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Wikiquote:Transwiki/American History Primary Sources Cold War

THE UNITED NATIONS
1948
 * "Security requires both control of the use of force and the elimination of want. No people are secure unless they have the things needed not only to preserve existence, but to make life worth living....
 * "All peoples throughout the world must know that there is an organization where their interests can be considered and where justice and security will be sought for all."
 * Eleanor Roosevelt, Chairman of the UN Human Rights Commission, who helped to draft the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948.

Setting the Stage
1945
 * We can't do business with Stalin. He has broken every one of the promises he made at Yalta.
 * A very disappointed President Franklin D. Roosevelt, shortly before his death on April 13, 1945, commenting on the Big Three meeting (Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Marshal Josef Stalin of Soviet Russia).

1945
 * We must stand up to the Russians at this point and not be easy with them.
 * President Harry S Truman, shortly after taking office in April, to Secretary of State James Byrnes.

1945
 * Atomic bombs are meant to frighten those with weak nerves.
 * Soviet Marshal Stalin to his advisors, showing that the American bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki would not influence him in any way.

1946
 * [F]rom Stettin on the Baltic to Trieste on the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent [of Europe]. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of central and eastern Europe.... [A]ll these famous cities and populations lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere.
 * Former Prime Minister Winston Churchill, "Iron Curtain" speech at Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri (March 5, 1946).

1946
 * "The Lesson on History"
 * Title of speech by George C. Marshall on appeasement of Germany and Russia.

1946?
 * The Soviet pressure against the free institutions of the Western world is something that can be contained by the... vigilant application of counterforce at a series of constantly shifting geographical and political points.... The Russians look forward to a duel of infinite duration.
 * George F. Kennan, architect of the Containment strategy

1947
 * "The Cold War"
 * Title of a book by Walter Lippmann, indicating that this conflict was one in which the main opponents — The USSR supporting Communism and the United States supporting Democracy — were not involved directly in shooting warfare against each other, unlike World War II.

The U.S. Responds to the Threat: The Truman Doctrine
1947
 * One aspect of the present situation... concerns Greece and Turkey. The United States has received from the Greek government an urgent appeal for financial and economic assistance....  The very existence of the Geek state is today threatened by the terrorist activity of several thousand armed men, lewd by Communists, who defy the government's authority at a number of points....
 * Greece must have assistance if it is to become a self-supporting and self-sustaining democracy. The United States must supply that assistance....
 * I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or outside pressures....
 * [O]ur help should be primarily through economic and financial aid, which is essential to economic stability and orderly political processes....
 * If we falter in our leadership, we may endanger the peace of the world — and we shall surely endanger the welfare of our own nation.
 * President Harry Truman, The Truman Doctrine, in message to Congress (March 12, 1947).

Berlin Airlift
1948
 * Early in the morning, when we woke up, the first thing we did was listen to see whether the noise of aircraft engines could be heard. That gave us the certainty that we were not alone, that the whole civilized world took part in the fight for Berlin's freedom.
 * Berlin resident.

1949
 * When we refused to be forced out of Berlin, we demonstrated to the people of Europe that with their cooperation we would act, and act resolutely, when their freedom was threatened.
 * President Truman, remarks on the Berlin Airlift, after the Berlin blockade was lifted by the Soviets in May 1949.

North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)
1949
 * [A]n armed attack against one or more of them shall be considered an attack against them all.
 * From the NATO Treaty (April 1949), signed by the United States, Canada, Great Britain, France, Italy Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Portugal, and Luxembourg.

Korean War (1950-1953)
1950
 * Mr. President, I have very serious news. The North Koreans have invaded South Korea.
 * Secretary of State Dean Acheson to President Truman (June 24, 1950).

1950
 * Dean, we've got to stop the sons of --- no matter what.
 * President Truman's response to Secretary of State Acheson

1950
 * [The North Koreans were acting] just as Hitler, Mussolini, and the Japanese had acted ten, fifteen, and twenty years earlier. If this were allowed to go unchallenged, it would mean a third world war, just as similar incidents had brought on the second world war.
 * President Truman's thoughts after learning of the North Korean attack on South Korea.

1950
 * Korea is the Greece of the Far East. If we are tough enough now, if we stand up to them like we did in Greece three years ago, they won't take any next steps.
 * President Truman, on Korea as a place to help contain the expansion of Communism.

1950
 * While full-scale Chinese Communist intervention in Korea must be regarded as a continuing possibility, a consideration of all known factors leads to the conclusion that baring a Soviet decision for global war, such action is not probable in 1950. During this period, intervention will probably be confined to continued covert assistance to the North Koreans.
 * Assessment by the Central Intelligence Agency on the likelihood of Chinese Communist intervention in the Korean War (October 12, 1950). While the report correctly pointed to the fact that Soviet Russia was behind the war, it was incorrect regarding the Chinese, who sent a 300,000-man army into Korea on October 27.

1951
 * If I allowed him to defy the civil authorities in this manner, I myself would be violating my oath to uphold the Constitution.... I could do nothing else and still be President of the United States.
 * President Truman, after relieving Gen. Douglas MacArthur of his command in Korea in April 1951.

* The Cold War at Home, 1945-1955
1949?
 * [Members of the U.S. State Department] surrendered to every demand of the Soviet Union and promoted, at every opportunity, the communist cause in China.
 * Sen. Robert A. Taft, (R-Ohio)

1950
 * [The Democratic Party is guilty of] twenty years of treason.
 * Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy (R-Wisconsin), Lincoln Day Speech (February 12, 1950).

President Eisenhower's Cold War Policy (1953-1961)
1952
 * We cannot build a 20,000 mile Maginot Line or match the Red armies man for man, gun for gun, tank for tank at any particular place their general staff selects.
 * From "A Policy of Boldness," a Life Magazine article by John Foster Dulles (May 1952)

1953
 * If our policy is to stay where we are, we will be driven back. It is only by keeping alive the hope of liberation, by taking advantage of whatever opportunity arises, that we will end this terrible peril which dominates the world.
 * Secretary of State John Foster Dulles.

c. 1953
 * Rather than let the Communists nibble us to death all over the world in little wars, we will rely in the future on massive mobile retaliatory powers.*
 * Vice President Richard M. Nixon, on the Eisenhower administration's policy of "Massive Retaliation" to deter enemy attacks.

1955
 * [Nuclear disarmament would] ease the fears of war in the anxious hearts of people everywhere.... It would make [it] possible for every nation, great and small, developed and less developed, to advance the standards of living of its people.
 * President Eisenhower, at the Summit Conference with the leaders of Soviet Russia, France, and Great Britain at Geneva, Switzerland.

1956
 * If the United Nations once admits that international disputes can be settled by using force, then we will have destroyed the foundation of the organization and our best hope of establishing a world order.
 * President Eisenhower, in calling for a cease-fire in the Middle East (October 1956).**

1957
 * [The United States was] prepared to use force [anywhere in the Middle East against] aggression form any country controlled by international communism.
 * President Eisenhower, statement of the Eisenhower Doctrine (January 1957).

1961
 * We must never let the weight of this combination (of the military and industry) endanger our liberties or democratic process. We should take nothing for granted.  Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
 * President Eisenhower's Farewell Address.

* President Kennedy's Cold War (1961-1963)
1961
 * Let the word go forth that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans....
 * In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility.  I welcome it....
 * The trumpet summons us again... to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle... against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself....
 * And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.  My fellow citizens of the world: Ask now what America can do for you, but what together what we can do for the freedom of man....
 * We shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.
 * President John. F. Kennedy, Inaugural Address

1961
 * [The Bay of Pigs invasion made the United States look] like fools to our friends, rascals to our enemies, and incompetents to the rest.
 * American journalist following the Bay of Pigs fiasco, the American-aided invasion of Cuba by Cuban opponents of Cuban Communist President Fidel Castro, which failed because the Kennedy administration failed to provide promised air support.

1962
 * [The Soviet buildup in Cuba was] a deliberately provocative and unjustified change in the status quo....
 * It shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any nation in the Western Hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States.
 * President Kennedy, address to the nation on the discovery of Soviet missiles in Cuba (October 22, 1962).

1962
 * We're eyeball to eyeball and I think the other fellow just blinked.
 * Secretary of State Dean Rusk during the Cuban Missile Crisis, after a Soviet ship heading to Cuba turned back before it could be intercepted by American ships enforcing a quarantine around Cuba (October 24, 1962).

1962
 * If we are to open new doorways to peace, if we are to seize this rare opportunity for progress, if we are to be as bold and farsighted in our control of weapons as we have been in their invention, then let us now show all the world on this side of the wall and the other that a strong America also stands for peace.
 * President Kennedy, after the Cuban Missile Crisis

1962
 * It had been, to say the least, an interesting and challenging situation. The two most powerful nations of the world had squared off against each other, each with its finger on the [nuclear] button.
 * Both sides showed that if the desire to avoid war is strong enough, even the most pressing dispute can be solved by compromise....*
 * I'll always remember the late President [Kennedy] with deep respect because, in the final analysis, he showed himself to be sober-minded and determined to avoid war. He didn't let himself to become frightened, nor did he become reckless.  He didn't overestimate America's might, and he left himself a way out of the crisis....
 * It was a great victory for us, though, that we had been able to extract from Kennedy a promise that neither America nor any of her allies would invade Cuba.
 * From the Memoirs of Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev.

