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Sep 8, 1492
The Explorers
The first of these writers were the journals and letters of Christopher Columbus, his stories about the New World fascinated the Spanish and led them to set out expeditions to the Americas. -
Early Settlers
The early English settlers described their difficult and amazing new lives in letters, reports, and chronicles to friends and family back home. These writings gave the people back in England an image of America, an infuential writing was, A Brief and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia. -
The Meeting of Two Worlds from Colony to Country
The first english settlers described North America as " a hideous and desolate wilderness, full of wild beasts and wild men." The first permanent colony was established at Jamestown in 1607. -
The Puritan Tradition
The purpose for Puritan writers was to be useful and a tool to help readers understand the Bible and guide them in their daily lives. The wrote histories, sermons, scientific works, essays, and poems with religious themes. - Bay Psalm Book, in 1640. -
The Native American Experience
Out of the three hundred different Native American cultures in North American, storytelling was common to all. Storytelling was one of the many genres of spoken literature. They did not have a written language. -
Writers of the Revolution
Revolutionary writers focused their energies on matters of government rather than religion. The pamphlet became the fuel of the revolution and gave people the push they needed to break away from British rule. -
A Break With England
When England tried taxing colonist, writers for colonial newspapers and pamphlets influenced colonist greatly to support independence, which led to colonist declaring themselves to be free and independent from England in 1776. -
The United States of America was born
The Declaration of Independence and Constitution of United States are two famous pieces of writing in the U.S. That were written by Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and other colonial thinkers that began the United States of America in 1788. -
Puritan Beliefs
Religion was the most influential cultural force on writers of this period. For example the Puritans who were a group of English Protestants who were against the church of England lived their every day life according to their bible and believes of God. -
Exploration and the Early Settlers
Much of our understanding of pre-colonial America came from the first person accounts of its explorers, settlers, and colonists. We know this because of their journals, diaries, letters, and logs of those first settlers who stepped in America from England.
