The Beginners of a Nation

1899. American novelist and historian, Eggleston's novels depicting early life in southern Indiana have been widely read. In this book his aim has been to make the pages reflect the character of the age in which the English colonies were begun, and the traits of the colonists, and to bring into relief the social, political, intellectual, and religious forces that promoted emigration. It does not pretend to be the usual account of all the events attending early colonization; it is rather a history in which the succession of cause and effect is the main topic, a history of the dynamics of colony-planting in the first half of the seventeenth century. Who were the beginners of English life in America? What propulsions sent them for refuge to a wilderness? What visions beckoned them to undertake the founding of new states? What manner of men were their leaders? And what is the story of their hopes, their experiments, and their disappointments? These are the questions Eggleston attempts to a