Anthology of American Literature Volume I Book

Contents

Preface

The Literature of Early America

READING THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT

Christopher Columbus (1451—1506)

Letter Describing His First Voyage

FROM The Diario of Christopher Columbus’s First Voyage to America

Thursday 11 October 1492

Sunday 14 October 1492

Thomas Hariot (1560-1621)

FROM A Brief and True Report of the Newfound Land of Virginia

Gaspar Pérez de Villagrá (1555-1620)

FROM History of New Mexico

John Winthrop (1588-1649) and Anne Hutchinson (1591-1643)

FROM The Examination of Mrs. Anne Hutchinson at the Court at Newton November 1637

The Iroquois League

FROM The Constitution of the Five Nations

LITERATURE OF EARLY AMERICA

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH (1580—1631)

FROM The General History of Virginia

The Third Book

Powhatan’s Discourse of Peace and War

FROM A Description of New England

WILLIAM BRADFORD (1590—1657)

FROM Of Plymouth Plantation

FROM Chapter I [The Separatist Interpretation of the

Reformation in England, 1550—1607]

FROM Chapter III, Of Their Settling in Holland, and Their Manner of Living

FROM Chapter IV, Showing the Reasons and Causes of Their Removal

FROM Chapter VII, Of Their Departure from Leyden

FROM Chapter IX, Of Their Voyage

FROM Chapter X, Showing How They Sought Out a Place of Habitation

FROM Chapter XI [The Mayflower Compact]

FROM Chapter XII [Narragansett Challenge]

FROM Chapter XIV [End of the “Common Course.. .”]

FROM Chapter XIX [Thomas Morton of Merrymount]

FROM Chapter XXIV [Mr. Roger Williams]

FROM Chapter XXVIII [The Pequot War]

FROM Chapter XXXVI [Winslow’s Final Departure]

THOMAS MORTON (c. 1579—1647)

FROM The New English Canaan

JOHN WINTHROP (1588—1649)

FROM A Model of Christian Charity [expanded to include complete work]

FROM The Journal of John Winthrop

ROGER WILLIAMS (c. 1603—1683)

FROM A Key into the Language of America

FROM The Bloody Tenet of Persecution

THE NEW ENGLAND PRIMER (c. 1683)

FROM The New England Primer

ANNE BRADSTREET (1612—1672)

The Prologue

Contemplations

The Flesh and the Spirit

The Author to Her Book

Before the Birth of One of Her Children

To My Dear and Loving Husband

A Letter to Her Husband Absent Upon Public Employment

In Reference to Her Children, 23 June, 1659

In Memory of My Dear Grandchild Elizabeth Bradstreet

On My Dear Grandchild Simon Bradstreet

[On Deliverance] from Another Sore Fit

Upon the Burning of Our House, July 10th, 1666

As Weary Pilgrim

FROM Meditations Divine and Moral

MICHAEL WIGGLESWORTH (1631—1705)

FROM The Day of Doom

EDWARD TAYLOR (c. 1642—1729)

Prologue

FROM Preparatory Meditations

The Reflexion

Meditation 6 (First Series)

Meditation 8 (First Series)

Meditation 38 (First Series)

Meditation 39 (First Series)

Meditation 150 (Second Series)

FROM God’s Determinations

The Preface

The Joy of Church Fellowship Rightly Attended

Upon a Spider Catching a Fly

Huswifery

The Ebb and Flow

A Fig for Thee Oh! Death

COTTON MATHER (1663—1728)

FROM The Wonders of the Invisible World

FROM Magnalia Christi Americana

SAMUEL SEWALL (1652—1730)

FROM The Diary of Samuel Sewall

MARY ROWLANDSON (c. 1637—1711)

A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration

WILLIAM BYRD II (1674—1744)

FROM The Secret Diary of William Byrd of Westover, 1709—1712

FROM The History of the Dividing Line.. .

JOHN WOOLMAN (1720—1772)

FROM The Journal of John Woolman

JONATHAN EDWARDS (1703—1758)

Sarah Pierrepont

Personal Narrative

FROM A Divine and Supernatural Light

Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God

FROM Images or Shadows of Divine Things

The Literature of the Eighteenth Century

READING THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT

Correspondence

Thomas Jefferson to James Madison

Thomas Jefferson to John Adams

Abigail Adams to John Adams

John Adams to Abigail Adams

The Federalist/Anti-Federalist Controversy

The Federalist No. 1 (Alexander Hamilton)

The Federalist No. 2 (John Jay)

The Federalist No. 10 (James Madison)

The Federalist No. 51 (James Madison)

[Anti-Federalist Essay] (Brutus)

LITERATURE OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN (1706—1790)

FROM The Autobiography

Silence Dogood, No. 2

Silence Dogood, No. 7

Benjamin Franklin’s Epitaph

FROM Poor Richard’s Almanac, 1733

FROM Poor Richard’s Almanac, 1746

Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind, Peopling of Countries, etc.

