Massachusetts Founder Quotes

The distinction between the Pilgrims, those who came to Plymouth between 1620 and 1630, and the Puritans, who came after 1629, initially settling Massachusetts Bay and Connecticut, eventually disappeared as the great wave of Puritan settlers transformed the colony.16

Of all the Founders, Adams may have been the most churchgoing. But as a Unitarian, he did not believe in the Holy Trinity, the Holy Ghost, or the divinity of Jesus.XII Adams was a staunch, lifelong believer in religious liberty. As the primary author of the Massachusetts State Constitution, he wrote, “No subject shall be hurt, molested, or restrained in his person . . . for worshipping God in the manner most agreeable to the dictates of his own conscience.” And nary a word about the Judeo-Christian tradition.

In a 1840 letter to the The Lowell Offering, the publication of the Massachusetts mill town that employed thousands of young, single women and would become one of the birth places of the later labor movement, a correspondent named Betsey claiming to be “one of that unlucky, derided, and almost despised set of females, called spinsters, single sisters, lay-nuns . . . but who are more usually known by the appellation of Old Maids” argued that it was “a part of [God’s] wise design that there should be Old Maids,” in part because “they are the founders and pillars of anti-slavery, moral reform, and all sorts of religious and charitable societies.”28 Here was the idea of service and moral uplift brought into disruptive relief: What if women, in service to greater and moral good, did not submit themselves to a larger power structure, but instead organized to overturn it? Frederick

Most would find it surprising to learn that America was consciously, intentionally, and specifically founded and formed after the pattern of ancient Israel. Its founders saw it as a new Israel, the Israel of the New World. It was their exodus from Europe like the Hebrew exodus from Egypt. The New World was their new promised land, and the Massachusetts Bay Colony was their New Jerusalem. As for the legal system of the new American commonwealth, the Puritans sought to incorporate the Law of Moses. They instituted a day of rest after the pattern of the Hebrew Sabbath. And the American holiday, Thanksgiving, was formed after the pattern of the Hebrew Sukkot, the Feast of Tabernacles. They named the mountains of America after the mountains of Israel: Mount Gilead, Mount Hermon, Mount Ephraim, Mount Moriah, Mount Carmel, and Mount Zion. They called their towns and cities, Jericho, Jordan, Salem, Canaan, Goshen, Hebron, and Beersheba. They named their children Joshua, Rachel, Ezra, Zechariah, Esther, Jeremiah, and a host of other names derived from the people of ancient Israel.

In Massachusetts, an Anti-Federalist from Worcester in the western part of the Commonwealth wrote in February 1788, expressing fear that without a bill of rights, freedom of conscience would be imperiled. But the anonymous author only worried about religious freedom for Christians. Without a religious test in the Constitution, he wrote, “There is a door opened for Jews, Turks, and Heathens to enter into publick office, and be seated at the head of the government of the United States.

Eve LaPlante, American Jezebel: The Uncommon Life of Anne Hutchinson, pp. 238–39. Hutchinson’s many generations of descendants include Thomas Hutchinson, who later became governor of Massachusetts during the pre-Revolutionary days and whose policies incited the Boston Tea Party (see Chapter 4 ). In the twentieth century, her descendants included Franklin D. Roosevelt, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush, making this rather extraordinary woman the ancestor of three American presidents.

Any every denomination of Christians, demeaning themselves peaceably, and as good subjects of the commonwealth, shall be equally under the protection of the law: and no subordination of any one sect or denomination to another shall ever be established by law. Massachusetts Constitution.

The Crown would appoint the Massachusetts Council in lieu of the former council elected by the legislature. Thirty-six men were appointed by "mandamus"—an order commanding a supposed legal duty—to serve in this council, but many of them refused, and others were persuaded or intimidated into resigning.4 These "Mandamus Counselors" became known to the patriots as "the Divan," after the privy council of the Ottoman Empire. These Turkish rulers were considered perhaps the world's most absolute despots.

Samuel Adams, author of the following editorial, argued: For it is certainly beyond human art and sophistry, to prove the British subjects, to whom the privilege of possessing arms is expressly recognized by the Bill of Rights, and, who live in a province where the law requires them to be equip'd with arms, &c. are guilty of an illegal act, in calling upon one another to be provided with them, as the law directs . . . . One man has as good reason to affirm, that a few, in calling for a military force under pretence of supporting civil authority, secretly intended to introduce a general massacre, as another has to assert, that a number of loyal subjects, by calling upon one another to provided with arms, according to law, intended to bring on an insurrection. It will be equally difficult to prove it illegal, for a number of British subjects, to invite as many of their fellow subjects as they please, to convene and consult together, on the most prudent and constitutional measures for the redress of their grievances . . . .52 Adams thus appealed, as had the Boston resolution passed the previous September, to the right to have arms as guaranteed in the English Bill of Rights as well as the duty under Massachusetts law to be armed.

