The History of the Americans

For more than twenty years, the Puritan colonies of New England - Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven - would do their utmost to gain control of Rhode Island, Roger Williams's refuge committed to "soul liberty." They hated his nest of heretics on their border, and they coveted Rhode Island's arable land. The Puritan New Englanders would try everything short of military conquest, from subversion, to legal and military attacks on the Narragansetts, Rhode Island's closest indigenous allies, to political maneuvering in London. At every turn, Williams would outfox them, finally obtaining a charter from Charles II that definitively established absolute religious liberty in Rhode Island, and mandated a "democratical" form of government. Rhode Island under Williams would become the freest place in the English world, and Rhode Islanders would defend their freedoms even after Williams was no longer in their government. This is that story. Twitter: @TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast Selected references for this episode John M. Barry, Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul (Commission earned) James A. Warren, God, War, and Providence: The Epic Struggle of Roger Williams and the Narragansett Indians against the Puritans of New England (Commission earned) Joshua J. Monk, "Roger Williams' A Letter to the Town of Providence" Jean-Pierre Cavaillé, "'Naked as a sign'. How the Quakers invented nudity as a protest," Clio. Women, Gender, History, June 2021.

Kenneth W. Porter, writing in The New England Quarterly in 1934, said that “Samuell Gorton could probably have boasted that he caused the ruling element of the Massachusetts Bay Colony more trouble over a greater period of time than any other single colonist, not excluding those more famous heresiarchs, Anne Hutchinson and Roger Williams.”  As we shall see, he was charismatic, eloquent in speech, and often very funny in the doing of it, although nobody much considered him a laugh riot at the time. Gorton would, for example, address the General Court of Massachusetts, men not known for their happy-go-lucky ways, as "a generation of vipers, companions of Judas Iscariot." And yet Gorton (who spelled his first name "Samuell") would be second only to Roger Williams in shaping the civic freedom of Providence and Rhode Island. X/Twitter: @TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast Useful background: "Roger Williams Saves Rhode Island," The History of the Americans Podcast Selected references for this episode Kenneth W. Porter, "Samuell Gorton: New England Firebrand," The New England Quarterly, September 1934. John M. Barry, Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul: Church, State, and the Birth of Liberty (Commission earned) Michelle Burnham, "Samuel Gorton's Leveller Aesthetics and the Economics of Colonial Dissent," The William and Mary Quarterly, July 2010. Philip F. Gura, "The Radical Ideology of Samuel Gorton: New Light on the Relation of English to American Puritanism," The William and Mary Quarterly, January 1979. Samuel Gorton (Wikipedia)

This episode is about a radically democratic political movement in Maryland in the 1650s. Veterans of the New Model Army, many of whom had been swimming in political movements like the Levellers, came to Maryland and joined with other Protestants chafing under Catholic and aristocratic rule. Blood would be shed at the Battle of the Severn, and in the aftermath Lord Baltimore would install a man named Josias Fendall as the fourth governor of his proprietary colony. Fendall, it would turn out, decided he agreed with the populists, and led a legislative revolution that, for a time, would make Maryland the most politically radical government, other than in Rhode Island, anywhere in the English world. X (Twitter): @TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast Primary reference for this episode Noeleen McIlvenna, Early American Rebels: Pursuing Democracy from Maryland to Carolina, 1640-1700 (Commission earned)

In May 1660, Oliver Cromwell now dead, Charles II was restored as King of England. The 59 judges who in 1649 had signed the death warrant of the king's father, Charles I, were declared regicides, and exempted from the general amnesty Charles II offered to most people who had opposed his father. Some of the regicides were caught immediately and most gruesomely executed.  Others fled to Europe.  Three of them fled to New England.  Their names were Edward Whalley, William Goffe, and John Dixwell. This is their story, an epic tale of bounty-hunting across old New England, a tale woven with the anti-Royalist attitude of the Puritans and concern for their status after the Restoration. And, of course, there is the mysterious "Ghost of Hadley," a depiction of which is the art for the episode on the website for the podcast. [Errata: I am reliably informed by New Haveners that I blew the pronunciation of "Whalley," which apparently is pronounced like the cetacean rather than the diminutive for Walter. Also, I said "Morris" when I meant "Harris" at least once for entirely unknown cognitive reasons. Finally, I said that the attack on Hadley was in June 1675, when in fact it was June 1676.] X (Twitter): @TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast Selected references for this episode (Commission received on Amazon links, if clicking through the website) Robert Harris, Act of Oblivion: A Novel Matthew Jenkinson, Charles I's Killers in America: The Lives & Afterlives of Edward Whalley & William Goffe Christopher Pagluico, The Great Escape of Edward Whalley and William Goffe Edward Elias Atwater, History of the Colony of New Haven Until its Absorption Into Connecticut

This is the story of the New Haven Colony from 1643 until is absorption by Connecticut in 1664. We look at the colony's economic, military, and geopolitical successes and disasters, and the famous story of the "Ghost Ship," perhaps the most widely witnessed supernatural event in early English North America. Finally, confronted with the restoration of the Stuarts in England, the Puritan colonies of New England, the greatest supporters of Oliver Cromwell and the Commonwealth, struggle to establish their legitimacy under the monarchy. Connecticut Colony secures a charter from Charles II, and through a series of power plays absorbs New Haven Colony and puts an end to its theocratic government of the Elect. X (Twitter): @TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast Selected references for this episode (Commission received on Amazon links, if clicking through the website) Edward Elias Atwater, History of the Colony of New Haven Until its Absorption Into Connecticut First Anglo-Dutch War (Wikipedia) The United Colonies of New England I: The New England Confederation Begins (1643-1652) (Apple podcasts link) The United Colonies of New England II: Confederation or Absorption (1644-1690) (Apple podcasts link)

