Henry Cabot Lodge > Quotes

“I can never be anything else but an American, and I must think of the United States first, and when I think of the United States first in an arrangement like this I am thinking of what is best for the world, for if the United States fails the best hopes of mankind fail with it.”
― Henry Cabot Lodge

“Excitement is impossible where there is no contest.”
― Henry Cabot Lodge

“There can be no doubt that so far as the upbuilding of a strong and efficient State was concerned, this policy was entirely successful. To justify it on abstract grounds is impossible, and even its political necessity was, to say the least, doubtful. Whether rightly or wrongly, however, this system of harsh repression was the one adopted; and it is to be feared that its authors were little concerned with the need of justification.”
― Henry Cabot Lodge, Boston

“With some education, and not a little literary ability, he was as clever and worthless a scamp as can well be imagined, and when he took possession of Mount Wollaston, which he named Merry Mount, — or Mare Mount, — he proceeded to enjoy himself freely after his own fashion.”
― Henry Cabot Lodge, Boston

“THE colonial history of Maryland offers two points of especial interest. Maryland was the first proprietary government in America, and she lays claim to the distinction of having been the first state where religious toleration not only prevailed in practice, but was established by law.”
― Henry Cabot Lodge, A Short History of the English Colonies in America

“On the west of the Neck were long reaches of flats and marshes covered by the tides at high water, and known to the inhabitants of Boston for more than two hundred years as the Back Bay.”
― Henry Cabot Lodge, Boston

“At the same time they turned over the whole province to the city of Amsterdam; but the effort was vain; the colony of the south continued feeble and languishing, and the temporary success against Lord Baltimore was soon clouded by events at the north. In the charter which Winthrop obtained from Charles II., Connecticut and New Haven were consolidated, and all Long Island and the northern New Netherlands were declared within the Connecticut boundaries.”
― Henry Cabot Lodge, A Short History of the English Colonies in America

“He had however one great advantage over both his Pilgrim and Puritan enemies, for he wrote a narrative of his adventures in a reckless and amusing fashion of which they were incapable, and thus has kept the laugh forever on his side.”
― Henry Cabot Lodge, Boston

“In the case of Roger Williams it is not easy to show that the government of Massachusetts did not have a perfectly good case against him on purely secular grounds.”
― Henry Cabot Lodge, Boston

“On Noddle's Island, now East Boston, was established Samuel Maverick, a young gentleman of property and education, who had there laid out a farm, built him a house and fort, where four guns were mounted, and which served as a refuge and defence for all the planters of the neighbourhood.”
― Henry Cabot Lodge, Boston

“But this was not enough to check the English. The French stronghold, owing largely to the efforts of Mr. Pitt and the British navy, was doomed, and the brave garrison, deserting their hopeless post, permitted Forbes to march in unmolested, and name his conquest Fort Pitt.”
― Henry Cabot Lodge, A Short History of the English Colonies in America

“The little plantations at Weymouth, Hull, and Mount Wollaston, although within the limits of Boston Bay, nevertheless do not concern us here so much as the solitary men who had made homes for themselves upon the land now actually part of the modern city. On an island in the harbour was settled David Thomson, "Gent.," an attorney for Gorges, with his family. Thomson died in 1628, leaving to his family his island and to the island his name, which it has borne ever since.”
― Henry Cabot Lodge, Boston

“It may be possible to make the political history of every colony in turn picturesque and exciting;”
― Henry Cabot Lodge, A Short History of the English Colonies in America

“Sources of interest and excitement were not lacking during the season. If politics ran high, as in the years when revolution was preparing, society could gather at the capitol and listen to the classic oratory of Richard Henry Lee, or the fervid speeches of Patrick Henry, dressed in his suit of peach-blossom velvet, and defying King George, to the great alarm of the conservative land-owning gentry.”
― Henry Cabot Lodge, A Short History of the English Colonies in America

“A company of Irish Presbyterians came out, and Wentworth, brushing aside the old claims which seemed about to revive, gave them lands on the Merrimac, where they founded the thriving town of Londonderry.”
― Henry Cabot Lodge, A Short History of the English Colonies in America

