The Beginners of a Nation / A History of the Source and Rise of the Earliest English Settlements in America, with Special Reference to the Life and Character of the People

A HISTORY OF LIFE IN THE UNITED STATES
THE BEGINNERS OF A NATION A HISTORY OF THE SOURCE AND RISE OF THE EARLIEST ENGLISH SETTLEMENTS IN AMERICA WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE LIFE AND CHARACTER OF THE PEOPLE
BY EDWARD EGGLESTON

NEW YORK D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 1896
Copyright, 1896, By EDWARD EGGLESTON.
My dear Mr. Bryce :
In giving an account of the origins of the United States, I have told a story of English achievement. It is fitting that I should inscribe it to you, who of all the Englishmen of this generation have rendered the most eminent service to the American Commonwealth. You have shown with admirable clearness and candor, and with marvelous breadth of thought and sympathy, what are the results in the present time of the English beginnings in America, and to you, therefore, I offer this volume. I need not assure you that it gives me great pleasure to write your name here as godfather to my book, and to subscribe myself, my dear Mr. Bryce,
Yours very sincerely,
Edward Eggleston.
In this work, brought to completion after many years of patient research, I have sought to trace from their source the various and often complex movements that resulted in the early English settlements in America, and in the evolution of a great nation with English speech and traditions. It has been my aim to make these pages reflect the character of the age in which the English colonies were begun, and the traits of the colonists, and to bring into relief the social, political, intellectual, and religious forces that promoted emigration. This does not pretend to be the usual account of all the events attending early colonization; it is rather a history in which the succession of cause and effect is the main topic—a history of the dynamics of colony-planting in the first half of the seventeenth century. Who were the beginners of English life in America? What propulsions sent them for refuge to a wilderness? What visions beckoned them to undertake the founding of new states? What manner of men were their leaders? And what is the story of their hopes, their experiments, and their disappointments? These are the questions I have tried to answer.