Day 2: March 4, 1628

ABOVE: The early area of Massachusetts Bay colony and Plymouth colony. The other names around there are the inconvenient Indian tribes who happened to be there first. Right after the Revolution and when the colonies became states, Massachusetts boldly claimed that their state border went west all the way to the Pacific Ocean. The rest of the country did not agree.

What Happened:
On March 4, 1628, King Charles I granted a charter to the New England Company for a "plantation in Massachusetts Bay." Although some settlers had gone to what was to become Massachusetts in the years prior, there were conflicting grants and claims. (Plymouth had been established in 1620). This charter established legal authority for Massachusetts to exist as an English colony. In April of 1630, settlement began in earnest.

The Puritans were a tough nut to crack. The Church of England was a bold institution as it was to stand as an alternative to the all powerful Catholic Church. But for these Puritan fellows, that was not enough. Oh no. Puritans felt that the Church of England had not gone far enough to purify itself from all remnants of Catholic corruption (hence their name). The Puritans became a nuisance, because the monarchs of England rightly saw that the religious boldness of the Puritans could easily lead to political boldness, and that certainly would not do. So the Puritans were harassed, so much so that many of them left England for places like Holland. But many Puritans (whose religious roots were in the ideas of John Calvin and such happy doctrines as predestination) wanted a place of their own to worship and live as they pleased. It was the extreme separatist Puritans who sailed off course and ended up settling at Plymouth. A more "moderate" (only moderate when compared to other Puritans) bunch got the Massachusetts charter.

Why This Is Important:
While the establishment of any of the original colonies is a milestone, Massachusetts is most significant, I think, for several reasons. You could make an argument for Jamestown or Virginia, which were earlier and primarily commercial ventures, as the most significant early colonial settlements, but it is from the traditions established in Massachusetts that we get so much of our own political roots.

The "pilgrims" who settled in Plymouth made the famous Mayflower Compact, a written agreement to form a representative local government. Written being the key word, so from the very beginning a break from English tradition of an unwritten constitution. We Americans like it all down in writing. Charles I didn't realize it at the time, but it was very significant that the Massachusetts charter was a written document as well, and that the Puritans brought the original with them to the New World. Later they would insist on holding Britain to its terms, the idea that a charter (or later a Constitution) is a written contract between a government and its people.

On the 1630 trip over, leader/preacher John Winthrop gave a sermon that has to be one of the most important sermons in American history, "A Model of Christian Charity." In it, Winthrop expressed his vision of what Massachusetts would be, using the famous Biblical image of "a city upon a hill." From the beginning, Winthrop and others saw the new societies being established in the New World as different from the Old World of Europe. Massachusetts (and later America) would be the city upon a hill, the ideal for the rest of the world to look up to and emulate. Thus the belief of American Exceptionalism was born, right on one of the earliest boat trips over. Did this ideal ever die out? The "shining city on a hill" was a central image in several of Ronald Reagan's most celebrated speeches. Kennedy used it as well. It is something either cherished or reviled about America, this idea that we see ourselves as exceptional in human history.

ABOVE: John Winthrop. From the earliest days, we knew that we were better than everyone else. Because we're 'Merica. That is my general response when a student in my class questions American actions throughout history. I look at them and say, "but we're 'Merica."

Also crucial early on in Massachusetts, what some historians refer to as the "incubator of American democracy," were the townhalls established in Massachusetts towns. This was the closest the civilized world of this time came to that Athenian democratic ideal of local decisionmaking. All male Church members could vote and discuss local issues at these townhalls. That doesn't sound too democratic by our standards today (it was roughly about half of the white male population of any given locality), but for that time that was a higher percentage of eligible voters than anywhere in Europe.

While the Congregational (Puritan) Church dominated society in much of New England, Massachusetts also established early on a separation between political leadership and religion. There would be no Church of America officially sanctioned by the government. Education was also stressed early on, in large part due to the protestant belief that each individual should have a personal relationship with God without the need for a church to intercede. How do you do that? Read the Bible. So you've got to know how to read. Harvard was established in 1636.

ABOVE: Witches! In 1692 young girls in Salem, Mass. claimed to have been bewitched by older women in town. In all, 20 women were executed for witchcraft during the hysteria. What was really interesting, though, is that the accusers were poor inland girls, while the accused were usually from wealthier merchant families. It was really indicative of a growing class conflict as it was religious.

The "Protestant Work Ethic" that was such a root of early American enterprise was really born here as well. Once cash crops and farming were established in the Southern and Middle colonies (tobacco, rice, later cotton), life became easier there. But New England was not blessed with fertile soil. The Pilgrims really couldn't have picked a worse area along the East Coast to land for farming. In New England, people simply had to work harder to be successful, and farming was not the end all in the region because it couldn't be (notable later because slavery never took hold in New England, there were no plantations). So by necessity, New England became the commercial and business hub of the Colonies. Shipbuilding, commerce and trade, fishing, fur trapping in the interior...the most diverse economy in the Colonies was here. Most people had to work hard to succeed, and comparably to Europe, that was a great equalizer socially. No nobility (or huge underclass) took hold in New England. Why would it? If you were aristocracy, life was good in Europe, so why bother with the hassle. The people who came here, especially to New England it seemed, were ambitious people who wanted to move up the ladder of success. It takes a risk-taker and entrepreneur to simply take that step, make the trip over and start over.

While such free thinkers like Anne Hutchinson and Roger Williams were banished or worse in the early days, it is no coincidence that the center for rebellion against the Empire once the Revolutionary Period began was New England, and especially Boston. A unique way of life had been developed in New England, and men like Sam and John Adams, John Hancock and Paul Revere fiercely wanted to protect it once the British authorities belatedly decided to get a firm hold on these colonial ruffians. But that is for a future post.