Massachusettensis," pseudonym of Daniel Leonard, a prominent Massachusetts lawyer, penned several essays pleading America's cause. While he would soon transform into a Tory, as a Whig he made the following inflammatory remarks: Men combined to subvert our civil government, to plunder and murder us, can have no right to protection in their persons or properties among us; they have by their attempts upon our liberty, put themselves in a state of war with us, as Mr. Locke observes, and being the aggressors, if they perish, the fault is their own. "If any person in the best condition of the state, demands your purse at the muzzle of his pistol, you have no need to recur to law, you cannot give, i.e. immediate security against your adversary; and for that reason, viz. because the law cannot be applied to your relief, you make your own defence on the principles of natural law, which is now your only rule, and his life is forfeited into your hands, and you indemnified if you rake it, because he is the first and a dangerous aggressor." This rule applies itself to states, and to those employed by them to distress, rob or enslave other states; and shall property be secure where even life is forfeited?

Boys on horseback resupplied the militia.31 Militiamen on the way to Lexington and Concord stopped at a farm in Braintree, Massachusetts. To their amusement, 8-year-old John Quincy Adams, son of Abigail and John Adams, was executing the manual of arms with a musket taller than he was.

During this period, the colonists sought allies from any quarter, reaching out to friendly Native Americans. The address of Massachusetts to the Mohawk and other eastern tribes drafted by Samuel Adams and dated May 15, 1775, used simplified language in perhaps one of the most concise and forceful renditions of the American cause: brothers: the great, wickedness of such as should be our friends, bur are our enemies, we mean the ministry of Great Britain, has laid deep plots to take away our liberty and your liberty, they want to get all our money; make us pay it to them, when they never earned it; to make you and us their servants; and let us have nothing to eat, drink, or wear, but what they say we shall; and prevent us from having guns and powder to use, and kill our deer, and wolves, and other game, or to send to you, for you to kill your game with, and to get skins and fur to trade with us for what you want: but we hope soon to be able to supply you with both guns and powder, of our own making.

Some die-hard federalists continued to scorn declarations of rights. Representative Fisher Ames of Massachusetts privately quipped: Mr. Madison has introduced his long expected amendments. . . . He has hunted up all the grievances and complaints of newspapers, all the articles of conventions, and the small talk of their debates. It contains a bill of rights, the right of enjoying property, of changing the government at pleasure, freedom of the press, of conscience . . . . Oh! I had forgot, the right of the people to bear arms.24

Thinking that a demonstration of the New Psychology’s practical applications might make it less threatening to traditionalists, Hall delivered a series of lectures on education in Boston (arranged by Charles Eliot). The lectures drew on the work of a man named Francis Parker, who had become famous as the superintendent of schools in Quincy, Massachusetts, and the founder of a theory of pedagogy known as “the Quincy system.” Parker had served as a colonel in the Union Army (he retained the title ever after); after the war, he had spent several years in Europe, returning with a philosophy of education derived from Kantian and Fichtean ideas of mental growth, and emphasizing the importance of experience in acquiring knowledge. Hall expressed the germ of the theory in recapitulationist language: “The pupil should, and in fact naturally does, repeat the course of the development of the race, and education is simply the expediting and shortening of this course.”24 The lectures, attended mostly by teachers, were hugely successful. Hall still couldn’t get a job. He started to think about going to medical school.

eastern Massachusetts alone, I came across almost more than I could visit. I spent a couple mornings with the founders and members of Beacon Hill Villages, a kind of community cooperative in several neighborhoods of Boston dedicated to organizing affordable services—everything from plumbing repair to laundry—in order to help the elderly stay in their homes. I talked to people running assisted living homes who, against every obstacle, had stuck with the fundamental ideas Keren Wilson had planted. I’ve never encountered people more determined, more imaginative, and more inspiring. It depresses me to imagine how differently Alice Hobson’s last years would have been if she’d been able to meet one of them—if she’d had a NewBridge, an Eden Alternative, a Peter Sanborn Place, or somewhere like them to turn to. With any of them, Alice would have had the chance to continue to be who she was despite her creeping infirmities—“to really live,” as she would have put it.

This puts the choice in the hands of the poor,” says Michael Faye, founder of GiveDirectly, the organization behind Bernard’s windfall. “And the truth is, I don’t think I have a very good sense of what the poor need.”7 Faye doesn’t give people fish, or even teach them to fish. He gives them cash, in the conviction that the real experts on what poor people need are the poor people themselves. When I asked him why there are so few peppy videos or pictures on GiveDirectly’s website, Faye explained that he doesn’t want to play on emotions too much. “Our data are hard enough.” He’s right: According to a study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, GiveDirectly’s cash grants spur a lasting rise in incomes (up 38% from before the infusion) and also boost homeownership and possession of livestock (up 58%), while reducing the number of days that children go hungry by 42%. Furthermore,

Hall Jackson Kelley considered himself to be the Messiah of Oregon, but he was only its John the Baptist, crying in the wilderness. He inspired thousands who turned their eyes toward Oregon because of his burning message; most notable of whom were the other two members of that Massachusetts triumvirate, Nathaniel J. Wyeth and Captain Bonneville, who were to open up the Snake River country for the Americans.