I'm trying to do something about voting and the first split in the colonies over who had the right to vote in Massachusetts colony. It's going slowly.
(The Reverand Thomas Hooker. His disagreement with the leaders of Massachusetts colony led to the founding of Hartford in what became Connecticutt.)
When British emigrants came to the New
World they brought more than their religious beliefs and folkways.
Each group; Puritans and dissenters, Quakers and Pietists, exiled Cavaliers,
British borderers and Irish economic refugees brought their own conception of
liberty.
The colonists of New Englanders had some conceptions of
liberty that were unique to their settlements. David Fischer argues in Albion’s Seed that the word liberty was used in four
different ways that would probably strike modern Americans as unusual.
One use of liberty
described liberty or liberties that belonged to the community or communities
rather than the individual. Writers, from the founding of the colony for the
next two centuries spoke of the liberty of New England, the liberty of Boston, or the liberty of
the town. There is evidence that Sam Adams wrote more often about the ”liberty of America”
than the liberty of individual Americans.
This concept of collective liberty was consistent, to New
Englanders at least, with restrictions on individual liberty that modern
Americans would find very restrictive to say the least. In early years of the Massachusetts colony,
potential colonists couldn’t settle there without permission from the general
court. Persons who were judged to have dangerous opinions, in the eyes of the
authorities, could be and occasionally were shipped back to England. Not
every Tom, Dick, or Harry was allowed to move into the colony without
permission.
Those colonial New Englanders accepted restraints, but did
insist that the restrictions be consistent with the written laws of the
Commonwealth. And they insisted that they had the right to order their
communities in their own way. Not the way it was done in Pennsylvania,
or Virginia, or in some cases even England. (An intersting bit of history given the extremely long shot attempt of Texas to try to tell four swing states how to run their electons.)
Liberty or liberties had a
second meaning in New England. One that had
roots in the counties of East
Anglia where many of colonists and most of
their pastors left when they emigrated. Individuals could be granted the
liberty to do something that they normally couldn’t do. For example, certain
individuals could be granted the liberty to fish or hunt in certain areas while
that liberty was denied to others. In some cases the liberty granted depended
on someone’s social rank. For example a gentleman could not be punished with a
whipping unless the crime was extremely serious and “his course of life was
vicious and profligate.” (The author didn’t provide any examples. However military commander, whose name escapes me at the momentm was fined when his wife met him at the door and he hugged and kissed her in public.) Those of
lesser rank, had a lesser liberty: they were limited to forty stripes or less
if they were sentenced to a flogging.
And codified in the fundamental liberties of the colony was
the right of any man, inhabitant or foreigner to come before the courts or town
meetings and have his voice heard. And if he couldn’t plead his own cause he
had the right to ask someone else to speak for him.
And there was a third kind of liberty in New
England. It was referred to as Soul Liberty, Christian Liberty or
Freedom of Conscience. This did not mean freedom of conscience in the way we
understand it. This was freedom to practice the true faith as defined by the
fundamental law of the colony. This liberty did not apply to Quakers,
Catholics, Anglicans, Baptists, or even Presbyterians who did not agree to a
very restrictive definition of reformed theology. And that definitions could,
and often did, depend on the whim of the local minister.
Basically, it meant
they were free to persecute everyone else in their own way. I know, I’m getting
a headache just trying to wrap my brain around the idea that the freedom to
serve God in your own way in your own community could be defined as the right
to hang Quakers for preaching in the town. Granted the death penalty was not used for a first offense. First the persistant preacher would be exiled. Second offense usually was met with a flogging. Man or woman on the bare back, sometimes tied to the back of a cart and flogged through the town. Come back a third time and and you might end up at the end of a rope.
Actually Quakers were forbidden the right to settle in the Massachusetts colony up to early 1660's. In 1661 Charles II forbade the excution of Quakers. In 1684 the orginal Massachusetts charter was revoked, the basic laws of the colony brought into compliance with English law and a new governor installed. In 1689 the Glorious Revolution saw the passage of the toleration acts. Which were exactly that. You still had to be a member of the Church of England and swear to I believe it was the Thirty Nine Articles to obtain a university degree, preach in church, get a license to be a doctor or a lawyer, You were tolerated. Unless you were a Roman Catholic. Many of the restrictions on Catholics were still enforced in Britain and, they weren't too popular in the colonies either.
And, at times, liberty was used in a fourth way. It
described an obligation of the “body politicke” to protect individual members from
what the author calls the “tyranny of circumstance.” The Massachusetts poor laws may have been
limited but the General Court recognized a right for individuals to be free
from want in a basic sense. It wasn’t a question of collective welfare or even
social equality.
In Fischer’s opinion these four ways of looking at liberty;
collective liberty, individual liberties, soul freedom and freedom from tyranny
of circumstance were all part of what the New Englanders sometimes called ordered
liberty. The New Englanders had their ways of defining liberty; other colonies
and their settlers didn’t always agree.
