. 8. Published accounts. 9. John Canton (1718–1772), schoolmaster, was the "rst person in Eng land to try Franklin’s elec- trical experiments. 1. Copley (c. 1654–1709), En glish aristocrat, established this annual prize, Britain’s oldest sci- enti"c honor, to be given to one who had contrib- uted to the advancement of knowledge. 2. George Parker, second Earl of Maccles"eld (c. 1697–1764), astronomer and mathematician; president of the Royal Society 1752–64.

at Marly, for drawing Lightning from the Clouds.5 This engag’d the public Attention everywhere. M. Delor, who had an Apparatus for experimental Philosophy, and lectur’d in that Branch of Science, undertook to repeat what he call’d the Philadelphia Experiments, and after they were performed before the King and Court, all the Curious of Paris dock’d to see them. I will not swell this Narrative with an Account of that capital Experiment, nor of the in"nite Plea sure I receiv’d in the Success of a similar one I made soon after with a Kite at Philadelphia, as both are to be found in the Histories of Elec- tricity. Dr. Wright, an En glish Physician6 then at Paris, wrote to a Friend who was of the Royal Society an Account of the high Esteem my Experi- ments were in among the Learned abroad, and of their Won der that my Writ- ings had been so little noticed in Eng land. The Society on this resum’d the Consideration of the Letters that had been read to them, and the celebrated Dr. Watson drew up a summary Account of them, and of all I had afterwards sent to Eng land on the Subject, which he accompanied with some Praise of the Writer.7 This Summary was then printed in their Transactions:8 And some Members of the Society in London, particularly the very ingenious Mr. Canton, having veri"ed the Experiment of procuring Lightning from the Clouds by a Pointed Rod,9 and acquainting them with the Success, they soon made me more than Amends for the Slight with which they had before treated me. Without my having made any Application for that Honor, they chose me a Member, and voted that I should be excus’d the customary Pay- ments, which would have amounted to twenty- "ve Guineas, and ever since have given me their Transactions gratis. They also presented me with the Gold Medal of Sir Godfrey Copley1 for the Year 1753, the Delivery of which was accompanied by a very handsome Speech of the President Lord Maccles"eld,2 wherein I was highly honored.

Our new Governor, Captain Denny, brought over for me the before- mentioned Medal from the Royal Society, which he presented to me at an Entertainment given him by the City. He accompanied it with very polite Expressions of his Esteem for me, having, as he said been long acquainted with my Character. After Dinner, when the Com pany as was customary at that time, were engag’d in Drinking, he took me aside into another Room, and acquainted me that he had been advis’d by his Friends in Eng land to cultivate a Friendship with me, as one who was capable of giving him the best Advice, and of contributing most effectually to the making his Administration easy. That he therefore desired of all things to have a good Understanding with me; and he begg’d me to be assur’d of his Readiness on all Occasions to render me every Ser vice that might be in his Power. He

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3. As proprietor of Pennsylvania, Thomas Penn gave instructions to his “governor,” or deputy. The Assembly distinguished between these orders and  those of the British ministry, which they were willing to obey. One issue was the appro- priation of money. 4. An Historical Review of the Constitution and Government of Pennsylvania (1759) was written by Richard Jackson, but Franklin supplied much of

the material and paid for the book’s publication. 5. Frederick Louis, Prince of Wales (1707–1751), led the opposition party to his father, King George II (1683–1760). 6. See n. 8, p. 493. 7. On September 23, 1756, the Assembly con- demned private instructions to the “governor,” and in 1757 Franklin was sent to London to “remove grievances we labor under.”

said much to me also of the Proprietor’s good Dispositions toward the Prov- ince, and of the Advantage it might be to us all, and to me in par tic u lar, if the Opposition that had been so long continu’d to his Mea sures, were dropped, and Harmony restor’d between him and the People, in effecting which it was thought no one could be more ser viceable than myself, and I might depend on adequate Acknowl edgments and Recompenses, etc., etc.

The Drinkers "nding we did not return immediately to the Table, sent us a Decanter of Madeira, which the Governor made liberal Use of, and in pro- portion became more profuse of his Solicitations and Promises. My Answers were to this purpose, that my Circumstances, Thanks to God, were such as to make Proprietary Favors unnecessary to me; and that being a Member of the Assembly I could not possibly accept of any; that however I had no per- sonal Enmity to the Proprietary, and that whenever the public Mea sures he propos’d should appear to be for the Good of the People, no one should espouse and forward them more zealously than myself, my past Opposition having been founded on this, that the Mea sures which had been urg’d were evidently intended to serve the Proprietary Interest with great Prejudice to that of the People. That I was much obliged to him (the Governor) for his Professions of Regard to me, and that he might rely on every thing in my Power to make his Administration as easy to him as pos si ble, hoping at the same time that he had not brought with him the same unfortunate Instruc- tions his Pre de ces sor had been hamper’d with.3 On this he did not then explain himself. But when he afterwards came to do Business with the Assembly they appear’d again, the Disputes were renewed, and I was as active as ever in the Opposition, being the Penman "rst of the Request to have a Communication of the Instructions, and then of the Remarks upon them, which may be found in the Votes of the Time, and in the Historical Review I afterwards publish’d;4 but between us personally no Enmity arose; we were often together, he was a Man of Letters, had seen much of the World, and was very entertaining and pleasing in Conversation. He gave me the "rst Information that my old Friend James Ralph was still alive, that he was esteem’d one of the best po liti cal Writers in Eng land, had been employ’d in the Dispute between Prince Frederick and the King,5 and had obtain’d a Pension of Three Hundred a Year; that his Reputation was indeed small as a Poet, Pope having damn’d his Poetry in the Dunciad, but his Prose was thought as good as any Man’s.6

The Assembly " nally, "nding the Proprietaries obstinately persisted in manacling their Deputies with Instructions inconsistent not only with the Privileges of the People, but with the Ser vice of the Crown, resolv’d to peti- tion the King against them, and appointed me their Agent to go over to Eng land to pres ent and support the Petition.7 The House had sent up a Bill to the Governor granting a Sum of Sixty Thousand Pounds for the King’s

8. John Campbell, fourth Earl of Loudon (1705– 1782), served as commander- in- chief of the Brit- ish forces in North Amer i ca after Braddock’s defeat in 1755. 9. William Morris, captain of the Halifax (a

packet, or boat for carry ing passengers and usu- ally mail and cargo). 1. Between us, privately (French). 2. June 20, 1757.

Use, (10,000 Pounds of which was subjected to the Orders of the then Gen- eral Lord Loudon,8) which the Governor absolutely refus’d to pass, in Com- pliance with his Instructions. I had agreed with Captain Morris of the Packet9 at New York for my Passage, and my Stores were put on board, when Lord Loudon arriv’d at Philadelphia, expressly, as he told me to endeavor an Accommodation between the Governor and Assembly, that his Majesty’s Ser vice might not be obstructed by their Dissensions: Accordingly he desir’d the Governor and myself to meet him, that he might hear what was to be said on both sides.

We met and discuss’d the Business. In behalf of the Assembly I urg’d all the Arguments that may be found in the public Papers of that Time, which were of my Writing, and are printed with the Minutes of the Assembly and the Governor pleaded his Instructions, the Bond he had given to observe them, and his Ruin if he disobey’d: Yet seem’d not unwilling to hazard him- self if Lord Loudon would advise it. This his Lordship did not choose to do, tho’ I once thought I had nearly prevail’d with him to do it; but " nally he rather chose to urge the Compliance of the Assembly; and he entreated me to use my Endeavors with them for that purpose; declaring he could spare none of the King’s Troops for the Defense of our Frontiers, and that if we did not continue to provide for that Defense ourselves they must remain expos’d to the Enemy. I acquainted the House with what had pass’d, and (presenting them with a Set of Resolutions I had drawn up, declaring our Rights, and that we did not relinquish our Claim to those Rights but only suspended the Exercise of them on this Occasion thro Force, against which we protested) they at length agreed to drop that Bill and frame another comformable to the Proprietary Instructions. This of course the Governor pass’d, and I was then at Liberty to proceed on my Voyage: but in the meantime the Packet had sail’d with my Sea- Stores, which was some Loss to me, and my only Recompense was his Lordship’s Thanks for my Ser vice, all the Credit of obtaining the Accommodation falling to his Share.

He set out for New York before me; and as the Time for dispatching the Packet Boats, was in his Disposition, and there were two then remaining there, one of which he said was to sail very soon, I requested to know the precise time, that I might not miss her by any Delay of mine. His Answer was, I have given out that she is to sail on Saturday next, but I may let you know entre nous,1 that if you are there by Monday morning you will be in time, but do not delay longer. By some Accidental Hindrance at a Ferry, it was Monday Noon before I arrived, and I was much afraid she might have sailed as the Wind was fair, but I was soon made easy by the Information that she was still in the Harbor, and would not move till the next Day.

One would imagine that I was now on the very point of Departing for Eu rope. I thought so; but I was not then so well acquainted with his Lord- ship’s Character, of which Indecision was one of the Strongest Features. I shall give some Instances. It was about the Beginning of April that I came to New York, and I think it was near the End of June before we sail’d.2 There

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3. James Ennis (c. 1709–1774), of"cial courier for the government of Pennsylvania. 4. Writing desk. 5. This proverb refers to the image of St. George on horse back slaying a dragon. It was a common tavern sign. 6. William Pitt (1708–1778), prime minister of Eng land, champion of the American cause. 7. Jeffrey Amherst (1717–1797), successor to

Lord Loudon as British commander- in- chief in North Amer i ca. James Wolfe (1727–1759), com- mander of the British campaign to seize Quebec. 8. In eastern New Jersey. 9. The Fortress of Louisburg (see n. 6, p. 546). 1. The Earl of Loudon’s attack on Fort Louis- burg failed because of bad weather and superior French defenses. “Halifax”: in Nova Scotia, Southwest of Cape Breton.

were then two of the Packet Boats which had been long in Port, but were detain’d for the General’s Letters, which were always to be ready tomorrow. Another Packet arriv’d, and she too was detain’d, and before we sail’d a fourth was expected. Ours was the "rst to be dispatch’d, as having been there longest. Passengers were engag’d in all, and some extremely impa- tient  to be gone, and the Merchants uneasy about their Letters, and the Orders they had given for Insurance (it being War- time) and for Fall Goods. But their Anxiety avail’d nothing; his Lordship’s Letters were not ready. And yet whoever waited on him found him always at his Desk, Pen in hand, and concluded he must needs write abundantly.

Going myself one Morning to pay my Res pects, I found in his Antecham- ber one Innis, a Messenger of Philadelphia,3 who had come from thence express, with a Packet from Governor Denny for the General. He deliver’d to me some Letters from my Friends there, which occasion’d my enquiring when he was to return and where he lodg’d, that I might send some Letters by him. He told me he was order’d to call tomorrow at nine for the Gener- al’s Answer to the Governor, and should set off immediately. I put my Let- ters into his Hands the same Day. A Fortnight after I met him again in the same Place. So you are soon return’d, Innis! Return’d; No, I am not gone yet.— How so?— I have call’d here by Order every Morning these two Weeks past for his Lordship’s Letter, and it is not yet ready.— Is it pos si ble, when he is so great a Writer, for I see him constantly at his Scritoire.4 Yes, says Innis, but he is like St. George on the Signs, always on horse back, and never rides on.5 This Observation of the Messenger was it seems well founded; for when in Eng land, I understood that Mr. Pitt6 gave it as one Reason for Removing this General, and sending Amherst and Wolf,7 that the Ministers never heard from him, and could not know what he was doing.

This daily Expectation of Sailing, and all the three Packets going down Sandy hook,8 to join the Fleet there, the Passengers thought it best to be on board, lest by a sudden Order the Ships should sail, and they be left behind. There if I remember right we were about Six Weeks, consuming our Sea Stores, and oblig’d to procure more. At length the Fleet sail’d, the General and all his Army on board, bound to Louisburg with Intent to besiege and take that Fortress;9 all the Packet Boats in Com pany, ordered to attend the General’s Ship, ready to receive his Dispatches when those should be ready. We were out 5 Days before we got a Letter with Leave to part; and then our Ship quitted the Fleet and steered for Eng land. The other two Packets he still detain’d, carried them with him to Halifax, where he stayed some time to exercise the Men in sham Attacks upon sham Forts, then alter’d his Mind as to besieging Louisburg,1 and return’d to New York with all his Troops, together with the two Packets above- mentioned and all their Passengers. During his Absence the French and Savages had taken Fort George on the

2. Fort William Henry, on Lake George, in pres ent- day upper New York State. 3. John Dod Bonnell, captain of the packet Har- riott, was wounded on Loudon’s Louisburg cam-

paign. 4. Wormlike mollusks had bored through the ships’ planks.

Frontier of that Province,2 and the Savages had massacred many of the Gar- rison after Capitulation.

I saw afterwards in London, Captain Bonnell, who commanded one of those Packets.3 He told me, that when he had been detain’d a Month, he acquainted his Lordship that his Ship was grown foul, to a degree that must necessarily hinder her fast Sailing, a Point of consequence for a Packet Boat, and requested an Allowance of Time to heave her down and clean her Bottom. He was ask’d how long time that would require. He answer’d Three Days. The General replied, If you can do it in one Day, I give leave; other wise not; for you must certainly sail the Day after tomor- row. So he never obtain’d leave tho’ detain’d afterwards from day to day dur- ing full three Months. I saw also in London one of Bonnell’s Passengers, who was so enrag’d against his Lordship for deceiving and detaining him so long at New York, and then carry ing him to Halifax, and back again, that he swore he would sue him for Damages. Whether he did or not I never heard; but as he represented the Injury to his Affairs it was very considerable.

On the whole I then won der’d much, how such a Man came to be entrusted with so impor tant a Business as the Conduct of a great Army: but having since seen more of the great World, and the means of obtaining and Motives for giving Places and Employments, my Won der is diminished. General Shir- ley, on whom the Command of the Army devolved upon the Death of Brad- dock, would in my Opinion if continued in Place, have made a much better Campaign than that of Loudon in 1757, which was frivolous, expensive and disgraceful to our Nation beyond Conception: For tho’ Shirley was not a bred Soldier, he was sensible and sagacious in himself, and attentive to good Advice from others, capable of forming judicious Plans, quick and active in carry ing them into Execution. Loudon, instead of defending the Colonies with his great Army, left them totally expos’d while he paraded it idly at Halifax, by which means Fort George was lost;— besides he derang’d all our mercantile Operations, and distress’d our Trade by a long Embargo on the Exportation of Provisions, on pretense of keeping Supplies from being obtain’d by the Enemy, but in Real ity for beating down their Price in Favor of the Contractors, in whose Pro"ts it was said, perhaps from Suspi- cion only, he had a Share. And when at length the Embargo was taken off, by neglecting to send Notice of it to Charlestown, the Carolina Fleet was detain’d near three Months longer, whereby their Bottoms were so much damag’d by the Worm,4 that a great Part of them found er’d in the Passage home. Shirley was I believe sincerely glad of being reliev’d from so burden- some a Charge as the Conduct of an Army must be to a Man unacquainted with military Business. I was at the Entertainment given by the City of New York, to Lord Loudon on his taking upon him the Command. Shirley, tho’ thereby superseded, was pres ent also. There was a great Com pany of Of"- cers, Citizens and Strangers, and some Chairs having been borrowed in the Neighborhood, there was one among them very low which fell to the Lot of Mr. Shirley. Perceiving it as I sat by him, I said, they have given you, Sir, too low a Seat.— No Matter, says he; Mr. Franklin, I "nd a low Seat the easiest!

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5. Slowest. 6. The dagpole bearing the ship’s dag. 7. Thirteen nautical miles, or approximately "f- teen land miles per hour.

8. Archibald Kennedy Jr. (d. 1794); Franklin had consulted with his father on the Albany plan (see n. 6, p. 556). 9. Setting up, mea sur ing.

While I was, as afore- mention’d, detain’d at New York, I receiv’d all the Accounts of the Provisions, etc., that I had furnish’d to Braddock, some of which Accounts could not sooner be obtain’d from the dif fer ent Persons I had employ’d to assist in the Business. I presented them to Lord Loudon, desiring to be paid the Balance. He caus’d them to be regularly examin’d by the proper Of"cer, who, after comparing every Article with its Voucher, cer- ti"ed them to be right, and the Balance due, for which his Lordship promis’d to give me an Order on the Paymaster. This, however, was put off from time to time, and tho’ I called often for it by Appointment, I did not get it. At length, just before my Departure, he told me he had on better Con- sideration concluded not to mix his Accounts with those of his Pre de ces- sors. And you, says he, when in Eng land, have only to exhibit your Accounts at the Trea sury, and you will be paid immediately. I mention’d, but without Effect, the great and unexpected Expense I had been put to by being detain’d so long at New York, as a Reason for my desiring to be presently paid; and On my observing that it was not right I should be put to any farther Trou ble or Delay in obtaining the Money I had advanc’d, as I charg’d no Commis- sions for my Ser vice. O, Sir, says he, you must not think of persuading us that you are no Gainer. We understand better those Affairs, and know that every one concern’d in supplying the Army "nds means in the doing it to "ll his own Pockets. I assur’d him that was not my Case, and that I had not pocketed a Farthing: but he appear’d clearly not to believe me; and indeed I have since learned that im mense Fortunes are often made in such Employments.— As to my Balance, I am not paid it to this Day, of which more hereafter.

Our Captain of the Packet had boasted much before we sail’d, of the Swift- ness of his Ship. Unfortunately when we came to Sea, she proved the dull- est5 of 96 Sail, to his no small Morti"cation. After many Conjectures respecting the Cause, when we were near another Ship almost as dull as ours, which however gain’d upon us, the Captain order’d all hands to come aft and stand as near the Ensign Staff6 as pos si ble. We were, Passengers included, about forty Persons. While we stood there the Ship mended her Pace, and soon left our Neighbor far behind, which prov’d clearly what our Captain suspected, that she was loaded too much by the Head. The Casks of Water it seems had been all plac’d forward. These he therefore order’d to be remov’d farther aft; on which the Ship recover’d her Character, and prov’d the best Sailor in the Fleet.

The Captain said she had once gone at the Rate of 13 Knots, which is accounted 13 Miles per hour.7 We had on board as a Passenger Captain Ken- nedy8 of the Navy, who contended that it was impossible, that no Ship ever sailed so fast, and that there must have been some Error in the Division of the Log- Line, or some Mistake in heaving9 the Log. A Wager ensu’d between the two Captains, to be deci ded when there should be suf"cient Wind. Ken- nedy thereupon examin’d rigorously the Log- line, and being satis"ed with that, he determin’d to throw the Log himself. Accordingly some Days after

1. Loads. 2. I.e., land on the bottom of the sea could be touched with a weighted line, so the ship was near shore. 3. I.e., they could determine their location by the sun’s position. 4. Armed ships in private hands, commissioned by a government to seize its enemies’ ships.

5. Group of islands and rocks twenty- "ve miles southwest of Eng land. 6. St. George’s Channel is between Eng land and Ireland. There, in one of Britain’s worst maritime disasters, four ships commanded by Cloudsley Shovell (c. 1650–1707) struck the rocks and went down on October 22, 1707.

when the Wind blew very fair and fresh, and the Captain of the Packet (Lut- widge) said he believ’d she then went at the Rate of 13 Knots, Kennedy made the Experiment, and own’d his Wager lost.

The above Fact I give for the sake of the following Observation. It has been remark’d as an Imperfection in the Art of Shipbuilding, that it can never be known till she is tried, whether a new Ship will or will not be a good Sailor; for that the Model of a good sailing Ship has been exactly follow’d in a new One, which has prov’d on the contrary remarkably dull. I apprehend this may be partly occasion’d by the dif fer ent Opinions of Seamen respecting the Modes of lading, rigging and sailing of a Ship. Each has his System. And the same Vessel laden by the Judgment and Orders of one Captain shall sail better or worse than when by the Orders of another. Besides, it scarce ever happens that a Ship is form’d, "tted for the Sea, and sail’d by the same Person. One Man builds the Hull, another rigs her, a third lades1 and sails her. No one of these has the Advantage of knowing all the Ideas and Expe- rience of the others, and therefore cannot draw just Conclusions from a Combination of the whole. Even in the simple Operation of Sailing when at Sea, I have often observ’d dif fer ent Judgments in the Of"cers who com- manded the successive Watches, the Wind being the same. One would have the Sails trimm’d sharper or datter than another, so that they seem’d to have no certain Rule to govern by. Yet I think a Set of Experiments might be instituted, "rst to determine the most proper Form of the Hull for swift sailing; next the best Dimensions and properest Place for the Masts; then the Form and Quantity of Sail, and their Position as the Winds may be; and lastly the Disposition of her Lading. This is the Age of Experiments; and such a Set accurately made and combin’d would be of great Use. I am there- fore persuaded that ere long some ingenious Phi los o pher will undertake it— to whom I wish Success.

We were several times chas’d on our Passage, but outsail’d every thing, and in thirty Days had Soundings.2 We had a good Observation,3 and the Captain judg’d himself so near our Port, (Falmouth) that if we made a good Run in the Night we might be off the Mouth of that Harbor in the Morn- ing, and by running in the Night might escape the Notice of the Enemy’s Privateers,4 who often cruis’d near the Entrance of the Channel. Accord- ingly all the Sail was set that we could possibly make, and the Wind being very fresh and fair, we went right before it, and made great Way. The Cap- tain after his Observation, shap’d his Course as he thought so as to pass wide of the Scilly Isles:5 but it seems there is sometimes a strong Indraft setting up St. George’s Channel which deceives Seamen, and caus’d the Loss of Sir Cloudsley Shovel’s Squadron.6 This Indraft was prob ably the Cause of what happen’d to us. We had a Watchman plac’d in the Bow to whom they often call’d, Look well out befor’e, there; and he as often answer’d Aye,

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7. Small sails set at the sides of larger sails. 8. Movement. 9. The prehistoric British monument, about ten miles north of Salisbury. 1. Wilton House, home of the earls of Pembroke and one of the great manor houses of Eng land. 2. Franklin arrived at Falmouth on July 17 and reached London on the eve ning of July 26. This sentence concludes the third part of The Auto- biography. It was the last sentence in the manu- script printed by Franklin’s son in 1818. Franklin

wrote Part Four between November 13, 1789, and his death, on April 17, 1790, at age 84. 3. Robert Charles (1706–1770), a colonist living in London and serving as colonial agent for New York and Pennsylvania. 4. In 1751–63, John Cartaret, "rst Earl of Gran- ville (1690–1763), was president of the king’s Privy Council, which ruled on Franklin’s case against the proprietors. Collinson (see n. 1, p. 573) was a cloth merchant by trade, and Han- bury (1700–1758) was a tobacco merchant.

Aye! But perhaps had his Eyes shut, and was half asleep at the time: they sometimes answering as is said mechanically: For he did not see a Light just before us, which had been hid by the Studding Sails7 from the Man at Helm and from the rest of the Watch; but by an accidental Yaw8 of the Ship was discover’d, and occasion’d a great Alarm, we being very near it, the light appearing to me as big as a Cart Wheel. It was Midnight, and Our Captain fast asleep. But Captain Kennedy jumping upon Deck, and seeing the Dan- ger, ordered the Ship to wear round, all Sails standing. An Operation dan- gerous to the Masts, but it carried us clear, and we escap’d Shipwreck, for we were running right upon the Rocks on which the Light house was erected. This Deliverance impress’d me strongly with the Utility of Light houses, and made me resolve to encourage the building more of them in Amer i ca, if I should live to return there.

In the Morning it was found by the Soundings, etc., that we were near our Port, but a thick Fog hid the Land from our Sight. About 9 aClock the Fog began to rise, and seem’d to be lifted up from the Water like the Cur- tain at a Play house, discovering under neath the Town of Falmouth, the Ves- sels in its Harbor, and the Fields that surrounded it. A most pleasing Spectacle to those who had been so long without any other Prospects, than the uniform View of a vacant Ocean! And it gave us the more Plea sure, as we were now freed from the Anx i eties which the State of War occasion’d.

I set out immediately with my Son for London, and we only stopped a little by the Way to view Stonehenge9 on Salisbury Plain, and Lord Pembroke’s House and Gardens, with his very curious Antiquities at Wilton.1

We arriv’d in London the 27th of July 1757.2 [Part Four] As soon as I was settled in a Lodging Mr.  Charles3 had provided for me, I went to visit Dr. Fothergill, to whom I was strongly recommended, and whose Counsel respecting my Proceedings I was advis’d to obtain. He was against an imme- diate Complaint to Government, and thought the Proprietaries should "rst be personally applied to, who might possibly be induc’d by the Interposition and Persuasion of some private Friends to accommodate Matters amicably. I then waited on my old Friend and Correspondent Mr. Peter Collinson, who told me that John Hanbury, the great Virginia Merchant, had requested to be informed when I should arrive, that he might carry me to Lord Gran- ville’s, who was then President of the Council,4 and wish’d to see me as soon as pos si ble. I agreed to go with him the next Morning. Accordingly Mr. Hanbury called for me and took me in his Carriage to that Nobleman’s, who receiv’d me with great Civility; and after some Questions respecting the pres ent State of Affairs in Amer i ca, and Discourse thereupon, he said to me, “You Americans have wrong Ideas of the Nature of your Constitution; you contend that the King’s Instructions to his Governors are not Laws,

5. Actually, in 1744. In the next sentence, Franklin leaps ahead to 1765–66. 6. After Parliament repealed the Stamp Act in 1766 it passed the Declaratory Act, which asserted the right of Parliament to legislate for the colonies without their consent. The Stamp Act of 1765 was an act of Parliament that imposed a direct tax on the colonies. In response to colonial protests, Parliament repealed this act in 1766. At the same time, it passed the Declaratory Act, which asserted Parliament’s unconditional right to legislate for the colonies without their consent. 7. I.e., in July– August 1757.

8. Actually, Thomas Penn (see n. 3, p.  576), who  lived in Eng land after 1741 but remained proprietor of Pennsylvania until 1775. 9. On August  20, 1757; “Heads”: i.e., chief points. 1. John Ferdinand Paris (d. 1759), attorney spe- cializing in colonial affairs and legal adviser to the Penns. 2. Charles Calvert, the "fth Baron Baltimore (1699–1751), proprietor of Mary land. The dispute over the boundary between Pennsylvania and Mary land was settled by the survey of the Mason- Dixon Line, 1763–67.

and think yourselves at Liberty to regard or disregard them at your own Dis- cretion. But those Instructions are not like the Pocket Instructions given to a Minister going abroad, for regulating his Conduct in some triding Point of Ceremony. They are "rst drawn up by Judges learned in the Laws; they are then considered, debated and perhaps amended in Council, after which they are signed by the King. They are then so far as relates to you, the Law of the Land: for the King is the Legislator of the Colonies.”

I told his Lordship this was new Doctrine to me. I had always understood from our Charters, that our Laws were to be made by our Assemblies, to be presented indeed to the King for his Royal Assent, but that being once given the King could not repeal or alter them. And as the Assemblies could not make permanent Laws without his Assent, so neither could he make a Law for them without theirs. He assur’d me I was totally mistaken. I did not think so however. And his Lordship’s Conversation having a little alarm’d me as to what might be the Sentiments of the Court concerning us, I wrote it down as soon as I return’d to my Lodgings.— I recollected that about 20 Years before,5 a Clause in a Bill brought into Parliament by the Ministry, had propos’d to make the King’s Instructions Laws in the Colonies; but the Clause was thrown out by the Commons, for which we ador’d them as our Friends and Friends of Liberty, till by their Conduct towards us in 1765, it seem’d that they had refus’d that Point of Sovereignty to the King, only that they might reserve it for themselves.6

After some Days,7 Dr. Fothergill having spoken to the Proprietaries, they agreed to a Meeting with me at Mr. J. Penn’s8 House in Spring Garden. The Conversation at "rst consisted of mutual Declarations of Disposition to rea- sonable Accommodation; but I suppose each Party had its own Ideas of what should be meant by reasonable. We then went into Consideration of our several Points of Complaint which I enumerated. The Proprietaries jus- ti"ed their Conduct as well as they could, and I the Assembly’s. We now appeared very wide, and so far from each other in Our Opinions, as to dis- courage all Hope of Agreement. However, it was concluded that I should give them the Heads of our Complaints in Writing, and they promis’d then to consider them.— I did so soon after;9 but they put the Paper into the Hands of their Solicitor Ferdinando John Paris,1 who manag’d for them all their Law Business in their great Suit with the neighboring Proprietary of Mary- land, Lord Baltimore,2 who had subsisted 70 Years, and wrote for them all their Papers and Messages in their Dispute with the Assembly. He was a proud angry Man; and as I had occasionally in the Answers of the Assembly treated his Papers with some Severity, they being really weak in point of

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3. Orally (Latin). 4. William Murray, "rst Earl of Mans"eld (1705–1793), chief justice of the King’s Bench.

Argument, and haughty in Expression, he had conceiv’d a mortal Enmity to me, which discovering itself whenever we met, I declin’d the Proprietary’s Proposal that he and I should discuss the Heads of Complaint between our two selves, and refus’d treating with anyone but them. They then by his Advice put the Paper into the Hands of the Attorney and Solicitor General for their Opinion and Counsel upon it, where it lay unanswered a Year want- ing eight Days, during which time I made frequent Demands of an Answer from the Proprietaries but without obtaining any other than that they had not yet receiv’d the Opinion of the Attorney and Solicitor General: What it was when they did receive it I never learned, for they did not communicate it to me, but sent a long Message to the Assembly drawn and signed by Paris reciting my Paper, complaining of its want of Formality as a Rudeness on my part, and giving a dimsy Justi"cation of their Conduct, adding that they should be willing to accommodate Matters, if the Assembly would send over some Person of Candor to treat with them for that purpose, intimating thereby that I was not such.

The want of Formality or Rudeness, was prob ably my not having address’d the Paper to them with their assum’d Titles of true and absolute Proprietar- ies of the Province of Pennsylvania, which I omitted as not thinking it nec- essary in a Paper the Intention of which was only to reduce to a Certainty by writing what in Conversation I had delivered vivâ voce.3 But during this Delay, the Assembly having prevail’d with Governor Denny to pass an Act taxing the Proprietary Estate in common with the Estates of the People, which was the grand Point in Dispute, they omitted answering the Message.

When the Act however came over, the Proprietaries counsel’d by Paris determin’d to oppose its receiving the Royal Assent. Accordingly they petition’d the King in Council, and a Hearing was appointed, in which two Lawyers were employ’d by them against the Act, and two by me in Support of it. They alledg’d that the Act was intended to load the Proprietary Estate in order to spare those of the People, and that if it were suffer’d to continue in force, and the Proprietaries who were in Odium with the People, left to their Mercy in proportioning the Taxes, they would inevitably be ruined. We replied that the Act had no such Intention and would have no such Effect. That the Assessors were honest and discreet Men, under an Oath to assess fairly and equitably, and that any Advantage each of them might expect in lessening his own Tax by augmenting that of the Proprietaries was too tri- ding to induce them to perjure themselves. This is the purport of what I remember as urg’d by both Sides, except that we insisted strongly on the mischievous Consequences that must attend a Repeal; for that the Money, 100,000 Pounds, being printed and given to the King’s Use, expended in his Ser vice, and now spread among the People, the Repeal would strike it dead in their Hands to the Ruin of many, and the total Discouragement of future Grants, and the Sel"shness of the Proprietors in soliciting such a general Catastrophe, merely from a groundless Fear of their Estate being taxed too highly, was insisted on in the strongest Terms.

On this Lord Mans"eld, one of the Council4 rose, and beckoning to me, took me into the Clerk’s Chamber, while the Lawyers were pleading, ask’d

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5. Urging.

me if I was really of Opinion that no Injury would be done the Proprietary Estate in the Execution of the Act. I said, Certainly. Then says he, you can have little Objection to enter into an Engagement to assure that Point. I answer’d None, at all. He then call’d in Paris, and after some Discourse his Lordship’s Proposition was accepted on both Sides; a Paper to the purpose was drawn up by the Clerk of the Council, which I sign’d with Mr. Charles, who was also an Agent of the Province for their ordinary Affairs; when Lord Mans"eld return’d to the Council Chamber where " nally the Law was allowed to pass. Some Changes were however recommended and we also engag’d they should be made by a subsequent Law; but the Assembly did not think them necessary. For one Year’s Tax having been levied by the Act before the Order of Council arrived, they appointed a Committee to examine the Proceedings of the Assessors, and On this Committee they put several par tic- u lar Friends of the Proprietaries. After a full Enquiry they unanimously sign’d a Report that they found the Tax had been assess’d with perfect Equity.

The Assembly look’d on my entering into the "rst Part of the Engagement as an essential Ser vice to the Province, since it secur’d the Credit of the Paper Money then spread over all the Country; and they gave me their Thanks in form when I return’d. But the Proprietaries were enrag’d at Gov- ernor Denny for having pass’d the Act, and turn’d him out, with Threats of suing him for Breach of Instructions which he had given Bond to observe. He however having done it at the Instance5 of the General and for his Maj- esty’s Ser vice, and having some power ful Interest at Court, despis’d the Threats, and they were never put in Execution.

1771–90 1868

SAMSON OCCOM 1723–1792

Born in a wigwam on Mohegan land near New London, Connecticut, Samson Occom (or Occum, as it is sometimes spelled) belonged to the northernmost branch of the Pequot tribe. When the religious revival known as the Great Awaken- ing began, his mother, Sarah Occom, was among the "rst Mohegans to convert to evangelical, or New Light, Protestantism. In 1741, Occom himself converted to Chris tian ity after hearing a sermon by the radical New Light preacher John Daven- port. The following year, he was appointed to the Mohegan tribal council, where he served with his father, Joshua Occom. Two years later, he attended hearings in the Mason case, a land dispute between the state of Connecticut and the Mohegans where historic deeds and treaties played a large role. The case was deci ded in favor of Connecticut. Convinced that literacy was a crucial skill for defending native

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sovereignty in their historic domains, Occom sought out the Reverend Eleazar Wheelock, a Yale gradu ate and New Light minister who kept a small school at Lebanon Creek, in Mohegan territory. From 1743 until 1747, Occom studied En glish, Hebrew, Greek, and Latin with Wheelock. After completing his studies, he taught school for a short period, then prepared for the ministry under the Reverend Benjamin Pomeroy in Hebron, Connecticut.

In 1749, Occom moved to Montauk, at the southeastern tip of Long Island, New York. There, with the support of the local Montaukett community and the Boston branch of the Com pany for the Propagation of the Gospel in New Eng land, he started a school for about thirty Native and white children. He married a Mon- taukett former pupil, Mary Fowler, in 1751, and together they formed a traditional home in a Montauk wigwam and started a family. After eleven years with the Mon- tauks, during which time Occom served not only as a teacher but also as a healer, judge, and counselor, he was ordained by the presbytery of Suffolk, on Long Island. In 1761, he wrote An Account of the Montauk Indians, on Long Island, an early example of an indigenous author writing an ethnographic account of a Native community. That same year, he undertook a mission to the Iroquois, establishing a school in Oneida, in upstate New York, and recruiting students for Moor’s Indian Charity School, a small institution that Wheelock had recently opened in Lebanon to help develop a Native ministry.

Occom went to Eng land on a speaking tour with the Reverend Nathaniel Whitaker to raise funds for the Indian Charity School in 1765. Before his departure, Occom wrote a short autobiography to clarify some details about his background for the group sponsoring his trip. Over the next two years, he delivered some three hun- dred sermons across Eng land, Scotland, and Ireland, while collecting around twelve thousand pounds for the school—an enormous sum of money for the time. During his stay in London, he testi"ed in an appeal of the Mason land case. Whee- lock had promised to care for Occom’s family while he was away, but when Occom returned, he found his relations sickly and in extreme poverty.

In dire "nancial straits, alienated from Wheelock, and feeling vulnerable as an “Indian preacher” in the Presbyterian Church, Occom wrote a ten- page autobiography by way of self- justi"cation. Dated September 17, 1768, A Short Narrative of My Life was not published until 1982. It provides fascinating details of the day- to- day life of a rural minister in eighteenth- century North Amer i ca. Occom describes how he tended his garden, his animals, and his congregation, and how he preached to his Native parishioners and used innovative pedagogy to teach their children to read. He speculates that some of the criticisms leveled against him arose simply because “I am a poor Indian.”

When Occom learned that Wheelock intended to use the money raised on the speaking tour to expand the Indian School into a college and move it to Hanover, New Hampshire, he angrily predicted to Wheelock that his college had too much “Gran- deur for the Poor Indians, they’ll never have much bene"t of it.” He was right. The newly renamed Dartmouth College soon ceased to focus on educating Native Ameri- can students, and in 1773 Occom and Wheelock broke off their long relationship.

By that time, however, Occom had established himself as a public "gure. On September 2, 1772, he preached at the execution of Moses Paul, a Wampanoag man convicted of murder. His sermon was densely packed with Scriptural allusions, and it addressed several audiences at once. Noting that he was preaching “at the earnest desire and invitation of the poor condemned Criminal,” Occom called upon the assembled ministers to do the work of the Lord and exhorted his Native audience to avoid “the sin of drunkenness.” A Sermon, Preached at the Execution of Moses Paul, an Indian was "rst printed on October 31 and went through three further editions by the end of the year. Nineteen editions were ultimately published, an extraordi- nary number for any work in this period.

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Meanwhile, Occom preached widely, especially in New Eng land, often to con- gregations of Native Christians. In 1774, he published his Collection of Hymns and Spiritual Songs, which included six hymns of his own composition. A prominent fea- ture of Christian worship for centuries, hymns had become a source of friction between traditionalists and evangelical New Lights, who preferred the new hymns of the En glish theologians Isaac Watts and Charles Wesley to the older hymns in collec- tions such as the Bay Psalm Book (excerpted earlier in this volume). Despite these ten- sions, hymn singing had become a central ele ment of worship in Native Christian

Samson Occom. Made during Occom’s speaking tour of the British Isles, this famous print shows him pointing at a Bible. A bow and arrows hang directly above.

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1. The text is from Collections of the Mas sa chu- setts Historical Society, Vol. ser. 1, Vol. 10 (1809). 2. Or (as below) “powaws,” and often spelled

“powwows,” are religious leaders, sometimes referred to as priests.

communities. Occom’s hymnal appealed to a wide audience, appearing in four edi- tions, the last in 1792. It had a lasting impact on the American tradition of hymnody.