Of the organized Puritan settlements in New England in the first half of the 17th century – Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, and Connecticut being foremost – the New Haven Colony was in some respects the most peculiar.  It was probably the wealthiest of the four United Colonies of New England on a per capita basis, the most insistent on religion’s role in civil governance, and the least democratic, being, basically, not democratic.  The men who founded it, Theophilus Eaton and the Reverend John Davenport, had great expectations and ambitions for spiritual communion and commercial profit, most of which would come to naught. It would survive as an independent colony less than 25 years. This is the story of its founding, at a place called Quinnipiac. X (Twitter): @TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast Selected references for this episode (Commission received on Amazon links, if clicking through the website) Edward Elias Atwater, History of the Colony of New Haven Until its Absorption Into Connecticut Josephine Dodge Daskam Bacon, History of the Colony of New Haven, Before and After the Union With Connecticut

Dr. James Horn is President and Chief Officer of Jamestown Rediscovery (Preservation Virginia) at Historic Jamestowne.  Previously, he has served as Vice President of Research and Historical Interpretation at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Saunders Director of the International Center for Jefferson Studies at Monticello, and taught for twenty years at the University of Brighton, England.  He has been a Fulbright Scholar and held fellowships at the Johns Hopkins University, the College of William and Mary, and Harvard University.  He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.  A leading scholar of early Virginia and English America, Dr. Horn is the author and editor of numerous books and articles including three that we have leaned on extensively in this podcast, A Land As God Made It: Jamestown and the Birth of America; 1619: Jamestown and the Forging of American Democracy; and most recently A Brave and Cunning Prince: The Great Chief Opechancanough and the War for America. (I'll get a little tip if you buy them through the links above.) Our conversation focuses on the extraordinary life of Opechancanough, the fascinating man who twice led the Powhatan Confederacy in wars to expel English settlers from the James River and the Chesapeake.  As longstanding and attentive listeners know, Opechancanough may or may not have been the same man as Paquiquineo, taken by the Spanish in the Chesapeake in 1561, received in the court of Philip II, christened Don Luis de Velasco in Mexico City, and returned to his homeland in 1570. Jim persuades me that Opechancanough was, in fact, the same man.  Along the way I learn, a bit too late, how to pronounce various names properly. X (Twitter): @TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast

In order to understand the history of English North America during the 1640s to the 1660s, one really needs to know at least something about the English Civil Wars, Oliver Cromwell's Commonwealth, and the restoration of the Stuarts in 1661. This episode is a high level look at that period, oriented toward the events and themes most important to the history of the Americans. But there are still some great details, including a graphic description of the execution of Charles I, and an elegy of sorts, to Sir Henry Vane! It must be said that British listeners and others who know a lot about this period will no doubt find this overview tediously shallow and rife with rank generalizations and even error.  Guilty as charged. The American analogy would be to cover the years between the run-up to our own Civil War and the Reconstruction of the South in one podcast episode. Absurd! And yet here it is. X (Twitter): @TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast Selected references for this episode (Commission received on the Amazon links) Jonathan Healey, The Blazing World: A New History of Revolutionary England 1603-1689 George Bancroft, History of the United States of America (Vol 1) Robert Harris, Act of Oblivion: A Novel Elvis Costello, "Oliver's Army" (YouTube)

It is the late 1640s. More than forty years before the famous witch hunt in Salem, William Pynchon's town of Springfield, Massachusetts Bay Colony, was roiled by the strange doings of Hugh and Mary Parsons, an unhappy and anxious couple with poor social skills. In that dark, solitary place on the edge of the North American wilderness, anxiety, depression, a bad marriage, and conspiracy theories combined with bad luck and no little neurosis to produce an epic tragedy, preserved for us by many pages of deposition transcripts taken by Pynchon. True crime, Puritan theology, rumor mongering, strange doings, and the inherent justice of the New English courts combine for a fantastic story. And, of course, there is some great trivia: What does "wearing the green gown" mean? Closing disclaimer: This episode is absolutely not in recognition of "Women's History Month." X (Twitter): @TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast Selected references for this episode Malcolm Gaskill, The Ruin of All Witches: Life and Death in the New World David M. Powers, Damnable Heresy: William Pynchon, the Indians, and the First Book Banned (and Burned) in Boston Nachman Ben-Yehuda, "The European Witch Craze of the 14th to 17th Centuries: A Sociologist's Perspective," American Journal of Sociology, July 1980. Useful prerequisite: The Life and Times of William Pynchon

This episode tells the story of three "lost voices" from early Maryland, surprising people who remind us of the complexity of the 17th century Atlantic world. Mathias de Sousa was of African descent, and is called "the first Black colonist" of Maryland. He would skipper a pinnace in the Chesapeake, trade with the local tribes, and sit in the Maryland Assembly. Margaret Brent was a stone-cold businesswoman, executor for the estate of Leonard Calvert, and would become famous for demanding not just one vote, but two, in the Maryland Assembly. Trust me when I say she had her reasons. Finally, there is Mary Kittamaquund Kent, "the Pocahontas of Maryland." Her similarities to the actual Pocahontas were, it must be said, something of a stretch. X (Twitter): @TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast Selected references for this episode David S. Bogen, "Mathias de Sousa: Maryland's First Colonist of African Descent," Maryland Historical Magazine Spring 2001. Lois Green Carr, "Margaret Brent - A Brief History", Maryland State Archives. Kelly L. Watson, "'The Pocahontas of Maryland': Sex, Marriage, and Diplomacy in the Seventeenth-Century Chesapeake," Early American Studies, Winter 2021.