American Quotations by William J. Federer 2024

Matthew Fontaine Maury (January 14, 1806-February 1, 1873) was a scientist and pioneer hydrographer. He was known as the "Pathfinder of the Seas" for having charted the sea and wind currents while serving in the U.S. Navy. Considered the founder of modern hydrography and oceanography, he was Professor of Meteorology at Virginia Military Institute. In his book Physical Geography of the Sea, 1855, Matthew Maury wrote: <I have always found in my scientific studies, that, when I could get the Bible to say anything on the subject it afforded me a firm platform to stand upon, and a round in...

William Lloyd Garrison (December 10, 1805-May 24, 1879 was an abolitionist leader and the publisher of The Liberator, an anti-slavery paper in Boston. He founded the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1833 and suffered hundreds of threats upon his life for his politically incorrect stand that a human being was not property. In the face of pro-slavery government, laws, court decisions, public opinion, and even pseudo "scientific theories" that Negroes were "biologically inferior" and therefore denied the right to life and freedom, William Lloyd Garrison printed the first issue of The Liberator on January 1, 1831: <It is pretended, that I...

Francis J. Grund (1805-September 29, 1863) was a mathematician who became a political commentator. His death was mentioned in the New York Times, October 2, 1863. A contemporary of Alexis de Tocqueville, Francis J. Grund wrote in his work The Americans in Their Moral, Social and Political Relations, 1837: <Although the most perfect tolerance exists with regard to particular creeds, yet it is absolutely necessary that a man should belong to some persuasion of other, lest his fellow-citizens should consider him an outcast from society. The Jews are tolerated in America with the same liberality as any denomination of Christians;...

Alexis de Tocqueville (July 29, 1805-April 16, 1859) was a French statesman, historian and social philosopher. He arrived in New York, May 11, 1831, with Gustave de Beaumont, and began a nine month tour of the country for the purpose of observing the American prison system, the people and American institutions. His two-part work, which was published in 1835 and 1840, was titled Democracy in America. It has been described as: <the most comprehensive and penetrating analysis of the relationship between character and society in America that has ever been written.> 1805AT001 In it, Alexis de Tocqueville related: <Upon my...

United States Congress (June 4, 1805) during Thomas Jefferson's presidency, drafted a Treaty of Peace and Amity with Tripoli, ratified April 12, 1806, in order to prevent the pirates of the North African Barbary Coast from seizing American ships, confiscating their cargo, and selling the crews and passengers as slaves. The United States had made a previous treaty with Tripoli and paid large sums of extortion money, but it failed when war broke out in 1801. Lieutenant Stephen Decatur (1779-1820) won famed by stealing into the Tripoli harbor on the small vessel Intrepid, February 16, 1804, burning a captured ship and...