One of Lincoln's favorite anecdotes sprang from the early days just after the Revolution. Shortly after the peace was signed, the story began, the Revolutionary War hero Ethan Allen "had occasion to visit England," where he was subjected to considerable teasing banter. The British would make "fun of the Americans and General Washington in particular and one day they got a picture of General Washington" and displayed it prominently in the outhouse so Mr. Allen could not miss i

Doctrines which stressed God's activity through nature and man's innate goodness had a certain natural appeal to the American mind; to certain groups of intellectuals and anti-revivalists they were highly gratifying. In the place of "enthusiasm" they could substitute reason, in the place of faith, good works. Many Deists maintained a nominal connection with the church without adhering to its doctrines, as in the case of George Washington. Others, such as Jefferson and Frankli

The publication in 1684 of the Reverend Increase Mather's An Essay for the Recording of Illustrius Providences prepared the way for a witchhunt of more frightening proportions. The pestilence broke out again in 1688 and lasted until October, 1692. In Salem, two West Indian slaves stirred up latent fears through their tales of voodooism. When a group of young girls began to show signs of demon possession and accused their neighbors of being in league with Satan, the Inquisiti

There was also a desire to transmit to the next generation the stimulating spirit of the Renaissance, which many of the New England intelligentsia had received at Cambridge. These interests bore fruit in the establishment of Harvard College, the first college in English America. In 1636, the Massachusetts General Court voted four hundred pounds for the founding of a college. This grant was augmented two years later through a bequest by John Harvard, a minister at Charlestown,

The steep payments he owed British bankers forced Jefferson to retain him enormous workforce of slaves despite his professed hatred for the institution. "The torment of mind I endure till the moment shall arrive when I shall owe not a shilling on earth is such really as to render life of little value," he told his American manager in 1787. But he would not sell land to pay his debts; "nor would I willingly sell the slaves as long as there remains any prospect of paying my deb

Tabling the slavery issue had been a precondition of union in 1787 and now again in 1790. Though a passionate slavery critic, Hamilton knew that this inflammatory issue could wreck the union. He couldn't be both the supreme nationalist and the supreme abolitionist. He certainly couldn't push through his controversial funding program if he stirred up the slavery question, which was probably a futile battle anyway. So this man of infinite opinions grew mute on that all-importa

Also from the start, however, European believers took a religious interest in America. As the career of Christopher Columbus illustrates, it was an interest with both the fidelity and the tragedy that would characterize the whole history of Christianity in North America. Columbus's very first entry in the diary that recorded his journey to America in 1492 expressed the hope that he could make contact with the native peoples in order to find out "the manner in which may be und