The state rights democrat. [volume] (Albany, Linn County, Oregon) 1865-1900, 1865-10-07
PurItanisrn shown UP.

The New York Christian Witness thus
truthfully and justly exposes the intol-
~lcrance and barbarity of Puritanism
The Puritans who left England and
settled at Plymouth, and founded New
England. profcssed to have fed from per-
secution. and sought n place to worship
God according to the dictates and rights
of conscience. AMI TO christianize the In
dian. They were not settled before they
robbed the Indians, enslaved their women
and children, sold them into foreign bond
age. and visited the most inhuman and
selt-degrading crueltics upon all classes
with whom they came in contact. They
plandercd the towns Of the natives. They
employed and paid assassins. Brides were
paid for the assassination Of chiefs. They
burnt hundreds of the natives alive. They
roasted at the stake women and children,
and burnt them in heaps. Their ablest
and f@avorite diyines declared that the
burning Of four hundred Indians at once.
mostly women and children, seemed n
that it was awful to see their blood run
ming down and quenehing the violence
of the burning wood, and smell the stencil.
Mather himself boosted that they had
that day sent -four hundred souls to hell.
They turned upon the Quakers. They
imposed heavy fines for hearing them
speak. They passed laws against all other
%seets. They fogged inhumanly women
and children. They put them in prison
and whipped them daily. They cut off
their cars. They bored their tongues
with red hot irons. They hang men.
women aud children as witches, and con-
tinued it for fifty years. The colonies of
New England were threatened with abso-
lutte determination by their fanaticism.
They eziled Baptists and Catholics.
They drove women and helpless children.
under severest penalties, to seek protec-
ton among the savages. where they were
all murdered because they differed with
them on metaphysical divinity. Mather,
the entire clergy. the Governors aud
Legislatures all combined and We'd with
each other in radical fury and hate. As
late rs lT40 they enacted the most barba-
roas laws against sectarics and enforced
the Saybrook Platform.
And this was all done after all the gen
fuses above named had written. Chau-
Ger had three centuries before written the
Canterbury Tales. Spenser had given
the world the Fairy Queen, and drawn
the character OF Arther. 4 man whose
calling vas to please the world in an age
of almost universal corruption, had made
Portia to plead like an angel, had drawn
the character of Duncan. Miranda and
Antonio; Massinger had written, and
Milton had sung the sublimest epic in
the world. Bacon had written Novum
0rganum Essex, Russell, Raleigh and
Algernon Sidney had bled ON the scaffold
or Ia he Tower. Magma Charta had been
a law for four hundred years, The Peti
ton of Rights had been obtained fifty
years before. Lock had written on tolera
ton in exile. Laud's cruelties had passed
into history. In the very height Of thi.
madness, when the Pilgrims were roasting
indians and torturing Quakers, Jeffrey:
was making his tour through Somerset
shire, and holding the Bloody Assizes fol
the last tyrant Of the house Of Stuart
and from the gloomy walls of Bedford
prison come forth from the hands of
tinker. the Pilgrims Progress