A few months after Moses Paul’s execution, Occom had attended the "rst orga- nizational meeting of the Brotherton group, a pantribal movement to establish a Christian Indian town in Oneida territory. The aim of the town was to provide residents with a space where they could exercise self- governance, sheltered from white induence and encroachment. Occom was closely involved with the Brother- ton community for over a de cade. Shortly after moving his family to Brotherton in 1789, however, Occom became frustrated by condicts within the community over the disposition of lands to whites. In 1791, the family moved to the Native Christian town of New Stockbridge, some "fteen miles northwest of Brotherton. When Occom died there the following year, of natu ral causes, three hundred indigenous people attended his funeral.

From An Account of the Montauk Indians, on Long Island1

III. Concerning their gods. They imagined a great number of gods. There were the gods of the four corners of the earth; the god of the east, the god of the west, the god of the north, the god of the south; and there was a god over their corn, another over their beans, another over their pumpkins, and squashes, &c. There was one god over their wigwams, another of the "re, another over the sea, another of the wind, one of the day, and another of the night; and there were four gods over the four parts of the year, &c. &c.

But they had a notion of one great and good God, that was over all the rest of the gods, which they called Cauhluntoowut, which signi"es one that is possessed with supreme power. They also had a notion of a great evil god, which they called Mutcheshesunnetooh, which signi"es evil power, who they say is mischievous, &c.

And to these gods they call for help under every dif"culty, and to them they offered their sacri"ces of vari ous kinds, &c.

As for their images, they kept them as oracles. The powwaws2 consult these images to know the minds of their gods; for they pretend these images tell what the people should do to the gods, either to make a dance or a feast, or give something to the old people, or sacri"ce to the gods.

IV. As for the Powaws, they say they get their art from dreams; and one has told me they get their art from the devil, but then partly by dreams or night visions, and partly by the dev il’s immediate appearance to them by vari- ous shapes; sometimes in the shape of one creature, sometimes in another, sometimes by a voice, &c. and their poisoning one another, and taking out poison, they say is no imaginary thing, but real. I have heard some say, that have been poisoned, it puts them into great pain, and when a powaw takes out the poison they have found immediate relief; at other times they feel no manner of pain, but feel strangely by degrees, till they are senseless, and then they will run mad. Sometimes they would run into the water; sometimes into the "re; and at other times run up to the top of high trees and tumble

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3. Vari ous. 1. The text is from American Indian Non#ction: An Anthology of Writings (2007), edited by

Bernd C. Peyer. Some of the bracketed insertions are Peyer’s; others have been added for this anthology.

down headlong to the ground, yet receive no hurt by all these. And I don’t see for my part, why it is not as true, as the En glish or other nation’s witch- craft, but is a great mystery of darkness, &c.

V. Concerning their dead, burial, and mourning. They use[d] to wash their dead clean, and adorn them with all manner of ornaments, and paint the face of them with divers3 colours, and make a great lamentation over their dead. When they carry the corpse to the grave, the whole com pany, especially of the women, make a doleful and a very mournful and loud lam- entation, all the way as they go to the grave, and at the grave; and they use[d] to bury great many things with their dead, especially the things that belonged to the dead, and what they did not bury they would give away, and they would never live in a wigwam, in which any person died, but will immediately pull it down, and they generally mourned for their dead about a year, and the time they are in mourning the women kept their faces blackt with coal mixt with grease, neither would they wear "ne cloathes, nor sing, nor dance, nei- ther will the mourners mention the name by which their dead was called, nor suffer any one in the whole place to mention it till some of the relations are called by the same name; and when they put off their mourning habit, they generally made a great nightly dance. They begin it in the eve ning and hold it till morning.

VI. Concerning their notions of future state. They believed the exis- tence of their souls after their bodies are dead. Their souls go to the west- ward a great way off, where the righ teous, or those that behaved themselves well in this world, will exercise themselves in pleas ur able singing and danc- ing forever, in the presence of their Sawwonnuntoh or their western god, from whom they have received their beans and corn, their pumpkins, squashes, and all such things. They suppose the wicked go to the same place or country with the righ teous; but they are to be exercised in some hard ser- vile labour, or some perplexing exercise, such as fetching water in a riddle, or making a canoe with a round stone, &c.

These were common notions with all Long Island Indians.

1761 1809

A Short Narrative of My Life1

From My Birth till I Received the Christian Religion

I was Born a Heathen and Brought up In Heathenism, till I was between 16 & 17 years of age, at a Place Calld Mohegan, in New London, Connecticut, in New Eng land. My Parents Livd a wandering life, for did all the Indians at Mohegan, they Chiedy Depended upon Hunting, Fishing, & Fowling for their Living and had no Connection with the En glish, excepting to Traf"c with them in their small Trides; and they Strictly maintained and followed their Heathenish Ways, Customs & Religion, though there was Some

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2. In 1729, the Harvard gradu ate and Congrega- tionalist minister Eliphalet Adams occasionally preached to the Mohegans. 3. In 1733–38 the Yale gradu ate and Presbyte- rian minister Jonathan Barber occasionally

taught the Mohegans. 4. I.e., woven mats, which were placed over birchbark frames. 5. I.e., the Great Awakening was underway. 6. I.e., awakened spiritually to a sense of sin.

Preaching among them. Once a Fortnight, in ye Summer Season, a Minis- ter from New London used to come up, and the Indians to attend;2 not that they regarded the Christian Religion, but they had Blankets given to them every Fall of the Year and for these things they would attend and there was a Sort of School kept, when I was quite young, but I believe there never was one that ever Learnt to read any thing,— and when I was about 10 Years of age there was a man who went about among the Indian Wig- wams, and wherever he Could "nd the Indian Children, would make them read;3 but the Children Used to take Care to keep out of his way;— and he used to Catch me Some times and make me Say over my Letters; and I believe I learnt Some of them. But this was Soon over too; and all this Time there was not one amongst us, that made a Profession of Chris tian ity— Neither did we Cultivate our Land, nor kept any Sort of Creatures except Dogs, which we used in Hunting; and we Dwelt in Wigwams. These are a Sort of Tents, Covered with Matts, made of Flags.4 And to this Time we were unaquainted with the En glish Tongue in general though there were a few, who understood a little of it.

From the Time of Our Reformation till I Left Mr. Wheelocks

When I was 16 years of age, we heard a Strange Rumor among the En glish, that there were Extraordinary Ministers Preaching from Place to Place and a Strange Concern among the White People.5 This was in the Spring of the Year. But we Saw nothing of these things, till Some Time in the Summer, when Some Ministers began to visit us and Preach the Word of God; and the Common People all Came frequently and exhorted us to the things of God, which it pleased the Lord, as I humbly hope, to Bless and accompany with Divine Induence to the Conviction and Saving Conversion of a Num- ber of us; amongst whom I was one that was Imprest with the things we had heard. These Preachers did not only come to us, but we frequently went to their meetings and Churches. After I was awakened6 & converted, I went to all the meetings, I could come at; & Continued under Trou ble of Mind about 6 months; at which time I began to Learn the En glish Letters; got me a Primer, and used to go to my En glish Neighbours frequently for Assistance in Reading, but went to no School. And when I was 17 years of age, I had, as I trust, a Discovery of the way of Salvation through Jesus Christ, and was enabl’d to put my trust in him alone for Life & Salvation. From this Time the Distress and Burden of my mind was removed, and I found Serenity and Plea sure of Soul, in Serving God. By this time I just began to Read in the New Testament without Spelling,— and I had a Stronger Desire Still to Learn to read the Word of God, and at the Same Time had an uncommon Pity and Compassion to my Poor Brethren According to the Flesh. I used to wish I was capable of Instructing my poor Kindred. I used to think, if I Could once Learn to Read I would Instruct the poor Children in Reading,— and used frequently to talk with our Indians Concerning Religion. This continued till

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7. Instruction. 8. Prob ably worth about $1,400 in pres ent- day American currency. 9. A village of the Western Niantics, in pres ent- day East Lyme, Connecticut.

1. A village of the Narragansetts, in Charlestown, Rhode Island. 2. The Presbyterian minister Azeriah Horton, a Yale gradu ate, ministered primarily to the Shin- necocks on Long Island and in Rhode Island.

I was in my 19th year: by this Time I Could Read a little in the Bible. At this Time my Poor Mother was going to Lebanon, and having had Some Knowl- edge of Mr. Wheelock and hearing he had a Number of En glish youth under his Tuition,7 I had a great Inclination to go to him and be with him a week or a Fortnight, and Desired my Mother to Ask Mr. Wheelock whether he would take me a little while to Instruct me in Reading. Mother did so; and when She Came Back, She Said Mr. Wheelock wanted to See me as Soon as pos si ble. So I went up, thinking I Should be back again in a few Days; when I got up there, he received me With kindness and Compassion and in Stead of Staying a Forthnight or 3 Weeks, I Spent 4 Years with him.— After I had been with him Some Time, he began to acquaint his Friends of my being with him, and of his Intentions of Educating me, and my Circum- stances. And the good People began to give Some Assistance to Mr. Whee- lock, and gave me Some old and Some New Clothes. Then he represented the Case to the Honorable Commissioners at Boston, who were Commission’d by the Honorable Society in London for Propagating the gospel among the Indians in New Eng land and parts adjacent, and they allowed him 60 £ in old Tender, which was about 6 £ Sterling,8 and they Continu’d it 2 or 3 years, I cant’t tell exactly.— While I was at Mr. Wheelock’s, I was very weakly and my Health much impaired, and at the End of 4 Years, I over Strained my Eyes to such a Degree, I Could not persue my Studies any Longer; and out of these 4 years I Lost Just about one year;— And was obliged to quit my Studies.

From the Time I left Mr. Wheelock till I Went to Eu rope

As soon as I left Mr. Wheelock, I endeavored to "nd Some Employ among the Indians; went to Nahantuck,9 thinking they may want a School Master, but they had one; then went to Narraganset,1 and they were Indifferent about a School, and went back to Mohegan, and heard a number of our Indians were going to Montauk, on Long Island, and I went with them, and the Indi- ans there were very desirous to have me keep a School amongst them, and I Consented, and went back a while to Mohegan and Some time in Novem- ber I went on the Island, I think it is 17 years ago last November. I agreed to keep School with them Half a Year, and left it with them to give me what they Pleased; and they took turns to Provide Food for me. I had near 30 Scholars this winter; I had an eve ning School too for those that could not attend the Day School— and began to Carry on their meetings, they had a Minister, one Mr. Horton, the Scotch Society’s Missionary; but he Spent, I think two thirds of his Time at Sheenecock, 30 Miles from Montauk.2 We met together 3 times for Divine Worship every Sabbath and once on every Wednesday eve ning. I [used] to read the Scriptures to them and used to expound upon Some par tic u lar Passages in my own Tongue. Visited the Sick and attended their Burials.— When the half year expired, they Desired me to Continue with them, which I complied with, for another half year, when

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3. Samuel Buell, the Presbyterian minister and Yale gradu ate, who preached at Occom’s ordina-

tion, in 1759. 4. Somewhat slow to learn.

I had ful"lled that, they were urgent to have me Stay Longer, So I continued amongst them till I was Married, which was about 2  years after I went there. And Continued to Instruct them in the Same manner as I did before. After I was married a while, I found there was need of a Support more than I needed while I was Single,— and made my Case Known to Mr. Buell3 and to Mr. Wheelock, and also the Needy Circumstances and the Desires of these Indians of my Continuing amongst them, and the Commissioners were so good as to grant £15 a year Sterling— And I kept on in my Ser vice as usual, yea I had additional Ser vice; I kept School as I did before and Carried on the Religious Meetings as often as ever, and attended the Sick and their Funerals, and did what Writings they wanted, and often Sat as a Judge to reconcile and Decide their Matters Between them, and had visitors of Indians from all Quarters; and, as our Custom is, we freely Entertain all Visitors. And was fetched often from my Tribe and from others to see into their Affairs Both Religious, Temporal,— Besides my Domestic Concerns. And it Pleased the Lord to Increase my Family fast— and Soon after I was Mar- ried, Mr. Horton left these Indians and the Shenecock & after this I was [alone] and then I had the whole care of these Indians at Montauk, and vis- ited the Shenecock Indians often. Used to set out Saturdays towards Night and come back again Mondays. I have been obliged to Set out from Home after Sun Set, and Ride 30 Miles in the Night, to Preach to these Indians. And Some Indians at Shenecock Sent their Children to my School at Montauk, I kept one of them Some Time, and had a Young Man a half year from Mohegan, a Lad from Nahantuck who was with me almost a year; and had little or nothing for keeping them.

My Method in the School was, as Soon as the Children got together, and took their proper Seats, I Prayed with them, then began to hear them. I gen- erally began ( after some of them Could Spell and Read,) With those that were yet in their Alphabets, So around, as they were properly Seated till I got through and I obliged them to Study their Books, and to help one another. When they could not make out a hard word they Brought it to me— and I usually heard them, in the Summer Season 8 Times a Day 4 in the morn- ing, and in [the] after Noon.— In the Winter Season 6 Times a Day, As Soon as they could Spell, they were obliged to Spell when ever they wanted to go out. I concluded with Prayer; I generally heard my Eve ning Scholars 3 Times Round, And as they go out the School, every one, that Can Spell, is obliged to Spell a Word, and to go out Leisurely one after another. I Catechised 3 or 4 Times a Week according to the Assembly’s [Shorter] Catechism, and many Times Proposed Questions of my own, and in my own Tongue. I found Dif"culty with Some Children, who were Some what Dull,4 most of these can soon learn to Say over their Letters, they Distinguish the Sounds by the Ear, but their Eyes can’t Distinguish the Letters, and the way I took to cure them was by making an Alphabet on Small bits of paper, and glued them on Small Chips of Cedar after this manner A B & C. I put these on Letters in order on a Bench then point to one Letter and bid a Child to take notice of it, and then I order the Child to fetch me the Letter from the Bench; if he Brings the Letter, it is well, if not he must go again and again till he brings

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5. The works of the great En glish hymnodist Isaac Watts (1674–1748). 6. Enthusiastic lay preachers. 7. Turned away from.

8. Inclination. 9. Move. 1. Particle, bit. “York”: prob ably New York. 2. I.e., dismissed.

[the] right Letter. When they can bring any Letters this way, then I just Jumble them together, and bid them to set them in Alphabetical order, and it is a Plea sure to them; and they soon Learn their Letters this way.— I fre- quently Discussed or Exhorted my Scholars, in Religious matters.— My Method in our Religious Meetings was this; Sabbath Morning we Assem ble together about 10 o’C and begin with Singing; we generally Sung Dr. Watt’s Psalms or Hymns.5 I distinctly read the Psalm or Hymn "rst, and then gave the meaning of it to them, after that Sing, then Pray, and Sing again after Prayer. Then proceed to Read from Suitable portion of Scripture, and so Just give the plain Sense of it in Familiar Discourse and apply it to them. So con- tinued with Prayer and Singing. In the after Noon and Eve ning we Proceed in the Same Manner, and so in Wednesday Eve ning. Some Time after Mr. Horton left these Indians, there was a remarkable revival of religion among these Indians and many were hopefully converted to the Saving knowledge of God in Jesus. It is to be observed before Mr. Horton left these Indians they had Some Prejudices infused in their minds, by Some Enthu- siastical Exhorters6 from New Eng land, against Mr. Horton, and many of them had left him, by this means he was Discouraged, and was disposed from7 these Indians. And being acquainted with the Enthusiasts in New Eng land & the make and the Disposition8 of the Indians I took a mild way to reclaim them. I opposed them not openly but let them go on in their way, and whenever I had an opportunity, I would read Such pages of the Scrip- tures, and I thought would confound their Notions, and I would come to them with all Authority, Saying “ these Saith the Lord”; and by this means, the Lord was pleased to Bless my poor Endeavours, and they were reclaimed, and Brought to hear almost any of the ministers.— I am now to give an Account of my Circumstances and manner of Living. I Dwelt in a Wigwam, a Small Hut with Small Poles and Covered with Matts made of Flags, and I was obligd to remove9 twice a Year, about 2 miles Distance, by reason of the Scarcity of wood, for in one Neck of Land they Planted their Corn, and in another, they had their wood, and I was obligd to have my Corn carted and my Hay also,— and I got my Ground Plow’d every year, which Cost me about 12 shillings an acre; and I kept a Cow and a Horse, for which I paid 21 shil- lings every year York currency, and went 18 miles to Mill for every Dust1 of meal we used in my family. I Hired or Joined with my Neighbours to go to Mill, with a Horse or ox Cart, or on Horse Back, and Some time went myself. My Family Increasing fast, and my Visitors also. I was obligd to contrive every way to Support my Family; I took all opportunities, to get Some thing to feed my Family Daily. I Planted my own Corn, Potatoes, and Beans; I used to be out hoeing my Corn Some times before Sun Rise and after my School is Dismist,2 and by this means I was able to raise my own Pork, for I was allowed to keep 5 Swine. Some mornings & Eve nings I would be out with my Hook and Line to Catch "sh, and in the Fall of Year and in the Spring, I used my gun, and fed my Family with Fowls. I Could more than pay for my Powder & Shot with Feathers. At other Times I Bound old Books for

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3. I.e., et cetera. “Piggins”: small, wooden pails. 4. Cf. 2 Corinithians 11.23.

Easthampton People, made wooden Spoons and Ladles, Stocked Guns, & worked on Cedar to make Pails, [Piggins], and Churns & C.3 Besides all these Dif"culties I met with advers Providence, I bought a Mare, had it but a little while, and she fell into the Quick Sand and Died, After a while Bought another, I kept her about half year, and she was gone, and I never have heard of nor Seen her from that Day to this; it was Supposed Some Rogue Stole her. I got another and [it] Died with a Distemper, and last of all I Bought a Young Mare, and kept her till She had one Colt, and She broke her Leg and Died, and Presently after the [Colt] Died also. In the whole I Lost 5 Horse Kind; all these Losses helped to pull me down; and by this Time I got greatly in Debt, and acquainted my Circumstances to Some of my Friends, and they Represented my Case to the Commissioners of Boston, and Interceded with them for me, and they were pleased to vote 15 £ for my Help, and Soon after Sent a Letter to my good Friend at New London, acquainting him that they had Superseded their Vote; and my Friends were so good as to represent my Needy Circumstances Still to them, and they were so good at Last, as to Vote £ 15 and Sent it, for which I am very thank- ful; and the Revd Mr. Buell was so kind as to write in my behalf to the gentlemen of Boston; and he told me they were much Displeased with him, and heard also once again that they blamed me for being Extravagant; I Can’t Conceive how these gentlemen would have me Live. I am ready to [forgive] their Ignorance, and I would wish they had Changed Circum- stances with me but one month, that they may know, by experience what my Case really was; but I am now fully convinced, that it was not Igno- rance, For I believe it can be proved to the world that these Same Gentle- men gave a young Missionary a Single man, one Hundred Pounds for one year, and "fty Pounds for an Interpreter, and thirty Pounds for an Introducer; so it Cost them one Hundred & Eighty Pounds in one Single Year, and they Sent too where there was no Need of a Missionary.

Now you See what difference they made between me and other mission- aries; they gave me 180 Pounds for 12 years Ser vice, which they gave for one years Ser vices in another Mission.— In my Ser vice (I speak like a fool,4 but I am Constrained) I was my own Interpreter. I was both a School mas- ter and Minister to the Indians, yea I was their Ear, Eye & Hand, as Well as Mouth. I leave it with the World, as wicked as it is, to Judge, whether I ought not to have had half as much, they gave a young man Just mentioned which would have been but £ 50 a year; and if they ought to have given me that, I am not under obligations to them, I owe them nothing at all; what can be the Reason that they used me after this manner? I can’t think of any thing, but this as a Poor Indian Boy Said, Who was Bound out to an En glish Family, and he used to Drive Plow for a young man, and he whipt and Beat him allmost every Day, and the young man found fault with him, and Complained of him to his master and the poor Boy was Called to answer for himself before his master, and he was asked, what it was he did, that he was So Com- plained of and beat almost every Day. He Said, he did not know, but he Supposed it was because he could not drive any better; but says he, I Drive as well as I know how; and at other Times he Beats me, because he is of a

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1. The text is from Samson Occom, A Sermon at the Execution of Moses Paul, an Indian; Who had been guilty of Murder, Preached at New Haven in Amer i ca (1788). 2. Moses Paul, a Wampanoag man, was con- victed of the murder of a white man, Moses Cook, and sentenced to death. Paul unsuccess-

fully appealed his conviction, charging the all- white jury with racial bias. Paul then wrote to Occom asking him to preach at his execution, which took place in 1772 at the Brick Meeting House in New Haven, Connecticut. 3. Behave.

mind to beat me; but says he believes he Beats me for the most of the Time “ because I am an Indian”.

So I am ready to Say, they have used me thus, because I Can’t Induence the Indians so well as other missionaries; but I can assure them I have endeavoured to teach them as well as I know how;— but I must Say, “I believe it is because I am a poor Indian”. I Can’t help that God has made me So; I did not make my self so.

September 17, 1768 1982

From A Sermon at the Execution of Moses Paul, an Indian1

The ADDRESS

By the melancholy providence of God, and at the earnest desire and invita- tion of the poor condemned criminal,2 I am here before this great con- course of people at this time, to give the last discourse to the poor miserable object who is to be executed this day before your eyes, for the due reward of his folly, and madness, and enormous wickedness. It is an unwelcome task to me to speak upon such an occasion; but since it is the desire of the poor man himself, in conscience I cannot deny him; I must endeavour to do the great work the dying man requests. I conclude that this great concourse of people have come together to see the execution of justice upon this poor Indian; and I suppose the biggest part of you look upon yourselves Christians, and as such I hope you will demean3 yourselves; and that you will have suitable commiseration towards this poor object. Though you cannot in justice pray for his life to be continued in this world, you can pray earnestly for the salvation of his poor soul. Let this be therefore, the fervent exercise of our souls; for this is the last day we have to pray for him.— As for you that do not regard religion, it cannot be expected, that you will put up one petition for this miserable creature: yet I would intreat you seriously to consider the frailty of corrupt nature, and behave yourselves as becomes rational creatures.

And in a word, let us all be suitably affected with the melancholy occasion of the day, knowing that we are all dying creatures, and accountable unto God. Though this poor condemned criminal will in a few minutes know more than all of us, either in unutterable joy, or inconceivable woe; yet we shall certainly know as much as he, in a few days.

The sacred words that I have chosen to speak from upon this undesirable occasion, are found written in Romans vi. 23.

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4. Psalm 39, “Teach Me the Mea sure of My Days,” verses 3 and 4, by the En glish hymnodist

Isaac Watts (1674–1748). 5. Cf. Deuteronomy 30.19.

For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Death is called the King of Terrors, and it ought to be the subject of every man and woman’s thoughts daily; because it is that unto which they are lia- ble every moment of their lives: and therefore, it cannot be unseasonable to think, speak and hear of it at any time, and especially on this mournful occa- sion; for we must all come to it, how soon we cannot tell; whether we are prepared or not prepared, ready or not ready, whether death is welcome or not welcome, we must feel the force of it: whether we concern ourselves with death or not, it will concern itself with us. Seeing that this is the case with every one of us, what manner of persons ought we to be in all holy conver- sation and godliness; how ought men to exert themselves in preparation for death continually; for they know not what a day or an hour may bring forth, with re spect to them. But, alas! according to the appearance of mankind in general, death is the least thought of. They go on from day to day, as if they were to live here for ever, as if this was the only life. They contrive, rack their inventions, disturb their rest, and even hazard their lives in all manner of dangers, both by sea and land; yea they leave no stone unturned that they may live in the world, and at the same time have little or no contrivance to die well: God and their souls are neglected, and heaven and eternal happi- ness are disregarded; Christ and his religion are despised— yet most of these very men intend to be happy when they come to die, not considering that there must be great preparation in order to die well. Yea there is none so "t to live as those that are "t to die; those that are not "t to die are not "t to live. Life and death are nearly connected: we generally own that it is a great and solemn thing to die. But I say again, how little do mankind realize these things? They are busy about the things of this world as if there was no death before them. Dr. Watts pictures them out to the life in his psalms:

See the vain race of mortals move Some walk in honor’s gaudy show, Like shadows o’er the plain, Some dig for golden ore, They rage and strive, desire and love, They toil for heirs they know not who, But all their noise is vain. And strait are seen no more.4

Eternal life is shamefully disregarded by men in general, and eternal death is chosen rather than life.5 This is the general complaint of the bible from the beginning to the end. As long as Christ is neglected, life is refused, and as long as sin is cherished, death is chosen; and this seems to be the woful case of mankind of all nations, according to their appearance in these days; for it is too plain to be denied, that vice and immortality, and doods of iniquity are abounding every where amongst all nations, and all orders and ranks of men, and in every sect of people. Yea there is a great agreement and harmony among all nations, and from the highest to the lowest to practise sin and iniquity; and the pure religion of Jesus Christ is turned out of doors, and is dying without; or, in other words, the Lord Jesus Christ is turned out of doors by men in gen- eral, and even by his professed people. “He came to his own, and his own

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6. John 1.11. 7. Psalm 14.1. “The Psalmist”: David, the second king of ancient Israel, traditionally considered the author of the Book of Psalms.

8. James 3.8. Cf., e.g., Proverbs 14.9, 15.2, 26.4. “Solomon”: a son of David who became a king of Israel, traditionally considered the author of the Book of Proverbs.

received him not.”6 But the devil is admitted, he has free access to the houses and hearts of the children of men: Thus life is refused and death is chosen.

But in further speaking upon our text, by divine assistance, I shall con- sider those two general propositions:

I. That sin is the cause of all the miseries that befall the children of men, both as to their bodies and souls, for time and eternity.

II. That eternal life and happiness is the free gift of God, through Jesus Christ our Lord.

In speaking to the "rst proposition, I shall "rst consider the nature of sin; and secondly, shall consider the consequences of sin, or the wages of sin, which is death.

First then, we are to describe the nature of sin. Sin is the transgression of the law:— This is the scripture de"nition of sin.

Now the law of God being holy, just and good; sin must be altogether unholy, unjust and evil. If I was to de"ne sin, I should call it a contrariety to God; and as such it must be the vilest thing in the world; it is full of all evil; it is the evil of evils; the only evil, in which dwells no good thing; and is most destructive to God’s creation, where ever it takes effect. It was sin that trans- formed the very angels of heaven into dev ils; and it was sin that caused hell to be made. If it had not been for sin, there never would have been such a thing as hell or devil, death or misery.

And if sin is such a thing as we have just described; it must be worse than the dev ils and hell itself.— Sin is full of deadly poison; it is full of malignity and hatred against God, against all his divine perfections and attributes, against his wisdom, against his power, against his holiness and goodness, against his mercy and justice, against his written law and gospel; yea, against his very being and existence. Were it in the power of sin, it would even dethrone God, and set itself on the throne.

* * * 2. I shall endeavour to shew the sad consequences or effects of sin upon

the children of men. Sin has poisoned them, and made them distracted or fools. The Psalmist

says, The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God.7 And Solomon, through his Proverbs, calls ungodly sinners fools;8 and their sin he calls their folly and foolishness. The Apostle James says, “But the tongue can no man tame, it is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison.” It is the heart that is in the "rst place full of this “deadly poison.” The tongue is only an interpreter of the heart. Sin has vitiated the whole man, both soul and body; all the powers are corrupted; it has turned the minds of men against all good, towards all evil. So poisoned are they, according to the Prophet Isaiah v. 20. “Wo unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter.” And Christ Jesus saith in John iii. 19, 20. “And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds

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9. Illicit sexual intercourse. 1. The parable of Dives the rich man and Lazarus appears in Luke 16.19–31.

were evil. For every one that doth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved.” Sin has stupi"ed mankind, they are now ignorant of God their maker; neither do they enquire after him. And they are ignorant of themselves, they know not what is good for them, neither do they understand their danger; and they have no fear of God before their eyes.

* * * The next thing I shall consider, is the actual death of the body, or separa-

tion between soul and body. At the cessation of natu ral life, there is an end of all the enjoyments of this life: there is no more joy nor sorrow; no more hope nor fear, as to the body; no more contrivance and carry ing on any busi- ness; no more merchandizing and trading; no more farming; no more buy- ing and selling; no more building of any kind, no more contrivance at all to live in the world; no more datteries nor frowns from the world; no more honor nor reproach; no more praise; no more good report, nor evil report; no more learning of any trades, arts or sciences in the world; no more sinful pleasures, they are all at an end; recreations, visiting, tavern haunting, music and dancing, chambering9 and carousing, playing at dice and cards, or any game whatsoever; cursing and swearing, and profaning the holy name of God, drunkenness, "ghting, debauchery, lying and cheating, in this world, must cease for ever. Not only so, sinners must bid an eternal farewell to all the world; bid farewell to all their beloved sins and pleasures: and the places and possessions that knew them once, shall know them no more for ever. And further, they must bid adieu to all sacred and divine things. They are obliged to leave the Bible, and all the ordinances thereof; and to bid fare- well to preachers, and all sermons and all Christian people, and Christian conversation; they must bid a long farewell to sabbaths and seasons, and opportunities of worship; yea, an eternal farewell to God the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, and adieu to heaven and all happiness, to saints and all the inhabitants of the upper world. At your leisure please to read the destruc- tion of Babylon; Rev. the 18th, most of that description will apply to the case of dying sinners.

Mean while, the poor departed soul must take up its lodging in sorrow, woe and misery, in the lake that burns with "re and brimstone, where the worm dieth not, and the "re is not quenched; where a multitude of frightful deformed dev ils dwell, and the damned ghosts of Adam’s race; where dark- ness, horror and despair reigns, where hope never comes, and where poor guilty naked souls will be tormented with exquisite torments, even the wrath of the Almighty poured out upon their damned souls; the smoke of their tor- ments ascending up for ever and ever; and hellish groans, howlings, cries and shrieks all round them, and merciless dev ils upbraiding them for their folly and madness, and tormenting them incessantly.— And there they must endure the most unsatiable, fruitless desire, and the most overwhelming shame and confusion, and the most horrible fear, and the most doleful sor- row, and the most racking despair. When they cast their daming eyes to heaven, with Dives in torments,1 they behold an angry and frowning God,

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2. Galatians 2.20. “The apostle”: Jesus’ apostle Paul.

3. 1 John 4.16.

whose eyes are as a daming "re, and they are struck with ten thousand darts of pain; and the sight of the happiness of the saints above, adds to their pains and aggravates their misery. And when they redect upon their past folly and madness, in neglecting the great salvation in their day, it will pierce them with ten thousand inconceivable torments; it will as it were enkindle their hell afresh; and it will cause them to curse themselves bitterly, and curse the day in which they were born, and curse their parents that were the instru- ments of their being in the world; yea they will curse, bitterly curse; and with that very God that gave them their being, to be in the same condition with them in hell torments. This is what is called the second death, and it is the last death, and an eternal death to a guilty soul.

And O eternity, eternity, eternity! Who can mea sure it? Who can count the years thereof? Arithmetic must fail, the thoughts of men and angels are drowned in it; how shall we describe eternity? To what shall we compare it? Were it pos si ble to employ a dy to carry off this globe by the small particles thereof, and to carry them to such a distance that it should return once in ten thousand years for another particle, and so continue until it has carried off all this globe, and framed them together in some unknown space, until it has made just such a world as this is; after all, eternity would remain the fame unexhausted duration. This must be the unavoidable portion of all impenitent sinners, let them be who they will, great or small, honorable or ignoble, rich or poor, bond or free. Negroes, Indians, En glish, or of what nations forever, all that die in their sins, must go to hell together, for the wages of sin is death.

The next thing that I was to consider is this: II. That eternal life and happiness is the free gift of God, through Jesus

Christ our Lord. Under this proposition I shall endeavour to shew, what this life and hap-

piness is. The life that is mentioned in our text, begins with a spiritual life: it is the

life of the soul, a restoration of soul from sin to holiness, from darkness to light, a translation from the kingdom and dominion of Satan, to the king- dom of God’s grace. In other words, it is being restored to the image of God, and delivered from the image of Satan. And this life consists in union of the soul to God, and communion with God; a real participation of the divine nature, or in the apostle’s words, it is Christ formed within us; “I live,” says he, “yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.”2 And the apostle John saith, “God is love, and he that dwelleth in love, dwelleth in God, and God in him.”3 * * * This life is called eternal life, because God has planted a living princi ple in the soul; and whereas he was dead before, now he is made alive unto God; there is an active princi ple within him towards God, he now moves towards God in his religious devotions and exercises; is daily, comfortably and sweetly walking with God, in all his ordinances and commands; his delight is in the ways of God; he breathes towards God, a living breath, in praises, prayers, adorations and thanksgivings; his prayers are now heard in the heavens, and his praises delight the ears of the Almighty,

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4. 2 Corinthians 12.15. 5. At this location, Protestants were executed during the reigns of Henry VIII (1509–47),

Edward VI (1547–53), Mary I (1553–58), Eliza- beth I (1558–1603), and James I (1603–1625).

and his thanksgivings are accepted. So alive is he now to God, that it is his meat and drink, yea more than his meat and drink, to do the will of his heav- enly Father. It is his delight, his happiness and plea sure to serve God. He does not drag himself to his duties now, but he does them out of choice, and with alacrity of soul. Yea, so alive is he to God, that he gives up himself and all that he has entirely to God, to be for him and none other; his whole aim is to glorify God in all things, whether by life or death, all the same to him.

We have a bright example of this in St Paul. After he was converted, he was all alive to God; he regarded not himself, but was willing to spend, and be spent in the ser vice of his God;4 he was hated, reviled, despised, laughed at, and called by all manner of evil names; was scourged, stoned and imprisoned;— and all could not stop his activity towards God. He would boldly and coura- giously go on in preaching the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, to poor, lost, and undone sinners; he would do the work God set him about, in spite of all opposition he met with, either from men or dev ils, earth or hell; come death, or come life, none of these things moved him, because he was alive unto God. Though he suffered hunger and thirst, cold and heat, poverty and nakedness by day and by night, by sea and land, and was in danger all ways; yet he would serve God amidst all these dangers. Read his amazing account in 2 Cor. xi. 23. and on.

Another instance of marvellous love towards God, we have in Daniel. When there was a proclamation, sent by the king, to all his subjects, forbid- ding them to call upon their gods, for thirty days; which was done by envi- ous men, that they might "nd occasion against Daniel, the servant of the Most High God; yet he having the life of God in his soul, regarded not the king’s decree, but made his petitions to his God, as often as he used to do, though death was threatened to the disobedient. But he feared not the hell they had prepared; the den resembled hell, and the lions the dev ils. Thus Daniel and Paul went through "re and water, as the common saying is, because they had eternal life in their souls in an eminent manner; and they regarded not this life, for the cause and glory of God. And thus it has been in all ages with true Christians. Many of the fore- fathers of the En glish, in this country, had this life, and are gone the same way that the holy prophets and apostles went. Many of them went through all manner of sufferings for God; and a great number of them are gone home to heaven, in chariots of "re. I have seen the place in London, called Smith"eld, where numbers were burnt to death for the religion of Jesus Christ.5 And there is the same life in true Christians now in these days; and if there should per- secutions arise in our day, I verily believe, true Christians would suffer with the same spirit and temper of mind, as those did, who suffered in days past.

We proceed to shew, that this life which we have described, is the free gift of God, through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Sinners have forfeited all mercy into the hand of divine justice, and have merited hell and damnation to themselves; for the wages of sin is everlast- ing death, but heaven and happiness is a free gift; it comes by favour; and

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6. John 3.16. 7. Ephesians 2.8. 8. The assembled listeners, including numerous

clergymen. 9. Numbers 32.23. 1. Genesis 9.6.

all merit is excluded: and especially if we consider that we are fallen sinful creatures, and there is nothing in us that can recommend us to the favour of God. * * * And it is said, that this life is given in and through the Lord Jesus Christ. It could not be given in any other way, but in and through the death and sufferings of Christ; Christ himself is a gift, and he is the Chris- tian’s life. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”6 The word says further, “For by grace ye are saved, through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God.”7 This is given through Jesus Christ our Lord; Christ obtained it with his own blood, by the induence of his spirit he prepares us for it; and by his divine grace preserves us for it. In a word, he is all in all in our eternal salvation; all this is the free gift of God.

I have now gone through what I proposed from my text. And I shall now make some application of the whole.

First to the criminal in par tic u lar; and then to the auditory in general.8 My poor unhappy brother MOSES;

As it was your own desire that I should preach to you this last discourse, so I shall speak plainly to you.— You are the bone of my bone, and desh of my desh. You are an Indian, a despised creature; but you have despised yourself; yea, you have despised God more; you have trodden under foot his authority; you have despised his commands and precepts: and now, as God says, “be sure your sins will "nd you out;9 so now, poor Moses, your sins have found you out, and they have overtaken you this day; the day of your death is now come; the King of Terrors is at hand; you have but a very few moments to breathe in this world.— The just laws of man, and the holy law of Jehovah, call aloud for the destruction of your mortal life; God says, “Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed.”1 This is the ancient decree of heaven, and it is to be executed by man; nor have you the least gleam of hope of escape, for the unalterable sentence is past; the terrible day of execution is come; the unwelcome guard is about you; and the fatal instruments of death are now made ready; your cof"n and your grave, your last lodging, are open ready to receive you.

Alas! poor Moses, now you know, by sad, by woful experience, the living truth of our text, that the wages of sin is death. You have been already dead; yea twice dead: by nature spiritually dead, and since the awful sentence of death has been past upon you, you have been dead to all the pleasures of this life: or all the pleasures, lawful or unlawful, have been dead to you: And death which is the wages of sin, is standing even on this side of your grave ready to put a "nal period to your mortal life; and just beyond the grave, eternal death awaits your poor soul, and the dev ils are ready to drag your miserable soul down to their bottomless den, where everlasting woe and hor- ror reigns; the place is "lled with doleful shrieks, howls and groans of the damned. Oh! to what a miserable, forlorn, and wretched condition, have your extravagant folly and wickedness brought you, i.e. if you die in your sins. And O! what manner of repentance ought you to manifest! How ought your

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2. In Calvinist theology, God established the Covenant of Works with Adam, who then broke it. Jesus Christ established the Covenant of

Grace with those who believe in him and will thus be saved. 3. Matthew 11.28.

heart to bleed for what you have done! How ought you to prostrate your soul before a bleeding God! And under self- condemnation, cry out, Ah Lord, ah Lord, what have I done!— Whatever partiality, injustice and error there may be among the judges of the earth, remember that you have deserved a thou- sand deaths, and a thousand hells, by reason of your sins, at the hands of a holy God. Should God come out against you in strict justice, alas! what could you say for yourself? for you have been brought up under the bright sun- shine, and plain, and loud sound of the gospel; and you have had a good education; you can read and write well; and God has given you a good natu- ral understanding: and therefore your sins are so much more aggravated. You have not sinned in such an ignorant manner as others have done; but you have sinned with both your eyes open as it were, under the light, even the glorious light of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.— You have sinned against the light of your own conscience, against your knowledge and understand- ing; you have sinned against the pure and holy laws of God, and the just laws of men; you have sinned against heaven and earth; you have sinned against all the mercies and goodness of God; you have sinned against the whole Bible, against the Old and New- Testament; you have sinned against the blood of Christ, which is the blood of the everlasting covenant.2 O poor Moses, see what you have done! and now repent, repent, I say again repent; see how the blood you shed cries against you, and the avenger of blood is at your heels. O dy, dy to the Blood of the Lamb of God, for the pardon of all your aggravated sins.

