"James River" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Doubtless a main reason why he accepted the plan of campaign suggested by Halleck was the opportunity which it offered to Pope. Perhaps, too, the fatality in McClellan's character turned the scale. He begged to be left where he was with his base on James River, and to be allowed to renew the attack on Richmond.1 But he did not take the initiative. The government must swiftly hurry up reinforcements, and then—the old, old story! Obviously, it was a question ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... who landed at Jamestown in 1607 were all men. While some of them were building a fort, Captain Newport, with Captain John Smith and others, explored the James River and visited the Powhatan, chief of a neighboring tribe of Indians. This done, Newport returned to England (June, 1607) with his three ships, leaving one hundred and five colonists to begin a struggle for life. Bad water, fever, hard labor, ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... had delayed their movements, and Lafayette was thus obliged to make a choice. He went to rejoin his reinforcement at Raccoon-Ford, and hastened, by forced marches, to come into contact with Lord Cornwallis, who had had time to make one detachment at Charlottesville, and another at the James River Fork. The first had dispersed the Virginian assembly; the second had done no material injury; but the principal blow was to be struck: Lord Cornwallis was established in a good position, within one march of the magazines, when Lafayette arrived close ...
— Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... syllable representing the locative affix,—"at the Falls." The same name is found in Virginia, under a disguise which has hitherto prevented its recognition. Capt. John Smith informs us that the "place of which their great Emperor taketh his name" of Powhatan, or Pawatan, was near "the Falls" of James River,[13] where is now the city of Richmond. 'Powatan' is pauat-hanne, or 'falls on ...
— The Composition of Indian Geographical Names - Illustrated from the Algonkin Languages • J. Hammond Trumbull
... the route had been destroyed by the enemy, but pioneers advanced at the head of the column, and as the bridges were all small they were quickly repaired. A march of a few miles brought us in sight of the James river; a noble stream, at least five miles wide at this point. Not far from the shore appeared the masts of the U. S. frigate Cumberland, sunk in the memorable fight with the Merrimac. As our march led us along the banks, the views were charming. On one hand was the noble ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... awakened by the roar of the Confederate blowing up of ironclads in the James River. A few minutes later he was in the Petersburg entrenchments. He rode solitary and lone from City Point to Richmond, entering the city by the Newmarket road, and overtaking a division of the Twenty-fifth ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... Rangers, embarked, leaving the remainder of the 76th, with other troops, to garrison Portsmouth. The detachment of the 76th which embarked consisted of one major, three captains, twelve subalterns, and three hundred men, under Major Needham. The troops proceeded up the James river destroying warlike stores, shipping, barracks, foundaries and private property. After making many excursions the troops marched to Bermuda Hundreds, opposite City Point, where they embarked, on May 2d; but receiving orders from lord Cornwallis, returned ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... Dutch slave trader that landed his cargo of slaves upon the banks of the James River was moved thereto by his greed for gain, we know. The Southerners who wrought upon their slaves and gave them the rudiments of civilization, wrought, we know, for the purpose ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... time of the settlement of Jamestown in 1607 the area of present-day Virginia was occupied by Indians of three linguistic stocks: Algonquin, Siouan, and Iroquoian. Generally speaking, the Algonquins which included the Powhatan Confederacy inhabited the Tidewater, reaching from the Potomac to the James River and extending to the Eastern Shore. The Siouan tribes, including the Monacans and the Manahoacs, occupied the Piedmont; while the Iroquoian group, containing the independent Nottoways and Meherrins, partially surrounded ...
— Mother Earth - Land Grants in Virginia 1607-1699 • W. Stitt Robinson, Jr.
... Vernon is a desert waste; Monticello is little better, and the same circumstances which have desolated the lands of Washington and Jefferson have impoverished every planter in the State. Hardly any have escaped, save the owners of the rich bottom lands along James River, the fertility of which it seems difficult utterly to destroy.'[46] Now a Virginia planter stands in much the same relation to his plantation as an absentee Irish landlord to his estate; the care of the land is in each case handed ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... of hands, who were subject to the command of the master. The land yielded their food, live stock and game. The great rivers swarmed with fish for the taking. Their ships took the tobacco off their private wharves on the banks of the Potomac or the James River, and carried it to London or Bristol, bringing back English goods and articles of home manufacture in return for the only produce which the Virginian gentry chose to cultivate. Their hospitality was boundless. No stranger ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... defences. Grant, too, had changed his operations, at first directed against Richmond on the northwest; and, since he found every hill and wood and morass strongly fortified, he concluded to march on Lee's flank to the James River, and attack Richmond from the south, after reducing Petersburg, and destroying the southern railroads by which the Confederates received ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... twenty-one, he accompanied Colonel Beauquette, as a serjeant, in a hostile expedition against the Indians of the north. Having provided for the comfortable settlement of his mother and family on James River, Virginia, he moved to the Holston, where he ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... 1865, the President was wont to pay visits to the James River, not merely to inspect the camps and the field-hospitals, but to have a peep at "the promised land"—that is, Richmond, still held by the rapidly melting and discouraged Southerners as the "Last Ditch." In one of his strolls he came ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... army by a frontal attack led to the disastrous defeat of Cold Harbor, and Grant who was never personally routed resolved to throw his army south of the James River. It involved a concealed night march, while his lines were in many places but thirty to one hundred feet from the watchful Confederates. The utmost secrecy was used in regard to the bold movement intended, but preparations for it demanded frequent reconnaissances and map-sketching ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... for on arriving in Virginia he found himself so hated and shunned by the British officers over whom he was placed that he soon resigned his command of the Virginia posts to General Phillips, of the British army, and instead of proceeding against Edenton, he undertook another expedition up the James River. ...
