{"product_id":"10-days-that-unexpectedly-changed-america-isbn-9780307339348","title":"10 Days That Unexpectedly Changed America","description":"\u003cb\u003eA companion book to The History Channel® special series of ten one-hour documentaries\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003e10 Days That Unexpectedly Changed America\u003c\/i\u003e pinpoints pivotal days that transformed   our nation. For the series and the book, The History Channel challenged a panel of   leading historians, including author Steven M. Gillon, to come up with some less   well-known but historically significant events that triggered change in America.   Together, the days they chose tell a story about the great democratic ideals upon   which our country was built.  \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e You won’t find July 4, 1776, for instance, or the   attack on Fort Sumter that ignited the Civil War, or the day Neil Armstrong set foot   on the moon. But January 25, 1787, is here. On that day, the ragtag men of Shays’   Rebellion attacked the federal arsenal in Springfield, Massachusetts, and set the   new nation on the path to a strong central government. January 24, 1848, is also   on the list. That’s when a carpenter named John Marshall spotted a few glittering   flakes of gold in a California riverbed. The discovery profoundly altered the American   dream. Here, too, is the day that noted pacifist Albert Einstein unwittingly advocated   the creation of the Manhattan Project, thus setting in motion a terrible chain of   events.  \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Re-creating each event with vivid immediacy, accessibility, and historical   accuracy, \u003ci\u003e10 Days That Unexpectedly Changed America\u003c\/i\u003e comes together as a history of   our country, from the first colonists’ contact with Native Americans to the 1960s.   It is a snapshot of our country as we were, are, and will be.Steven M. Gillon is the resident historian of The History Channel and host of \u003ci\u003eHistoryCENTER\u003c\/i\u003e. Having taught at both Oxford and Yale, he is currently a professor at the University of Oklahoma.1\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    May 26, 1637\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Massacre at Mystic\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    On the moonlit night of May 26, 1637, Puritans from Massachusetts Bay   Colony attacked a large Pequot village at a place called Missituck,   located near the Mystic River in Connecticut. The assault began on   May 25 with an all-day march through solidly held Pequot territory.   As dusk approached, the seventy English, seventy Mohegans, and five   hundred Narragansetts warriors led by Major John Mason and Captain   John Underhill reached the outskirts of the Mystic settlement, where   they decided to rest for a few hours. By 2 A.M. on the morning of the   twenty-sixth, the English were poised to put an end to the war that   had been raging between them and the Pequot for more than a year.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    With the aid of clear skies and a brightly lit moon they began their   final assault. Mason and Underhill divided their forces into northern   and southern contingents and attacked through the two entrances to   the village. According to their own accounts, Mason led his men   through the northeast gate when he \"heard a Dog bark, and an Indian   crying Owanux! Owanux! Which is Englishmen! Englishmen!\" After   removing piles of tree branches that blocked their approach, Captain   Underhill led his men through the other entrance with \"our swords in   our right hand, our carbines and muskets in our left hand.\" The   Pequots, initially startled by the attack, quickly regrouped and   pelted the invaders with arrows. Two Englishmen were killed and   twenty others wounded. Some were shot \"through the shoulder, some in   the face, some in the legs.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Instead of engaging the Englishmen, many of the Pequots, especially   women and children, stayed huddled in their wigwams. Frustrated that   his enemy refused to fight by traditional European rules of   engagement, Mason decided to burn the village. He lit a torch,   setting fire to the wigwams. At the same time, Captain Underhill \"set   fire on the south end with a train of powder. The fires of both   meeting in the center of the fort, blazed most terribly, and burnt   all in the space of half an hour.\" Dozens of men, women, and children   were burned alive. Mason observed that the Pequots were \"most   dreadfully amazed . . . indeed, such a dreadful Terror did the   Almighty let fall upon their Spirits, that they would fly from us and   run into the very Flames, where many of them perished.\" Another   Englishman who saw the slaughter wrote: \"The fire burnt their very   bowstrings . . . down fell men, women and children . . . great and   doleful was the bloody sight.\" After setting the fires, Mason ordered   his men to \"fall off and surround the Fort.\" From this vantage point,   they slaughtered anyone trying to flee the flames. The carnage was so   frightening that Uncas, a Mohegan sachem (chief) allied with the   English, cried, \"No more! You kill too many!\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The light of a late spring morning brought into full focus the   carnage that had been perpetrated the previous night. The Pequot were   reeling from the most gruesome act of ethnic cleansing perpetrated by   European colonizers on American soil. Fort Mystic lay in smoldering   ruins. Dwellings that once housed Pequot families were reduced to hot   piles of ash, and the once formidable wooden palisade that surrounded   Mystic was burning. Hundreds of Pequots were either dead or   dying--mostly women, children, and elderly members of the tribe. The   stench of burning human flesh filled the morning air. \"It was a   fearful sight to see them,\" observed William Bradford, who came to   America on the Mayflower in 1620 and served as governor of Plymouth   Colony, \"thus frying in the fire and the streams of blood quenching   the same, and horrible was the stink and scent thereof; but the   victory seemed a sweet sacrifice, and they gave the praise therof to   God, who had wrought so wonderfully for them, thus to enclose their   enemies in their hands and give them so speedy a victory over so   proud and insulting an enemy.