Page 75 - American Stories, A History of the United States

The government of Massachusetts was neither a democracy nor a theocracy. The
2.1 magistrates elected in Massachusetts did not believe they represented the voters, much
less the whole populace. They ruled in the name of the electorate, but their responsi-
bility was to God. In 1638, Winthrop warned against overly democratic forms, since
2.2 “the best part [of the people] is always the least, and of that best part the wiser is always
the lesser.” The Congregational ministers possessed no formal political authority in
Massachusetts Bay and could not even hold civil office. Voters often ignored the rec-

2.3 ommendations of their ministers.
In New England, the town became the center of public life. In other regions of Brit-
ish America, where the county was the focus of local government, people did not expe-
rience the same density of social and institutional interaction. In Massachusetts, groups
2.4
of men and women voluntarily covenanted together to observe common goals. The
community constructed a meetinghouse where religious services and town meetings
were held. This powerful sense of shared purpose—something that later Americans
have greatly admired—should not obscure the fact that the founders of New England
towns also had a keen eye for personal profit. Seventeenth-century records reveal that
speculators often made a good deal of money from selling “shares” in village lands. But
acquisitiveness never got out of control, and recent studies have shown that entrepre-
neurial practices rarely disturbed the peace of the Puritan communities. Inhabitants
Quick Check generally received land sufficient to build a house and support a family. Although vil-
What did the founders of Massachu- lagers escaped the kind of feudal dues collected in other parts of America, they were
setts mean when they referred to expected to contribute to the minister’s salary, pay local and colony taxes, and serve in
their colony as a “City on a Hill”?
the militia.

Competing Truths in New England

The European settlers of Massachusetts Bay managed to live in peace—at least with
each other. This was a remarkable achievement considering the chronic instability
that plagued other colonies. The Bay Colonists disagreed over many issues, sometimes
vociferously; towns disputed with neighboring villages over boundaries. But the people
inevitably relied on the civil courts to mediate differences. They believed in a rule of
law, and in 1648, the colonial legislature, called the General Court, drew up the Lawes
and Liberties, the first alphabetized code of law printed in English. In clear prose, it
explained to ordinary colonists their rights and responsibilities as citizens of the com-
monwealth. The code engendered public trust in government and discouraged magis-
trates from the arbitrary exercise of authority.
The Puritans never supported religious toleration. They transferred to the New
World to preserve their own freedom of worship. They expressed little concern for
the religious freedom of those they deemed heretics. The most serious challenges to
Puritan orthodoxy in Massachusetts Bay came from two charismatic people. The first,
Roger Williams, arrived in 1631 and immediately attracted loyal followers. Indeed,
everyone seemed to have liked him as a person.
Williams’s religious ideas, however, created controversy. He preached extreme
separatism. The Bay Colonists, he exclaimed, were impure in the sight of the Lord as
long as they remained even nominal members of the Church of England. Moreover, he
questioned the validity of the colony’s charter, since the king had not first purchased
the land from the Indians, a view that threatened the integrity of the entire colonial
experiment. Williams also insisted that the civil rulers of Massachusetts had no busi-
ness punishing settlers for their religious beliefs. Monitoring people’s consciences was
God’s responsibility, not men’s. The Bay magistrates were prepared neither to tolerate
heresy nor to accede to Williams’s other demands, and in 1636, after failing to reach
a compromise with him, they banished him from the colony. Williams then worked
out the logic of his ideas in Providence, a village he founded in what would become
Rhode Island.

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