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When Massachusetts banned immigrants with different religious beliefs - then executed the ones who snuck in
By adamg on Thu, 12/03/2015 - 12:46pm
Today's the day Plymouth banned a boat carrying Quakers from landing in Sandwich, falling in line with their counterparts up in Boston who felt their Puritan citizens needed protection from those evil Quakers.
In July of 1656, two women seeking to share their Quaker faith traveled from the West Indies to Boston. The authorities did not hesitate to move against them: the pair was confined to the ship while their baggage was searched and their books confiscated. Then they were taken to jail, stripped, and searched for signs of witchcraft. After five weeks in prison, they were returned to the ship, and the captain was forced to carry them back to Barbados. Just two days later, four Quaker men and four Quaker women arrived aboard another vessel. This group spent 11 weeks in prison before being deported to England.
Three years later, three Quakers were hanged in Boston. A fourth, Mary Dyer, was granted a reprieve at the last minute, only to be hanged the next year when she returned to Boston.
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Comments
Clearly this was set up for
Clearly this was set up for comments you are looking for like "and nothing has changed by us banning Syrian immigrants:.
Sure, and then I cackled maniacally
You might want to check out Mass Moments. It's a pretty interesting site that tells you what historically important thing happened today in Massachusetts history. Like, say, today's entry.
But, yes ...
I probably wouldn't have linked to this a year ago. When I saw it today, I was indeed struck by the parallels to current events.
Parallels?
Ya, Quaker Extremism was rampant in the 1600's. That coupled with large capacity muskets and suicide tunics, i can diffidently see the parallels.
"To protect orthodox Puritanism, the courts passed a series of laws forbidding residents from housing Quakers. Quakers themselves were threatened with whipping, arrest, imprisonment, banishment, or death. But driven by conscience, some Quakers repeatedly returned to Massachusetts to preach; four of them, including Mary Dyer, went to the gallows before a shocked King Charles ordered an end to the hanging of Quakers in 1661."
Somehow i dont see us whipping or sending Syrians to the gollows, but "parallels."
"diffidently"?
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Quakers have, in fact, been seen as a considerable threat at several periods in history.
But they didn't have to be here.
By 1656, the town of Providence was twenty years old. Roger Williams was a Baptist. I think. They were essentially barred from Massachusetts Colony. The Quakers could have landed there, I guess, but they kept coming back to Massachusetts to cause trouble, I mean preach their version of the Gospel.
Roger Williams later went on to found a zoo bearing his name.
The most threatening Quaker in history was
ME! Richard Nixon!
The parallels are still there
The parallels are still there.
The Puritans saw Quakerism as an existential threat to their religion and engaged in unreasonable force to keep the Quakers out. The people opposing Syrian refugees see them as a similar existential threat to "our" culture, politics, language, whatever.
If you look around at the people demanding the Syrian refugees be kept out, you see the same politicians and pundits who had, prior to Paris and San Bernardino, been shouting about keeping Hispanic immigrants out because of crimes committed by a few of them (especially "illegals"), and using a bit of inductive logic while looking at their overall politics, you can get the strong impression that these just pundits are basically just xenophobes afraid of The Other coming here and changing things. The criminality of a few immigrants and the recent Da'esh terrorism is just giving these nitwits a good focal point to sound like reasonable people with a rational basis to keep brown people out.
The Puritans lived in a time period when vicious punishments were the norm for transgressions; nowadays we don't. So what? Governments learned in the 1800s that the overt grotesqueness of things like public torture and executions actually work against their legitimacy, not in their favor, so they stopped using such displays to exert control over their subjects and demonstrate "justice" against their criminals. Nowadays the government just locks people up forever and hides them away. That plenty of innocent people get punished due to public hysteria, or that people get punished for things that shouldn't be crimes in the first place, hasn't changed. At all.
yeah its weird
how things that have a precedent in history can be relevant throughout time
i think adam is generally a garbage tier person that runs an above average website but some of you pick silly things to harp on
That's gratitude for you
> a garbage tier person
What does this tell us about what kind of a person you are?
i wouldnt presume
to put words in your mouth, so why don't you explain your thoughts for us rather than have me assume what they are?
I don't understand the contempt for Adam.
I don't understand the contempt for Adam.
It's like this:
AG finds something interesting. It was on a site he visited today. It might seem relevant. It is guaranteed to draw a bunch of comments.
Good for him. No, really.
He digs up all kinds of cool historical things.
He digs up all kinds of contemporary things.
I don't think it's really a question of contempt. I think it's a question of controversy. Three decker fire? Sunrise? News to some, but what can you really say about them?
Someone makes a political comment? Hey, now the fun begins.
And the fact that it may be a
And the fact that it may be a kind of "leading question" somehow invalidates the response?
And, pray tell, what do such signs look like?!?
Holy cats!
Boobs...
Given the Puritan value system, I am sure the clearest sign of witchcraft was bare breasts. If none were found during the strip search, the ladies were clearly in the grace of the Lord...if such vileness was discovered, they were clearly dancing with the Devil!
Crap! I married a witch!
n/t
How do you know that she is a witch?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrzMhU_4m-g
Moles
birthmarks, a third nipple, any kind of "unusual" skin marking, really. It didn't take too much.
Actual answer
Birthmarks were considered marks of the devil.
I don't have the source
I don't have the source material in front of me right now, but our own Cotton Mather had a surefire method of detecting witchcraft. He just needed some quality time alone with the young, female suspect, during which time he would painstakingly feel every inch of her naked body for abnormalities like a "witch's teat" (ie birthmark, mole), which she might use to nurse an imp.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witches'_mark
She turned me into a newt!
I got better.
In other Plymouth boating
In other Plymouth boating news , Video: Mayflower II heads through the Cape Cod Canal
http://www.capecodtimes.com/article/20151201/NEWS/...
Not connected to MA history
Not connected to MA history so much, but another historical parallel I keep thinking of when reading about the anti-Syrian xenophobia going on now is the MS St. Louis, a ship full of German Jewish refugees shortly before WWII that got turned away from several ports, including in the U.S.