Puritans have a bad name among most Americans. We think of them as dour, stubborn, cold, unfeeling, anti-romantic prudes who, in the words of H. L. Mencken, were “desperately afraid that somebody, somewhere might be having a good time.” When people think of the Puritans, they think of the Salem witch trials, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Scarlet Letter,” Jonathan Edwards’s fire-and-brimstone sermons, the persecution of Anne Hutchinson and other real and perceived wrongs. Yet alongside those real and alleged traits of intolerance, obstinacy, stubbornness and infuriating self-righteousness, there is far more to their story.

Much of what was important about Puritanism is very much alive in the U.S. today. Early in the 20th century the German sociologist Max Weber wrote a book called “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.” That Protestant work ethic to which Weber referred originated among the Puritans, who believed above all that their time on this earth should be spent in productive labor—the benevolent and efficient use of God-given resources; they were thrifty, industrious, and wedded to their religious beliefs. They opposed card-playing and gambling, not so much because each was an evil in itself, but because they were considered a waste of time. Furthermore, Puritans did not eschew pleasure by any means; these were people who obviously enjoyed conjugal love. They had very large families; in fact, one of my Puritan ancestors had 107 grandchildren and 227 great-grandchildren. They wore bright clothes on occasion, and they celebrated successful harvest, and drank alcoholic beverages. They sang and danced and made music, but they did so at times they considered appropriate, and always in moderation. They did not regard sex as evil, only that it should be conducted within the sanctity of marriage. In fact, once a Puritan couple were engaged, if they had intimate relations it was not considered a fatal flaw.

The Puritan political system, which was rooted in their Congregational religious organization, also grew in the North and spread across the Midwest. In the New York village where I grew up, our population was under 5,000, yet we were fully incorporated political entity with our own mayor, police and fire departments, school system, public works department, and so on. Where I now live, in Virginia, we are governed by counties for the most part, which arises from the fact that colonial Virginia was dominated by the Anglican Church, which was organized in parishes, which in turn became counties. In other words, New England local governments down to the town level, made famous by the “town meeting,” is a part of our political heritage that survives in substantial portions of the nation. Just as the Puritans is rejected the idea of higher religious authorities such as bishops and cardinals and all the —as they put it—remnants of popery, they resisted the powers of higher authorities, unless of course they were their own ordained ministers. The Puritans, after all, were on the Whig side in the war against King Charles I. (During the subsequent period of Puritan rule under Cromwell, many Puritan colonists returned to England.)

It is no surprise, then, that much of the revolutionary fervor which erupted in the colonies in the 1760s and 1770's had its roots around Boston. The British army was sent to Boston in the 1760s for the purpose of rooting out the seeds of the incipient rebellion. The “Intolerable Acts” passed in reaction to the Boston tea party were directed exclusively against the Massachusetts Bay colonists. Indeed, John Adams and other revolutionary leaders were descendants of those early Puritans and carried much of their spirit with them.

For these and many other reasons the Puritan legacy is still with us—their blood runs in our veins, much deeper and stronger than many of us might wish to admit. On the other hand, there is much about their legacy that is positive—ideas of political and individual freedom, liberty, hard work, perseverance, dedication, stewardship: All those features of the American character are owed in great measure to the Puritans.

Characteristics of Puritanism:  Myth And Reality

Myth:  Puritan—someone who is desperately afraid that somebody, somewhere might be having a good time.
Fact:  Puritans were not somber, morose people.  They wore colored clothes, had games, celebrations, feasts, partook of “strong waters”—had strong aesthetic sense (architecture).

