Drawing on a gold mine of primary documents--including letters, diary entries, personal narratives, political speeches, broadsides, trial transcripts, and contemporary newspaper articles--
The Boisterous Sea of Liberty brings the past to life in a way few histories ever do.
Here is a panoramic look at early American history as captured in the words of Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Beecher Stowe and many other historical figures, both famous and obscure. In these pieces, the living voices of the past speak to us from opposing viewpoints--from the vantage point of loyalists as well as patriots, slaves as well as masters. The documents collected here provide a fuller understanding of such historical issues as Columbus's dealings with Native Americans, the Stamp Act Crisis, the Declaration of Independence, the Whiskey Rebellion, the Missouri Crisis, the Mexican War, and Harpers Ferry, to name but a few.
Compiled by Pulitzer Prize winning historian David Brion Davis and Steven Mintz, and accompanied by extensive illustrations of original documents, The Boisterous Sea of Liberty brings the reader back in time, to meet the men and women who lived through the momentous events that shaped our nation.
Acknowledgments
Introduction
PART 1. FIRST ENCOUNTERS
The Meaning of America
Utilizing the Native Labor Force
New World Fantasies
Labor Needs
The Black Legend
A Critique of the Slave Trade
PART 2. EUROPEAN COLONIZATION NORTH OF MEXICO
Justifications for English Involvement in the New World
A Rationale for New World Colonization
England's First Enduring North American Settlement
Life in Early Virginia
Race War in Virginia
Indentured Servitude
The Shift to Slavery
Regional Contrasts
The Pilgrims Arrive in Plymouth
Reasons for Puritan Immigration
The Idea of the Covenant
Servitude in New England
Mounting Conflict with Native Americans
Native Americans as Active Agents
Puritan Economics
King Philip's War
Struggles for Power
An Indian Slave Woman Confesses to Witchcraft
The Sin of Slaveholding
English Liberties
PART 3. A LAND OF CONTRASTS
Mercantilist Ideas
New Netherlands: America's First Multicultural Society
New Netherlands Becomes New York
Indian Affairs
The Schenectady Massacre
Persecution of the Quakers
The Quaker Ideal of Religious Tolerance
South Carolina
Georgia
English Liberties and Deference
Queen Anne's War
Immigration and Ethnic Diversity
Indentured Servitude
Suspicion of Arbitrary Power
The Great Awakening
Fear of Slave Revolts
America as a Land of Opportunity
PART 4. THE SEVEN YEARS' WAR
British North America in 1775
A Soldier's Diary
Fasting and Repentance
The Capture of Qubec
The Seven Years' War and the Growth of Antislavery Sentiment
The Fate of Native Americans
PART 5. THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
The Proclamation of 1763
The Stamp Act Crisis
The Townshend Acts
The Boston Massacre
The Regulators
Samuel Adams
The Boston Tea Party
American Resistance to Britain
The Battles of Lexington and Concord
Declaring Independence
Slavery and the American Revolution
Benedict Arnold's Treason
The War in the South
The Articles of Confederation
PART 6. CREATING A NEW NATION
Native Americans and the American Revolution
The Newburgh Conspiracy
Slavery in Postrevolutionary America
White Slavery
Relations with Britain
The Critical Period and Shays' Rebellion
Northwest Ordinance
Creating Republican Governments
The U.S. Constitution
Debates within the Constitutional Convention
The Three-fifths Compromise
Fugitive Slaves and the Constitution
A Proslavery Document?
Ratification Debates
The New Republic
The Birth of Political Parties
The Haitian Revolution
The Citizen Genet Affair
The Whiskey Rebellion
Washington's Farewell Address
The Quasi-War with France and the XYZ Affair
Jeffersonian Republicanism
The Jeffersonians in Power
REPEAL OF THE JUDICIARY ACT OF 1801
Judicial Review
Louisiana, Expansion, and Disunionist Conspiracies
Slavery and Race in Jeffersonian America
The American Eagle, the French Tiger, and the British Shark
The Dambargo of 1807
The Road to War
The "War Hawks"
Clearing the Land of Indians
Missionary Work and Indian Policy
PART 7. ANTEBELLUM AMERICA
SHIFTS IN SENSIBILITY: FAMILY, GENDER ROLES, RELIGION, AND THE RISE OF HUMANITARIANISM
The Emergence of the Republican Family
Republican Motherhood
Religious Liberalism and Evangelical Revivalism
Disestablishment
ORIGINS OF THE AMERICAN REFORM TRADITION
Dueling
Education
Colonization
Postward Nationalism and Division
1818 AND 1819: WATERSHED YEARS IN AMERICAN HISTORY
The Second Bank of the United States
McCullough v. Maryland
Acquiring Florida
The Monroe Doctrine
The Missouri Crisis
Slavery and Sectionalism
The Underground Railroad
The Rise of the Second Party System
The Election of 1824
POWER AND IDEOLOGY IN JACKSON'S AMERICA
Nullification and the Bank War
Political Democratization and the Dorr War
Party Competition and the Rise of the Whigs
Antebellum Reform: The Shift to Immediatism
Abolition and Slavery
Nat Turner's Insurrection
Narrative and Testimony of Sarah M. Grimk
Testimony of Angelina Grimk
A Proslavery New Yorker
From Antislavery to Women's Rights
MANIFEST DESTINY
Gone to Texas
Texas Annexation
Mounting Sectional Antagonisms
The Amistad Affair
Political Antislavery
The Free Soil Party
The Mexican War
THE ESCALATING CONFLICT OVER SLAVERY
The Compromise of 1850
Mass Immigration
The Know-Nothings and the Disintegration of the Second-Party System
AMERICA AT MIDCENTURY
Revival of the Slavery Issue
Bleeding Kansas
Bleeding Sumner
The Dred Scott Decision
The Gathering Storm
Harpers Ferry
The Secession Crisis
PART 8. CIVIL WAR
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF NAMES
The Emancipation Proclamation
Gettysburg
TOWARD RECONSTRUCTION
The Nature and History of the Gilder Lehrman Collection