Superpowers need origin stories — nations no less than comic-book heroes. The Pilgrims are ours. Forget the fortune-hunters of Jamestown; the tale of doughty settlers seeking religious liberty and overcoming hardship to establish the self-governing Plymouth Colony is the origin story we want. As John Turner observes in his excellent new history of the colony, “by the early nineteenth century, the Pilgrims had become symbols of republicanism, democracy, and religious toleration.” The Pilgrims are part of our national pantheon and its narrative of America as a nation devoted to liberty.
Revisionist historians have assailed this mythos, arguing that the Pilgrims were not trying to beat a thoroughfare of freedom across the wilderness. Rather, they accepted slavery and refused to extend religious liberty to others. Despite the iconic day of thanksgiving providing a “heartwarming story of two peoples feasting together instead of fighting each other,” Pilgrim settlers often wronged the natives. Furthermore, Plymouth was soon overshadowed by the establishment of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. By this reckoning, the Pilgrims were historically negligible and morally unworthy of our admiration — their significance derives from our printing their legend rather than the facts.
Turner’s book, They Knew They Were Pilgrims, alternately affirms and challenges both the popular mythos and its critics. Beginning with the separatist movement in England and continuing until Plymouth was incorporated into Massachusetts in 1691, Turner provides an engaging account of the Pilgrims, from Calvinist theology to colonial politics. While validating some criticisms, he asserts that the Pilgrims matter for more than their legend, and he deftly uses the history of Plymouth to explore ideas of liberty in the American colonies.
This should be of particular interest to conservatives as we debate rival claims about the founding principles of our nation, which the study of colonial life places in context. Though the Declaration of Independence asserts a right to liberty, we do not all mean the same thing by it. Turner demonstrates that colonial ideas of liberty were not uniform, even in Plymouth, though there was a dominant theme. The Pilgrims and their descendants understood liberty not as individual freedom to live as one pleased; when they encountered that kind of freedom at Thomas Morton’s Merry Mount settlement, they saw it as “licentiousness and recklessness.” Rather, the Pilgrims sought freedom for Christians, redeemed from bondage to sin and Satan, to live in accord with Scripture, covenanting as a congregation free from the dominion of the corrupt Church of England.