A Narrative of the Late Massacres, in Lancaster County

SAMSON OCCOM (1723-1792)

FROM A Short Narrative of My Life

The Slow Traveller

A Morning Hymn

A Son’s Farewell

Conversion Song

MICHEL-GUILLAUME-JEAN DE CRÈVECOEUR (1735—1813)

FROM Letters from an American Farmer

Letter III (What Is an American?)

Letter IX (Description of Charleston)

Letter XII (Distresses of a Frontier Man)

OLAUDAH EQUIANO (1745—1797)

FROM The Life of Olaudah Equiano

THOMAS PAINE (1737—1809)

FROM Common Sense

FROM The American Crisis

FROM The Age of Reason

THOMAS JEFFERSON (1743—1826)

FROM Notes on the State of Virginia

FROM Query V: Cascades

FROM Query VI: Productions Mineral, Vegetable and Animal

Query XIV: Laws

FROM Query XVII: Religion

FROM Query XVIII: Manners

FROM Query XIX: Manufactures

FROM Autobiography of Thomas Jefferson

PHILLIS WHEATLEY (1754?—1784)

On Virtue

To the University of Cambridge, in New England

On Being Brought from Africa to America

On the Death of the Rev. Mr. George Whitefield. 1770

On Imagination

To S. M. A Young African Painter, On Seeing His Works

Recollection

To His Excellency General Washington

PHILIP FRENEAU (1752—1832)

The Power of Fancy

The Hurricane

To Sir Toby

The Wild Honey Suckle

The Indian Burying Ground

On Mr. Paine’s Rights of Man

On a Honey Bee

On the Universality and Other Attributes of the God of Nature

On the Religion of Nature

WILLIAM BARTRAM (1739—1823)

FROM Travels through North and South Carolina

JUDITH SARGENT MURRAY (1751-1820)

“On the Equality of the Sexes”

SUSANNA HASWELL ROWSON (1762-1824)

FROM Charlotte Temple

Slaves in Algiers

HANNAH WEBSTER FOSTER (1758-1840)

FROM The Coquette; or, The History of Eliza Wharton

RED JACKET (c. 1750-1830)

The Indians Must Worship the Great Spirit in Their Own Way

The Literature of the Early- to Mid-Nineteenth Century

READING THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT

William Lloyd Garrison (1805-1879)

On the Constitution and the Union

Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

Plea for Captain John Brown

Seneca Falls Women’s Rights Convention (1848)

Declaration of Sentiments

READING THE CRITICAL CONTEXT

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

Introduction [Eulogy to Thoreau]

Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)

FROM “Twice-Told Tales, by Nathaniel Hawthorne” [A Review]

The Philosophy of Composition

FROM The Poetic Principle

Herman Melville (1819-1891)

FROM Hawthorne and His Mosses

LITERATURE OF THE EARLY- TO MID-NINETEENTH CENTURY

WASHINGTON IRVING (1783—1859)

FROM The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.

The Author’s Account of Himself

Rip Van Winkle

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

Traits of Indian Character

BLACK HAWK (1767-1838)

FROM Black Hawk’s Autobiography

WILLIAM APESS (1798-1839)

Eulogy on King Philip

ELIAS BOUDINOT (c.1802-1839)

Address to the Whites

Selections from the Cherokee Phoenix

PENINA MOÏSE (1797-1880)

To Persecuted Foreigners

The Mirror and the Echo

To a Lottery Ticket

THOMAS BANGS THORPE (1815—1878)

The Big Bear of Arkansas

JAMES FENIMORE COOPER (1789—1851)

FROM The Spy

FROM The Pilot

FROM The Pioneers

FROM The Deerslayer

Preface to The Pilot (1849)

Preface to the Leather-Stocking Tales (1850)

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT (1794—1878)

Thanatopsis

The Yellow Violet

To a Waterfowl

A Forest Hymn

To Cole, the Painter, Departing for Europe

To the Fringed Gentian

The Prairies

Abraham Lincoln

EDGAR ALLAN POE (1809—1849)

