Beginnings – American Literature

• They (Puritans) set sail from England with a dream. Their new nation would be a guiding light. It would be and example for the whole world. John Winthrop spoke of the new land as a “City upon a Hill”.

England motives

• Desire to weaken Spain and France • Mechents wanted high profits in foreign trade • Wanted to send laborers abroad to lessen

overpopulation • Protestants seeking a new way of life • Increase the nation’s wealth

Sir Walter Raleigh

• 1587 • Lost Colony of Roanoke • 150 men, women, children disappeared and

no one knows exactly what happened to them• Claims that the Croatan Indians either helped

them or slaughtered them.

Captain John Smith

• 1607 Virginia – named after virgin Queen• Jamestown – most successful early American

colony • Algonquian Indians had an on and off again

relationship with the settlers• Only 60 of the 214 settlers survived.• Wedding of Pocahontas and John Rolfe helped

relations for awhile.

Pilgrims - 1620

• Pilgrims arrived

John Winthrop – prominent Puritan minister

…The Lord will be our God and delight to dwell among us, as His own people, and…Command a blessing upon us in all our ways..”

President Ronald Reagan Nov. 25, 1982

I have always believe that this anointed land was set apart in an uncommon way, thata divine plan places this great continent here between the oceans to be found by people From every corner of the Earth who had a special love of faith and freedom.

Brief History of the beginnings •Protestant Reformation – 1517 •Martin Luther posted 95 thesis on Wittenberg Cathedral. The church saw him as a heretic •He deemphasized the church ritual and the priesthood.•He stressed the significance of one’s inner light and the ability to obtain it.•Gave rise to the Protestant (protest) religion •Catholic church strong in Spain and Italy and parts of France and Germany

•Protestant – Switzerland, Germany, and parts of France and eventually England And Scotland

Columbus 1492

Columbus believed he found a passage to India and continued to think he found it based on his belief in a Biblical reference. He saw his fulfillment from Isaiah 11: 10-12: “And he shall set up an ensign for the nations.”

Amerigo Vespucci 1501

Portuguese sailor who sailed to Brazil. He lied and said he found America in 1497 to get around the fact that Columbus landed in Venezuela on his third voyage in 1498.

Martin Waldseemulerr 1507

Obscure German map maker who came across Vespucci’s work and decided this new land be called Amerigo – and he wrote America across a map in 1507