To save our democracy, look to Plymouth Rock.
Thanksgiving at Plymouth. (Credit: Jennie Augusta Brownscombe)
With the Thanksgiving holiday fast approaching, controversies over the role of Puritans in American history have begun their annual resurfacing.
If we discuss the Puritans at all today, it is most often with scorn or in mockery. We frequently dismiss Puritans as anachronistic religious fundamentalists. One column mocks Puritans for giving their children names like Obedience, Praise-God, and Remember. An article from Pitzer College denounces the “almost limitless capacity of Puritanism for evil.” Journalist H.L. Mencken memorably described Puritanism as “the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.” Other anti-Pilgrim diatribes brand Puritans as “deceitful, abusive…extremists” or inform us that “the Pilgrims smelled.” Still others legitimately point out the eventual outbreak of brutal violence between the Native and Puritan communities.
Yes, the Puritans were problematic. In the decades after the “first Thanksgiving,” their expansion led to wars with Native groups such as the Pequot rife with the slaughter of civilians. As with future chapters of the American story, Puritans are stained by their role in colonization.
Nonetheless, their movement on the whole was one of relative liberty and equality. For all their faults, many Pilgrims resisted the racism of their time and welcomed Native converts into their ranks. Pilgrims were far from sexist by standards of the day, recognizing women’s contributions to religious life and saw redeemed souls as genderless. Though perhaps flawed in execution, theirs was a society deeply rooted in ideals rather than popular demagoguery or the pursuit of pleasure.
In fact, one might argue the pious communitarianism of Puritan New England formed the firmament for democratic America. Perhaps the maligned “hortatory names” of the Puritans offer us this key themselves. However imperfect they were, the Puritans were people of principle. As peculiar in retrospect as these names may be, we should admire a society that names its children for its ideals rather than as the culmination of a quest for the most euphonic amalgamation of syllables.
Detractors of the Puritans often point to the infamous Salem witch trials. Yet, this miscarriage of justice was an aberration from rather than the fulfillment of Puritan ideals. While Puritanism arose from a concern that principles would succumb to personal grievances, it was exactly these sorts of grievances that drove the witch trials. Eventually, it would be Puritan clergy who ended the trials. Interestingly, Samuel Sewall, a judge who initially presided over the trials before joining many Puritan clergy in denouncing them, also authored America's first anti-slavery work: The Selling of Joseph. Puritan culture sowed the seeds for both American democracy and the anti-slavery movement.
In his 1835 Democracy in America, the French polymath Alexis de Tocqueville argued that American democracy is uniquely indebted to its Puritan antecedents. Moreover, he describes their religion as intermingled with “the most absolute democratic and republican theories.” The Puritans journeyed not “to improve their situation or to increase their wealth,” but “tore themselves from the comforts of their homeland… to assure the triumph of an idea.” Puritan civilization, erected upon ideals, formed a society remarkably equal, one where “democracy is society’s way of being.” Tocqueville’s description seems novel now, where the Puritans remain cast in the popular image as petty tyrants obsessed with moral pedantry. Nonetheless, the society they built was guided by an imperfect but ever continuing quest for the most moral course of action. There are many ways to describe today’s United States, but morally obsessed would not be one of them, even if we may have inherited institutions built by Puritans.
The Puritans set sail, quite literally, on uncertain waters at an uncertain time to build the most democratic society on Earth. Like the country of their descendants, they established themselves on principles well conceived but poorly executed. In the past months, authoritarian regimes have consolidated their power; once more, the United States and her allies are a rock of liberty in a world ever more familiar to tyranny. In these days of war and disquiet, the democratic model we need might be found in our history. Perhaps, if we want to defend our democracy, we must look back to Plymouth Rock.
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