Dissent

The History of an American Idea

Ralph Young

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781479814527
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Historia de Norteamérica

Finalist, 2016 Ralph Waldo Emerson Award One of Bustle's Books For Your Civil Disobedience Reading List Dissent: The History of an American Idea examines the key role dissent has played in shaping the United States. It focuses on those who, from colonial days to the present, dissented against the ruling paradigm of their time: from the Puritan Anne Hutchinson and Native American chief Powhatan in the seventeenth century, to the Occupy and Tea Party movements in the twenty-first century. The emphasis is on the way Americans, celebrated figures and anonymous ordinary citizens, responded to what they saw as the injustices that prevented them from fully experiencing their vision of America. At its founding the United States committed itself to lofty ideals. When the promise of those ideals was not fully realized by all Americans, many protested and demanded that the United States live up to its promise. Women fought for equal rights; abolitionists sought to destroy slavery; workers organized unions; Indians resisted white encroachment on their land; radicals angrily demanded an end to the dominance of the moneyed interests; civil rights protestors marched to end segregation; antiwar activists took to the streets to protest the nation’s wars; and reactionaries, conservatives, and traditionalists in each decade struggled to turn back the clock to a simpler, more secure time. Some dissenters are celebrated heroes of American history, while others are ordinary people: frequently overlooked, but whose stories show that change is often accomplished through grassroots activism. The United States is a nation founded on the promise and power of dissent. In this stunningly comprehensive volume, Ralph Young shows us its history. Teaching Resources from Temple University: Sample Course Syllabus Teaching Resources from C-Span Classroom Teaching Resources from Temple University

CHAPTER 1

The “Free Aire of a New World”

Now if you do condemn me for speaking what in my conscience I know to be truth I must commit myself unto the Lord.

—Anne Hutchinson, 1636

After more than a century of conflict with and exploitation of the First Nations of the New World, Spain had successfully established scores of missions and permanent colonies from Florida to California, while French explorers and missionaries were setting up outposts along the St. Lawrence River. Into this volatile mix of cultures thousands of English colonists began in the early seventeenth century to establish permanent settlements along the east coast of North America. Most were seeking economic opportunity, but many, especially those arriving in New England, were religious dissenters who believed the only possibility for them to worship according to the dictates of their conscience was to abandon England and seek refuge in the New World. Almost as soon as these religious dissenters arrived in New England, dissidents such as Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson rose up among them to challenge the authorities. Dissent also erupted in Virginia, when Nathaniel Bacon and hundreds of indentured servants revolted against the colonial elite and the forces that limited their economic prospects. Native Americans too, such as Powhatan in Virginia and Metacom in Massachusetts, took up arms to protest English encroachment on their lands.

Something changes when people break from their day-to-day existence and take action to build something new. Forces are let loose that create a climate conducive to independent thinking and a sense that the individual has to take a stand at some point for what she or he believes is right. And if that goes against the majority feeling in the body politic, then so be it. So it was in the “free aire of a new world”1 that dissent, already widespread in the old country as a result of the forces unleashed by the Protestant Reformation, took root at once in receptive and fertile soil.

* * *

The Puritans who settled in Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay had a profound influence on the development of American history, yet most Americans have a distorted image of them. The most common misconception about the Puritans is that they were uptight spoilsports. In fact we still use the word Puritan as an adjective to describe an entire set of strict, rather self-righteous values; this is a false representation. They were not, as the common stereotype holds, uptight spoilsports. Contrary to H. L. Mencken’s acerbic twentieth-century observation that Puritanism is “the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy,”2 the truth is that the Puritans of seventeenth-century Massachusetts were much more down-to-earth, sensible, and intellectual than our image of them. They valued education, they enjoyed life, they wore colorful clothing, they were not against alcohol, nor did they believe that sex was evil. True, they were very religious—they took God, the Bible, and morality seriously—but they believed that God is good. Therefore it followed that everything God created is good and is there for humans to enjoy. Increase Mather, one of the most famous Puritan ministers, once delivered a sermon titled “Wine Is from God, the Drunkard from the Devil,” meaning that God made wine for us to drink and enjoy. Drinking to the point of drunkenness, however, is an abuse, and that is a sin. Examination of the church records of the 1630s and 1640s reveals that the principal expenses churches incurred were the costs for the wine and ale that was consumed at ordination ceremonies for new ministers. God also created sex, and he made it enjoyable for our pleasure. Sex was not just for procreation; it was a joyous sign of our love and devotion. There are cases in colonial court records of women divorcing their husbands for refusing to have conjugal relations, and vice versa. Increase Mather’s son, Cotton Mather, the most influential Puritan clergyman by the 1690s, censured a couple that wished to practice sexual abstinence thinking that it would heighten their spirituality. Mather believed that such a practice was a denunciation of the purity of sexual love within matrimony and was therefore a denunciation of God. To be sure, Puritans did not tolerate pre- or extramarital sex or promiscuity (although from the birth records and court transcripts of seventeenth-century Massachusetts we learn that many Puritans did engage in premarital sex), but within marriage sex was a blessed thing. In essence the Puritans ultimately believed that life and the pleasures of life were all gifts of God to be relished. Denying this was a sin, just as becoming obsessive or fixated on pleasure was a sin. The key was moderation in all things.

