American Exceptionalism Vol 1

Timothy Roberts

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351576901
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

American exceptionalism the idea that America is fundamentally distinct from other nations is a philosophy that has dominated economics, politics, religion and culture for two centuries. This collection of primary source material seeks to understand how this belief began, how it developed and why it remains popular.

EDITORIAL NOTES

Rosier, A True Relation of the Most Prosperous Voyage

1. Thomas Arundell Baron of Warder: see headnote.

2. the Archduke: the Archduke Albert VII of Austria (1559–1621).

3. KINGS MAIESTY himself: James I, King of England and Ireland (1566–1625).

4. some forrein Nation: see headnote.

5. Your friend I. R.: James Rosier.

6. the Downes: area of the southern North Sea near the English Channel off the east Kent coast.

7. the Lizarde: a peninsula in south Cornwall.

8. Saint Iames his Shels: scallop shells.

9. Iland Cuervo: the smallest of the Azores Islands, and nearest to the Americas.

10. embaied: confined.

11. showldes: sandbars.

12. the land: Monhegan, Maine.

13. very high mountaines: perhaps the White Mountains of New Hampshire.

14. wesse: not identified.

15. Pentecost-harbor: St George’s harbour, Maine. See F. B. Greene, History of Boothbay, Southport and Boothbay Harbor, Maine. 1623–1905 (Portland, OR: Loring, Short, & Harmon, 1906), pp. 49–50.

16. pinnesse: or pinnace, a light boat, propelled by oars or sails, carried aboard merchant and war ships for conveying passengers and provisions to shore or to another ship.

17. two of the Ilands: not identified.

18. Chirurgeon: surgeon.

19. balew: value.

20. Saluages: savages.

21. Canoas: canoes.

22. our Shallop: a small open boat propelled by oars or sails and used chiefly in shallow waters.

23. ioifull: joyful.

24. a great riuver: see headnote.

25. flanke: flank, arm.

26. Rider: river.

27. blage: not identified.

28. Thus we shipped fiue Saluages, two Canoas, with all their bowes and arrows: Of the five Indians that the expedition kidnapped, three were given to Ferdinando Gorges, later the founder of the Province of Maine, and one to Sir John Popham, England’s chief justice. The other’s outcome is unknown. See S. Weidensaul, First Frontier: Forgotten History of Struggle, Savagery, and Endurance in Early America (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2012), pp. 30–1.

29. orlop: the lowest deck of a ship.

30. the riuer: see headnote.

31. Saint Georges Iland: now Monhegan, Maine.

32. Sir Walter Ralegh in his voyage to Guiana, in the discouery of the Riuer Orenoque: in 1595 the English navigator Walter Raleigh (1554–1618) explored what is now Guyana and eastern Venezuela in search of Manoa, a legendary city in Spanish literature at the head of the Caroní River. Upon returning to England Raleigh published Discovery of Guiana, which exaggerated what he had encountered, in particular, the abundance of gold.

33. Riuer in the West Indies called Rio Grande: the Rio Grande River was probably first given that name by the Spanish explorer Juan de Oñate (1550–1626). Ordered by King Philip II to colonize the northern frontier of New Spain, Oñate forded the river, also known as the Río del Norte, in 1598.

34. Loyer: Loire.

35. Seurne: Severn.

36. I refer to his owne relation in the May of his Geographicall description: this map has disappeared. See Early English and French Voyages Chiefly from Hakluyt 1534–1608, ed. H. S. Burrage (New York: Charles Scribners Sons, 1906), p. 389.

37. Sylly: Isles of Scilly, off the southwestern tip of the Cornish peninsula.

38. Rain-Déere and Fallo-Déere: caribou and white-tailed deer.

39. Cony: rabbit.

[Farrer/Ferrar], A Perfect Description of Virginia

1. fain: inclined.

2. Berckley: Sir William Berkeley (1605–77) was colonial governor of Virginia 1641–77, appointed by King Charles I.

3. 50 foot: infantrymen.

4. Emperor Nichotawance: Nectowance (1600–49) was the chief of the Pamunkey tribe following the execution of his uncle Opechancanough for attacks on English settlers beginning in 1644, precipitating the Third Anglo-Powhatan War. He signed a treaty with the Virginia colony in 1646 acknowledging Indian subjection to the English Crown and promising a yearly tribute.

5. King CHARLES: Charles I (1600–49) was King of England, Scotland and Ireland from 1625 until his execution in 1649.

6. Prind: printed.

7. Written to a Friend in England: see headnote.

8. Negroes brought thither: African workers were first imported in 1619 as indentured servants, and their slavery was codified after a 1654 lawsuit.

9. Kine: cattle.

10. Lupines: flowering plants.

11. the Mogulls Countrey: India.

12. Pinnaces: light boats, propelled by oars or sails, carried aboard merchant and war ships for conveying passengers and provisions to shore or to another ship.

13. Silk as may be worth five pounds Sterling money, this some French men affirme: starting in the sixteenth century Lyon, France became the capital of the European silk trade.

14. the Dutch the like in any of their Plantations: the Dutch East Indies, now Indonesia.