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Major Mason considered his actions that day to be righteous, and he   went to his grave believing that the violence at Mystic pleased the   English God in true Puritan form. \"Sometimes,\" he wrote, \"the   scripture declareth that women and children must perish with their   parents . . . We had sufficient light from the word of God for our   proceedings.\" Mason, like most of the English commentators of the   era, framed the conflict in terms of savagery and civilization; the   \"civilized\" Protestants of the English empire were asserting their   natural authority over \"savage,\" pagan, and dark-skinned Indians. As   the last fires at Mystic burned out, news of the tragedy spread   throughout New England. A new and terrible era had begun.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    ***\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The battle at Mystic had its roots in the initial contact in the   early seventeenth century between English settlers and native peoples   living in New England. The Pilgrims, who arrived in 1620, had the   good fortune of encountering Squanto, a Wampanoag who helped the   Pilgrims adjust to their new world. Within a few years, however,   relations between the Pilgrims and local tribes soured. No matter how   friendly the initial contact, it could not alter the English view of   natives as untrustworthy savages. Indians, preached Anglican bishop   John Jewell, were \"a wild and naked people\" who lived \"without any   civil government, offering up men's bodies in sacrifice, drinking   men's blood . . . sacrificing boys and girls to certain familiar   devils.\" Over the next few years the settlers stole native crops and   acquired their land. In 1622, a militia captain killed eight friendly   Indians, impaling the head of the sachem on top of the fort at   Plymouth as a clear signal of their power. The Indians had a word for   the white settlers: wotowquenange, which meant stabbers or cutthroats.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Both sides were already deeply suspicious of each other by the time   Jonathan Winthrop and the six hundred Puritan settlers arrived on the   shores of Massachusetts in June 1630. Unlike the mostly male crews of   fortune seekers and laborers that landed in Virginia more than a   decade earlier, the Puritans who founded the Plymouth Colony came as   families--husbands, wives, children, and servants--seeking to locate   permanently. They came to America determined to create a \"Citty on   the Hill,\" a utopia where individuals would work in common struggle   to serve God's will. Winthrop wanted to escape a decadent England,   with its Catholic queen, beggars, horse thieves, and \"wandering   ghosts in the shape of men.\" The Puritan mission was to tame the   wilderness so their commonwealth would \"shine like a beacon\" back to   immoral England.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The Puritan families wanted land and access to all of the bounties   that the New World had to offer--a goal that put them in competition   with the Indians for local natural resources. Most Puritans viewed   Indians as dangerous, temporary obstacles to permanent English   settlement in New England, not potential partners in the development   of a new society. \"The principall ende of this plantacion,\" their   charter stated, was to \"wynn and incite the natives of [the] country,   to the knowledg and obedience of the onlie true God and Savior of   mankinde, and the Christian fayth.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The Puritans came to America prepared to use force to achieve their   ends. The Massachusetts Charter instructed settlers \"to encounter,   expulse, repel, and resist by force of arms\" any effort to destroy   the settlement. The settlers who arrived in Massachusetts aboard the   Arabella were told to \"neglect not walls, and bulwarks, and   fortifications for your own defence.\" They brought with them five   artillery pieces, skilled artisans who could make weapons, and a   handful of professional soldiers. Shortly after arriving they set up   a militia company. All males between the ages of sixteen and sixty   were expected to serve.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Within the first three years as many as three thousand English had   settled in the colony. By 1638, the population had swelled to eleven   thousand. As the colony grew, the Puritans laid claim to land owned   by the Indians. As God's \"chosen people,\" the Puritans felt entitled   to the land occupied by native tribes, often using Scripture to   justify the outright seizure of territory. The new land was an   untamed wilderness and their job was to subdue it for the glory of   their God. The Puritans also offered secular justifications for   taking possession of the land. Winthrop created a legal concept   called vacuum domicilium, which proposed that Indians had defendable   rights only to lands that were under cultivation. \"As for the Natives   in New England, they inclose noe Land, neither have any setled   habytation, nor any tame Cattle to improve the Land by,\" Winthrop   reasoned. If they left Indians land \"sufficient for their use, we may   lawfully take the rest, there being more than enough for them and us.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The Puritans' most powerful weapons in seizing Indian land were   neither laws nor guns, but microbes. Over the centuries, Europeans   had been exposed to and, through a process of evolution, developed   immunity to a host of viruses. Indians, isolated on a distant   continent, had never been exposed to the deadly microbes and   therefore had no immunity. Smallpox was the biggest killer, but   syphilis and various respiratory diseases added to the death toll.   Tens of thousands of Indians died in the first year after the arrival   of the English. By some estimates, disease killed 75 percent of the   tribes in southern New England in less than two years. An Englishman   wrote that the Indians had \"died on heapes, as they lay in their   houses, and the living that were able to shift for themselves wouyle   runne away and let them dy, and let there Carkases ly above the   ground without buriall.