• Puritans were not opposed to pleasure, but saw its regulation as part of a well-ordered society.  They were moral athletes who strove to standards higher than one had a right to expect.  They drove themselves to great achievements—there was no rest short of the grave.
• Puritanism was very similar to Judaism—they saw themselves as spiritual heirs of Abraham who had entered into a covenant of Grace. They believed they were God’s chosen people who were creating a “New Jerusalem.”  Never was a people so sure it was on the right track.
• Puritans were not high-minded theorists but rather pragmatic people who were concerned with the way things worked in the real world.  They fought among themselves over power, not how many angels could dance on the head of a pin.  The were indeed frequently narrow-minded, but that can often be a source of strength.
• Puritanism was a very comforting religion despite harshness because it placed God in charge and eliminated worldly vanities.  The Puritans were bookish and literate:  They created the first college, the first bookstore, and the first newspaper in America.  See Anne Bradstreet’s poems.
  Marriage was for joy—to escape “burning” in hell; men and women were created different for each other’s pleasure; divorce laws were relatively mild, and separation could be based on sexual incompatibility.
• There was much premarital sex—about 10 percent of brides were pregnant at the time of marriage.  (Anglicans in the South were much stricter.)
  Because Puritans expected very little from life, few of them were disillusioned.  The world was filled with evil—it was not a playhouse but a workhouse.
• American individualism can be traced to the Puritans.  Faith was their rock, but human intellect was highly valued:  “Ignorance is the mother of heresy,” they said.
• The Puritans could be self-righteous and intolerant, although such tendencies have been exaggerated.  Nevertheless, Puritans were hated by others.  Their view of the world was very harsh:  They saw the world as filled with depravity.  Yet Puritans, Anglicans, Catholics, and Separatists were not that far apart; they shared many fundamental beliefs.
• The sermon tradition of Puritanism still lives (as seen in TV preachers today.)  Puritan sermons were lengthy exercises in logic—more like legal documents than literary events.  See Jonathan Edwards, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.
• All government in the Puritan colonies was based on the shaky assumption that the Bible is clear and unambiguous, which is not true.  (Faith/works controversy, etc.)
• Laws were strict:  Crimes included blasphemy, perjury (death), cursing of parents, idolatry, adultery, fornication.  Laws followed commandments and Deuteronomy; they also wrote laws as existed back home.
• Whatever the drawbacks, the church was the central unifying force in Massachusetts, which led to the famous town meeting.  First held in churches, then separately, the town meeting is the “most remarkable if not the most influential institution to emerge in early America.”
• Connection exists between American public school tradition and Puritans—also with higher education.
• Dissenters:  Anne Hutchinson and Roger Williams both ran afoul of Puritan authorities and were banished from the colony.  Fear of dissension also led to the Salem witch craze, a terrible event but one that had far more gruesome parallels in Europe.
  

VIRGINIA-MASSACHUSETTS COMPARISONS:

• Two different kinds of people emerged. The Massachusetts Bay bay colonists were people of proven ability at home who came in family units. The Virginia colony was populated in the beginning by single men who were able to survive in wilderness.
• Massachusetts aristocrats created a working democracy.
• Virginia planters replaced defunct London leaders and formed their own local aristrocracy.
• The Massachusetts Puritans brought their charter with them, which gave them much firmer local control earlier.  Congregationalism as a religion gave people local control over their churches, and in the political arena that concept was translated into the New England town meeting.
• The House of Burgesses and the Assembly formed the basic political structure of Virginia. 
• Virginia became in many ways a model/miniature England—much closer than New England to the mother country, but still different.  Maybe more conservative, much more self-conscious.  Differences between Virginia and New England are precursors of North-South differences of the antebellum period.
• Carl Degler:  The Virginia Assembly was the first democratic (republican) body in North America, but it began almost by accident in 1619.  Charles I terminated the  assemblies in 1624, but later authorized their return.
• An important precedent was established by the colonists, including the idea of prohibition on taxes “other than by authority of the grand assembly.”  Englishmen had always guarded their right to tax locally.
• Early, dogmatic insistence on self-government was important in American political development.  Representative government was born in the 17th century (Virginia assembly and New England town meeting).
• Most New England immigrants arrived as members of a nuclear family in which the father exerted strong authority.  They therefore found it easier to cope with the wilderness and to preserve English ways.  It was even possible to reproduce an English family structure in New England because the sex ratio was about even.
• New England families differed from the English pattern in only one important aspect—people lived longer in New England.  This meant that parents could expect to see their children grow up, marry, and have their own children.  New England may have “invented” grandparents, who gave an additional measure of stability to society.
• Life expectancy was apparently much longer in New England than in the Chesapeake colonies because climatic and economic conditions were more favorable there.

Additional New England Colonies

Not everything in New England was agreeable.  The Puritans were passionate people with strong beliefs, and like all human beings, they had differing opinions on important matters from time to time.  Although their thinking was rooted in the Bible, the Bible is sometimes ambiguous in terms of religious doctrine.  For example, in one book of the New Testament claims that man is saved by faith alone; in another it is claimed that faith without works is dead. Thus, when arguments arose, they could not always be resolved by resorting to the scripture.  Within a few years of the settlement of Massachusetts Bay, various groups began to break off and establish new colonies towns and eventually new colonies.  Because of the way New England expanded, however, the similarities among the New England colonies probably outweigh the differences.  Throughout the 17th century, the New England colonies were dominated by the Puritan faith.

