The story of the pilgrims4/5/2023 ![]() ![]() Yet when Webster made his statement, many Americans could not enjoy these privileges. Here, he declared, was “where Christianity, and civilization” took hold in a vast wilderness “peopled by roving barbarians.” The town, its 19th-century celebrants declared, launched a system that produced representative government and religious freedom, two hallowed tenets of America enshrined in the U.S. In 1820, on the town’s bicentennial, the statesman Daniel Webster venerated Plymouth in the racialist language of his age. What had once been a story about religious obedience became a story about religious freedom. Second, Plymouth stood for the religious freedom sought by its founders.īy that point, the ends for which Plymouth would be useful had changed. First, the Mayflower Compact, the 200-word document written and signed on the journey, introduced the idea of self-rule maintained with a constitutional government. (Virginians, by contrast, celebrated Jamestown instead.) Their argument hinged on two claims. In the 19th century, Plymouth resurfaced when historians and politicians in New England claimed it was the birthplace of the nation. The word “Plymouth” may today conjure up visions of Pilgrims in search of religious freedom, but that vision did not reflect the circumstances on the ground in the early 17th century. In the centuries that followed, that trend continued, even as the form of that nationalism changed. But after the establishment of the United States, historians and politicians cemented Plymouth in the script of American nationalism, minimizing its well-documented problems and magnifying its alleged wonders. Before 1776, few commentators made much of that bit of history. 16, 1620, though accounts of the exact date differ-and the creation of the Plymouth idea that is still familiar to many Americans. More than a century would pass between that landing-on what was recorded as Dec. It attracted few English migrants before Massachusetts absorbed it in 1691. They believed that this was the place to launch their new England, a refuge for persecuted Protestants. This autumn marks the 400th anniversary of the arrival of a hardy band of English religious dissenters at the Wampanoag town of Patuxet. ![]()
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