The History of the Americans

First off, a brief item of business for those of you listening in close to real time – on April 11, 2023, I’ll be in Washington with some free time in the evening.  If Washington area listeners want to do a meet up, send me a note at thehistoryoftheamericans@gmail.com, through the website, or by DM on Twitter.  If we get a few takers I’ll find some place that is reasonably convenient to DuPont Circle where I will be staying, and get it organized.  I hope we can do it! In this episode we recount Roger Williams’ first few years in Massachusetts, following his refusal of the post of “teacher” at the church in Boston on the ground that it was insufficiently “separated.” In the years until 1624, Williams would begin to develop his idea that church and state must be separate. With the goal of saving Indian souls, he also deepened his understanding of the local tribes and Algonquian language and culture. He would live in Salem, then Plymouth, and back to Salem, but he spent most of his time abroad in the land, paddling his canoe from one Indian village to another. Also during these years, religious zeal in both Massachusetts and back in England, although in different form, would become even more extreme. Zealotry, it would turn out, was not all it was cracked up to be. 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 Edmund Morgan, Roger Williams: The Church and State Edmund S. Morgan, The Puritan Dilemma: The Story of John Winthrop

Our guest today is Kenny Ryan, host of another great history pod, Abridged Presidential Histories with Kenny Ryan. Abridged Presidential Histories Podcast with Kenny Ryan launched its first episode at the end of March, 2020, and has progressed through the American presidencies chronologically. If you have listened to Abridged Presidential Histories, you already know that it includes narrative episodes with a lot of amusing factoids told with humor in solo narrative form – I think you all know I like that sort of thing – and some very interesting interviews with historians who are expert in the relevant presidencies.  We had a wide-ranging conversation, and covered a lot of interesting stuff, including: The changing reputations of Jackson, Grant, JFK, and LBJ. Presidential histories take about 50 years to settle down, because they need to be written by people who were not politically aware as they happened. Should Martin Van Buren get more credit for “Jacksonian Democracy?” Jackson should get more credit for his handling of the Nullification Crisis. What president would Kenny like to have as a friend? Surprising answer! Who was the biggest party animal among the presidents? Should our politicians spend more time drinking and playing cards? Who were the greatest First Ladies? The influence of Dolly Madison and Lady Bird Johnson. Did young Kenny meet Lady Bird on a field trip? Austin’s moontowers. Who was the most overrated president? The revival of Calvin Coolidge’s reputation on the political right. What presidents would you invite on a pub crawl? Will Nixon be rehabilitated? Is journalism really the “first draft of history”? And much more! Jack on Twitter: @TheHistoryOfTh2 Kenny on Twitter: @APHpodcast [Abridged] Presidential Histories with Kenny Ryan (website) …and on Apple.

This is the first of several non-consecutive episodes about Roger Williams, whom we have teased a few times already.  Williams was one of early New England’s immensely consequential figures, perhaps in the long run more so than either William Bradford or John Winthrop.  While the intellectual and civic contributions of Williams were legion, there are four startlingly modern things that he essentially invented.  First, Williams argued that requiring people to attend church and worship in a particular way – a practice the English called “conformity” and essentially a universal obligation in Christian Europe for centuries – was an offense unto God. Williams thought that people must be free to find their own faith and follow their own beliefs. In a universally religious time, this amounted to a wholesale reconsideration of the “proper relation between a free individual and the state.”  Second, Williams challenged the settled relationship between the church, man’s manifestation of God on this earth, and the state.  He concluded they should be entirely separate, an idea that most Americans today take as a given. Third, Williams founded the new colony of Rhode Island, the first political entity anywhere in the world dedicated to the proposition of religious freedom and liberty of conscience.  Finally, Williams learned the local Algonquian language and studied the indigenous peoples of New England with a compassion and intellectual honesty that was, for its time, very unusual and arguably unprecedented. In order to understand Williams, however, we need to know something about Puritan theology, an introduction to which is the main topic of this episode! More exciting that it sounds! And, anyway, it will be useful background for many of the episodes to come. Twitter: @TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast Selected references for this episode Apple Computer, “The Crazy Ones” John M. Barry, Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul David Hackett Fischer, Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America Edmund Morgan, Roger Williams: The Church and State Prenanthes serpentaria

The Winthrop Fleet has arrived, but Salem is not what they had expected. John Winthrop leads an expedition to explore Massachusetts Bay, meets Samuel Maverick – whose descendants would be consequential in the world of sports – and William Blackstone (Blaxton), and decides to move the new immigrants to Charlestown, Boston, and other future towns in the region. The winter is brutal, but it makes the Puritan settlers resilient, and their hunger is relieved when the Lyon arrives on February 5, 1631, with new supplies and a minister named Roger Williams. All that and the origin of the Boston Common and a botanical puzzle concerning “snakeweed”! 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 Francis J. Bremer, John Winthrop: America’s Forgotten Founding Father George Bancroft, History Of The United States Of America Volume 1 Thomas Hutchinson, The History of Massachusetts, from the First Settlement Thereof in 1628, Until the Year 1750 Edmund S. Morgan, The Puritan Dilemma: The Story of John Winthrop David Hackett Fischer, African Founders: How Enslaved People Expanded American Ideals Gutierrezia sarothrae William Blaxton (Blackstone) Map of Boston in 1630, superimposed on today’s Boston

This episode is a backgrounder, an overview of the Puritan society, culture, and economy in New England during the seventeenth century. The objective is to set all y’all listeners up for more traditional and detailed “timeline” episodes over the coming weeks. Sort of a mega-prerequisite. We therefore discuss Puritan religious “conformity” within the context of the early 1600s, families, religion, property rights, the structure of the New England economy, and its relationship with the outside world. Oh. And the importance of beer and cake when Puritan mothers gave birth to cute little Puritan babies. Twitter: @TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast Primary reference for this episode Alan Taylor, American Colonies: The Settling of North America

