2 - Catharine Sedgwick's “Recital” of the Pequot War

Summary

I hope my dear Mrs. Embry [sic] you will go on to enrich your native country and to elevate the just pride of your country women.

– Catharine Sedgwick to Emma Embury, January 29, 1829

It has been the fate of all the tribes to be like the Carthaginians, in having their history written by their enemies. Could they now come up from their graves, and tell the tale of their own wrongs, reveal their motives, and describe their actions, Indian history would put on a different garb from the one it now wears, and the voice of justice would cry much louder in their behalf than it has yet done.

– “Materials for American History,” North American Review (1826)

Shortly before Catharine Sedgwick published her third novel, Hope Leslie, in 1827, she wrote a letter home to her brother, Charles, recounting a recent trip to Boston that she had made by stagecoach. Along the way, as Sedgwick described it, she encountered an aged veteran of the Revolutionary War who somehow charmed her. To Sedgwick the incident was worthy of detail:

One old soldier I shall never forget. He was not like most of our old pensioners, a subject of pity on account of (perhaps) accidental virtue, but everything about him looked like the old age of humble frugal industrious virtue. And then he was so patient under the severest of all physical evils … so cheerful and bright, so confiding in kindness, and so trustful in his fellow–creatures….[…]