American Heroes: Profiles of Men and Women Who Shaped Early America Book

The prologue was really worrisome to me. I was afraid that the whole book would be like it, with him bouncing around from topic to topic, mentioning one person and that leading to another with no warning. He seems to assume that we know everything he's talking about already which makes for a really confused reader. This is not for the faint of heart. Clearly someone who isn't a history major and/or buff shouldn't read this because there is no way to keep up. Whether it was explorers from the 1500s, Puritans, Washington and Franklin, Salem Witch Trials, etc., he assumed you knew it.

It was really interesting to learn that people placed such an importance on the old writings, identifying or trying to identify new species of animals and plants based on the old writers of Europe. They judged what America would be like and what it should be based on old writings.

Morgan said that Columbus wasn't one of his heroes because of his treatment of the natives and that was good to hear. He said the Indians were more monastic with their way of life, not capturing material things and helping neighbors, whereas the really "religious" groups who claimed to be Christians were the exact opposite. They coveted material wealth and treated Indians abominably. Indians had the right qualities without "civilization" and Christianity and it upset the Europeans and Spanish.

I was shocked by how dangerous he portrayed libraries to be, how reading breeds heresy. I've never thought of someone having dangerous ideas from reading certain works. But it does also encourage independent thought and spark change, so he ended the chapter by saving he hoped libraries stayed dangerous for years to come.

I was so surprised that anthropologists found more variation in head shape, jaw length, skin color, etc. between Indians than they did in white people. The differences suggest they didn't come over from Asia at the same time or from the same place. Morgan said there's no such thing as "the" American Indian but they all did have one thing in common: they refused to be absorbed into the European culture.

Indians were willing to listen to stories of the English God but they didn't care about the rewards or punishments He meted out. The Cherokees felt that everyone was free to think for themselves and that's why there was great diversity of religion between them. They thought they had to civilize the Indians before they would convert to Christianity, and thought college would do that. But when they got boys in college, they would skip classes to go in the hills.

The French excelled at marrying Indian women. They were so eager for French husbands that they jilted the Indian men. The English government offered 10 pounds and 50 acres town who married Indian women or to Indian women who married Englishmen but few did. When Englishmen traveled with Indians on trading, surveying, or hunting expeditions, they were offered the prettiest maidens. When a man married a woman he seemed devoted to her and her family and that way of life and didn't desire to be among the English.

Even though they adopted guns, cloth, and items into their way of life, they didn't fully assimilate into white culture.

Indians thought white men who so discontented and uneasy with the world that it was a wonder they didn't go out of it. The Indians didn't fight or use bad language and name-calling with each other. They respected each other and didn't have long conversations. Whites would get unnerved by their silence. They would speak so low out of courtesy and Europeans had trouble hearing them, and Europeans would speak so loudly that Indians would ask if they thought they were deaf. They never raised their voice even when angry.

If any Indian violated their customs, the treatment was intended to shame them into reform and not force them. Sarcasm seemed to be a good method, such as commending a thief for their honesty or praising the courage of someone who ran in battle.

Europeans thought the biggest gift to give the Indians was Christianity. They deemed the Indians lazy from the start, even though the wealthy whites lived a life of pleasure themselves. Indians were careless about wealth, unimpressed by it and actually wanting to avoid it. They valued the person and their abilities to hunt and be a warrior. A chief had to give away all his possessions and if he was thought to be selfish he would lose his authority.

It's amazing that Robert Rogers wrote about the Indians that their principles are that every man is free and independent and no one has the right to take that away from them, 11 years before the Declaration of Independence.

I was uncorked table when Morgan called Indians incorrigible, said "we" hated them because they exemplified the Christian way of life better than us, and they fit the values of the Declaration of Independence better than we do. He said "we" don't want to be like them with a thousand petty republics, no authority to make us behave, or to abandon our riches, and "we're" irritated by them who exhibit our values better. "We do not have room for such incorrigible individualists within our civilization." But he said it would be damaged beyond repair if we didn't admire their dignity and diversity more than they had reason to admire us. I couldn't believe he said these things!

