The first complete narrative history of Captain John Smith's exploration of the New England coast

In 1812, New Hampshire shopkeeper Timothy M. Joy abandoned his young family, fleeing the creditors who threatened to imprison him. Within days, he found himself in a Massachusetts jailhouse, charged with defamation of a prominent politician. During the months of his incarceration, Joy kept a remarkable journal that recounts his personal, anguished path toward spiritual redemption. Martin J. Hershock situates Joy's account in the context of the pugnacious politics of the early republic, giving context to a common citizen's perspective on partisanship and the fate of an unfortunate shopkeeper swept along in the transition to market capitalism. In addition to this close-up view of an ordinary person's experience of a transformative period, Hershock reflects on his own work as a historian. In the final chapter, he discusses the value of diaries as historical sources, the choices he made in telling Joy's story, alternative interpretations of the diary, and other contexts in which he might have placed Joy's experiences. The appendix reproduces Joy's original journal so that readers can develop their own skills using a primary source.

Originally published in 2011, this volume publishes the letters of Jeremy Belknap and Ebenezer Hazard. The letters encompassed twenty years, from 1779 to 1798, during a time when the United States was warring against England, establishing new governments, building a national identity, exploring the hinterland, and refining an American identity in prose and verse. The letters of Hazard and Belknap tell of an age when science and religion had not yet divorced due to irreconcilable differences, when the most profound philosophy nestled comfortably next to a childlike fascination with the remarkable. The two friends explored in their epistles the nature of love, death, and piety; the best way for humans to govern themselves; matters of religious and scientific truth and the best means to arrive at it; the methods and writing of history; human credulity; and the wonders of nature.

"A brutal killing, an all-out manhunt, and a riveting account of the first murder trial in U.S. history--set in the 1600s in colonial New England against the backdrop of the Pequot War (between the Pequot tribe and the colonists of Massachusetts Bay), an explosive trial whose outcome changed the course of history, ended a two-year war, and brought about a peace that allowed the colonies to become a full-blown nation. The year: 1638. The setting: Providence, Plymouth Colony. A young Nipmuc tribesman, returning home from trading beaver pelts, is fatally stabbed in a robbery in the woods near Plymouth Colony, by a white runaway servant and fellow rogues. The young tribesman, fighting for his life, is able, with his final breaths, to reveal the details of the attack to Providence's governor, Roger Williams. A frantic manhunt by the fledgling government of Plymouth ensues, followed by the convening of the first trial, with Plymouth's governor Thomas Prence presiding as judge. The jury: local settlers (white) whose allegiance seems more likely to be with the accused than with the murdered (a native) . . . Tobey Pearl, piecing together a fascinating narrative through original research and first-rate detective work, re-creates in detail the full and startling, pivotal moment in pre-revolutionary America, as she examines the evolution of our nascent civil liberties and the role of the jury as a safeguard against injustice"--

How has the U.S. dealt, throughout its long history, with one of the worlds oldest problems? Although poverty has always been part of the human experience, societal reactions and responses to it have been as varied as the condition has been static. Poverty in America has its own turbulent history of causes, effects, and remedies, from debtor's prison to the War on Poverty, from Social Darwinism to food stamps. This in-depth encyclopedia covers the entire history of American poverty from every angle—historical, social, cultural, political, spiritual, and literary. How has poverty been defined in America? What has been done to prevent it? How have minority groups been affected? How has the church reacted? And what, if anything, can be done to eliminate it? Poverty in America covers these issues in vivid detail, from the colonial period to the Industrial Revolution to the global economy of the 21st century. Impactful primary document excerpts from key periods throughout American history are also included, providing firsthand accounts from all sides of the issue. A chronology of events and an extensive bibliography round out this fascinating work.

The volumes in this set, originally published between 1967 and 2011, available as ebooks for the first time, include succinct, accessible books on two of the most important periods of American history which offer concise treatment of these major historical topics, as well as some lengthier, finest single-volume studies of the American Civil and Revolutionary Wars ever written and an outstanding reference tool in a 2 volume Encyclopedia. Among other things they: Bring central themes and problems into sharper focus. Discuss the pivotal roles played by Benjamin Franklin and Abraham Lincoln. Examine the role of medical doctors in the northern campaigns during the revolutionary war. Elucidate the character of the underlying moral and political problem of slavery. Discuss the social and political experience of the civil war whilst examining the centrality of what happened on the battlefield. Evaluate the legacy of the Civil War for America and for the world and emphasize its relationship to many of the dominating themes of modern history – democracy, freedom, equality and nationalism.

In this complex and dynamic history, Russell M. Lawson navigates the story of the Piscataqua Valley from Martin Pring in 1603, through the turbulent Indian wars of colonial days, around the volatile American Revolution and into the smooth sailing of the nineteenth-century shipbuilding industry. In Dover, Durham, Exeter and the entire valley, Piscataqua played a major role in the foundation of the United States, all the while surrounded by the river's natural splendor.

A-Z entries and primary document excerpts explore the turbulent history of poverty in America.

The dispossessed people of Colonial America included thousands of servants who either voluntarily or involuntarily ended up serving as agricultural, domestic, skilled, and unskilled laborers in the northern, middle, and southern British American colonies as well as British Caribbean colonies. Thousands of people arrived in the British-American colonies as indentured servants, transported felons, and kidnapped children forced into bound labor. Others already in America, such as Indians, freedmen, and poor whites, placed themselves into the service of others for food, clothing, shelter, and security; poverty in colonial America was relentless, and servitude was the voluntary and involuntary means by which the poor adapted, or tried to adapt, to miserable conditions. From the 1600s to the 1700s, Blacks, Indians, Europeans, Englishmen, children, and adults alike were indentured, apprenticed, transported as felons, kidnapped, or served as redemptioners. Though servitude was more multiracial and multicultural than slavery, involving people from numerous racial and ethnic backgrounds, far fewer books have been written about it. This fascinating new study of servitude in colonial America provides the first complete overview of the varied lives of the dispossessed in 17th- and 18th-century America, examining colonial American servitude in all of its forms.