We have arrived at the Great Migration of the Puritans to Massachusetts, which effectively began in 1628 and would continue until 1640 or so, and then abruptly end. The result would be that for almost two hundred years the non-indigenous population of New England would consist almost entirely of the descendants of a group of religious refugees shaped by a particularly tumultuous moment in English political and religious life. The “Winthrop Fleet” of 1630 led by – no surprises here – John Winthrop, would define the geography of Puritan Massachusetts. Winthrop’s leadership, which will unfold over two decades, began with one of history’s most famous sermons, “A Modell of Christian Charity,” which would in turn define the aspirations for the Puritan settlement of Massachusetts Bay. It would also be the first great expression of one aspect of “American exceptionalism,” the idea that Americans – meaning specifically Puritan English settlers in New England – would serve as an example for all the world. 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 Francis J. Bremer, John Winthrop: America’s Forgotten Founding Father George Bancroft, History Of The United States Of America Volume 1 Thomas Hutchinson, The History of Massachusetts, from the First Settlement Thereof in 1628, Until the Year 1750 John Endecott (Wikipedia) John Winthrop, A Modell of Christian Charity David Crowther, The History of England Podcast

This episode looks at the collapse of trust between Charles I and anti-Puritan royalists and clerics, on the one hand, and Parliament, Puritans, anti-Catholic Anglicans, and lawyers and others concerned with resisting the expansion of royal power on the other, in the second half of the 1620s. The collision would end in a final and very dramatic session of the House of Commons, and would ultimately persuade tens of thousands of Puritans that they had no choice but to leave England. It would be the catalyst for the Puritan Great Migration to New England. Before we get to any of that, however, we briefly address the Twitter kerfuffle I unwittingly set off with a tweet about a BBC story on Sir Francis Drake, and the circumstances under which I do, and do not, support the renaming of things named after people who have fallen out of favor. The Twitter thread regarding Sir Francis Drake’s famous change of heart 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 George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham Michael B. Young, “Charles I and the Erosion of Trust, 1625-1628,” Albion: A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies, Summer 1990.

Between 1628 and 1640 perhaps 20,000 Puritans would leave England and settle in Boston and environs. Then English immigration to Massachusetts would stop as abruptly as it started. The Puritans of Massachusetts would thrive with only trivial incremental immigration for the next 200 years, creating a uniquely American society in New England, a homogeneous world with its own culture and polity that would eventually become the beating heart of the American Revolution. In this episode and the next, we talk about the theological and political forces that set the stage for the Puritan Great Migration, and the new articulation of English political liberty during the crucial second and third decades of the 17th century that arose from conflict over the scope of royal power between Sir Edward Coke and King James I. Errata: A listener pointed out that Luther posted 95 theses, rather than the 99 I somehow said and sadly missed in post-production. Must have been thinking of red balloons. 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 Alan Taylor, American Colonies: The Settling of North America English Reformation (Wikipedia)

This is our one hundredth episode, at least by some counts, and also our first interview. Eric Yanis, the creator and host of The Other States of America History Podcast, agreed to be our first interviewee. We chatted about a wide range of subjects, including: How the pandemic motivated both of us to start our podcasts; Eric on teaching middle schoolers in New York during the pandmic; The different ways in which we put together our episodes; The rapidly declining interest in history among college undergraduates and some of its causes, including the de-emphasis of history in primary and middle schools; Middle schoolers today have almost no exposure to history before the sixth grade — “kids today” have not even heard of “teepees”; How interest in history rises as we age – “People become more interested in history the more history they have”; Should history podcasters be intimated by academic historians, and should academics be more supportive of popular history, even if it offends their professional sensibilities? “The zone where lives can live”; A digression on the historiography of the Popham/Sagadahoc Colony and the reasons for its failure; Our fantasy pub crawl with figures from sixteenth and seventeenth century America, assuming a universal translator; Things we hear from listeners; The competing claims for the inspiration of Shakespeare’s “The Tempest”; Eric discusses the legacy of New Netherland in our language, our celebration of Christmas, and in our national self-image as a “melting pot”; So maybe I should publish the podcast on YouTube. This was fun, and I hope you all enjoyed it. For those of you listening along in real time, may the season be filled with happiness, and may you give and receive excellent history books! Jack on Twitter: @TheHistoryOfTh2 Eric on Twitter: @OtherStatesPod The Other States of America Podcast (Apple podcast link)

This episode is about the trading between the Dutch of New Netherland, the English first of Plymouth and then of Massachusetts Bay Colony, and the Algonquian and Iroquoian tribes in the region during the 1620s and 1630s.  These relationships were important, both to the profitability of settlement for the Dutch and the English, and because they so destabilized the balance of power among the tribes and the Europeans that they would eventually lead to the very ugly Pequot War of 1636-38. The indigenous ceremonial currency, wampum, sat at the center of this trade, and we take a first look at its monetization by the Dutch and then the English. Twitter: @TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast Selected references for this episode Mark Meuwese, “The Dutch Connection: New Netherland, the Pequots, and the Puritans in Southern New England, 1620—1638,” Early American Studies, Spring 2011. Paul Otto, “Henry Hudson, the Munsees, and the Wampum Revolution,” published in The Worlds of the Seventeenth-Century Hudson Valley, ed. Jaap Jacobs and Lou Roper. Albany: SUNY Press, 2014 D. I. Bushnell, Jr., “The Origin of Wampum,” The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, Jan – Jun 1906. Wampum (Wikipedia)