Guide to the study and reading of American history

Every day I'm freshly amazed that Google Books is free. Here's the 1912 Guide to the study and reading of American history by Edward Channing, Albert Bushnell Hart and Frederick Jackson "Frontier" Turner.

Current reading

• John Senior's The Death of Christian Culture
• the essays of the late Joseph Sobran, the "reluctant anarchist" (read the essay)
• The Founders' Constitution, which is of only antiquarian interest now that the Old Republic is dead
• Ted Morgan's Wilderness at Dawn: The Settling of the North American Continent, a decent starting point for early American history - it's a bit heavy on the "representative anecdote", but then there's only so much you can fit into a couple of hundred pages

February 10, 1675

On the outskirts of Lancaster, Massachusetts:

On the tenth of February 1675, came the Indians with great numbers upon Lancaster: their first coming was about sunrising; hearing the noise of some guns, we looked out; several houses were burning, and the smoke ascending to heaven. There were five persons taken in one house; the father, and the mother and a sucking child, they knocked on the head; the other two they took and carried away alive. There were two others, who being out of their garrison upon some occasion were set upon; one was knocked on the head, the other escaped; another there was who running along was shot and wounded, and fell down; he begged of them his life, promising them money (as they told me) but they would not hearken to him but knocked him in head, and stripped him naked, and split open his bowels. Another, seeing many of the Indians about his barn, ventured and went out, but was quickly shot down. There were three others belonging to the same garrison who were killed; the Indians getting up upon the roof of the barn, had advantage to shoot down upon them over their fortification. Thus these murderous wretches went on, burning, and destroying before them.