Perspectives on Ideas February 18, 2007

America
62 O receive the fugitive [freedom], and prepare in time an asylum for mankind. Paine, Common Sense, 1776. Hofstadter, ed. Great Issues in American History. Vol. 1. Independence.

69 …a period may arrive, when (both countries being prepared for it) some terrible disaster, some dreadful convulsion in Great Britain, may transfer the seat of empire to this western hemisphere—where the British constitution…shall rise with youthful vigor and shine with redoubled splendor. Charles Inglis, The True Interest of America Impartially Stated, 1776. Hofstadter, ed. Great Issues in American History. Vol. 1. Independence.

916 …England, an old and exhausted land, must one day be contented, like other parents, to be strong only in her children. Emerson, English Traits.

378 Transformation means winning over all segments of urban life to a new politics of common effort. Bradley, Time Present, Time Past.

12 Was he thinking of the Kentucky father whose two sons died in battle, one in Union blue, the other in Confederate gray, the father inscribing over their double grave, “God knows which was right.” Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years.

30 Balding and shrunken, he [his father Clyde] now represented the antithesis of the American dream, a second-generation son who failed to rise above the foothold left him by his self-made father. Christianson, Fox at the Wood’s Edge: Loren Eiseley

29 Surely, this was the best of all possible systems of life, where one simply chose the thing he most wanted to do, and, because he loved it, worked as hard as he could, and, because he worked hard, steadily rose from position to position, until he had “arrived,” when the world would hold no more secrets or problems, and life gracefully leveled out on a plane of confidence, security and happiness. Sevareid, Not So Wild a Dream.

295 Confronting the dark pages of our history is essential to getting beyond them. Bradley, Time Present, Time Past.

383 …American history, with its tensions between liberty and obligation, freedom and order, exclusion and participation, the dominant culture and the countless subcultures, the individual and the community. Bradley, Time Present, Time Past.

21 …we may bind their trade, confine their manufactures, and exercise every power whatsoever—except that of taking money out of their pockets without their consent. William Pitt, Speech on the Stamp Act. 1766. Hofstadter, ed. Great Issues in American History. Vol. 1. Independence.

35 After many more centuries shall have rolled away, long after we, who are now bustling upon the stage of life, shall have been received to the bosom of mother earth, and our names are forgotten, the Colonies may be so far increased as to have the balance of wealth, numbers and power in their favor, the good of the empire make it necessary to fix the seat of government here; and some future George…may cross the Atlantic and rule Great Britain by an American Parliament. Daniel Leonard, Massachusettensis, 1775. Hofstadter, ed. Great Issues in American History. Vol. 1. Independence.

70 Thomas Jefferson: Our Northern brethren also I believe felt a little tender under those censures [of slavery in the original Declaration of Independence], for tho’ their people have very few slaves themselves yet they had been pretty considerable carriers of them to others. Hofstadter, ed. Great Issues in American History. Vol. 1. Independence.

58 To be always running three or four thousand miles with a tale or a petition, waiting four or five months for an answer, which, when obtained, requires five or six more to explain it in…. Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776. Hofstadter, ed. Great Issues in American History. Vol. 1. Independence.

301 What is particularly striking about the interaction of Americans with our indigenous peoples is how little we know about them…challenge is to see the Indians on their own terms and from the perspective of their own cultures, instead of simply looking for ways to fit them into the dominant white culture. Bradley, Time Present, Time Past.

316 By learning more about Native American peoples, we learn more about ourselves. Bradley, Time Present, Time Past.

353 The story of the military institutions of the American colonies is an account of efforts to keep as much of the free population as possible armed and prepared to fight on short notice. Boorstin, The Americans: Colonial Experience