Foner starts his Story of American Freedom with the claim that “American Freedom was born in revolution,” but then makes it clear that the story really begins in a web of complex conflicts and outright contradictions from which, perhaps, “American freedom” never entirely extricates itself. This is abundantly clear in the thought of New Englanders in the early colonial period.
I: Equality before God; Inequality of Station
On the one hand, documents such as John Winthrop’s “A Modell of Christian Charity” (1630), present a rather radically egalitarian vision of human beings’ absolute equality before God. For many puritans, even the fact of election (selection by God for salvation) indicated no special difference of worth in the elect. There was general agreement that absolutely nothing human beings could do would be sufficient to elevate them to salvation. For those who held more extreme notions of irresistable grace, and believed that sanctification could only be detected internally, a certain emphasis on individual autonomy was only logical. It’s no surprise that the more personal forms of religious dissent in colonial Massachusetts led to political experiments of a decidedly libertarian character, as in Rhode Island. (It’s probably worth noting, as others have done forcefully, that much of what we take as individualist or libertarian in the early settlers of American would probably seem downright slavish, in its connections to church and government, by contemporary standards. On the other hand, debunking of “Puritan myths” can doesn’t necessarily take us any closer to the details of the real conflicts that faced the early colonists. Nothing but immersion in the primary documents is adequate to that task.)
On the other hand, the same doctrine that emphasized equality before God naturalized inequality of station among human beings, so that “in all times some must be rich, some poore, some high and eminent in power and dignitie; others mean and in submission.” (Winthrop, “Modell”) Different strokes for different folks, right down to the stroke of the whip for some of those who get to “show forth the glory of [God’s] wisdom” in submission. Opposition to “levelling tendencies” and apologetics for existing power relations could be grounded in a very paradoxical egalitarianism.
II. Mutual Aid and Social Control
Winthrop’s “Modell” is a sort of wild see-saw of social and political perspectives. As we’ve noted, the rules for “giving, lending and forgiving” emphasize the care of others in need, and we sense the ways in which, ideally, submission might be spread around a little, with the “high” made “low” from time to time in service of their needy brethren. The references to the Jubilee also suggest ways in which too this peculiar pluralism of haves and have nots might gain a certain degree of flexibility through the periodic wiping away of debts and nullification of transactions. (For an 1832 English discussion of the radical potential of the Jubilee, see William Benbow’s Grand National Holiday.) Give, if giving is needed, even if you have to deprive your own family. Forgive, when your debtor has no chance of paying. In times when the community itself is in need, give your all. And remember that all of this, and your status within it, is set up as it is to glorify God.
All of this was probably easier to adhere to in the early days of settlement, when getting through the first few years really did depend on active mutual aid among the colonists. The Pilgrims started out pretty well alone, on the edge of a gigantic wilderness. Relations with the indigenous populations were complicated by the lack of a shared understanding of land ownership, racial attitudes, the role of the English government and the colonial companies, and the more-or-less messianic visions of the settlers. In the 1630, John Cotton gave his speech on “The Divine Right to Occupy the Land,” while the legal right was in the hands of companies based in England, and the land itself was occupied by Native American tribes. Initially, very few colonists, with Roger Williams and the Rhode Island settlers being the main exception, made any attempt to compensate the tribes for the land appropriated by colonists. The Pequot War in 1637 marked the opening of military hostilities between European and Indian populations, only a few years after the immigration of Winthrop, Cotton, etc.
The immigration “wave” of the 1630s was tiny compared too later periods, but it swamped the tiny population of Massachusetts, and pushed the social dynamic beyond the help of simple compacts and mutual aid relationships based solely on common sense and shared needs. The 1630s see the first banishments as well as the first wars, and the government of the Bay Colony finds itself in the business of policing dissent, through a combination of secular and church-based institutions. The Antinomian Controversy saw all of these institutions brought into play.
III: Subordination to England, and to notions of authority
Virginia and New England were managed by companies with charters from the English crown. It was possible, as in Rhode Island in the early years, to occupy land in North America without a charter, but it was very difficult to hold it. While the New England Confederation marked an early attempt at uniting the colonies, and its included some basic protections for citizens, it was also an agreement excluding and marginalizing the settlers in Rhode Island, who would not accept the religious disciplines of Massachusetts. Roger Williams, who had disdained charters, preferring to deal directly with the local tribes for land, was eventually forced to seek recognition from England. As things fell out, even a charter in the name of a fugitive King, obtained in times of Civil War, was a better protection than any other Rhode Island could procure.
From our present perspective, the lack of attempt at separation, and the willingness to reproduce intolerant institutions, on the part of most colonies and colonists may seem strange, but that’s probably just presentism on our part. Separation from the specific strictures was, for many of the early colonists, a rather large step, and it was, as we see from the intellectual conflicts that plagued New England, one fraught with a fairly healthy helping of problems to be solved. We need to remind ourselves that notions like separation of church and state, or the acceptance of tolerance as uniformly a virtue, simply were not the values of the puritans. Texts such as Rev. Nathaniel Ward’s “Against Toleration” from The Simple Cobler of Aggawam give us a clearer notion of their views. Recall, too, Winthrop’s distinction between natural and federal liberty, to see how freedom could be essentially identified with obedience and conformity to an external will.
IV. General thoughts about “Puritan Freedom”
As easy as it is to disparage puritan doctrines, when summarized, isolated from their contexts and the subtleties of contemporaty debates, and viewed from a substantial distance in time, any sort of good-faith engagement with the primary documents forces you to acknowledge that, at the very least, they took the questions with which we’re engaging very, very seriously. And I have tried to play up the contradictions involved, not to play to our common sense that contradiction somehow points to a failure of thought, but to highlight both the radically egalitarian elements and the decidedly authoritarian ones. I’m not certain that the primary sources really allow us a simple place from which to stand and judge.
I also want to raise the possibility that many of the conflicts and contradictions the puritans faced are still, to one extent or another, unresolved in our own conceptions of freedom.
[Look for part 2 of the Puritan overview, very soon now…]
