George Bancroft > Quotes

“Truth is not exciting enough to those who depend on the characters and lives of their neighbors for all their amusement”
― George Bancroft

“To the emigrants it was promised that they and their children should continue to be Englishmen.”
― George Bancroft, History of the United States of America, Volumes 1-6: From the Discovery of the Continent

“Take four of the best kingdoms in Christendom, and put them all together, they may no way compare with this country, either for commodities or”
― George Bancroft, History of the United States of America, Volumes 1-6: From the Discovery of the Continent

“Skelton was chosen pastor and Higginson teacher. Three or four of the gravest members of the church then laid their hands on Skelton with prayer, and in like manner on Higginson: so that “these two blessed servants of the Lord came in at the door, and not at the window;”
― George Bancroft, History of the United States of America, Volumes 1-6: From the Discovery of the Continent

“What liberal English statesmen thought of the people of Massachusetts we know from D'Ewes, who wrote: “All men whom malice blindeth not, nor impiety transverseth, may see that the very finger of God hath hitherto gone with them and guided them.”
― George Bancroft, History of the United States of America, Volumes 1-6: From the Discovery of the Continent

“The Turks, whose law forbade the enslaving of Muslims, continued to sell Christian and other captives; and Smith, the third president of Virginia, relates that he was himself a runaway from Turkish bondage.”
― George Bancroft, History of the United States of America, Volumes 1-6: From the Discovery of the Continent

“trade with the territory between Virginia and New France, from forty to forty-five degrees of latitude. Their charter, given on the eleventh of October, 1614, names the extensive region NEW NETHERLAND.”
― George Bancroft, History of the United States of America, Volumes 1-6: From the Discovery of the Continent

“These measures were adopted almost without opposition, and received the nearly unanimous assent of the nation. They were truly English measures, directed in part against abuses introduced at the Norman conquest, in part against the encroachments of the sovereign.”
― George Bancroft, History of the United States of America, Volumes 1-6: From the Discovery of the Continent

“These colonies were to resemble the lordships in the Netherlands. Everyone who would emigrate on his own account was promised as much land as he could cultivate;”
― George Bancroft, History of the United States of America, Volumes 1-6: From the Discovery of the Continent

“I find one record of a trial for witchcraft where the prisoner was proved a murderess.”
― George Bancroft, History of the United States of America, Volumes 1-6: From the Discovery of the Continent

“Angels hovered round his path, charged to minister to his soul; spirits of darkness vainly leagued together to tempt him from his allegiance. His burning piety could use no liturgy; his penitence revealed itself to no confessor. He knew no superior in holiness. He could as little become the slave of priest-craft as of a despot. He was himself a judge of the orthodoxy of the elders; and, if he feared the invisible powers of the air, of darkness, and of hell, he feared nothing on earth. Puritanism constituted not the Christian clergy, but the Christian people, the interpreter of the divine will; and the issue of Puritanism was popular sovereignty.”
― George Bancroft, History of the United States of America, Volumes 1-6: From the Discovery of the Continent

“In March, 1638, an Indian deed from Canonicus and Miantonomoh made him the undisputed possessor of an extensive domain;”
― George Bancroft, History of the United States of America, Volumes 1-6: From the Discovery of the Continent

“About the year 990, Moorish merchants from the Barbary coast reached the cities of Nigritia, and established an uninterrupted exchange of Saracen and European luxuries for the gold and slaves of Central Africa.”
― George Bancroft, History of the United States of America, Volumes 1-6: From the Discovery of the Continent

“and by asserting that the Holy Spirit dwells in every believer, that the revelation of the Spirit is superior “to the ministry of the word,” they sustained with intense fanaticism the paramount authority of private judgment. The founder of this party was Anne Hutchinson,”
― George Bancroft, History of the United States of America, Volumes 1-6: From the Discovery of the Continent

“All great men incline to fatalism, for their success is a mystery to themselves; and it was not entirely with hypocrisy that Cromwell professed himself the servant of Providence, borne along by irresistible necessity.”
― George Bancroft, History of the United States of America, Volumes 1-6: From the Discovery of the Continent

“The government of the future colonies was reserved to a royal council; for “politics,” says the charter”
― George Bancroft, History of the United States of America, Volumes 1-6: From the Discovery of the Continent

