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Roger Williams, founder of the colony of Rhode Island, is famous as an apostle of religious tolerance and a foe of religious establishments. In Separating Church and State, Timothy Hall combines impressive historical and legal scholarship to explore Williams's theory of religious liberty and relate it to current debate. Williams's fierce religious dogmaticism, Hall argues, is precisely what led to his religious tolerance, making him one of the most articulate champions of the argument for the necessary separation of church and state. "Both timely and provocative. . . . Offers Williams's largely overlooked but deeply important perspective on the peaceful coexistence of committed believers of diverse faiths. The book also brings into question crucial tenets of the United States Supreme Court's First Amendment religion clause jurisprudence at a time when many are raising questions about it." -- Marci A. Hamilton, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, New York City "Hall has the entire Williams corpus under his command, and he plays the relevant texts like a master organist. He also has the legal corpus equally at his fingertips. One of the great strengths of his book is that it bridges the too often separate fields of history and jurisprudence." -- Edwin Gaustad, author of Liberty of Conscience: Roger Williams in America
A new history of Loyalism using revolutionary New England as a case study.
This book investigates the historical context, meaning, and expression of early Quaker pacifism in England and its colonies. Weddle focuses primarily on one historical moment--King Philip's War, which broke out in 1675 between English settlers and Indians in New England. Among the settlers were Quakers, adherents of the movement that had gathered by 1652 out of the religious and social turmoil of the English Civil War. King Philip's War confronted the New England Quakers with the practical need to define the parameters of their peace testimony --to test their principles and to choose how they would respond to violence. The Quaker governors of Rhode Island, for example, had to reconcile their beliefs with the need to provide for the common defense. Others had to reconcile their peace principles with such concerns as seeking refuge in garrisons, collecting taxes for war, carrying guns for self-defense as they worked in the fields, and serving in the militia. Indeed, Weddle has uncovered records of many Quakers engaged in or abetting acts of violence, thus debunking the traditional historiography of Quakers as saintly pacifists. Weddle shows that Quaker pacifism existed as a doctrinal position before the 1660 crackdown on religious sectarians, but that it was a radical theological position rather than a pragmatic strategy. She thus convincingly refutes the Marxist argument that Quakers acted from economic and political, and not religious motives. She examines in detail how the Quakers' theology worked--how, for example, their interpretation of certain biblical passages affected their politics--and traces the evolution of the concept of pacifism from a doctrine that was essentially about protecting the state of one's own soul to one concerned with the consequences of violence to other human beings.
In this Very Short Introduction, Alan Taylor presents the current scholarly understanding of colonial America to a broader audience. He focuses on the transatlantic and a transcontinental perspective, examining the interplay of Europe, Africa, and the Americas through the flows of goods, people, plants, animals, capital, and ideas.
Since the late 1780s historians and jurists have questioned what was uppermost in the minds of the framers of the United States Constitution. In surveying the thirteen states’ experiences as colonies and under the Articles of Confederation, one is struck more by their great diversity than by their commonalities. In this groundbreaking historical work, Christopher Collier brings to the fore an interpretation virtually neglected since the mid-nineteenth century: the view from the states, in which the creation and ratification of the new Constitution reflected a unique combination of internal and external needs. All Politics Is Local closely analyzes exactly what Connecticut constituents expected their representatives to achieve in Philadelphia and suggests that other states’ citizens also demanded their own special returns. Collier avoids popular theory in his convincing argument that any serious modern effort to understand the Constitution as conceived by its framers must pay close attention to the state-specific needs and desires of the era. Challenging all previous interpretations, Collier demonstrates that Connecticut’s forty antifederalist representatives were motivated not by economic, geographic, intellectual, or ideological factors, but by family and militia connections, local politics, and other considerations that had nothing at all to do with the Constitution. He finds no overarching truth, no common ideological thread binding the antifederalists together, which leads him to call for the same state-centered micro-study for the other twelve founding states. To do less leaves historical and contemporary interpretations of the U.S. Constitution not simply blurred around the edges but incomplete at the core as well. Collier delights and surprises readers in proving—with his trademark impeccable historical scholarship, firm grasp of known sources, and ample new material—that in the case of Connecticut, a stalwart defender of the provincial prerogative, all politics is and was, to one degree or another, local.
In examining the founding of New England towns during the seventeenth century, John Frederick Martin investigates an old subject with fresh insight. Whereas most historians emphasize communalism and absence of commerce in the seventeenth century, Martin demonstrates that colonists sought profits in town-founding, that town founders used business corporations to organize themselves into landholding bodies, and that multiple and absentee landholding was common. In reviewing some sixty towns and the activities of one hundred town founders, Martin finds that many town residents were excluded from owning common lands and from voting. It was not until the end of the seventeenth century, when proprietors separated from towns, that town institutions emerged as fully public entities for the first time. Martin's study will challenge historians to rethink not only social history but also the cultural history of early New England. Instead of taking sides in the long-standing debate between Puritan scholars and business historians, Martin identifies strains within Puritanism and the rest of the colonists' culture that both discouraged and encouraged land commerce, both supported and undermined communalism, both hindered and hastened development of the wilderness. Rather than portray colonists one-dimensionally, Martin analyzes how several different and competing ethics coexisted within a single, complex, and vibrant New England culture.
Rhode Island has a long history of constitutional governance. Beginning in 1636, Rhode Island's constitution has been shaped by revolution, nation-building, tumult, and further changes wrought by everything from neo-liberalism to gay rights. The result has been a living document reflecting conflicting and changing values, making the Rhode Island constitution an essential resource for understanding the cultural history of this state. In The Rhode Island State Constitution Patrick T. Conley and Robert J. Flanders provide an outstanding constitutional and historical account of the state's governing charter. In addition to an overview of Rhode Island's constitutional history, it provides an in-depth, section-by-section analysis of the entire constitution, detailing the many significant changes that have been made since its initial drafting. This treatment, along with a table of cases, index, and bibliography provides an unsurpassed reference guide for students, scholars, and practitioners of Rhode Island's constitution. Previously published by Greenwood, this title has been brought back in to circulation by Oxford University Press with new verve. Re-printed with standardization of content organization in order to facilitate research across the series, this title, as with all titles in the series, is set to join the dynamic revision cycle of The Oxford Commentaries on the State Constitutions of the United States. The Oxford Commentaries on the State Constitutions of the United States is an important series that reflects a renewed international interest in constitutional history and provides expert insight into each of the 50 state constitutions. Each volume in this innovative series contains a historical overview of the state's constitutional development, a section-by-section analysis of its current constitution, and a comprehensive guide to further research. Under the expert editorship of Professor G. Alan Tarr, Director of the Center on State Constitutional Studies at Rutgers University, this series provides essential reference tools for understanding state constitutional law. Books in the series can be purchased individually or as part of a complete set, giving readers unmatched access to these important political documents.
In Local Government in Early America, Brian P. Janiskee examines the origins of the "town hall meeting" and other iconic political institutions, whose origins lie in our colonial heritage. This work offers an overview of the structure of local politics in the colonial era, a detailed examination of the thoughts of key founders--such as John Adams and Thomas Jefferson--on local politics, and some thoughts on the continued role of local institutions as vital elements of the American political system.