Contr'un
The Founding Fathers
Some days I’m content to treat the “founding fathers” as Real American Heroes, guys who did a pretty amazing job of forging a country out of the colonies, despite active opposition from England and internal […]
Month: February 2006
The Very Idea
The Declaration as an Argument
So, what does the Declaration of Independence do? What kind of writing is it, and what does it seek to accomplish? The documents begins: When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for […]
The Very Idea
Colonial America: The First Half of our History
It’s surprising when you notice that the colonial period is nearly one half of American history, over 150 years. If you start the history of the national period after the ratification of the Constitution, rather […]
The Very Idea
Great Ideas: Working Definitions and Clarifications
It’s obvious, once the question is asked, that people value “great ideas” for a variety of reasons. But perhaps a general definition may still be possible. Great Ideas are those which will not let us […]
Uncategorized
Land-Banks as a substitute for Alchemy?!
Carl Wennerlind has a great article online, tracing connections between the alchemical tradition and the rise of credit-money, including land-banking. “Credit-Money as the Philosopher’s Stone: Alchemy and the Coinage Problem in Seventeenth-Century England” starts with […]
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Susan Dimock and Bessie Greene
Ednah Dow Cheney’s Memoir of Susan Dimock : resident physician of the New England Hospital for Women and Children is now online. There’s some very nice material here, including accounts of the funeral for the […]
The Very Idea
Puritan New England 2: Key Categories
We’ve set as a goal some attention to the development of “great ideas” as they relate to politics (specifically democracy), religion (monotheism), philosophy (rationalism), and science. So it make sense to do an occasional round-up […]
Uncategorized
William B. Green and the LTV
Among the interesting questions that rise out of Greene’s early mutual bank writings is this one: did Greene really believe in a “labor theory of value” in the same way as other socialists of his […]
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Puritan America: Round-up of primary source archives
While this is not an exhaustive list of other archives with 17th-century New England texts online, it’s a pretty good list of places to start looking for material: The Avalon Project at Yale Law School […]
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Thomas Morton: New England Outsider
Thomas Morton’s and the settlement of “Merrymount” at Mount Wollaston in Massachusetts have long functioned in national mythology as the foil for the early puritan settlements. Along with Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson, Morton figures […]