The covenant theology that the Puritans devised touched political and social relationships as well as spiritual ones. God, they believed, made an original covenant with Adam. If Adam would obey God’s laws, God would bless Adam with eternal life. However, Adam broke the covenant when he ate the forbidden fruit. Later, when God sent his only son into the world, he instituted the covenant of grace whereby those who would have faith in him would receive forgiveness and redemption from Adam’s sin. God also made covenants with nations. Puritans believed that when Henry VIII turned his back on Rome, God covenanted with England that as long as England would continue to reform God’s church, he would bestow his blessings. After all, was not the “Protestant wind” that destroyed the Spanish Armada a clear example of God’s approval of England? Covenants did not only exist between God and mankind on a spiritual or national level; they also existed throughout the whole chain of relationships. For example, there were covenants between magistrates and the people on all levels of national and local government: the people agree to obey the laws; the magistrates and governors will protect the people’s rights. On the personal level there was the covenant between a man and a woman in which they agree to love and honor each other; a covenant between parents and children; a covenant between masters and servants. Just as the nation was subordinate to God, the people were subordinate to magistrates, wives to husbands, children to parents, servants to masters. The clearly defined logic of the covenant approach shaped all political, social, and personal relationships and established a set of mores and assumptions that were dutifully followed for generations. However, within this subordinate/dominant structure, on the spiritual level, salvation was equally available. Class and gender did not separate people; only faith did. And perhaps it was this element of spiritual equality that wound up fueling dissent and inciting challenges to authority.

* * *

The Puritans were religious dissenters, but they did not come to the New World for the noble cause of “religious freedom.” What the Congregational Puritans of Massachusetts Bay were seeking was to practice what they regarded as the one true faith, not freedom for all religions. They did not favor religious toleration, as anyone entering the colony wishing to worship according to a “false” belief system quickly discovered. Those who did not see eye to eye with the Bay Colony’s authorities found themselves ostracized and banished. These men and women were the first dissenters within the colonies, and although they had no way of knowing it at the time, they were the vanguard of what was to become a defining American character trait.

One of the most noteworthy dissenters was Roger Williams. Williams arrived in 1631 and became the teacher of the Salem church (larger churches had two ministers: the pastor and the teacher). Almost immediately he began calling for the complete separation of the Congregational churches of New England from the Church of England, warning that God would punish the people of Massachusetts if they did not do so. But the Puritans had no wish to separate. They wanted to reform the church, and how could that be done from outside the church? Williams irritated them even further when he disputed the king’s authority to grant the charter to Massachusetts Bay because Charles had no right to the land. The land belonged to the Indians, and no one had consulted them! This, of course, was a challenge to the validity of all land claims and deeds obtained by individual settlers. And finally Williams called for toleration of all religious beliefs and the separation of church and state. Civil authorities, he maintained, should have no power to monitor people’s beliefs, nor was it their prerogative to enforce the Ten Commandments or punish breaches thereof. Such practices endangered religious freedom. At first the magistrates tried to convince Williams to tone down his dissent; but he did not, and they banished him in 1636. Williams spent that winter with the Narragansett Indians, purchased land from them, and founded the settlement of Providence. In 1644 he traveled to London to obtain a charter for the colony (to be called Rhode Island) that gave him the legal authorization to govern the colony.