“After discovering the island which bears his name, and exploring berth channels of that which owes to him the name of Roode Eiland, now Rhode Island, the mariner from Holland imposed the names of places in his native land on groups in the Atlantic, which, years before, Gosnold and other English navigators had visited. The Unrest sailed beyond Cape Cod; and, while John Smith was making maps of the bays and coasts of Maine and Massachusetts, Adriaen Block traced the shore as far, at least, as Nahant.”
― George Bancroft, History of the United States of America, Volumes 1-6: From the Discovery of the Continent

“cruelty toward animals was a civil offence.”
― George Bancroft, History of the United States of America, Volumes 1-6: From the Discovery of the Continent

“Our diplomatic relations connect us on terms of equality and honest friendship with the chief powers of the world, while we avoid entangling participation in their intrigues, their passions, and their wars.”
― George Bancroft, History of the United States of America, Volumes 1-6: From the Discovery of the Continent

“Yeardley was elected governor in his stead, with higher rank. On the twenty-second of November the king gave him audience, knighted him, and held a long discourse with him on the religion of the natives.”
― George Bancroft, History of the United States of America, Volumes 1-6: From the Discovery of the Continent

“Among others there came from Connecticut, Haynes; from New Haven, Eaton; from Saybrook, Fenton, by the consent of New Haven; from Plymouth, Window; from Massachusetts, Winthrop. The articles of confederation, which were completed before the end of the month, gave to the four Calvinist governments the name of THE UNITED COLONIES OF NEW ENGLAND. For themselves and their posterity, they entered into a firm and perpetual league of offence and defense, mutual advice and succor, both for preserving and propagating the truths and liberties of the gospel, and for their mutual safety and welfare.”
― George Bancroft, History of the United States of America, Volumes 1-6: From the Discovery of the Continent

“after the Lord hath increased them to the number of fifty householders, shall appoint one to teach all children to read and write;”
― George Bancroft, History of the United States of America, Volumes 1-6: From the Discovery of the Continent

“The history of religious persecution in New England is this: the Puritans established a government in America such as the laws of natural justice warranted, and such as the statutes and common law of England did not warrant; and that was done by men who still acknowledged a limited allegiance to the parent state.”
― George Bancroft, History of the United States of America, Volumes 1-6: From the Discovery of the Continent

“Virginia had long been the home of its inhabitants. “Among many other blessings,” said their statute-book, “God Almighty hath vouchsafed increase of children to this colony;” and the huts in the wilderness were as full as the birds' nests of the woods.”
― George Bancroft, History of the United States of America, Volumes 1-6: From the Discovery of the Continent

“and no emigrant might avow dissent, or affect the superstitions of the church of Rome,”
― George Bancroft, History of the United States of America, Volumes 1-6: From the Discovery of the Continent

“On the twenty-second of March, 1622, at mid-day, they fell upon the unsuspecting population; children and women, as well as men, the missionary, the benefactor all were slain with every aggravation of cruelty.”
― George Bancroft, History of the United States of America, Volumes 1-6: From the Discovery of the Continent

“Under such auspices”
― George Bancroft, History of the United States of America, Volumes 1-6: From the Discovery of the Continent

“In April, 1631, there came from the banks of the Connecticut the sagamore of the Mohegans, to extol the fertility of his country, and solicit an English plantation as a bulwark against the Pequods; in May, the nearer Nipmucks invoked the aid of the emigrants against the tyranny of the Mohawks;”
― George Bancroft, History of the United States of America, Volumes 1-6: From the Discovery of the Continent

“There shall never be any bond slaverie, villinage, or captivitie amongst us, unles it be lawfull captives taken in just warres, and such strangers as willingly selle themselves or are sold to us. And these shall have all the liberties and Christian usages which the law of God established in Israel concerning such persons doeth morally require. This exempts none from servitude who shall be judged thereto by authoritie.”
― George Bancroft, History of the United States of America, Volumes 1-6: From the Discovery of the Continent

“the Ohio company summoned the adventurous Christopher Gist from his frontier home on the Yadkin.”
― George Bancroft, History of the United States of America, Volumes 1-6: From the Discovery of the Continent