Sonnet–To Science

To Helen

Israfel

The City in the Sea

Sonnet–Silence

Lenore

The Raven

Ulalume–A Ballad

Annabel Lee

Ligeia

The Fall of the House of Usher

The Tell-Tale Heart

The Purloined Letter

RALPH WALDO EMERSON (1803—1882)

Nature

The American Scholar

The Divinity School Address

Self-Reliance

The Poet

The Rhodora

Each and All

The Snow-Storm

Concord Hymn

The Problem

Ode

Hamatreya

Days

Brahma

Terminus

NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS (1806-1867) January 1, 1828 January 1, 1829

The Lady in the White Dress, I Helped into the Omnibus

MARIA STEWART (1803-1879)

An Address Delivered Before The Afric-American Female Intelligence Society of America

GEORGE MOSES HORTON (1797-1883)

On Liberty and Slavery Death of an Old Carriage Horse Division of An Estate Lover’s Farewell On Hearing of the Intention of a Gentleman to Purchase the Poet’s Freedom The Creditor to His Proud Debtor

George Moses Horton, Myself

MARGARET FULLER (1810—1850)

FROM Woman in the Nineteenth Century

FROM Summer on the Lakes

Mackinaw (Chapter 6)

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE (1804—1864)

My Kinsman, Major Molineux

Young Goodman Brown

The Maypole of Merry Mount

The Minister’s Black Veil

The Birth-Mark

The Artist of the Beautiful

Ethan Brand

Rappaccini’s Daughter

The Custom-House: Introductory to The Scarlet Letter

The Scarlet Letter

HERMAN MELVILLE (1819—1891)

FROM Moby-Dick

Ishmael’s Departure (Chapters 1-10)

The Mast-Head (Chapter 35)

The Whiteness of the Whale (Chapter 42)

Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish (Chapter 89)

Bartleby, the Scrivener

Benito Cereno

The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids

The Portent

Shiloh

Malvern Hill

The College Colonel

A Utilitarian View of the Monitor's Fight

The House-Top

The Swamp Angel

The Æolian Harp

The Tuft of Kelp

The Maldive Shark

The Berg

Art

Greek Architecture

LYDIA HOWARD HUNTLEY SIGOURNEY (1791-1865) Indian Names The Indian's Welcome to the Pilgrim Fathers Death of an Infant

LYDIA MARIA CHILD (1802-1880)

Charity Bowery The Black Saxons Slavery's Pleasant Homes

The New England Boy's Song about Thanksgiving Day

JOHN ROLLIN RIDGE (1827-1867)

FROM The Life and Adventures of Joaquín Murieta

JOSIAH HENSON (1789-1883)

FROM The Life of Josiah Henson

FREDERICK DOUGLASS (1818—1895)

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

Letter to His Old Master

What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?

West Indian Emancipation Day Speech

JOHN P. PARKER (1827-1900)

FROM His Promised Land

HENRY DAVID THOREAU (1817—1862)

Civil Disobedience

Walden

They Who Prepare my Evening Meal Below

On Fields O'er Which the Reaper's Hand Has Passed

Smoke

Conscience

My Life Has Been the Poem

WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS (1806-1870)

Grayling; or “Murder Will Out”

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW (1807—1882)

A Psalm of Life

The Arsenal at Springfield

The Jewish Cemetery at Newport

My Lost Youth

Aftermath

The Tide Rises, the Tide Falls

FROM Hiawatha

FROM Tales of a Wayside Inn

The Wayside Inn

The Landlord’s Tale (Paul Revere’s Ride)

Interlude

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER (1807—1892)

The Hunters of Men

Massachusetts to Virginia

The Warning

Toussaint l'Ouverture

The Farewell

Song of Slaves in the Desert

Barbara Fritchie

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL (1819—1891)

To the Dandelion

FROM The Biglow Papers, First Series

FROM A Fable for Critics

HARRIET BEECHER STOWE (1811-1896)

FROM Uncle Tom’s Cabin

Preface

Chapter I

Chapter VII

Chapter IX

Chapter XIV

Chapter XXV

Chapter XXVI

Chapter XXXV

Chapter XL

Chapter XLI

FANNY FERN (1811—1872)

Aunt Hetty on Matrimony

Hints to Young Wives

Owls Kill Hummingbirds

The Tear of a Wife

Mrs. Adolphus Smith Sporting the “Blue Stocking”

Fresh Fern Leaves: Leaves of Grass

Blackwell’s Island

Blackwell’s Island No. 3

Independence

The Working Girls of New York

WILLIAM WELLS BROWN (1814-1884)

