Year: 2006

Thomas Morton’s and the settlement of “Merrymount” at Mount Wollaston in Massachusetts have long functioned in national mythology as the foil for the early puritan settlements. Along with Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson, Morton figures as one of the great dissendents of early New England. A good deal of what has come down to us about the events at Merrymount is obviously skewed and propagandistic, a product of the conflicts, but it remains valuable in that light. For a sampling of original texts on the matter, check out the links on this modern tribute to “The Pagan Pilgrim: Thomas Morton […]

The Mayflower History site has quite a bit of good material on Puritan New England, as well as .pdfs of a couple of key original tracts and sermons. 17th and 18th century titles are always fun, and a couple of these are real gems: Hypocrisy Unmasked: By A true relation of the proceedings of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts against SAMUEL GORTON (and his accomplices) a notorious disturber of the peace and quiet of the several Governments wherein he lived: with the grounds and reasons thereof, examined and allowed by their General Court holden at Boston in New […]

The major colonial land bank experiments seem to be these: 1681: The Fund at Boston, In New England1686: “Blackwell’s Bank” [proposed]1732: Connecticut land bank1714: Boston land bank [proposed]1740: Land Bank, or Manufactory Scheme, Boston The debates surrounding them, beginning with Potter’s Key of Wealth, includes roughly 25-30 major pamphlets, prospectuses, decrees, etc. All of these were published by Andrew McFarland Davis, roughly one hundred years ago. The subject was already obscure by the time William B. Greene was made aware of it, in 1857. Subsequently, radicals and intellectual historians alike seem to have paid relatively little attention to the topic. […]

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 […]

Here are some links to a small part of Andrew McFarland Davis’ work on the colonial land banks. The first essay, on a Connecticut experiment of 1732, is interesting. The last essay provides a context for Severals relating to the FUND, which I recently posted on The Very Idea! Davis, Andrew McFarland. “A Connecticut Land Bank of the Eighteenth Century.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 13 (October 1898): 70-84. Davis, Andrew McFarland. “Currency Discussions in Massachusetts in the Eighteenth Century.” Part I. Quarterly Journal of Economics 11 (October 1896): 70-91. Davis, Andrew McFarland. “Currency Discussions in Massachusetts in the Eighteenth Century.” […]

While this essay was published in 1836, while William B. Greene was at West Point, similarities between it and the the section on “The Usury Laws” in Greene’s Equality (1849) make it worth at least a look as a potential source. WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANTOn Usury Laws The fact that the usury laws, arbitrary, unjust, and oppressive as they are, and unsupported by a single substantial reason, should have been suffered to exist to the present time can only be accounted for on the ground of the general and singular ignorance which has prevailed as to the true nature and character […]