1963
 * Freedom has many difficulties and democracy is not perfect, but we have never had to put up a wall to keep our people in....
 * I know of no town, no city, that has been besieged for 18 years that still lives with the vitality... and the determination of the city of West Berlin.
 * Freedom is indivisible, and when one man is enslaved, all are not free.... When all are free, then we can look forward to the day when this city will be joined as one and this country and this great Continent of Europe in a peaceful and hopeful globe.
 * All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and therefore, as a free man I take pride in the words, "Ich bin ein [I am a ] Berliner."
 * President Kennedy, speech at the West Berlin City Hall (June 1963).

Kennedy and Latin America
1963
 * We know who killed the Alliance: the oligarchic governments of Latin America.... We know who supplied the poison: the bureaucrats and technicians.  And we know who would have defended it if anyone had bothered to let them know that it existed and needed defenders: the people.
 * Latin American author Victor Alba, on the failure of Kennedy's Alliance for Progress.

The Vietnam War (1945-1975)

 * You can kill ten of my men for every one I kill of yours, but even at those odds, you will lose and I will win.
 * Vietnamese Communist leader Ho Chi Minh, to his French enemies in Vietnam (c. 1950).

 * You have a row of dominos set up. You knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is that it will go over very quickly.
 * President Eisenhower, press conference remarks explaining the "domino theory" that one country falling to the Communists will lead to other countries falling as well (April 7, 1954).

 * The Americans will never let us down; the free world will not let us down.
 * French commander of 13,000 troops under attack at Dien Bien Phu by 50,000 Vietminh (Communist Vietnamese). The Americans sent no help and the French surrendered on May 7, 1954.

 * If he thinks I'm inexperienced and have no guts, we won't get anywhere with him. So we have to act. [Vietnam] looks like the place.
 * President Kennedy to an aide in April 1961, after the failed invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs.

 * In the final analysis it is their war. They are the ones who have to win or lose it.
 * President Kennedy, on the government of South Vietnam's Ngo Dinh Diem, shortly before Diem was overthrown and murdered in early November 1963.

 * If I don't go in now, they'll be all over me in Congress. They won't be talking about my civil rights bill, or education, or beautification.  No sir, they'll push Vietnam up my --- every time.
 * President Lyndon B. Johnson, to an adviser, shortly after becoming president (1963).

 * I don't think it's worth fighting for and I don't think we can get out. I don't see that we can ever hope to get out of there once we are committed.
 * President Johnson on Vietnam (May 1964).

 * Congress approves and supports the determination of the President... to take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against forces of the United States.
 * From the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, passed by Congress (August 7, 1964) after two U.S. Navy ships were apparently attacked by North Vietnamese attack craft.

 * The farmer you waved to from your jeep in the day wold be the guy with the gun looking out for you at night.
 * American soldier in Vietnam (1965).

 * The energy and persistence of the Vietcong [Communist guerrillas] are astonishing. They have accepted extraordinary losses and they come back for more.  They show skill in their sneak attacks and ferocity when cornered.
 * Presidential adviser McGeorge Bundy, reporting on his observations of combat in Vietnam (1965).

 * We cannot win. I truly have serious doubts that an army of Westerners can successfully fight Orientals in an Asian jungle.
 * Undersecretary of State George Ball, agreeing with Bundy and calling in the Cabinet for American pullout from Vietnam (1965).

 * If I got out of Vietnam, I'd be doing exactly what [Neville] Chamberlain did in World War II. I'd be giving a big fat reward for aggression.
 * President Johnson, remembering the British appeasement policies in the late 1930s in rejecting the advice of Bundy and Ball (1965).

 * The cost of the war's present course far outweighs anything we can reasonably hope to gain by it, for ourselves or for the people of Vietnam. It must be ended, in a peace of brave men who have fought each other with a terrible fury, each believing that he alone was in the right.  We have prayed to different gods, and the prayers of neither have been answered fully.  Now, while there is still time for some of them to be partly answered, now is the time to stop.
 * Speech by Sen. Robert Kennedy (D-NY), March 18, 1968.

 * This is what is at stake in Vietnam — the credibility of America's support in Southeast Asia, and, indeed, in many other areas in whose security we have a national interest. Remove this credibility and we will indeed be placed in the position of becoming world policemen, or captives in a fortress America.  In theory, there may be better places to fight than Vietnam; in fact, we have no alternative.
 * Eugene V. Rostow of the U.S. State Department (1968).

 * I call it the Madman Theory, Bob. I want the North Vietnamese to believe that I've reached the point where I might do anything to stop the war.  We'll slip the word to them that, 'for God's sake, you know Nixon is obsessed about Communists.  We can't restrain him when he's angry — and he has his hand on the nuclear button' — and Ho Chi Minh will be in Paris [at the peace talks] in two days begging for peace.
 * President Richard Nixon to his assistant, Robert Haldeman, before unleashing massive air attacks on North Vietnam in December 1972, which led to the cease-fire the next month (1972).

Response at Home to the Vietnam War

 * I didn't want to believe it at first — people protesting against us when we were putting our lives on the line for our country.... How could they do this to us?  Many of us would not be coming back and many others would be wounded or maimed.
 * Vietnam veteran Ron Kovic, in his book, Born on the Fourth of July (c. 1967).

 * We have too often been disappointed by the optimism of American leaders, both in Vietnam and in Washington, to have faith any longer in the silver linings they find in the darkest clouds.... To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, the face of evidence, the optimists ho have been wrong in the past.  To suggest we are on the edge of defeat is to yield to unreasonable pessimism.  To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory conclusion.
 * CBS newscaster Walter Cronkite, in the CBS Evening News broadcast of February 28, 1968.

 * If I've lost Walter, then it's all over. I've lost Mr. Average American.
 * President Johnson to an aide, after Walter Cronkite of CBS came out against the Vietnam War (1968).

 * Tonight I renew the offer I made in August — to stop the bombardment of North Vietnam. We ask that talks begin promptly, that they be serious talks on the substance of peace....
 * There is division in the American house now.... And holding the trust that is mine, as President of all the people, I cannot disregard the peril to the progress of the American people and the hope and prospect of peace for all peoples....
 * Accordingly, I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your President.
 * President Johnson (March 31, 1968).

 * I saw these young men in uniforms standing on street corners with their rifles, and I was thinking What is this?
 * Leone Keegan, an 18-year-old freshman at Kent State University in Ohio, after the National Guard was brought in to stop violent protests (1970). Shortly afterward, the Guardsmen fired on rioting students who had been throwing rocks at them, killing four of them.

 * [The shootings at Kent State] should remind us once again that when dissent turns to violence it invites tragedy.
 * President Nixon (1970).

Richard M. Nixon's Foreign Policy (1969-1974)

 * What we have done is simply opened the door, opened the door for travel, opened the door for trade.
 * President Nixon, after visiting China (July 6, 1972).

 * The only time in the history of the world that we have had any extended period of peace is when there has been a balance of power. It is when one nation becomes infinitely more powerful in relation to its potential competitors that the danger of war arises.
 * President Nixon, explaining why he opened up relations with Communist China in order to balance the growing power of Soviet Russia (1972).

Jimmy Carter's Foreign Policy (1977-1981)
c. 1977
 * We are deeply concerned.. By the... subtle erosion in the focus and morality of our foreign policy. Under the Nixon-Ford administration, there has evolved a kind of secretive ‘Lone Ranger' foreign policy — a one-man policy of international adventure.  This is not an appropriate policy for America.
 * Jimmy Carter

Ronald Reagan's Foreign Policy (1981-1989)
1983
 * I call upon the scientific community in our country, those who gave us nuclear weapons, to turn their great talents now to the cause of mankind and world peace: to give us the means of rendering these nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete.
 * President Reagan, speech proposing the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), which would make it possible for a defender to shoot down incoming nuclear attack missiles.

End of the Cold War
1992
 * For over 40 years, the United States has led the West in the struggle against communism and the threat it posed to our most precious values. That confrontation is over.
 * President George H. W. Bush

2004
 * Others hoped, at best, for an uneasy cohabitation with the Soviet Union; [Reagan] won the Cold War — not only without firing a shot, but also by inviting enemies out of their fortress and turning them into friends.
 * Lady Margaret Thatcher, former British Prime Minister, following the death of President Reagan.

2004
 * I think of someone else other than Reagan, someone less of a hardliner, had been in power then the breakthrough in ending the Cold War would not have happened.
 * Former Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze, following the death of President Reagan.


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Wikiquote talk:Transwiki/American History Primary Sources Cold War

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Wikiquote:Transwiki/American History Primary Sources Economic Changes in the Young US

ECONOMIC CHANGES IN THE UNITED STATES

The Industrial Revolution

1789.   	“A few days ago I was informed that you wanted a manager of cotton spinning.... in which business I flatter myself that I can give the greatest satisfaction, in making machinery, making good yarn, either for stockings or twist, as any that is made in England.” ''New English immigrant Samuel Slater, writing to Rhode Island businessman Moses Brown. Slater had worked in a mill in England and knew from memory how to build the same mill in America.''