The Escape

HARRIET ANN JACOBS (1813—1897)

FROM Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

Chapter I

Chapter V

Chapter VI

Chapter X

Chapter XVI

Chapter XXI

Chapter XLI

JAMES M. WHITFIELD (1822-1871)

America

Self-Reliance

ABRAHAM LINCOLN (1809—1865)

To Horace Greeley

Gettysburg Address

Second Inaugural Address

FRANCES E. W. HARPER (1825-1911)

“Bury Me in a Free Land”

“To the Union Savers of Cleveland”

“The Slave Mother”

“Learning to Read”

“Aunt Chloe’s Politics”

LOUISA MAY ALCOTT (1832—1888)

FROM Little Women

FROM Hospital Sketches

A Day (Chapter III)

A Night (Chapter IV)

EMMA LAZARUS (1849-1887)

“In the Jewish Synagogue at Newport,”

“The New Colossus”

“1492”

WALT WHITMAN (1819—1892)

Preface to the 1855 Edition of Leaves of Grass

Song of Myself (from 1855 Edition of Leaves of Grass)

FROM Inscriptions

To You

One’s-Self I Sing

When I read the book

I Hear America Singing

Poets to Come

FROM Children of Adam

From pent-up aching rivers

Out of the rolling ocean the crowd

As Adam, Early in the Morning

Once I pass’d through a populous city

Facing west from California’s shores

FROM Calamus

In paths untrodden

Scented herbage of my breast

What Think You I take My Pen In Hand?

I saw in Louisiana a live-oak growing

I hear it was charged against me

Crossing Brooklyn Ferry

FROM Sea-Drift

Out of the cradle endlessly rocking

As I ebb’d with the ocean of life

FROM By the Roadside

When I heard the learn’d astronomer

The Dalliance of the Eagles

FROM Drum-Taps

Beat! Beat! Drums!

Cavalry Crossing a Ford

Bivouac on a Mountain Side

Vigil strange I kept on the field one night

A march in the ranks hard-prest, and the road unknown

A sight in camp in the daybreak gray and dim

The Wound-Dresser

FROM Memories of President Lincoln

When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d

FROM Autumn Rivulets

There was a child went forth

Sparkles from the Wheel

Who Learns My Lesson Complete?

Passage to India

The Sleepers

From Whispers of Heavenly Death

A noiseless patient spider

FROM Noon to Starry Night

To a Locomotive in Winter

FROM Democratic Vistas

EMILY DICKINSON (1830—1886)

49 I never lost as much but twice

67 Success is counted sweetest

125 For each ecstatic instant

130 These are the days when Birds come back

165 A Wounded Deer – leaps highest

185 “Faith” is a fine invention

210 The thought beneath so slight a film

214 I taste a liquor never brewed

216 Safe in their Alabaster Chambers

241 I like a look of Agony

249 Wild Nights–Wild Nights!

258 There’s a certain Slant of light

280 I felt a Funeral, in my Brain

287 A Clock stopped

303 The Soul selects her own Society

324 Some keep the Sabbath going to Church

328 A Bird came down the Walk

338 I know that He exists

341 After great pain, a formal feeling comes

401 What Soft–Cherubic Creatures

414 ’Twas like a Maelstrom, with a notch

435 Much Madness is divinest Sense

441 This is my letter to the World

448 This was a Poet–It is That

449 I died for Beauty–but was scarce

465 I heard a Fly buzz–when I died

510 It was not Death, for I stood up

520 I started Early–Took my Dog

585 I like to see it lap the Miles

613 They shut me up in Prose

632 The Brain–is wider than the sky

640 I cannot live with You

650 Pain–has an Element of Blank

657 I dwell in Possibility

670 One need not be a Chamber–to be Haunted

709 Publication–is the Auction

712 Because I could not stop for Death

732 She rose to His Requirement–dropt

745 Renunciation–is a piercing Virtue

754 My life had stood–a Loaded Gun

764 Presentiment–is that long Shadow–on the Lawn

976 Death is a Dialogue between

986 A narrow Fellow in the Grass

1052 I never saw a Moor

1078 The Bustle in a House

1129 Tell all the truth but tell it slant

1207 He preached upon “Breadth” till it argued him narrow

1463 A Route of Evanescence

1545 The Bible is an antique Volume

1624 Apparently with no surprise

1670 In Winter in my Room

1732 My life closed twice before its close

1755 To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee

1760 Elysium is as far as to

Letters to T. W. Higginson