Keywords: Conflicts
Item 104960
Our Lady of the Holy Hope sign from Fort Pentagoet, Castine, 1648
Contributed by: Maine Historical Society Date: 1648 Location: Castine Media: Copper
Item 104961
Copper medallion from Fort Pentagoet, Castine, ca. 1721
Contributed by: Maine Historical Society Date: circa 1721 Location: Castine Media: copper
Exhibit
Anglo-Americans in northern New England sometimes interpreted their own anxieties about the Wilderness, their faith, and their conflicts with Native Americans as signs that the Devil and his handmaidens, witches, were active in their midst.
Exhibit
Liberty Threatened: Maine in 1775
At Lexington and Concord, on April 19, 1775, British troops attempted to destroy munitions stored by American colonists. The battles were the opening salvos of the American Revolution. Shortly, the conflict would erupt in Maine.
Site Page
"… land as legal property sprouted a thicket of conflicts. In addition to the many instances where multiple colonists claimed Native title to the same…"
Site Page
"… another proprietor clinging to a stack of conflicting deeds. Above all, settlers feared that they might be forced into tenancy or wage labor."
Story
My Africa Book and living in Portland
by Titi de Baccarat
My art is about being an immigrant in the US, my pain, fear, uncertainty, and hope for my future
Story
Scientist Turned Artist Making Art Out of Trash
by Ian Trask
Bowdoin College alum returns to midcoast Maine to make environmentally conscious artwork
Lesson Plan
Longfellow Studies: Longfellow Amongst His Contemporaries - The Ship of State DBQ
Grade Level: 9-12
Content Area: English Language Arts, Social Studies
Preparation Required/Preliminary Discussion:
Lesson plans should be done in the context of a course of study on American literature and/or history from the Revolution to the Civil War.
The ship of state is an ancient metaphor in the western world, especially among seafaring people, but this figure of speech assumed a more widespread and literal significance in the English colonies of the New World. From the middle of the 17th century, after all, until revolution broke out in 1775, the dominant system of governance in the colonies was the Navigation Acts. The primary responsibility of colonial governors, according to both Parliament and the Crown, was the enforcement of the laws of trade, and the governors themselves appointed naval officers to ensure that the various provisions and regulations of the Navigation Acts were executed. England, in other words, governed her American colonies as if they were merchant ships.
This metaphorical conception of the colonies as a naval enterprise not only survived the Revolution but also took on a deeper relevance following the construction of the Union. The United States of America had now become the ship of state, launched on July 4th 1776 and dedicated to the radical proposition that all men are created equal and endowed with certain unalienable rights. This proposition is examined and tested in any number of ways during the decades between the Revolution and the Civil War. Novelists and poets, as well as politicians and statesmen, questioned its viability: Whither goes the ship of state? Is there a safe harbor somewhere up ahead or is the vessel doomed to ruin and wreckage? Is she well built and sturdy or is there some essential flaw in her structural frame?
