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Excerpt from Documentary History of Rhinebeck, in Dutchess County, N. Y: Embracing Biographical Sketches and Genealogical Records of Our First Families and First Settlers Translated - It is acknowledged by these presents that upon the 8th day of June, 1686, in the presence of the magis trates, have Aran Kee, Kreme Much, and Korra Kee, young Indians, appeared, the which do acknowledge to have sold to Gerrit Artsen, Arie Rosa and Jan Elton a certain parcell of land, lying upon the east shore, right over against the mouth of the Redout Creek, bounded between a small creek and the river, the which said creek is sold to the purchasers. The bounds of the said land beginneth at the parting of the lands of Henry Kip, and by a small creek called, in the Indian speech, Quanelos; and then runs right through to a great oak tree, marked and scored by the Indians; then runs south to where the upper most creek comes into the same; and then by the said creek to the river; for which the purchasers promise to pay to the abo riginal sellers, or cause to be paid, as follows: Six buffaloes, four blankets, five kettels, four guns, five horns, five axes, ten kans of powder, eight shirts, eight pairs of stockings, forty fathoms of wampum, or sewant, two drawing knives, two adzes, ten knives, half anker rum, one frying pan; which payment shall and must be made on the Ist of November next ensuing. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

The premier secessionist of antebellum Mississippi, John A. Quitman was one of the half-dozen or so most prominent radicals in the entire South. In this full-length biography, Robert E. May takes issue with the recent tendency to portray secessionists as rabble-rousing, maladjusted outsiders bent on the glories of separate nationhood. May reveals Quitman to have been an ambitious but relatively stable insider who reluctantly advocated secession because of a despondency over slavery’s long-range future in the Union and a related conviction that northerners no longer respected southern claims to equality as American citizens. A fervent disciple of South Carolina “radical” John C. Calhoun’s nullification theories, Quitman also gained notoriety as his region’s most strident slavery imperialist. He articulated the case for new slaver territory, participated in the Texas Revolution, won national acclaim as a volunteer general in the Mexican War, and organized a private military—or “filibustering”—expedition with the intent of liberating Cuba from Spanish rule and making the island a new slave state. In 1850, while governor of Mississippi during the California crisis, Quitman wielded his influence in a vain attempt to induce Mississippi secession. Later, in Congress, he marked out an extreme southern position on Kansas. Mississippi’s most vehement “fire-eater,” Quitman played a significant role in the North-South estrangement that led to the American Civil War. The first critical biography of this important figure, May’s study sheds light on such current historical controversies as whether antebellum southerners were peculiarly militaristic or “antibourgeois” and helps illuminate the slave-master relations, mobility, intraregional class and geographic friction, partisan politics, and family customs of the Old South.