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3843e75
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New England farmers did not think of war as a game, or a feudal ritual, or an instrument of state power, or a bloodsport for bored country gentlemen. They did not regard the pursuit of arms as a noble profession. In 1775, many men of Massachusetts had been to war. They knew its horrors from personal experience. With a few exceptions, they thought of fighting as a dirty business that had to be done from time to time if good men were to survi..
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David Hackett Fischer |
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925cae6
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Until Washington crossed the Delaware, the triumph of the old order seemed inevitable. Thereafter, things would never be the same again.
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american-revolution
george-washington
war
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David Hackett Fischer |
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d7c5851
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Americans tended to think of war as something that had to be done from time to time, for a particular purpose or goal. They fought not for the sake of fighting but for the sake of winning.
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war
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David Hackett Fischer |
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548a653
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This hostility to unnatural sex had a demographic consequence of high importance. Puritan moralists condemned as unnatural any attempt to prevent conception within marriage. This was not a common attitude in world history. Most primitive cultures have practiced some form of contraception, often with high success. Iroquois squaws made diaphragms of birchbark; African slaves used pessaries of elephant dung to prevent pregnancy. European women..
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David Hackett Fischer |
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ac89343
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Empirical studies show that New Zealanders are the most widely traveled people on the planet. The computer and the Internet have made a major difference. Insularity, distance, and isolation may have been important in an earlier period of New Zealand's history, but not today. The rapid progress of communications has wrought a revolution in the spatial condition of New Zealand, and yet its culture remains very distinctive. This fact suggests ..
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David Hackett Fischer |
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5d6a347
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Sexual intercourse was taboo on the Lord's Day. The Puritans believed that children were born on the same day of the week as when they had been conceived. Unlucky infants who entered the world on the Sabbath were sometimes denied baptism because of their parents' presumed sin in copulating on a Sunday. For many years Sudbury's minister Israel Loring sternly refused to baptize children born on Sunday, until one terrible Sabbath when his own ..
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David Hackett Fischer |
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32664d7
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This idea of collective liberty also was expressed in many bizarre obligations which New England towns collectively imposed upon their members. Eastham's town meeting, for example, ordered that no single man could marry until he had killed six blackbirds or three crows. Every town book contained many such rules.4 The General Court also passed sweeping statutes which allowed the magistrates to suppress almost any act, by any means. One such ..
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David Hackett Fischer |
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79a220c
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That case was not unique in the sexual history of New Haven. When a second deformed pig was born in that troubled town, another unfortunate eccentric was also accused of bestiality by his neighbors. Even though he could not be convicted under the two-witness rule, he was imprisoned longer than anybody else in the history of the colony. When yet a third defective piglet was born with one red eye and what appeared to be a penis growing out of..
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David Hackett Fischer |
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2f1a860
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There was no heat in these buildings, partly because the earliest meetinghouses also served as powder magazines, and fires threatened to blow the entire congregation to smithereens. They were bitter cold in winter. Many tales were told of frozen communion bread, frostbitten fingers, baptisms performed with chunks of ice and entire congregations with chattering teeth that sounded like a field of crickets. It was a point of honor for the mini..
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David Hackett Fischer |
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fe64ed2
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threatened. As late as 1775, townsmen within twenty miles of the sea were urged to carry arms to church lest godless British raiding parties surprise them while at worship. After the service, the men left the meeting first--a regional folkway that continued long after its military origins had been forgotten.
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David Hackett Fischer |
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ad3b318
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Many activities were forbidden on the Sabbath: work, play, and unnecessary travel. Even minor instances of Sabbath-breaking were punished with much severity. The Essex County Court indicted a man for carrying a burden on the Sabbath, and punished a woman for brewing on the Lord's Day. When Ebenezer Taylor of Yarmouth, Massachusetts, fell into a forty-foot well, his rescuers stopped digging on Saturday afternoon while they debated whether it..
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David Hackett Fischer |
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4f1ccc3
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Every Canadian winter was a mortal challenge to its habitants.
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David Hackett Fischer |
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e639f9b
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It was typical of Washington's style of leadership to present a promising proposal as someone else's idea, rather than his own.
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David Hackett Fischer |
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a58c755
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These are the times that try men's souls," Paine began. "The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it NOW deserves the love and thanks of man and woman."
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David Hackett Fischer |
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2f466a8
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Thus the fate of entire Kingdoms often depends upon a few blockheads and irresolute men."43"
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David Hackett Fischer |
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8ba4708
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The island was said to be "completely covered with pigeons." Thousands of them fattened on the raspberries, and the settlers fed on the pigeons.16"
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David Hackett Fischer |
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41201ad
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Long voyages under sail with crews that spoke many tongues made a ship into a language school.
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David Hackett Fischer |
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6a5fd6d
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Some of these words appear in metropolitan French, but a person of Saintonge who speaks the parlanjhe of the region is uniquely called a goulebeneze, literally, a happy mouth.
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David Hackett Fischer |
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f5539b6
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We never let go of a belief once fixed in our minds" quoted by an Appalachian women with an air of pride.' (This quote explains a lot about my family)"
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David Hackett Fischer |
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3bad0ad
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In 1767, an epidemic broke out on board a crowded emigrant vessel sailing from Belfast to South Carolina; the unscrupulous owners had packed 450 people into its hold and more than 100 died at sea. Another ship bound from Belfast to Philadelphia ran out of food in mid-passage. Forty-six passengers starved to death; the survivors were driven to cannibalism and some even consumed the flesh of their own families. The transatlantic journey becam..
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David Hackett Fischer |
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a980575
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But the Quakers were not entirely liberated from magic. One particular variety of supernatural belief came to be very widely shared among them. The idea of the Inner Light led them to that form of superstition which is commonly called spiritualism today. In the seventeenth century there were repeated instances of attempts by Quakers to communicate with the dead, and even to raise them from the grave. In Worcestershire, for example, one Engl..
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David Hackett Fischer |
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81bbc47
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Rarely was Richelieu accused of leniency. In his hubris, he was alleged to have said, "Give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, and I will find something there to hang him."14"
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David Hackett Fischer |