Chris Blattman

Search
Close this search box.

Sweet land of liberty?

I am reading Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America. It is not the aim of the book, but it banishes any notions that American liberty was always and ever-present. I bring you the theocracy of the northeast.

…The provinces of Connecticut and Plymouth also forbade any single person to “live of himself. These laws were enforced. In 1668 the court of Middlesex County, Massachusetts, systematically searched its towns for single persons and placed them in families.

…hierarchy of age within the family was written into the laws of Massachusetts, which in 1648 required the death penalty as a punishment for stubborn or rebellious sons over the age of sixteen who refused to obey either their father or mother. The same punishment was also provided for children who struck or cursed their parents. No child was ever executed under this law, but several were fined or whipped by the courts for being rude or abusive to their parents. Some of these errant “children” were in their forties, and their parents were of advanced age.

And ill news for many of my former Yale colleagues:

Masturbation was made a capital crime in the colony of New Haven.

Interesting manifestations of individual liberty abound:

Customs of courtship in New England were carefully designed to allow young people privacy enough to discover if they loved one another, at the same time that parents maintained close supervision. This was the purpose of “bundling,” a European custom which became widespread in New England. The courting couple were put to bed together, “tarrying” all night with a “bundling board” between them. Sometimes the young woman’s legs were bound together in a “bundling stocking” which fitted her body like a glove.

Bundling boards and courting sticks were not merely pieces of amusing social trivia. These two ingenious folk-inventions were instruments of an important cultural purpose. They were designed to reconcile two requirements of New England courtship—the free consent of the young, and strict supervision by their elders. Both of these elements were thought necessary to a covenanted marriage.

I suppose this should be heartening to anyone who despairs today’s theocracies will never reform.

5 Responses

  1. An interesting book developing Hackett’s ideas is _American Nations_ by Colin Woodard. Heroically wrong, but highly educational and a great read.

  2. Chris, have you read Anthony Gill’s “Political Origins of Religious Liberty”? It has a chapter on Colonial British America, too.

    It gives examples of how religious groups in New England, especially the Puritans, used mandatory tithing, religious restrictions on the franchise and mandatory church attendance to impose their religion on religiou minorities. They jailed and fined Baptists and Quakers. They even hanged some, for example, a woman named Mary Dyer.

  3. Interesting…some Amish sects here in the States also use bundling for teenage courtship. The teens get together with the family at the young lady’s house and have a good clean fun kind of evening, and then the teens are allowed to retire to the room with a bundle. The kicker is the gentleman has to be up and out before sunrise! This isn’t every Amish order, but some do abide by it!

Why We Fight - Book Cover
Subscribe to Blog