Virginia DeJohn Anderson

In September 1776, two men from Connecticut each embarked on a dangerous mission. One of the men, a soldier disguised as a schoolmaster, made his way to British-controlled Manhattan and began furtively making notes and sketches to bring back to the beleaguered Continental Army general, GeorgeWashington. The other man traveled to New York to accept a captain's commission in a loyalist regiment before returning home to recruit others to join British forces. Neither man completed his mission. Both met their deaths at the end of a hangman's rope, one executed as a spy for the American causeand the other as a traitor to it.Neither Nathan Hale nor Moses Dunbar deliberately set out to be a revolutionary or a loyalist, yet both suffered the same fate. They died when there was every indication that Britain would win the American Revolution. Had that been the outcome, Dunbar, convicted of treason and since forgotten, mightwell be celebrated as a martyr. And Hale, caught spying on the British, would likely be remembered as a traitor, rather than a Revolutionary hero. In The Martyr and the Traitor, Virginia DeJohn Anderson offers an intertwined narrative of men from very similar backgrounds and reveals how their relationships within their families and communities became politicized as the imperial crisis with Britain erupted. She explores how these men forgedtheir loyalties in perilous times and believed the causes for which they died to be honorable. Through their experiences, The Martyr and the Traitor illuminates the impact of the Revolution on ordinary lives and how the stories of patriots and loyalists were remembered and forgotten afterindependence.

Nathan Hale, Moses Dunbar, and the American Revolution

The Martyr and the Traitor

David Goldfield

William L. Barney

Carl Abbott

Peter H. Argersinger

School of Urban Studies and Planning Carl Abbott

Jo Ann E. Argersinger

University Jo Ann Argersinger

Robert M. Weir

This highly visual brief survey of U.S. History introduces the key features of American political, social, and economic history in an exciting new format designed to ignite, in the readers, a passion to know and love history.This volume covers U.S. History from approximately 1600 to 1900 through enhanced visual presentations, emphasis in geographic literacy, and a free CD-ROM that includes History Notes and the Western Civilization Documents.This book is for anyone interested in the development of the American Nation and the influences that continue to shape the U.S. and the world.

The American Journey

When we think of the key figures of early American history, we think of explorers, or pilgrims, or Native Americans--not cattle, or goats, or swine. But as Virginia DeJohn Anderson reveals in this brilliantly original account of colonists in New England and the Chesapeake region, livestock played a vitally important role in the settling of the New World. Livestock, Anderson writes, were a central factor in the cultural clash between colonists and Indians as well as a driving force in the expansion west. By bringing livestock across the Atlantic, colonists believed that they provided the means to realize America's potential. It was thought that if the Native Americans learned to keep livestock as well, they would be that much closer to assimilating the colonists' culture, especially their Christian faith. But colonists failed to anticipate the problems that would arise as Indians began encountering free-ranging livestock at almost every turn, often trespassing in their cornfields. Moreover, when growing populations and an expansive style of husbandry required far more space than they had expected, colonists could see no alternative but to appropriate Indian land. This created tensions that reached the boiling point with King Philip's War and Bacon's Rebellion. And it established a pattern that would repeat time and again over the next two centuries. A stunning account that presents our history in a truly new light, Creatures of Empire restores a vital element of our past, illuminating one of the great forces of colonization and the expansion westward.

How Domestic Animals Transformed Early America

Creatures of Empire

This book explores New England's founding, in terms of ordinary people and the transcendent meanings that those lives ultimately acquired.

The Great Migration and the Formation of Society and Culture in the Seventeenth Century

New England's Generation

Virginia DeJohn Anderson

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