Quotes About History

According to official records, exactly 3,000 free African Americans departed from New York to Canada in 1783—1,336 men, 914 women, and 750 children.

Unlike the tens of thousands of emigrants who were still enslaved and the hundreds of thousands of African Americans who remained in bondage in the new United States, a handful of free black émigrés left written accounts of their personal adventures.

The Indians, of course, had no recourse in the courts, where they were forbidden to testify; "[we are] not heard when we speak the truth," they protested.149 By 1826 scarcely 100 Catawbas remained in two small villages, and in 1840 the remaining Catawbas signed away what little was left of their land in return for a tract in North Carolina which they never received.

The American Revolution, a fight for freedom from colonial rule, was also the most extensive and destructive "Indian war" in the nation's history. Whereas other wars affected individual nations, the Revolution affected all Native Americans east of the Mississippi.

Yet patriot masters apparently felt the need to fabricate such arguments, if only to relieve their own consciences. Understandably, they preferred to envision themselves as purveyors of freedom, the British as engineers of slavery. But it wasn't true, and the slaves undoubtedly knew this.

Two runaways who were captured by the patriots reported that three-quarters of the soldiers who manned the garrison were Negroes and that "all the blacks who are sent to the fort at the great Bridge, are supplied with muskets, Cartridges &c strictly ordered to use them defensively & offensively.

After the war, white loyalists joined with white patriots and Catawba Indians to destroy these and other black communities which had managed to take advantage of the turbulent times to fashion lives without masters, if only for a short period of time.107

Historically, the Western Abenakis opposed all English-speaking Europeans. Their homeland—present-day Vermont, New Hampshire, and southern Quebec—lay between areas of English and French control.

Once they had survived the winter and returned to the warpath, these Indians would not simply be fighting for the Crown—now, they had good reasons of their own to seek revenge against the American patriots.

The notion that women were "displaying a distinctive form of patriotism" by "shaming" their men into battle oversimplifies the female experience of the Revolutionary War. Women did become more political, by necessity if not by choice—but this does not mean that the political goals of the state superceded personal commitments to family and natural instincts for survival.

Autobiography is the poor man's history.

I don't write fantasy; I write historical novels about an imaginary place.

History's shown us time and again, that mixing religion and politics only brings destruction.

It's amazing, isn't it? Here we are, two thousand years later, with everything we've accomplished, everything we know, and yet this little talisman still rules the way billions of people live…and die.

Sichuan food would not be Sichuanese without the hot chilies that arrived before 1700 from South America.

It was part of your religion to hate the British.

The German word for tatting is Schiffchenarbeit meaning 'the work of the little boat

I have little children, 5 1/2 and 1 1/2, and I thought I should document my life, because by the time they're in the mid-20s, they'll be able to say, 'This is what he did.'

We have two boys, and one of our kids is much more interested in history and stories, so if you want him to do some calculations about lenses, you would start talking to him about Galileo... Then he would be into the lenses, but if you just start talking to him about lenses, he might not stay with you.

There is just so much beauty in Cambridge. It's wonderful.

Remember where you came from.

I came through the bebop era, and to me that was enough.

I am not in the camp of 'Russia has to be our enemy, and they have to be that way forever,' and I think sometimes we fight about from the past.

I have a record that I'm so very, very proud of, and no campaign is going to take that away.