1793.   	“I heard much sad of the extreme difficulty of ginning cotton, that is, separating it from its seeds.....  I involuntarily happened to be thinking on the subject and struck out a plan of a machine in my mind....  I made one... which required te labor of one man to turn it and with which one man will clean ten times as much cotton as he can in any other way before known, and also clean it much better than in the usual mode. This machine may be turned by water or a horse with the greatest ease, and one man and a horse will do more than fifty men with the old machines. It makes the labor fifty times less, without throwing any class of people out of business.” Eli Whitney, letter to father explaining the invention of the cotton gin.

1816	“I find mills in my travels manufacturing flour without any miller and all done by machinery and shut up.... I have walked through these mills calling for the miller and found none and the whole process of grinding, elevating, cooling and bolting going on and no miller.” Letter from his brother to Oliver Evans, the American inventor who developed an automated flour mill in 1785.

c. 1820 “Who has not been delighted with the clocklike movements of a large cotton factory?” ''	Sen. Henry Clay of Kentucky''

1835.   	“Of all the countries in the world, America is that in which the spread of ideas and of human industry is most continual and rapid....  The American... is less afraid than any other inhabitant of the globe to risk what he has gained in the hope of a better future....  There is not a country in the world where man... feels with more pride that he can fashion the universe to please himself.” 	Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America.

c. 1840. “The buzzing and hissing and whizzing of pulleys and rollers and spindles and flyers around me often grew tiresome.... I could look across the room and see girls moving backward and forward among the spinning frames, sometimes stooping, sometimes reaching up their arms, as their work required.” Lucy Larcom, recalling her work as an 11-year-old mill worker in Among the Lowell Mill-Girls: A Reminiscence (1881)

c. 1840 “To this habit [waking in order to be at work at 5 A.M.], I never was and never shall be reconciled, for it has taken nearly a lifetime for me to make up the sleep lost at that early age.” Harriet Robinson, recollections of her experience as a young factory worker.

c. 1840. “At first the hours seemed very long... and when I went out at night the sound of the mill was in my ears.... You know that people learn to sleep with the thunder of Niagara in their ears, and a cotton mill is no worse, though you wonder that we do not have to hold our breath in such a noise.” “Letters from Susan” in the Lowell Offering, the literary magazine published by the women working in the mills of Lowell, Massachusetts.

The Transportation Revolution

Roads

1832	“When it seems that the population is turning toward a certain part of the country, there is a hurry to open a road thither. The road almost always comes before those whom it is intended to serve, but it encourages them to move.... America has undertaken and finished the construction of some immense canals. It already has more railways than France. No one fails to see that the discovery of steam has incredibly increased the power and prosperity of the Union; and this is because it facilitates speedy communications between the different parts of that immense land The states of the South, where communications are less convenient, are those which languish compared to the rest.”  Alexis de Tocqueville, Journals

The Steamboat

1807   	“I overtook many sloops and schooners, beating to the windward, and parted with them as if they had been at anchor. The power of propelling boats by steam is now fully proved.” Robert Fulton, following his 300-mile voyage from New York City to Albany and back in 62 hours on his ship Clermont, the first steamship.

1807   	The Clermont looked like “precisely like a backwoods saw-mill mounted on a scow and set on fire.” One observer’s description of Fulton’s steamboat Clermont.

Canals

1825  	I’ve got a mule and her name is Sal,

Fifteen miles on the Erie Canal.

She’s a good old worker and a good old pal,

Fifteen miles on the Erie Canal.

We’ve hauled some barges in our day,

Filled with lumber, coal, and hay,

And we know every inch of the war

From Albany to Buffalo.

Popular song “Erie Canal”

Railroads

1830	“At first the gray [horse] had the best of it,... the engine had to wait until the rotation of the wheels set the blower to work. The horse was perhaps a quarter of a mile ahead when the safety valve of the engine lifted and the thin blue vapor issuing from it showed an excess of steam. The blower whistled,... the pace increased, the passengers shouted, the engine gained on the horse,... the race was neck and neck, nose and nose — then the engine passed the horse, and a great hurrah hailed the victory. But it was not repeated; for just at this time,... the band which drove the pulley which drove the blower, slipped from the drum, the safety valve ceased to scream, and the engine for want of breath began to wheeze and pant.” Observer of the race between Americas’s first successful steam locomotive Tom Thumb and a horse.

	The Communications Revolution

1844.  	“What hath God wrought!” Samuel F. B. Morse, the first message sent by his telegraph, Washington to Baltimore.

Economic Crisis

1819	“The banking bubbles are breaking. The merchants are crumbling in ruin; the manufactures perishing, agriculture stagnating, and distress universal in every part of the country.” Diary entry of Secretary of State John Quincy Adams (May 1819)

	Immigration

????	“Hundreds of poor people, men, women and children of all ages,... huddled together without light, without air,... sick in body, dispirited in heart,... living without food or medicine, except as administered by the hand of casual charity.” Robert Smith, describing immigrants on the ocean passage.

1854	“Twice within the past month I have been stoned by young men.... The windows of the church have frequently been broken — the panels of the church door stove in, and last week a large rock entered my chamber unceremoniously about 11 o’clock at night.” A Catholic priest


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Wikiquote talk:Transwiki/American History Primary Sources Economic Changes in the Young US

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Wikiquote:Transwiki/American History Primary Sources Establishing the 13 Colonies

What Kind of People Came to America?

1600s. Unruly gallants packed thither by their friends to escape ill destines,... condemned wretches, forfeited by law,... strumpets and bawds, for the abomination of life spewed out of their country,... poor gentlemen, broken tradesmen, rakes and libertines, footmen and suchothers fitter to spoil or ruin a commonwealth than to help raise and maintain one. Seventeenth-century English summary of those who left for America.

Why did Settlers Come to America?

1600s My dear wife much longed to see me settled there in peace, and so put me to it. One clergyman’s reason for coming.

1600s The hopes of having land of their own and becoming independent of landlords is what chiefly induces people to America. An early immigrant to New York.

1600s [A farmer with] fifty acres of land may afford to give more wood for timber and fire, as good as the world yields, than many noblemen in England can afford to. Anonymous

THE ESTABLISHMENT OF 13 ENGLISH COLONIES

Virginia

1585	The soil is the most plentiful, sweet, fruitful and wholesome of all the world. Captain Arthur Barlowe, report on his exploration of Roanoke Island, site of the first settlement in the Virginia Colony (now in the state of North Carolina).

1586   	On August 18 a daughter was born to Elinor,... wife of Ananias Dare....  The child was christened on the following Sunday and was named Virginia because she was the first Christian child born in Virginia. John White, father of Elinor Dare, from an account of events in the failed colony of Roanoke.

1607   	It is... reported that the French intend to inhabit Virginia. Reasons for Founding Colonies, London.

1607   	There were never Englishmen left in a foreign country in such misery as we were in this newly discovered Virginia. Remarks of a Virginia colonist.

1608   	Our men were destroyed with cruel diseases such as swellings, flixes, burning fevers, and by wars, and some departed suddenly, but for the most part they died of mere famine. There were never Englishmen left in a foreign country in such misery. George Percy, one of the few survivors of the settlement of Jamestown in 1607.

1609 	[Many settlers] never did know what a day’s work was.....  He that will not work shall not eat. Captain John Smith to lazy colonists in Jamestown, Virginia, after assuming command of the colony.

1609	“Why do you take by force what you may obtain by love? Why will you destroy us who supply you with food? What can you get by war?... We are unarmed, and willing to give you what you ask, if you come in a friendly manner.” Chief Wahunsonacock to the settlers of Jamestown, who attacked his villages to get food.

1619 	“Prayer being ended, to the intent that we had begun at God Almighty  so we might proceed with awful and due respect toward his lieutenant, our most gracious and dread sovereign [King Charles I], all the burgesses were entreated to retire themselves into the body of the church....” 	John Pory, Proceedings of the First Meeting of the Virginia House of Burgesses, the first representative assembly in the future United States.

New England

1620	Having undertaken for the glory of God, and advancement of the Christian faith and honor of our king and country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the northern parts of Virginia, do by these present, solemnly and mutually, in the presence of God and one of another, covenant and combine ourselves together in a civil body politic, for our better ordering and preservation and furtherance of the ends aforesaid.... From the Mayflower Compact, in which the settlers of Plymouth agree to establish a majority-rule government.

1621	[The Pilgrims] were not acquainted with trade nor traffic... but only had been used to a plain country life and the innocent trade of husbandry. Governor William Bradford of Plymouth, on how the Pilgrims were ill-prepared for the demanding life in New England.