But let us now turn to a more pleasant theme.— Though you have been a great sinner, a heaven daring sinner; yet hark! O hear the joyful sound from heaven, even from the King of kings, and Lord of lords; that the gift of God is eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord. It is a free gift, and bestowed on the greatest sinners, and upon their true repentance towards God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, they shall be welcome to the life, which we have spoken of; it is granted upon free terms. He that hath no money may come; he that hath no righ teousness, no goodness, may come; the call is to poor undone sinners; the call is not to the righ teous, but sinners, inviting them to repentance. Hear the voice of the Son of the most high God, “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”3 This is a call, a gracious call to you, poor Moses, under your pres ent burdens and distresses. * * * O poor Moses, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ with all your heart, and thou shalt be saved eternally. Come just as you are, with all your sins and abominations, with all your blood- guiltiness, with all your condemnation, and lay hold of the hope set before you this day. This is the last day of salvation with your soul; you will be beyond the bounds of mercy in a few minutes more. O, what a joyful day will it be if you now openly believe in, and receive the Lord Jesus Christ; it would be the beginning of heavenly days with your poor soul; instead of a melancholy day, it would be a wedding day to your soul; it would cause the very angels in heaven to rejoice, and the saints on earth to be glad; it would cause the angels to

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4. The patriarchs of the Hebrew Bible.

come down from the realms above, and wait hovering about your gallows, ready to convey your soul to the heavenly mansions, there to take the pos- session of eternal glory and happiness, and join the heavenly choirs in sing- ing the song of Moses and the Lamb; there to sit down forever with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob4 in the kingdom of God’s glory; and your shame and guilt shall be forever banished from the place, and all sorrow and fear forever dy away, and tears be wiped from your face; and there shall you forever admire the astonishing and amazing and in"nite mercy of God in Christ Jesus, in pardoning such a monstrous sinner as you have been; there you will claim the highest note of praise, for the riches of free grace in Christ Jesus. But if you will not accept of a Saviour proposed to your ac cep- tance in this last day of your life, you must this very day bid farewell to God the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, to heaven and all the saints and angels that are there; and you must bid all the saints in this lower world an eternal farewell, and even the whole world. And so I must leave you in the hands of God; and must turn to the whole auditory.

Sirs, We may plainly see, from what we have heard, and from the miser- able object before us, into what a doleful condition sin has brought man- kind, even into a state of death and misery. We are by nature as certainly under sentence of death from God, as this miserable man is, by the the just determination of man; and we are all dying creatures, this is the dreadful fruit of sin. O! let us then dy from all appearance of sin; let us "ght against it with all our might; let us repent and turn to God, and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, that we may live forever; let us all prepare for death, for we know not how soon, nor how suddenly we may be called out of the world.

Permit me reverend gentlemen and fathers in Israel, to speak a few words to you, though I am well sensible that I need to be taught the "rst princi ples of the oracles of God, by the least of you. But since the providence of God has so ordered it, that I must speak here on this occasion, I beg that you would not be offended nor be angry with me.

God has raised you up, from among your brethren, and has quali"ed, and authorised you to do his great work; and you are the servants of the Most High God, and ministers of the Lord Jesus, the Son of the living God: you are Christ’s ambassadors; you are called Shepherds, watchmen, overseers, or bishops, and you are rulers of the temples of God, or of the assemblies of God’s people; you are God’s angels, and as such you have nothing to do but to wait upon God, and to do the work the Lord Jesus Christ your blessed Lord and Master has set you about, not fearing the face of any man, nor seeking to please men, but your Master. * * * But what need I speak any more? Let us all attend, and hear the great Apostle of the Gentiles speaking unto us in Eph[esians] vi from the 10th verse and onward. “Fi nally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might; put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not against desh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spir- itual wickedness in high places. Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand in the evil day, and having done all to

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5. Poor, shabby. 6. Lack.

stand. Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breast- plate of righ teousness; and your feet shod with the prepara- tion of the gospel of peace: above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the "ery darts of the wicked; and take the hel- met of salvation, and the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God; praying always with all prayer and supplication in the spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance, and supplication for all saints.”

I shall now address myself to the Indians, my brethren and kindred accord- ing to the desh. My Poor kindred,

You see the woful consequences of sin, by seeing this our poor miserable country- man now before us, who is to die this day for his sins and great wickedness. And it was the sin of drunkenness that has brought this destruc- tion and untimely death upon him. There is a dreadful woe denounced from the Almighty against drunkards; and it is this sin, this abominable, this beastly and accursed sin of drunkenness, that has stript us of every desir- able comfort in this life; by this we are poor, miserable and wretched; by this sin we have no name nor credit in the world among polite nations; for this sin we are despised in the world, and it is all right and just, for we despise ourselves more; and if we do not regard ourselves, who will regard us? And it is for our sins, and especially for that accursed, that most hateful sin of drunkenness that we suffer every day. For the love of strong drink we spend all that we have, and every thing we can get. By this sin we cannot have comfortable houses, nor any thing comfortable in our houses; neither food nor raiment, nor decent utensils. We are obliged to put up any sort of shel- ter just to screen us from the severity of the weather; and we go about with very mean,5 ragged and dirty clothes, almost naked. And we are half starved, for most of the time obliged to pick up any thing to eat.— And our poor children are suffering every day for want6 of the necessaries of life; they are very often crying for want of food, and we have nothing to give them; and in  the cold weather they are shivering and crying, being pinched with the cold— — All this is for the love of strong drink. And this is not all the misery and evil we bring on ourselves in this world; but when we are intoxicated with strong drink, we drown our rational powers, by which we are distin- guished from the brutal creation; we unman ourselves, and bring ourselves not only level with the beasts of the "eld, but seven degrees beneath them; yea we bring ourselves level with the dev ils; I do not know but we make ourselves worse than the dev ils, for I never heard of drunken dev ils.

My poor kindred, do consider what a dreadful abominable sin drunken- ness is. God made us men, and we choose to be beasts and dev ils; God made us rational creatures, and we chuse to be fools. Do consider further, and behold a drunkard, and see how he looks, when he has drowned his reason; how deformed and shameful does he appear? He dis"gures every part of him, both soul and body, which was made after the image of God. He appears with awful deformity, and his whole visage is dis"gured; if he attempts to speak he cannot bring out his words distinct, so as to be understood; if

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7. A name in the Hebrew Bible that later became identi"ed with the devil. 8. See Genesis 9.22, where Ham sees the naked-

ness of his father, Noah. In some accounts, this led to the curse of Ham, which was said to explain the enslavement of Africans.

he walks he reels and staggers to and fro, and tumbles down. And see how he behaves, he is now laughing, and then he is crying; he is singing, and the next minute he is mourning; and is all love to every one, and anon he is rag- ing, and for "ghting, and killing all before him, even the nearest and the dearest relations and friends: Yea nothing is too bad for a drunken man to do. He will do that which he would not do for the world, in his right mind.

Further, when a person is drunk, he is just good for nothing in the world; he is of no ser vice to himself, to his family, to his neighbours, or his coun- try; and how much more un"t is he to serve God: yet he is just as "t for the ser vice of the devil.

Again, a man in drukenness is in all manner of dangers, he may be killed by his fellow- men, by wild beasts, and tame beasts; he may fall into the "re, into the water, or into a ditch; or he may fall down as he walks along, and break his bones or his neck; he may cut himself with edge tools.— Further, if he has any money or any thing valuable, he may lose it all, or may be robbed, or he may make a foolish bargain, and be cheated out of all he has.

I believe you know the truth of what I have just now said, many of you, by sad experience; yet you will go on still in your drunkenness. Though you have been cheated over and over again, and you have lost your substance by drunkenness, yet you will venture to go on in this most destructive sin. O fools when will ye be wise?— We all know the truth of what I have been say- ing, by what we have seen and heard of drunken deaths. How many have been drowned in our rivers, and how many have been frozen to death in the winter seasons! yet drunkards go on without fear and consideration: alas, alas! What will become of all such drunkards? Without doubt they must all go to hell, except they truly repent and turn to God. Drunkenness is so com- mon amongst us, that even our young men and young women are not ashamed to get drunk. Our young men will get drunk as soon as they will eat when they are hungry— It is generally esteemed amongst men, more abominable for a woman to be drunk, than a man; and yet there is nothing more common amongst us than female drunkards. Women ought to be more modest than men; the holy scriptures recommend modesty to women in particular:— but drunken women have no modesty at all. It is more intoler- able for a woman to get drunk, if, we consider further, that she is in great danger of falling into the hands of the sons of Belial,7 or wicked men, and being shamefully treated by them.

And here I cannot but observe, we "nd in sacred writ, a woe denounced against men, who put their bottles to their neighbours’ mouth to make them drunk, that they may see their nakedness;8 and no doubt there are such dev ilish men now in our day, as there were in the days of old.

And to conclude, consider my poor kindred, you that are drunkards, into what a miserable condition you have brought yourselves. There is a dreadful woe thundering against you every day, and the Lord says, that drunkards shall not inherit the kingdom of God.

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1. The texts are from Samson Occom, A Choice Collection of Hymns and Spiritual Songs (1774), as reprinted in The Collected Writings of Samson Occom, Mohegan (2006), edited by Joanna

Brooks. 2. I.e., the cross that Jesus carried to the site of his Cruci"xion.

And now let me exhort you all to break off from your drunkenness, by a gospel repentance, and believe on the Lord Jesus and you shall be saved. Take warning by this doleful sight before us, and by all the dreadful judg- ments that have befallen poor drunkards. O let us all reform our lives, and live as becomes dying creatures, in time to come. Let us be persuaded that we are accountable creatures to God, and we must be called to an account in a few days. You that have been careless all your days, now awake to righ- teousness, and be concerned for your poor and never dying souls. Fight against all sins, and especially the sin that easily besets you, and behave in time to come as becomes rational creatures; and above all things, receive and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall have eternal life; and when you come to die, your souls will be received into heaven, there to be with the Lord Jesus in eternal happiness, and with all the saints in glory; which God of his in"nite mercy grant, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

September 2, 1772 1788

HYMNS1

The Sufferings of Christ, or Throughout the Saviour’s Life We Trace

Throughout the Saviour’s Life we trace, Nothing but Shame and deep Disgrace, No period else is seen; Till he a spotless Victim fell, Tasting in Soul a painful Hell, 5 Caus’d by the Creature’s Sin. On the cold Ground methinks I see My Jesus kneel, and pray for me; For this I him adore; Siez’d with a chilly sweat throughout, 10 Blood- drops did force their Passage out Through ev’ry open’d Pore. A pricking Thorn his Temples bore; His Back with Lashes all was tore, Till one the Bones might see; 15 Mocking, they push’d him here and there, Marking his Way with Blood and Tear, Press’d by the heavy Tree.2 Thus up the Hill he painful came, Round him they mock, and make their Game, 20

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3. During the three- hour period called the Cru- ci"xion darkness, the sun dis appeared as Jesus died on the cross. 4. According to the New Testament accounts of the Cruci"xion, Jesus was offered unappetizing beverages while on the cross. E.g., in Matthew 27.34, he is offered a cup of gall (bile) mixed with

vinegar (also translated as wine). However, John 2.1–11 describes the "rst miracle attributed to Jesus, earlier in his life: turning water into wine. Here, he performs a similar miracle. 5. Bride of Christ. The phrase is variously inter- preted. 6. Cf. Psalm 121.8.

At length his Cross they rear; And can you see the mighty God, Cry out beneath sin’s heavy Load, Without one thankful Tear? Thus vailed in Humanity, 25 He dies in Anguish on the Tree; What Tongue his Grief can tell? The shudd’ring Rocks their Heads recline, The mourning Sun refuse to shine, When the Creator fell.3 30 Shout, Brethren, shout in songs divine, He drank the Gall to give us Wine,4 To quench our parching Thirst; Seraphs advance your Voices higher; Bride of the Lamb,5 unite the Choir, 35 And Laud thy precious Christ.

A Morning Hymn, or Now the Shades of Night Are Gone

Now the shades of night are gone, Now the morning light is come: Lord, we would be thine to- day, Drive the shades of sin away. Make our souls as noon- day clear, 5 Banish every doubt and fear; In thy vineyard, Lord, to- day We would labor, we would pray. Keep our haughty passions bound, Rising up and sitting down, 10 Going out and coming in,6 Keep us safe from every sin. When our work of life is past, O receive us then at last; Labor then will all be o’er, 15 Night of sin will be no more.

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A Son’s Farewell, or I Hear the Gospel’s Joyful Sound

I hear the gospel’s joyful sound, An organ I shall be, For to sound forth redeeming love, And sinner’s misery. Honor’d parents fare you well, 5 My Jesus doth me call, I leave you here with God until I meet you once for all. My due affections I’ll forsake, My parents and their house, 10 And to the wilderness betake, To pay the Lord my vows. Then I’ll forsake my chiefest mates, That nature could afford, And wear the shield into the "eld, 15 To wait upon the Lord. Then thro’ the wilderness I’ll run, Preaching the gospel free; O be not anxious for your son, The Lord will comfort me. 20 And if thro’ preaching I shall gain True subjects to my Lord, ’Twill more than recompence my pain, To see them love the Lord. My soul doth wish mount Zion7 well, 25 Whate’er becomes of me; There my best friends and kindred dwell, And there I long to be.

7. Mount Zion is a hill in Jerusalem; by extension, it means Israel, the chosen people: here, the elect, or the faithful.

609

Ethnographic and Naturalist Writings

Broadly de"ned, the genre of literary ethnography is the written description of peoples, cultures, and socie ties. In this sense, literary ethnography involves a wide variety of styles and can be adapted to many dif fer ent purposes. Descrip- tions of nature—naturalist writings, or natu ral histories as they are sometimes called— have a similarly multivalent character. Virtually all of the earliest “Ameri- can” lit er a ture offers instances of ethnographic and naturalist writing, as the sus- tained Eu ro pean encounter with the Amer i cas that began in 1492 provided writers with a trea sure trove of new material. Descriptions of the land, its peoples, and its natu ral resources are central to narratives of contact and exploration, and they dominate promotional writings designed to encourage investment and colonization. Often enthusiastic in tone, such works typically describe marvels that can at "rst be puzzling, perhaps even a bit threatening, but are ultimately enticing.

A second register in these narratives, one that became more pronounced over time, involved a religiously indected language of won ders and portents, sometimes associated with demonic induence. Drawing on folk beliefs as well as Christian traditions, works such as Cotton Mather’s Won ders of the Invisible World (excerpted earlier in this volume) recorded observations in a quasi- scienti"c language indu- enced by the rise of empiricism— that is, the theory that all knowledge derives from sense experience— but they applied that language to events, or objects, that were not empirically observable in any direct way. Pop u lar works in this vein appeared in early newspapers, almanacs, and broadsides, where occurrences such as earth- quakes or the birth of misshapen fetuses (“monsters”) were sometimes presented as curiosities but at other times interpreted as evidence of divine dis plea sure.

The eighteenth- century writings included in this cluster are distinguished from these earlier works by a deepening empiricism and a complexly self- redective tone that is often manifested through humor. The empiricism and the humor align these works with En glish novels such as Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719) and Henry Fielding’s Joseph Andrews (1742). Novelistic ele ments are especially prominent in the "rst three se lections here, by Sarah Kemble Knight, William Byrd, and Alexander Hamilton. Their travel narratives, paying substantial atten- tion to the communities and landscapes they encountered on their journeys, offer rich instances of authors seeking new ways to understand cultures and natu ral environments.

The "nal two se lections have dif fer ent emphases. William Bartram’s charming “Anecdotes of a Crow” invites redection on enduring questions about human and animal be hav ior. An instance of the popu lar naturalist essay, “Anecdotes of a Crow” shows the same interest in environment and social context that animates works such as J. Hector St. John de Crévecoeur’s Letters from an American Farmer (1782), excerpted after this cluster. In “History of the Muh- he- con- nuk Indians,” the Mahi- can writer Hendrick Aupaumut provides an insider’s view of tribal traditions. Along with works included elsewhere in this volume by David Cusick (“The Iroquois Cre- ation Story”) and Samson Occom (“An Account of the Montauk Indians, on Long Island”), Aupaumut’s history signals the growing role of Native authors in repre- senting indigenous communities.

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1. The text is from The Journal of Madame Knight (1920), edited by George P. Winship.

2. Town in Connecticut. 3. Clumsy fellow.

SARAH KEMBLE KNIGHT

The Bostonian Sarah Kemble Knight (1666–1727) was a woman of many talents. She kept a boarding house and taught school (thus she was sometimes called Madam Knight) and supposedly numbered Benjamin Franklin and members of the Mather family among her pupils. She also taught penmanship, made copies of court rec ords, and wrote letters for people having business with the courts. She educated herself about the law and had a reputation for skillfully settling estates. Such engage- ment in public affairs was not unusual; in the early eigh teenth century, many women played signi"cant economic roles.

While her husband was abroad in 1704, Knight settled her cousin Caleb Trow- bridge’s estate on behalf of his widow. To do so, she traveled to New Haven, Con- necticut, on Monday, October 2, 1704. From there, she went to New York, and she returned home to Boston in March 1705. The journey was hazardous, not under- taken lightly in those years, and unusual for a woman traveling alone.

Like numerous classics of early American lit er a ture, The Private Journal of a Journey from Boston to New York in the Year 1704 that Knight kept was not published until the nineteenth century, when it was transcribed from shorthand and edited by Theodore Dwight. It provides a striking contrast to the soul- searching journals of Knight’s Puritan contemporaries, having more of a Yankee davor. Her literary allusions and passages of poetry remind us that early Americans absorbed trans- atlantic literary models to express the most common and intimate details of their lives. A keen ethnographic observer of provincial Amer i ca, Knight was a sharply humorous commentator on its sometimes crude or ridicu lous features. Her journal depicts everyday life in the northeastern colonies at the turn of the eigh teenth century, while revealing that its author shared some of her society’s most troubling prejudices.

From The Private Journal of a Journey from Boston to New York in the Year 17041

Saturday, October the Seventh

We set out early in the morning and being something unacquainted with the way, having asked it of some we met, they told us we must ride a mile or two and turn down a lane on the right hand, and by their direction we rode on but not yet coming to the turning, we met a young fellow and asked him how far it was to the lane which turned down towards Guilford.2 He said we must ride a little further and turn down by the corner of Uncle Sam’s lot. My guide vented his spleen at the lubber,3 and we soon after came into the road, and keeping still on, without anything further remarkable, about two o’clock after noon we arrived at New Haven, where I was received with all pos si ble re spects and civility. Here I discharged Mr. Wheeler with a reward

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4. A large barrel or cask. 5. I.e., the Indian. 6. Pumpkins. 7. I.e., understand. 8. Equal to, the same as. The joke plays on the justice’s head being the same as the head of a hog (a hog’s head).

9. Days set aside for military exercises. “Lecture days”: days when a less formal sermon was offered than the one prepared for Sundays. 1. A wooden frame on a post, with holes for the head and arms, used as public punishment for offenders.

to his satisfaction, and took some time to rest after so long and toilsome a journey, and informed myself of the manners and customs of the place and at the same time employed myself in the affair I went there upon.

They are governed by the same laws as we in Boston (or little differing) throughout this whole colony of Connecticut, and much the same way of church government, and many of them good, sociable people, and I hope religious too. But a little too much in de pen dent in their princi ples, and, as I have been told, were formerly in their zeal very rigid in their administra- tions towards such as their laws made offenders, even to a harmless kiss or innocent merriment among young people, whipping being a frequent and counted an easy punishment, about which as other crimes, the judges were absolute in their sentences. They told me a pleasant story about a pair of justices in those parts, which I may not omit the relation of.

A negro slave belonging to a man in the town stole a hogshead4 from his master and gave or sold it to an Indian, native of the place. The Indian sold it in the neighborhood, and so the theft was found out. Thereupon the hea- then5 was seized and carried to the justice’s house to be examined. But his Worship (it seems) was gone into the "eld, with a brother in of"ce to gather in his pompions.6 Whither the malefactor is hurried, and complaint made and satisfaction in the name of justice demanded. Their Worships can’t pro- ceed in form without a bench: whereupon they order one to be immediately erected, which, for want of "tter materials, they made with pompions— which being "nished, down sets their Worships, and the malefactor called and by the se nior Justice interrogated after the following manner: You, Indian, why did you steal from this man? You shouldn’t do so— it’s a grandy wicked thing to steal. “Hol’t, hol’t,” cries Justice ju nior. “ Brother, you speak negro to him. I’ll ask him.” “You, sirrah, why did you steal this man’s hogs- head?” “Hogshead?” (replies the Indian), “Me no stomany.”7 “No?” says his Worship, and pulling off his hat, patted his own head with his hand, says, “Tatapa8 you, Tatapa— you; all one this. Hogshead all one this.” “Hah!” says Netop, “Now me stomany that.” Whereupon the com pany fell into a great "t of laughter, even to roaring. Silence is commanded, but to no effect: for they continued perfectly shouting. “Nay,” says his Worship in an angry tone, “If it be so, take me off the bench.”

Their diversions in this part of the country are on lecture days and training days9 mostly: on the former there is riding from town to town.

And on training days the youth divert themselves by shooting at the tar- get, as they call it (but it very much resembles a pillory1), where he that hits nearest the white has some yards of red ribbon presented him which being tied to his hatband, the two ends streaming down his back, he is led away in triumph with great applause as the winners of the Olympiack games. They generally marry very young: the males oftener, as I am told, under twenty than above. They generally make public weddings and have a way something

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2. Fortify against. 3. Shillings, or two En glish pounds. 4. I.e., paying. 5. Unchristian. 6. Cognizance; recognition. 7. Fix; cheat.

8. Specie; actual coin or money. “Rate”: calculate the price of. 9. Coin minted in the Mas sa chu setts Bay Colony. “Pieces of eight”: Spanish silver coins. “Rials”: former En glish gold coins worth ten shillings.

singular (as they say) in some of them, viz. just before joining hands the bridegroom quits the place, who is soon followed by the bridesmen and, as it were, dragged back to duty— being the reverse to the former practice among us, to steel2 man’s pride.

There are great plenty of oysters all along by the seaside as far as I rode in the colony and those very good. And they generally lived very well and comfortably in their families. But too indulgent (especially the farmers) to their slaves, suffering too great familiarity from them, permitting them to sit at table and eat with them (as they say, to save time), and into the dish goes the black hoof as freely as the white hand. They told me that there was a farmer lived near the town where I lodged who had some difference with his slave concerning something the master had promised him and did not punctually perform, which caused some hard words between them. But at length they put the matter to arbitration and bound themselves to stand to the award of such as they named— which done, the arbitrators having heard the allegations of both parties, order the master to pay 403 to black face and acknowledge his fault. And so the matter ended, the poor master very hon- estly standing to4 the award.

There are everywhere in the towns as I passed a number of Indians the natives of the country, and are the most savage5 of all the savages of that kind that I had ever seen: little or no care taken (as I heard upon inquiry) to make them other wise. They have in some places lands of their own, and governed by laws of their own making;— they marry many wives and at plea sure put them away, and on the least dislike or "ckle humor, on either side. Saying “stand away” to one another is a suf"cient divorce. And, indeed, those uncomely “stand aways” are too much in vogue among the En glish in this (indulgent colony) as their rec ords plentifully prove, and that on very trivial matters, of which some have been told me, but are not proper to be related by a female pen, though some of that foolish sex have had too large a share in the story.

If the natives commit any crime on their own precincts among them- selves the En glish takes no cognezens6 of. But if on the En glish ground they are punishable by our laws. They mourn for their dead by blacking their faces and cutting their hair after an awkerd and frightful manner, but can’t bear you should mention the names of their dead relations to them. They trade most for rum, for which they would hazard their very lives, and the En glish "t7 them generally as well by seasoning it plentifully with water.

They give the title of merchant to every trader who rate their goods accord- ing to the time and spetia8 they pay in: viz. pay, money, pay as money, and trusting. Pay is grain, pork, beef, &c. at the prices set by the General Court that year; money is pieces of eight, rials, or Boston or Bay shillings9 (as they call them,) or good hard money, as sometimes silver coin is termed by them; also wampum, viz. Indian beads which serves for change. Pay as money is provisions, as aforesaid, one third cheaper than as the Assembly or General Court sets it, and trust as they and the merchant agree for time.

1. Twelve pence; “d” is from denarius, an ancient Roman coin. 2. The law of merchants (Latin). 3. Cheeks like saddlebags (from the Spanish alforjas: pouches). 4. I.e., talking, like the ass ridden by the Old Testament prophet Balaam (Numbers 22). 5. Vibrant; brilliant in color. 6. Slang for lower- class woman. 7. Extremely. “Gent”: genteel, stylish. “Law”: Lord.

8. Silk cloth suitable for a hood. 9. I.e., treat them equally badly. 1. Of native intelligence. 2. Knight criticizes country people for desiring luxuries and for chewing tobacco, which they spit in the house of the merchant where they go to purchase ribbons and such. 3. I.e., Election Day, which Knight mockingly sug- gests they treat as a sacred holiday.

Now, when the buyer comes to ask for a commodity, sometimes before the merchant answers that he has it, he says, “Is your pay ready?” Perhaps the chap replies “Yes.” “What do you pay in?” says the merchant. The buyer hav- ing answered, then the price is set; as suppose he wants a sixpenny knife, in pay it is 12d1—in pay as money eight pence, and hard money its own price, viz. 6d. It seems a very intricate way of trade and what Lex Mercatoria2 had not thought of.

Being at a merchant’s house, in comes a tall country fellow, with his alfo- geos3 full of tobacco; for they seldom lose their cud, but keep chewing and spitting as long as their eyes are open. He advanced to the middle of the room, makes an awkward nod, and spitting a large deal of aromatic tinc- ture, he gave a scrape with his shovel- like shoe, leaving a small shovel full of dirt on the door, made a full stop, hugging his own pretty body with his hands under his arms, stood staring round him like a cat let out of a basket. At last, like the creature Balaam rode on,4 he opened his mouth and said: “Have you any ribinen for hatbands to sell, I pray?” The questions and answers about the pay being passed, the ribin is brought and opened. Bump- kin simpers, cries “It’s confounded gay5 I vow”; and beckning to the door, in comes Joan Tawdry,6 dropping about 50 curtsies, and stands by him. He shows her the ribin. “Law, you,” says she, “it’s right gent, do you take it, tis dreadful7 pretty.” Then she inquires “Have you any hood silk8 I pray?” which being brought and bought, “Have you any thread silk to sew it with?” says she, which being accommodated with they departed. They generally stand after they come in a great while speechless, and sometimes don’t say a word till they are asked what they want, which I impute to the awe they stand in of the merchants, who they are constantly almost indebted to, and must take what they bring without liberty to choose for themselves. But they serve them as well,9 making the merchants stay long enough for their pay.

We may observe here the great necessity and bene"t both of education and conversation; for these people have as large a portion of mother wit,1 and sometimes a larger, than those who have been brought up in cities, but for want of improvements render themselves almost ridicu lous, as above. I should be glad if they would leave such follies and am sure all that love clean houses (at least) would be glad on’t too.2

They are generally very plain in their dress, throughout all the colony, as I saw, and follow one another in their modes, that you may know where they belong, especially the women, meet them where you will.

Their chief red- letter day is St.  Election,3 which is annually observed according to charter, to choose their government, a blessing they can never be thankful enough for, as they will "nd if ever it be their hard fortune to lose it. The pres ent governor in Connecticut is the Honorable John Winthrop,

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Esq.4 A gentleman of an ancient and honorable family whose father was gov- ernor here sometime before, and his grand father had been governor of the Mas sa chu setts.5 This gentleman is a very courteous and affable person, much given to hospitality, and has by his good ser vices gained the affection of the people as much as any who had been before him in that post.

From December the Sixth

* * * The city of New York is a pleasant, well- compacted place, situated on a com- modious river which is a "ne harbor for shipping. The buildings brick gen- erally, very stately and high, though not altogether like ours in Boston. The bricks in some of the houses are of divers colors and laid in checkers,6 being glazed look very agreeable. The inside of them are neat to admiration, the wooden work, for only the walls are plastered, and the sumers and gist7 are planed and kept very white scowered as so is all the partitions if made of boards. The "replaces have no jambs (as ours have) but the backs run dush with the walls, and the hearth is of tiles and is as far out into the room at the ends as before the "re, which is generally "ve foot in the lower rooms, and the piece over where the mantle tree should be is made as ours with joiners’ work,8 and as I suppose is fastened to iron rods inside. The house

4. Fitz- John Winthrop (1638–1707), governor of Connecticut 1698–1707. 5. John Winthrop (1606–1676), father of Fitz- John, governor of Connecticut 1659–76. John Winthrop (1588–1649), grand father of Fitz- John, founding governor of Mas sa chu setts Bay.

6. I.e., alternating. “Divers”: vari ous. 7. The main beams and joists. 8. Joiners were craftsmen who constructed things by joining pieces of wood together. Their work was more "nished than a carpenter’s. “Mantle tree”: a wood beam over the opening of a "replace.

A View of Fort George with the City of New York from the S.W. An engraving of New York from the southwest, showing the skyline (primarily church steeples) as it might have appeared to Sarah Kemble Knight in the early eigh teenth century.

where the vendue9 was, had chimney corners like ours, and they and the hearths were laid with the "nest tile that I ever see, and the staircases laid all with white tile which is ever clean, and so are the walls of the kitchen which had a brick door. They were making great preparations to receive their governor, Lord Cornbury from the Jerseys,1 and for that end raised the mili- tia to guard him on shore to the fort.

They are generally of the Church of Eng land and have a New Eng land gentleman for their minister, and a very "ne church set out with all custom- ary requisites. There are also a Dutch and divers conventicles as they call them, viz. Baptist, Quakers, etc. They are not strict in keeping the Sabbath as in Boston and other places where I had been, but seem to deal with great exactness as far as I see or deal with. They are sociable to one another and courteous and civil to strangers and fare well in their houses. The En glish go very fash ion able in their dress. But the Dutch, especially the middling sort, differ from our women, in their habit go loose,2 wear French muchets which are like a cap and a headband in one, leaving their ears bare, which are set out with jewels of a large size and many in number. And their "n gers hooped with rings, some with large stones in them of many colors as were their pendants in their ears, which you should see very old women wear as well as young.

They have vendues very frequently and make their earnings very well by them, for they treat with good liquor liberally, and the customers drink as liberally and generally pay for’t as well, by paying for that which they bid up briskly for, after the sack3 has gone plentifully about, though sometimes good penny worths’ are got there. Their diversions in the winter is riding sleighs about three or four miles out of town, where they have houses of entertainment at a place called the Bowery,4 and some go to friends’ houses who handsomely treat them. Mr.  Burroughs carried his spouse and daughter and myself out to one Madame Dowes, a gentlewoman that lived at a farm house, who gave us a handsome entertainment of "ve or six dishes and choice beer and metheglin,5 cider, etc. all which she said was the produce of her farm. I believe we met 50 or 60 sleighs that day— they dy with great swiftness and some are so furious that they’ll turn out of the path for none except a loaden cart. Nor do they spare for any diversion the place affords, and sociable to a degree, their tables being as free to their neighbors as to themselves.

Having here transacted the affair I went upon and some other that fell in the way, after about a fortnight’s stay there I left New York with no little regret[.] * * *

9. Auction. 1. Edward Hyde (1661–1723), Viscount Corn- bury, governor of New York and New Jersey 1701–08. 2. Are more casual in appearance. “Middling”: middle class.

3. Wine; speci"cally, white wine imported from Spain or the Canaries. 4. Now a street in lower Manhattan. 5. A spiced variety of fermented beverage. The cider offered was prob ably also alcoholic.

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1. The text is from The Secret Diary of William Byrd of Westover 1709–1712, edited by Louis B. Wright and Marion Tinling (1941). 2. I.e., four pages of Lucian, a Greek satirist of the second century c.e.

3. I.e., slave quarters. 4. I.e., performed my calisthenics. 5. Dr.  John Tillotson (1620–1694), archbishop of Canterbury, one of Byrd’s favorite writers.

WILLIAM BYRD

W illiam Byrd (1674–1744) was the son of a wealthy Virginia planter, merchant, and Indian trader. His mother, Mary Horsmanden, came from a family of Royalist refugees who ded the En glish Civil Wars (1642–51). Byrd was educated in Eng land and spent the formative years of his life in London, where he learned the skills to manage his father’s estate.

After spending more than half of his life in Eng land, Byrd returned to Virginia in 1726 to stay. In a letter of that year to his friend Charles Boyle, Earl of Orrery, Byrd described the satisfactions he derived from the role of the Virginia planter:

Besides the advantage of pure air, we abound in all kinds of provisions without expense (I mean we who have plantations). I have a large family of my own, and my doors are open to every body, yet I have no bills to pay, and half- a- crown will rest undisturbed in my pockets for many moons altogether. Like one of the patriarchs [in the Old Testament], I have my dock and herds, my bondmen and bondwomen, and every sort of trade amongst my own servants, so that I live in a kind of in de pen dence on every one but Providence. . . . Thus, my Lord, we are very happy in our Canaans [our “promised lands”] if we could but forget the onions and deshpots of Egypt [where the Israelites had been enslaved yet enjoyed luxuries].

Byrd’s “new Canaan” is a self- suf"cient, earthly garden, combining the best of civi- lized and rural life— all, of course, based on slave labor. He recorded details of plantation life in his secret diary.

In 1728, Byrd accepted a commission to survey the much- disputed boundary line between Virginia and North Carolina. The diary that he kept on his trip served as the sourcebook for his History of the Dividing Line. He planned to have the History of the Dividing Line published in London, and although that proj ect failed and the book did not appear in print until 1841, Byrd’s manuscript was circulated among his London friends, and later naturalists such as Thomas Jefferson knew of it. In its wealth of natu- ral detail and Indian lore, as well as its frequently contemptuous portrayals of pro- vincials, the History helped satisfy the London metropolis’s curiosity about Amer i ca.

From The Secret Diary of William Byrd of Westover 1710–17121

[December] 31. [1710] I rose at 5 o’clock and read a chapter in Hebrew and four leaves in Lucian.2 I said my prayers and ate boiled milk for breakfast. My daughter was very sick all night and vomited a great deal but was a little better this morning. All my sick people were better, thank God, and I had another girl come down sick from the quarters.3 I danced my dance.4 Then I read a sermon in Dr. Tillotson5 and after that walked in the garden till

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6. Both were servants. 7. Small private room.

8. A frequent visitor, the wife of the minister of Hungar’s Parish, Northampton County, Virginia.

dinner. I ate roast venison. In the after noon I looked over my sick people and then took a walk about the plantation. The weather was very warm still. My wife walked with me and when she came back she was very much indisposed and went to bed. In the eve ning I read another sermon in Dr. Tillotson. About 8 o’clock the wind came to northwest and it began to be cold. I said my prayers and had good health, good thoughts, and good humor, thank God Almighty.

Some night this month I dreamed that I saw a daming sword in the sky and called some com pany to see it but before they could come it was dis- appeared, and about a week after my wife and I were walking and we dis- covered in the clouds a shining cloud exactly in the shape of a dart and seemed to be over my plantation but it soon dis appeared likewise. Both these appearances seemed to foretell some misfortune to me which afterwards came to pass in the death of several of my negroes after a very unusual manner. My wife about two months since dreamed she saw an angel in the shape of a big woman who told her the time was altered and the seasons were changed and that several calamities would follow that confusion. God avert His judgment from this poor country.

[January] 2. [1711] I rose at 5 o’clock and read a chapter in Hebrew and nothing in Greek because of the com pany that was here. I said my prayers and ate boiled milk for breakfast. I had six sick negroes come down from the quarters. About 9 o’clock my com pany went away. My wife was a little better and so was my child, thank God, but C- l- y was extremely ill and so was A- g- y.6 I tended them as much as I could but God is pleased to afdict me with His judgment for my sins. His holy will be done. I ate some wild turkey. The wind was northeast and it was cold. In the after noon I read a little En glish but could not be easy because poor C- l- y was so very ill. I took a melancholy walk. In the eve ning about 6 o’clock C- l- y died and all the people was grieved at it. I read a little En glish and gave the necessary orders about the sick people who were 12  in number. I said my prayers and had good health, good thoughts, and good humor, thank God Almighty.

[January] 6. [1711] I rose at 5 o’clock and read two chapters in Hebrew and six leaves in Lucian. I said my prayers and ate boiled milk for breakfast. Poor old S- r- y died this night to make up the number of the dead. God save the rest. A- g- y seemed to be a little better and so did the rest of the sick, God be praised, except Jenny and she seemed to be worse. The weather threatened rain all day. I removed several things out of the Doctor’s closet7 into mine and was very little with my cousin. I was out of humor with my wife. I ate boiled pork for dinner. In the after noon Mrs. Dunn8 went away in the rain. I spent most of my time in looking after my sick. In the eve ning it rained extremely, and all night. My cousin and I took a walk about the plantation. I said my prayers and had good health, good thoughts, and good humor, thank God Almighty.