Connecticut

Not all the motivation was over religious differences, however; the relatively rocky and unfriendly coast of Massachusetts was not as appealing as, for example, the Connecticut River Valley.  Thomas Hooker was the pastor in Newtown, Massachusetts, in the early 1630s.  Because of his differences with the leadership of the Massachusetts colony in the person of Governor Winthrop, Hooker decided to take his flock westward, and in 1636 his entire congregation set out for the Connecticut River Valley, which had been discovered by Dutchman Adrian Block some years earlier.  There Hooker founded the town of Hartford.  Other groups from Massachusetts later founded additional towns in the Connecticut Valley.  The colony of New Haven, led by the Reverend John Davenport, was founded in 1637, and Stamford  was settled in 1641.  Additional towns joined with them to create the New Haven colony.

The Fundamental Orders of Connecticut were written in 1639.   Although the Mayflower compact had laid down the broad outlines of government, the Fundamental Orders filled in the details and became the first full-blown constitution written for government in America.  The orders contained no reference to the British government; thus the document occupies an important place in American political history.

Eventually the settlers on the north shore of Long Island Sound merged with the Puritans in the Connecticut River Valley.  Although the Dutch colony at New Amsterdam had claimed parts of Connecticut, the English settlers eventually controlled the colony.  Following a bloody war with the Pequot Indians, known as the Pequot War, the people of Connecticut obtained a charter from Charles II.   As was the case with most colonial charters, the only restriction was that the laws of the colony must conform to the laws of England.

Rhode Island

The founder of the Rhode Island colony was Roger Williams, a dissenter from Massachusetts who had more liberal ideas than some of the Puritan fathers in the Massachusetts Bay colony.  Williams first established Providence, which eventually merged with other settlements such as Newport and became the colony of Rhode Island.  Williams obtained a charter from Parliament in 1643, which gave the colony the right to govern itself.

Williams believed in the separation of church and state, and thus is a revered figure in the history of American ideas of religious freedom.  The colony attracted freethinkers of all kinds, including Anne Hutchinson, who was found guilty of heresy in her famous trial in Massachusetts.  Although the government of Rhode Island was not fully democratic, the settlers nevertheless felt free to express themselves in various ways, with the result that Rhode Island was one of the more turbulent colonies in early America. (Roger Williams statue in Providence, left)

Because of the conflict between King Charles I and Parliament that led to the English Civil War, Rhode Island’s charter was declared invalid following the restoration of Charles II.  Rhode Island then got a new charter, which affirmed the rights granted under the first charter and included a land grant. It also declared that people should be free of any sort of persecution “for any difference in opinion in matters of religion.”  That provision reflected the feelings of Roger Williams himself, and the idea continued to grow as the American colonies developed.  So liberal was the religious posture of Rhode Island that Roman Catholics and even Jews were welcome in the colony.  Rhode Island remained, however, something of an outcast among the rest of the colonies for its different ways.  (Following the American Revolution, Rhode Island was the only state that did not send a delegation to the Constitutional Convention in 1787.)  Yet the people of Rhode Island felt strongly about their views and defended their positions against the other New England colonies.

New Hampshire

The territory that became New Hampshire was part of a 1622 land grant established by the Council for New England.  The first small settlement was eventually expanded by colonists from Massachusetts.  A number of small towns were created.  They had difficulty establishing a system of government and remained under the jurisdiction of Massachusetts until 1679, when they were separated by the Crown.  James II rejoined them again in 1686, but in 1691 New Hampshire became a royal colony.  The colony grew slowly because of conflicts over land ownership, but in 1717 a group of Scotch-Irish settlers entered the colony and established the town of Londonderry, and a thriving textile business soon grew up.

The western portion of the New Hampshire colony was also claimed by New York, which eventually won the territory, but later it broke off and became a separate colony of Vermont, which in turn became the 14th state in the Union.  The territory of Maine remained part of Massachusetts until 1820. Although the separate New England colonies developed separately, often as a result of theological disputes, the general character on New England was not only consistent within its colonies, but many cultural ideas spread from New England across New York and into the Middle West.