Erin ’s Reviews > American Patriarch: The Life of George Washington > Status Update

In a pre industrial society when numbers were essential to society's chances of survival and most children died before reaching adulthood. Women were expected to have babies, the more the better.

John Adams was a lawyer from Boston where until now he had moved in the shadow of his cousin Samuel Adams.

New York was a colony founded by the Dutch and became British decades later in the same diplomatic session that made Canada British.

Boston for years had been the target of British attack and New Englanders had done all the fighting.

In the mid- eighteenth century the game still had a zero sum: what one side won, the other lost.

Quebec took its name from an Algonquin word for "narrows"

Men were somewhat freer than women not to marry. For men the economic imperative was less as men controlled most of the resources.

The Pontiac uprising confirmed what British leaders already believed about the American frontier: that it was a sinkhole for imperial finance.

Benjamin Franklin proposed an American government consisting of a council chosen by the colonies and a president general appointed by the British crown.

Wars exhausted armies and depleted navies. They also eroded government finances.