The Idaho world. [volume] (Idaho City, Idaho Territory) 1864-1918, 1869-01-28
THE PURITAN ANNIVERSARY.

thus comments on the great Fore
fathers Day" Of the New England
Puritans:
To-day, two hundred and forty.eight
years ago, the first settlement in New
|England-and the third settlement in
the United States was made. The
Puritans landed upon Plymouth Rock
Curiously enough, the most prosaic PEG.
pie who ever liyed-who were the most
opposed to the fine arts-who were
sombre and gloomy in their nature and
disposition-were brought to this coun.
try by a vessel bearing the beautiful
and poetical name of the Mayfower.
They were one hundred and one in num-
Der, belonging to twenty families, and
were conveyed to the bleakest part of
the United States, up BON the bleakest
shore, and in the most inclement season
of the year. This was caused by a
mistake of the pilot, who intended to
land them upon the shore Of Virginia,
where settlement had been made, at
jamestown, thirteen years before. The
mistake was one which will be felt for
all time to come. 1t has already most
prodigiously changed the destiny OF
the country.
With the history of the Puritans al,
most every American believes himself
we'll acquainted 1t has been emilia
zoned in poetry and prose. 1t is in the
chronicles of fact and in the pages OF
fiction. 1t has been repeated for years
upon this anniversary, in all the large
towns where q company of New Eng
land immigrants could be gathered to-
gether. But their history is generally
wrong and fallacious, because only a
onc-sided and partial view is given OF
this remarkable people. They are pic
tured as saints, and endowed with viz
tues which they were very far, indeed,
from possessing.
We often hear them apostrophized as
pre-eminently the champions of liberty
and the antagonists of negro slavery.
They were, in fact the greatest sustain
ers of that system of servitude Their
vessels were engaged in the African
slave trade. They brought most Of the
negroes to this country.
When the Federal Constitution was
adopted, in 1887, it was proposed to
terminate the African slave trade III
1900, but the New England States ob-
jccted, and extended the period eight
years, or until 1908 1t is a vcritablc
fact that during our colonial period, a
blacksmith in Bristol Rhode Island,
was legally excused from violating the
Sabbath (upon which day he had been
at work, and been complained off, up
on his plea that he had been making
shackles for a slave-tradcr, on board Of
which the negro slaves had risen, which
fact had caused her to put into Bristol
in distress the day previous.
All the Puritan colonies had negroes
as slaves up to the period Of the Rcvo-
luton, and for some time after The
number was not large, because the ma
ture of the products in those colonies
would not admit of slavery being prof
liable. They not only held the negroes
as slaves, but they shipped off the cap
tive Indians, taken in war, to the slave
marts of the West Indies. Among 9th
ers so treated, were the wife and chill
dren of the celebrated chief of Mount
Hope, known in our history as King
Philip, one of the greatest and bravcst
of the aborigines who ever trod the soil
of America.
The Puritans, unlike their modern
descendants in New England to-day,
had great pride of race. The negroes
and the Indians were both treated by
them as degenerate and inferior, upon
whom were to be conferred no political
privileges.
The Puritans were not, as their name
would indicate now, tce-totalers. They
were the great manufacturers Of "New
England Rum" They drank it liberal
y-yea, they drank, and even their
preachers drank, in many cases, to ex-
cess. The great cause of the temper
ance reformation, as we'll as the Adolf
ton crusade, had nothing to encourage
them in the annals of the Puritans, to
whom, by many, both friends and ene-