God, War, and Providence
The Epic Struggle of Roger Williams and the Narragansett Indians against the Puritans of New England
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Narrated by:
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Bob Souer
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By:
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James A. Warren
About this listen
A devout Puritan minister in 17th-century New England, Roger Williams was also a social critic, diplomat, theologian, and politician who fervently believed in tolerance. Banished from Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1635, Williams purchased land from the Narragansett Indians and laid the foundations for the colony of Rhode Island as a place where Indian and English cultures could flourish side by side, in peace.
As the 17th century wore on, a steadily deepening antagonism developed between an expansionist, aggressive Puritan culture and an increasingly vulnerable, politically divided Indian population. Indian tribes that had been at the center of the New England communities found themselves shunted off to the margins of the region. By the 1660s, all the major Indian peoples in southern New England had come to accept English authority, either tacitly or explicitly. All, except one: the Narragansetts.
In God, War, and Providence James A. Warren tells the remarkable and little-known story of the alliance between Roger Williams's Rhode Island and the Narragansett Indians, and how they joined forces to retain their autonomy and their distinctive ways of life against Puritan encroachment.
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Often remembered as the president who died shortly after taking office, William Henry Harrison remains misunderstood by most Americans. Before becoming the ninth president of the United States in 1841, Harrison was instrumental in shaping the early years of westward expansion. Robert M. Owens now explores that era through the lens of Harrison’s career, providing a new synthesis of his role in the political development of Indiana Territory and in shaping Indian policy in the Old Northwest.
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Title = Truth in Advertising
- By William Jenks on 06-18-19
By: Robert M. Owens
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America's Hidden History
- Untold Tales of the First Pilgrims, Fighting Women and Forgotten Founders Who Shaped a Nation
- By: Kenneth C. C. Davis
- Narrated by: Sam Freed, Kenneth C. Davis
- Length: 7 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Kenneth C. Davis presents a collection of extraordinary stories, each detailing an overlooked episode that shaped the nation's destiny and character. Davis' dramatic narratives set the record straight, busting myths and bringing to light little-known but fascinating facts from a time when the nation's fate hung in the balance.
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Boring, boring, boring
- By Yeshe on 10-14-10
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The Island at the Center of the World
- The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony That Shaped America
- By: Russell Shorto
- Narrated by: Russell Shorto
- Length: 14 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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In a landmark work of history, Russell Shorto presents astonishing information on the founding of our nation and reveals in riveting detail the crucial role of the Dutch in making America what it is today.
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Incomplete history, but fun. Performance is poor.
- By Matthew on 11-27-18
By: Russell Shorto
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Crucible of War
- The Seven Years' War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754-1766
- By: Fred Anderson
- Narrated by: Paul Woodson
- Length: 29 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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In this vivid and compelling narrative, the Seven Years' War - long seen as a mere backdrop to the American Revolution - takes on a whole new significance. Relating the history of the war as it developed, Anderson shows how the complex array of forces brought into conflict helped both to create Britain's empire and to sow the seeds of its eventual dissolution. Beginning with a skirmish in the Pennsylvania backcountry involving an inexperienced George Washington, the Iroquois chief Tanaghrisson, and the ill-fated French emissary Jumonville, Anderson reveals a chain of events that would lead to world conflagration.
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A Detailed History
- By Daniel on 07-15-18
By: Fred Anderson
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The Cherokee Nation and the Trail of Tears
- By: Theda Perdue, Michael Green
- Narrated by: George Wilson
- Length: 5 hrs and 25 mins
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Acclaimed historians Theda Perdue and Michael D. Green paint a moving portrait of the infamous Trail of Tears. Despite protests from statesmen like Davy Crockett, Daniel Webster, and Henry Clay, a dubious 1838 treaty drove 17,000 mostly Christian Cherokee from their lush Appalachian homeland to barren plains beyond the Mississippi. For 4,000, this brutal forced march lead only to their deaths.
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Great audio book
- By Steve on 03-23-08
By: Theda Perdue, and others
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Jacksonland
- President Andrew Jackson, Cherokee Chief John Ross, and a Great American Land Grab
- By: Steve Inskeep
- Narrated by: Steve Inskeep
- Length: 11 hrs and 48 mins
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Jacksonland is the thrilling narrative history of two men - President Andrew Jackson and Cherokee chief John Ross - who led their respective nations at a crossroads of American history. Five decades after the Revolutionary War, the United States approached a constitutional crisis. At its center stood two former military comrades locked in a struggle that tested the boundaries of our fledgling democracy. Jacksonland is their story.
