Early America Quotes

When America was first made known to Europe, the part assumed by France on the borders of that new world was peculiar, and is little recognized. While the Spaniard roamed sea and land, burning for achievement, red-hot with bigotry and avarice, and while England, with soberer steps and a less dazzling result, followed in the path of discovery and gold-hunting, it was from France that those barbarous shores first learned to serve the ends of peaceful commercial industry.

In 1803 only three states had rifle companies.

I think everyone should read Governor William Bradford's diary.

They were not mentioned in the Declaration of Independence, they were absent in the Constitution and they were invisible in the new political democracy. They were the women of early America.

In the beginning, all the world was America.

Most depictions of early America as a garden of opportunity airbrush indentured servants out of the picture while focusing on the minority who arrived free.

Even in the early days of America when it was largely an agrarian or agricultural, farmer-type of economy. There were still cities; there were still elites.

Little things about the Pilgrims surprised me. For instance, the fact that the first duel in America was fought at Plymouth by two teenaged boys over a girl. The life the Pilgrims led in Holland before coming to America also surprised me.

I'm very interested in the early American history, the time when the country came together.

Sandra Day O'Connor - once she said that there are - there were no public schools in America until the 18th century, and she overlooked my alma mater because we started - I say we - in 1635. And among the people who went there - and they're on - the walls in the auditorium, the names are: Ralph Waldo Emerson and Cotton Mather, Benjamin Franklin, except he split when he was 10 years old to go to work.

It can be safely asserted that since early Colonial times, the North has had a distinct race problem. Every one of these States had slaves, and at the beginning of Washington's Administration, there were 40,000 black slaves and 17,000 black freemen in this section.

There's a really great documentary called 'Many Rivers,' which documents the totality of slavery from its inception, and then it gives you a little history on how America came to prominence. It's crazy - the first black man to actually step foot in America came as a free man, as an explorer, with the Spaniards.

Pocahontas was the reason the Virginia colony didn't disappear, unlike some earlier attempts.

I had long known the story of Aaron Burr, but when I heard about his remarkable daughter, Theodosia, about the relationship between the two and about her tragic disappearance, I knew I wanted to tell their story.

The Founding Fathers had just four Cabinet departments and the postmaster general.

The first mention of a 'ranger' is as early as 1622, during the 1622 Powhatan rebellion, a near-successful effort to drive the British out of what is now Virginia.

In our history, America began with a French look.

If you look at the beginning of this country, when the pilgrims came to this country, the first year they had a communistic experiment. They said, 'OK, we're going to take the land, we're going to work the land together and share in the fruits of our labor.' They almost starved to death. Almost half of them died that first year.

In the formative days of the Republic, the directing influence the Bible exercised upon the fathers of the Nation is conspicuously evident.

In early America, taverns would sometimes ban political discussions in order to prevent the physical fights that would often break out when drinking men differed significantly about politics.

Most people do not realize that there was a paid chaplain in Congress even before the Revolutionary War ended.

The pious ones of Plymouth, who, reaching the Rock, first fell upon their knees and then upon the aborigines.