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    As more Puritans disembarked in America, their settlements expanded   farther west and south, eventually bringing them into contact with   the Pequot. There were roughly thirteen thousand Pequots occupying   the two thousand square miles of territory between the Niantic River   in Connecticut and the Wecapaug River in Rhode Island. Little is   known about the Pequot before their contact with Europeans. One   historian described them as the \"most numerous, the most warlike, the   fiercest and the bravest of all aboriginal clans of Connecticut.\"   Like other native tribes in southern New England, they depended on   farming, hunting, and fishing for survival. The main difference   between them and other nearby tribes, such as the Narragansett,   Nipmuc, and Mattabesic, was that the Pequot built fortified villages.   By 1637 they had constructed two large fortified hilltop villages--at   Weinshauks and Mystic. In addition to these forts, they built smaller   villages nearby containing as many as thirty wigwams, which were   surrounded by a few hundred acres of cultivated land.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Highly organized with a powerful grand sachem and tribal council, the   Pequot managed to establish military dominance over the other tribes   in New England. In an effort to monopolize trade with early Dutch   explorers, the Pequot subjugated nearby tribes. By the 1630s, the   Pequot were the dominant political and military force in the area.   Not only had they established extensive trading networks throughout   the region, but they also occupied some of the region's most fertile   soil.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Just as the English were planning to expand into Pequot territory,   the tribe was decimated by disease. By 1634, the tribe that had   numbered thirteen thousand a few years earlier now had only three   thousand. John White, a planter in New England, wrote that \"the   Contagion hath scarce left alive one person of an hundred.\" Whole   Indian tribes were decimated--too sick to hunt, fetch wood for fire,   or take care of one another. Their bodies were full of bursting pox   boils; \"their skin cleaving by reason thereof to the mats they lie   on. When they turn them, a whole side will flay off at once, and they   will be all of a gore blood, most fearful to behold.\" The Puritans   believed that the epidemics were gifts from God. \"If God were not   pleased with our inheriting these parts,\" Puritan Jonathan Winthrop   wondered, \"why did he drive out the natives before us? And why doth   he still make room for us, by diminishing them as we increase?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The once powerful Pequot found themselves under assault from all   directions. Not only were they reeling from disease, they faced new   economic competition. The Pequot occupied land that was rich in   wampum--small sea shells drilled and strung together into beads.   Until the arrival of the Europeans, wampum had served as a medium of   exchange and communication for many tribes. They used it to create   the insignia of sachems, command the service of shamans, console the   bereaved, celebrate marriages, end blood feuds, and seal treaties.   The Dutch, and later the English, however, recognized the economic   value of wampum and started using it as a form of currency.   Initially, the Pequot benefited from a lucrative trading system that   involved exchanging wampum and furs for European manufactured goods.   Eventually, however, the English decided to make their own wampum.   Using steel drills, they produced large quantities of wampum, driving   down its value and undermining the source of the Pequot's economic   power.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The Pequot were divided over how to respond to the new economic   threat posed by the English. The sachem Sassacus, deeply distrustful   of the English, called for building an alliance with the Dutch to try   to repel the English. The sub-sachem Uncas, who had married   Sassacus's daughter, opposed these efforts. Believing it was futile   to resist the more numerous and well-armed English, he advocated   cooperation. (Uncas would be forever remembered as the fictionalized   character in James Fenimore Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans.) The   debate between these two powerful men ripped the tribe apart at a   critical moment. After a series of heated debates, the tribal council   sided with Sassacus and forced Uncas to leave the village. An angry   Uncas formed a separate tribe, the Mohegan, and joined forces with   the English in an effort to destroy his former tribe. Decimated by   disease and torn apart by rival factions, the Pequot had never been   more vulnerable.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The English moved quickly to take advantage of the opportunity. The   immediate cause of the horrific attack on Mystic was revenge for the   deaths of two Englishmen. In 1634, Captain John Stone, an English   merchant, and his crew were found dead on their ship on the   Connecticut River. Stone fell far short of the God-fearing ideal for   an Englishman of the times. He was a notorious drunk, cheat, and   liar. At the time of his death he was in trouble for stealing a ship   full of Dutch trade goods from the Dutch governor of New York after a   night of hard drinking. (Stone got the governor drunk as a   diversionary tactic.) Informants from the Narragansett told colonial   authorities that the Pequot ruthlessly murdered Stone and his men in   their sleep. The Pequot told a different story. They claimed that   Stone had taken two Indians captive. When Stone refused to release   them, they took the ship by force. \"This was related with such   confidence and gravity,\" Winthrop said, \"as having no means to   contradict it, we inclined to believe it.\"","brand":"Crown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46300415852773,"sku":"NP9780307339348","price":19.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780307339348_c02a430c-0bcf-44a0-84d4-22b68a5ceac9.jpg?v=1767720111","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/10-days-that-unexpectedly-changed-america-isbn-9780307339348","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}