U.S. History I: United States History 1607-1865 ... - Textbook Equity

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. Furthermore, Puritans did not
reject pleasure by any means; they were people who obviously enjoyed conjugal love—they
had very large families. 13
Puritans 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. It was not uncommon
for a Puritan bride to be pregnant at the time of her wedding.
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
government 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 rejected
the idea of higher religious authorities such as bishops and cardinals and other—as
they put it—remnants of popery, they resisted the power of higher authority, unless of
course it was one of their own ordained ministers.
(The Puritans, after all, were on the Whig Parliamentary side in the English Civil War against
King Charles I and the Royalists. During the subsequent period of Puritan rule under Protectorate
of Oliver Cromwell, many Puritan colonists returned to England.)
Given the Puritan history of resistance to authority, it is no surprise that much of the revolutionary
fervor which erupted in the colonies in the 1760s and 1770s 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.
The Puritans believed beyond much doubt that they were absolutely on the right track. John
Winthrop’s “Model” describes a society that, if the Puritans had been able to achieve it,
would have been a reasonable facsimile of paradise on Earth. Being human, they could not
sustain their religious fervor, nor live up to the idealized conditions Winthrop laid out, but
they created a strong, vibrant society that prospered and influenced American behavior and
attitudes far beyond their temporal and geographical boundaries.
13 One of this author’s Puritan ancestors had 107 grandchildren and 227 great-grandchildren!
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