Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

Excerpt from Dutch Village Communities on the Hudson River "The Government of the United States is not the result of special creation but of evolution... "In the deepest and widest sense our American history does not begin with the Declaration of Independence, or even with the settlement of Jamestown and Plymouth; but it descends in unbroken continuity from the days when stout Arminius in the forests of northern Germany successfully defied the might of imperial Rome." - John Fiske. "The State of New York, once New Netherlands, affords us the remarkable phenomenon of a land settled by one body of Teutonic settlers and afterwards by the accidents of warfare transferred to another. The two sets of colonists were both of the same original stock and the same original speech; but the circumstances of their several histories had made them practically strangers to each other. On the Nether-Dutch of Holland and Zealand transplanted to the New World came in the Nether-Dutch of England... Here is a field of special interest." - Freeman. "But they [the Dutch] brought the patience, the enterprise and the courage, the indomitable spirit, and the hatred of tyranny, into which they had been born, into which their nation had been baptized with blood. "Education came with them; the free schools, in which Holland had led the van of the world, being early transplanted to these shores; ... an energetic Christian faith came with them, with its Bibles, its ministers, its interpreting books." - R. S. Storrs. "The Netherlands divide with England the glory of having planted the first colonies in the United States; and they divide the glory of having set the example of public freedom. If England gave our fathers the idea of a popular representation, the United Provinces were their model of a federal union." - Bancroft. 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.

Challenges the belief that the Walloons and the Dutch of the Hudson Valley were cultural preservationists who resisted English culture. In 1678, seven French-speaking Protestant families established the village of New Paltz in the Hudson River Valley of New York. Life on the edge of European settlement presented many challenges, but a particular challenge for these ethnic Walloon families, originally from the southern Spanish Netherlands, was that they lived in a Dutch cultural region in an English colony. In Set in Stone, Kenneth Shefsiek explores how the founders and their descendants reacted to and perpetuated this multiethnic cultural environment for generations. As the founding families controlled their town economically and politically, they creatively and selectively blended the cultures available to them. They allowed their Walloon culture to slip away early in the village’s history, but they continued to combine Dutch and English cultures for more than 150 years. When they finally abandoned the last vestiges of Dutch culture in the early nineteenth century, they did so just as descendants of English colonists began to claim that the national commitment to liberty and freedom was grounded in the nation’s English heritage. Not willing to be marginalized, descendants of the New Paltz Walloons constructed an alternative national narrative, placing their ancestors at the very center of the American story. “Kenneth Shefsiek demonstrates that he has a keen eye for detail, and this careful attention to the small things helps bring New Paltz’s past to life. The book paints a surprising picture of one of the most intriguing communities in early America.” — Andrew Lipman, author of The Saltwater Frontier: Indians and the Contest for the American Coast

The first comprehensive guide to the Hudson since the works of Ernest Ingersoll were published in the early 1900s, this guidebook arrives to fill the need for a detailed, point-by-point guide to the river from its intersection with the Atlantic to its source in the Adirondacks. Adams offers his reader five routes by which to tour the region. The traveler can venture directly up the main steamboat channel, or choose road and rail routes on the east and west shores of the river. Maps for each route are included, together with suggestions for excursions to many points of local and historical interest along the way. Over 250 photographs and paintings, and excerpts from American authors pepper the book, giving multiple perspectives of the region's long history. For the armchair as well as the actual traveler, from the Abyssal Plain to Doodletown and Chevaux de-Frise, past Anthony's nose, Burden's ironworks, and the Saratoga Battle Field to the Hudson's source at Lake Tear of the Clouds - this is the perfect traveling guide to the Hudson River region, rich in its history and culture, and ever-plentiful in its breathtaking sights.

President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation of September 22, 1862, did not apply to Maryland, as this state was not in rebellion, hence the local movement was necessary in order to carry out the policy of the National Government, and the Constitution of 1864, with its prohibitory clause in regard to slavery. The book looks at the political movement leading to the call of the Constitutional Convention; gives an account of the sittings of that Convention and the formation of a new Constitution; and tells of the acceptance of the Constitution by the state. --From preface.