![]() Morison’s running head for that chapter included the word “communism,” which appeared 12 times in his edition even though the term did not exist when the Pilgrims lived. In 1623, Bradford had noted that the Pilgrims abandoned an economic model in which individuals would work for the common good, and instead tended their own farms. In 1952, with a Red Scare rising, the historian Samuel Eliot Morison edited Bradford’s book. Speaking at Plymouth in 1920, on its 300th anniversary, Massachusetts Senator Henry Cabot Lodge saw in the Pilgrims’ experiences the “foundations upon which the great fabric of the United States has been built up,” a telling statement as the world recovered from the influenza pandemic and a world war. Orators remembered Plymouth and its founders well into the 20th century, again shaping the story to fit their needs. Such figures have long populated stories about Thanksgiving, which became a federal holiday in 1863. Illustrators depicted them weighed down by heavy woolens, trudging through wintry woods, seemingly always on their way to church. Nonetheless, the Pilgrims became stock figures in the American pageant and in elementary-school classrooms. William Apess, a Pequot historian, condemned the treatment of his ancestors. Mencken mocked the Pilgrims’ self-righteous piety. Of course, not everyone bought the positive spin. Webster and others across New England condemned slavery, but most politicians echoed Plymouth’s past: they touted grand principles that many could not enjoy. Slavery remained widespread and the federal government in the 1830s forcibly relocated thousands of Natives from the Southeast. Yet when Webster made his statement, many Americans could not enjoy these privileges. Here, he declared, was “where Christianity, and civilization” took hold in a vast wilderness “peopled by roving barbarians.” The town, its 19th-century celebrants declared, launched a system that produced representative government and religious freedom, two hallowed tenets of America enshrined in the U.S. In 1820, on the town’s bicentennial, the statesman Daniel Webster venerated Plymouth in the racialist language of his age. What had once been a story about religious obedience became a story about religious freedom. Second, Plymouth stood for the religious freedom sought by its founders.īy that point, the ends for which Plymouth would be useful had changed. First, the Mayflower Compact, the 200-word document written and signed on the journey, introduced the idea of self-rule maintained with a constitutional government. (Virginians, by contrast, celebrated Jamestown instead.) Their argument hinged on two claims. In the 19th century, Plymouth resurfaced when historians and politicians in New England claimed it was the birthplace of the nation. The word “Plymouth” may today conjure up visions of Pilgrims in search of religious freedom, but that vision did not reflect the circumstances on the ground in the early 17th century. In the centuries that followed, that trend continued, even as the form of that nationalism changed. But after the establishment of the United States, historians and politicians cemented Plymouth in the script of American nationalism, minimizing its well-documented problems and magnifying its alleged wonders. Before 1776, few commentators made much of that bit of history. 16, 1620, though accounts of the exact date differ-and the creation of the Plymouth idea that is still familiar to many Americans. More than a century would pass between that landing-on what was recorded as Dec. It attracted few English migrants before Massachusetts absorbed it in 1691. They believed that this was the place to launch their new England, a refuge for persecuted Protestants. This autumn marks the 400th anniversary of the arrival of a hardy band of English religious dissenters at the Wampanoag town of Patuxet. ![]()
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