1622 	Squanto... was a special instrument sent of God for their good beyond their expectation.... He directed them how to set their corn, where to take fish, and to procure other commodities, and was also their pilot to bring them to unknown places.... What could now sustain them but the spirit of God and His grace?...       So they began to think how they might raise as much corn as they could and obtain a better crop than they had done, that they might not still thus languish in misery. At length, after much debate of things, the governor (with the advice of the chief among them) gave way that they should set corn, every man for his own particular, and in that regard trust to themselves.... 	Governor William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation 1620 - 1647, on how Plymouth gave up having all farmers work for the Company, letting them instead work their own land in order to prevent renewed starvation.

1630 	The Lord will be our God and delight to dwell among us as His own people....  The Lord will make our name a praise and glory, so that men shall say of succeeding plantations: ‘The Lord make it like that of New England.”  For we must consider that we shall be like a City upon a Hill; the eyes of all people are on us. Massachusetts Bay Colony as the New Israel, in John Winthrop, A Model of Christian Charity.

1639  	[W]here a people are gathered together the word of God requires that... there should be an orderly and decent government established according to God, to order and dispose of the affairs of the people... as occasion shall require. 	From the Preamble of the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, considered the first constitution in the future United States.

1647   	Forasmuch as the good education of children is of... benefit to any commonwealth, and whereas many parents and masters are too indulgent and negligent of their duty in that kind: It is ordered that the selectmen of every town... shall have a vigilant eye over their brethren and neighbors to see, first, that none of them shall suffer so much barbarism in any of their families [by failing] to teach, by themselves or others, their children and apprentices so much learning as may enable them perfectly to read the English tongue, and knowledge of the capital laws; upon penalty of 20s. For each neglect therein. Massachusetts Bay Colony School Law, known as “The Great Deluder Law,” in order to hinder “the chief project of that old deluder, Satan, to keep men from the knowledge of the Scriptures.”

1650	If any man have a stubborn and rebellious son of... sixteen years of age, which will not obey the voice of his father or the voice of his mother, and that when they have chastened him will not hearken unto them, then may his father and mother... lay hold on him and bring him to the magistrates assembled in Court, and testify that their son is stubborn and rebellious and... lives in sundry notorious crimes, such a son shall be put to death. Connecticut Legal Code.

c.	 1650 Disorders may be prevented, and ill weeds nipped before they take too great a head. Massachusetts law requiring town officials to inspect families to determine if there were problems with them requiring correction.

New Netherland

1609.  	The land is the finest for cultivation that I ever in my life set foot upon, and it also abounds with trees of every description. The natives are a very good people; for, for when they saw that I would not remain, they supposed that I was afraid of their bows, and taking the arrows, they broke them in pieces and threw them into the fire. Henry Hudson, from his description of his voyage up the Hudson River

1624. 	Whosoever shall settle any colony out of the limits of Manhattan Island shall be obliged to satisfy the Indians for the land they shall settle upon.... 	From the Charter of Freedoms and Exemptions of New Netherland.

1643	On the island of Manhattan, and in its environs, there may well be four or five hundred men of different sects and nations: the Director General told me that there were men of eighteen different languages; they are scattered here and there on the river, above and below, as the beauty and convenience of the spot has invited each to settle. Report on New Amsterdam by French Father Isaac Jogues, who was later murdered by the Mohawks.

1647	I shall govern you as a father his children. Peter Stuyvesant, to the people of New Amsterdam upon arriving there as Director General (Governor) of New Netherland.

1664  	Powder and provisions failing, and no relief or reinforcements being expected, we were necessitated to come to terms with the enemy, not through neglect of duty or cowardice.... but in consequence of an absolute impossibility to defend the fort, much less the city of New Amsterdam, and still less the country. Peter Stuyvesant, account of the surrender of New Netherland to the English.

Settlers and Indians

1600s Many ways hath their advice and endeavor been advantageous to us, they being our first instructors for the planting of their Indian corn, by teaching us to cull out the finest seed, to observe the fittest season, to keep distance for holes and fit measure for hills, to worm it, weed it, to prune it, and dress it as occasion requires. Farmer on how Indians showed settlers how to grow corn. 2000s  People are still living there happily.


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Wikiquote talk:Transwiki/American History Primary Sources Establishing the 13 Colonies

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Wikiquote:Transwiki/American History Primary Sources Expansion and Manifest Destiny

EXPANSION WESTWARD

Texan Independence from Mexico

1827	“The North Americans have conquered whatever territory adjoins them. In less than half a century, they have become masters of extensive colonies which formerly belonged to Spain and France, and of even more spacious territories from which have disappeared the former owners, the Indian tribes.” General Manuel Mier y Terán, hero of Mexico’s war for independence against Spain, following an inspection tour of Mexico’s northeastern border.

1836

“I am besieged by a thousand or more of the Mexicans under Santa Anna. I have sustained a continued bombardment for twenty-four hours and have not lost a man. The enemy have demanded a surrender... otherwise the garrison is to be put to the sword if the place is taken. I have answered the summons with a cannon shot, and our flag still waves proudly from the walls.

“I shall never surrender or retreat.

“Then, I all on you in the name of liberty, of patriotism, and of everything dear to the American character to come to our aid with all dispatch.... Though this call may be neglected, I am determined to sustain myself as long as possible and die like a soldier who never forgets what is due to his own honor and that of his country.

“Victory or death!”

William B. Travis, lieutenant colonel, commanding Texan forces at the Alamo.

1836.   	“Remember the Alamo!” Popular slogan following the Battle of the Alamo, where all Texan defenders were killed by Gen. Santa Anna’s Mexican Army.

The Panic of 1837 and Depression

1837.   	“Matters worse and worse in Wall Street as far as I can learn; everyone discouraged; prospect of universal ruin and general insolvency of the banks, which will be terrible indeed if it takes place. Workmen thrown out of employ by the hundreds daily.” George Templeton Strong, Diary entry for May 2.

MANIFEST DESTINY AND EXPANSION TO THE PACIFIC

1839

“The far-reaching, the boundless future will be the era of American greatness. In its magnificent domain of space and time, the nation of many nations is destined to manifest to mankind the excellence of divine principles; to establish on earth the noblest temple ever dedicated to the worship of the Most High....

“For this blessed mission... has America been chosen ; and her high example shall smite unto death the tyranny of kings, hierarchs, and oligarchs, and carry the glad tidings of peace and good will where myriads now endure an existence scarcely more enviable than that of beasts of the field. Who, then, can doubt that our country is destined to be the great nation of futurity?”

John L. O’Sullivan, call for America’s Manifest Destiny in United States Magazine and Democratic Review

	Oregon

1844  	“Fifty-four forty or fight!” Democrats’ presidential election campaign slogan, demanding that the U.S. get all of the Oregon Territory from the British (with its northern boundary at 54°40' N Latitude) rather than the compromise line at 49° N.

1845

“Our title to the country of the Oregon is ‘clear and unquestionable,’ and already our people are preparing to perfect that title by occupying it with their lives and children.

“But eighty years ago our population was confined on the west by the ridge of the Alleghenies. Within that period — within the lifetime, I might say, of some of my hearers — our people, increasing to many millions, have filled the eastern valley of the Mississippi, adventurously ascended the Missouri to its headsprings, and are already engaged in establishing the blessings of self-government in valleys of which the rivers flow to the Pacific.” James K. Polk, Inaugural Address

1846   	“The best business you can go into you will find on your father’s farm or in his workshop. If you have no family or friends to aid you, and no prospect open to you there, turn your face to the great West and there build up your home and fortune.” Horace Greeley, “To Aspiring Young Men”

1846	“I remember how filled with terror I was when we experienced the violent thunderstorms.... Our oxen would try to stampede, our tents would be blown down, and everybody and everything would be soaked with the driving rains....

“We had to cross a desert that took two days’ and one night’s travel. There was no water at all, so we filled every keg and dish with water so the cattle should have water as well as ourselves.”

Lucy Deady, recalling her experience with her family on the Oregon Trail from Missouri to the Pacific Coast when she was age 11.

c. 1846 “The Indian is a financier of no mean ability, and invariably comes out A-1 in a bargain.” A woman who negotiated with Indians in her travels to the West.


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Wikiquote talk:Transwiki/American History Primary Sources Expansion and Manifest Destiny

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Spanish colonization of the Americas

Spanish colonization of the Americas began with Christopher Columbus's landing on San Salvador in 1492 and continued until the independence wars of the early 19th century. During this period the indigenous population was decimated by a combination of war, exploitation and disease.

Quotes

 * Presently we discovered two or three villages, and the people all came down to the shore, calling out to us, and giving thanks to God.… An old man came on board my boat; the others, both men and women cried with loud voices: "Come and see the men who have come from the sky. Bring them victuals and drink."
 * Christopher Columbus, Journal (13 October 1492).

 * I wished to give a complete relation to your Highnesses, and also where a fort might be built…. However, I do not see it to be necessary, because these people are simple in armaments…. With fifty men I could subjugate them all and make them do everything that is required of them.
 * Christopher Columbus, Journal (14 October 1492).