Before returning to Rhode Island, Williams published The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution to defend his views—that all religious faiths should be tolerated and that there should be a total separation of church and state—against the attacks of the Boston clergy, as well as to promulgate them in England. If governing officials seek to enforce one religion in a society, then they obviously have to punish those who refuse to accept the authorized religion. “A civill sword,” meaning the punishment that civil authorities must use to enforce conformity of religion, Williams argued with impeccable logic, “is so far from bringing or helping forward an opposite in Religion to repentance that Magistrates sin grievously against the worke of God and blood of Soules by such proceedings. . . . Violence and a sword of steele begets such an impression in the sufferers that certainly they conclude . . . [that] that Religion cannot be true which needs such instruments of violence to uphold it so.” Regarding separation of church and state, Williams maintained that it is imperative to keep a well-defined distinction between the two to protect freedom of religion. If there were too much blurring of the lines between church and state, both institutions would be endangered, but worst of all it would mean religion would have to be sanctioned by the state. And as far as Williams was concerned, he did not want the colony to have, like the nations of Europe, an established religion. Religious belief should not be dependent on the whim of a monarch. “Magistrates,” he insisted, “have no power of setting up the Forme of Church Government, electing church officers, [or] punishing with church censures.” Likewise

the Churches as Churches, have no power . . . of erecting or altering forms of Civill Government, electing of Civill officers, inflicting Civill punishments . . . as by deposing Magistrates from their Civill Authoritie, or withdrawing the hearts of the people against them, to their Lawes, no more than to discharge wives, or children, or servants, from due obedience to their husbands, parents, or masters; or by taking up arms against their Magistrates, though he persecute them for Conscience: for though members of Churches who are publique officers also of the Civill State may suppress by force the violence of Usurpers . . . yet this they doe not as members of the Church but as officers of the Civill State.3

The most influential of the Puritan ministers in the colony was John Cotton. He had a large following in England, and when he migrated to Massachusetts, many members of his congregation followed him to Boston, including Anne Hutchinson, who had greatly admired his sermons. Shortly after her arrival Hutchinson began holding Wednesday-evening meetings in her home in which she summarized and analyzed the previous Sunday’s sermon for women who had been unable to attend church that week. Hutchinson, who was a highly intelligent woman who studied the finer points of theology and was unafraid to step out of the usual role of submissive housewife in articulating her views, provided an incisive commentary that so energized the sessions that they soon became the most popular event in Boston. So many women (and men) began filling her home that she had to schedule a second weekly meeting. A problem arose, however, when Hutchinson began criticizing John Cotton’s colleague at the Boston church. She made the accusation that the pastor, John Wilson, was preaching that salvation could be achieved through good works, whereas John Cotton’s sermons were in line with the Calvinist view that faith alone led to salvation and that no amount of effort would ease the way.

The title page of Roger Williams’s The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution, for Cause of Conscience, Discussed in a Conference between Truth and Peace (1644), in which Williams presents his argument for religious freedom, tolerance, and separation of church and state. (Public domain; courtesy Library of Congress)

Over the next several months, as Hutchinson intensified her critique of Wilson, she also attended worship services at other churches and began accusing other ministers of preaching the covenant of works. In fact by the summer of 1636 she was claiming that only John Cotton and her brother-in-law John Wheelwright, of all the Bay Colony’s ministers, were preaching the covenant of grace. She argued that good behavior could never lead to salvation and that it was only through a mystical experience that a sinner could be saved. This was one of the paradoxes with which Puritans wrestled: if salvation came only through faith, if it did not matter how sinful or pious a person was who was predestined for eternal life in heaven, how does a society get people to live according to good conduct and moral law? The Puritan answer was that good conduct was a sign of piety, but Hutchinson’s contention that only mystical experience mattered, thus rendering a person’s behavior insignificant, was getting perilously close to the heresy of Antinomianism: denying the need for law and paving the way to anarchy.

