Documenting United States History

(Marvins-Underground-K-12) #1
TopIC I | Settling atlantic north america 33

we must be knit together, in this work, as one man.... We must be willing to
abridge ourselves of our superfluities, for the supply of others’ necessities. We
must uphold a familiar commerce together in all meekness, gentleness, patience
and liberality. We must delight in each other; make others’ conditions our own;
rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before
our eyes our commission and community in the work, as members of the same
body.... We shall find that the God of Israel is among us, when ten of us shall
be able to resist a thousand of our enemies; when he shall make us a praise and
glory that men shall say of succeeding plantations, “The Lord make it likely that
of New England.” For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The
eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this
work we have undertaken, and so cause him to withdraw his present help from
us, we shall be made a story and a by-word through the world. We shall open the
mouths of enemies to speak evil of the ways of God, and all professors for God’s
sake. We shall shame the faces of many of God’s worthy servants, and cause their
prayers to be turned into curses upon us till we be consumed out of the good
land whither we are agoing....

Edmund Clarence Stedman and Ellen Mackay Cortissoz, eds., A Library of American Litera-
ture from the Earliest Settlement to the Present Time, vols. 1–2, Colonial Literature, 1607–
1764 (New York: Charles Webster and Co., 1891), 306–307.

praCTICINg historical Thinking


Identify: What kind of society does Winthrop envision? What will be the result if
that society fails to come to pass?
Analyze: Winthrop presents his social vision in religious terms. What secular
advantages also might underlie his appeal to build a society “knit together... as
one man”?
Evaluate: Compare this document to William Bradford’s (Doc. 2.3). Describe the
similarities and differences between them. How were the societies that they sought
to create different from the one that John Rolfe describes in Jamestown (Doc. 2.2)?

applyINg ap® historical Thinking Skills


RevIew historical Causation


As you’ll recall from Chapter 1, historical causation refers to the relationship between
cause and effect—the ways that things change over time and the causes that precede those
changes. Historians are concerned with both long-term causes and proximate (short-term)
causes. Using your textbook and your class notes, determine and explain two long-term
and two proximate causes of the events described in one of the documents above. Use the
graphic organizer identified in Chapter 1 if it is helpful.

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