 * I promise this, that if I am supported by our most invincible sovereigns with a little of their help, as much gold can be supplied as they will need, indeed as much of spices, of cotton, of mastic gum (which is only found in Chios), also as much of aloes wood, and as many slaves for the navy, as their Majesties will wish to demand.
 * Christopher Columbus, "Concerning the Islands Recently Discovered in the Indian Sea" (14 March 1493).

 * The Indians were totally deprived of their freedom and were put into the harshest, fiercest, most horrible servitude and captivity which no one who has not seen it can understand. Even beasts enjoy more freedom when they are allowed to graze in the field.
 * Bartolomé de las Casas, History of the Indies (1510).

 * The city of Temixtitan [ Tenochtitlán] is itself is as big as Seville or Córdoba.… This city has many squares where trading is done and markets are held continuously.… There are, in all districts of this great city, many temples or houses for their idols.… Among these temples there is one, the principal one, whose great size and magnificence no human tongue could describe, for it is so large that within the precincts … a town of some five hundred inhabitants could easily be built.
 * Hernán Cortés "Second Letter from Mexico" (1520).

 * Broken spears lie in the roads; We have torn our hair in our grief. 	The houses are roofless now, and their walls Are red with blood.
 * Nahuatl poem from Miguel Leon-Portilla, Precolombian Literatures of Mexico (1969).

 * Who could conquer Tenochitlán? Who could shake the foundation of heaven?
 * Nahuatl poem from Miguel Leon-Portilla, Precolombian Literatures of Mexico (1969).

 * Who can doubt that gunpowder against the infidels is incense for the Lord?
 * Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, General and Natural History of the Indies (1526).

 * We traveled over a great part of the country and found it all deserted, since the people had fled to the mountains, leaving their houses and fields out of fear of the Christians. This filled our hearts with sorrow, seeing the land so fertile and beautiful, so full of water and streams, but abandoned and the places burned down, and the people, so thin and wan, fleeing and hiding.
 * Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, Account of the Narváez Expedition (1542). Cabeza de Vaca and his three companions were shipwrecked and had lived among Indians for several years.

 * They [Indians] brought us blankets, which they had been concealing from the Christians, and gave them to us, and told us how the Christians had come into the country before and destroyed and burned the villages, taking with them half the men and all the women and children, and how those who could escaped by running off.
 * Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, Account of the Narváez Expedition (1542).

 * In order to bring those people to Christianity and obedience unto your Imperial Majesty, they should be well treated, and not otherwise.
 * Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, Account of the Narváez Expedition (1542).

 * Not only have [the Indians] shown themselves to be very wise peoples and possessed of lively and marked understanding, prudently governing and providing for their nations … and making them prosper in justice; but they have equalled many diverse nations of the world, past and present, that have been praised for their governance, politics and customs; and exceed by no small measure the wisest of all these, such as the Greeks and Romans, in adherence to the rules of natural reason.
 * Bartolomé de las Casas, Apologetic History of the Indies (1566).

 * Those who died so cruel a death, who rendered such important services to God and to their emperor, and who gave light to those who lived in darkness, ought to have had their names perpetuated in letters of gold; but they were never remunerated! They did not even obtain wealth, although this is the goal of all men!
 * Often quoted: to serve God and His Majesty, to bring light to those who were in darkness, and to grow rich, as all men desire to do
 * Bernal Díaz de Castillo, True History of the Conquest of New Spain (ca. 1570), on Spanish soldiers killed in Mexico.

 * Great was the stench of death after our fathers and grandfathers succumbed, half of the people fled to the fields. The dogs and the vultures devoured the corpses. The mortality was terrible. Your grandfathers died, and with them died the son of the king and his brothers and kinsmen. So it was that we became orphans, oh, my sons! So we became when we were young. All of us were thus.
 * Francisco Hernández Arana, Annals of the Cakchiquels (1571), describing the Yucatán plague of 1518 that preceded direct Spanish contact.

 * The Inca asked Fray Vicente who had told him so. Fray Vicente responded that the Gospel had told him, the book. Atahualpa said, "Give me the book, so that it will tell me." So he gave it to him and he took it in his hands and began to look through the pages of the book. The Inca said, "Well, why doesn't it tell me? The book doesn't even talk to me!" Speaking with great majesty, seated in his throne, the Inca Atahualpa threw the book down from his hands.… Don Francisco Pizarro and Don Diego de Almagro shouted and said, "Out, knights, against these infidels who are against our Christianity, and for our Emperor and King let us have at them!"
 * Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, The First New Chronicle and Good Government (1615), describing the start of the battle of Cajamarca in 1532. Guaman Poma's account was disputed in a manuscript by Father Blas Valera, since destroyed.

 * The magistrates of the realm … draw 30,000 Ps. from the magistracy and become rich, doing harm to the poor Indians and the chiefs, despising and taking away their jobs and positions in this realm.… From this there is no defense by the principal chiefs, because they act with him and are partners. They are praised by the priest, the magistrate: "Oh, what a good principal chief, don Pedro!"… The said magistrates … and other Spaniards who walk among the Indians are as absolute rulers with little fear of God and justice.
 * Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, The First New Chronicle and Good Government (1615).

 * Popé … ordered in all the pueblos through which he passed that they instantly break up and burn the images of the holy Christ… and that they burn the temples, break up the bells, and separate from the wives whom God had given them in marriage and take those whom they desired. They were ordered likewise not to teach the Castilian language in any pueblo….
 * "Declaration of Pedro Naranjo of the Queres Nation" (1681) describing the Pueblo Revolt.
 * The Spanish did not find the American colonization easy. The first island-town Columbus founded, which he called Isabella, failed completely. He then ran out of money and the crown took over. The first successful settlement took place in 1502, when Nicolas de Ovando landed in Santo Domingo with thirty ships and no fewer than 2,500 men. This was a deliberate colonizing enterprise, using the experiences Spain had acquired in its reconquista, and based on a network of towns copied from the model of New Castile in Spain itself. That in turn had been based on the bastides of medieval France, themselves derived from Roman colony-towns, an improved version of Greek models going back to the beginning of the first millennium BC. So the system was very ancient. The first move, once a beachhead or harbour had been secured, was for an official called the adelantano to pace out the street-grid. Apart from forts, the first substantial building was the church. Clerics, especially from the orders of friars, the Dominicans and Franciscans, played a major part the colonizing process, and as early as 1512 the first bishopric in the New World was founded. Nine years before, the crown had established a Casa de la Contracion in Seville, as headquarters of the entire transatlantic effort, and considerable state funds were poured into the venture. By 1520 at least 10,000 Spanish-speaking Europeans were living on the island of Hispaniola in the Caribbean, food was being grown regularly and a definite pattern of trade with Europeans had been established.
 * Paul Johnson, A History of the American People (1999), pp. 6-7

 * The Aztecs were Polytheists, practising human sacrifice and, in some areas, ritual cannibalism; but there were also points of comparison with Christianity - their chief god was born of a virgin, they ate pastry images of him twice a year, they had forms of baptism and confession, and a compass-point cross. Yet there was no attempt to build on these foundations, contrary to early Christian practice and, indeed, to the instructions of Gregory the Great. From the time of Juan de Zumarraga, first Bishop of Mexico, a great destroyer of religious antiquities, a systematic attempt was made to erase all trace of pre-Christian cults. Writing in 1531, he claimed that he personally had smashed over 500 temples and 20,000 idols.
 * Paul Johnson (2014). History of Christianity. New York: Touchstone. page 402. (also quoted in Goel, S. R. (1986). Papacy: Its doctrine and history.)
 * The evidence of profit was even greater, of course, in the vast land empire which the conquistadores swiftly established in the western hemisphere. From the early settlements in Hispaniola and Cuba, Spanish expeditions pushed towards the mainland, conquering Mexico in the 1520s and Peru in the 1530s. Within a few decades this dominion extended from the River Plate in the south to the Rio Grande in the north. Spanish galleons, plying along the western coast, linked up with vessels coming from the Philippines, bearing Chinese silks in exchange for Peruvian silver. In their "New World" the Spaniards made it clear they were here to stay, setting up an imperial administration, building churches, and engaging in ranching and mining. Exploiting the natural resources—and, still more, the native labor—of these territories, the conquerors sent home a steady flow of sugar, cochineal, hides, and other wares. Above all, they sent home silver from the Potosí mine, which for over a century was the biggest single deposit for the metal in the world.
 * Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (1987), p. 27
 * The West’s use of what was its temporary edge in technology, including guns, armour and steel, enabled it to take over much of the rest of the world before the subjugated peoples learned how to fight back. It also helped, in the case of the Americas, that the Europeans brought new diseases with them. The Spanish adventurers Cortés and Pizarro overthrew great empires in Mexico and Peru, which had millions of subjects and huge armies, with mere handfuls of men. The odds were fantastic but the Spanish had the advantage of the germs they carried, which were already spreading inland, going ahead of them to lay waste the local populations, which had no immunity to such things as smallpox or measles. In addition, the Spanish rode horses against foot soldiers, wore steel armour and carried steel and guns against men armed with bronze and wood and armoured with quilted cotton.
 * Margaret MacMillan, War: How Conflict Shaped Us (2020)
 * Some scholars consider the initial period of the Spanish conquest—from Columbus’s irst landing in the Bahamas until the middle of the sixteenth century— as marking the most egregious case of genocide in the history of mankind. The death toll may have reached some 70 million indigenous people (out of 80 million) in this period. Millions of natives died of disease— smallpox, measles, influenza, and typhus, in particular— brought to the Americas by the conquest. Alien microbes traveled more quickly than did the European conquerors themselves, by the highest estimates killing an estimated 95 percent of the pre-Columbian Native American population, by the lowest estimates about a half. There is no evidence that the Spanish purposely infected the indigenous peoples. Yet the Spanish imposed conditions upon the Indians that made them more susceptible to the imported diseases. They were exploited as forced laborers and were concentrated in work camps, especially as the search for gold and silver brought a frenetic Spanish interest in mining for precious ores. The Indians were forcibly deported from their homes to alien locations for the purpose of replacing local labor of natives who had died out. The newcomers were deprived of food and water and housed, if at all, in unsanitary, makeshift dwellings. They were separated from their families and normal support systems. They were beaten, brutalized, and deprived of freedom.
 * Norman Naimark, Genocide: A World History (2015)

title: Spanish colonization of the Americas


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Talk:Spanish colonization of the Americas

