Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB
[blocks in formation]

OF

THE TOWN OF PLYMOUTH,

FROM ITS FIRST SETTLEMENT IN 1620,

TO THE PRESENT TIME:

WITH A CONCISE

HISTORY OF THE ABORIGINES

OF NEW ENGLAND,

AND THEIR WARS WITH THE ENGLISH, &c.

BY JAMES THACHER, M. D. A. A. S.

"Ask thy fathers and they will show thee; thy elders and they will tell
thee."

SECOND EDITION, ENLARGED AND CORRECTED.

BOSTON:

MARSH, CAPEN & LYON.

1835.

[ocr errors][merged small][merged small]

Entered according to the act of Congress, in the year 1835, by MARSH,

CAPEN & LYON, in the Clerk's office of the District Court of Massachusetts.

PREFACE.

THE author of these pages feels great pleasure in acknowledging his obligations to the public that the whole of the first edition, consisting of 1250 copies, was disposed of within a few months after publication. The present impression is considerably enlarged and improved, and will present a full, and he trusts, a correct narrative of the pilgrimage of our puritan fathers, and a just delineation of their characters. From them we inherit civil and religious foundations, incomparably the wisest and best that ancestors ever bequeathed to their posterity. It is from their wisdom and virtue that we derive instruction pertaining to the radical principles which are recognized at the present day as the immutable laws of the rights of man, and their glorious achievements were highly prized and firmly sustained by the sages of our revolution, in 1776. Their ardent zeal and heavenly temper prompted them to labor in the perilous field of liberty, and their spirits, sustained by a holy trust, must have traced through the eye of faith the glorious destiny of future generations. While we trace, in their struggle for religious and political freedom, our inestimable institutions, and witness that their efforts in the noble cause are triumphant, we almost wish that they might awake to a second existence. But who can know the felicity the good spirits may now enjoy, as from their heavenly seat, they look down upon the scene of their trials, their sufferings, and their death, and see that the land they loved is free and happy?

"Go call thy sons; instruct them what a debt
They owe their ancestors; and make them swear
To pay it, by transmitting down entire

Those sacred rights to which themselves were born."

Akenside.

« AnteriorContinuar »