The Founding of a Nation: The Story of the Pilgrim Fathers, Their Voyage on the Mayflower, Their Early Struggles, Hardships and Dangers, and the Beginnings of American Democracy, as Told in the Journals of Francis Beaumont, Cavalier, Volume 1

"This story is a narrative-history of the Pilgrims of Plymouth. Though not entirely in accordance with popular traditions, which in many instances are erroneous, it is in accordance with historical facts...Francis Beaumont, the narrator, is a literary character...Wherever Beaumont speaks of himself and events that affect him alone, that part of the story is fiction; but whenever he associates himself with the acts of the colonists that part is in the main recorded history: for instance, the breaking of the ship's beams, the signing of 'the Compact,' the three voyages of discovery, the planting of the colony in the great clearing, the building of the houses, the burning of the common-house, the discovery of the columns of smoke from the fires of the savages, the various meetings at the common-house, the great sickness, the deaths, the coming of Samoset, the visits of Massassoit, the dread of the savages, the first harvest festival, the coming of the ship Fortune, the great famine, and other incidents of a similar character. These events are all told chronologically with one exception, i.e., the entrance of the Mayflower into Plymouth Harbor. The date of the first attempt of the ship to gain the harbor was the fifteenth of December, old style. In the story this event has been placed on Christmas Day. With this exception the story follows the history almost day by day. The motif of the narrative is to have some one else besides the interested parties tell the story of the courage and hardships of these enduring people: an epic of tragedy, self-denial, romance, famine, pestilence, death, and heroism unsurpassed in the annals of man."--Foreword.