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Should we keep such a page like this one here or the page should be deleted?(StarWarsFanBoy 16:39, 26 January 2010 (UTC))


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Wikiquote:Transwiki/American History Primary Sources French and Indian War

THE SEVEN YEARS WAR/FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR

1753	We would fain hope these people are only French traders, and they have no other view but trade. I hope there is no great army of French among the [Great] lakes.”

Governor Robert Dinwiddie, on learning that some French were seen in western Pennsylvania during the winter of 1752-1753.

1754.

“You and the French are like two edges of a pair of shears, and we are the cloth that is cut to pieces between them.”

Remarks of a Native American to an Englishman

1754.

“They pretended to have an undoubted right to the river from a discovery made by one LaSalle sixty years ago, and the rise of this expedition is to prevent our settling on the river or waters of it....

“He told me the country belong’d to them, that no English man had a right to trade upon them waters, & that he had orders to make every person prisoner that attempted it on the Ohio or on the waters of it.”

Major George Washington, report of his meeting with the French officer in command of forces in the Northwest.

1755.

“The volley fired by this young Virginian in the forests of America has set the world in flames.”

	A British writer, on George Washington’s attack on French and Indian troops near Fort Duquesne (latter Pittsburgh), starting the French and Indian War.

1755

While General Braddock was in Maryland, colonists were “treated as slaves, and as arrogance unchecked knows no bounds, the military soon silenced the civil power, property became dependent on the moderation of a licentious soldiery, triumphing over the sanction of laws, and the authority of magistracy.”

	Daniel Dulany of Maryland.

1755

“The English soldiers... were struck with such a panic that they behaved with more cowardice than it is possible to conceive.... They broke and ran like sheep pursued by dogs....

“The Virginia troops showed a good deal of bravery, and were nearly all killed.... I luckily escaped without a wound, though I had four bullets through my coat and two horses shot under me.”

''From 22-year old George Washington to his mother during the French and Indian War. British Gen. Braddock was ambushed by the French and Indians.''

1756

“Indians are the only match for Indians, and without them [on our side] we shall ever fight on unequal terms.”

''Colonel George Washington, on the need for Indian troops to work alongside the British and Americans. The Indian Scouts remained a unit of the United States Army until 1948.''

1758	“Militia, you will find, sir, will never answer your expectations, no dependence is to be placed upon them; They are obstinate and perverse, they are egged on by the Officers, who lead them to acts of disobedience, and when they are ordered to certain posts for the security of stores, or the protection of the Inhabitants, will, on a sudden, resolve to leave them, and the united vigilance of their officers cannot prevent them.”

Col. George Washington, on the unreliability of colonial militia troops.

1758

“I must confess that in this country, we must comply and learn the art of war from enemy Indians or anything else who have seen the country and war carried on in it.”

British Brigadier General John Forbes, preparing for the advance into western Pennsylvania to take Fort Duquesne from the French. 1759

American troops are “in general the dirtiest, most contemptible cowardly dogs that you can conceive. They fall down dead in their own dirt and desert by battalions, officers and all. Such rascals as those are rather an encumbrance than any real strength to an army.”

British General James Wolfe.

1760

“The present war teaches us that disputes arising in America may be an occasion of embroiling nations who have no concerns there. If the French remain in Canada and Louisiana, fix the boundaries as you will between us and them, we must border on each other for 1,500 miles. The people that inhabit the frontiers are generally the refuse of both nations, often of the worst morals and the least discretion; remote from the eye, the prudence, and the restraint of government. Injuries are therefore frequently, in some part or other of so long a frontier, committed on both sides, resentment provoked, the colonies first engaged, and then the mother countries.... The flames of war, once kindled, often spread far and wide, and the mischief is infinite.

“Happy it proved to both nations that the Dutch were prevailed on finally to cede the New Netherlands (now the province of New York) to us in the peace of 1674; a peace that has ever since continued between us, but must have been frequently disturbed if they had retained the possession of that country, bordering several hundred miles on our colonies of Pennsylvania westward, Connecticut and the Massachusetts eastward.”

Benjamin Franklin, urging Great Britain to take possession of Canada following its conquest by British and American troops, in his pamphlet, Great Britain’s Interest in Her Colonies”.

1763

He had to deal with “the insulting rudeness of an Assembly-man who, picked up from a dunghill, thinks himself raised to a Being of Superior nature.”

British Colonel Henry Bouquet, on Pennsylvania politicians.


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Talk:Transwiki:American History Primary Sources French and Indian War

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Wikiquote:Transwiki/American History Primary Sources Immigration

Coming to America

c. 1880

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles, From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she.

With silent lips, “Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”

''	Emma Lazarus, “The New Colussus,” about the new Statue of Liberty. The quote in the last 5 lines is found on the statue.''

c. 1890 [Agents from railroads and steamship companies in Europe to encourage immigration swarmed] as the locusts covered Egypt. An anonymous observer.

c. 1890 How can a steerage passenger remember that his a human being when he must first pick the worms from his food... and eat in his stuffy, stinking bunk, or in the hot and fetid atmosphere of a compartment where 150 men sleep? An Italian immigrant

1892

My first impressions of the new world will always remain etched in my memory, particularly that hazy October morning when I first saw Ellis Island.... All of us... clustered on the foredeck for fear of separation and looked with wonder on this miraculous land of our dreams.

Passengers all about us were crowding against the rail, jabbered conversation, sharp cries, laughs and cheers — a steadily rising din filled the air. Mothers and fathers lifted up the babies so that they too could see, off to the left, the Statue of Liberty.

	Italian immigrant Edward Corsi.

Americanization/Assimilation

1888	[I]nstead of the old American stock being “swamped” by immigration, it has absorbed the immigrants and remained nearly unchanged. Carl Schurz, even, hasn’t imported a German idea into our politics;... our present Mayor Grant, of Irish blood, will serve New York, whether well or ill, solely by American principles. Theodore Roosevelt, letter to James Bryce, the British author of The American Commonwealth.

c. 1890 Jews without Jewish memories.... The shook them off in the boat when they came across the seas. They emptied out their memories. A later Jewish-American writer, on how migrants wanted to leave the Old World behind and become assimilated into American life.

1893	I have always been in favor of a healthy Americanization, but that does not mean a complete disavowal of our German heritage. Our character should take on the best of that which is American, and combine it. ''Carl Schurtz to immigrants from Germany At the opening of the Chicago World's Fair in 1893, on how he expected them to fit into American society. The term "melting pot" had not yet been coined, but Schurz approved the idea.''

1903	[Society must take] the earliest opportunity to catch the little Russian, the little Italian, the little German, Pole, Syrian, and the rest and begin to make good American citizens of them. A writer on the need for kindergartens to help children assimilate.

Adjusting to American Life

c. 1890 To this one he lends a dollar; for another he obtains a railway ticket without payment; he has coal distributed in the depth of winter;... he sometimes sends poultry at Christmas time; he buys medicine for a sick person; he helps bury the dead. How machine politicians help immigrants (in exchange for their votes).

c. 1895 [A map of New York City, with a different color for each immigrant group] would show more stripes than... a zebra, and more colors than any rainbow. Jacob Riis, a social reformer and an immigrant from Denmark.

c. 1900 Now if a Russian got his job in a shear department, he’s looking for a buddy, a Russian buddy. He’s not going to look for a Croatian buddy. And if he sees the boss looking for a man he says, “Look, I have a good man,” and he’s picking out his friends. A Ukrainian department, a Russian department, a Polish department. And it was a beautiful thing in a way. A Polish steelworker, on how Pittsburgh steel mills developed ethnic-based work groups. 1904. [Coney Island] is just like what I see when I dream of heaven. An immigrant woman’s opnion of the amusement parks at Coney Island.


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Talk:Transwiki:American History Primary Sources Immigration

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Wikiquote:Transwiki/American History Primary Sources Labor and Working Conditions

Working and Living Conditions

1873	[What will be done] to relieve the necessities of the 10,000 homeless and hungry men and women of our city whose urgent appeals have apparently been disregarded by our public servants? Appeal by labor leaders of New York City during the winter of 1873.

