It is after Peale's portrait and may have been copies from Norman's sheet almanac for … which it closely follows. Several decades later Clarence Brigham, former Librarian of the American Antiquarian Society, again took up the attribution question in his book Paul Revere's Engravings Draper, undated, but probably around There are two varieties of this Primer , differing in the border around the title-page.
The same plate again did duty in a later New England Primer about … but in this cut of Washington, the title underneath was John Adams, President. Hart's opinion may be correct. The style of engraving in a way is like Revere's work, and the evidence of the letter to his cousin is interesting, if not conclusive. While WorldCat records copies of this rarity at several institutions, the fact is that most if not all these entries are invalid.
Errors in correctly identifying and cataloging rare books, especially in cases where facsimile editions are present, are not uncommon. The goal of the Primer was to combine the study of the Bible with the alphabet, vocabulary, and the reading of prose and poetry.
William Holmes McGuffey, the author of the McGuffey Reader, which was used for over years in our public schools with over million copies sold since until it was stopped in due to a Supreme Court decision in Abington v. Schempp whereas the Court eliminated Bible reading in American schools under the pretense of separation of church and state. From it are derived our notions on the character of God, on the great moral Governor of the universe.
The New England colonists—with the exception of Rhode Island—were predominantly Puritans, who, by and large, led strict religious lives. The clergy was highly educated and devoted to the study and teaching of both Scripture and the natural sciences. Some groups came to North America to escape religious persecution. Pilgrims, Puritans, Quakers, and Catholics all fled Europe to establish communities where they could worship freely. Spain — Claimed much of the southwest and Florida.
They came to conquer, and to convert Natives to Christianity. They came to the Americas to escape poverty, warfare, political turmoil, famine and disease. They believed colonial life offered new opportunities. The United States was formed as a result of the American Revolution when the thirteen American colonies revolted against the rule of Great Britain. After the war ended, the U. Another of our primers devotes half a page to a meditation "On Life and Death," dominated by a woodcut illustration of a weapon-wielding skeleton.
Others detailed the death of John Rogers, the Protestant martyr who was burned alive in by the Catholic Queen Mary I of England, or contained various versions of the catechism.
Why such a focus on death? It partially stems from high childhood mortality rates in an age before vaccines and modern medicine, when contagious diseases like scarlet fever, measles and whooping cough ran rampant. The emphasis can also be explained in part by the changing attitude toward death in the time of the primers' popularity, an attitude that increasingly saw death not as a morbid end but instead as a positive event that allowed righteous souls to pass into eternal paradise.
This change can be seen not only in children's books like the primers but in many places, such as gravestones that started to carry messages celebrating the fate of the soul after death. But the main reason for the seeming obsession with death in the New England Primer lies with the religious inclinations of the book, which was written primarily for the Protestant populations of New England and reflects a Puritan religious ideology.
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