United States historian William Pencak presents thirteen of his essays, written beginning in 1976. Some deal with colonial and revolutionary crowds and communities in Massachusetts—the impressment rio
The Keystone State, so nicknamed because it was geographically situated in the middle of the thirteen original colonies and played a crucial role in the founding of the United States, has remained at
Two powerfully contradictory images dominate historical memory when we think of Native Americans and colonists in early Pennsylvania. To one side is William Penn’s legendary treaty with the Lenape at
Founded in 1682 by a society that had no military, eschewed violence as a means of solving conflicts, and tolerated a wide variety of religions, Pennsylvania began as a “peaceable kingdom”—but war was