1874	[Never before had] so many of the working classes, skilled and unskilled... been moving from place to place seeking employment that was not to be had. Report of the Pennsylvania Bureau of Labor Statistics.

1877	Labor produces all the wealth of the world.... [The laborer] makes civilization possible. 	Labor reformer George E. McNeill.

c. 1877 “Work is prayer” and “gospel of work” Phrases representing the importance of thrift, hard work, and individual initiative in life.

c. 1877 Life in a factory is perhaps, with the exception of prison life, the most monotonous life a human being can live. Comment on factory life by a textile worker.

1883

The whole condition of industrial labor has changed in our century. Contrast the state of such labor a century ago with what it is now. Then the handicraftsman worked in his own home, surrounded by his family, upon a task, all the processes of which he had mastered, giving him thus a sense of interest and pride in the work being well and thoroughly done. Now he leaves his home early and returns to it later, working during the day in a huge factory with several hundred other men. The subdivision of labor gives him now only a bit of the whole process to do... whether it be the making of a shoe or of a piano. He cannot be the master of a craft, but only the master of a fragment of the craft. He cannot have the pleasure or pride of the old-time workmen, for he makes nothing...

Steam machinery is slowly taking out of his hands even this fragment of intelligent work, and he is set at feeding and watching the great machine which has been endowed with the brains that once was in the human toiler.

R. Heber Newton.

c. 1901 All the affairs of the village and the conditions of living are regulated entirely by the mill company. Practically speaking, the company owns everything and controls everything, and to a large extent controls everybody in the mill village. From a U.S. Department of Labor report on life in a North Carolina "company town."

c. 1905

The tick of the clock is the boss in his e=anger

The face of the clock has the eye of a foe

The clock — I shudder — Dost hear how it draws me?

It calls me “Machine” and it cries to me “Sew!”

Lower East Side garment worker Morris Rosenfeld

c. 1910 The faces, hands, arms to the elbows of everyone in the room are lack with the color of the cloth on which they are working. Account of workers in a textile sweatshop.

c. 1910 Take all the important decisions out of the hands of workmen. ''Frederick Winslow Taylor, founder of Scientific Management. Note: workplaces in advanced companies today do the exact opposite.''

Industrial Laborers Organize

1866	[Through] cooperation we will become a nation of employers — the employers of our own labor. The wealth of the land will pass into the hands of those who produce it. William Sylvis, founder and president of the National Labor Union (NLU).

1871	From the time of the Chicago fire I became more and more engrossed in the labor struggle and I decided to take an active part in the efforts of the working people to better the conditions under which they worked and lived. Irish immigrant Mary Harris Jones (1830-1930),once called “the most dangerous woman in America,” in The Autobiography of Mother Jones.

1873	Strikes are... as much a disease of the body politic as the measles or indigestion are of our physical organization. Comment of the New York Railroad Gazette on labor conditions following the Panic of 1873.

1877	The overwhelming labor question has dwarfed all other questions into nothing. We have home questions enough to occupy our attention now. An Ohio Republican, on the shifting of attention from Reconstruction to labor unrest.

1886	One of the objects of our Order is the abolition of these distinctions which are maintained by creed or color... My experience... [has] taught me that we have worked so far successfully toward the extinction of these regrettable distinctions. Frank Ferrell, an African American member of the Knights of Labor, at the Knights’ national convention in Richmond, Virginia.

1886	The Knights of Labor have undertaken to test, upon a large scale, the application of compulsion as a means of enforcing their demands. The point to be determined is whether capital or labor shall, in future, determine the terms upon which the invested resources of the nation are to be employed. Henry Clews, “The Folly of Organized Labor,” in North American Review (June 1886)

1886	Investigate the abuses of which our sex is subjected by unscrupulous employers, to agitate the principles which our Order teaches of equal pay for equal work and the abolition of child labor. Demand of 16 women attending the convention of the Knights of Labor.

c. 1886 [A] heterogeneous stew of divergent and discordant customs, languages and institutions [is] impossible to organize. Samuel Gompers, founder and president of the American Federation of Labor (AFL), on why he refused to include immigrants in the AFL.

Violent Labor Action

1886

I have told [Police] Captain Schaak, and I stand by it, “if you cannonade us, we shall dynamite you.”

You laugh! Perhaps you think, “you’ll throw no more bombs”; but let me assure you I die happy on the gallows, so confident am I that the hundreds and thousands to whom I have spoken will remember my words;... they will do the bomb throwing!

	One of eight defendants in the trial for the violent Haymarket Riot in Chicago (May 3, 1886), in which seven policemen and one civilian were killed.

1894	The struggle... has developed into a contest between the producing classes and the money power of the country. We stand upon the ground that the workmen are entitled to a just proportion of the proceeds of their labor. ''Eugene V. Debs, the Socialist organizer of the American Railway Union (ARU) and of the violent May-July 1894 strike against the Pullman Palace Car Company in Chicago. '' 1894	The Debs of fable lighted a fire in the car yards of Chicago. The Debs of fact lighted an idea in the dangerous shadows of the Republic. Editorial in a Unitarian newspaper on Eugene V. Debs 1894	Debs had “the kindest heart that ever beat Betwixt here and the jedgment seat.” Poet James Whicomb Riley, on his friend Eugene V. Debs.


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Wikiquote:Transwiki/American History Primary Sources Life in the 13 Colonies

LIFE IN THE 13 ENGLISH COLONIES

Slavery

1662.

“Whereas some doubts have arisen whether children that are slaves by birth, and by the charity and piety of their owners made partakers of the blessed sacrament of baptism, should by virtue of their baptism be made free, it is enacted and declared... that the condition of baptism does not alter the condition of the person as to his bondage or freedom...”

	Virginia Slave Law.

1750.

“The first object which saluted my eyes when I arrived on the coast, was the sea, and a slave ship... waiting for its cargo. These filled me with astonishment, which was soon converted into terror, when I was carried on board....

“[Below decks] I received such a salutation in my nostrils as I had never experienced in my life: so that with the loathsomeness of the stench, and crying together, I became so sick and low that I was not able to eat, nor had I the least desire to taste any thing. I now wished for the last friend, death, to relieve me; but soon, to my grief, two of the white men offered me eatables; and, on my refusing to eat, one of them held me fast by the hands... and tied my feet, while the other flogged me severely.... “One day... two of my wearied countrymen who were chained together... jumped into the sea; immediately another... followed their example... Two of the wretches were drowned, but [the ship’s crew got the other, and afterwards flogged him unmercifully for thus attempting to prefer death to slavery.” ''Account of the Middle Passage in The Interesting Narrative of Olaudah Equiano (1789), a slave brought to Virginia, and bought by a British naval officer. In 1766, he bought his freedom, and moved to England in 1777, becoming a leader in the antislavery movement.''

1774

“You are taxed without your consent, because you are not represented in Parliament. I grant that [is] a grievance....  [But] pray, sir,.... are your hearts also hard, when you hold [us] in slavery who are entitled to liberty by the law of nature, equal as yourselves?”

Letter of a slave to a Boston newspaper.

1781

“Anytime while I was a slave, if one minute’s freedom had been offered to me, and I had been told I must die at the end of that minute, I would have taken it — just to stand one minute on God’s earth as a free woman.”

Elizabeth Freeman, a former slave, after her successful law suit in a Massachusetts winning her freedom, and which led to the ending of slavery in Massachusetts.

Indentured Servants

c. 1700

“Soul drivers... are men who make it their business to go on board all ships whjo have in either Servants or Convicts and buy sometimes the whole and sometimes a parcell of them,... and they drive them through the Country like a parcell of them until they can sell them to advantage.”

John Harrower, an indentured servant, describing the purchase and sale of servants arriving by ship from England.

1750

“Children from 1 to 7 rarely survive the voyage; and many a time parents are compelled to see their children miserably suffer and die from hunger, thirst and sickness, and then to see them cast into the sea. I witnessed such misery in no less than 32 children in our ship, all of whom were thrown into the sea....

“When the ships have landed at Philadelphia after their long voyage, no one is permitted to leave them except those who pay for their passage or can give good security; the others, who cannot pay, must remain on board the ships till they are purchased and are released form the ships by their purchasers. The sick always fare the worst for the healthy are naturally preferred, and so the sick and the wretched must often remain on board in front of the city for 2 or 3 weeks, and frequently die, whereas many a one, if he could pay his debt and were permitted to leave the ship immediately, might recover and remain alive.

“The sale of human beings in the market on board the ship is carried on thus: Every day Englishmen, Dutchmen and High-German people come from the city of Philadelphia and other places... and go on board the newly-arrived ship that has brought and offers for sale passengers from Europe, and select from among the healthy persons such as they deem suitable for their business, and bargain with them how long they will serve for their passage-money, which most of them are still in debt for. When they have come to an agreement, it happens that adult persons bind themselves in writing to serve 3, 4, 5, or 6 years for the amount due by them, according to their age and strength. But very young people, from 10 to 15 years, must serve till they are 21 years old.

