As old Cantabrigians see it, Cambridge University has never quite been given its due. "Other institutions of learning can produce brilliant poets, scholars, scientists or jurists," says the current Cambridge Journal, "[but] which of them can claim to have nursed a great republic through its infancy?" Indeed, the Journal adds, the U.S. might never have prospered as it did had it not been for Cambridge men.
Between 1630 and 1640, some 140 Cantabrigians stepped on to American soil. At the beginning of the decade, John Winthrop arrived and became the first governor of Massachusetts....