“With matters in this unpromising state, new burdens were thrust upon South Carolina. The pirates, who in earlier days had been welcomed in Charleston, now ruined the commerce of the city, and sapped the prosperity of the province. They were under the lead of Teach, "Black Beard," whose head-quarters were in North Carolina.”
― Henry Cabot Lodge, A Short History of the English Colonies in America

“At the beginning of the eighteenth century a large number of Scotch-Irish Presbyterians came out, who, with Germans from the middle colonies, pushed out to the frontier, and did much to open up the western country.”
― Henry Cabot Lodge, A Short History of the English Colonies in America

“The houses of the ruling and representative class were very different from those of the great majority of Virginians. When the traveller came to one of the widely separated gaps in the forest and found himself upon the borders of a great plantation, the estate presented the appearance of a small village. In the centre stood the house of the planter, around which were clustered the offices, all separate from the main building, the tobacco-houses, and the numerous huts of the negro quarters. In the fields the slaves were seen sawing wood and making clearings, or cultivating tobacco. Not far away the herds of cattle were at pasture, and the whole scene recalled an English farm.”
― Henry Cabot Lodge, A Short History of the English Colonies in America

“Two of these little settlements were made in 1625, on the shores of the bay at the head of which the future town was to stand. One was at Hull, where some men exiled from Plymouth and a few stragglers of uncertain origin gathered together. The other was formed by a trading-party under the lead of one Captain Wollaston, who settled within the limits of the present town of Quincy on a low hill near the shore, which still bears the name of the leader. Wollaston himself soon became dissatisfied and departed for Virginia, where he disposed of his indented servants and sent back for more, the trade in human beings having proved profitable.”
― Henry Cabot Lodge, Boston

“While he thus gained general hatred, he also won universal contempt by his debaucheries and excesses, by his debts, and by his habit of dressing as a woman. He was plunged in one long quarrel with his Assemblies, both in New York and New Jersey, plotted with Dudley, of Massachusetts, to destroy the free - charter governments of Connecticut and Rhode Island, and at last excited such loud and strenuous opposition that he was recalled, but could not return to England until his accession to the Earldom of Clarendon released him from prison, into which he had been thrown for debt.”
― Henry Cabot Lodge, A Short History of the English Colonies in America

“On the towns rested the whole political structure, and from them came the capacity for practical self-government, the readiness for federation, and the keen sense of local rights. Among all the institutions of the Puritans the town government is pre-eminent, not only as a distinctive mark, but for its strength, usefulness, intrinsic sense, and political importance.”
― Henry Cabot Lodge, A Short History of the English Colonies in America

“In Philadelphia the disorders inaugurated by young Penn broke out at short intervals, assuming not infrequently the proportions of a dangerous riot.”
― Henry Cabot Lodge, A Short History of the English Colonies in America

“Headed by Roger Conant, a man still clear to us as possessed of leadership and force, these four went southward and westward from Cape Ann and settled at a place called Naumkeag, to be better known in future as Salem.”
― Henry Cabot Lodge, Boston

“William Blackstone had laid out a farm and orchard, and built him a house on the western slope of one of the hills, whence he could see the sun set across the windings of the river Charles, and over the wide brown marshes through which it made its way.”
― Henry Cabot Lodge, Boston

“The fluctuations in tobacco caused the first conflict with England, brought on by the violence of the clergy, and paved the way for resistance.”
― Henry Cabot Lodge, A Short History of the English Colonies in America

“So insignificant were the towns, that in earl times legislation was necessary to compel them to have "ordinaries" for passing strangers. Some of the houses in the New Jersey villages were of wood, but brick was the most usual material.”
― Henry Cabot Lodge, A Short History of the English Colonies in America

“As an English production it does not rank high. It might get by at Princeton but certainly not at Harvard.”
― Henry Cabot Lodge

“With Winthrop came seven or eight hundred, increased very shortly to a thousand, by some additional vessels; and this was soon after followed by a second thousand. No such attempt at settlement had been seen before on the American continent. It was not the longing for adventure, but the transfer of a people, a government, and a Church; and this it is which separates it from all other colonizing undertakings in America at their inception, and which made the Massachusetts settlement from the beginning such a moving force in American history.”
― Henry Cabot Lodge, Boston