My previous post was of my lineage and how deeply rooted my family history is in American history. I graduated from Baylor University in Waco, Texas, and majored in literature and journalism. I can understand now why I had such a love for the early American literature. Genealogy and the history of literature are interconnected. It is through the early literature that we have knowledge of what the life was like in early America under British rule. I revisited one of my favorite college textbooks to understand what living in early America was like. The following information is taken from:
The American Tradition in Literature Vol. 1 4th ed. By Bradley, Beatty, Long, Perkins, 1974.
**This book “represents the range and power of our literature…” “While we have made literary merit our criterion…, we attempted…to emphasize the relations between literary work and general movements in American civilization and intellectual history.”
“Our colonial literature became a great reservoir of
material and inspiration…and provides an understanding of those bedrock
American experiences which developed national character…”
The likes of William Bradford, Samuel Sewall and Cotton Mather shed light on early American life in real time. The following was taken word by word from the book listed above.
William Bradford was one of the greatest colonial Americans. He was large in spirit and wisdom and believed that he was an instrument of God. Despite the fact that Bradford was self-taught, and without training, his manuscript “Of Plimoth Plantaion” is a classic among literary annals. Five important colonial historians quoted from it before 1730. At 16, he joined the Separatist group, and at 18, he escaped with the group to Holland to avoid persecution. There he became a wealthy weaver, and at age 27 as the leader of a committee, he arranged their pilgrimage on the Mayflower to America. On Nov 11, 1620, he signed the Mayflower compact after making landfall at Cape Cod. John Carver was elected governor but died during the first year. Bradford was elected to succeed him. From 1621 until his death, Bradford possessed more power than any other colonial governor, yet he refused to become the sole proprietor and maintained the democratic principles of the Mayflower Compact. He was re-elected 30 times for 33 years (elections were not held for 2 of those years). Transcribing his writing was difficult because he did not use traditional spelling and punctuation. In Vol I, Bradford documents their voyage and arrival at Cape Cod. In Vol. 2, he recounts the Mayflower Compact, the compact with the Indians, the first Thanksgiving, among other challenges.
SAMUEL SEWALL (1652-1730)
Samuel represents the 2nd and 3rd generation of a fading Puritanism. Devoutly religious in private and public life, Sewall resisted an early religious vocation in favor of wealth, public office and pursuit of his hobbies. Shortly after graduating from Harvard in 1671, he married Hannah Hull the daughter of John Hull, Master of the Mint and the wealthiest person in Massachusetts. Samuel came to Boston at the age of nine with his father to avoid the Restoration of 1660. His DIARY is a social history of that city during that time. He began his public service in his late twenties managing the colony’s printing press, acting as deputy of the general court in 1683 and later as a member of the Council 1684-1686. In England on business in 1688, he assisted Increase Mather, the appointed envoy of the Massachusetts churches, in an unsuccessful effort to secure the restoration of the charter of the colony. Under the new charter of 1692, Sewall again became a member of the Council and served for 33 years. In that same year, 1692, Sewall was appointed as justice of the Superior Court and rose in the ranks until he was chief justice of Massachusetts from 1718-1728. His most memorable judicial act was being a member of the special court of 3 which condemned the witches of Salem in 1692. That the blood of these innocents rested heavily on his soul is shown by his public confession of error 5 years later recorded in the text of his diary. The fervid dedication of the Puritan Fathers was doomed and this is depicted in his diary. His other writings have little merit.
COTTON MATHER ( 1663-1728)
His critics cannot express any enthusiasm for him as a man or a writer, yet his influence on his contemporaries is undeniable. He had a colossal mass of work, dull and full of personal bias, but it was a valuable source of knowledge for the history and the men of colonial New England. Mather was viewed as an egotist, a reactionary, and a bigoted witch-hunter. Yet now we see that he was fighting a losing battle for his theology. He was facing a new age of secular and materialistic ideas. He was the last in succession to his grandfather, Richard and his father, Increase. This priesthood had represented the dominant hierarchy of New England during more than a half century. Cotton enrolled in Harvard at 11, already fluent in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. He became saturated with piety and learning. Receiving his Master of Arts degree at 18, he entered the ministry at the Second Church in Boston. There he spent his life in a superhuman ferment of activity and publication which carried far beyond his parish duties into public issues as well as theological dogma. He had an unfavorable personality and Boston was no longer the Puritan community of his father’s youth. He amassed 2,000 books, the largest of the colonial libraries. He wrote 444 bound volumes. It is reported that he kept 450 fasts during his life, and once publicly humiliated himself for his sins. He survived 3 wives, the last died insane. He outlived all but 2 of his 15 children. His book Wonders of the Invisible World in 1693 was an analysis of the evidence against witches, evoking the morbid fascination of reasoned error. Mather had not participated in the bloody Salem trials, but his influence was undeniably on the side of the prosecution. In 1700, he questioned some of the evidence as invalid.
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