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Fantastic and Thoughtful
- By Elizabeth Westbrook on 05-05-16
By: Steve Inskeep
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A Colony Sprung from Hell
- Pittsburgh and the Struggle for Authority on the Western Pennsylvania Frontier, 1744-1794
- By: Daniel P. Barr
- Narrated by: Michael Kazalski
- Length: 11 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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The early settlement of the region around Pittsburgh was characterized by a messy collision of personal, provincial, national, and imperial interests. Driven by the efforts of Europeans, Pennsylvanians, Virginians, and Indians, almost everyone attempted to manipulate the clouded political jurisdiction of the region. A Colony Sprung from Hell traces this complex struggle. The events and episodes that make up the story highlight the difficulties of creating and consolidating authority along the frontier.
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These places have names.
- By Scott A. Yerecic on 01-13-17
By: Daniel P. Barr
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Andrew Jackson
- His Life and Times
- By: H.W. Brands
- Narrated by: John H. Mayer
- Length: 25 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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The extraordinary story of Andrew Jackson—the colorful, dynamic, and forceful president who ushered in the Age of Democracy and set a still young America on its path to greatness—told by the bestselling author of The First American.
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Very Thorough
- By Eric on 02-07-06
By: H.W. Brands
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Dawn of Detroit
- A Chronicle of Bondage and Freedom in the City of the Straits
- By: Tiya Miles
- Narrated by: Allyson Johnson
- Length: 10 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Most Americans believe that slavery was a creature of the South, and that Northern states and territories provided stops on the Underground Railroad for fugitive slaves on their way to Canada. In this paradigm-shifting book, celebrated historian Tiya Miles reveals that slavery was at the heart of the Midwest's iconic city: Detroit. In this richly researched and eye-opening book, Miles has pieced together the experience of the unfree - both native and African American - in the frontier outpost of Detroit.
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Great!
- By Melissa Eisner on 05-30-18
By: Tiya Miles
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A proper history of an obscure epoch
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Poor reading
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Bernard Bailyn gives us a compelling account of the first great transit of people from Britain, Europe, and Africa to British North America, their involvements with each other, and their struggles with the indigenous peoples of the eastern seaboard.
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In the first volume in the Penguin History of the United States series, edited by Eric Foner, Alan Taylor challenges the traditional story of colonial history by examining the many cultures that helped make America, from the native inhabitants from millennia past through the decades of Western colonization and conquest and across the entire continent, all the way to the Pacific coast.
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In The American Puritans, Dustin Benge and Nate Pickowicz tell the story of the first hundred years of Reformed Protestantism in New England through the lives of nine key figures: William Bradford, John Winthrop, John Cotton, Thomas Hooker, Thomas Shepard, Anne Bradstreet, John Eliot, Samuel Willard, and Cotton Mather. Here is sympathetic yet informed history, a book that corrects many myths and half-truths told about the American Puritans while inspiring a current generation of Christians to let their light shine before men.
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When Union and Confederate forces squared off along Bull Run on July 21, 1861, the Federals expected this first major military campaign would bring an early end to the Civil War. But when Confederate troops launched a strong counterattack, both sides realized the war would be longer and costlier than anticipated. First Bull Run, or First Manassas, set the stage for four years of bloody conflict that forever changed the political, social, and economic fabric of the nation. It also introduced the commanders, tactics, and weaponry that would define the American way of war through the turn of the twentieth century.
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Often hailed as the godfather of today's elite special forces, Robert Rogers trained and led an unorthodox unit of green provincials, raw woodsmen, farmers, and Indian scouts on "impossible" missions in colonial America that are still the stuff of soldiers' legend. The child of marginalized Scots-Irish immigrants, Rogers learned to survive in New England's dark and deadly forests, grasping, as did few others, that a new world required new forms of warfare. John F. Ross not only re-creates Rogers's life and his spectacular battles with breathtaking immediacy and meticulous accuracy...
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WOW!!!
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The War That Made America
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Apart from The Last of the Mohicans, most Americans know little of the French and Indian War, also known as the Seven Years' War, and yet it remains one of the most fascinating periods in our history. In January 2006, PBS will air The War That Made America, a four-part documentary about this epic conflict. Fred Anderson, the award-winning and critically acclaimed historian, has written the official tie-in to this exciting television event.
