The Cradle of Religious Liberty

“Then gently scan your brother man,
Still gentler sister woman;
Tho’ they may gang a kennin wrang.
To step aside is human.”
—ROBERT BURNS

There is nothing in the genius of America more precious today than the spirit of religious and political tolerance in its application to our own people. It did not come naturally; in fact, it would be difficult to conceive of any more dogmatic and less tolerant people than the first settlers on New England shores. They were sterling, courageous men and women who had willingly sacrificed the comforts of an older civilization and endured hardships beyond description in order that they might enjoy religious liberty.

Their convictions were so deeply rooted that departure from their standards seemed desecration. They, who so valued religious liberty for themselves, denied it to others. Once irreconcilable nonconformists, they became conformists to a new order and rigorous disciplinarians in matters pertaining to the faith. No will but theirs was tolerated. In the name of religion, unconscionable injustices were imposed upon dissenters. Their ingenuity in devising forms of mental and bodily suffering was boundless

The stocks, whipping posts and stake were popular instruments of torture, and slight infractions of the law brought down upon the heads of unfortunate offenders, public ignominy and shame. The early New Englanders were more than grim defenders of their faith. Their offensive was so vigorous and well-sustained that there was little occasion for a defensive. If there ever was a militant religion, it was that of early New England. The austerities of the faith of the Pilgrim Fathers out-shadowed the loveliness of Christian tenets. Theirs were strange interpretations of the words of the “Prince of Peace.”

Of the punishment for witchcraft Nathaniel Hawthorne said, “These scenes you think are all too somber. So indeed, they are, but the blame must rest on the somber spirit of our forefathers who wove their web of life with hardly a single thread of gold.”

Magistrates imposing death penalties were as lacking in enthusiasm for their work as Pontius Pilate of old, on a certain memorable occasion. They yielded, even as Pilate bad yielded, to the clamor of public opinion.

New England judges, in ordering unfortunate women to bear throughout life the scarlet letter “A” to proclaim them adulteresses to all the world, must have spent many sleepless nights when the words, “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone,” occurred to them.

The modesty of the early New England settlers seems to have been more in evidence than their mercy, for it has been stated that it was due to regard for feminine delicacy that women sentenced to capital punishment were burned and not hanged. Hanging might make an indecorous display of their legs.

Descendants of New England pioneers are proud of their ancestry and glad to proclaim the fact that so far as the United States are concerned, New England is in deed the cradle of religious liberty. Reaction releases energy and the reaction against intolerance in New England was swift and far-reaching. From having been among the most intolerant, they became tolerant.

Maryland, however, contests the claim of New England to the title of “Cradle of Religious Liberty.” The legislature passed a law in 1649 entitled, “An Act Concerning Religion” which reads as follows:

“Whereas, the enforcing of conscience in matters of religion hath frequently fallen out to be of dangerous consequence in those commonwealths where it hath been practiced, Therefore be it now enacted that no person shall be molested in respect to religion, except that all persons who deny the Holy Trinity shall suffer death and confiscation.”

There seems little choice to be made between the penalty of death as imposed by the early settlers of Maryland upon those who would not embrace the doctrine of Trinitarian lam, and the penalties of the stocks, whipping-post and stake as inflicted by the early New England settlers upon those who could not, or would not embrace the stern, uncompromising doctrines of the Puritans. Whether New England or Maryland has the more authentic claim to the title, the uppermost thought in the minds of the readers of history is that they both ought to be very glad they are out of a mighty bad mess. Both New England and Maryland must defer to Virginia in matters of political significance to our country.

In New England a school of liberal thinkers and writers, Emerson, Hawthorne, Longfellow, Whittier, Holmes, Bryant, Lowell, and Thoreau, arose and New England became the national center of education and culture. In the ministry Brooks, Phillips, and Beecher were proudly proclaimed as among the great.

