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Puritans
Persecuted as “heretics,” the Puritans emigrated to Massachusetts, where Governor John Winthrop hoped to create a “Citty upon a Hill.”
Editor’s Note: After a distinguished career as a journalist, television commentator, and president and editor-in-chief of Congressional Quarterly, Robert Merry turned to writing history.
Thomas Morton liked the lush country, the Indians liked Thomas—and the stern Puritans cared little for either
Mary Rowlandson, captured by Indians in 1676 and marched into the “vast and howling Wilderness,” survived to write the first and perhaps most powerful example of the captivity narrative.
Lancaster, Massachusetts Bay Colony, February 10, 1676
It was a bankrupt ruin by the 1660s, but the Saugus Ironworks foretold America’s industrial might.
In the last quarter-century, the American steel industry—once the very symbol of American economic power—has undergone wrenching change.
A rare survivor of New England’s earliest days testifies to the strength that forged a nation.
Had Thomas Morton raised his maypole anywhere but next door to the Pilgrims, history and legend probably would have no record of him, his town, or his “lascivious” revels.
TIME: Summer, 1628.
Up until the last century in some parts of the country, a murderer’s guilt could legally be determined by what happened when he or she touched the victim’s corpse.
In 1646 in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Mary Martin was pregnant and unmarried. Her paramour was a married man, but it was her status as a single woman that determined the nature of her crime.
“What a sacred office is that of the parent!” exclaimed an anonymous contributor to The Parent’s Magazine in December, 1840.
Many a book, a magazine, a play, a movie, has been banned in Boston. But Christmas?
Many a book, a magazine, a play, a movie, has been banned in Boston. But Christmas?
How far back in American history can we find the old shell game in operation? Alas, pretty far.
It is as old as money, or the shortage thereof. Even the first Puritan settlers of New England were able to let their eyes stray from regarding Zion to study the money problem, which was, Heaven knows, acute in those days.
Roger Williams liked Indians and almost everyone else, and he founded a colony that gave our freedom a broader horizon
There is a legend about Roger Williams that is exceedingly popular among Americans. There is also a truth which is slowly emerging from the welter of fancies. The truth is less simple than the legend, for most legends are oversimplifications. But it has some even more dramatic aspects than the beloved myth and it accords better, too, with the mental development of the normal human being. If it dims the halo of this pioneer of American liberty, it gives him a warmth, a nearness to ourselves that we could hardly feel while he stood on the pedestal.
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