AQQ
"You must learn some of my philosophy. Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure."
Jane Austen. Pride and Prejudice. (1813), cap. lviii.
A Philosophy of History
Thomas Nuttall. On Early Banking in Kentucky. 1818.
Thomas Nuttall, a botanist and zoologist from Great Britain, traveled down the Ohio River in 1818. He writes about the money situation at that time in a Journal entry dated 23 Nov 1818:
"At length I arrived at the large and flourishing town of Louisville, but recently a wilderness. Labour and provision rated here much above the value which they commonly bore in the state and the surrounding country. The markets were very negligently supplied, and at prices little inferior to those of New Orleans. In fact, the vortex of speculation, this commercial gambling, absorbed the solid interests of the western states, and destroyed all mercantile confidence. The whole country was overrun with banks, which neither deserved confidence nor credit. Not a note in Kentucky commanded specie, the capital was altogether fictitious, and ought to have been secured by every species of property possessed by the stockholders. A more ruinous and fraudulent system of exchange was never devised in any Christian country; it is truly a novelty to see a whole community, at least the wealthy part of it, conspiring in a common system of public fraud."
He had his opinions on why the banking scheme was originally put into effect, and he understood the country, as he lived here from 1818 till 1841. He wrote:
"The love of luxury, without the means of obtaining it, has proved the bane of these still rude settlements of agriculturists, naturally poor in money by reason of their remoteness from the emporium of commerce, and their neglect of manufactures. When one heard a farmer demand a price for his produce in Kentucky, equal nearly to that of Philadelphia, we might be certain that he expected payment in depreciated paper."
Thomas Nuttall. Journal of Travels Into the Arkansa Territory, (Philadelphia, 1821)
(Note the Title Page has "Arkansa Territory" without a "W" at the end.)
The Easiest Lifestyle in the World
AQQ
Prof. James T. Lemon writes: "A relatively sloppy landscape was the reflection of the easiest lifestyle in the world. The wastefulness of American society today may well follow from the abundance of the colonial era."
"Agricultural and Society in Early America", Agricultural History Review 35 (1987): 89.
We think of early Americans as being poor. In most of the things that matter, air, land, forest, space, and water, they were surpassingly rich; and they squandered most of it. Talk about mortgaging your grandchildren's future.
An oldtimer once told Clifton Johnson, an early travel writer: "No matter how much land the old-time farmers cleared up they kept a piece of the best woodland for posterity. It was the sentiment of every farmer that this woodland should be saved to draw from to keep up the buildings on the place, and it was sacred to them. Yet as soon as posterity got their hands on it they turned it into money and swept those patches of woodland off the face of the earth as clean as you could sweep with a broom." (Highways and Byways of the Great Lakes, 1911, p. 13.) It appears that it may have been the grandchildren that destroyed the inheritance of the great grandchildren. Still, there is no doubt that the pioneer white settlers were wasteful of natural resources, and passed on the attitude.
Prof. James T. Lemon writes: "A relatively sloppy landscape was the reflection of the easiest lifestyle in the world. The wastefulness of American society today may well follow from the abundance of the colonial era."
"Agricultural and Society in Early America", Agricultural History Review 35 (1987): 89.
We think of early Americans as being poor. In most of the things that matter, air, land, forest, space, and water, they were surpassingly rich; and they squandered most of it. Talk about mortgaging your grandchildren's future.
An oldtimer once told Clifton Johnson, an early travel writer: "No matter how much land the old-time farmers cleared up they kept a piece of the best woodland for posterity. It was the sentiment of every farmer that this woodland should be saved to draw from to keep up the buildings on the place, and it was sacred to them. Yet as soon as posterity got their hands on it they turned it into money and swept those patches of woodland off the face of the earth as clean as you could sweep with a broom." (Highways and Byways of the Great Lakes, 1911, p. 13.) It appears that it may have been the grandchildren that destroyed the inheritance of the great grandchildren. Still, there is no doubt that the pioneer white settlers were wasteful of natural resources, and passed on the attitude.
Indian Captivities
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Samuel Gardner Drake. Indian Captivities, Being a Collection of the Most Remarkable Narratives of Persons Taken Captive by the North American Indians... to which are Added, Notes, Historical, Biographical, &c., 1839
Samuel Gardner Drake. Indian Captivities, Being a Collection of the Most Remarkable Narratives of Persons Taken Captive by the North American Indians... to which are Added, Notes, Historical, Biographical, &c., 1839
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