The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 58, July 1954 - April, 1955 Page: 196
650 p. : ill., maps (some col.), ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Southwestern Historical Quarterly
day Americans who trace their ancestry back to colonial times this
book will be stimulating and revealing. One wonders why a
book of this nature did not appear a good many years ago.
The introduction points out: "These writings, in fact, point
immediately toward the American mind of the Revolutionary
period-a mind of Enlightenment, one which was to center on the
notion of the free, rational personality and which was to know
that freedom and rationality are embodied in the very nature of
things American." Farther on the introduction says:
The Pilgrim idea of freedom through private and separate devo-
tion, the Puritan idea of freedom through work and facing one's fate
as a sinful individual, the Virginia idea of freedom through the
responsibilities of the ruling gentleman, the Quaker idea of freedom
through the inviolable sacredness of the individual, and the frontier
idea of freedom through violent self-assertion-all these ultimately
found their largest realization in the thoughts, beliefs, and actions of
enlightened Americans of the Revolution and beyond. In the writings
here selected, we can know ideas as they came into being and began
to be explored and tested and as they made for characteristic attitudes
toward life and living.
In its contents this book is composed of seven sections. Section
I, The Voyager, a reprint from John Smith, A Description of New
England, is followed by Section II, The Pilgrim, with a reproduc-
tion of eighteen pages from William Bradford, The History of
Plymouth Plantation. In The Puritan, that is, Section III, there
are nine reproductions from Puritan writings of the time and
thirteen reproductions from contemporary Puritan poetry. Sec-
tion IV, The Virginia Gentleman, contains a reproduction from
A True Narrative of the Late Rebellion in Virginia, another from
the Burwell Papers, two from writings by William Byrd, and the
fifth from Robert Beverly, The History and Present State of
Virginia. Passages from William Penn and John Woolman relate
to The Quaker, the fifth section, while four quote from Eben-
ezer Cook (1731), William Dawson (1736), Mather Byles (1744),
and Benjamin Church (1757) to make The American as Au-
gustan Poet for the sixth section. The seventh section carrying
The Frontiersman for its title, quotes from Conrad Weiser's
Journal to the Ohio and from The Adventures of Colonel Daniel196
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 58, July 1954 - April, 1955, periodical, 1955; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101158/m1/217/: accessed April 27, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.