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A thorough and absorbing history
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Mayflower Lives
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Leading into the 400th anniversary of the voyage of the Mayflower, Martyn Whittock examines the lives of the "saints" (members of the Separatist Puritan congregations) and "strangers" (economic migrants) on the original ship. Collectively, these people would become known to history as "the Pilgrims". The story of the Pilgrims has taken on a life of its own as one of our founding national myths - their escape from religious persecution, the dangerous transatlantic journey, that brutal first winter.
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Wonderful!
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The Tuscarora War
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At dawn on September 22, 1711, more than five hundred Tuscarora, Core, Neuse, Pamlico, Weetock, Machapunga, and Bear River Indian warriors swept down on the unsuspecting European settlers living along the Neuse and Pamlico Rivers of North Carolina. During the following days, they destroyed hundreds of farms, killed at least 140 men, women, and children, and took about 40 captives. So began the Tuscarora War, North Carolina's bloodiest colonial war and surely one of its most brutal.
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neither a racist author nor a tale of genocide
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What listeners say about God, War, and Providence
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- ryan pedro
- 02-19-19
Early american history at its finest.
A brilliantly told book that for me at least really made me feel for the Narragansett tribe and other early New England Native Americans. It also made you think how different America could have been if they had prevailed.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Kindle Customer
- 01-08-19
The Complexity and Diplomacy of early New England
I lived in Rhode Island for twelve years and my wife’s family had been there for over three hundred, and yet James Warren’s book taught me SO MUCH that I thought was long since tied down in the cobwebs of forgetfulness and buried in the dust of history. The book is readable, and, despite the intense complexity it shows us of the competition, division and diplomacy of New England in the 1600’s, would be comprehensible to a High School student today. I believe James Warren’s God, War, and Providence should be required reading for every High School student in Rhode Island.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Jeffropicc
- 01-02-21
Best Written Book on the Subject
This book reads like a novel bringing the characters and circumstances to life in a way that keeps the listener engaged and interested, without missing any of the important details and with the reminder that history has been - and remains - open to interpretation. I would recommend this to anyone new to the topic of Williams and the Narragansetts as well as anyone well versed in colonial New England and RI history.
The narrator is excellent. However, some of the Native American place names are mispronounced (at least based on the current local pronunciations like Cocumscussoc). It Is not distracting unless you know the current local pronunciation and will need to translate for context.
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- D. L. Munro
- 09-16-22
Interesting history
I did not know much about Roger Williams or his contributions to colonial life but found the book to be helpful to understand both the thinking of colonial life and the difficulty in having relations with the Indians that were beneficial to both parties. There was a substantial amount in the last few chapters about the many treaties between the colonials and the Indian which revealed a great deal about how each viewed the other one’s ability to keep the promises that they had made. The reader was exceptional.
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- Amazon Customer
- 12-09-22
Super Information
I’ve traced multiple lines of my family back to this time, and this really helped put their lives and movements in context. I really love the details on the relationships with the native tribes. Would have loved more details on Anne Hutchinson and some inclusion of other notable Rhode Islanders who stood up to the Puritans in favor of separation of church and state (3 women I know of: Herodias Gardner, Catherine Marbury Scott, who was Anne Hutchinson’s sister, and 12 year old Mary Stanton, who were all whipped and jailed).
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- Doug C
- 10-19-22
Excellent review of Rhode Island History
My research has led me to read many accounts of early colonial history. This book accurately accounts the history of Rhode Island, it’s colony, the English and Native inhabitants. With a deep dive into Narragansett and Roger Williams the political and historical machinations of Rhode Island are laid out in full. The narrator does a good job at pronunciations and keeping an alluring tone. Worth a read.
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- Andy from FL
- 12-05-19
The best book so far on Roger Williams
I've read everything I could on Roger Williams, the true father of the religious freedoms we enjoy in this nation. This is now my personal favorite. The author is VERY clear that all we have to go by when learning about this time period is the writings left behind, and those writings can be skewed at times (imagine reading a history of WWII 200 yrs from now written by a Japanese military men DURING the war). He does an excellent job at injecting at times why a certain historical record may not be fully reliable. You get a full history of various Indian tribes living in the area and how they interacted with Roger Williams and with the English. Roger Williams lived his faith while the Puritans seemed to use their faith as a club to subdue those who didn't agree with them. Williams' most enduring spark of brilliance was his unique recognition that God never, outside the unified nation of Israel, demanded that a government enforce the 10 Commandments or create a State religion and demand subjection. He looked back at Judah's time in Babylon and saw that it was the Jews' responsibility to live the life God spelled out, it was the government's job to make sure there was fertile ground for the true religion to flourish. It is impossible to give this man enough credit for his impact on the Founding Fathers' foundation for spelling out the religious freedoms this country was founded on. James Madison referred back to Williams' thinking when he insisted that we have FULL religious freedom rather than merely government "tolerance".
