Quotes from Nathaniel Philbrick

In the year 1712, a Captain Hussey, cruising in his little boat for right whales along Nantucket's south shore, was blown out to sea in a fierce northerly gale.

In a letter hastily written to a friend in London, Cushman saw only doom and disaster ahead. "Friend, if ever we make a plantation God works a miracle, especially considering how scant we shall be of victuals, and most of all un-united amongst ourselves and devoid of good tutors and regiment. Violence will break all. Where is the meek and humble spirit of Moses?

That Church according to Church is too brave, too cunning, and too good to be true is beside the point. America was destined to become a nation of self-fashioned and self-promoting men. What makes his story so special, I believe, is that he shows us how the nightmare of wilderness warfare might one day give rise to a society that promises liberty and justice for all.

Even if Nantucket's Quakers dominated the island economically and culturally, room was made for others, and by the early nineteenth century there were two Congregational church towers bracketing the town north and south. Yet all shared in a common, spiritually infused mission—to maintain a peaceful life on land while raising bloody havoc at sea. Pacifist killers, plain-dressed millionaires, the whalemen of Nantucket were simply fulfilling the Lord's will.

a boat towing a whale could go no faster than one mile per hour. It

wishing thee a short and prosperous voyage, with a full portion of happiness we remain thy friends. In

and the University of Pennsylvania, he penned a memoir of his time in America. Shortly after marrying the twenty-eight-year-old Marie Brigitte Plunkett

In 1634, smallpox and influenza ravaged both the Indians and the English in the region. William Brewster, whose family had managed to survive the first terrible winter unscathed, lost two daughters, Fear and Patience, now married to Isaac Allerton and Thomas Prence, respectively.

To me, the white whale is that wall, shoved near to me.

doing what Americans had always done: profit as best they could from whatever commercial circumstances presented themselves.

If something was not in the scriptures, it was a man-made distortion of what God intended. At once radical and deeply conservative, the Puritans had chosen to spurn thousands of years of accumulated tradition in favor of a text that gave them a direct and personal connection to God.

it is a maxim founded on the universal experience of mankind that no nation is to be trusted farther than it is bound by its interest, and no prudent statesman or politician will venture to depart from it.

Sitting Bull is known today for stalwart resistance, for being the last of his tribe to surrender to the U.S. government. But at the Little Bighorn, he did not want to fight. He wanted to talk. This may be his most important legacy. As he recognized when he instructed his nephew to approach Reno's skirmish line with a shield instead of a rifle, our children are best served not by a self-destructive blaze of glory, but by the hardest path of all: survival and accommodation.

the greatest danger to America's future came from self-serving opportunism masquerading as patriotism.

I've always known that I had the happy facility of making enemies of any one I ever knew

I see the clouds which now rise thick and fast upon our horizon," Quincy said, "the thunders roll, and the lightnings play, and to that God who rides on the whirlwind and directs the storm I commit my country.

As Arnold had demonstrated, the real enemy was not Great Britain, but those Americans who sought to undercut their fellow citizens' commitment to one another.

As Thomas Jefferson wrote the following year, "the moderation and virtue of a single character has probably prevented this revolution from being closed as most others have been by a subversion of that liberty it was intended to establish.

I've long since learned to be wary of Melissa's sighs. Whenever I finish the draft of a chapter, I read it to her out loud—usually while she's washing the dishes after dinner. Not only does this get me out of doing the dishes, but it provides some extremely helpful, if on occasion devastating, feedback.

Three Village Historical Society

Fairfield Museum and History Center

Lee wrote, "[and] lament with you that fatal indecision of mind which in war is a much greater disqualification than stupidity or even want of personal courage. . . . Eternal defeat and miscarriage must attend the man of the best parts if cursed with indecision." Washington was as aware as

Her name was Annie, and she, too, owned a dog. She said that Alexandria was "the most dog-friendly city in America." There were so many dog day-care centers in town that people asked each other, "So where does your dog go to school?

Melissa laughed and said that our dog was homeschooled