“Many parents must sell and trade away their children like so many head of cattle; fit if their children take the debt upon themselves, the parents can leave the ship free and unrestrained; but as the parents often do not know where and to what people their children are going, it often happens that [they]... do not see each other for many years, perhaps no more in all their lives....

“It often happens that whole families, husband, wife, and children, are separated by being sold to different purchasers, especially when they have not paid and part of their passage money.”

German immigrant Gottlieb Mittelberger, in Gottlieb Mittelberger’s Journey to Pennsylvania in the Year 1750.

Colonial Economic Life: Learning

1671

“[There are] no free schools nor printing, and I hope we shall not have these [for a] hundred years.”

Report of Governor William Berkeley of Virginia.

1732

“Haste makes waste.”

“Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.”

Benjamin Franklin, from Poor Richard’s Almanac.

1748

“Remember, that time is money.... In short, the way to wealth... depends chiefly on two words, ‘industry’ and ‘frugality’; that is, neither waste neither time nor money, but make the best use of both....  He that gets all he can honestly and saves all he gets (necessary expenses excepted) will certainly become rich, if that Being who governs the world... does not, in His wise providence, otherwise determine.”

From Benjamin Franklin, Advice to a Young Tradesman.

c. 1750

“As we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by an invention of ours.”

Benjamin Franklin, inventor of the Franklin stove.

Colonial Economic Life: Farm Life

1679

“Quite tight and warm,... [made of] entire trees, split through the middle, or squared out of the rough, and placed in the form of a square.”

Traveler’s account of Swedish-style log houses built by frontier farmers.

c. 1700

“Nothing to wear, eat, or drink was purchased, as my farm provided all.”

Anonymous farmer, speaking about prosperous subsistence agriculture in the colonies.

c. 1700

“Breadbasket of the colonies”

Name given to the Middle Colonies, which produced and exported grains, and well as other crops for the export trade.

1733

“In America there are enough fertile lands to feed all the poor of England.”

James Oglethorpe, founder of Georgia, on how England should send its poor people to the colonies. 1755

“[Farmers] drive up their Herds [of cattle] on Horseback... for their Cattle are near as wild as Deer... [and] run as they please in the Great Woods, where there are no Inclosures to stop them.”

British seaman, describing a cattle drive to a colonial seaport.

	Colonial Economic Life: Trade

1713

“[Boston] is so conveniently situated for trade and the genius of the people are so inclined to merchandise, that they seek no other education for their children than writing and arithmetic.”

An observer’s account of Boston.

Religion in Colonial Life

1738

“Hearing him preach gave me a heart wound.”

Georgia farmer Nathan Cole, after hearing English revivalist preacher George Whitefield.

1740

“There was such a gust of the power of God, that it appeared to me the very gates of hell would give way.”

Fanny Lewis of Baltimore, after a revival.

1740

“[Jesus] died and shed his blood as much for you as for your master, or any of the white people.... [He] opened the door to heaven... and invites you all to enter.”

	Presbyterian minister Cary Allen, preaching to slaves in Virginia 1741

“The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked. His wrath toward you burns like fire; He looks upon you as worthy of nothing else but to be cast into the fire.... You are ten thousand times more abominable in His eyes as the most hateful serpent is in ours. You have offended Him infinitely more than ever a stubborn rebel did his prince; And yet it is nothing but His hand that holds you from falling into the fire every moment....

“And now you have an excellent opportunity, a day wherein Christ has thrown the door of mercy wide open, and stands in calling and crying with a loud voice to poor sinners.... How awful it is to be left behind at such a day!”

From “Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God,” sermon by Jonathan Edwards, founder of the Great Awakening revival in his church in Northampton, Massachusetts in the 1730s.

Colonial Politics

1676	“For having upon specious pretenses of public works raised unjust taxes upon the commonality for the advancement of private favorites and other sinister ends.... “For having wronged His Majesty’s prerogative and interest by assuming the monopoly of the beaver trade.... “By having... sold his Majesty’s country and the lives of his loyal subjects to the barbarous heathen [Indians].... “Of these aforesaid articles we accuse Sir William Berkeley, as guilty of each and every one of the same, and as one, who has traitorously attempted, violated and injured his Majesty’s interest here.” Nathaniel Bacon, “Declaration of the People,” the manifesto written to support “Bacon’s Rebellion.” 1790

This was a fine year for the 13 colonies there was a huge massacure by John Forthdraw. He went to every colonie and killed three people in each trip he made to the colonie. He made about 6 trips to each colonie. He was greatly feared and was untalked about. He is not commonly known but, he was one of the most frightening people in the world.


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Talk:Transwiki:American History Primary Sources Life in the 13 Colonies

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Wikiquote:Transwiki/American History Primary Sources Material Progress in Post-Civil War America

MATERIAL PROGRESS IN POST-CIVIL-WAR AMERICA

NEW TECHNOLOGY

1876	The application of scientific methods to the investigation of natural laws and to the conduct of the useful arts which are founded upon them is year by year... enlarging the outcome of human endeavor. More notably, perhaps, are these facts in... Engineering.... In metallurgical engineering, especially,, within the period of our own recollection, how rapid has been the rate and how wide the scope of progress — the scientific discovery and mining of metaliferous veins; the economical separation and reduction of ores of every grade; the production and regulation of high temperatures; the varied improvements in the manufacture of iron, in saved heat and work, in uniformity and range of products; and most important of all, the creation and the utilization, to be counted by the million tons a year, of the cheap constructive steels! Alexander Lyman Holley, from an address, “The Inadequate Union of Engineering Science and Art,” given on February 22, 1876.

THE INVENTORS

c. 1876 It has been just so in all my inventions. The first step is an intuition — and comes with a burst, then difficulties arise.... ‘Bugs’ — as such little faults and difficulties are called — show themselves and months of anxious watching, study and labor are requisite before commercial success — or failure — is certainly reached. Thomas A. Edison, inventor of the light bulb, phonograph, motion picture camera, and many other inventions, who opened a research laboratory in Menlo Park, NJ in 1876.

1876	Mr. Watson, come here. I want you. Alexander Graham Bell calling his assistant; the first words spoken into a telephone.

1876	My God, it talks! The emperor of Brazil, examining the telephone, at the 1876 American Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia.

INNOVATION IN BUSINESS

1873	“The Gilded Age” ''Title of a novel by Mark Twain. The expression came to represent American life in an age of money and leisure.''

1889

In the manufacture of agricultural implements, specific evidence is submitted showing that six hundred men now do the work that, fifteen or twenty years ago, would have required 2,145 men — a displacement of 1,545.

The manufacture of boots and shoes offers some wonderful facts in this connection. In one large and well-established manufactory, the proprietors testify that it require five hundred persons, working by hand processes, to make as many women’s boots and shoes as a hundred persons now make with the aid of machinery — a displacement of eighty percent.

	David A. Wells, Recent Economic Changes (1889)

1890	Touching the material condition of the great mass of people... we may safely say that no nation ever enjoyed such universal prosperity. The producers, in agriculture and manufacturing, have not made exceptional gains. Indeed, these have not been as prosperous as usual, owing to the great fall in prices of products. But the masses of the people have never received compensation so high or purchased commodities so cheaply. Never in any country’s history has so great a proportion of the products of labor and capital gone to labor and so little to capital. And this furnishes the best proof of a most satisfactory condition of affairs. It is probable that in many future decades the citizen is to look back upon this as the golden age of the Republic and long for a return to its conditions. From Andrew Carnegie, Triumphant Democracy: Sixty Years March of the Republic.

c. 1890 From the moment these crude stuffs were dug out of the earth until they flowed in a stream of liquid steel in the ladles, there was never a price, profit, or royalty paid to an outsider. Observer of vertical integration of business as practiced by Andrew Carnegie.

c. 1890 “Captains of industry” Leaders of big business, likening them to great military leaders.

THE GOSPEL OF MATERIAL PROGRESS

1893	A little ideal world, a realization of Utopia... [looking forward to] some far away time when the earth should be as pure, as beautiful, and as joyous as the White City itself. Description of the Chicago World’s Fair.

1893	A grand opportunity to see... the material advantages which civilization brings to mankind. Description of the Chicago World’s Fair by Frederick Ward Putnam, a director of the Fair and head of Harvard University’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology.

1900	There is no genuine, praiseworthy success in life if you are not honest, truthful, and fair-dealing.... To make money honestly is to preach the gospel. Andrew Carnegie, founder of United States Steel, in The Gospel of Wealth.

c. 1900 “Carnegie library” Public libraries, such as that in Mount Vernon, built from money donated by Andrew Carnegie.

UNETHICAL BUSINESS PRACTICES

1889	I have been driven from pillar to post, from one railway line to another, for twenty years, in the absolutely vain effort to get equal and just freight rates with the Standard Oil Trust,... but which I have been utterly unable to do. I have had to consequently shut down, with my business absolutely ruined. George Rice, a small oil refinery owner, in a complaint to the U.S. Industrial Commission about John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Trust.


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