[January] 7. [1711] I rose at 5 o’clock and read two chapters in Hebrew and some Greek in Lucian. I said my prayers and ate boiled milk for breakfast. My sick people were some worse and some well enough to go home to the quarters. Jenny and A- g- y were much as they were. The weather held up so

9. A device something like a horse’s bit and fas- tened in the mouth. 1. An overseer. 1. The text is from The Dividing Line Histories of William Byrd II of Westover (2013), edited by Kevin Joel Berland. 2. Ate well. “The River”: the Dan River, which weaves back and forth across the boundary between Virginia and North Carolina that Byrd’s

com pany was in the pro cess of marking with poles. Byrd is credited with the "rst recorded mention of this name. 3. Ned Bearskin, the surveyors’ Saponi Indian guide. 4. In the biblical Books of Leviticus and Deuter- onomy, dietary laws prohibit vari ous kinds of mix- ing, such as meat and milk, though not two kinds of meat in one pot.

that I and my cousin [Guy] went to church, but my wife was afdicted with the headache and stayed at home. People condoled the sickness of my family. Mr. Anderson gave us a sermon. After church I carried him home with me to dinner and to see my sick people. I ate "sh for dinner. Mr. Anderson advised me to give my people cordials since other physic failed, which I did. In the after noon I did nothing but mind them. In the eve ning my cousin and we talked till 8 o’clock. I said a short prayer and had good health, good thoughts, and good humor, thank God Almighty.

[January] 22. [1711] I rose at 3 o’clock and read a chapter in Hebrew and some Greek in Lucian. I said my prayers and ate boiled milk for breakfast. I danced my dance. I ordered the sloop to be unloaded. Redskin Peter pre- tended to be sick and I put a [branding- iron] on the place he complained of and put the [bit] upon him.9 The boy called the Doc was sent from Falling Creek with a swollen thigh. My sick people were better, thank God Almighty. I received a courteous letter from the Governor by Tom, who brought no news. I ate boiled pork for dinner. Mr. Mumford came down after dinner and told me all was well at Appomattox. When he had got some victuals we took a walk to see the people load the sloop and afterwards about the plan- tation. In the eve ning G- r- l came and let me know things were well at Fall- ing Creek. He brought me a letter from Tom Turpin1 in which he agreed to stay with me for £25 a year. I ate some roast beef for supper. I neglected to say my prayers, but had good health, good thoughts, and good humor, thank God.

[January] 23. [1711] I rose at 5 o’clock and read a chapter in Hebrew and some Greek in Lucian. I said my prayers and ate boiled milk for breakfast. I danced my dance. My sick people were better, thank God, and Redskin Peter was particularly well and worked as well as anybody. * * *

1710–12 1941

From The History of the Dividing Line1

We encamp’t about two Miles beyond the River, where we made good Chear2 upon a very fat Buck, that luckily fell in our way. The Indian3 likewise shot a Wild Turkey, but confest he wou’d not bring it us, lest we shou’d continue to provoke the Guardian of the Forrest, by cooking the Beasts of the Field, and the Birds of the Air together in one Vessel.

This Instance of Indian Superstition I confess is countenanc’d in some mea sure by the Levitical Law, which forbad the mixing things of a Dif fer- ent Nature together in the same "eld, or in the same Garment, and why then not in the same Kettle?4

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5. A pole is a surveyor’s tool and unit of mea- sure ment equal to sixteen and a half feet. 6. Saplings: young trees. 7. An appetizing davor. 8. A strong davor with a slight ele ment of decay in it (from French haut goût: high taste). “Venison”: in Byrd’s day, game, not speci"cally deer meat. 9. Some early systems for classifying animals grouped bears with dogs. 1. I.e., they consider dog meat a delicacy "t for only the highest level of society.

2. A close relative of the chestnut. “A very clean Feeder”: i.e., a creature that eats clean foods. 3. The fruit of forest trees, particularly as food for wild animals. 4. The pseudonymous travel writer Sir John Mandev ille (d. c. 1356) does not mention bears in The Voyages and Travels of Sir John Mandev ille, but the claim that bears hoard food appears in the works of the Roman naturalists Pliny the Elder (23–79 c.e.) and Aelian (c. 170– c. 235 c.e.).

But after all, if the Jumbleing of two Sorts of Flesh together be a Sin, how intolerable an Offence must it be to make a Spanish Oleo, that is a Hotch- potch of every kind of thing that is eatable, and the good People of Eng land wou’d have a great deal to answer for, for beating up so many dif fer ent Ingre- dients into a Pudding.

We were so cruelly intangled with Bushes, and Grape- Vines all day, that we could advance the Line no farther than 5 Miles and 28 Poles.5

The Vines grew very thick in these Woods, twineing lovingly round the Trees almost every where, especially to the Saplins.6 This makes it evident how natu ral both the Soil, and Climate of this Country are to Vines, tho’ I believe most to our own Vines.

The Grapes, we commonly met with were black, tho’ there be two or three kinds of White Grapes that grow wild. The black are very sweet, but small, because the Strength of the Vine spends itself in Wood, tho’ without Ques- tion a proper Culture wou’d make the same Grapes both larger and sweeter. But with all these Disadvantages I have drunk tolerable good Wine prest from them, tho’ made without Skill. There is then good Reason to believe, it might admit of great Improvement if rightly managed.

Our Indian kill’d a Bear of two years old, that was feasting on these Grapes. He was very fat as they generally are, in that Season of the year. In the fall the Flesh of this Animal has a high Relish,7 dif fer ent from that of other Creatures, tho’ inclining nearest to that of Pork, or rather Wild Boar.

A true Woodsman prefers this sort of meat to that of the fattest Venison, not only for the Haut- gout8 but also because the Fat of it is well tasted, and never rises in the Stomach. Another proof of the goodness of this meat is, that it is less apt to corrupt, than any other we are acquainted with.

As agreeable as such rich Diet was to the men, yet we who were not accustom’d to it, tasted it at "rst with some sort of Squemishness, that Ani- mal being of the Dog- kind9 tho’ a little use soon reconcil’d us to this Amer- ican Venison. And that its being of the Dog kind might give us less disgust, we had the Example of that Ancient and polite People the Chinese, who reckon Dog’s Flesh too good for any under the Quality of Mandarin.1

This Beast is in truth a very clean Feeder, living while the Season lasts upon [Acorns], Chesnuts, and Chinkapens,2 Wild- Hony, and wild Grapes. They are naturally not carnivorous, unless Hunger constrain them to it, after the Mast3 is all gone, and the Product of the Woods quite exhausted.

They are not provident enough to lay up any Hoard, like the Squirrels, nor can they after all live very long upon licking their Paws, as Sir John Mandevil and some Travellers tell us,4 but are forc’t in the Winter Months to quit the Mountains, and visit the Inhabitants.

5. Piece of desh. 6. A name for a bear. 7. I.e., fast as during the Christian observation of

Lent, a period of roughly six weeks before Easter. 8. Projections; i.e., branches.

Their Errand is then to surprise a poor Hog at a Pinch to keep them from starving. And to shew they are not Flesh Eaters by Trade, they devour their Prey very awkwardly.

They don’t kill it right out, and feast upon its Blood and Entrails, like other Ravenous Beasts, but having after a fair pursuit seiz’d it with their Paws, they begin "rst upon the Rump, and so devour one Collop5 after another til they come to the Vitals, the poor Animal crying all the while for several Min- utes together. However in so doing Bruin6 acts a little imprudently, because the dismal outcry of the Hog alarms the Neighbourhood, and ’tis odds but he pays the forfeit with his Life, before he can secure his Retreat.

But Bears soon grow weary of this unnatural Diet, and about January, when there is nothing to be got in the Woods, they retire into some cave or hollow Tree, where they sleep away two or three Months very comfortably. But then they quit their Holes in March when the Fish begin to run up the Rivers, on which they are forc’t to keep Lent7 till some Fruit or Berry comes in Season.

But Bears are fondest of Chesnuts, which grow plentifully towards the Mountains upon very large Trees, where the Soil happens to be rich. We were curious to know how it happen’d that many of the outward Branches of those Trees came to be broke off in that solitary Place, and were inform’d, that the Bears are so discreet, as not to trust their unwieldy Bodies on the smaller Limbs of the Tree, that would not bear their Weight. But after venturing as far as is safe, which they can juge to an Inch, they bite off the End of the Branch, which falling down, they are content to "nish their Repast on the Ground. In the same Cautious Manner they secure the Acorns, that grow on the weaker Limbs of the Oak. And it must be allow’d, that in these Instances a Bear car- ries Instinct a great way, and acts more reasonably than many of his Betters, who indiscreetly venture upon frail Proj ects8 that won’t bear them.

* * * In the Eve ning we examin’d our Friend Bearskin, concerning the Religion

of his Country, and he explaind it to us, without any of that Reserve, to which his Nation is Subject.

He told us he believ’d there was one Supreme God, who had several Subal- tern Deities under Him. And that this Master- God made the World a long time ago. That he told the Sun, the Moon, and Stars, their Business in the Begin- ning, which they with good looking after have faithfully perform’d ever since.

That the same Power, that made all things at "rst, has taken Care to keep them in the same Method and Motion ever since.

He believed that God had form’d many Worlds before he form’d this, but that those Worlds either grew old and ruinous, or were destroyed for the Dis- honesty of the Inhabitants.

That God is very just and very good, ever well pleas’d with those men who possess those God- like Qualities. That he takes good People into his safe Protection, makes them very rich, "lls their Bellies plentifully, preserves them from Sickness, and from being surprizd, or overcome by their Enemies.

But all such as tell Lies, and cheat those they have Dealings with, he never fails to punish with Sickness, Poverty, and Hunger, and after all that, suf-

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9. Level. 1. Stomach cramps. 2. Infatuated, foolish, silly.

3. Byrd distinguishes between Bearskin’s natu- ral perspective and the philosophy of the ancients or the religion of the moderns.

fers them to be knock’t on the Head and scalp’t by those that "ght against them.

He believ’d that after Death both good and bad People are conducted by a strong Guard into a great Road in which departed Souls travel together for some time, Til at a certain Distance this Road forks into two Paths, the one extremely Levil,9 and the other Stony and Mountainous.

Here the good are parted from the Bad, by a dash of Lightening, the "rst being hurry’d away to the Right, the other to the Left. The Right Hand Road leads to a charming warm Country, where the Spring is everlasting, and every Month is May, and as the year is always in its Youth, so are the People, and particularly the Women are bright as Stars, and never scold.

That in this happy Climate there are Deer, Turkeys, Elks, and Buffalos innumerable, perpetually fat and gentle, while the Trees are loaded with deli- cious Fruit quite throughout the four seasons.

That the Soil brings forth Corn spontaneously, without the Curse of Labour, and so very wholesome, that None who have the happiness to eat of it, are ever sick, grow old, or dy.

Near the Entrance into this Blessed Land sits a venerable old Man on a Mat richly woven, who examins strictly all that are brought before Him, and if they have behav’d well, the Guards are order’d to open the Chrystal Gate, and let them enter into the Land of Delights.

The left hand Path is very rugged and uneaven, leading to a dead and bar- ren Country, where it is always Winter. The Ground is the whole year round cover’d with Snow, and nothing is to be seen upon the Trees, but Icicles.

All the People are hungry, yet have not a Morsel of anything to eat, except a bitter kind of Potatoe, that gives them the Dry- Gripes1 and "lls their whole Body, with loathsome Ulcers, that stink and are insupportably painfull.

Here all the Women are old and ugly, having claws like a Panther, with which they dy upon the Men, that slight their Passion. For it seems these haggard old Furies are intolerably fond2 and expect a vast deal of Cherish- ing. They talk much and exceedingly shrill, giving exquisite Pain to the Drum of the Ear, which in that Place of the Torment is so tender that every sharp Note wounds it to the Quick.

At the end of this Path sits a dreadful Old Woman on a monstrous Toad- Stool, whose head is cover’d with Rattle Snakes instead of Tresses, with glar- ing white Eyes, that strike a Terror unspeakable into all that behold her.

This Hag pronounces Sentence of Woe upon all the miserable Wretches that hold up their hands at her Tribunal. After this they are deliver’d over to huge Turkey- Buzzards, like Harpys, that dy away with them, to the Place above mentioned.

Here after they have been tormented a certain number of Years, accord- ing to their several Degrees of Guilt, they are again driven back into this World, to try if they will mend their Manners, and merit a place the next time in the Regions of Bliss.

This was the Substance of Bearskins Religion, and was as much to the purpose as could be expected from a meer State of Nature, without one glimps of Revelation or Philosophy.3

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It contain’d however the three Great Articles of Natu ral Religion, The Belief of a God. The Moral Distinction betwixt Good and Evil, and the Expectation of Rewards and Punishments in another World.

Indeed the Indian Notion of a Future Happiness is a little Gross and Sen- sual, like Mahomet’s Paradise.4 But how can it be other wise in a People, that are contented with Nature, as they "nd Her, and have no other Lights but what they receive from purblind Tradition.5

There having been great Signs of Rain yesterday Eve ning, we had taken our Precautions in securing the Bread, and Trenching in our Tent.

* * * As I sat in the Tent I overheard a learn’d Conversation between one of

our Men and the Indian. He ask’t the En glishman what it was that made that rumbling Noise when it Thunder’d?

The Man told him merrily, that the God of the En glish was "ring his great Guns upon the God of the Indians, which made all that roaring in the Clouds, and that the Lightening was only the Flash of those Guns.

The Indian carry ing on the Humour, reply’d very gravely, He believ’d that might be the Case indeed, and that the Rain which follow’d upon the Thun- der must be occasion’d by the Indian God’s being so scar’d he cou’d not hold his Water.

1728 1841

4. The idea of paradise in Islam (founded by the prophet Muhammad) is popularly identi"ed with the presence of seventy- two virgins. “Gross”:

materialistic. 5. Traditional beliefs based on poor perception, lack of intellect, or both.

ALEXANDER HAMILTON

Alexander Hamilton (1712–1756) was a product of the Scottish Enlightenment, a period distinguished by a rich literary and intellectual culture that helped lay the foundations of the modern human sciences, such as sociology and econom- ics. Not to be confused with the "rst secretary of the U.S. trea sury, this Alexander Hamilton belonged to minor Scottish gentry. The twelfth child of a professor of divinity at the University of Edinburgh, Hamilton entered the university at age thirteen. After earning a Master of Arts degree, he studied medicine, completing his training in 1737. Hamilton believed in both the value of local identity and advancement within the British Empire, and in 1739 he followed an elder brother to Mary land in search of greater opportunity than he could "nd in Edinburgh. He settled in Mary land’s capital, Annapolis, where he found the disorder and lack of culture disheartening and the conditions unhealthy, as he experienced directly when he contracted malaria.

Hamilton’s rocky start in the colony took a turn for the better in 1743, when he was elected to Annapolis’s governing body, the Common Council. The next year, he spent four months traveling around the northeast, accompanied by his slave Dromo. In the Itinerarium, an account of the journey based on his diary, Hamilton takes

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1. The text is from Hamilton’s Itinerarium Being a Narrative of a Journey from Annapolis, Mary land through Delaware, Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts and New Hampshire from May to September, 1744 (1907), edited by Albert Bushnell Hart, LL.D. 2. Or Joppa Town, seat of Baltimore County 1712–68. 3. I.e., in science. 4. Ginseng (the more common spelling), a popu-

lar medicinal plant. 5. I.e., in the nutrient- rich soil below water near the Susquehanna River. 6. Leaving, or breaking up a meeting. 7. In The Life of Gargantua and Pantagruel, a series of novels by the French monk François Rabelais (c. 1494–1553), the noise of a winter battle melts and is heard by the crew of a ship that passes the site of the condict the following spring.

notice of the natu ral and human landscapes on this more than sixteen- hundred- mile- long tour. Some of his best writing involves character portraits, which are novelistic in their detail— perhaps unsurprisingly, since early in the trip he read Joseph Andrews, the "rst novel by the En glish writer Henry Fielding (1707–1754) and, in fact, one of the "rst English- language novels. He also provided detailed descriptions, in an ethnographic mode, of several of colonial Amer i ca’s urban cen- ters: New York City, Boston, and Newport, Rhode Island. Hamilton gave the manu- script of the Itinerarium to an Italian friend, who prob ably took it to Italy. Following a lengthy disappearance, the manuscript was "rst published in 1906.

From Hamilton’s Itinerarium1

[May 31, 1744] Leaving Joppa2 I fell in com pany with one Captain Waters and with Mr. D— —gs, a virtuoso in botany. He affected some knowledge in Natu ral Philosophy,3 but his learning that way was but super"cial.

* * * He showed me a print or "gure of the Gensing,4 which he told me was to be found in the rich bottoms near Susquehanna.5 The plant is of one stem or stalk, and jointed. From each joint issues four small branches, at the extrem- ity of each of these is a cinquefoil, or "ve leaves, somewhat oblong, notched and veined. Upon the top of the stem it bears a bunch of red berries, but I could not learn if it had any apparent dower, the colour of that dower, or at what season of the year it blossomed or bore fruit. I intended, however, to look for it upon the branches of Susquehanna, not that I imagined it of any singular virtue, for I think it has really no more than what may be in the com- mon liquorice root, mixed with an aromatick, or spicy drug, but I had a curi- osity to see a thing which has been so famous.

After parting with this com pany, I put up at one Tradaway’s, about ten miles from Joppa. The road here is pretty hilly, stony, and full of a small gravel. I observed some stone, which I thought looked like limestone.

Just as I dismounted at Tradaway’s, I found a drunken Club dismissing.6 Most of them had got upon their horses, and were seated in an oblique situ- ation, deviating much from a perpendicular to the horizontal plane, a pos- ture quite necessary for keeping the center of gravity within its proper base, for the support of the superstructure; hence we deduce the true physical reason why our heads overloaded with liquor become too ponderous for our heels. Their discourse was as oblique as their position: the only thing intel- ligible in it was oaths and Goddamnes; the rest was an inarticulate sound like Rabelais’ frozen words a- thawing7 interlaced with hickupings and belch-

8. Drunken revelers; from the devotees of Bac- chus, the Roman god of wine and intoxication. 9. Breasts. “Pursy”: short of breath, asthmatic; fat. 1. King George’s War (1744–48), between Eng land and France; sometimes called the third French and Indian War. 2. Claimed to practice medicine—in this case, dentistry.

3. A nail used to secure a horse shoe to the horse’s hoof. 4. Entertained us with a tune on his crowd, a stringed instrument played with a bow. 5. By reading music, generally considered more advanced than playing by rote or by ear. 6. A crossable passage of the Susquehanna. 7. Over a mile wide. 8. Appetite.

ings. I was uneasy till they were gone, and my landlord, seeing me stare, made that trite apology,— That indeed he did not care to have such disor- derly fellows come about his house; he was always noted far and near for keeping a quiet house and entertaining only gentlemen or such like; but these were country people, his neighbours, and it was not prudent to disoblige them upon slight occasions. “Alas, sir!” added he, “we that entertain travel- lers must strive to oblige every body, for it is our daily bread.” While he spoke thus our Bacchanalians8 "nding no more rum in play, rid off helter- skelter, as if the devil had possessed them, every man sitting his horse in a seesaw manner like a bunch of rags tied upon the saddle. I found nothing par tic u- lar or worth notice in my landlord’s character or conversation, only as to his bodily make. He was a fat pursy man, and had large bubbies9 like a woman. I supped upon fried chickens and bacon, and after supper the conversation turned upon politicks, news, and the dreaded French war;1 but it was so very lumpish and heavy that it disposed me mightily to sleep. This learned com- pany consisted of the landlord, his overseer and miller, and another greasy- thumbed fellow, who, as I understood, professed physick2 and particularly surgery in the drawing of teeth.

He practised upon the house maid, a dirty piece of lumber, who made such screaming and squawling as made me imagine there was murder going for- wards in the house. However, the artist got the tooth out at last, with a great clumsy pair of blacksmith’s forceps; and indeed it seemed to require such an instrument, for when he showed it to us it resembled a horse nail3 more than a tooth.

The miller I found professed musick, and would have tuned his crowd to us,4 but unfortunately the two middle strings betwixt the bass and treble were broke. This man told us that he could play by the book.5

After having had my "ll of this elegant com pany, I went to bed at ten o’clock.

Friday, June 1st.— The sun rose in a clear horizon, and the air in these high- lands was for two hours in the morning very cool and refreshing. I breakfasted upon some dirty choco late, but the best that the house could afford, and took horse about half an hour after six in the morning. For the "rst thirteen miles the road seemed gravelly and hilly, and the land but indifferent.

* * * When I came near Susquehanna Ferry,6 I looked narrowly in the bottoms for the gensing, but could not discover it. The lower ferry of Susquehanna, which I crossed, is above a mile broad.7 It is kept by a little old man, whom I found at vittles with his wife and family upon a homely dish of "sh, without any kind of sauce. They desired me to eat, but I told them I had no stomach.8

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They had no cloth upon the table, and their mess was in a dirty, deep, wooden dish, which they evacuated9 with their hands, cramming down skins, scales, and all. They used neither knife, fork, spoon, plate, or napkin, because, I sup- pose, they had none to use. I looked upon this as a picture of that primitive simplicity practised by our forefathers, long before the mechanic arts1 had supplied them with instruments for the luxury and elegance of life. I drank some of their cider, which was very good, and crossed the ferry in com pany with a certain Scots- Irishman, by name Thomas Quiet. The land about Susquehanna is pretty high and woody, and the channel of the river rocky.

Mr. Quiet rid a little scrub bay mare, which he said was sick and ailing, and could not carry him, and therefore he lighted every half mile and ran a couple of miles at a footman’s pace, to “spell the poor beast” (as he termed it). He informed me he lived at Monocosy,2 and had been out three weeks in quest of his creatures (horses), four of which had strayed from his planta- tion. I condoled his loss, and asked him what his mare’s distemper was, resolving to prescribe for her, but all that I could get out of him was that the poor silly beast had choaked herself in eating her oats; so I told him that if she was choaked she was past my art to recover. This fellow I observed had a par tic u lar down- hanging look, which made me suspect he was one of our New- light bigots.3

I guessed right, for he introduced a discourse concerning White"eld, and enlarged pretty much and with some warmth upon the doctrines of that apostle, speaking much in his praise. I took upon me, in a ludicrous man- ner, to impugn some of his doctrines, which by degrees put Mr. Quiet in a passion. He told me datly that I was damned without redemption. I replied that I thought his name and behaviour were very incongruous, and desired him to change it with all speed, for it was very improper that such an angry turbulent mortal as he should be called by the name of Thomas Quiet.

1744 1906

9. Emptied. “Mess”: meal. 1. The construction of tools. 2. Near Frederick, Mary land, northwest of Baltimore. 3. Evangelical Protestants, which in Hamilton’s

day prominently included followers of the British Anglican revivalist George White"eld (1714– 1770), mentioned below, who toured the colonies on several occasions.

WILLIAM BARTRAM

The son of the internationally famous botanist John Bartram, William Bartram (1739–1823) became an impor tant naturalist in his own right. During his early years in Philadelphia, William accompanied his father on expeditions in the east- ern American colonies to collect plants and served as an illustrator for his father’s writings. He participated in the far- dung intellectual networks that included the local luminary Benjamin Franklin and the Swedish naturalist Carl von Linné, more familiarly known as Linnaeus, who developed the organism- naming system still used by biologists. For three years, Bartram attended the Philadelphia Acad emy ( later the University of Pennsylvania). He then moved to the Cape Fear region of North Carolina to live with his uncle.

1. The text is from The Philadelphia Medical and Physical Journal, Part 1, Vol. 1 (1804). 2. In the biological sense of a distinct popula-

tion within a species. 3. Linnaeus’s now obsolete term for most moths.

After France ceded Florida to Eng land in 1765, Bartram traveled extensively in the southeastern United States, at "rst with his father and later on his own. In 1777, John Bartram died, leaving his botanical garden to William’s brother, and William returned to Philadelphia to assist with its management. Among the Bartrams’ most prominent customers were the United States presidents George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and the writer J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur.

William Bartram’s most famous literary work derived from his journeys in the southeast. He published Travels through North and South Carolina, East and West Florida, the Cherokee Country, the Extensive Territories of the Muscolgulges, or Creek Confederacy, and the Country of the Chactaws in 1791. This account indu- enced numerous writers, including the eighteenth- century British Romantic poets Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Words worth. In later years, Bartram contin- ued to be active in naturalist circles and published several essays, including the following se lection.

Anecdotes of an American Crow1

It is a dif"cult task to give a history of our Crow. And I hesitate not to aver, that it would require the pen of a very able biographer to do justice to his talents.

Before I enter on this subject minutely, it may be necessary to remark, that we do not here speak of the crow, collectively, as giving an account of the whole race2 (since I am convinced, that these birds differ as widely as men do from each other, in point of talents and acquirements), but of a par tic u- lar bird of that species, which I reared from the nest.

He was, for a long time, comparatively a helpless, dependent creature, hav- ing a very small degree of activity or vivacity, every sense seeming to be asleep, or in embryo, until he had nearly attained his "nished dimensions, and "gure, and the use of all his members. Then, we were surprised, and daily amused with the progressive developement of his senses, expanding and maturating as the wings of the youthful phalæna,3 when disengaged from its nympha- shell.

These senses, however, seemed, as in man, to be only the organs or instru- ments of his intellectual powers, and of their effects, as directed towards the accomplishment of vari ous designs, and the grati"cation of the passions.

This was a bird of a happy temper, and good disposition. He was tractable and benevolent, docile and humble, whilst his genius demonstrated extraor- dinary acuteness, and lively sensations. All these good qualities were greatly in his favour, for they procured him friends and patrons, even among men, whose society and regard contributed to illustrate the powers of his under- standing. But what appeared most extraordinary, he seemed to have the wit to select and trea sure up in his mind, and the sagacity to practise, that kind of knowledge which procured him the most advantage and pro"t.

He had great talents, and a strong propensity to imitation. When I was engaged in weeding in the garden, he would often dy to me, and, after very attentively observing me in pulling up the small weeds and grass, he would fall to work, and with his strong beak, pluck up the grass; and the more so, when I complimented him with encouraging expressions. He enjoyed great

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Timber rattler. William Bartram was a talented nature painter as well as being a naturalist writer. He encountered this timber rattler in the backwoods of colonial New Jersey.

Snapping turtle. Bartram produced this painting, which he titled “The great Mud Tortoise from Pennsylvania— called the snap[p]ing Turtle,” around 1760.

4. Useless.

plea sure and amusement in seeing me write, and would attempt to take the pen out of my hand, and my spectacles from my nose. The latter article he was so pleased with, that I found it necessary to put them out of his reach, when I had done using them. But, one time, in par tic u lar, having left them a moment, the crow being then out of my sight, recollecting the bird’s mis- chievous tricks, I returned quickly, and found him upon the table, riding my inkstand, books, and paper. When he saw me coming, he took up my spectacles, and dew off with them. I found it vain4 to pretend to overtake him; but standing to observe his operations with my spectacles, I saw him settle down at the root of an apple- tree, where, after amusing himself, for awhile, I observed, that he was hiding them in the grass, and covering them with chips and sticks, often looking round about, to see whether I was watch- ing him. When he thought he had suf"ciently secreted them, he turned about, advancing towards me, at my call. When he had come near me, I ran towards the tree, to regain my property. But he, judging of my intentions, by my actions, dew, and arriving there before me, picked them up again, and dew off with them, into another apple- tree. I now almost despaired of ever getting them again. However, I returned back to a house, a little distance off, and there secreting myself, I had a full view of him, and waited to see the event. After some time had elapsed, during which I heard a great noise and talk from him, of which I understood not a word, he left the tree, with my spectacles dangling in his mouth, and alighted, with them, on the ground. After some time, and a great deal of caution and contrivance in choosing and rejecting dif fer ent places, he hid them again, as he thought very effec- tually, in the grass, carry ing and placing over them chips, dry leaves, &c., and often pushing them down with his bill. After he had "nished this work, he dew up into a tree, hard by, and there continued a long time, talking to himself, and making much noise; bragging, as I supposed, of his achieve- ments. At last, he returned to the house, where not "nding me, he betook himself to other amusements. Having noted the place, where he had hid my spectacles, I hastened thither, and after some time recovered them.

This bird had an excellent memory. He soon learned the name which we had given him, which was Tom; and would commonly come when he was called, unless engaged in some favourite amusement, or soon after correction: for when he had run to great lengths in mischief, I was under the necessity of whipping him; which I did with a little switch. He would, in general, bear correction with wonderful patience and humility, suppli- cating with piteous and penitent cries and actions. But sometimes, when chastisement became intolerable, he would suddenly start off, and take ref- uge in the next tree. Here he would console himself with chattering, and adjusting his feathers, if he was not lucky enough to carry off with him some of my property, such as a pen- knife, or a piece of paper; in this case, he would boast and brag very loudly. At other times, he would soon return, and with every token of penitence and submission, approach me for forgiveness and reconciliation. On these occasions, he would sometimes return, and settle on the ground, near my feet, and dif"dently advance, with soft- soothing expressions, and a sort of circumlocution; and sit silently by me, for a considerable time. At other times, he would con"dently come and settle

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upon my shoulder, and there solicit my favour and pardon, with soothing expressions, and caressing gesticulations; not omitting to tickle me about the neck, ears, &c.

Tom appeared to be induenced by a lively sense of domination (an attri- bute prevalent in the animal creation): but, nevertheless, his ambition, in this re spect, seemed to be moderated by a degree of reason, or redection. He was, certainly, by no means tyrannical, or cruel. It must be confessed, however, that he aimed to be master of every animal around him, in order to secure his in de pen dence and his self- preservation, and for the acquisi- tion and defence of his natu ral rights. Yet, in general, he was peaceable and social with all the animals about him.

He was the most troublesome and teazing to a large dog, whom he could never conquer. This old dog, from natu ral "delity, and a par tic u lar attach- ment, commonly lay down near me, when I was at rest, reading or writing under the shade of a pear- tree, in the garden, near the house. Tom (I believe from a passion of jealousy) would approach me, with his usual caresses, and dattery, and after securing my notice and regard, he would address the dog in some degree of complaisance, and by words and actions; and, if he could obtain access to him, would tickle him with his bill, jump upon him, and compose himself, for a little while. It was evident, however, that this seem- ing sociability was mere arti"ce to gain an opportunity to practise some mis- chievous trick; for no sooner did he observe the old dog to be dozing, than he would be sure to pinch his lips, and pluck his beard. At length, however, these bold and hazardous achievements had nearly cost him his life: for, one time, the dog being highly provoked, he made so sudden and "erce a snap, that the crow narrowly escaped with his head. After this, Tom was wary, and used every caution and deliberation in his approaches, examin- ing the dog’s eyes and movements, to be sure that he was really asleep, and at last would not venture nearer than his tail, and then by slow, silent, and wary steps, in a sideways, or oblique manner, spreading his legs, and reach- ing forward. In this position, he would pluck the long hairs of the dog’s tail. But he would always take care to place his feet in such a manner as to be ready to start off, when the dog was roused and snapped at him.

1804

HENDRICK AUPAUMUT

Hendrick Aupaumut (1757–1830) produced one of the "rst ethnographies of a Native community written by an indigenous author: his “History of the Muh- he- con- nuk [Mahican] Indians” (1791). The path that led him to this proj ect suggests many of the complexities facing Native American intellectuals in the eigh teenth century.

Born in the Native Christian town of Stockbridge, Mas sa chu setts, Aupaumut entered a community that had recently been ministered to by the Puritan divine Jonathan Edwards. Edwards served at Stockbridge from 1751 until late 1757, long enough to have baptized Aupaumut. Schooled by a Protestant minister, possibly

Edwards’s son Timothy, Aupaumut learned to speak, read, and write in En glish. In 1775 he wrote to Timothy Edwards, asking to borrow copies of some of his father’s works, including the treatise on the freedom of the will that Edwards had written at Stockbridge.

When the Revolutionary War broke out, Aupaumut joined the Continental Army, forming a com pany along with other Stockbridge Indians. He earned a reputation as a good soldier, was commissioned as a captain, and saw extensive ser vice, win- ning a commendation from George Washington, then the commanding general of the Continental Army. In the mid-1780s, Aupaumut led the Stockbridge commu- nity as it relocated to New Stockbridge, in central New York, where Samson Occom briedy joined him.

During the early 1790s, Aupaumut served as an emissary from President George Washington’s administration to a pan- Indian alliance in the Great Lakes region of the Northwest Territory. His diplomatic initiatives continued for nearly two de cades and were directed at "nding peaceful resolutions to condicts between the United States and Native communities. In the 1800s, he opposed Tecumseh’s efforts to create a pantribal alliance to wage frontier warfare.

Even as Aupaumut pursued negotiated settlements between the United States and Indian groups on the western frontier, he began searching for land where the residents of New Stockbridge could relocate again, in order to be relieved of the pressures of white encroachment on their New York lands. In 1829, he joined the last group of Stockbridges to remove to the Fox River in Wisconsin, which is where he died.

In addition to numerous speeches and letters published during his lifetime, Aupaumut’s writings include a narrative reporting on his diplomatic initiative to the Iroquois and Northwest tribes. The following se lection is from the tribal history that he wrote in 1791, prob ably in connection with his proposal to serve as a negotiator for the Washington administration.

From History of the Muh- he- con- nuk Indians1

“Our ancestors, before they ever enjoyed Gospel revelation acknowledged one Supreme Being who dwells above, whom they styled Waun- theet Mon- nit- toow, or the Great, Good Spirit, the author of all things in heaven and on earth and governs all events; and he is good to all his creatures. They also believed that there is an evil one, called Mton- toow or Wicked Spirit that loves altogether to do mischief; that he excites person or persons to tell a lie— angry, "ght, hate, steal, to commit murder, and to be envious, mali- cious, and evil- talking; also excites nations to war with one another, to violated their friendship which the Great, Good Spirit given them to main- tain for their mutual good, and their children after them.

“In order to please the Great, Good Spirit which they acknowledged to be their dependence, and on the other hand to withstand the evil one— therefore, the following custom was observed, which handed down to them by their fore- fathers, and considered as communicated to them by Good Spirit.

“The Head of each family— man or woman— would began with all ten- derness as soon as daylight, to waken up their children and teach them, as follows:—

1. The text is from Electa F. Jones, Stockbridge, Past and Pres ent; or, Rec ords of an Old Mission Station (1854).

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“ ‘My Children— you must remember that it is by the goodness of the Great, Good Spirit we are preserved through the night. My Children, you must listen to my words. If you wish to see many good days and eve nings you must love to all men, and be kind to all people.

“ ‘If you see any that are in distress, you must try to help them. Remem- ber that you will also be in distress some time or other. If you see any one hungry you must give him something to eat; though you should have but little cake, give him half of it, for you also liable to hunger. If you see one naked, you must cover him with your own raiment.2 For you must consider that some future time you will also stand in need of such help; but if you will not assist, or have compassion for the poor, you will displease the Good Spirit; you will be called Uh- wu- theet, or hard- hearted and nobody will pity on you the time of your distress, but will mock at you.

* * * “ ‘My Children—at all times you must obey your Sachem and Chiefs,3 in

all good counsels they give; never to speak evil against them, for they have taken much pains in promoting your happiness. And if you do not observe this, you will be looked upon worse than the beasts are.’

“Thus they inculcate instruction to their children day after day until they are grown up; and after they are grown, yet they would teach them occa- sionally. And when young people have children they also teach theirs in like manner.— This custom is handed down from generation to another; at the same time it may be observed that there were some that did not take no pains to instruct their children, but would set bad examples before them, as well as there are such among civilized nations. But such men were roving about, and could not be contented to stay at one place.

“Our ancestors’ Government was a Demo cratical. They had Wi- gow- wauw, or Chief Sachem, successively, as well as other nations had, chosen by the nation, whom they looked upon as conductor and promoter of their general welfare, and rendered him obedience as long as he behaved himself agree- ably to the of"ce of a Sachem.4 And this of"ce was hereditary by the lineage of a female’s offspring, but not on man’s line, but on woman’s part. That is— when Wi- gow- wauw is fallen by death, one of his Nephews, (if he has any) will be appointed to succeed his Uncle as a Sachem, and not any of his sons.5

The Sachem always have Woh- weet- quan- pe- chee, or Counselors, and one Mo- quau- pauw, or Hero, and one Mkhooh- que- thoth, or Owl, and one Un- nuh- kau- kun, or Messenger, or Runner; and the rest of the men are called young men. (But the Six Nations6 call young men Warriors.) The Sachem is looked upon as a great tree under whose shade the whole nation is sit. His business is to contemplate the welfare of his people day and night— how to promote their peace and happiness. He also ever take pains to maintain and brighten the belt of friendship with all their allies. When he "nd any busi-

2. Cf. Matthew 25.34–40. Aupaumut may have purposefully highlighted similarities between Christian and Mahican beliefs. 3. Supreme leader and subordinates. 4. I.e., the Chief Sachem serves as long as he pleases the people. 5. I.e., the position was passed down through the female line, to the sons of the Chief

Sachems’ sisters. 6. The Iroquois Confederacy, consisting of the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, and Tuscarora tribes. Aupaumut compares the orga nizational structure of Mahican po liti cal society to that of the Iroquois, at a time when they were living in proximity to one another in central New York.

7. Currency, consisting of shells beaded on string. Wampum belts were also used to symbol- ize diplomatic agreements, similar to treaties.

8. I.e., a central spot, similar to a town center. 9. Here, meeting places for intertribal diplomacy.

ness of public nature, he is to call his counselors together to consult with them; and then they will determine what is good for the Nation. The Sachem must be a peaceable man— has nothing to do with wars— but he is at times go from house to house to exhort his people to live in unity and peace.

“The Sachem has no stated salary for his ser vices; for it was a disgrace or reproach any man to ask reward for any of his public ser vices; but what ever he does for his nation must be done out of friendship and good will. But it was the custom to help their Sachem voluntarily in building a long We- ko- wohm, or wigwam, all complete; and the hunters, when they returned from hunting each man give him a skin. The women also at times, some give him Mkith- non, or Muk- sens, some belts for the body, others garters, and some other ornaments—as wampum7 to be for his own use. They are also to bring victuals to Sachem’s to enable him to feed strangers;— for whenever strang- ers arrived at their "re- place8 they are directed to go to Sachem’s house. There they stay until their business is completed.