— In Ancient Albemarle • Catherine Albertson
... that portal. But the southern or rear door had not yet been thoroughly tried and upon that he concluded to make a determined assault. To do this it would be necessary to renew his movement around his opponent's right flank by crossing the formidable James River—a difficult feat at any time, but double difficult at that moment, owing to the fact that Butler's "bottled" force might be crushed by a Confederate attack while the hazardous passage of the river was being effected. Nevertheless, he decided ...
— On the Trail of Grant and Lee • Frederick Trevor Hill
... bilious attacks by day, became a solemn ruin, and a few shattered tombstones, over which the jimson-weed and the wild vines clamber, show to the curious traveller the place where civilization first sought to establish itself on the James River, U.S.A. ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... Ocean—as abortive as those of the Netherlanders to sail across the North Pole to Cathay—were creating scientific discussion in Europe, and that the first cargo of imaginary gold dust was exported from the James River. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the Neuse were French Huguenots, who first located on the James River, in Virginia, but were afterwards induced by the proprietors of Carolina to accept grants of land in what is now known as Carteret County, to which place they removed in 1707. In 1710 a colony from Switzerland and Germany, under ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... of the royal grant were two hundred miles north, and the same distance south, of the mouth of the James River, and east and west ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... chooses to trace the remote origin of the American Rebellion will find the germ of the Union armies of 1861-5 in the cabin of the Mayflower, and the inception of the Secession forces between the decks of that Dutch slaver which planted the fruits of her avarice and piracy in the James River colonies in 1619. ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... of the South induced many Huguenots to settle in the colony of Virginia, and their neat little cottages, covered with French grapevines, and the wild honeysuckle, might be seen scattered along James river, not far above Richmond. One writer of that day, says: 'Most of the French who lived at that town (Monacan) on James river, removed to Trent river, in North Carolina, where the rest were expected daily to come to them, when I came away, which was in August, 1708.' In 1690, King ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... this mishap, New England missed becoming the scene of the first permanent English colony. For when, five years afterward, Gosnold returned to America with a hundred men and adequate supplies, it was not to Buzzard's Bay, but to the mouth of the James River, that he steered, and on its banks the colony was founded. Gosnold himself seems to have been a man of the type that afterward made the New England whalers famous in all seas; the mariners of New Bedford, New London, Sag ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... of this high "divide" looking down from among the clouds into the long and nearly straight defiles on either hand, which separate the Alleghany Mountains proper from the Blue Ridge on the east and from Cheat Mountain and other ranges on the west. Still further to the southwest the James River and the New River interlace their headwaters among the mountains, and break out on east and west, making the third natural pass through which the James River and Kanawha turnpike and canal find their way. These three routes ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... Committee to acquaint you that a ship has lately sailed from this place bound to James River, in Virginia; the master's name is Crowel Hatch. When he was building his ship, a proposal was made to him by some of the Committee, to employ the tradesmen of this Town, for which he should receive a recompense by a discount of five per cent on their several bills, ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, vol. III. • Samuel Adams
... told of a week in camp just outside the Virginian capital, where by day, by night, on its rocky bed sang James river; of the business quarter, noisy with army wagons—"rattling o'er the stony street," says the page; of colonels, generals, and statesmen by name—Hampton, Wigfall, the fiery Toombs, the knightly Lee, the wise Lamar; of such and such headquarters, of sentinelled warehouses, glowing ironworks, ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... cobalt, and some dark ore. Above this bluff we set the prairie on fire, to invite the Sioux. After twelve and a half miles, we had passed several other sandbars, and now reached the mouth of a river called by the French Jacques (James river) or Yankton, from the tribe which inhabits its banks. It is about ninety yards wide at the confluence: the country which it waters is rich prairie, with little timber: it becomes deeper and wider above its mouth, and ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark |
