Welcome to Chronicles of America

This website is designed to serve as a guide which will enable you to more clearly trace the various phases in the development of the American people and to understand the relations of one phase to another. This website may be used as a whole to study the early history of the nation in its entirety, or individual sections may be selected to acquire a special knowledge. This site is not limited, however, to just the history of the United States, but includes shorter versions of the history of Canada and South America.

A New World

Volume 1. History in its broadest aspect is a record of man's migrations from one environment to another. America was the last great goal of these migrations. He who would understand its history must know its mountains and plains, its climate, its products, and its relation to the sea and to other parts of the world.

The Spanish Conquerors

Volume 2. Spain's attempt to conquer all of America was never as great as the time period between 1492 and 1545. This section of the website will provide the reader a deeper look into this time period, starting with Columbus discovery of America.

English Exploration of America

Volume 3. It was during the reign of Elizabeth, the last of the Tudor sovereigns of England, that Englishmen won the command of the sea under the consummate leadership of Sir Francis Drake, the first of modern admirals. Drake and his companions are known to fame as Sea-Dogs. They won the English right of way into Spain's New World. And Anglo-American history begins with that century of maritime adventure and naval war in which English sailors blazed and secured the long sea-trail for the men of every other kind who found or sought their fortunes in America.

Crusaders of New France

Volume 4. France failed to dominate the Western Hemisphere, but that was not want to the many officials, missionaries, seigneurs, voyageurs, and habitants, who were all the scions of a proud race, admirably fitted to form the rank and file in a great crusade. From their initial settlement of the St. Lawrence River Valley they were consistently driven westward, always questing for additional furs.

Virginia and the Southern Colonies

Volume 5. The quest for profit guided the establishment of Virginia, but a search for religious haven led Catholics to Maryland. The Carolinas, known first as "South Virginia," were a wilderness compared to Virginia, but soon, hearty men who longed for the frontier, brought their families south into the backwoods and settled into what would become North Carolina. South Carolina, on the other hand, had great plantations, a town society, suave and polished, a learned clergy, an aristocratic cast to life. And then there was Georgia, created from one man's vision of philanthropy, a second chance for the downtrodden, vagabonds, and petty criminals of England, Germany and France.

Puritans and Pilgrims in New England

Volume 6. The Pilgrims and Puritans, whose migration to the New World marks the beginning of permanent settlement in New England, were children of the same age as the enterprising and adventurous pioneers of England in Virginia, Bermuda, and the Caribbean. England was full of resolute men, sea-dogs and soldiers of fortune, captains on the land as well as the sea, who in times of peace were seeking employment and profit and who needed an outlet for their energies. Some of these continued in the service of kings and princes in Europe; others conducted enterprises against the Spaniards in the West Indies and along the Spanish Main; while still others, such as John Smith and Miles Standish, became pioneers in the work of English colonization.

Dutch Settlement in America

Volume 7. Continue with Dutch Colonial Management (chapter 5)

Quaker Colonies

Volume 8. Quakerism was one of the many religious sects born in the seventeenth century under the influence of Puritan thought. Their humane ideas and philanthropic methods, such as the abolition of slavery, and the reform of prisons and of charitable institutions, came in time to be accepted as fundamental practical social principles. Led by William Penn, Quakers immigrated to America and helped found the colonies of Delaware, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.

Colonial Folkways

Volume 9. Not until after the turmoil of the war which ended with the Treaty of Utrecht (1713) do we begin to find a state of colonial society sufficiently at rest to admit of a satisfactory review. The half century from 1713 to 1763 is the period during which the life of the colonists attained its highest level of stability and regularity, and to this period, the training time of those who were to make the Revolution, we shall chiefly direct our attention. It will be an advantage, however, to preface a consideration of colonial life with a reference to the topography of the country and a review of the racial elements which made up its composite population.

New France

Volume 10: Many centuries of European history had been marked by war almost ceaseless between France and England when these two states first confronted each other in America. The conflict for the New World was but the continuation of an age-long antagonism in the Old, intensified now by the savagery of the wilderness and by new dreams of empire. From 1690 to 1760 the combatants fought with little more than pauses for renewed preparation; and the conflict ended only when France yielded to England the mastery of her empire in America. It is the story of this struggle, covering a period of seventy years, which is told in the following pages.

Age of Invention

Volume 39: This volume is not intended to be a complete record of inventive genius and mechanical progress in the United States. A bare catalogue of notable American inventions in the nineteenth century alone could not be compressed into these pages. Nor is it any part of the purpose of this book to trespass on the ground of the many mechanical works and encyclopedias which give technical descriptions and explain in detail the principle of every invention. All this book seeks to do is to outline the personalities of some of the outstanding American inventors and indicate the significance of their achievements.

Theodore Roosevelt and His Times

Volume 47: There is a line of Browning's that should stand as epitaph for Theodore Roosevelt: "I was ever a fighter." That was the essence of the man, that the keynote of his career. He met everything in life with a challenge. If it was righteous, he fought for it; if it was evil, he hurled the full weight of his finality against it. He never capitulated, never sidestepped, never fought foul. He carried the fight to the enemy.