“The Sachem is allowed to keep Mno-ti, or peaceable bag, or bag of peace, containing about one bushel, some less.— This bag is made of Weeth- kuhn- pauk, or bitter sort of hemp; grows on intervals, about three or four feet long; and sometimes made of Wau- pon- nep- pauk, or white hemp, which grows by the side of rivers, or edge of marshes,— amazing strong and lasting—of which they make strings, and die part of the strings of dif fer ent colors; then worked and made into bag of dif fer ent marks. In this bag they keep vari ous Squau- tho- won, or belts of wampum; also strings; which belts and strings they used to establish peace and friendship with dif fer ent nations, and to use them on many occasions, and passed as coin. In this bag they keep all belts and strings which they received of their allies of dif fer ent nations. This bag is, as it were, unmoveable; but it is always remain at Sachem’s house, as hereditary with the of"ce of a Sachem; and he is to keep the Pipe of Peace, made of red hard stone— a long stem to it. Besides this bag, they keep other smaller bags which they called Ne- mau- won- neh Mno-ti, or Scrip, which contains nour- ishment on journey, which they carry with them when they go out to hold treaties with other "re- places.9 In such scrips they occasionally put belts and strings for transacting business abroad. When they "nd the wampum will be fall short, besides what is kept in the bag, the Sachem and his counselors would sent their runner to gather, or collect wampum from their women, which business they called mauw- peen, or sitting into one place.

“The of"ce of Counselors was not gotten by hereditary, but it was elec- tive; therefore, the wise men were only entitled the of"ce of Counselors. They are called Chiefs. Their business is to consult with their Sachems in promoting peace and happiness for their people. They will also at all times exhort young people to every good work.

“The title of Mo- quau- pauw, or Hero, is gotten only by merit; by remark- able conduct in the wars, by great courage and prudence. The business of Heroes in time of peace is to sit with their Sachem and Counselors in all their councils, and to con"rm their agreements, but never to contradict them; for which they are beloved by their Sachem and Counselors, and by all their people. But when any warfare is sounded in their ears, then they will all meet

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together to hold a general Council: and when they "nd themselves under necessity of joining to such war, then the Sachem and Counselors will put the business in the hands of Heroes, exhorting them to be courageous and prudent, to take good care of their young men. But when the offers of peace is proposed, then the Hero will put the business in the hands of the Sachem and Counselors, who will cut or break the string of the bow, and bury the Puhwi, and by certain ceremony or emblem wipe off all tears and blood, and cleanse their beds, scattered all dark clouds, that they may enjoy pleas- ant days again.

“The of"ce of Owl is come by merit also; who must have strong memory, and must be good speaker, and have strong voice. He is to sit by the side of his Sachem; his business is to proclaim the orders of his Sachem to the people with loud voice. And he is also to get up every morning as soon as daylight. In the "rst place he is to make noise like an Owl, then shouted to wake the people, and then ordered them to their respective lawful duties for the day.

“And the business of the Runner is to carry messages, or carry tidings; and he is always ready to run. He is to give notice to the people to attend. And when they go out another town to hold council, he is to run to inform the Chiefs that live in that town that his Chiefs will arrive— such a time. And when they hold treaty with any nation he is to light his Sachem’s Pipe. And he must be man of veracity: for if he tell a falsehood, his feathers will be pulled off.

“Our Nation was divided into three clans or tribes, as Bear Tribe. Wolf Tribe, and Turtle Tribe. Our ancestors had par tic u lar opinion for each tribe to which they belonged. The Bear Tribe formerly considered as the head of the other tribes, and claims the title of hereditary of"ce of Sachem. Yet they ever united as one family.

“And at the death of Sachem they considered as though their light is put out, and sitting under dark clouds, and in the situation of mourning, until another is appointed to succeed in the of"ce; which must be done by the consent and approbation of the whole nation. Yet no other person has right to succeed but one of the nephews of the deceased Sachem, either the eldest, or the likeliest.

“One of the wisest of their Counselors is employed on such occasions. In the "rst place, when all things are ready, He will address the whole Nation as follows,—

“ ‘My friends— grand- fathers, Uncles, Brothers, Cousins, attend. You also, my women— grand- mothers, Mothers, and Sisters, listen. You, the Children— you must also hear me attentively. It is the will of the Great, Wise, Good Spirit— our great tree has been fallen to the ground, and great dark- ness has been spread over our "re- place these many days, whereby we become as fatherless children. According to the custom of our good ancestors, and by the help of the Great Good Spirit. I now remove all dark clouds which hangs over our "re- place. [Strings of Wampum delivered.]

“ ‘Again listen: I now raise your heads which has been hang downwards, and wipe off all your tears from your face, so that you may see clear, and open your ears that you may hear, and set your hearts right again, that you may understand distinctly.’ ” [Strings of Wampum again delivered.]

This ceremony has passed so entirely out of use that the Tribe are unable to give the remainder; indeed they have not retained even thus much of this

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in ter est ing document. They, however, have retained their wampum. The meaning of a belt is remembered by the Indian Tribes in this manner. The whole body frequently assem ble, and being seated, each piece is passed from hand to hand, every person repeating the words as he takes it. Then again the color conveys some idea. A blood- colored hatchet readily gives an impres- sion of something warlike, while white speaks of peace.1

1791

1. Aupaumut describes a peace- building pro cess resembling the Iroquois Condolence Ritual, a diplo- matic ritual used by the Iroquois and other Native groups.

J. HECTOR ST. JOHN DE CRÈVECOEUR 1735–1813

J . Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur is a writer with a divided reputation, as well as a mysterious and fascinating past. Like Benjamin Franklin, another master of irony and disguise, Crèvecoeur rewards the reader’s close attention but only rarely provides "rm conclusions about the author’s views and intentions. In “What Is an American?”— the most famous essay in his internationally acclaimed Letters from an American Farmer (1782)— Crèvecoeur offers an idealistic portrait of the soon- to-be United States, one that resonated with later depictions of the nation as a melting pot and a land of opportunity. Farmer James, Crèvecoeur’s persona in the Letters, is at his happiest and most hopeful here, and these qualities have sometimes been taken as his creator’s entire understanding of “the American, this new man.” The full text of the Letters tells a dif fer ent story. It includes a shocking depiction of a slave suffer- ing a brutal punishment; and it ends with Farmer James having moved his family to a frontier Indian village out of despair over the fratricidal vio lence unleashed by the Revolution. The complexity of Crèvecoeur’s stance toward Revolutionary- era Ameri- can society is greatly magni"ed by the uncertainties surrounding the author’s ulti- mate commitments. The uncertainties associated with the work itself are ampli"ed by the differences between the En glish and French editions.

Born Michel- Guillaume Jean de Crèvecoeur in Caen, Normandy, the son of a minor nobleman, he was educated by Jesuits. However, he came to reject Catholi- cism as oppressive, and perhaps for this reason he broke with his father as a teen- ager, sailed to Eng land, and lived there with distant relatives. In 1755 he traveled to French Canada. He enlisted in the Canadian militia, served the government as a surveyor and cartographer, and was wounded in the defense of Quebec during one of the major battles of the French and Indian War (1754–63). After his military career ended in 1759, he traveled to New York, where he was naturalized as a Brit- ish colonial subject in 1765 and changed his name to Hector St. John. Sometimes he went by James Hector St. John, a moniker suggesting that he identi"ed with his persona Farmer James. He later expanded his surname to St. John de Crèvecoeur and added an initial. For the next ten years, Crèvecoeur traveled extensively in the colonies as a surveyor and a trader with American Indians. In 1769, he married a wealthy Protestant woman, Mehetabel Tippet; bought land in Orange County, New

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York; and settled into life on his farm there, Pine Hill. The couple gave their three children names that evoked Crèvecoeur’s French background; a daughter was named América-Francés. In his "rst year at Pine Hill, Crèvecoeur began to write a series of essays about Amer i ca based on his travels and experience as a farmer.

The advent of the American Revolution prompted Crèvecoeur’s wish to reestab- lish owner ship of family lands in France. Although he seems to have held Loyalist sympathies and was suspected of being a British spy, he was arrested and impris- oned as an American spy in 1779, when he tried to sail from the British- held port of New York. (Some have suspected him of being a double agent.) His delayed depar- ture was prob ably related to France’s recognition of the United States and entrance into the war against Britain in 1778. Crèvecoeur reached London in 1780, and the following year he sold his manuscript to a publishing house there, leading to the 1782 edition of Letters. There is evidence to suggest that the British edition was partially rewritten by an unknown editor to draw out its republican themes. In France, Crèvecoeur reconciled with his father, then moved to Paris. There, he was celebrated by the French intellectuals known as the philosophes, who encouraged him to publish a French translation of the Letters. The text that appeared in 1784 was recast more favorably toward France.

In 1783, Crèvecoeur returned to the now victorious United States. He then learned that his farm had been burned in an Indian attack, his wife was dead, and his children were housed with strangers. After regaining custody of his children and moving to New York City, Crèvecoeur was made French consul to New York, Connecticut, and New Jersey. A great success as a diplomat, he was named an hon- orary citizen of several American cities; the town of St. Johnsbury, Vermont, was named in his honor; and he became an adopted member of the Oneida Nation. He returned to Paris in 1790, at the height of the French Revolution. Three years later, he retired to Normandy. His three- volume sequel to Letters (1801) was not well received. He died at his daughter’s home outside Paris.

In the conceit that structures Crèvecoeur’s work, Farmer James writes his letters in response to queries from an En glish visitor, who wishes to better understand Amer i ca. The personal letter was a central genre in eighteenth- century literary culture, featured in epistolary novels as well as popu lar travelers’ and naturalists’ accounts, both factual and "ctional. Works ranging from the French po liti cal phi- los o pher Baron de Montesquieu’s Persian Letters (1721) to the En glish poet Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s Turkish Embassy Letters (1763) to the En glish novelist Laurence Sterne’s A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy (1768) embody aspects of the form as Crèvecoeur employed it. The American farmer was already a well- established "gure in the po liti cal and social debates of the day, notably employed by the statesman John Dickinson in his Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania (1767–68).

Crèvecoeur’s Letters engage the revolutionary- era debates over human nature and po liti cal organ ization vividly but unspeci"cally. He inserted himself into the same transatlantic debates over Americanness and its effects on humankind that Thomas Jefferson pursued in Notes on the State of Virginia (1785; excerpted below); but in contrast to Jefferson, with whom he later corresponded, Crèvecoeur’s philosophical themes are woven through his work rather than presented discur- sively. This allusiveness distinguishes Crèvecoeur’s Letters from the po liti cal writ- ings of the day and lends the collection its lasting fascination.

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From Letters from an American Farmer1

From Letter III. What Is an American?

I wish I could be acquainted with the feelings and thoughts which must agi- tate the heart and pres ent themselves to the mind of an enlightened En glishman, when he "rst lands on this continent. He must greatly rejoice that he lived at a time to see this fair country discovered and settled; he must necessarily feel a share of national pride, when he views the chain of settle- ments which embellishes these extended shores. When he says to himself, this is the work of my countrymen, who, when convulsed by factions,2 afdicted by a variety of miseries and wants, restless and impatient, took ref- uge here. They brought along with them their national genius,3 to which they principally owe what liberty they enjoy, and what substance they pos- sess. Here he sees the industry of his native country displayed in a new man- ner, and traces in their works the embryos of all the arts, sciences, and ingenuity which dourish in Eu rope. Here he beholds fair cities, substantial villages, extensive "elds, an im mense country "lled with decent houses, good roads, orchards, meadows, and bridges, where an hundred years ago all was wild, woody, and uncultivated! What a train of pleasing ideas this fair spec- tacle must suggest; it is a prospect which must inspire a good citizen with the most heartfelt plea sure. The dif"culty consists in the manner of view- ing so extensive a scene. He is arrived on a new continent; a modern society offers itself to his contemplation, dif fer ent from what he had hitherto seen. It is not composed, as in Eu rope, of great lords who possess every thing, and of a herd of people who have nothing. Here are no aristocratical families, no courts, no kings, no bishops, no ecclesiastical dominion, no invisible power giving to a few a very vis i ble one; no great manufacturers employing thousands, no great re"nements of luxury. The rich and the poor are not so far removed from each other as they are in Eu rope. Some few towns excepted, we are all tillers of the earth, from Nova Scotia to West Florida. We are a people of cultivators, scattered over an im mense territory, communicating with each other by means of good roads and navigable rivers, united by the silken bands of mild government, all respecting the laws, without dreading their power, because they are equitable. We are all animated with the spirit of an industry which is unfettered and unrestrained, because each person works for himself. If he travels through our rural districts he views not the hostile castle, and the haughty mansion, contrasted with the clay- built hut and miserable cabin, where cattle and men help to keep each other warm, and dwell in meanness,4 smoke, and indigence. A pleasing uniformity of decent competence appears throughout our habitations. The meanest of our log- houses is a dry and comfortable habitation. Lawyer or merchant are the fairest5 titles our towns afford; that of a farmer is the only appellation of the rural inhabitants of our country. It must take some time ere he can recon- cile himself to our dictionary, which is but short in words of dignity, and

1. The text is from Letters from an American Farmer, edited by Albert Boni and Charles Boni (1925). 2. Disputes.

3. Spirit; distinctive character. 4. Poorness, shabbiness. 5. Most impor tant.

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names of honor. There, on a Sunday, he sees a congregation of respectable farmers and their wives, all clad in neat homespun, well mounted, or riding in their own humble wagons. There is not among them an esquire, saving the unlettered magistrate. There he sees a parson as simple as his dock, a farmer who does not riot6 on the labor of others. We have no princes, for whom we toil, starve, and bleed; we are the most perfect society now exist- ing in the world. Here man is free as he ought to be; nor is this pleasing equality so transitory as many others are. Many ages will not see the shores of our great lakes replenished with inland nations, nor the unknown bounds of North Amer i ca entirely peopled. Who can tell how far it extends? Who can tell the millions of men whom it will feed and contain? for no Eu ro pean foot has as yet traveled half the extent of this mighty continent!

The next wish of this traveler will be to know whence came all these people? They are a mixture of En glish, Scotch, Irish, French, Dutch, Germans and Swedes. From this promiscuous breed, that race now called Americans have arisen. The eastern provinces7 must indeed be excepted, as being the unmixed descendants of En glishmen. I have heard many wish that they had been more intermixed also: for my part, I am no wisher, and think it much better as it has happened. They exhibit a most con spic u ous "gure in this great and variegated picture; they too enter for a great share in the pleasing perspective displayed in these thirteen provinces. I know it is fash ion able to redect on8 them, but re spect them for what they have done; for the accuracy and wisdom with which they have settled their territory; for the decency of their manners; for their early love of letters; their ancient college,9 the "rst in this hemi sphere; for their industry,1 which to me who am but a farmer is the criterion of every- thing. There never was a people, situated as they are, who with so ungrateful a soil have done more in so short a time. Do you think that the monarchical ingredients which are more prevalent in other governments have purged them from all foul stains? Their histories assert the contrary.

In this great American asylum,2 the poor of Eu rope have by some means met together, and in consequence of vari ous causes; to what purpose should they ask one another what countrymen they are? Alas, two thirds of them had no country. Can a wretch who wanders about, who works and starves, whose life is a continual scene of sore afdiction or pinching penury, can that man call Eng land or any other kingdom his country? A country that had no bread for him, whose "elds procured him no harvest, who met with nothing but the frowns of the rich, the severity of the laws, with jails and punish- ments; who owned not a single foot of the extensive surface of this planet? No! Urged by a variety of motives, here they came. Every thing has tended to regenerate them; new laws, a new mode of living, a new social system; here they are become men: in Eu rope they were as so many useless plants, wanting vegetative mold and refreshing showers; they withered, and were mowed down by want, hunger, and war; but now by the power of transplan- tation, like all other plants they have taken root and dourished! Formerly they were not numbered in any civil lists3 of their country, except in those

6. I.e., indulge himself. 7. New Eng land. 8. To censure or blame. 9. Harvard College, founded in 1636. 1. Industriousness.

2. Place of refuge (e.g., as from religious perse- cution). 3. Recognized employees of the civil govern- ment: ambassadors, judges, secretaries, etc.

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4. In 1755, as part of the French and Indian War, the French Acadians— settlers who had lived in Nova Scotia for about one hundred and twenty- "ve years— were banished by the British,

who had taken the province in 1710. 5. Where there is bread, there is one’s father- land (Latin). 6. Dear mother (Latin, literal trans.).

of the poor; here they rank as citizens. By what invisible power has this sur- prising metamorphosis been performed? By that of the laws and that of their industry. The laws, the indulgent laws, protect them as they arrive, stamping on them the symbol of adoption; they receive ample rewards for their labors; these accumulated rewards procure them lands; those lands confer on them the title of freemen, and to that title every bene"t is af"xed which men can possibly require. This is the great operation daily performed by our laws. From whence proceed these laws? From our government. Whence the government? It is derived from the original genius and strong desire of the people rati"ed and con"rmed by the crown. This is the great chain which links us all, this is the picture which every province exhibits, Nova Scotia excepted. There the crown has done all; either there were no people who had genius, or it was not much attended to: the consequence is that the province is very thinly inhabited indeed; the power of the crown in conjunction with the mosquitoes has prevented men from settling there. Yet some parts of it dourished once, and it contained a mild, harmless set of people. But for the fault of a few leaders, the whole were banished.4 The greatest po liti cal error the crown ever committed in Amer i ca was to cut off men from a country which wanted nothing but men!

What attachment can a poor Eu ro pean emigrant have for a country where he had nothing? The knowledge of the language, the love of a few kindred as poor as himself, were the only cords that tied him: his country is now that which gives him land, bread, protection, and consequence: Ubi panis ibi patria5 is the motto of all emigrants. What then is the American, this new man? He is either a Eu ro pean, or the descendant of a Eu ro pean, hence that strange mixture of blood, which you will "nd in no other country. I could point out to you a family whose grand father was an En glishman, whose wife was Dutch, whose son married a French woman, and whose pres ent four sons have now four wives of dif fer ent nations. He is an American, who, leaving behind him all his ancient prejudices and manners, receives new ones from the new mode of life he has embraced, the new government he obeys, and the new rank he holds. He becomes an American by being received in the broad lap of our great Alma Mater.6 Here individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men, whose labors and posterity will one day cause great changes in the world. Americans are the western pilgrims, who are carry ing along with them that great mass of arts, sciences, vigor, and industry which began long since in the east; they will "nish the great circle. The Americans were once scattered all over Eu rope; here they are incorpo- rated into one of the "nest systems of population which has ever appeared, and which will hereafter become distinct by the power of the dif fer ent cli- mates they inhabit. The American ought therefore to love this country much better than that wherein either he or his forefathers were born. Here the rewards of his industry follow with equal steps the pro gress of his labor; his labor is founded on the basis of nature, self- interest; can it want a stronger allurement? Wives and children, who before in vain demanded of him a mor- sel of bread, now, fat and frolicsome, gladly help their father to clear those

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7. I.e., they deal with rougher people. 8. Social experience.

9. Trade. 1. Nonaristocratic landowners.

"elds whence exuberant crops are to arise to feed and to clothe them all; without any part being claimed, either by a despotic prince, a rich abbot, or a mighty lord. Here religion demands but little of him; a small voluntary sal- ary to the minister, and gratitude to God; can he refuse these? The Ameri- can is a new man, who acts upon new princi ples; he must therefore entertain new ideas, and form new opinions. From involuntary idleness, servile depen- dence, penury, and useless labor, he has passed to toils of a very dif fer ent nature, rewarded by ample subsistence.— This is an American.

British Amer i ca is divided into many provinces, forming a large associa- tion, scattered along a coast 1,500 miles extent and about 200 wide. This society I would fain examine, at least such as it appears in the middle prov- inces; if it does not afford that variety of tinges and gradations which may be observed in Eu rope, we have colors peculiar to ourselves. For instance, it is natu ral to conceive that those who live near the sea must be very dif fer- ent from those who live in the woods; the intermediate space will afford a separate and distinct class.

Men are like plants; the goodness and davor of the fruit proceeds from the peculiar soil and exposition in which they grow. We are nothing but what we derive from the air we breathe, the climate we inhabit, the government we obey, the system of religion we profess, and the nature of our employ- ment. Here you will "nd but few crimes; these have acquired as yet no root among us. I wish I was able to trace all my ideas; if my ignorance prevents me from describing them properly, I hope I shall be able to delineate a few of the outlines, which are all I propose.

Those who live near the sea feed more on "sh than on desh, and often encounter that boisterous ele ment.7 This renders them more bold and enter- prising; this leads them to neglect the con"ned occupations of the land. They see and converse with a variety of people, their intercourse8 with man- kind becomes extensive. The sea inspires them with a love of traf"c,9 a desire of transporting produce from one place to another; and leads them to a variety of resources which supply the place of labor. Those who inhabit the middle settlements, by far the most numerous, must be very dif fer ent; the simple cultivation of the earth puri"es them, but the indulgences of the government, the soft remonstrances of religion, the rank of in de pen dent freeholders,1 must necessarily inspire them with sentiments, very little known in Eu rope among people of the same class. What do I say? Eu rope has no such class of men; the early knowledge they acquire, the early bar- gains they make, give them a great degree of sagacity. As freemen they will be litigious; pride and obstinancy are often the cause of lawsuits; the nature of our laws and governments may be another. As citizens it is easy to imag- ine that they will carefully read the newspapers, enter into every po liti cal disquisition, freely blame or censure governors and others. As farmers they will be careful and anxious to get as much as they can, because what they get is their own. As northern men they will love the cheerful cup. As Chris- tians, religion curbs them not in their opinions; the general indulgence leaves every one to think for themselves in spiritual matters; the laws inspect our actions, our thoughts are left to God. Industry, good living, sel"shness,

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2. I.e., the frontier; the land west of the original colonies and east of the Mississippi. 3. I.e., they were improvident and spent beyond

their means. “Want”: lack. 4. Crèvecoeur’s father, unlike Farmer John’s, never went to Amer i ca.

litigiousness, country politics, the pride of freemen, religious indifference are their characteristics. If you recede still farther from the sea, you will come into more modern settlements; they exhibit the same strong lineaments, in a ruder appearance. Religion seems to have still less induence, and their manners are less improved.

Now we arrive near the great woods, near the last inhabited districts;2 there men seem to be placed still farther beyond the reach of government, which in some mea sure leaves them to themselves. How can it pervade every corner; as they were driven there by misfortunes, necessity of beginnings, desire of acquiring large tracts of land, idleness, frequent want of economy,3 ancient debts; the reunion of such people does not afford a very pleasing spectacle. When discord, want of unity and friendship; when either drunk- enness or idleness prevail in such remote districts; contention, inactivity, and wretchedness must ensue. There are not the same remedies to these evils as in a long- established community. The few magistrates they have are in general little better than the rest; they are often in a perfect state of war; that of man against man, sometimes deci ded by blows, sometimes by means of the law; that of man against every wild inhabitant of these venerable woods, of which they are come to dispossess them. There men appear to be no better than carnivorous animals of a superior rank, living on the desh of wild animals when they can catch them, and when they are not able, they subsist on grain. He who would wish to see Amer i ca in its proper light, and have a true idea of its feeble beginnings and barbarous rudiments, must visit our extended line of frontiers where the last settlers dwell, and where he may see the "rst labors of settlement, the mode of clearing the earth, in all their dif fer ent appearances; where men are wholly left dependent on their native tempers and on the spur of uncertain industry, which often fails when not sancti"ed by the ef"cacy of a few moral rules. There, remote from the power of example and check of shame, many families exhibit the most hid- eous parts of our society. They are a kind of forlorn hope, preceding by ten or twelve years the most respectable army of veterans which come after them. In that space, prosperity will polish some, vice and the law will drive off the rest, who uniting again with others like themselves will recede still farther; making room for more industrious people, who will "nish their improve- ments, convert the log house into a con ve nient habitation, and rejoicing that the "rst heavy labors are "nished, will change in a few years that hitherto barbarous country into a "ne fertile, well- regulated district. Such is our pro- gress, such is the march of the Eu ro pe ans toward the interior parts of this continent. In all socie ties these are offcasts; this impure part serves as our precursors or pioneers; my father himself was one of that class,4 but he came upon honest princi ples, and was therefore one of the few who held fast; by good conduct and temperance, he transmitted to me his fair inheritance, when not above one in fourteen of his contemporaries had the same good fortune.

Forty years ago his smiling country was thus inhabited; it is now purged, a general decency of manners prevails throughout, and such has been the fate of our best countries.

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5. Believers. 6. The Roman Catholic doctrine that the sub- stance of the bread and wine used in the sacra- ment of communion is changed at the consecration to the substance of the body and blood of Christ. 7. As distinguished from transubstantiation; the

doctrine that Christ’s body is not pres ent in or under the ele ments of bread and wine, but the bread and wine are signs of Christ’s presence through faith. 8. One who dissents or withdraws from an established church.

Exclusive of those general characteristics, each province has its own, founded on the government, climate, mode of husbandry, customs, and peculiarity of circumstances. Eu ro pe ans submit insensibly to these great powers, and become, in the course of a few generations, not only Americans in general, but either Pennsylvanians, Virginians, or provincials under some other name. Whoever traverses the continent must easily observe those strong differences, which will grow more evident in time. The inhabitants of Canada, Mas sa chu setts, the middle provinces, the southern ones will be as dif fer ent as their climates; their only points of unity will be those of reli- gion and language.

As I have endeavored to show you how Eu ro pe ans become Americans, it may not be disagreeable to show you likewise how the vari ous Christian sects introduced wear out, and how religious indifference becomes prevalent. When any considerable number of a par tic u lar sect happen to dwell con- tiguous to each other, they immediately erect a temple, and there worship the Divinity agreeably to their own peculiar ideas. Nobody disturbs them. If any new sect springs up in Eu rope it may happen that many of its profes- sors5 will come and settle in Amer i ca. As they bring their zeal with them, they are at liberty to make proselytes if they can, and to build a meeting and to follow the dictates of their consciences; for neither the government nor any other power interferes. If they are peaceable subjects, and are indus- trious, what is it to their neighbors how and in what manner they think "t to address their prayers to the Supreme Being? But if the sectaries are not settled close together, if they are mixed with other denominations, their zeal will cool for want of fuel, and will be extinguished in a little time. Then the Americans become as to religion what they are as to country, allied to all. In them the name of En glishman, Frenchman, and Eu ro pean is lost, and in like manner, the strict modes of Chris tian ity as practiced in Eu rope are lost also. This effect will extend itself still farther hereafter, and though this may appear to you as a strange idea, yet it is a very true one. I shall be able per- haps hereafter to explain myself better; in the meanwhile, let the following example serve as my "rst justi"cation.

Let us suppose you and I to be traveling; we observe that in this house, to the right, lives a Catholic, who prays to God as he has been taught, and believes in transubstantiation;6 he works and raises wheat, he has a large family of children, all hale and robust; his belief, his prayers offend nobody. About one mile farther on the same road, his next neighbor may be a good honest plodding German Lutheran, who addresses himself to the same God, the God of all, agreeably to the modes he has been educated in, and believes in consubstantiation;7 by so doing he scandalizes nobody; he also works in his "elds, embellishes the earth, clears swamps, etc. What has the world to do with his Lutheran princi ples? He persecutes nobody, and nobody persecutes him, he visits his neighbors, and his neighbors visit him. Next to him lives a seceder,8 the most enthusiastic of all sectaries; his zeal is hot and "ery, but separated as he is from others of the same complexion, he has no congregation

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9. En glish Quaker and founder of Pennsylvania (1644–1718). 1. An ecclesiastical assembly held in Dordrecht, or Dordt, Holland, in 1618 to settle disputes

between Protestant Reformed churches. “Low Dutchman”: someone from Holland, not Bel- gium.

of his own to resort to, where he might cabal and mingle religious pride with worldly obstinacy. He likewise raises good crops, his house is handsomely painted, his orchard is one of the fairest in the neighborhood. How does it concern the welfare of the country, or of the province at large, what this man’s religious sentiments are, or really whether he has any at all? He is a good farmer, he is a sober, peaceable, good citizen: William Penn9 himself would not wish for more. This is the vis i ble character, the invisible one is only guessed at, and is nobody’s business. Next again lives a Low Dutchman, who implicitly believes the rules laid down by the synod of Dort.1 He conceives no other idea of a clergyman than that of a hired man; if he does his work well he will pay him the stipulated sum; if not he will dismiss him, and do without his sermons, and let his church be shut up for years. But notwithstanding this coarse idea, you will "nd his house and farm to be the neatest in all the coun- try; and you will judge by his wagon and fat horses that he thinks more of the affairs of this world than of those of the next. He is sober and laborious, there- fore he is all he ought to be as to the affairs of this life; as for those of the next, he must trust to the great Creator. Each of these people instruct their children as well as they can, but these instructions are feeble compared to those which are given to the youth of the poorest class in Eu rope. Their children will therefore grow up less zealous and more indifferent in matters of religion than their parents. The foolish vanity, or rather the fury of making proselytes, is unknown here; they have no time, the seasons call for all their attention, and thus in a few years, this mixed neighborhood will exhibit a strange religious medley, that will be neither pure Catholicism nor pure Calvinism. A very per- ceptible indifference, even in the "rst generation, will become apparent; and it may happen that the daughter of the Catholic will marry the son of the seceder, and settle by themselves at a distance from their parents. What reli- gious education will they give their children? A very imperfect one. If there happens to be in the neighborhood any place of worship, we will suppose a Quaker’s meeting; rather than not show their "ne clothes, they will go to it, and some of them may perhaps attach themselves to that society. Others will remain in a perfect state of indifference; the children of these zealous parents will not be able to tell what their religious princi ples are, and their grandchil- dren still less. The neighborhood of a place of worship generally leads them to it, and the action of going thither is the strongest evidence they can give of their attachment to any sect. The Quakers are the only people who retain a fondness for their own mode of worship; for be they ever so far separated from each other, they hold a sort of communion with the society, and seldom depart from its rules, at least in this country. Thus all sects are mixed as well as all nations; thus religious indifference is imperceptibly disseminated from one end of the continent to the other; which is at pres ent one of the strongest characteristics of the Americans. Where this will reach no one can tell, per- haps it may leave a vacuum "t to receive other systems. Persecution, religious pride, the love of contradiction are the food of what the world commonly calls religion. These motives have ceased here; zeal in Eu rope is con"ned; here it

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2. I.e., like gunpowder in a gun. 3. Parcels of land held outright for speci"ed periods of time. 4. The Moravian Church, or Unity of Brethren,

originated in Bohemia and Moravia in the "f- teenth century. In the following two centuries, persecution forced groups of Moravians to emi- grate to other lands.

evaporates in the great distance it has to travel; there it is a grain of powder inclosed,2 here it burns away in the open air, and consumes without effect.

But to return to our back settlers. I must tell you that there is something in the proximity of the woods which is very singular. It is with men as it is with the plants and animals that grow and live in the forests; they are entirely dif fer ent from those that live in the plains. I will candidly tell you all my thoughts but you are not to expect that I shall advance any reasons. By liv- ing in or near the woods, their actions are regulated by the wildness of the neighborhood. The deer often come to eat their grain, the wolves to destroy their sheep, the bears to kill their hogs, the foxes to catch their poultry. This surrounding hostility immediately puts the gun into their hands; they watch these animals, they kill some; and thus by defending their property, they soon become professed hunters; this is the pro gress; once hunters, farewell to the plow. The chase renders them ferocious, gloomy, and unsociable; a hunter wants no neighbor, he rather hates them, because he dreads the competi- tion. In a little time their success in the woods makes them neglect their tillage. They trust to the natu ral fecundity of the earth, and therefore do little; carelessness in fencing often exposes what little they sow to destruc- tion; they are not at home to watch; in order therefore to make up the de"- ciency, they go oftener to the woods. That new mode of life brings along with it a new set of manners, which I cannot easily describe. These new man- ners, being grafted on the old stock, produce a strange sort of lawless prof- ligacy, the impressions of which are indelible. The manners of the Indian natives are respectable, compared with this Eu ro pean medley. Their wives and children live in sloth and inactivity; and having no proper pursuits, you may judge what education the latter receive. Their tender minds have noth- ing else to contemplate but the example of their parents; like them they grow up a mongrel breed, half civilized, half savage, except nature stamps on them some constitutional propensities. That rich, that voluptuous sentiment is gone that struck them so forcibly; the possession of their freeholds3 no lon- ger conveys to their minds the same plea sure and pride. To all these reasons you must add their lonely situation, and you cannot imagine what an effect on manners the great distances they live from each other has! Consider one of the last settlements in its "rst view: of what is it composed? Eu ro pe ans who have not that suf"cient share of knowledge they ought to have, in order to prosper; people who have suddenly passed from oppression, dread of gov- ernment, and fear of laws into the unlimited freedom of the woods. This sudden change must have a very great effect on most men, and on that class particularly. Eating of wild meat, what ever you may think, tends to alter their temper: though all the proof I can adduce is that I have seen it: and having no place of worship to resort to, what little society this might afford is denied them. The Sunday meetings, exclusive of religious bene"ts, were the only social bonds that might have inspired them with some degree of emulation in neatness. Is it then surprising to see men thus situated, immersed in great and heavy labors, degenerate a little? It is rather a won der the effect is not more diffusive. The Moravians4 and the Quakers are the only instances in

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5. The Moravians were family communities who gave up private property and were noted for their industry and thrift. 6. I.e., Quaker settlers had more money than

the Moravians. 7. Needs. 8. Neediness, poverty. 9. Lack.

exception to what I have advanced. The "rst never settle singly, it is a col- ony of the society which emigrates; they carry with them their forms, wor- ship, rules, and decency:5 the others never begin so hard, they are always able to buy improvements,6 in which there is a great advantage, for by that time the country is recovered from its "rst barbarity. Thus our bad people are those who are half cultivators and half hunters; and the worst of them are those who have degenerated altogether into the hunting state. As old plowmen and new men of the woods, as Eu ro pe ans and new- made Indians, they contract the vices of both; they adopt the moroseness and ferocity of a native, without his mildness, or even his industry at home. If manners are not re"ned, at least they are rendered simple and inoffensive by tilling the earth; all our wants7 are supplied by it, our time is divided between labor and rest, and leaves none of the commission of great misdeeds. As hunters it is divided between the toil of the chase, the idleness of repose, or the indul- gence of inebriation. Hunting is but a licentious idle life, and if it does not always pervert good dispositions; yet, when it is united with bad luck, it leads to want:8 want stimulates that propensity to rapacity and injustice, too natu- ral to needy men, which is the fatal gradation. After this explanation of the effects which follow by living in the woods, shall we yet vainly datter our- selves with the hope of converting the Indians? We should rather begin with converting our back- settlers; and now if I dare mention the name of religion, its sweet accents would be lost in the immensity of these woods. Men thus placed are not "t either to receive or remember its mild instructions; they want9 temples and ministers, but as soon as men cease to remain at home, and begin to lead an erratic life, let them be either tawny or white, they cease to be its disciples.

* * * Eu rope contains hardly any other distinctions but lords and tenants; this fair country alone is settled by freeholders, the possessors of the soil they culti- vate, members of the government they obey, and the framers of their own laws, by means of their representatives. This is a thought which you have taught me to cherish; our difference from Eu rope, far from diminishing, rather adds to our usefulness and consequence as men and subjects. Had our forefathers remained there, they would only have crowded it, and per- haps prolonged those convulsions which had shook it so long. Every indus- trious Eu ro pean who transports himself here may be compared to a sprout growing at the foot of a great tree; it enjoys and draws but a little portion of sap; wrench it from the parent roots, transplant it, and it will become a tree bearing fruit also. Colonists are therefore entitled to the consideration due to the most useful subjects; a hundred families barely existing in some parts of Scotland will here in six years cause an annual exportation of 10,000 bushels of wheat; 100 bushels being but a common quantity for an industri- ous family to sell, if they cultivated good land. It is here then that the idle may be employed, the useless become useful, and the poor become rich; but by riches I do not mean gold and silver, we have but little of those metals; I

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1. Charles- Town (now Charleston), South Carolia; Lima, Peru.

mean a better sort of wealth, cleared lands, cattle, good houses, good clothes, and an increase of people to enjoy them.

There is no won der that this country has so many charms, and pres ents to Eu ro pe ans so many temptations to remain in it. A traveler in Eu rope becomes a stranger as soon as he quits his own kingdom; but it is other wise here. We know, properly speaking, no strangers; this is every person’s coun- try; the variety of our soils, situations, climates, governments, and produce hath something which must please every body. No sooner does a Eu ro pean arrive, no matter of what condition, than his eyes are opened upon the fair prospect; he hears his language spoken, he retraces many of his own coun- try manners, he perpetually hears the names of families and towns with which he is acquainted; he sees happiness and prosperity in all places dis- seminated; he meets with hospitality, kindness, and plenty everywhere; he beholds hardly any poor; he seldom hears of punishments and executions; and he won ders at the elegance of our towns, those miracles of industry and freedom. He cannot admire enough our rural districts, our con ve nient roads, good taverns, and our many accommodations; he involuntarily loves a coun- try where every thing is so lovely.

* * * After a foreigner from any part of Eu rope is arrived, and become a citizen, let him devoutly listen to the voice of our great parent, which says to him, “Welcome to my shores, distressed Eu ro pe an; bless the hour in which thou didst see my verdant "elds, my fair navigable rivers, and my green mountains!— If thou wilt work, I have bread for thee; if thou wilt be honest, sober, and industrious, I have greater rewards to confer on thee— ease and in de pen dence. I will give thee "elds to feed and clothe thee; a comfortable "reside to sit by, and tell thy children by what means thou hast prospered; and a decent bed to repose on. I shall endow thee beside with the immuni- ties of a freeman. If thou wilt carefully educate thy children, teach them gratitude to God, and reverence to that government, the philanthropic gov- ernment, which has collected here so many men and made them happy. I will also provide for thy progeny; and to every good man this ought to be the most holy, the most power ful, the most earnest wish he can possibly form, as well as the most consolatory prospect when he dies. Go thou and work and till; thou shalt prosper, provided thou be just, grateful, and industrious.”

