Mormons didn’t just leave eastern states because ‘many Americans were suspicious’. It began when the Missouri Governor, Lilburn Boggs, issued an order in November 1838 to exterminate or drive out the Mormons from the state. This order resulted in The Missouri Mormon War and the Haun’s Hill Massacre, which ultimately forced Mormons to migrate west.
For some reason, I am not able to comment on Chapter 4, so I am leaving my suggestion here:
On Chapter 4, Paragraph 18, the second sentence reads:
“Georgia was founded a philanthropic group that included James Oglethorpe.”
Please consider changing it to “Georgia was founded by a philanthropic group that included James Oglethorpe” as the former citation is grammatically incorrect.
Race hadn’t been invented as a construct yet? The English didn’t bring a vision of race with them to America, they were still working within the limits of the civil vs savage/Christian vs Pagan construct. Race-making emerges as a result of these outlook towards the end of the seventeenth century and takes off in the eighteenth. This sentence needs to be revised to reflet the prevailing historiographical recognition of over 20 years of work begining with Karen O. Kupperman’s undistputed thesis in Indians & English.
Perhaps something along the lines of: “Enlgish colonists, like other Europeans, brought a powerful and massively distorted vision of their own supremacy, righteousness, and moral superiority to America. These European colonists all saw the world in a binary view of their own cultures and societies as being civil, versus any others that were regarded as ‘savage’. This supposed civility went hand-in-hand with their all-consuming Christian world-view. Their faith was as much a driving force as commercial oppoortunities for expansion, and pushed them to attempt to convert non-Christians or else exterminated them to bring about the bible’s final prophecy of the second-coming.”
Is this not a touch dramatic and misleading given that New Spain remained indefatigably powerful and a lychpin of the Spanish Empire well into the nineteenth century? The Armada is hardly ‘the end’ of Spanish threat or power. But, I do agree it does see a shift towards decline in naval supremacy.
In fact this last sentence, problematically sets up a trope of American Exceptionalism. As in: the English come, take over, and then White Anglo-Americans rise and destory Native life. The English colonies were weak and disparate places across the board until essentially a few decades before independence is won from Britain. New England and Virginia are the only true ‘power players’ in the seventeenth century and even then they’re perilously close to extinction until White population numbers and Native death rates create small areas of super-majority.
As the likes of Matthew Bahar, Daniel Richter, David Silverman, Andrew Lipman, and many more have begun to state emphatically, the settler-colonial model can not be deployed as fact in the sixteenth and seventeenth century colonies. It just doesn’t fit, and is as factually inorrect and misleading as exceptionalist regressive tropes.
When we’re dealing with a decent amount of very good historical truth elsewhere on the website, isn’t expulsion a bit of a massive corrective? The Spanish salughtered the early French Huegnots in Florida. Perhaps, instead it could be stated: “In the 1560s local Spanish leaders put an end to early French attempts to colonise the area near modern-day Jacsonville, northeast Florida, which resulted in the massacre of Protestant Huegnot colonists by Catholic soldiers.”
The sentence “The aristocracy then were wealthy or successful because they had greater access to wealth, education, and patronage and not because they were innately superior” does not seem to reflect John Locke in an accurate manner. While Locke recognized that economic inequality and educational differences existed, he did not explicitly argue that the aristocracy’s dominance was due to unfair access to resources. Instead, he tended to justify social and political inequality through natural rights, property ownership, and rationality—within a framework that still implicitly favored the elite. His larger argument is that private property arises from labor. He did acknowledge that inequalities emerge naturally in a society. He was not critical of existing social hierarchies.
Recent Comments in this Document
September 10, 2025 at 4:48 pm
Mormons didn’t just leave eastern states because ‘many Americans were suspicious’. It began when the Missouri Governor, Lilburn Boggs, issued an order in November 1838 to exterminate or drive out the Mormons from the state. This order resulted in The Missouri Mormon War and the Haun’s Hill Massacre, which ultimately forced Mormons to migrate west.
See in context
September 9, 2025 at 10:50 pm
Should say “Hewes” instead of “Hews” (line 3)
See in context
September 6, 2025 at 1:46 am
Bacon died of dysentery.