As soon as I was through, I started this book over again.
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- Sarah C.
- 01-21-23
A Forgotten Early American Experiment in Tolerance
As a student of history, I've had to read numerous books on King Philip's War and the various themes it sprang from in early New England. That the Puritans were encroaching, haughty, intolerant and hypocritical is undeniable (they flee England due to religious intolerance but then are intolerant themselves of indigenous and non-Puritan Christian practices), but it's also not acknowledged or as easily memorable that not all the Puritan colonies were like that.
Roger Williams is a name that's remembered in American history for his involvement in the founding of Rhode Island and some of his modern views on how a government should be run (separation of church and state being the main issue he got kicked out of Massachusetts). But how did he start a colony when this area was still largely inhabited by various Native American groups? Williams lived among them during various periods of exile, learned their culture and language and earned the trust of many important Native leaders, particularly among the Narragansett. So when he was forced to permanently leave Massachusetts, he chose to settle among the Narragansett in their territory with their permission and with other like-minded settlers who desired "freedom of conscience."
Up until King Philip's War, Rhode Island was actually unique for its easy and trusting relationship with the Narragansett. Williams often served as a diplomatic advisor and interpreter who tried to settle issues fairly, even for those in Massachusetts who banished him. While he didn't agree with Native religious practices, he did find commonality and wisdom that vibed with his Christianity. And unlike the Puritans who dismissed and refused to hear his views, Rhode Island became known for having dissenters of many kinds who wanted to live in a more tolerant society. Rhode Island was also unique because it had a simpler form of government not connected to the church, which was big in those days.
Warren's telling of Williams and his attempt to "experiment" with religious toleration in early America also showed how unfortunately, intolerance, greed and mistrust won out in the end. The Massachusetts Bay Colony's constant need for more land and desire to get the best (read: Native) lands for themselves meant a lot of strife, discord and eventually bloodshed. Rhode Island simply wanted to live separately from Massachusetts, who wanted to control their land and their religious opinions. While the colony charter did bring some security for both the settlers and Natives, it wasn't enough to prevent Massachusetts from attempting to encroach or take things by force.
Warren also points out how the viewpoints of the Narragansetts and the English were conflicting, which led to many misunderstandings and increased likelihood of conflict. The Natives expected the English Puritans to keep their word in treaties and also be honest about their intentions, while the English were eager to use the factionalism of tribes to their advantage, constantly saw treachery and evil in the Natives' activity, especially in the months before King Philip's War broke out, and justified their illegal land grabs by insisting on their religious and political superiority. Even Williams was not completely immune to the idea of English superiority when he argued that indentured servitude was a better option than outright slavery for Natives following the War's conclusion. Unfortunately the mistrust, lies and superiority continued (and still are) issues in U.S.-Native relations today. The roots did begin in New England though, as Warren demonstrates.
I found this fascinating and somewhat encouraging to read. Though you can argue that William's experiment failed in the end since Rhode Island later joined the rest of New England in terms of anti-Native mentality and acceptance, it also showed that peaceful relations between groups was possible and the ideas about government that the Founders would enshrine when they wrote the Constitution were already in practice over a hundred years before. What Williams did was significant and still is significant today and hopefully the lessons learnt will endure.
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- Ethan Young
- 11-08-24
Fascinating History
Learn about the fascinating relationship between the New England Puritans and the local native peoples, and the relationship between staunch magisterial protestant pilgrims and non-conformist pilgrims, such as Roger Williams.
While many attempt to idealize the Puritan pilgrims, or they try to idealize the native peoples, history shows that both people groups had their virtues and vices, with incredibly upright people from both groups along with maliciously evil people as well. One sided over-generalized interpretations of history is for fools, zealots, and politicians.
Roger Williams, a peacemaker at heart, sought for many years to keep the peace between the immigrants and the native people. But both sides having committed injustices against each other the dye was cast for the conflict that that ensued.
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