In a society that expected women to be subservient, Hutchinson’s assertiveness exacerbated her problems. But her gender was not what got her banished. She was banished by the Bay Colony authorities because of her belief that God guided each individual’s morality. To the powers that be, this was anarchy. Nor was she banished because she advocated religious freedom; she was just as intolerant of her adversaries as they were with her. At her trial in 1637 Governor John Winthrop and several magistrates and ministers debated with her for two days over theological matters. She insisted that they prove to her where she was in error, while they insisted that she present scriptural evidence that would support her accusation that Wilson was preaching the covenant of works. After they kept pressing her, she finally announced that it was not through a passage of scripture but that God had spoken to her “by an immediate revelation”: “By the voice of his own spirit to my soul.”4 This was sufficient for the court to condemn her. If direct revelation took precedence over the Bible or law, what then was to prevent any person from breaking the law because he or she had an immediate revelation from the Holy Spirit? This would lead to the breakdown of law and the breakdown of society. Hutchinson was banished, and in early 1638 she and a number of her followers went to Narragansett Bay and established the colonies of Warwick and Newport. (Later, wishing to remove herself farther from the reach of the authorities in Boston, she moved to the Dutch colony of New Netherlands, where, in 1643, Indians massacred her and her family. When word of the massacre arrived in Boston, the Puritans there saw this as God’s divine judgment on her heretical views.)

* * *

Although Charles I’s efforts to force Puritans to conform to the Church of England drove thousands of them to resettle in Massachusetts, most Puritans remained in the mother country. By the end of the 1630s they dominated Parliament, and in 1642, led by Oliver Cromwell, they took up arms against Charles. After six years of bitter fighting the English civil war came to an end with the king’s defeat and execution. This was perhaps the single most extraordinary event in the development of English constitutionalism. With one stroke of the axe Parliament had established its authority over the monarchy. For the next ten years Cromwell exercised executive power; but after his death Parliament restored the late king’s son, Charles II, to the throne, and the eleven-year Puritan interregnum came to an end.

During the chaos of the civil war religious dissent continued to grow. One of the dissenting sects that emerged at that time was the Quakers. Believing that each individual should interpret scripture according to his or her own light, George Fox preached that this “Inner Light” would lead to salvation and that clerics were not necessary to interpret God’s word. Although Fox’s followers called themselves the Society of Friends, the English irreverently labeled them Quakers, for their penchant of “trembling before the Lord.” Believing it was sinful how both Protestants and Catholics eagerly found ways to justify war, Quakers became outspoken pacifists. They practiced civil disobedience and passive resistance. They believed that the Sermon on the Mount was a code by which to live. They also refused to swear oaths in court, wore plain clothes, and valued humility. However, their humility did not prevent them from going about the realm doggedly proclaiming the truth of their vision to such a degree that most people regarded them as extremely annoying. (Later, in New England, Quakers sometimes proselytized by marching nude up the aisle during Puritan church services.) Christians were also horrified that Quakers had no clergy, denied the concepts of original sin and predestination, and did not discipline their children by trying to break their will but instead treated them as innocents who were not born sinful and who only needed love and nurturing to bring out their inner spark. Quaker views, it appeared to other Christians, were leading straight to anarchy.

When Charles II was restored to the throne, he sought to repay a loan of ₤16,000 he had received from one of his supporters, Admiral William Penn. But Penn had died, and so Charles offered the money to Penn’s Quaker son, also named William. The younger Penn asked instead for a charter so that he could establish a colony in the New World as a refuge for the Society of Friends. Charles granted the charter with the stipulation that all laws Penn enacted must be submitted for approval and that Anglicans would be guaranteed religious freedom.

Penn put a lot of thought into his “Holy Experiment.” His intention was to provide a place where Quakers could worship freely without fear of harassment, and unlike the Puritans who attempted to erect a socially and religiously homogeneous society, Penn wanted Pennsylvania to be open and welcoming to people of all beliefs. He composed a “Frame of Government” that guaranteed due process of law, trial by jury, liberty of conscience, and moderate punishments.

One of the most unusual features that set Pennsylvania apart from the other English colonies was that the settlers arrived there without weapons. Penn sincerely wanted to maintain friendly relations with the Indians and treat them with respect. And for a time, at least until Pennsylvania established its first militia in 1740, peaceful coexistence was successful. The Quakers dealt fairly with the Indians, treated them as human beings, and made sure to pay for lands they sought.

In Pennsylvania Quakers were able to worship freely. But they faced enormous hostility in other colonies. In Boston in 1657 one Quaker, Mary Dyer, was arrested for proselytizing her religious vi...