Unmoored

The Search for Sincerity in Colonial America

Ana Schwartz

• Publisher: Omohundro Institute and UNC Press
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781469671772
• eBook ISBN: 9781469671789
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Early American History
• Index: History

New England’s Puritans were devoted to self-scrutiny. Consumed by the pursuit of pure hearts, they latched on to sincerity as both an ideal and a social process. It fueled examinations of inner lives, governed behavior, and provided a standard against which both could be judged. In a remote, politically volatile frontier, settlers gambled that sincerity would reinforce social cohesion and shore up communal happiness. Sincere feelings and the discursive practices that manifested them promised a safe haven in a world of grinding uncertainty.

But as Ana Schwartz demonstrates, if sincerity promised much, it often delivered more: it bred shame and resentment among the English settlers and, all too often, extraordinary violence toward their Algonquian neighbors and the captured Africans who lived among them. Populating her “city on a hill” with the stock characters of Puritan studies as well as obscure actors, Schwartz breathes new life into our understanding of colonial New England.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Acknowledgments
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Introduction. Great Expectations
• Chapter 1. Moral Unmoorings
• Chapter 2. Dreaming on Dry Land
• Chapter 3. Blood, Regret, and Tears
• Chapter 4. The Happiest Memories
• Chapter 5. Friendship, Fair and True
• Conclusion. Miserable Comforts
• Index