15. Heathen and Mahumetans: the people of China and Muslims.

16. the Indian name Tapahanuke … great Bay of Chespiacke: respectively, the Rappahannock River, the Potomac River, the Patuxent River, the Patapsco River, the Susquehanna River and the Chesapeake Bay.

17. called the Acamake: Accomack, the Eastern Shore of Virginia.

18. Smiths map: John Smith, Map of Virginia: With a Description of the Countrey, the Commodities, People, Government and Religion. Smith (1580–1631) led the Virginia Colony based at Jamestown 1608–9 and drafted this map around 1607, published in London in 1612. It remained the most influential map of Virginia throughout the century.

19. Captaine Teardley: Francis Yeardley (1620–55), son of the former governor of Virginia George Yeardley.

20. That since the Massacre … Berkely the Governour: see notes 2 and 4, above.

21. That the Government is after the Lawes of England … by whom sent: the Virginia House of Burgesses was the first assembly of elected representatives in the western hemisphere. The House was established by the Virginia Company in 1619 in an effort to encourage English craftsmen to settle in North America. Company officials also adopted English Common Law as the basis of their system in the Virginia colony. White men over the age of seventeen who owned land were empowered to select representatives to govern in the legislative assembly.

22. to find a way to a West or South Sea by land or rivers, & to discover a way to China and East Indies or unto some other Sea that shal carry them thither: the Northwest Passage, believed to connect the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

23. For Sir Francis Drake was on the back side of Virginia, in his voyage about the world in 37 degrees just opposite to Virginia and called Nova Albion: Francis Drake (1540–96), an English sea captain and navigator, carried out the second circumnavigation of the world 1577–80. Nova Albion was Drake’s term for the Pacific Coast of North America, which he claimed for England in 1579.

24. of this certainty Mr. Hen. Brigs that most judicious & learned Mathematician wrote a small Tractate: Henry Briggs (1556–1630), an English mathematician, in 1622 published a Treatise of the north-west passage to the South Sea through the Continent of Virginia, indicating a transcontinental passage from Hudson’s Bay to the Sea of Japan.

25. that most noble Earle of Southampton then Governour of the Virginia Company in England: Henry Wriothesley, third Earl of Southampton (1573–1624), treasurer of the Virginia Company in 1624.

26. trade of the East India: East Indies was a European term from the sixteenth century to identify South and Southeastern Asia, and the islands of Oceania.

27. That the Swedes have come and crept into a River called Delawar: The colony of New Sweden (1638–55) was situated along the Delaware River near present-day New Salem, New Jersey and southwest of Philadelphia, until it was incorporated into Dutch New Netherland. In 1644 New Sweden supported the Susquehannock Indians in their victory in a war against the English Province of Maryland.

28. Cape Charles: in present-day Northampton County, on Virginia’s Eastern Shore.

29. the Hollanders … call it … New Netherlands: New Netherland (1614–67) was the colonial province of the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands, including claimed territories from the peninsula of Delaware and Maryland to Cape Cod, Massachusetts. The colony was a private business venture of the Dutch West India Company to exploit the American fur trade.

30. our side of Cape Cood: Cape Cod.

31. But it is well known, that our English Plantations … to ruine that Plantation: Don Diego Sarmiento de Acuña, Count of Gondomar (1567–1626), was t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• General Introduction
• Select Bibliography
• Introduction
• James Rosier, A True Relation of the Most Prosperous Voyage made this Present Year 1605 by Captaine George Waymouth in the Discovery of the Land of Virginia (1605)
• [John Farrer/Ferrar], A Perfect Description of Virginia (1649)
• The Original Rights of Mankind Freely to Subdue and Improve the Earth (1722)
• [George Duffield], A Sermon Preached in the Third Presbyterian Church in the City of Philadelphia (1783)
• Jeremy Belknap, ‘Enquiry whether the Discovery of America has been Useful or Hurtful to Mankind’, Boston Magazine (1784)
• William Linn, The Blessings of America (1791)
• Charles Ingersoll, An Oration, delivered at Mr. Harvey’s, Spring Garden, before a Very Numerous Meeting of Democratic Citizens (1812)
• The American Colonization Society
• James Allan, Oration Delivered before the Chamberlain Philosophical and Literary Society of Centre College (1835)
• United States Magazine and Democratic Review
• [Charles Creighton Hazewell], ‘The Oregon Question’, Western Review (1846)
• Horace Greeley and Henry Raymond, Association Discussed, or The Socialism of the Tribune Examined (1847)
• Anon., ‘Communism’, New York Journal of Commerce (1848)
• William D. C. Murdock, Address on the Free-Soil Question (1848)
• Benjamin Wade, Plain Truths for the People, Speech in the US Senate (1858)
• Samuel Sullivan Cox, Laws of National Growth, Speech in US House of Representatives (1860)
• John Bates Clark, ‘The Nature and Progress of True Socialism’, New Englander (1879)
• Thorstein Veblen, ‘Some Neglected Points in the Theory of Socialism’, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (1891)
• Textual Variants
• Editorial Notes