With such a galaxy of thinkers to lead New England out of its morass of bigotry and intolerance the future seemed secure. Not only did the different branches of the Protestant faith find ways to live together, but the mantle of tolerance was enlarged to include within its folds the Catholic immigrants who began to arrive in numbers. The first inroads into Anglo homogeneity were made by Irish and French Canadian settlers. Their boys played with boys of Mayflower ancestry on historic commons, with little regard to social, political, or religious differences. An interesting anthropological experiment had begun. The melting pot was boiling. From it was eventually to come a well-fused type, Homo Americanus, fifty thousand years or thereabouts removed from Mr. Wells’ Homo Antiquus. Slow but certain progress has been made in the promotion of better understanding since the morning when the winged arrow brought to earth him in whose bosom first dwelt the spirit of good-will towards all men. It has been a discouraging and contentious march, and much blood, innocent as well as guilty, has been brutally spilled along the way; but thank God for the progress made.

In the face of pseudo-statesmen shrieking the inevitability of war, successive stages of civilization have been passed. The fealty of the individual caveman to his family was reluctantly extended to others of his kind.

Clans have declared truces in inter-clan warfare to join in arms against common enemies, with the result that nations have come into being, and in turn nations even have allied themselves with other nations to wage more effective warfare. The greater the coalition, the more devastating and cruel the warfare; and yet, in the exercise of good conscience and common sense, we know that it will not always be so; that the day must come, “When man to man will brother be, for a’ that.” There are sane methods of settling differences.

While the struggle for religious liberty had proceeded without large-scale bloodshed in New England and elsewhere in the United States, the struggle for political liberty had not fared so well. Two wars with the mother country were fought before young America considered herself entirely on her own, and another war was in the making. If there is anything worse than international warfare, it is civil warfare, and the United States was destined to experience it in the extreme of bitterness. In the early sixties the North and South joined in sanguinary issue.

During four terrible years the struggle continued toward its inevitable conclusion — impoverishment, destitution, and unspeakable sorrow. The hands of the dock of civilization were turned back, but the nation shook itself loose and sadder, but wiser, struggled on again.

As before stated, it is the writer’s purpose to relate the story of the rise of Rotary, and in order that the spirit of the movement may be better understood, he has drawn attention to antecedent circumstances which he thinks, in a measure responsible, for the state of mind in America which made the birth of Rotary possible during the early part of the twentieth century.

He makes no mention of the unceasing effort of European countries to substitute peace psychology for war psychology, except to acknowledge that they were not without good effect even in instances when they seemed to fail in their purpose. There can be no doubt that the sentiment in all countries favors peaceful settlement of international differences, and that all men, whosesoever they may be situated and whatsoever their experiences may have been, deplore the fact that war still continues to be the ultimate recourse.

Rotary hopes that it may find a way to help promote international understanding and good to the end that resort to arms may be less frequent in the future.

Ideas have unhinged the gates of empires. Epigrammatic utterances have influenced the lives of generations of men. Soon after the end of the civil war, a New York editor wrote a sentence of four words: “Young man, go west.” It aroused New England and all the east to action as no words in times of peace had ever aroused those parts before. From farm, factory, and home the trek began. Fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, uncles, aunts, and cousins all were there. Every known means of conveyance was used. Slowly and laboriously these hardy pioneers traversed mountains, hills, and plains searching for better and cheaper land and other forms of wealth, and at the same time spreading the doctrine of religious liberty. Here and there the numbers were augmented by recruits from abroad — British, Irish, German, and Scandinavian, all welcome and all high in hope as they struggled onward toward the promised land.

Now and then, small groups attracted by alluring prospects, detached themselves and established communities along the way, in hopes that such communities would grow into important cities, to the enrichment of the early settlers.

The majority of the prospective town sites failed to develop in accordance with expectations, and many were ultimately abandoned to agricultural development or other purposes to which they were adapted; others did come up to expectations, and a few developed far beyond wildest dreams.

From some one of the many town sites prospected a mighty city was to rise, the metropolis of the west. Where was it to be? One man’s guess was as good as another’s, and fortune awaited the lucky.

Milwaukee was a favorite; Vincennes had its following; St. Louis was in the running; and others thought well of the chances of Chicago which had grown around Fort Dearborn, at the mouth of a river. Friends of the latter held that Milwaukee was too far north; St. Louis, too far south; that Chicago was near enough to the southern limit of Lake Michigan to accommodate freight transportation by water, and also near enough to a straight line across the continent to give it the benefit of transcontinental transportation which was bound to be a factor in the commerce of the future.