Book Description

The settlement of North America was the beginning of a new era in human history. The oppressive laws, habits and customs of the Old World no longer held such power over those who had made the treacherous journey across the Atlantic. No reigning monarch or dictatorial power ever stepped onto the ground of North America. Yet, despite this, the men and women thirteen colonies of North America were still not free until they threw off the shackles of England's government and asserted their own rights. The journey between the discovery of America to the eventual liberation of the United States after the Revolutionary War was a long and turbulent one that Charles Carleton Coffin uncovers through the course of his book Sweet Land of Liberty. Coffin's account begins with an explanation of how during the early sixteenth century Spanish, French and English ships began to land along the eastern coast of America and laid claim to vast swathes of the continent. Particularly fascinating are the chapters in which Coffin explores how America became a haven for religious dissidents, firstly the puritans of the seventeenth century and later for groups such as the Quakers. As the eighteenth century progressed the relations between the thirteen colonies and the English government in London until eventually the Declaration of Independence was declared and the continent descended into warfare. Carleton explains how the ideas of liberty and freedom were developed over the preceding years and shaped this important document and the subsequent war. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in the early history of the United States and how ideas of liberty and freedom were developed in the colonies prior to the War of Independence. Charles Carleton Coffin was an American journalist, American Civil War correspondent, author and politician. He was one of the most famous newspaper correspondents of the American Civil War and has been called "the Ernie Pyle of his era." His book Sweet Land of Liberty was first published as Old Times in the Colonies in 1880. Coffin passed away in 1896.