The history of the United States was a vibrant one during the period in which Dorcas Morse lived. It was a time when the colonies were largely autonomous and presented a fairly independent attitude toward their parent nation, England. It was in her lifetime when most of the original thirteen colonies were chartered and the Louisiana Territory first explored.

In 1650, when Dorcas was five years old, Anne Bradstreet published a collection of poems entitled “The Tenth Muse.” It was about the four elements, four ages of man, four constitutions, and four seasons of the year. It also dealt with the monarchies of Assyria, Persia, Greece, and Rome, and it included a dialogue between Old England and New England. Bradstreet was one of the first female writers in North America to become well-known.

When Dorcas Morse was about six years old, in 1651, the Navigation Acts were passed. It stated that colonial imports and exports were only to be shipped in English-flag vessels. This was one in a long chain of acts intended to regulate colonial commerce, prohibiting or restricting commercial relations between the colonies and non-English nations. Many colonial merchants paid no heed to the Navigation Acts and traded illegally, which was not punished very severely at the time by the British government.

Twelve years later, in 1663, eight English nobles to whom James II owed a debt asked for a piece of land between Virginia and Spanish Florida. Their request was granted, and they were given what later became North and South Carolina. The first settlers built Charles Town in 1670. There, they cut timber, raised cattle, and traded with the Indians.

Just one year later, Peter Stuyvesant became the last Dutch governor of New Netherland, which is present-day New York and New Jersey. During a 1644 attack on the island of Saint Martin, he received a wound which led to the amputation of his right leg. After he was fitted with a wooden leg in Holland, he was nicknamed “Pegleg Peter”. From 1647 onwards, he served as Director General of the New Netherlands. Then in 1664 he was displaced and New Netherland captured by the Duke of York when the Duke sailed in with an English fleet. The Hollanders put up no resistance, preferring English rule over that of Stuyvesant, much to his disgust.

       

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