I was severely uncomfortable reading the section about Puritans and sex. Attempted rape scenarios that were documented, men having maids sleep with them in their bed in a roomful of people, servants sneaking in and out of each other's houses to have sex. There was a law that said a woman could announce the father of her child and get support from the father, which caused girls to abuse it. There are cases where girls admitted they would lie and claim a wealthy man was the father just to get money.

The story of the wealthy girl who was duped into marrying an impotent man by his friend who came to earn her affections by bringing her gold and gifts for him, was like something out of a really bad movie. The man had her marry the first man who turned out to be incapable of performing and wasn't a true husband for her, so she divorced him. Then later the friend got them back together again and convinced her the man was fixed and took treatments to be able to perform. It turned out he was still impotent and the man had been living in her family home the whole time, tricked her into marrying the man and signing over all her property to her husband. Her husband died, she found the man living in her family home, but, the two kids she had weren't her husbands, they were another man's because she'd never had sex with her husband...I got done with the chapter and wondered how he hell this story came into a book called American Heroes. Who's the hero?!

It took so long to get to the Salem witch trials story and then he said he wasn't going to talk about the tension between Salem Village and Salem town and I really wanted to know that.

It made me so mad to know that 5 years after the executions of the Salem witch trials, the court had a day of fasting to atone for what they had done. The judges asked for forgiveness from God for their part and had guilt for the innocent. Morgan praised the community because one judge tried to shoulder all the blame but everyone fasted in admittance of their wrongdoing.

I was shocked at the info of Quakers. They confronted the church and religious authorities, refused to take their hats off or use titles to their betters, some came to church naked. They claimed they were a direct revelation from God, that they had the light that the apostles received from Jesus. They didn't believe Jesus' death would redeem man's sins.

The chapter on William Penn was so long. I was thoroughly sick of him and the whole subject of the Quakers and the Puritans.

He praised Washington and Franklin for their ability to know when to not act, even when everyone else wanted them to. Franklin had to contend with state militias putting themselves above the continental army and petitioning Europeans for money for themselves when Franklin was trying to raise money for the whole army. Washington trying to keep the army together because they were ill fed, ill clothed, ill armed, and ill housed, and enlistments were running out. State militias were paying 20-30+ dollars more service and being loyal to Washington meant less pay for a longer service. Their easygoing manners were mistaken for inactivity, laziness, and irresponsibility. Washington was seen as timid and incompetent as a general because he didn't start battles he couldn't win and waited for those he could win.

I liked learning about Franklin traveling to England on behalf of the continent, to get them to stop taxing the colonists. He urged the colonists to have patience and not engage in behavior that would hurt their cause. But the lords in England didn't understand and so Franklin knew that only independence would win their goal. He went to France as an envoy and refused to accept any concessions from Britain.

Parliament wanted to tax the colonists but they didn't want to be taxed by a body that they weren't represented in. England said they were represented--by men they didn't even know, in England who had been voted on there. The colonists felt that they should be represented by someone who they had elected.

It was such a strange and shocking notion that he said the government is a fiction and it's asking people to suspend their disbelief in order to accept a representative. That was the basis of our American government, the colonists first accepting the large-scale representation. The assembly was elected by popular votes and these were national representatives instead of the failing state governments. Everyone had to accept being a nation and come together for one purpose.

It's amazing that the Constitution is the most durable government by a major power in the world.

This wasn't what I expected at all and I was so disappointed. It was scholarly and he would go on and on about the topics, but not the details I expected. He knew all about these times in history and he assumed we're all historians like him and had already known all of this too. Most of it I had no idea what he was talking about and he didn't take the time to explain. This is an odd cast of characters with an unconventional definition of a hero. I didn't enjoy the people he wrote about and didn't find most of them to be heroic. The stories weren't good, usually had a bad ending, and I'll be giving this back to the bookstore because I would never read this again.