COMMUNITY and COMMITMENT in NEW ENGLAND, 1630-1689 By
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“WITH A PUBLICK SPIRIT”: COMMUNITY AND COMMITMENT IN NEW ENGLAND, 1630-1689 By SARAH AUGUSTA MORGAN SMITH A dissertation submitted to the Graduate School-New Brunswick Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey In partial fulfillment of the requirements For the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Program in Political Science Written under the direction of Andrew R. Murphy And approved by _____________________________________ _____________________________________ _____________________________________ _____________________________________ New Brunswick, New Jersey May 2016 Copyright © 2016 Sarah Augusta Morgan Smith All Rights Reserved ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION “With a Publick Spirit”: Community and Commitment in New England, 1630-1689 by SARAH AUGUSTA MORGAN SMITH Dissertation Director: Andrew R. Murphy “With a Publick Spirit”: Community and Commitment in New England, 1630- 1689 engages in a critical analysis of the core principles of New England’s civic identity from its founding through roughly the first two and a half generations of political development. It explores the complex relationship between the problem of sustaining revolutionary founding commitments and the concept of civic education as character formation in seventeenth century New England. The subject presents the opportunity to study the critical intersection of theory and practice and argues that these early decades were crucial for the establishment of a particularly American concept of civic formation, and thus, for the development of American political thought on the nature of citizenship. At the heart of the project is a reflection on the civic virtues necessary for founding and maintaining a political society, the ways that they can be encouraged through civic institutions such as schools and legal systems, and the potential dangers when such virtues are either deficient or carried to excess by the citizenry. I argue that the April Revolution in Boston of 1689 demonstrates that the Puritans were successful in transferring their founding commitments to subsequent generations, and that this success ii stemmed from their utilization of an approach to civic formation that emphasized the importance of civic knowledge and virtue as prerequisite to civic engagement. The problem of Puritan New England is very much an American problem, and in the conclusion, I argue that the Puritan approach to civic formation recurs in the history of American political thought in ways that have proven particularly useful when the nation’s founding principles seemed most threatened. In contrast, I point to the inadequacies of two major strains of the thought within the American tradition that diverge from the Puritan model of civic formation to successfully perpetuate the commitments of the national founding. Finally, I suggest some of the ways in which an adaptation of the Puritan mode of civic education may be useful for shaping present-day debates about civic education. iii Table of Contents Abstract of the Dissertation ................................................................................................ ii Introduction: Citizens on a Hill........................................................................................... 1 The Americanization of the Puritan Experience ............................................................. 9 Definitions ..................................................................................................................... 15 Puritanism .................................................................................................................. 15 Citizen ........................................................................................................................ 16 Civic Formation ......................................................................................................... 17 Political Theory and the Problem of Foundings ........................................................... 19 Civic Education as a Political Problem ..................................................................... 25 Political Theorists and Civic Education .................................................................... 29 Chapter Outline and Plan of the Dissertation ................................................................ 32 A Note on Sources, Dating, and Transcription ............................................................. 38 Chapter 2: Founding Aspirations and First Fashionings .................................................. 42 The Political Context of Stuart England ....................................................................... 44 A Promise and a Model as Statements of Civic Identity ............................................... 50 Moral Equality ........................................................................................................... 57 Industry and Calling .................................................................................................. 61 Christian Love and Civil Communion....................................................................... 68 New England’s Anti-Type: The Mission to the Indians and the Symbolism of Founding ....................................................................................................................................... 74 Conclusion ..................................................................................................................... 86 Chapter 3: Tending the Plantation—Institutions of Civic Cultivation ............................. 93 Making Moral Equality Politically Safe: Education as a Public Good ......................... 95 Creating a Broad Foundation: Public Education ....................................................... 96 Harvard College and the Preparation of Civic Leaders ........................................... 105 The Bramble and the Trees: Law, Liberty, and Civic Formation in Massachusetts Bay ..................................................................................................................................... 118 Liberty and Arbitrary Government: Negotiating Representation, 1634-1644 ........ 120 Thomas Shepard’s 1641 Lectures Series: Consent and Dissent in Massachusetts .. 135 From Liberties to Laws: 1641-1648 ........................................................................ 139 Embodied Equality, Consent Constituted: The Laws and Liberties as the People’s Law .......................................................................................................................... 144 iv Conclusion ................................................................................................................... 152 Chapter 4: Shoring up the Foundation—The Crisis of the Rising Generation ............... 154 A Defect of Industry: Idleness, Sloth, Drunkenness, Sexual Misconduct, etc. ........... 157 An Excess of Industry: Distraction, Covetousness, Pride, and Economic Oppression165 An Immoderate Attachment to Equality: The Quaker ‘Threat’ .................................. 174 “Then called Puritans, now called Quakers” ........................................................... 177 The Half-Way Covenant: The Problem of Purity and the Failure of Communion ..... 190 “Our Crowns and Jewels”: New English Liberties and the Politics of the Restoration ..................................................................................................................................... 196 Conclusion ................................................................................................................... 206 Chapter 5: Increase Mather, Revivalist and Reformer .................................................... 209 “Qualifications for Soldiers and Christians”: The Civic Value of Martial Virtue ...... 212 The Necessity of Reformation: Responding to God’s Judgement on New England ... 218 Harvard and the Hope for the Future ....................................................................... 224 Redeeming Failed Citizens: The Reforming Synod and Civic Restoration ............ 227 New England in Crisis: The Royal Attack on the 1629 Charter ................................. 234 The Dominion of New England ............................................................................... 243 Increase Mather Goes to London ............................................................................. 245 Conclusion ................................................................................................................... 249 Chapter 6: A “Happy” Revolution .................................................................................. 250 Civic Education, Part 1: Cotton Mather’s Pre-Revolutionary Sermon Series ............ 251 18 April 1689: A Revolution in Boston ...................................................................... 256 Speaking to an Audience Abroad, Part 1: The Boston Declaration of April 18, 1689 264 Speaking to an Audience Abroad, Part 2: The General Court Petitions the King ...... 279 Civic Education, Part 2: Cotton Mather’s Post-Revolutionary ‘Texts’ ...................... 281 Speaking to an Audience Abroad, Part 3: Law and the April Revolution .................. 294 Increase Mather and The New Charter ....................................................................... 304 Conclusion ................................................................................................................... 305 Chapter 7: The Puritan Legacy in American Civic Formation ....................................... 306 What