From Letter IX. Description of Charles- Town; Thoughts on Slavery; on Physical Evil; A Melancholy Scene

Charles- Town is, in the north, what Lima is in the south;1 both are capitals of the richest provinces of their respective hemi spheres: you may therefore conjecture, that both cities must exhibit the appearances necessarily result- ing from riches. Peru abounding in gold, Lima is "lled with inhabitants who enjoy all those gradations of plea sure, re"nement, and luxury, which pro- ceed from wealth. Carolina produces commodities, more valuable perhaps than gold, because they are gained by greater industry; it exhibits also on our northern stage, a display of riches and luxury, inferior indeed to the

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2. Ware houses. 3. Liveliest, most vibrant. 4. I.e., of the land, extending into the harbor. 5. Expensive. 6. The practice of tithing (offering a tenth of

one’s worldly goods to God) was begun by the biblical patriarch Abraham (Genesis 14.20). It is “Mosaical” because the "rst "ve Books of the Old Testament (starting with Genesis) are tradi- tionally ascribed to Moses.

former, but far superior to what are to be seen in our northern towns. Its situation is admirable, being built at the conduence of two large rivers, which receive in their course a great number of inferior streams; all navi- gable in the spring, for dat- boats. Here the produce of this extensive terri- tory concenters; here therefore is the seat of the most valuable exportation; their wharfs, their docks, their magazines,2 are extremely con ve nient to facilitate this great commercial business. The inhabitants are the gayest3 in Amer i ca; it is called the center of our beau monde, and it [is] always "lled with the richest planters of the province, who resort hither in a quest of health and plea sure. Here are always to be seen a great number of valetudi- narians from the West Indies, seeking for the renovation of health, exhausted by the debilitating nature of their sun, air, and modes of living. Many of these West Indians have I seen, at thirty, loaded with the in"rmities of old age; for nothing is more common in those countries of wealth, than for per- sons to lose the abilities of enjoying the comforts of life, at a time when we northern men just begin to taste the fruits of our labor and prudence. The round of plea sure, and the expenses of those citizens’ tables, are much superior to what you would imagine: indeed the growth of this town and province has been astonishingly rapid. It is [a] pity that the narrowness of the neck4 on which it stands prevents it from increasing; and which is the reason why houses are so dear.5 The heat of the climate, which is some- times very great in the interior parts of the country, is always temperate in Charles- Town; though sometimes when they have no sea breezes the sun is too power ful. The climate renders excesses of all kinds very dangerous, particularly those of the table; and yet, insensible or fearless of danger, they live on, and enjoy a short and a merry life: the rays of their sun seem to urge them irresistably to dissipation and plea sure: on the contrary, the women, from being abstemious, reach to a longer period of life, and seldom die without having had several husbands. An Eu ro pean at his "rst arrival must be greatly surprised when he sees the elegance of their houses, their sump- tuous furniture, as well as the magni"cence of their tables. Can he imagine himself in a country, the establishment of which is so recent?

The three principal classes of inhabitants are, lawyers, planters, and mer- chants; this is the province which has afforded to the "rst the richest spoils, for nothing can exceed their wealth, their power, and their induence. They have reached the ne plus ultra of worldly felicity; no plantation is secured, no title is good, no will is valid, but what they dictate, regulate, and approve. The whole mass of provincial property is become tributary to this society; which, far above priests and bishops, disdain to be satis"ed with the poor Mosaical portion of the tenth.6 I appeal to the many inhabitants, who, while contending perhaps for their right to a few hundred acres, have lost by the mazes of the law their whole patrimony. These men are more properly law givers than interpreters of the law; and have united here, as well as in most other provinces, the skill and dexterity of the scribe with the power and ambi- tion of the prince: who can tell where this may lead in a future day? The

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7. Then a colony in South Carolina.

nature of our laws, and the spirit of freedom, which often tends to make us litigious, must necessarily throw the greatest part of the property of the colo- nies into the hands of these gentlemen. In another century, the law will possess in the north, what now the church possesses in Peru and Mexico.

While all is joy, festivity, and happiness in Charles- Town, would you imag- ine that scenes of misery overspread in the country? Their ears by habit are become deaf, their hearts are hardened; they neither see, hear, nor feel for the woes of their poor slaves, from whose painful labors all their wealth proceeds. Here the horrors of slavery, the hardship of incessant toils, are unseen; and no one thinks with compassion of those showers of sweat and of tears which from the bodies of Africans, daily drop, and moisten the ground they till. The cracks of the whip urging these miserable beings to excessive labor, are far too distant from the gay capital to be heard. The cho- sen race eat, drink, and live happy, while the unfortunate one grubs up the ground, raises indigo, or husks the rice; exposed to a sun full as scorching as their native one; without the support of good food, without the cordials of any cheering liquor. This great contrast has often afforded me subjects of the most afdicting meditation. On the one side, behold a people enjoying all that life affords most bewitching and pleas ur able, without labor, without fatigue, hardly subjected to the trou ble of wishing. With gold, dug from Peru- vian mountains, they order vessels to the coasts of Guinea; by virtue of that gold, wars, murders, and devastations are committed in some harmless, peaceable African neighborhood, where dwelt innocent people, who even knew not but that all men were black. The daughter torn from her weeping mother, the child from the wretched parents, the wife from the loving hus- band; whose families swept away and brought through storms and tempests to this rich metropolis! There, arranged like horses at a fair, they are branded like cattle, and then driven to toil, to starve, and to languish for a few years on the dif fer ent plantations of these citizens. And for whom must they work? For persons they know not, and who have no other power over them than that of vio lence; no other right than what this accursed metal has given them! Strange order of things! Oh, Nature, where are thou?— Are not these blacks thy children as well as we? On the other side, nothing is to be seen but the most diffusive misery and wretchedness, unrelieved even in thought or wish! Day after day they drudge on without any prospect of ever reaping for them- selves; they are obliged to devote their lives, their limbs, their will, and every vital exertion to swell the wealth of masters; who look not upon them with half the kindness and affection with which they consider their dogs and horses. Kindness and affection are not the portion of those who till the earth, who carry the burdens, who convert the logs into useful boards. This reward, simple and natu ral as one would conceive it, would border on humanity; and planters must have none of it!

* * * A clergyman settled a few years ago at George- Town,7 and feeling as I do now, warmly recommended to the planters, from the pulpit, a relaxation of severity; he introduced the benignity of Chris tian ity, and pathetically made use of the admirable precepts of that system to melt the hearts of his

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8. Lacedemonia was a country in the Peloponnese region of the ancient world. The inhabitants of its capital, Sparta— who were known as Spartans or Lacedemonians— enslaved the inhabitants of the

town of Helos, who were known as Helotes. In the ancient world, the Peloponnese region of Laco- nia, or Lacedemonia, was a country.

congregation into a greater degree of compassion toward their slaves than had been hitherto customary; “Sir (said one of his hearers) we pay you a genteel salary to read to us the prayers of the liturgy, and to explain to us such parts of the Gospel as the rule of the church directs; but we do not want you to teach us what we are to do with our blacks.” The clergyman found it prudent to withhold any farther admonition. Whence this aston- ishing right, or rather this barbarous custom, for most certainly we have no kind of right beyond that of force? We are told, it is true, that slavery can- not be so repugnant to human nature as we at "rst imagine, because it has been practiced in all ages, and in all nations: the Lacedemonians8 them- selves, those great assertors of liberty, conquered the Helotes with the design of making them their slaves; the Romans, whom we consider as our masters in civil and military policy, lived in the exercise of the most horrid oppression; they conquered to plunder and to enslave. What a hideous aspect the face of the earth must then have exhibited! Provinces, towns, districts, often depopulated; their inhabitants driven to Rome, the greatest market in the world, and there sold by thousands! The Roman dominions were tilled by the hands of unfortunate people, who had once been, like their victors free, rich, and possessed of every bene"t society can confer; until they became subject to the cruel right of war, and to lawless force. Is there then no superintending power who conducts the moral operations of the world, as well as the physical? The same sublime hand which guides the planets round the sun with so much exactness, which preserves the arrangement of the whole with such exalted wisdom and paternal care, and prevents the vast system from falling into confusion; doth it abandon mankind to all the errors, the follies, and the miseries, which their most frantic rage, and their most dangerous vices and passions can produce?

* * * Everywhere one part of the human species are taught the art of shedding the blood of the other; of setting "re to their dwellings; of leveling the works of their industry: half of the existence of nations regularly employed in destroying other nations. What little po liti cal felicity is to be met with here and there, has cost oceans of blood to purchase; as if good was never to be the portion of unhappy man. Republics, kingdoms, monarchies, founded either on fraud or successful vio lence, increase by pursuing the steps of the same policy, until they are destroyed in their turn, either by the induence of their own crimes, or by more successful but equally criminal enemies.

If from this general review of human nature, we descend to the examina- tion of what is called civilized society; there the combination of every natu- ral and arti"cial want, makes us pay very dear for what little share of po liti cal felicity we enjoy. It is a strange heterogeneous assemblage of vices and vir- tues, and of a variety of other princi ples, forever at war, forever jarring, for- ever producing some dangerous, some distressing extreme. Where do you conceive then that nature intended we should be happy? Would you prefer

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the state of men in the woods, to that of men in a more improved situation? Evil preponderates in both; in the "rst they often eat each other for want of food, and in the other they often starve each other for want of room. For my part, I think the vices and miseries to be found in the latter, exceed those of the former; in which real evil is more scarce, more supportable, and less enormous. Yet we wish to see the earth peopled; to accomplish the happi- ness of kingdoms, which is said to consist in numbers. Gracious God! to what end is the introduction of so many beings into a mode of existence in which they must grope amidst as many errors, commit as many crimes, and meet with as many diseases, wants, and sufferings!

The following scene will I hope account for these melancholy redections, and apologize for the gloomy thoughts with which I have "lled this letter: my mind is, and always has been, oppressed since I became a witness to it. I was not long since invited to dine with a planter who lived three miles from— — , where he then resided. In order to avoid the heat of the sun, I resolved to go on foot, sheltered in a small path, leading through a pleasant wood. I was leisurely traveling along, attentively examining some peculiar plants which I had collected, when all at once I felt the air strongly agitated; though the day was perfectly calm and sultry. I immediately cast my eyes toward the cleared ground, from which I was but at a small distance, in order to see whether it was not occasioned by a sudden shower; when at that instant a sound resembling a deep rough voice, uttered, as I thought, a few inar- ticulate monosyllables. Alarmed and surprised, I precipitately looked all round, when I perceived at about six rods distance something resembling a cage, suspended to the limbs of a tree; all the branches of which appeared covered with large birds of prey, duttering about, and anxiously endeavor- ing to perch on the cage. Actuated by an involuntary motion of my hands, more than by any design of my mind, I "red at them; they all dew to a short distance, with a most hideous noise: when, horrid to think and painful to repeat, I perceived a Negro, suspended in the cage, and left there to expire! I shudder when I recollect that the birds had already picked out his eyes, his cheek bones were bare; his arms had been attacked in several places, and his body seemed covered with a multitude of wounds. From the edges of the hollow sockets and from the lacerations with which he was dis"gured, the blood slowly dropped, and tinged the ground beneath. No sooner were the birds down, than swarms of insects covered the whole body of this unfor- tunate wretch, eager to feed on his mangled desh and to drink his blood. I found myself suddenly arrested by the power of affright and terror; my nerves were convulsed; I trembled, I stood motionless, involuntarily contemplating the fate of this Negro, in all its dismal latitude. The living specter, though deprived of his eyes, could still distinctly hear, and in his uncouth dialect begged me to give him some water to allay his thirst. Humanity herself would have recoiled back with horror; she would have balanced whether to lessen such reliedess distress, or mercifully with one blow to end this dreadful scene of agonizing torture! Had I had a ball in my gun, I certainly should have dispatched him; but "nding myself unable to perform so kind an of"ce, I sought, though trembling, to relieve him as well as I could. A shell ready "xed to a pole, which had been used by some Negroes, presented itself to me; "lled it with water, and with trembling hands I guided it to the quiver- ing lips of the wretched sufferer. Urged by the irresistible power of thirst,

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he endeavored to meet it, as he instinctively guessed its approach by the noise it made in passing through the bars of the cage. “Tankè, you whitè man, tankè you, putè somè poison and givè me.” “How long have you been hang- ing there?” I asked him. “Two days, and me no die; the birds, the birds; aaah me!” Oppressed with the redections which this shocking spectacle afforded me, I mustered strength enough to walk away, and soon reached the house at which I intended to dine. There I heard that the reason for this slave being thus punished was on account of his having killed the overseer of the plan- tation. They told me that the laws of self- preservation rendered such execu- tions necessary; and supported the doctrine of slavery with the arguments generally made use of to justify the practice; with the repetition of which I shall not trou ble you at pres ent.

Adieu.

From Letter X. On Snakes; and on the Humming Bird

* * * As I was one day sitting solitary and pensive in my primitive arbor, my atten- tion was engaged by a strange sort of rustling noise at some paces distant. I looked all around without distinguishing anything, until I climbed one of my great hemp stalks; when to my astonishment, I beheld two snakes of con- siderable length, the one pursuing the other with great celerity through a hemp stubble "eld. The aggressor was of the black kind, six feet long; the fugitive was a water snake, nearly of equal dimensions. They soon met, and in the fury of their "rst encounter, they appeared in an instant "rmly twisted together; and whilst their united tails beat the ground, they mutu- ally tried with open jaws to lacerate each other. What a fell9 aspect did they pres ent! their heads were compressed to a very small size, their eyes dashed "re; and after this condict had lasted about "ve minutes, the second found means to disengage itself from the "rst, and hurried toward the ditch. Its antagonist instantly assumed a new posture, and half creeping and half erect, with a majestic mien, overtook and attacked the other again, which placed itself in the same attitude, and prepared to resist. The scene was uncommon and beautiful; for thus opposed they fought with their jaws, biting each other with the utmost rage; but notwithstanding this appearance of mutual courage and fury, the water snake still seemed desirous of retreating toward the ditch, its natu ral ele ment. This was no sooner perceived by the keen- eyed black one, than twisting its tail twice round a stalk of hemp, and seiz- ing its adversary by the throat, not by means of its jaws, but by twisting its own neck twice round that of the water snake, pulled it back from the ditch. To prevent a defeat the latter took hold likewise of a stalk on the bank, and by the acquisition of that point of re sis tance became a match for its "erce antagonist. Strange was this to behold; two great snakes strongly adhering to the ground mutually fastened together by means of the writhings which lashed them to each other, and stretched at their full length, they pulled but pulled in vain, and in the moments of greatest exertions that part of their bodies which was entwined, seemed extremely small, while the rest

9. Evil.

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appeared indated, and now and then convulsed with strong undulations, rapidly following each other. Their eyes seemed on "re, and ready to start out of their heads; at one time the condict seemed deci ded; the water- snake bent itself into two great folds, and by that operation rendered the other more than commonly outstretched; the next minute the new strug gles of the black one gained an unexpected superiority, it acquired two great folds likewise, which necessarily extended the body of its adversary in proportion as it had contracted its own. These efforts were alternate; victory seemed doubtful, inclining sometimes to the one side and sometimes to the other; until at last the stalk to which the black snake fastened, suddenly gave way, and in consequence of this accident they both plunged into the ditch. The water did not extinguish their vindictive rage; for by their agitations I could trace, though not distinguish their mutual attacks. They soon reappeared on the surface twisted together, as in their "rst onset; but the black snake seemed to retain its wonted superiority, for its head was exactly "xed above that of the other, which it incessantly pressed down under the water, until it was stided, and sunk. The victor no sooner perceived its enemy incapable of farther re sis tance, than abandoning it to the current, it returned on shore and dis appeared.

From Letter XII. Distresses of a Frontier Man

I wish for a change of place; the hour is come at last, that I must dy from my house and abandon my farm! But what course shall I steer, enclosed as I am? The climate best adapted to my pres ent situation and humor1 would be the polar regions, where six months day and six months night divide the dull year: nay, a simple Aurora Borealis would suf"ce me, and greatly refresh my eyes, fatigued now by so many disagreeable objects. The severity of those climates, that great gloom, where melancholy dwells, would be perfectly analogous to the turn of my mind. Oh, could I remove my plantation to the shores of the Oby,2 willingly would I dwell in the hut of a Samoyede, with cheerfulness would I go and bury myself in the cavern of a Laplander. Could I but carry my family along with me, I would winter at Pello, or Tobolsky, in order to enjoy the peace and innocence of that country. But let me arrive under the pole, or reach the antipodes,3 I never can leave behind me the remembrance of the dreadful scenes to which I have been a witness; there- fore never can I be happy! Happy, why would I mention that sweet, that enchanting word? Once happiness was our portion; now it is gone from us, and I am afraid not to be enjoyed again by the pres ent generation! Which- ever way I look, nothing but the most frightful precipices pres ent themselves to my view, in which hundreds of my friends and acquaintances have already perished: of all animals that live on the surface of this planet, what is man when no longer connected with society; or when he "nds himself surrounded by a convulsed and a half- dissolved one? He cannot live in solitude, he must belong to some community bound by some ties, however imperfect. Men

1. Temperament. 2. A river in Siberia, the approximate region referred to in this sentence and the next one. Samoyedes are a Siberian people. Laplanders can be the Sami people or others living in Lapland, a

far- northern region near Siberia. Pello is a town in Lapland. Tobolsky, or Tobolsk, is a town in Siberia. 3. I.e., even if I travel far south— below the south pole on to Australia and New Zealand.

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mutually support and add to the boldness and con"dence of each other; the weakness of each is strengthened by the force of the whole. I had never before these calamitous times formed any such ideas; I lived on, labored and prospered, without having ever studied on what the security of my life and the foundation of my prosperity were established: I perceived them just as they left me. Never was a situation so singularly terrible as mine, in every pos si ble re spect, as a member of an extensive society, as a citizen of an infe- rior division of the same society, as a husband, as a father, as a man who exquisitely feels for the miseries of others as well as for his own! But alas! so much is every thing now subverted among us, that the very word misery, with which we were hardly acquainted before, no longer conveys the same ideas; or rather tired with feeling for the miseries of others, every one feels now for himself alone. When I consider myself as connected in all these characters, as bound by so many cords, all uniting in my heart, I am seized with a fever of the mind, I am transported beyond that degree of calmness which is nec- essary to delineate our thoughts. I feel as if my reason wanted to leave me, as if it would burst its poor weak tenement: again I try to compose myself, I grow cool, and preconceiving the dreadful loss, I endeavor to retain the use- ful guest.

* * * Must I then bid farewell to Britain, to that renowned country? Must I renounce a name so ancient and so venerable? Alas, she herself, that once indulgent parent, forces me to take up arms against her. She herself "rst inspired the most unhappy citizens of our remote districts with the thoughts of shedding the blood of those whom they used to call by the name of friends and brethren. That great nation which now convulses the world; which hardly knows the extent of her Indian kingdoms; which looks toward the universal monarchy of trade, of industry, of riches, of power: why must she strew our poor frontiers with the carcasses of her friends, with the wrecks of our insigni"cant villages, in which there is no gold? When, oppressed by painful recollection, I revolve all these scattered ideas in my mind; when I contemplate my situation, and the thousand streams of evil with which I am surrounded; when I descend into the par tic u lar tendency even of the rem- edy I have proposed, I am convulsed— convulsed sometimes to that degree, as to be tempted to exclaim— Why has the master of the world permitted so much indiscriminate evil throughout every part of this poor planet, at all times, and among all kinds of people? It ought surely to be the punishment of the wicked only. I bring that cup to my lips, of which I must soon taste, and shudder at its bitterness. What then is life, I ask myself, is it a gracious gift? No, it is too bitter; a gift means something valuable conferred, but life appears to be a mere accident, and of the worst kind: we are born to be vic- tims of diseases and passions, of mischances and death: better not to be than to be miserable.— Thus impiously I roam, I dy from one erratic thought to another, and my mind, irritated by these acrimonious redections, is ready sometimes to lead me to dangerous extremes of vio lence. When I recollect that I am a father, and a husband, the return of these endearing ideas strikes deep into my heart. Alas! they once made it to glow with plea sure and with every ravishing exultation; but now they "ll it with sorrow. At other times, my wife industriously rouses me out of these dreadful meditations, and

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4. I.e., living as an American Indian. A wigwam is a hut or lodge, usually built of poles and cov-

ered with skins, mats, or bark.

soothes me by all the reasoning she is mistress of; but her endeavors only serve to make me more miserable, by redecting that she must share with me all these calamities, the bare apprehensions of which I am afraid will sub- vert her reason. Nor can I with patience think that a beloved wife, my faith- ful helpmate, throughout all my rural schemes, the principal hand which has assisted me in rearing the prosperous fabric of ease and in de pen dence I lately possessed, as well as my children, those tenants of my heart, should daily and nightly be exposed to such a cruel fate. Self- preservation is above all po liti cal precepts and rules, and even superior to the dearest opinions of our minds; a reasonable accommodation of ourselves to the vari ous exigen- cies of the times in which we live is the most irresistible precept. To this great evil I must seek some sort of remedy adapted to remove or to palliate it; situated as I am, what steps should I take that will neither injure nor insult any of the parties, and at the same time save my family from that certain destruction which awaits it if I remain here much longer. Could I insure them bread, safety, and subsistence, not the bread of idleness, but that earned by proper labor as heretofore; could this be accomplished by the sacri"ce of my life, I would willingly give it up. I attest before heaven that it is only for these I would wish to live and to toil: for these whom I have brought into this miserable existence. I resemble, methinks, one of the stones of a ruined arch, still retaining that pristine form that anciently "tted the place I occu- pied, but the center is tumbled down; I can be nothing until I am replaced, either in the former circle or in some stronger one. I see one on a smaller scale, and at a considerable distance, but it is within my power to reach it: and since I have ceased to consider myself as a member of the ancient state now convulsed, I willingly descend into an inferior one. I will revert into a state approaching nearer to that of nature, unencumbered either with volu- minous laws or contradictory codes, often galling the very necks of those whom they protect; and at the same time suf"ciently remote from the bru- tality of unconnected savage nature. Do you, my friend, perceive the path I have found out? it is that which leads to the tenants of the great— — village of— — , where, far removed from the accursed neighborhood of Eu ro pe ans, its inhabitants live with more ease, decency, and peace than you imagine: where, though governed by no laws, yet "nd, in uncontaminated simple man- ners all that laws can afford. Their system is suf"ciently complete to answer all the primary wants of man and to constitute him a social being, such as he ought to be in the great forest of nature. There it is that I have resolved at any rate to transport myself and family: an eccentric thought, you may say, thus to cut asunder all former connections, and to form new ones with a people whom nature has stamped with such dif fer ent characteristics! But as the happiness of my family is the only object of my wishes, I care very little where we be, or where we go, provided that we are safe and all united together.

* * * You may therefore, by means of anticipation, behold me under the Wigwam;4 I am so well acquainted with the principal manners of these people, that I

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entertain not the least apprehension from them. I rely more securely on their strong hospitality than on the witnessed compacts of many Eu ro pe ans. As soon as pos si ble after my arrival, I design to build myself a wigwam, after the same manner and size with the rest, in order to avoid being thought sin- gular, or giving occasion for any railleries; though these people are seldom guilty of such Eu ro pean follies. I shall erect it hard by5 the lands which they propose to allot me, and will endeavor that my wife, my children, and myself may be adopted soon after our arrival. Thus becoming truly inhabit- ants of their village, we shall immediately occupy that rank within the pale6 of their society which will afford us all the amends we can possibly expect for the loss we have met with by the convulsions of our own. According to their customs we shall likewise receive names from them, by which we shall always be known. My youn gest children shall learn to swim and to shoot with the bow, that they may acquire such talents as will necessarily raise them into some degree of esteem among the Indian lads of their own age; the rest of us must hunt with the hunters. I have been for several years an expert marksman; but I dread lest the imperceptible charm of Indian edu- cation may seize my younger children and give them such a propensity to that mode of life as may preclude their returning to the manners and cus- toms of their parents. I have but one remedy to prevent this great evil; and that is, to employ them in the labor of the "elds as much as I can; I am even resolved to make their daily subsistence depend altogether on it. As long as we keep ourselves busy in tilling the earth, there is no fear of any of us becoming wild; it is the chase and the food it procures that have this strange effect. Excuse a simile— those hogs which range in the woods, and to whom grain is given once a week, preserve their former degree of tameness; but if, on the contrary, they are reduced to live on ground nuts, and on what they can get, they soon become wild and "erce. For my part, I can plow, sow, and hunt, as occasion may require; but my wife, deprived of wool and dax, will have no room for industry,7 what is she then to do? like the other squaws, she must cook for us the nasaump, the ninchické,8 and such other prepara- tions of corn as are customary among these people. She must learn to bake squashes and pumpkins under the ashes; to slice and smoke the meat of our own killing, in order to preserve it; she must cheerfully adopt the manners and customs of her neighbors, in their dress, deportment, conduct, and inter- nal economy, in all re spects. Surely if we can have fortitude enough to quit all we have, to remove so far, and to associate with people so dif fer ent from us, these necessary compliances are but part of the scheme. The change of garments, when those they carry with them are worn out, will not be the least of my wife’s and daughter’s concerns: though I am in hopes that self- love will invent some sort of reparation. Perhaps you would not believe that there are in the woods looking- glasses, and paint of every color; and that the inhabitants take as much pains to adorn their faces and their bodies, to "x their bracelets of silver, and plait their hair, as our forefathers the Picts9 used to do in the time of the Romans. Not that I would wish to see either my wife or daughter adopt those savage customs; we can live in great peace and harmony with them without descending to every article; the interrup-

5. Built it right near. 6. Bounds. 7. House hold work.

8. Like nasaump, a kind of cornmeal mush. 9. Ancient people of northern Britain.

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1. Smallpox. 2. The Ten Commandments.

3. Prayers.

tion of trade hath, I hope, suspended this mode of dress. My wife under- stands inoculation perfectly well, she inoculated all our children one after another, and has successfully performed the operation on several scores of people, who, scattered here and there through our woods, were too far removed from all medical assistance. If we can persuade but one family to submit to it, and it succeeds, we shall then be as happy as our situation will admit of; it will raise her into some degree of consideration, for whoever is useful in any society will always be respected. If we are so fortunate as to carry one family through a disorder, which is the plague1 among these people, I trust to the force of example, we shall then become truly necessary, val- ued, and beloved; we indeed owe every kind of"ce to a society of men who so readily offer to admit us into their social partnership, and to extend to my family the shelter of their village, the strength of their adoption, and even the dignity of their names. God grant us a prosperous beginning, we may then hope to be of more ser vice to them than even missionaries who have been sent to preach to them a Gospel they cannot understand.

As to religion, our mode of worship will not suffer much by this removal from a cultivated country, into the bosom of the woods; for it cannot be much simpler than that which we have followed here these many years: and I will with as much care as I can, redouble my attention, and twice a week, retrace to them the great outlines of their duty to God and to man. I will read and expound to them some part of the decalogue,2 which is the method I have pursued ever since I married.

* * * Thus then in the village of— — , in the bosom of that peace it has enjoyed ever since I have known it, connected with mild hospitable people, strang- ers to our po liti cal disputes, and having none among themselves; on the shores of a "ne river, surrounded with woods, abounding with game; our little society united in perfect harmony with the new adoptive one, in which we shall be incorporated, shall rest I hope from all fatigues, from all appre- hensions, from our pres ent terrors, and from our long watchings. Not a word of politics shall cloud our simple conversation; tired either with the chase or the labor of the "eld, we shall sleep on our mats without any distressing want, having learnt to retrench every superduous one: we shall have but two prayers to make to the Supreme Being, that He may shed His fertilizing dew on our little crops, and that He will be pleased to restore peace to our unhappy country. These shall be the only subject of our nightly prayers, and of our daily ejaculations:3 and if the labor, the industry, the frugality, the union of men can be an agreeable offering to Him, we shall not fail to receive His paternal blessings. There I shall contemplate Nature in her most wild and ample extent; I shall carefully study a species of society, of which I have at pres ent but very imperfect ideas; I will endeavor to occupy with propriety that place which will enable me to enjoy the few and suf"cient bene"ts it confers. The solitary and unconnected mode of life I have lived in my youth must "t me for this trial, I am not the "rst who has attempted it; Eu ro pe ans did not, it is true, carry to the wilderness numerous families; they went there

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as merely speculators; I, as a man seeking a refuge from the desolation of war. They went there to study the manner of the aborigines; I to conform to them, what ever they are; some went as visitors, as travelers; I as a sojourner, as a fellow hunter and laborer, go determined industriously to work up among them such a system of happiness as may be adequate to my future situation, and may be a suf"cient compensation for all my fatigues and for the misfor- tunes I have borne: I have always found it at home, I may hope likewise to "nd it under the humble roof of my wigwam.

O Supreme Being! if among the im mense variety of planets, inhabited by Thy creative power, Thy paternal and omnipotent care deigns to extend to all the individuals they contain; if it be not beneath Thy in"nite dignity to cast Thy eye on us wretched mortals; if my future felicity is not contrary to the necessary effects of those secret causes which Thou hast appointed, receive the supplications of a man, to whom in Thy kindness Thou hast given a wife and an offspring: View us all with benignity, sanctify this strong con- dict of regrets, wishes, and other natu ral passions; guide our steps through these unknown paths, and bless our future mode of life. If it is good and well meant, it must proceed from Thee; Thou knowest, O Lord, our enter- prise contains neither fraud, nor malice, nor revenge. Bestow on me that energy of conduct now become so necessary, that it may be in my power to carry the young family Thou hast given me through this great trial with safety and in Thy peace. Inspire me with such intentions and such rules of conduct as may be most acceptable to Thee. Preserve, O God, preserve the companion of my bosom, the best gift Thou hast given me: endue her with courage and strength suf"cient to accomplish this perilous journey. Bless the children of our love, those portions of our hearts; I implore Thy divine assistance, speak to their tender minds, and inspire them with the love of that virtue which alone can serve as the basis of their conduct in this world, and of their happiness with Thee. Restore peace and concord to our poor afdicted country, assuage the "erce storm which has so long ravaged it. Per- mit, I beseech Thee, O Father of Nature, that our ancient virtues, and our industry, may not be totally lost: and that as a reward for the great toils we have made on this new land, we may be restored to our ancient tranquillity, and enabled to "ll it with successive generations, that will constantly thank Thee for the ample subsistence Thou hast given them.

The unreserved manner in which I have written must give you a con- vincing proof of that friendship and esteem, of which I am sure you never yet doubted. As members of the same society, as mutually bound by the ties of affection and old acquaintance, you certainly cannot avoid feeling for my distresses; you cannot avoid mourning with me over that load of physical and moral evil with which we are all oppressed. My own share of it I often overlook when I minutely contemplate all that hath befallen our native country.

c. 1769–80 1782

657

ANNIS BOUDINOT STOCKTON 1736–1801

A nnis Boudinot Stockton spent her life surrounded by induential people, a fact that was closely related to her poetic pursuits. Shortly after her birth, in Darby, Pennsylvania, her parents moved to Philadelphia, where they lived next to Benjamin Franklin’s post of"ce; in 1751, they enrolled her brothers John and Elias in the Acad- emy and College of Philadelphia, a secondary school cofounded by Franklin. After the family moved to Prince ton, New Jersey, some two years later, they lived for a time in a house rented from the Reverend Aaron Burr, then serving as the president of Prince ton University, and his wife, Esther Edwards Burr, the daughter of Jonathan Edwards. (The Burrs’ son, Aaron, Jr., who was born in 1756, became the vice president of the United States in 1801 and, three years later, famously killed the statesman Alexander Hamilton in a duel.) Annis and Esther became quite close. Around 1757, Annis married Richard Stockton, a prominent lawyer and a favorite of Loyalist New Jersey governor William Franklin (Benjamin’s illegitimate son, to whom the "rst part of The Autobiography is addressed). Stockton eventually joined the patriot cause, and as a New Jersey delegate to the Second Continental Congress, he signed the Declara- tion of In de pen dence in 1776. That same year, Annis and Richard’s daughter Julia married Benjamin Rush, a leading physician, intellectual, and public servant, who also signed the Declaration. Annis’s brother Elias was a delegate to the Second Con- tinental Congress and served for a year as its president. Long after his sister’s death, Elias became the "rst president of the American Bible Society and the benefactor of Buck Watie, the Cherokee tribal leader and editor of the Cherokee Phoenix, who took Elias Boudinot’s name as a gesture of re spect. In short, Annis Boudinot Stockton was at the center of a network of socially prominent and po liti cally induential men. The women who were associated with those men often exerted induence in ways that were less direct but could be at least equally signi"cant.

In her roles as Richard’s wife and Elias’s sister, Stockton served in a semipublic capacity as the hostess at Morven, the Stocktons’ elegant estate in Prince ton, where she counted George and Martha Custis Washington among her guests. With its lav- ish gardens— a source of enjoyment and inspiration for Annis— the property required a considerable labor force, and enslaved people provided at least part of that labor. Richard had been raised a Quaker, but the Stocktons owned slaves at a time when the Society of Friends was becoming increasingly "rm in its opposition to the practice. Annis (whose background was French Huguenot, i.e., Protestant) appears to have continued to own slaves after Richard’s death, perhaps because she wished to remain at her beloved Morven rather than move in with her daughter.

Residing within a network of social privilege and po liti cal power, Annis Stockton assumed the authority of her station in vari ous ways, one of which was by writing and publishing poetry. Several of her topical poems that address leading events and "gures of the day were printed in newspapers, and she sent some of her strongly nationalist poems in cele bration of George Washington to the object of her praise. While her associations with induential male "gures are impor tant for understand- ing Stockton’s work, so too are her networks of friends, mainly though not exclu- sively women. Women such as Esther Burr provided Stockton with an intellectual atmosphere and an audience for her poetry that shaped the poems themselves.

Stockton’s milieu and her writings defy certain common ideas about poetry. In William Words worth’s preface to the second edition of Lyrical Ballads (1800), the

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groundbreaking Romantic work that he coauthored with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Words worth de"ned poetry as “the spontaneous overdow of power ful feelings” that “takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.” This de"nition seems to suggest that solitude is essential to poetic composition, but the writing and reading of poetry were and often continued to be intensely social activities. In Boudinot’s day, poems might be composed at regular social gatherings in private homes, called “salons.” Works written there or composed elsewhere were often read aloud to the assembled guests, and later circulated in manuscript. Some participants in these lit- erary networks kept “commonplace books,” that is, manuscript books where they recorded their own and one another’s poems. At other times, writers circulated man- uscript collections of their own work, as did Stockton’s close friend Elizabeth Graeme Fergusson, a writer and intellectual described by one admirer as “the most learned woman in Amer i ca.” The network involving Stockton and Fergusson also included

Annis Boudinot Stockton. This undated painting of Stockton is by an unidenti"ed American artist.

A H Y M N W R I T T E N I N T H E Y E A R 1 7 5 3 | 6 5 9

Hannah Grif"tts, Deborah Logan, Milcah Martha Moore, and Susanna Wright. Moore kept a commonplace book that contains the only known copies of many works by these women. Stockton collected the main body of her poetry in a large manu- script volume that she labeled “Only for the Eye of a Friend.” Held in the archives of the New Jersey Historical Society, the volume "rst appeared in print in 1995.

The poetry that was the coin of such literary networks was typically modeled on the work of British neoclassical poets, notably John Dryden and Alexander Pope. In Protestant Amer i ca, John Milton was another impor tant induence. Stockton produced works in all the major poetic genres, including odes, elegies, sonnets, and hymns. Her subjects ranged from the battle of the sexes, to pastoral cele brations of rural life, to the major events of the Revolution and early republic. She also wrote elegies, including annual tributes to Richard after his death. The scope of her work is remarkable, and at its best so is its wit, technical mastery, sensibility, and intelligence.

The following texts are from Only for the Eye of a Friend: The Poems of Annis Boudinot Stockton (1995), edited by Carla Mulford. The bracketed insertions are Mulford’s.

A Hymn Written in the Year 1753

1

Jesus thy Servant is resign’d To thy unerring will; Oh; may my heart be more inclin’d Thy precepts to ful"ll.

2

Do with me what thou thinkest best, 5 Conform my soul to thee, Stamp thy dear image on my breast And ne’er depart from me

3

For in thy blissful smiles I live— More sweet than life’s thy love, 10 And in thy favour is Contain’d The heaven I hope above.

4

Thou art my soul’s honour and wealth Her bliss and friendship too, The source of all her peace and health 15 And every joy in view.

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5

Then lead me thro the giddy path Of youth’s deceitful road, Nor leave me to the tempter’s wrath My Saviour and my God 20

6

And at the last and gloomy hour When death my desh invades, Oh! let thy staff thy crook thy power Support me through the shades.

7

Then with thy presence gild the gloom 25 Of that tremendous vale O! guide the wandering exile home Nor let my foes prevail.

8

But let thy spirit whisper peace, And shew my sins forgiven; 30 Make ev’ry doubt and sorrow cease, And antedate my heaven1

1753 1995

An Elegiack Ode on the 28th Day of February [1782]. The Anniversary of Mr. [Stockton’s] Death

Mr. COLLINS,

The following elegant little ode, written by a lady on the anniver- sary of her husband’s death, tho’ it deserves a more lasting remem- brance than a Gazette can give it, yet, in the mean- time, may serve to entertain your ingenious readers. Sent to me as a friend, I have to beg her excuse for thus exposing her grief to the eyes of the pub- lick, while I wish to shew it, her wit.

A.B.1

I’ve heard the tempest howl along the plain, And screaming winds pour forth a dreadful blast; While deaks2 of snow and sheets of driving rain Presented nature as a dreary waste.

1. That is, make heaven pres ent to her during her life. 1. This poem was submitted by “A.B.” (possibly

Aaron Burr, Jr.,) to the New Jersey Gazette, where it was "rst published. 2. Flakes.

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Howl now ye tempests, blow ye winds around— 5 Your gloomy sounds are music to my ear; Such as I never yet in zephyrs3 found, Tho’ fan’d by purple wings of vernal air. The gloomy sound, according with my wo, Spreads a soft melancholy o’er my mind, 10 That sooths my pangs, and gives the tender dow Of lenient drops, to sorrow ever kind. Ah! what avails my sorrows’ sad complaint, While in the grave my Lucius4 breathless lies? The turf enshrines the dust; the skies the saint; 15 But left behind the hapless mourner dies. Each day I "nd the anguish more severe; In crouds, in solitude, at home, abroad— Bereav’d of all my inmost soul held dear, I "nd her sinking fast beneath the load. 20 No change of circumstance, no varying scene, Can draw the deep, envenom’d, barbed dart: Tho’ care maternal, prompts the look serene;5 The anxious sigh, still wrings the mother’s heart. Oh! on this day, may each revolving year, 25 Be mark’d by nature’s sympathetic groan! Nor sighing gales, deny the pitying tear, While at his tomb, I make my silent moan! The weeping winds, report my tender grief— And see! a group celestial hastening down, 30 To share my wo, and bring my pain relief, By holding up a bright immortal crown! Religion "rst, with Heaven’s resplendent beam, Pres ents a glass to meet my tearful eye— Behold! behind this life’s impervious screen, 35 My fav’rite son, and wipe your sorrows dry. Then friendship, science, liberty, and truth, Write on his tomb, in characters sublime, Approve the efforts, of his age and youth, To hand their induence down to future time. 40 The graces too, by eloquence led on, With cypress garlands strew his hallowed grave:6 For they had fondly mark’d him as their own— But vain their power, and induence to save! In times when civil discord holds her court; 45 And vice triumphant, keeps his ancient post: When most is needed, such a "rm support, They mourn with me, their friend and patron lost.