Alan Taylor, American Colonies: The Settling of North America (New York: Viking, 2001), 150.
See in context
September 5, 2025 at 3:57 am
Hi there!
For some reason, I am not able to comment on Chapter 4, so I am leaving my suggestion here:
On Chapter 4, Paragraph 18, the second sentence reads:
“Georgia was founded a philanthropic group that included James Oglethorpe.”
Please consider changing it to “Georgia was founded by a philanthropic group that included James Oglethorpe” as the former citation is grammatically incorrect.
Thank you!
See in context
September 1, 2025 at 5:50 pm
Race hadn’t been invented as a construct yet? The English didn’t bring a vision of race with them to America, they were still working within the limits of the civil vs savage/Christian vs Pagan construct. Race-making emerges as a result of these outlook towards the end of the seventeenth century and takes off in the eighteenth. This sentence needs to be revised to reflet the prevailing historiographical recognition of over 20 years of work begining with Karen O. Kupperman’s undistputed thesis in Indians & English.
Perhaps something along the lines of: “Enlgish colonists, like other Europeans, brought a powerful and massively distorted vision of their own supremacy, righteousness, and moral superiority to America. These European colonists all saw the world in a binary view of their own cultures and societies as being civil, versus any others that were regarded as ‘savage’. This supposed civility went hand-in-hand with their all-consuming Christian world-view. Their faith was as much a driving force as commercial oppoortunities for expansion, and pushed them to attempt to convert non-Christians or else exterminated them to bring about the bible’s final prophecy of the second-coming.”
See in context
September 1, 2025 at 5:26 pm
Is this not a touch dramatic and misleading given that New Spain remained indefatigably powerful and a lychpin of the Spanish Empire well into the nineteenth century? The Armada is hardly ‘the end’ of Spanish threat or power. But, I do agree it does see a shift towards decline in naval supremacy.
In fact this last sentence, problematically sets up a trope of American Exceptionalism. As in: the English come, take over, and then White Anglo-Americans rise and destory Native life. The English colonies were weak and disparate places across the board until essentially a few decades before independence is won from Britain. New England and Virginia are the only true ‘power players’ in the seventeenth century and even then they’re perilously close to extinction until White population numbers and Native death rates create small areas of super-majority.
As the likes of Matthew Bahar, Daniel Richter, David Silverman, Andrew Lipman, and many more have begun to state emphatically, the settler-colonial model can not be deployed as fact in the sixteenth and seventeenth century colonies. It just doesn’t fit, and is as factually inorrect and misleading as exceptionalist regressive tropes.
See in context
September 1, 2025 at 5:01 pm
When we’re dealing with a decent amount of very good historical truth elsewhere on the website, isn’t expulsion a bit of a massive corrective? The Spanish salughtered the early French Huegnots in Florida. Perhaps, instead it could be stated: “In the 1560s local Spanish leaders put an end to early French attempts to colonise the area near modern-day Jacsonville, northeast Florida, which resulted in the massacre of Protestant Huegnot colonists by Catholic soldiers.”
See in context
August 28, 2025 at 1:02 pm
The sentence “The aristocracy then were wealthy or successful because they had greater access to wealth, education, and patronage and not because they were innately superior” does not seem to reflect John Locke in an accurate manner. While Locke recognized that economic inequality and educational differences existed, he did not explicitly argue that the aristocracy’s dominance was due to unfair access to resources. Instead, he tended to justify social and political inequality through natural rights, property ownership, and rationality—within a framework that still implicitly favored the elite. His larger argument is that private property arises from labor. He did acknowledge that inequalities emerge naturally in a society. He was not critical of existing social hierarchies.
See in context
August 25, 2025 at 7:27 pm
The latest evidence (fossilized footprints found in White Sands National Park in New Mexico) proves a human presence in North America as early as 23,000 years ago: https://www.nps.gov/whsa/learn/nature/fossilized-footprints.htm
See in context
August 25, 2025 at 1:06 pm
Aeawaks —- Specifically the Lucayans
See in context