A School History of the United States by John Bach McMaster
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page 40 of 523 (07%)
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_Beginners of a Nation_, pp. 98-140.]
[Footnote 2: Read Eggleston's _Beginners of a Nation_, pp. 141-157; Fiske's _Beginnings of New England_, pp. 71-80; Doyle's _Puritan Colonies_, Vol. I., pp. 47-81; Palfrey's _New England_, Vol. I., pp. 176-232.] %32. Why the Separatists went to New England%.--They had come to Holland as an organized community, practicing English manners and customs. For a temporary residence this would do. But if they and their children's children after them were to remain and prosper, they must break up their organization, forget their native land, their native speech, their national traditions, and to all intents and purposes become Dutch. This they could not bring themselves to do, and by 1617 they had fully determined to remove to some land where they might still continue to be Englishmen, and where they might lay the foundations of a Christian state. But one such land could then be found, and that was America. To America, therefore, they turned their attention, and after innumerable delays formed a company and obtained leave from the London Company to settle on the coast of what is now New Jersey.[1] [Footnote 1: Eggleston's _Beginners of a Nation_, pp. 159-176.] This done, Brewster and Bradford and Miles Standish, with a little band, sent out as an advance guard, set sail from the Dutch port of Delft Haven in July, 1620, in the ship _Speedwell_. The first run was to Southampton, England, where some friends from London joined them in the _Mayflower_, and whence, August 5, they sailed for America. But the _Speedwell_ proved so unseaworthy that the two ships put back to Plymouth, where twenty people gave up the voyage. September 6, 1620, |
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