EMELIA.

February 28, 1782 April 24, 1782

3. Breezes. 4. A pseudonym for Richard, as Emelia, at the end of the poem, is a pseudonym for Annis. 5. I.e., the widow “looks serene” for her children’s sake.

6. Since classical times, cypress has been associated with death. “Graces”: Greek god- desses of qualities such as charm, beauty, and creativity.

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1. Elizabeth Graeme Fergusson wrote out this poem in her copybook with a note explaining that it referred to Stockton’s grand son John Rush, the eldest son of Julia Stockton Rush and Benja- min Rush, who was six at the time the poem was composed. 2. A type of alcoholic beverage. 3. Where sailors registered with an of"cial before going to sea.

1. Elias Boudinot may have sent Washington a written copy of this poem in 1779. The poem was "rst published in Columbian Magazine 1. 2. Stockton’s home in Prince ton, New Jersey. 3. King George III’s British Army; possibly also a reference to Hessians, i.e., German merce- nary soldiers. 4. Richard Stockton had inspected Washing- ton’s troops in the late fall of 1776.

On a Little Boy Going to Play on a Place from Whence He Had Just Fallen1

So the wreckd mari ner who tos’d on shore Hears the wind whistle and the billows roar Hous’d in some humble cot he vows in vain Never to trust the faithless deep again But warm’d and cloath’d to the "rst port repairs 5 And in a can of dip2 forgets his fears. The Seamens Register3 he hastes to seek

And sets his name to sail within a week

c. 1783 1995

Addressed to General Washington, in the Year 1777, after the Battles of Trenton and Prince ton1

The muse affrighted at the clash of arms, And all the dire calamities of war, From Morven’s2 peaceful shades has long retir’d, And left her faithful votary to mourn, In sighs, not numbers, o’er her native land. 5 Dear native land, whom George’s hostile slaves3 Have drench’d with blood, and spread destruction round, But thou, thy country’s better genius come, Heroic Washington, and aid my song! While I the won ders of thy deeds relate, 10 Thy martial ardor, and thy temp’rate zeal— Describe the fortitude, the saint like patience, With which thou hast sustain’d the greatest load, That ever guardian of his country bore. What muse can sing the hardships thou endur’d; 15 Unarm’d, uncloth’d, undisciplin’d thy men;4 In winter’s cold unhospitable reign; And press’d by numerous hosts of veteran troops, All well appointed for the hardy "ght: When quite deserted by the tatter’d bands 20 Which form’d thy camp (all but a chosen few, Of spirits like thy own) was forced to dy

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5. Washington had been defeated twice in the Hudson River region: on Long Island in August 1776 and in White Plains in October. The Brit- ish continued to advance across the Hudson, pushing Washington’s troops through New Jersey. To escape the British, the Stocktons left Prince- ton in November. 6. The women of New Jersey. Stockton alludes to the name given to the region (Nova Caesaria) in a 1664 land grant from King Charles II to his brother James, the Duke of York and future King James II. 7. I.e., in Washington’s famous crossing of the Delaware River before his successful attack on Trenton on December 26, 1776. 8. Captured German mercenary soldiers, pre- sented in a manner that evokes the ancient Roman treatment of captives.

9. The Roman Empire. In his epic the Aeneid, the Roman poet Virgil (70–19 b.c.e.) relates Aeneas’s rescue of his father and others after the destruction of their city, Troy, and Aeneas’s sub- sequent founding of Rome’s parent town. 1. In Elysium, the ancient Greek Isles of the Blessed, where heroes and patriots went after death. “Laurel”: an evergreen plant traditionally used to crown heroes and other famous people. 2. Classical symbols of majesty. 3. Spirits. Marcus Porcius Cato (95–46 b.c.e) was the Roman defender of republican liberty and opponent of Julius Caesar. Sir Philip Sid- ney (1554–86)— English poet, statesman, and soldier— was a major exponent of classical repub- licanism in the time of Queen Elizabeth I. 4. French. 5. Arbor, attractive dwelling or retreat.

From Hudson’s side5 before the victor foe. Ah! who can paint the horrors of that morn, When fame, with brazen trumpet, sounded loud, 25 That Washington retreats! Caesaria’s maids,6 Old men and matrons, children at the breast, With hair dishevell’d, and with streaming eyes, Implore the God of battles to protect Thee, their best hope, and now their only care. 30 — Oh, greatly favour’d by the God of hosts! He gave to thee to turn the battle’s fate,7 And shew his power to potentates below: While lines of Hessian captive slaves8 announce Thy triumph, and their haughty lords disgrace. 35 — Not good Æneas who his father bore, And all his houshold gods from ruin’d Troy, Was more the founder of the Latian realm,9 Than thou the basis of this mighty fabric, Now rising to my view, of arms, of arts; 40 The seat of glory in the western world. — For thee awaits the patriots shining crown; The laurel blooms in blest elysian groves,1 That twin’d by angel hands shall grace thy brow. A vacant seat among the ancient heroes, 45 Of purple, amarynth and fragrant myrtle,2 Awaits for thee— high rais’d above the rest, By Cato, Sydney, and the sacred shades3 Of bright illustrious line, from Greece and Rome, Gallic,4 American or British shores, 50 And long to hail thee welcome to the bower.5 — Late may they lead thee to the blest abode, And may’st thou meet the plaudit of thy God, While future ages shall enroll thy name In sacred annals of immortal fame. 55

EMELIA.

1777 January 1787

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[L]ines on Hearing of the Death of Doctor Franklin1

Why do I see the power of Genius droop As if on earth they’d lost their only prop? Why do I hear the philanthrophist sigh, And meet each neighbour with a tearful eye; They shake their heads and pensive beat their breast 5 And say alas the friend of man’s at rest.— Franklin no more— his vast unbounded mind Set free to rove with knowledge uncon"n’d From globe to globe their magnitudes to scan Observe their distance motion and their plan 10 View systems new in beauteous order rise And "xed stars that dame in other Skies2 Thro boundless depths of ether3 to survey The electric duid "nd it self a way In forked lightnings wild excentric play4 15 Ah what a scene for philosophic lore— But think of this and ye will weep no more— How rapid is the soul’s immortal growth— How great its pro gress in the search of truth— Compar’d to this all former efforts faint— 20 And the deep sage perfected in the saint.— 5

1995

1. Franklin died in 1790. 2. Franklin’s scienti"c work included astronomy. 3. Here, the clear sky. 4. Franklin experimented to determine if light-

ning involved electricity. 5. All of Franklin’s achievements pale in com- parison to the “immortal growth” he has experi- enced in death.

JOHN ADAMS ABIGAIL ADAMS 1735–1826 1744–1818

T he correspondence between Abigail Adams and John Adams provides a com-pelling glimpse into the ways that personal lives and po liti cal aspirations inter- sected in the months leading up to the American Declaration of in de pen dence. The couple exchanged exceptionally vivid letters from the time of their courtship until John’s retirement. Passionate and articulate, they exchanged details of their daily activities and wrote about their hopes and fears in ways that bring the meaning of the Revolution alive.

Abigail Smith and John Adams were married on October 25, 1764, and they remained the closest of partners until Abigail’s death, more than "fty years later. She was the daughter of a wealthy Congregational minister from Weymouth, on the South Shore of Mas sa chu setts, and he— a man who was to become the second

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president of the United States— was the son of a farmer from nearby Braintree (now a part of Quincy, Mas sa chu setts). Abigail had no formal schooling because, as she often explained, she was frequently ill as a child. Although this was true, she observed in later years that girls and boys in her youth were not treated equally and that “ daughters” were “wholly neglected in point of Lit er a ture.” She grew up in her grand mother’s house, where “instruction and amusement” were blended together. With a remarkable native intelligence, easy access to her father’s library, and a good ear for assimilating conversation heard in the parsonage, she developed both a grasp of the Greek and Roman classics, which were constant references for the Revolutionary generation, and an appreciation for modern lit er a ture.

John Adams graduated from Harvard College in 1755. He taught school for a short time in Worcester, Mas sa chu setts, but the roles of teacher and preacher were too closely joined for his taste, and he was made uncomfortable by any association with “frigid” Calvinism. He studied law instead and was admitted to the Boston bar in 1758. The following year, he met Abigail. Although he preferred a country law practice to one in the city and trea sured his Braintree farm, he found it impossible to support a growing family— the Adamses eventually had "ve children— with only a country clientele, so in 1768 they moved to Boston. John Adams’s opposition to the British Parliament’s Stamp Act of 1765 and his defense of Mas sa chu setts radicals such as John Hancock identi"ed him as one who would support the cause of in de pen dence, and in June 1774 he was elected as a Mas sa chu setts delegate to the First Congress of the Colonies, later known as the First Continental Congress. He left Braintree for Philadelphia on August 10, and for the next twenty- six years, ten of them spent abroad, he was a famous and sometimes controversial "gure in American public life. He was elected vice president under George Washington for two terms (1788 and 1792) and president in 1796. After losing the presidential election of 1800 to Thomas Jefferson, he retired to Braintree, eager to lead the rural life he had spoken about so wistfully while holding public of"ce. During John’s public career, Abigail oversaw the daily life of the farm, astutely managing money, property, animals, and people.

From the time that John Adams left Mas sa chu setts in 1774 until he returned from Paris in 1783, the couple exchanged more than three hundred letters. Their grand son published a se lection in the nineteenth century, and new editions con- tinue to appear. Their correspondence was exceptional but not unusual. The art- fully composed personal letter, often intended for public or semipublic circulation, already had a long history when the En glish novelist Samuel Richardson helped make it an essential middle class genre with his induential writing guide, Letters Written to and for Par tic u lar Friends, on the Most Impor tant Occasions (1741). Rich- ardson, who also wrote the popular epistolary novels Pamela; or Virtue Rewarded (1740) and Cla ris sa: or, the History of a Young Lady (1748), made the letter form accessible to more kinds of writers, especially women.

An admirer of Richardson’s "ction, Abigail crafted her epistolary style with care. When she remonstrated with John, writing “That your Sex are Naturally Tyrannical is a Truth so thoroughly established as to admit of no dispute,” and pointedly instructed him to “Remember the Ladies” in the new “Code of Laws” then being contemplated or they would “foment a rebellion,” she used a language born in part from Richardson’s works. John, too, was induenced by Richardson, in one famous passage alluding to Cla ris sa: more skeptical of extending po liti cal and legal rights than his wife, John Adams complained to a dif fer ent correspondent, “Democracy is Lovelace, and the people are Cla ris sa. The artful villain will pursue the innocent lovely girl to her ruin and her death.” Notwithstanding this difference in perspec- tive, the letters between Abigail and John provide an extraordinary rec ord of a long and happy marriage as well as a vivid portrait of a nation seeking its identity.

From The Letters1

Abigail Adams to John Adams

[classical parallels]

Braintree August 19 1774 The great distance between us, makes the time appear very long to me. It

seems already a month since you left me.2 The great anxiety I feel for my Country, for you and for our family renders the day tedious, and the night unpleasant. The Rocks and quick Sands appear upon every Side. What course you can or will take is all wrapt in the Bosom of futurity. Uncertainty and expectation leave the mind great Scope. Did ever any Kingdom or State regain their Liberty, when once it was invaded [,] without Blood shed? I can- not think of it without horror.

Yet we are told that all the Misfortunes of Sparta were occasiond by their too great Sollicitude for pres ent tranquility, and by an excessive love of peace they neglected the means of making it sure and lasting.3 They ought to have redected says Polibius that as there is nothing more desirable, or advantages4 than peace, when founded in justice and honour, so there is nothing more

1. The texts are from Adams Family Correspon- dence (1963), two vols., edited by L. H. Butter- "eld. The original spellings are unchanged. The bracketed insertions are Butter"eld’s. Words in angle brackets identify the writer’s earlier choice of a word. 2. John had left Braintree on August 10. 3. In 338 b.c.e., Philip II, king of Macedon

(382–336 b.c.e.), invaded Greece. The citizens of the Greek city of Sparta protected only their own territory and not the other Greek city-states. As a result Greece fell and subsequently was transformed from a democracy into a monarchy. 4. Advantageous. “Polibius”: Polybius (c. 205– 125 b.c.e.), Greek historian and author of a his- tory of Rome.

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Abigail Adams and John Adams. Benjamin Blyth executed these pastel portraits of the Adamses in 1766. Perhaps the most famous married couple in the new republic, the Adamses carried on an extensive and revealing correspondence about po liti cal as well as domestic matters.

L E T T E R S | 6 6 7

5. Mercy Otis Warren (1728–1814), Mas sa- chu setts writer, well known as a correspondent and friend of the leading po liti cal "gures of her day; wife of the statesman James Warren (1726– 1808). 6. Philip of Macedon had invaded Greece under the pretext that part of a Greek tribe known as the Locrians, in the town of Amphissa, were resisting the authority of the Amphictionic League, a neighboring council of states. 7. John owned the "fth edition (1768) of Ancient History, by Charles Rollion (1661–1741), rector of

the University of Paris. 8. Their seven- year- old son. 9. Julius Caesar died on the Ides of March in 44 b.c.e. 1. Thomas Cushing (1725–1788), a Mas sa chu- setts delegate to the Continental Congress. 2. John Rutledge (1739–1800), later governor of South Carolina. John Jay (1745–1829), New York jurist. 3. Samuel Adams (1722–1803), a Mas sa chu setts patriot.

shameful and at the same time more pernicious when attained by bad mea- sures, and purchased at the price of liberty.

I have received a most charming Letter from our Friend Mrs. W[arre]n.5 She desires me to tell you that her best wishes attend you thro your journey both as a Friend and patriot— hopes you will have no uncommon dif"cul- ties to surmount or Hostile Movements to impeade you— but if the Locri- ans should interrupt you, she hop[e]s you will beware that no future Annals may say you chose an ambitious Philip for your Leader, who subverted the noble order of the American Amphyctions, and built up a Monarchy on the Ruins of the happy institution.6

I have taken a very great fondness for reading Rollin’s ancient History since you left me.7 I am determined to go thro with it if pos si ble in these my days of solitude. I "nd great plea sure and entertainment from it, and I have per- swaided Johnny8 to read me a page or two every day, and hope he will from his desire to oblige me entertain a fondness for it.— We have had a charming rain which lasted 12 hours and has greatly revived the dying fruits of the earth.

I want much to hear from you. I long impatiently to have you upon the Stage of action. The "rst of September or the month of September, perhaps may be of as much importance to Great Britan as the Ides of March were to Ceaser.9 I wish you every Publick as well, as private blessing, and that wis- dom which is pro"table both for instruction and edi"cation to conduct you in this dif"cult day.— The little dock remember Pappa, and kindly wish to see him. So does your most affectionate

Abigail Adams

1774 1848

John Adams to Abigail Adams

[prayers at the congress]

Phyladelphia Septr. 16. 1774 Having a Leisure Moment, while the Congress is assembling, I gladly

embrace it to write you a Line. When the Congress "rst met, Mr. Cushing1 made a Motion, that it should

be opened with Prayer. It was opposed by Mr. Jay of N. York and Mr. Rut- ledge of South Carolina,2 because we were so divided in religious Sentiments, some Episcopalians, some Quakers, some Anabaptists, some Presbyterians, and some Congregationalists, so that We could not join in the same Act of Worship.— Mr. S. Adams3 arose and said he was no Bigot, and could hear a Prayer from a Gentleman of Piety and Virtue, who was at the same Time a Friend to his Country. He was a Stranger in Phyladelphia, but had heard

4. Jacob Duché (1737–1798), assistant rector of Christ Church and St. Peter’s in Philadelphia. 5. Made a formal call on. Peyton Randolph (1721?–1775), a public of"cial from Virginia, was president of the Continental Congress. 6. I.e., in the form set down by the Church of Eng land. “Ponti"callibus”: priestly attire. 7. “Plead my cause, O Lord, with them that strive with me: "ght against them that "ght against me” (Psalm 35.1). “Collect”: the prayer assigned to be read before the Epistle, or liturgical lesson. 8. Bombardment. 9. Samuel Cooper (1725–1783), minister of the Brattle Street Church, Boston. 1. The Bible and the works of the Roman poet

Virgil (70–19 b.c.e.) and the Greek epic poet Homer were thought to have magical properties: a passage opened to at random (in Latin the sortes, or “chance oracles”) had relevance to one’s life and future. I.e., the choice of Psalm 35 is prophetic. 2. Showing discernment. 3. Duché later supported the Crown and ded to Eng land. 4. Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790; see his head- note, above) returned to Philadelphia from Eng land in May 1775. The Pennsylvania Assem- bly then elected him to the Second Continental Congress (May 1775– March 1781).

that Mr. Duchè (Dushay they pronounce it) deserved that Character, and therefore he moved that Mr. Duchè, an episcopal Clergyman,4 might be desired, to read Prayers to the Congress, tomorrow Morning. The Motion was seconded and passed in the Af"rmative. Mr. Randolph our President, waited on5 Mr. Duchè, and received for Answer that if his Health would permit, he certainly would. Accordingly next Morning he appeared with his Clerk and in his Ponti"callibus, and read several Prayers, in the established Form;6 and then read the Collect for the seventh day of September, which was the Thirty "fth Psalm.7— You must remember this was the next Morn- ing after we heard the horrible Rumour, of the Cannonade8 of Boston.— I never saw a greater Effect upon an Audience. It seemed as if Heaven had ordained that Psalm to be read on that Morning.

After this Mr. Duchè, unexpected to every Body struck out into an extem- porary Prayer, which "lled the Bosom of every Man pres ent. I must confess I never heard a better Prayer or one, so well pronounced. Episcopalian as he is, Dr. Cooper9 himself never prayed with such fervour, such Ardor, such Ear- nestness and Pathos, and in Language so elegant and sublime— for Amer i ca, for the Congress, for The Province of Mas sa chu setts Bay, and especially the Town of Boston. It has had an excellent Effect upon every Body here.

I must beg you to read that Psalm. If there was any Faith in the sortes Virgilianæ, or sortes Homericæ, or especially the Sortes biblicæ, it would be thought providential.1

It will amuse your Friends to read this Letter and the 35th. Psalm to them. Read it to your Father and Mr. Wibirt.— I won der what our Braintree Church- men would think of this?— Mr. Duchè is one of the most ingenious2 Men, and best Characters, and greatest orators in the Episcopal order, upon this Continent— Yet a Zealous Friend of Liberty and his Country.3

I long to see my dear Family. God bless, preserve and prosper it. Adieu. John Adams

1774 1875

John Adams to Abigail Adams

[dr. franklin]

July 23 1775 My Dear You have more than once in your Letters mentioned Dr. Franklin,4 and in one intimated a Desire that I should write you something concerning him.

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5. Revealed. 6. John Dickinson (1732–1808), elected to the Continental Congress by the Pennsylvania Assembly, wrote two petitions— one in 1774, the other at the start of July 1775— that attempted but failed to reconcile with Great Britain. 7. James Wilson (1742–1798), a lawyer, was elected to the Second Continental Congress by

the Pennsylvania Assembly along with Thomas Willing (1732–1821), a banker, and Franklin. 8. Edward Biddle (1738–1779), a lawyer, was often ill. 9. I.e., Dickinson and Willing. Thomas Mifdin (1744–1800), a merchant, had left for the army (“Camp”). John Morton (1724?–1777), a jurist, was often ill.

Dr. Franklin has been very constant in his Attendance on Congress from the Beginning. His Conduct has been composed and grave and in the Opin- ion of many Gentlemen very reserved. He has not assumed any Thing, nor affected to take the lead; but has seemed to choose that the Congress should pursue their own Princi ples and sentiments and adopt their own Plans: Yet he has not been backward: has been very usefull, on many occasions, and discovered5 a Disposition entirely American. He does not hesitate at our boldest Mea sures, but rather seems to think us, too irresolute, and backward. He thinks us at pres ent in an odd State, neither in Peace nor War, neither dependent nor in de pen dent. But he thinks that We shall soon assume a Character more decisive.

He thinks, that We have the Power of preserving ourselves, and that even if We should be driven to the disagreable Necessity of assuming a total Inde- pen dency, and set up a separate state, We could maintain it. The People of Eng land, have thought that the Opposition in Amer i ca, was wholly owing to Dr. Franklin: and I suppose their scribblers will attribute the Temper, and Proceedings of this Congress to him: but there cannot be a greater Mistake. He has had but little share farther than to co operate and assist. He is how- ever a great and good Man. I wish his Colleagues from this City were All like him, particularly one, whose Abilities and Virtues, formerly trumpeted so much in Amer i ca, have been found wanting.6

There is a young Gentleman from Pensylvania whose Name is Wilson, whose Fortitude, Rectitude, and Abilities too, greatly outshine his Masters.7 Mr. Biddle, the Speaker, has been taken off, by Sickness.8 Mr. Mifdin is gone to the Camp, Mr. Morton is ill too, so that this Province has suffered by the Timidity of two overgrown Fortunes.9 The Dread of Con"scation, or Caprice, I know not what has induenced them too much: Yet they were for taking Arms and pretended to be very valiant.— This Letter must be secret my dear—at least communicated with great Discretion. Yours,

John Adams

1775 1875

John Adams to Abigail Adams

[prejudice in favor of new eng land]

Octr. 29. 1775 There is, in the human Breast, a social Affection, which extends to our

whole Species. Faintly indeed; but in some degree. The Nation, Kingdom, or Community to which We belong is embraced by it more vigorously. It is stronger still towards the Province to which we belong, and in which We had our Birth. It is stronger and stronger, as We descend to the County, Town, Parish, Neighbourhood, and Family, which We call our own.— And

1. I.e., to attend a Congregational church unless speci"cally exempted. 2. The distribution of property when no will

exists. 3. Some have fevers, and some have unnatural retention of water in any part of the body.

here We "nd it often so powerfull as to become partial, to blind our Eyes, to darken our Understandings and pervert our Wills.

It is to this In"rmity, in my own Heart, that I must perhaps attribute that local Attachment, that partial Fondness, that overweening Prejudice in favour of New Eng land, which I feel very often and which I fear sometimes, leads me to expose myself to just Ridicule.

New Eng land has in many Re spects the Advantage of every other Colony in Amer i ca, and indeed of every other Part of the World, that I know any Thing of.

1. The People are purer En glish Blood, less mixed with Scotch, Irish, Dutch, French, Danish, Sweedish &c. than any other; and descended from En glishmen too who left Eu rope, in purer Times than the pres ent and less tainted with Corruption than those they left behind them.

2. The Institutions in New Eng land for the Support of Religion, Morals and Decency, exceed any other, obliging every Parish to have a Minister, and every Person to go to Meeting &c.1

3. The public Institutions in New Eng land for the Education of Youth, supporting Colledges at the public Expence and obliging Towns to maintain Grammar schools, is not equalled and never was in any Part of the World.

4. The Division of our Territory, that is our Counties into Townships, empowering Towns to assem ble, choose of"cers, make Laws, mend roads, and twenty other Things, gives every Man an opportunity of shewing and improving that Education which he received at Colledge or at school, and makes Knowledge and Dexterity at public Business common.

5. Our Laws for the Distribution of Intestate Estates2 occasions a frequent Division of landed Property and prevents Monopolies, of Land.

But in opposition to these We have laboured under many Disadvantages. The exorbitant Prerogatives of our Governors &c. which would have overborn our Liberties, if it had not been opposed by the "ve preceding Particulars.

1775 1875

Abigail Adams to John Adams

[the building up a great empire]

November 27 1775 Tis a fortnight to Night since I wrote you a line during which, I have been

con"ned with the Jaundice, Rhumatism and a most voilent cold; I yesterday took a puke which has releived me, and I feel much better to day. Many, very many people who have had the dysentery, are now afdicted both with the Jaundice and Rhumatisim, some it has left in Hecticks, some in dropsies.3

The great and incessant rains we have had this fall, (the like cannot be recollected) may have occasiond some of the pres ent disorders. The Jaun- dice is very prevelant in the Camp. We have lately had a week of very cold weather, as cold as January, and a dight of snow, which I hope will purify the air of some of the noxious vapours. It has spoild many hundreds of

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4. James Warren (see n. 5, p. 667). 5. On November  11, the Mas sa chu setts House of Representatives extended the commissions of the delegates to the Continental Congress.

6. Being made. 7. John Thaxter, Jr. (1775–1791), Abigail’s cousin and a law clerk. Jonathan Mason (1756–1831), at the time a law clerk.

Bushels of Apples, which were designd for cider, and which the great rains had prevented people from making up. Suppose we have lost 5 Barrels by it.

Col. Warren4 returnd last week to Plymouth, so that I shall not hear any thing from you till he goes back again which will not be till the last of <next> this month.

He Damp’d my Spirits greatly by telling me that the Court had prolonged your Stay an other month.5 I was pleasing myself with the thoughts that you would soon be upon your return. Tis in vain to repine. I hope the publick will reap what I sacri"ce.

I wish I knew what mighty things were fabricating.6 If a form of Gover- ment is to be established here what one will be assumed? Will it be left to our assemblies to chuse one? and will not many men have many minds? and shall we not run into Dissentions among ourselves?

I am more and more convinced that Man is a dangerous creature, and that power whether vested in many or a few is ever grasping, and like the grave cries give, give. The great "sh swallow up the small, and he who is most strenuous for the Rights of the people, when vested with power, is as eager after the perogatives of Government. You tell me of degrees of perfec- tion to which Humane Nature is capable of arriving, and I believe it, but at the same time lament that our admiration should arise from the scarcity of the instances.

The Building up a Great Empire, which was only hinted at by my corre- spondent may now I suppose be realized even by the unbelievers. Yet will not ten thousand Dif"culties arise in the formation of it? The Reigns of Gov- ernment have been so long slakned, that I fear the people will not quietly submit to those restraints which are necessary for the peace, and security, of the community; if we seperate from Brittain, what Code of Laws will be established. How shall we be governd so as to retain our Liberties? Can any government be free which is not adminstred by general stated Laws? Who shall frame these Laws? Who will give them force and energy? Tis true your Resolution[s] as a Body have heithertoo had the force of Laws. But will they continue to have?

When I consider these things and the prejudices of people in favour of Ancient customs and Regulations, I feel anxious for the fate of our Monar- chy or Democracy or what ever is to take place. I soon get lost in a Laby- rinth of perplexities, but what ever occurs, may justice and righ teousness be the Stability of our times, and order arise out of confusion. Great dif"cul- ties may be surmounted, by patience and perserverance.

I believe I have tired you with politicks. As to news we have not any at all. I shudder at the approach of winter when I think I am to remain desolate. Suppose your weather is warm yet. Mr. Mason and Thaxter7 live with me, and render some part of my time less disconsolate. Mr. Mason is a youth who will please you, he has Spirit, taste and Sense. His application to his Studies is constant and I am much mistaken if he does not make a very good "gure in his profession.

8. Susanna Adams (1766–1826) was the daughter of Elihu and Thankful Adams. Elihu, John’s younger brother, died of dysentery while serving in the Continental Army. 9. Like “him” in the next sentence, pappa (i.e., John). 1. On March  17, 1776, the British evacuated Boston, having been defeated by General George Washington and his forces. Abigail anticipates that the front will move to Virginia (rather than

New York, as proved to be the case). 2. In 1775, John Murray, Lord Dunmore (1730- 1809), a Scottish nobleman who served as Virginia’s "nal royal governor, proclaimed martial law in that colony to thwart the rebel cause. George Washington was born in West moreland County, Virginia. 3. Prob ably Richard Cranch (1726-1811), Mas- sa chu setts legislator and husband of Abigail’s sister Mary (1741-1811).

I have with me now, the only Daughter of your Brother; I feel a tenderer affection for her as she has lost a kind parent.8 Though too young to be sen- sible of her own loss, I can pitty her. She appears to be a child of a very good Disposition— only wants to be a little used to com pany.

Our Little ones send Duty to pappa and want much to see him. Tom says he9 wont come home till the Battle is over— some strange notion he has got into his head. He has got a po liti cal cread to say to him when he returns.

I must bid you good night. Tis late for one who am much of an invalide. I was dissapointed last week in receiving a packet by the post, and upon unseal- ing it found only four news papers. I think you are more cautious than you need be. All Letters I believe have come safe to hand. I have Sixteen from you, and wish I had as many more. Adieu. Yours.

1775 1848

Abigail Adams to John Adams

[remember the ladies]

Braintree March 31 1776 I wish you would ever write me a Letter half as long as I write you; and

tell me if you may where your Fleet are gone? What sort of Defence Virginia can make against our common Enemy? Whether it is so situated as to make an able Defence?1 Are not the Gentery Lords and the common people vassals, are they not like the uncivilized Natives Brittain repre- sents us to be? I hope their Riffel Men who have shewen themselves very savage and even Blood thirsty; are not a specimen of the Generality of the people.

I am willing to allow the Colony great merrit for having produced a Wash- ington but they have been shamefully duped by a Dunmore.2

I have sometimes been ready to think that the passion for Liberty cannot be Eaquelly Strong in the Breasts of those who have been accustomed to deprive their fellow Creatures of theirs. Of this I am certain that it is not founded upon that generous and christian principal of doing to others as we would that others should do unto us.

Do not you want to see Boston; I am fearfull of the small pox, or I should have been in before this time. I got Mr. Crane3 to go to our House and see what state it was in. I "nd it has been occupied by one of the Doctors of a Regiment, very dirty, but no other damage has been done to it. The few things which were left in it are all gone. Cranch has the key which he never deliverd up. I have wrote to him for it and am determined to get it cleand as soon as pos si ble and shut it up. I look upon it a new acquisition of property,

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4. Samuel Quincy (1735-1793). “Your president”: John Hancock (1737-1793), president of the Sec- ond Continental Congress. 5. I.e., patricide: killer of one’s own father. 6. I.e., industry: labor.

7. I.e., gaieté de Coeur: gaiety of heart (French). 8. Boston was under siege from April 19, 1775, through March 17, 1776. “Least”: i.e., lest. 9. I.e., pusillanimity: timidity.

a property which one month ago I did not value at a single Shilling, and could with plea sure have seen it in dames.

The Town in General is left in a better state than we expected, more owe- ing to a percipitate dight than any Regard to the inhabitants, tho some indi- viduals discoverd a sense of honour and justice and have left the rent of the Houses in which they were, for the owners and the furniture unhurt, or if damaged suf"cent to make it good.

Others have committed abominable Ravages. The Mansion House of your President is safe and the furniture unhurt whilst both the House and Fur- niture of the Solisiter General4 have fallen a prey to their own merciless party. Surely the very Fiends feel a Reverential awe for Virtue and patrio- tism, whilst they Detest the paricide5 and traitor.

I feel very differently at the approach of spring to what I did a month ago. We knew not then whether we could plant or sow with safety, whether when we had toild we could reap the fruits of our own industery,6 whether we could rest in our own Cottages, or whether we should not be driven from the sea coasts to seek shelter in the wilderness, but now we feel as if we might sit under our own vine and eat the good of the land.

I feel a gaieti de Coar7 to which before I was a stranger. I think the Sun looks brighter, the Birds sing more melodiously, and Nature puts on a more chearfull countanance. We feel a temporary peace, and the poor fugitives are returning to their deserted habitations.

Tho we felicitate ourselves, we sympathize with those who are trembling least the Lot of Boston should be theirs.8 But they cannot be in similar cir- cumstances unless pusilanimity9 and cowardise should take possession of them. They have time and warning given them to see the Evil and shun it— I long to hear that you have declared an independancy— and by the way in the new Code of Laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make I desire you would Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favour- able to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. If perticuliar care and attention is not paid to the Laidies we are determined to foment a Rebelion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice, or Repre sen ta tion.

That your Sex are Naturally Tyrannical is a Truth so thoroughly estab- lished as to admit of no dispute, but such of you as wish to be happy will- ingly give up the harsh title of Master for the more tender and endearing one of Friend. Why then, not put it out of the power of the vicious and the Lawless to use us with cruelty and indignity with impunity. Men of Sense in all Ages abhor those customs which treat us only as the vassals of your Sex. Regard us then as Beings placed by providence under your protection and in immitation of the Supreem Being make use of that power only for our happiness.

1776

1. Miss Mary Palmer (“Mrs.” here stands for “Mistress”; 1746–1791), a niece of Richard and Mary Cranch. 2. I.e., to see the Continental Navy’s warships (men- o’- war). 3. Thomas Bul"nch (1728–1802), an  M.D., inoculated Abigail Adams, her children, and her friends and family members against smallpox.

4. I.e., the "rst group to be inoculated. 5. Katherine Quincy (1733–1804), a relative of Abigail’s. Peter Whitney (1744–1816), minister and patriot. 6. In an earlier letter, Abigail had informed John that James Warren had declined an appointment as associate justice of the Mas sa chu setts Superior Court.

John Adams to Abigail Adams

[ these colonies are free and in de pen dent states]

Philadelphia July 3. 1776 Your Favour of June 17. dated at Plymouth, was handed me, by Yesterdays

Post. I was much pleased to "nd that you had taken a Journey to Plymouth, to see your Friends in the long Absence of one whom you may wish to see. The Excursion will be an Amusement, and will serve your Health. How happy would it have made me to have taken this Journey with you?

I was informed, a day or two before the Receipt of your Letter, that you was gone to Plymouth, by Mrs. Polly Palmer,1 who was obliging enough in your Absence, to inform me, of the Particulars of the Expedition to the lower Harbour against the Men of War.2 Her Narration is executed, with a Preci- sion and Perspicuity, which would have become the Pen of an accomplished Historian.

I am very glad you had so good an opportunity of seeing one of our little American Men of War. Many Ideas, new to you, must have presented them- selves in such a Scene; and you will in future, better understand the Rela- tions of Sea Engagements.

I rejoice extreamly at Dr. Bul"nches Petition to open an Hospital.3 But I hope, the Business will be done upon a larger Scale. I hope, that one Hos- pital will be licensed in every County, if not in every Town. I am happy to "nd you resolved, to be with the Children, in the "rst Class.4 Mr. Whitney and Mrs. Katy Quincy,5 are cleverly through Innoculation, in this City.

I have one favour to ask, and that is, that in your future Letters, you would acknowledge the Receipt of all those you may receive from me, and men- tion their Dates. By this Means I shall know if any of mine miscarry.

The Information you give me of our Friends refusing his Appointment, has given me much Pain, Grief and Anxiety.6 I believe I shall be obliged to follow his Example. I have not Fortune enough to support my Family, and what is of more Importance, to support the Dignity of that exalted Station. It is too high and lifted up, for me; who delight in nothing so much as Retreat, Solitude, Silence, and Obscurity. In private Life, no one has a Right to cen- sure me for following my own Inclinations, in Retirement, Simplicity, and Frugality: in public Life, every Man has a Right to remark as he pleases, at least he thinks so.

Yesterday the greatest Question was deci ded, which ever was debated in Amer i ca, and a greater perhaps, never was or will be deci ded among Men. A Resolution was passed without one dissenting Colony “that these united Colonies, are, and of right ought to be free and in de pen dent States, and as such, they have, and of Right ought to have full Power to make War, con- clude Peace, establish Commerce, and to do all the other Acts and Things,

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7. Butter"eld notes that this letter “and the next one of the same date were written between the act of in de pen dence itself and the adoption of the statement designed to ‘ justify it in the sight of God and man.’ ” On June 7, Richard Henry Lee (1732–1794), from Virginia, moved “that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, Free and In de pen dent States.” Lee’s motion was carried on July 2 after vigorous debate. A commit- tee was appointed to prepare a formal declara- tion, and this document, written largely by Thomas Jefferson, was adopted July 4, 1776.

8. Writs of assistance were general search war- rants and, as such, a threat to civil liberty. 9. Here and below, the ellipses are in the manu- script. 1. The Continental Army invaded Canada in June 1775. Their aim was to win control of Que- bec and recruit French Canadians to their side. They were defeated in an assault on Quebec City in December of that year. The army suffered badly from smallpox, which contributed to the defeat.

which other States may rightfully do.” You will see in a few days a Declara- tion setting forth the Causes, which have impell’d Us to this mighty Revo- lution, and the Reasons which will justify it, in the Sight of God and Man.7 A Plan of Confederation will be taken up in a few days.

When I look back to the Year 1761, and recollect the Argument concern- ing Writs of Assistance, in the Superiour Court, which I have hitherto con- sidered as the Commencement of the Controversy, between Great Britain and Amer i ca,8 and run through the whole Period from that Time to this, and recollect the series of po liti cal Events, the Chain of Causes and Effects, I am surprized at the Suddenness, as well as Greatness of this Revolution. Britain has been "ll’d with Folly, and Amer i ca with Wisdom, at least this is my Judgment.— Time must determine. It is the Will of Heaven, that the two Countries should be sundered forever. It may be the Will of Heaven that Amer i ca shall suffer Calamities still more wasting and Distresses yet more dreadfull. If this is to be the Case, it will have this good Effect, at least: it will inspire Us with many Virtues, which We have not, and correct many Errors, Follies, and Vices, which threaten to disturb, dishonour, and destroy Us.— The Furnace of Afdiction produces Re"nement, in States as well as Individuals. And the new Governments we are assuming, in every Part, will require a Puri"cation from our Vices, and an Augmentation of our Virtues or they will be no Blessings. The People will have unbounded Power. And the People are extreamly addicted to Corruption and Venality, as well as the Great.— I am not without Apprehensions from this Quarter. But I must sub- mit all my Hopes and Fears, to an overruling Providence, in which, unfash- ionable as the Faith may be, I "rmly believe.

1776 1792

John Adams to Abigail Adams

[reflections on the declaration of in de pen dence]

Philadelphia July 3d. 1776 Had a Declaration of Inde pen dency been made seven Months ago, it would

have been attended with many great and glorious Effects.9 . . . We might before this Hour, have formed Alliances with foreign States.— We should have mastered Quebec and been in Possession of Canada1. . . . You will per- haps won der, how such a Declaration would have induenced our Affairs, in Canada, but if I could write with Freedom I could easily convince you, that it would, and explain to you the manner how.— Many Gentlemen in high Stations and of great Induence have been duped, by the ministerial Bubble

2. Negotiate. 3. Conquest.

of Commissioners to treat.2 . . . And in real, sincere Expectation of this Event, which they so fondly wished, they have been slow and languid, in pro- moting Mea sures for the Reduction3 of that Province. Others there are in the Colonies who really wished that our Enterprise in Canada would be defeated, that the Colonies might be brought into Danger and Distress between two Fires, and be thus induced to submit. Others really wished to defeat the Expedition to Canada, lest the Conquest of it, should elevate the Minds of the People too much to hearken to those Terms of Reconcilia- tion which they believed would be offered Us. These jarring Views, Wishes and Designs, occasioned an opposition to many salutary Mea sures, which were proposed for the Support of that Expedition, and caused Obstruc- tions, Embarrassments and studied Delays, which have " nally, lost Us the Province.

All these Causes however in Conjunction would not have disappointed Us, if it had not been for a Misfortune, which could not be foreseen, and per- haps could not have been prevented, I mean the Prevalence of the small Pox among our Troops. . . . This fatal Pestilence compleated our Destruction.— It is a Frown of Providence upon Us, which We ought to lay to heart.

But on the other Hand, the Delay of this Declaration to this Time, has many great Advantages attending it.— The Hopes of Reconciliation, which were fondly entertained by Multitudes of honest and well meaning tho weak and mistaken People, have been gradually and at last totally extinguished.— Time has been given for the whole People, maturely to consider the great Question of In de pen dence and to ripen their Judgments, dissipate their Fears, and allure their Hopes, by discussing it in News Papers and Pam- phletts, by debating it, in Assemblies, Conventions, Committees of Safety and Inspection, in Town and County Meetings, as well as in private Con- versations, so that the whole People in every Colony of the 13, have now adopted it, as their own Act.— This will cement the Union, and avoid those Heats and perhaps Convulsions which might have been occasioned, by such a Declaration Six Months ago.

But the Day is past. The Second Day of July 1776, will be the most mem- orable Epocha, in the History of Amer i ca.— I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bon"res and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.

You will think me transported with Enthusiasm but I am not.— I am well aware of the Toil and Blood and Trea sure, that it will cost Us to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these States.— Yet through all the Gloom I can see the Rays of ravishing Light and Glory. I can see that the End is more than worth all the Means. And that Posterity will tryumph in that Days Transaction, even altho We should rue it, which I trust in God We shall not.

1776 1792

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4. Matthew 7.24–25 describes “a wise man, which built his house upon a rock: And the rain descended, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock.”

5. On these revisions, see Thomas Jefferson’s account, later in this volume. 6. Norton Quincy (1716–1801), public servant. “Jonathan”: Abigail’s servant or farm boy. 7. A veterinarian in Braintree.

Abigail Adams to John Adams

[the declaration. smallpox. the grey horse]

* * *

Sunday july 14 [1776] By yesterdays post I received two Letters dated 3 and 4 of July and tho

your Letters never fail to give me plea sure, be the subject what it will, yet it was greatly heightned by the prospect of the future happiness and glory of our Country; nor am I a little Grati"ed when I redect that a person so nearly connected with me has had the Honour of being a principal actor, in laying a foundation for its future Greatness. May the foundation of our new con- stitution, be justice, Truth and Righ teousness. Like the wise Mans house may it be founded upon those Rocks and then neither storms or temptests will overthrow it.4

I cannot but feel sorry that some of the most Manly Sentiments in the Declaration are Expunged from the printed coppy. Perhaps wise reasons induced it.5

Poor Canady I lament Canady but we ought to be in some mea sure suf- ferers for the past folly of our conduct. The fatal effects of the small pox there, has led almost every person to consent to Hospitals in every Town. In many Towns, already arround Boston the Selectmen have granted Liberty for innoculation. I hope the necessity is now fully seen.

I had many dissagreable Sensations at the Thoughts of comeing myself, but to see my children thro it I thought my duty, and all those feelings van- ished as soon as I was innoculated and I trust a kind providence will carry me safely thro. Our Friends from Plymouth came into Town yesterday. We have enough upon our hands in the morning. The Little folks are very sick then and puke every morning but after that they are comfortable. I shall write you now very often. Pray inform me constantly of every im por tant transaction. Every expression of tenderness is a cordial to my Heart. Unim- portant as they are to the rest of the world, to me they are every Thing.

We have had during all the month of June a most severe Drougth which cut of all our promising hopes of en glish Grain and the "rst crop of Grass, but since july came in we have had a plenty of rain and now every thing looks well. There is one Misfortune in our family which I have never mentioned in hopes it would have been in my power to have remedied it, but all hopes of that kind are at an end. It is the loss of your Grey Horse. About 2 months ago, I had occasion to send Jonathan of an errant to my unkle Quincys6 (the other Horse being a plowing). Upon his return a little below the church she trod upon a rolling stone and lamed herself to that degree that it was with great dif"culty that she could be got home. I immediately sent for Tirrel7 and every thing was done for her by Baths, ointments, polticeing, Bleeding &c. that could be done. Still she continued extreem lame tho not so bad as

8. Another veterinarian. 9. Light house. 1. The manuscript is torn here and below. 2. In New Hampshire. 3. Their daughter Abigail’s nickname. 4. Abigail’s sister Elizabeth (1742–1816). 5. Abigail’s pseudoym refers to Portia Catonis (c. 70–43 b.c.e.), wife of the Roman politician

Marcus Junius Brutus (85–42 b.c.e.). Brutus is the most famous assassin of the Roman states- man and general Julius Caesar (100–44 b.c.e.). 6. Tea, an import of the British East India com- pany. 7. Dr. Cotton Tufts (1732–1815), Abigail’s uncle by marriage.

at "rst. I then got her carried to Domet8 but he pronounces her incurable, as a callous is grown upon her footlock joint. You can hardly tell, not even by your own feelings how much I lament her. She was not with foal, as you immagined, but I hope she is now as care has been taken in that Res pect.

I suppose you have heard of a deet which came up pretty near the Light9 and kept us all with our mouths open ready to catch them, but after staying near a week and makeing what observations they could set sail and went of to our great morti"cation who were [prepared?]1 for them in every res pect. If our Ship of 32 Guns which [was] Built at Portsmouth2 and waiting only for Guns and an other of [ . . . ] at Plimouth in the same state, had been in readiness we should in all probability been Masters of them. Where the blame lies in that res pect I know not, tis laid upon Congress, and Congress is also blamed for not appointing us a General.— But Rome was not Built in a day.

I hope the Multiplicity of cares and avocations which invellope you will not be too powerfull for you. I have many anxietyes upon that account. Nabby3 and Johnny send duty and desire Mamma to say that an indamation in their Eyes which has been as much of a distemper as the small pox, has prevented their writing, but they hope soon to be able to acquaint Pappa of their happy recovery from the Distemper.— Mr. C[ranch] and wife, Sister B[etsy]4 and all our Friend[s] desire to be rememberd to you and foremost in that Number stands your

Portia5

PS A little India herb6 would have been mighty agreable now.

1776 1875

John Adams to Abigail Adams

[do my friends think i have forgotten my wife and children?]

Philadelphia July 20, 1776 This has been a dull day to me: I waited the Arrival of the Post with much

Solicitude and Impatience, but his Arrival made me more solicitous still.— “To be left at the Post Of"ce” in your Hand Writing, on the back of a few Lines from the Dr.7 were all that I could learn of you, and my little Folks. If you was too busy to write, I hoped that some kind Hand would have been found to let me know something about you.

Do my Friends think that I have been a Politician so long as to have lost all feeling? Do they suppose I have forgotten my Wife and Children? Or are they so panic struck with the Loss of Canada, as to be afraid to correspond with me? Or have they forgotten that you have an Husband and your Children a Father? What have I done, or omitted to do, that I should be thus forgotten

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8. The medical profession. 9. Church ser vice. 1. Named after Daniel Sutton (1735–1819), of

Essex, Mas sa chu setts. His method required only a small puncture instead of the customary gash to infect the subject.

and neglected in the most tender and affecting scæne of my Life! Dont mistake me, I dont blame you. Your Time and Thoughts must have been wholly taken up, with your own and your Families situation and Necessities.— But twenty other Persons might have informed me.

I suspect, that you intended to have run slyly, through the small Pox with the family, without letting me know it, and then have sent me an Account that you were all well. This might be a kind Intention, and if the design had succeeded, would have made me very joyous. But the secret is out, and I am left to conjecture. But as the Faculty8 have this distemper so much under Command I will datter myself with the Hope and Expectation of soon hear- ing of your Recovery.

1776 1875

Abigail Adams to John Adams

[smallpox. the proclamation for in de pen dence read aloud]

July 21 1776 Boston I have no doubt but that my dearest Friend is anxious to know how his

Portia does, and his little dock of children under the opperation of a dis- ease once so formidable.

I have the plea sure to tell him that they are all comfortable tho some of them complaining. Nabby has been very ill, but the Eruption begins to make its appearance upon her, and upon Johnny. Tommy is so well that the Dr. innoculated him again to day fearing it had not taken. Charlly has no complaints yet, tho his arm has been very soar.

I have been out to meeting9 this forenoon, but have so many dissagreable Sensations this after noon that I thought it prudent to tarry at home. The Dr. says they are very good feelings. Mr. Cranch has passed thro the prepa- ration and the Eruption is comeing out cleverly upon him without any Sick- ness at all. Mrs. Cranch is cleverly and so are all her children. Those who are broke out are pretty full for the new method as tis call’d, the Suttonian1 they profess to practice upon. I hope to give you a good account when I write next, but our Eyes are very weak and the Dr. is not fond of either writing or reading for his patients. But I must transgress a little.

I received a Letter from you by wedensday Post 7 of July and tho I think it a choise one in the Litterary Way, containing many usefull hints and judi- cious observations which will greatly assist me in the future instruction of our Little ones, yet it Lacked some essential engrediants to make it com- pleat. Not one word respecting yourself, your Health or your pres ent Situa- tion. My anxiety for your welfare will never leave me but with my parting Breath, tis of more importance to me than all this World contains besides. The cruel Seperation to which I am necessatated cuts of half the enjoyments of life, the other half are comprised in the hope I have that what I do and what I suffer may be ser viceable to you, to our Little ones and our Country;

2. Now Boston’s State Street; site, in 1770, of the Boston Massacre, in which British Army sol- diers killed and injured civilians, enraging colo- nists. “Thursday”: July 18, 1776. 3. Countryside. “Some . . . train”: i.e., "eld guns with their vehicles. 4. Balcony. Thomas Crafts (1740–1799), col o nel in the Continental Army. 5. Privately owned armed vessels with a govern- ment commission.

6. A personal redection. James Bowdoin (1726– 1790), Mas sa chu setts merchant and statesman; author of an induential report on the Boston Massacre. 7. George Washington. 8. Abigail compares King George III of Eng land (1738–1820) to the Italian statesman and cardi- nal Cesare Borgia (1475–1507), famous for his cruelty, and to Catiline (108?–62 b.c.e.), Roman politician and conspirator against the state.

I must beseach you therefore for the future never to omit what is so essen- tial to my happiness.

Last Thursday after hearing a very Good Sermon I went with the Multi- tude into Kings Street2 to hear the proclamation for independance read and proclamed. Some Field peices with the Train were brought there, the troops appeard under Arms and all the inhabitants assembled there (the small pox prevented many thousand from the Country).3 When Col. Crafts read from the Belcona4 of the State House the Proclamation, great attention was given to every word. As soon as he ended, the cry from the Belcona, was God Save our American States and then 3 cheers which rended the air, the Bells rang, the privateers5 "red, the forts and Batteries, the cannon were discharged, the platoons followed and every face appeard joyfull. Mr. Bowdoin then gave a Sentiment,6 Stability and perpetuity to American independance. After din- ner the kings arms were taken down from the State House and every vestage of him from every place in which it appeard and burnt in King Street. Thus ends royall Authority in this State, and all the people shall say Amen.

I have been a little surprized that we collect no better accounts with regard to the horrid conspiricy at New York, and that so little mention has been made of it here. It made a talk for a few days but now seems all hushed in Silence. The Tories say that it was not a conspiricy but an association, and pretend that there was no plot to assasinate the General.7 Even their hardned Hearts <Blush> feel— — the discovery. We have in G[e]orge a match for a Borgia and a Catiline,8 a Wretch Callous to every Humane feeling. Our wor- thy preacher told us that he believed one of our Great Sins for which a righ- teous God has come out in judgment against us, was our Biggoted attachment to so wicked a Man. May our repentance be sincere.

Monday morg. july 22 I omitted many things yesterday in order to be better informed. I have got

Mr. Cranch to inquire and write you, concerning a French Schooner from Martineco which came in yesterday and a prize from Ireland. My own in"r- mities prevents my writing. A most Excruciating pain in my head and every Limb and joint I hope portends a speedy Eruption and prevents my saying more than that I am forever Yours.

The children are not yet broke out. Tis the Eleventh Day with us.

1776 1875

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681

THOMAS PAINE 1737–1809

T he author of two of the most popu lar books in eighteenth- century Amer i ca, and the most persuasive rhetorician of the cause for in de pen dence, Thomas Paine was born in Eng land and did not move to the colonies until he was thirty- seven years old and the rebellion was looming. Paine’s early years prepared him to support the Revolution. The discrepancy between his high intelligence and the limitations imposed on him in Eng land’s hierarchical society made him long for a new social order. The son of a Quaker father and an Anglican mother, he once said that a sermon he heard at age eight convinced him of the cruelty inherent in Chris- tian ity and made him a rebel forever.

By the time he arrived in Philadelphia with letters of introduction from Benjamin Franklin, recommending him as an “ingenious, worthy young man,” Paine had already led a remarkably full life. He attended grammar school until he was thir- teen and was then apprenticed in his father’s corset shop; at nineteen, he ran away from home to go to sea. From 1757 to 1774, he was, by turns, a corset maker, a tobacconist and grocer, a schoolteacher, and an exciseman (i.e., a government employee who taxed goods). Hoping to force Parliament to raise the salary of the excisemen, he engaged in some of the "rst efforts at labor organ izing. His efforts failed, however, and he lost his job when he admitted that he had stamped goods as inspected when in fact they had not been examined. His "rst wife died less than a year after their marriage, and he was separated from his second wife after three years. Scandals about his private life and questions about his integrity provided his critics with ammunition for the rest of his life. Franklin was right, however, in rec- ognizing Paine’s genius; like Franklin, Paine was self- taught and curious about every thing from the philosophy of law to natu ral science.

In Philadelphia, Paine transformed himself into a journalist. He quickly made his way in that city, "rst as a spokesman against slavery and then as the anonymous author of Common Sense (1776), the "rst pamphlet published in the colonies to urge immediate in de pen dence from Britain. Paine was obviously the right man in the right place at the right time. Relations with Eng land were at their lowest ebb: Boston was under siege, and the Second Continental Congress had convened in Philadel- phia. Common Sense sold phenomenally well and was quickly reprinted in cities along the eastern seaboard and in France, Germany, and Eng land. Meanwhile, Paine enlisted in the Revolutionary Army and served as an aide- de- camp in battles in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. He followed the triumph of Common Sense with the "rst of sixteen pamphlets titled The Crisis (1776-83). The "rst Crisis paper (“ These are the times that try men’s souls”) reportedly was read to General George Washington’s troops at Trenton, New Jersey, and did much to shore up the spirits of the ultimately victorious Revolutionary soldiers.

After the war, Paine received a number of po liti cal appointments as rewards for his ser vices as a writer for the American cause, but too indiscreet and hot- tempered for public employment, he misused his privileges and lost the most lucrative of"ces. In 1787, he returned to Eng land, where he wrote his second- most successful work, Rights of Man (1791–92), an impassioned plea against hereditary monarchy. Paine was charged with treason and ded to France, where he was made a citizen and lion- ized as a spokesman for revolution. The horrors of the French Revolution, however, brought home to Paine that the overthrow of monarchy did not necessarily usher in

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1. The full title is Common Sense: Addressed to the Inhabitants of Amer i ca, on the Following In ter est ing Subjects: viz. [i.e., namely]: I. Of the Origin and Design of Government in General; with Concise Remarks on the En glish Constitu- tion. II. Of Monarchy and Hereditary Succes-

sion. III. Thoughts on the Pres ent State of American Affairs. IV. Of the Pres ent Ability of Amer i ca; with some Miscellaneous Re"ections. The text is from The Writings of Thomas Paine (1894–96), vol. 1, edited by M. D. Conway.

enlightenment and order. When he protested the execution of Louis XVI, he was accused of sympathy with the Crown and imprisoned. He was saved from trial by the American ambassador, the future president James Monroe, who offered him renewed American citizenship and safe passage back to New York.

Paine spent the last years of his life in New York City and in New Rochelle, New York. During these years of unhappiness and impoverishment, his reputation suf- fered enormously as a result of his public rejection of or ga nized religion in The Age of Reason (1794). Paine’s attempt to de"ne his beliefs was viewed as an attack on Chris tian ity and, by extension, on conventional society. He was ridiculed and despised. Even George Washington, who had supported Paine’s early writing, thought En glish criticism of him was “not a bad thing.” Paine was buried on his farm at New Rochelle after his request for a Quaker gravesite was refused. Ten years later, an admirer exhumed his bones with the intention of having him rebur- ied in Eng land, but this plan came to nothing, and Paine’s remains have never been found.

Paine’s role in shaping American lit er a ture took numerous forms. He began his writing career in Philadelphia as the contributing editor of a magazine—then a new publication format—where he learned to address a wide audience, a skill that he turned to advantage in his polemical pamphlets. He made im por tant contribu- tions to the development of copyright and to the professionalization of authorship. But it was as a stylist of “plainness” that Paine made his greatest gift to American lit er a ture. Redecting on his prose style, he said he needed no “ceremonious expres- sions.” He wrote: “It is my design to make those who can scarcely read under- stand,” to put arguments in a language “as plain as the alphabet,” and to shape every thing “to "t the powers of thinking and the turn of language to the subject, so as to bring out a clear conclusion that shall hit the point in question and nothing else.”

Like Franklin, Thomas Jefferson admired Paine’s use of the new populist rhe- torical style then emerging to challenge the classical rhe toric associated with po liti- cal elites. Having cut a controversial path through the age of demo cratic revolution, Paine inspired later radicals, such as the journalist and poet Walt Whitman (in Volume B of this anthology), who eulogized his hero in 1877: “That he labor’d well and wisely for the States in the trying period of their parturition, and in the seeds of their character, there seems to me no question. I dare not say how much of what our Union is owning and enjoying to day— its in de pen dence— its ardent belief in, and substantial practice of, radical human rights— and the severance of its govern- ment from all ecclesiastical and superstitious dominion— I dare not say how much of all this is owing to Thomas Paine, but I am inclined to think a good portion of it decidedly is.”

From Common Sense1

Introduction

Perhaps the sentiments contained in the following pages are not yet suf"- ciently fash ion able to procure them general favor; a long habit of not think-

C O M M O N S E N S E | 6 8 3

2. George III (1738–1820; reigned 1760–1820). 3. Henry Pelham (1696–1754; prime minister of Britain 1743–54).

ing a thing wrong gives it a super"cial appearance of being right, and raises at "rst a formidable outcry in defence of custom. But the tumult soon sub- sides. Time makes more converts than reason.

As a long and violent abuse of power is generally the means of calling the right of it in question (and in matters too which might never have been thought of, had not the sufferers been aggravated into the inquiry), and as the King of Eng land2 hath undertaken in his own right, to support the Parliament in what he calls theirs, and as the good people of this country are grievously oppressed by the combination, they have an undoubted privilege to inquire into the pretensions of both, and equally to reject the usurpation of either.

In the following sheets, the author hath studiously avoided every thing which is personal among ourselves. Compliments as well as censure to indi- viduals make no part thereof. The wise and the worthy need not the triumph of a pamphlet; and those whose sentiments are injudicious or unfriendly will cease of themselves, unless too much pains is bestowed upon their conver- sions.

The cause of Amer i ca is in a great mea sure the cause of all mankind. Many circumstances have, and will, arise which are not local, but univer- sal, and through which the princi ples of all lovers of mankind are affected, and in the event of which their affections are interested. The laying a coun- try desolate with "re and sword, declaring war against the natu ral rights of all mankind, and extirpating the defenders thereof from the face of the earth, is the concern of every man to whom nature hath given the power of feel- ing; of which class, regardless of party censure, is

The Author

From III. Thoughts on the Pres ent State of American Affairs

In the following pages I offer nothing more than simple facts, plain argu- ments, and common sense: and have no other preliminaries to settle with the reader, than that he will divest himself of prejudice and prepossession, and suffer his reason and his feelings to determine for themselves: that he will put on, or rather that he will not put off, the true character of a man, and generously enlarge his views beyond the pres ent day.

Volumes have been written on the subject of the strug gle between Eng land and Amer i ca. Men of all ranks have embarked in the controversy, from dif- fer ent motives, and with vari ous designs; but all have been ineffectual, and the period of debate is closed. Arms as the last resource decide the contest; the appeal was the choice of the King, and the continent has accepted the challenge.

It hath been reported of the late Mr. Pelham3 (who though an able min- ister was not without his faults) that on his being attacked in the House of Commons on the score that his mea sures were only of a temporary kind, replied, “they will last my time.” Should a thought so fatal and unmanly pos- sess the colonies in the pres ent contest, the name of ancestors will be remembered by future generations with detestation.

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4. On April 19, 1775, in the "rst armed condict of the American Revolution, the Minutemen of Lexington, Mas sa chu setts, defended their ammu-

nition stores against the British. 5. Dominated.

The sun never shined on a cause of greater worth. ’Tis not the affair of a city, a county, a province, or a kingdom; but of a continent—of at least one eighth part of the habitable globe. ’Tis not the concern of a day, a year, or an age; posterity are virtually involved in the contest, and will be more or less affected even to the end of time, by the proceedings now. Now is the seed time of continental union, faith and honor. The least fracture now will be like a name engraved with the point of a pin on the tender rind of a young oak; the wound would enlarge with the tree, and posterity read it in full grown characters.

By referring the matter from argument to arms, a new era for politics is struck— a new method of thinking hath arisen. All plans, proposals, etc., prior to the nineteenth of April, i.e., to the commencement of hostilities,4 are like the almanacs of the last year; which though proper then, are super- seded and useless now. What ever was advanced by the advocates on either side of the question then, terminated in one and the same point, viz., a union with Great Britain; the only difference between the parties was the method of effecting it; the one proposing force, the other friendship; but it hath so far happened that the "rst hath failed, and the second hath withdrawn her induence.

As much hath been said of the advantages of reconciliation, which, like an agreeable dream, hath passed away and left us as we were, it is but right that we should examine the contrary side of the argument, and inquire into some of the many material injuries which these colonies sustain, and always will sustain, by being connected with and dependent on Great Britain. To examine that connection and dependence, on the princi ples of nature and common sense, to see what we have to trust to, if separated, and what we are to expect, if dependent.

I have heard it asserted by some, that as Amer i ca has dourished under her former connection with Great Britain, the same connection is neces- sary towards her future happiness, and will always have the same effect. Nothing can be more fallacious than this kind of argument. We may as well assert that because a child has thrived upon milk, that it is never to have meat, or that the "rst twenty years of our lives is to become a pre ce dent for the next twenty. But even this is admitting more than is true; for I answer roundly, that Amer i ca would have dourished as much, and prob ably much more, had no Eu ro pean power taken any notice of her. The commerce by which she hath enriched herself are the necessaries of life, and will always have a market while eating is the custom of Eu rope.

But she has protected us, say some. That she hath engrossed5 us is true, and defended the continent at our expense as well as her own, is admitted; and she would have defended Turkey from the same motive, viz., for the sake of trade and dominion.

Alas! we have been long led away by ancient prejudices and made large sacri"ces to superstition. We have boasted the protection of Great Britain without considering that her motive was interest not attachment; and that she did not protect us from our enemies on our account; but from her enemies

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6. King George III was a descendant of the Ger- man House of Hanover. Paine is referring to the Seven Years’ War (1756–63), which originally involved Prus sia and Austria and grew to include all the major Eu ro pean powers. The war was set- tled in Britain’s favor, but the North American component, the French and Indian War (1754–

63), resulted in heavy colonial losses. 7. The province of New Jersey was divided into East and West Jersey. 8. I.e., cunningly (from the historical intrigues of the Jesuits, a Roman Catholic order of priests and brothers).

on her own account, from those who had no quarrel with us on any other account, and who will always be our enemies on the same account. Let Britain waive her pretensions to the continent, or the continent throw off the dependence, and we should be at peace with France and Spain, were they at war with Britain. The miseries of Hanover’s last war6 ought to warn us against connections.

It hath lately been asserted in Parliament, that the colonies have no rela- tion to each other but through the parent country, i.e., that Pennsylvania and the Jerseys,7 and so on for the rest, are sister colonies by the way of Eng land; this is certainly a very roundabout way of proving relationship, but it is the nearest and only true way of proving enmity (or enemyship, if I may so call it). France and Spain never were, nor perhaps ever will be, our ene- mies as Americans, but as our being the subjects of Great Britain.

But Britain is the parent country, say some. Then the more shame upon her conduct. Even brutes do not devour their young, nor savages make war upon their families; wherefore, the assertion, if true, turns to her reproach; but it happens not to be true, or only partly so, and the phrase parent or mother country hath been jesuitically8 adopted by the King and his para- sites, with a low papistical design of gaining an unfair bias on the credulous weakness of our minds. Eu rope, and not Eng land, is the parent country of Amer i ca. This new world hath been the asylum for the persecuted lovers of civil and religious liberty from every part of Eu rope. Hither have they ded, not from the tender embraces of the mother, but from the cruelty of the mon- ster; and it is so far true of Eng land, that the same tyranny which drove the "rst emigrants from home, pursues their descendants still.

In this extensive quarter of the globe, we forget the narrow limits of three hundred and sixty miles (the extent of Eng land) and carry our friendship on a larger scale; we claim brotherhood with every Eu ro pean Christian, and triumph in the generosity of the sentiment.

It is pleasant to observe by what regular gradations we surmount the force of local prejudices, as we enlarge our acquaintance with the world. A man born in any town in Eng land divided into parishes, will naturally associate most with his fellow parishioners ( because their interests in many cases will be common) and distinguish him by the name of neighbor; if he meet him but a few miles from home, he drops the narrow idea of a street, and salutes him by the name of townsman; if he travel out of the county and meet him in any other, he forgets the minor divisions of street and town, and calls him countryman, i.e., countyman: but if in their foreign excursions they should associate in France, or any other part of Eu rope, their local remembrance would be enlarged into that of En glishmen. And by a just parity of reason- ing, all Eu ro pe ans meeting in Amer i ca, or any other quarter of the globe, are countrymen; for Eng land, Holland, Germany, or Sweden, when com- pared with the whole, stand in the same places on the larger scale, which

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9. I.e., Pennsylvania. 1. William I (c. 1028–1087; reigned 1066–87) conquered Eng land when he was duke of the French region of Normandy, his homeland.

2. I.e., wheat, not what Americans now call corn. 3. A naval warship. “Like the last”: the Seven Years’ War ended in Britain’s favor.

the divisions of street, town, and county do on the smaller ones; distinctions too limited for continental minds. Not one third of the inhabitants, even of this province,9 are of En glish descent. Wherefore, I reprobate the phrase of parent or mother country applied to Eng land only, as being false, sel"sh, narrow and ungenerous.

But, admitting that we were all of En glish descent, what does it amount to? Nothing. Britain, being now an open enemy, extinguishes every other name and title: and to say that reconciliation is our duty is truly farcical. The "rst King of Eng land of the pres ent line (William the Conqueror)1 was a Frenchman, and half the peers of Eng land are descendants from the same country; wherefore, by the same method of reasoning, Eng land ought to be governed by France.

Much hath been said of the united strength of Britain and the colonies, that in conjunction they might bid de"ance to the world: but this is mere presumption; the fate of war is uncertain, neither do the expressions mean anything; for this continent would never suffer itself to be drained of inhab- itants to support the British arms in either Asia, Africa, or Eu rope.

Besides, what have we to do with setting the world at de"ance? Our plan is commerce, and that, well attended to, will secure us the peace and friend- ship of all Eu rope; because it is the interest of all Eu rope to have Amer i ca a free port. Her trade will always be a protection, and her barrenness of gold and silver secure her from invaders.

I challenge the warmest advocate for reconciliation to show a single advan- tage that this continent can reap by being connected with Great Britain. I repeat the challenge; not a single advantage is derived. Our corn2 will fetch its price in any market in Eu rope, and our imported goods must be paid for buy them where we will.

But the injuries and disadvantages which we sustain by that connection, are without number; and our duty to mankind at large, as well as to our- selves, instruct us to renounce the alliance: because, any submission to, or dependence on, Great Britain tends directly to involve this continent in Eu ro- pean wars and quarrels, and set us at variance with nations who would other wise seek our friendship, and against whom we have neither anger nor complaint. As Eu rope is our market for trade, we ought to form no partial connection with any part of it. It is the true interest of Amer i ca to steer clear of Eu ro pean contentions, which she never can do, while, by her dependence on Britain, she is made the makeweight in the scale of British politics.

Eu rope is too thickly planted with kingdoms to be long at peace, and when- ever a war breaks out between Eng land and any foreign power, the trade of Amer i ca goes to ruin, because of her connection with Britain. The next war may not turn out like the last, and should it not, the advocates for recon- ciliation now will be wishing for separation then, because neutrality in that case would be a safer convoy than a man of war.3 Every thing that is right or reasonable pleads for separation. The blood of the slain, the weeping voice of nature cries, “ ’Tis time to part.” Even the distance at which the Almighty

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4. Boston was under British military occupation and was blockaded for six months.

5. I.e., liable to be caught in “friendly "re” from colonial rebels.

hath placed Eng land and Amer i ca is a strong and natu ral proof that the authority of the one over the other was never the design of Heaven. The time likewise at which the continent was discovered adds weight to the argument, and the manner in which it was peopled increases the force of it. The Ref- ormation was preceded by the discovery of Amer i ca: as if the Almighty gra- ciously meant to open a sanctuary to the persecuted in future years, when home should afford neither friendship nor safety.

The authority of Great Britain over this continent is a form of government which sooner or later must have an end: and a serious mind can draw no true plea sure by looking forward, under the painful and positive conviction that what he calls “the pres ent constitution” is merely temporary. As par- ents, we can have no joy, knowing that this government is not suf"ciently lasting to insure anything which we may bequeath to posterity: and by a plain method of argument, as we are running the next generation into debt, we ought to do the work of it, other wise we use them meanly and pitifully. In order to discover the line of our duty rightly, we should take our children in our hand, and "x our station a few years farther into life; that eminence will pres ent a prospect which a few pres ent fears and prejudices conceal from our sight.

Though I would carefully avoid giving unnecessary offense, yet I am inclined to believe that all those who espouse the doctrine of reconciliation may be included within the following descriptions.

Interested men who are not to be trusted, weak men who cannot see, prej- udiced men who will not see, and a certain set of moderate men who think better of the Eu ro pean world than it deserves; and this last class, by an ill- judged deliberation, will be the cause of more calamities to this continent than all the other three.

It is the good fortune of many to live distant from the scene of pres ent sorrow; the evil is not suf"ciently brought to their doors to make them feel the precariousness with which all American property is possessed. But let our imaginations transport us a few moments to Boston;4 that seat of wretch- edness will teach us wisdom, and instruct us forever to renounce a power in whom we can have no trust. The inhabitants of that unfortunate city, who but a few months ago were in ease and afduence, have now no other alter- native than to stay and starve, or turn out to beg. Endangered by the "re of their friends if they continue within the city,5 and plundered by the soldiery if they leave it, in their pres ent situation they are prisoners without the hope of redemption, and in a general attack for their relief they would be exposed to the fury of both armies.

Men of passive tempers look somewhat lightly over the offenses of Great Britain, and, still hoping for the best, are apt to call out, “Come, come, we shall be friends again for all this.” But examine the passions and feelings of mankind: bring the doctrine of reconciliation to the touchstone of nature, and then tell me whether you can hereafter love, honor, and faithfully serve the power that hath carried "re and sword into your land? If you cannot do all these, then are you only deceiving yourselves, and by your delay bringing

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6. Paradise Lost 4.98–99, by the En glish poet John Milton (1608–1674). 7. Thomas Anello, other wise Massanello [i.e., Tommaso Aniello (1622–1647), known as Masan- iello], a "sherman of Naples, who after spiriting

up his countrymen in the public market place, against the oppression of the Spaniards, to whom the place was then subject, prompted them to revolt, and in the space of a day became King [Paine’s note].

ruin upon posterity. Your future connection with Britain, whom you can nei- ther love nor honor, will be forced and unnatural, and, being formed only on the plan of pres ent con ve nience, will in a little time fall into a relapse more wretched than the "rst. But if you say, you can still pass the violations over, then I ask, hath your house been burnt? Hath your property been destroyed before your face? Are your wife and children destitute of a bed to lie on, or bread to live on? Have you lost a parent or a child by their hands, and yourself the ruined and wretched survivor? If you have not, then are you not a judge of those who have. But if you have, and can still shake hands with the murderers, then are you unworthy the name of husband, father, friend, or lover, and what ever may be your rank or title in life, you have the heart of a coward, and the spirit of a sycophant.

This is not indaming or exaggerating matters, but trying them by those feelings and affections which nature justi"es, and without which we should be incapable of discharging the social duties of life, or enjoying the felici- ties of it. I mean not to exhibit horror for the purpose of provoking revenge, but to awaken us from fatal and unmanly slumbers, that we may pursue determinately some "xed object. ’Tis not in the power of Britain or of Eu rope to conquer Amer i ca, if she doth not conquer herself by delay and timidity. The pres ent winter is worth an age if rightly employed, but if lost or neglected the whole continent will partake of the misfortune; and there is no punish- ment which that man doth not deserve, be he who, or what, or where he will, that may be the means of sacri"cing a season so precious and useful.

’Tis repugnant to reason, to the universal order of things, to all examples from former ages, to suppose that this continent can long remain subject to any external power. The most sanguine in Britain doth not think so. The utmost stretch of human wisdom cannot, at this time, compass a plan, short of separation, which can promise the continent even a year’s security. Rec- onciliation is now a fallacious dream. Nature hath deserted the connection, and art cannot supply her place. For, as Milton wisely expresses, “never can true reconcilement grow where wounds of deadly hate have pierced so deep.”6

* * * A government of our own is our natu ral right: and when a man seriously redects on the precariousness of human affairs, he will become convinced that it is in"nitely wiser and safer to form a constitution of our own in a cool deliberate manner, while we have it in our power, than to trust such an in ter est ing event to time and chance. If we omit it now, some Massanello7 may hereafter arise, who, laying hold of popu lar disquietudes, may collect together the desperate and the discontented, and by assuming to themselves the powers of government, " nally sweep away the liberties of the continent like a deluge. Should the government of Amer i ca return again into the hands of Britain, the tottering situation of things will be a temptation for some des- perate adventurer to try his fortune; and in such a case, what relief can

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8. Refuge. 9. Paine sometimes referred to this essay, the "rst of the sixteen Crisis pamphlets, as The American Crisis. In one week in 1776, he pub- lished three editions: one undated, one dated

December 19, and the one reprinted here, dated December 23. The text is from The Writings of Thomas Paine (1894–96), vol. 1, edited by M. D. Conway.

Britain give? Ere she could hear the news, the fatal business might be done; and ourselves suffering like the wretched Britons under the oppression of the conqueror. Ye that oppose in de pen dence now, ye know not what ye do: ye are opening a door to eternal tyranny by keeping vacant the seat of gov- ernment. There are thousands and tens of thousands, who would think it glorious to expel from the continent that barbarous and hellish power, which hath stirred up the Indians and the Negroes to destroy us; the cruelty hath a double guilt: it is dealing brutally by us, and treacherously by them.

To talk of friendship with those in whom our reason forbids us to have faith, and our affections wounded through a thousand pores instruct us to detest, is madness and folly. Every day wears out the little remains of kin- dred between us and them; and can there be any reason to hope, that as the relationship expires, the affection will increase, or that we shall agree bet- ter when we have ten times more and greater concerns to quarrel over than ever?

Ye that tell us of harmony and reconciliation, can ye restore to us the time that is past? Can ye give to prostitution its former innocence? Neither can ye reconcile Britain and Amer i ca. The last cord now is broken, the people of Eng land are presenting addresses against us. There are injuries which nature cannot forgive; she would cease to be nature if she did. As well can the lover forgive the ravisher of his mistress, as the continent forgive the murders of Britain. The Almighty hath implanted in us these unextinguish- able feelings for good and wise purposes. They are the guardians of His image in our hearts. They distinguish us from the herd of common animals. The social compact would dissolve, and justice be extirpated from the earth, or have only a casual existence were we callous to the touches of affection. The robber and the murderer would often escape unpunished, did not the injuries which our tempers sustain provoke us into justice.

O! ye that love mankind! Ye that dare oppose not only the tyranny but the tyrant, stand forth! Every spot of the old world is overrun with oppression. Freedom hath been hunted round the globe. Asia and Africa have long expelled her. Eu rope regards her like a stranger, and Eng land hath given her warning to depart. O! receive the fugitive, and prepare in time an asylum8 for mankind.

1776

The Crisis, No. 19

These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sun- shine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the ser vice of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyr- anny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us,

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1. Costliness. 2. Cf. the Second Continental Congress’s “Dec- laration Setting Forth the Causes and Necessity of [the Mas sa chu setts Assembly’s] Taking Up Arms” (July 6, 1775): “By one statute [Parlia- ment’s Declaratory Act of 1766] it is declared that Parliament can ‘of right make laws to bind us in all cases whatsoever.’ What is to defend us against so enormous, so unlimited a power?” 3. “The pres ent winter is worth an age, if rightly employed; but, if lost or neglected, the whole con- tinent will partake of the evil; and there is no punishment that man does not deserve, be he who, or what, or where he will, that may be the

means of sacri"cing a season so precious and use- ful” [Paine’s note, taken from Common Sense]. Paine wanted an immediate declaration of in de- pen dence, uniting the colonies and enlisting the aid of France and Spain. 4. The province of New Jersey was divided into East and West Jersey. Lord William Howe (1729– 1814), commander of the British Army in Amer- i ca (1775–78). 5. I.e., like one who is chilled. 6. Joan of Arc (1412–1431) led the French to vic- tory over the En glish in 1429 (not “the fourteenth century”).

that the harder the condict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness1 only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as freedom should not be highly rated. Britain, with an army to enforce her tyranny, has declared that she has a right (not only to tax) but “to bind us in all cases whatsoever,”2 and if being bound in that manner is not slavery, then is there not such a thing as slavery upon earth. Even the expression is impious; for so unlim- ited a power can belong only to God.