USA > Illinois > Bureau County > History of Bureau County, Illinois > Part 34
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We have given enough to indicate that al- together Forefathers' Day was duly celebrated -the addresses were elegant, eloquent, and fitting memorials to the illustrious sires who came over in the Mayflower. Certainly it must have been the exceptional auditor who
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could have listened to all these tributes and songs of praise for the great dead, and have gone away and felt the slightest desire to carp at or criticise any of the sentiments or facts uttered upon the occasion. What if some slight historical inaccuracies were ut- tered, or in the warm gush of love and admi- ration of the hour-that must have been infec- tious-some sentiment of eulogistic praise was too highly colored ! Could this be cause to mar the happy flow, and turn the sweet viands of the feast to gall and vinegar? Par- ticularly in a community largely made up of the sons and daughters of New England, could it have been anticipated that these elo- quent tributes could fall gratingly upon the ears of any one present. It does seem that no man in the world has had the cold and sour blood and brains to go through the world's graveyards and quarrel with the epi- taphs graven upon the tombstones of the dead -indited as they always have been by the hand of love and affection, as it was moved by impulse, with never a thought of what will the carping critic say. There is not probably a graveyard with a dozen stones in it in the world, but that some curious inscription will arrest the attention and mayhap in its wild raving to say something for the dear departed, both grammar and facts may be at fault, yet a pitying smile is here the extreme boundary line of the severest critic.
But it seems that the sentiments uttered on Forefathers' Day were to be mercilessly impaled upon the pen of the critic, a pen dipped in wormwood, and determined to de- face and pull down every evidence of a tribute or mark of affectionate memory of the sturdy old forefathers of New England.
We can, therefore, easily understand why it was that the community was deeply moved, and much comment and discussion, and a lively interest was started up by a newspaper
discussion that was had in the Bureau County Tribune in which the performances at the Forefathers' Day of December 22, 1879, were taken to task and their history sharply criti- cised by a correspondent of that paper. In that paper of January 9, 1880, appeared a short article over the signature of "Vox Populi" attacking Mr. McDougal's account of the schools. He says in his honors to New England he had fallen into slight errors and proceeds to point out that the country is not indebted to Harvard College for the ordi- nance of 1787, but to Thomas Jefferson. The ordinance of 1787, he says, not only set apart every 16th section for schools, but it prohib- ited slavery in all the Northwest, and provid- ed for the reclaiming of fugitive slaves es- caped from other States," etc., etc. This crit- ic attracted little attention and elicited no reply.
But in the paper of the week before-Janu- ary 12-"Independent" (John Scott, we be- lieve) had opened his batteries in the follow- ing style:
" On the evening of December 22, last, we stepped into the Congregational Church and heard part of the exercises in commemora- tion of the 259th anniversary of the landing of the Pilgrims upon Plymouth Rock. We were surprised and amazed at the glowing eulogies pronounced upon the Pilgrims and Puritans of 1620 and the Colonial colonies, of the same persons and their descendants of later years, upon that occasion.
"It was stated by one of the speakers, if we rightly understood him, that the Pilgrims and Puritans were men of correct religious habits and high moral standing; ‘that we were indebted to the Pilgrims and Puritans for our form of government;' that they fled from the mother country to escape religious persecution; 'that they were men of great independence of character;' 'that they de-
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termined to set up a different form of govern- ment in this country for themselves.' If we look at the history of the Pilgrims and the Puritan colonies impartially, and not through the mists and dogmas of the church, which now represent the same faith, we will see that most of the eulogies to the Pilgrims and Puritans upon such occasions, for be- queathing to us our free form of government, or the right to worship God according to the dictates of a man's own couscience is incon- grnous and nonsensical.
"The most inestimable principle that has ever been incorporated into our national gov- ernment is that of a separation of Church and State and of complete religious freedom. We never inherited these principles from the Pilgrims or Puritans. Impartial history shows conclusively that they never believed in such doctrine but always, in the early col- onies, rejected it, and enacted the most bitter and relentless laws for the purpose of perse- cuting the advocates of religious freedom and those who believed in a complete separa- tion of Church and State.
"Rev. Dr. Edwards drew a distinction between the Pilgrims and Puritans, but the distinction is without a difference. It is claimed by the religious teachers, who are representatives of the Puritan faith, that they did not persecute others on account of their religious belief; that it is exceedingly doubtful if ever, in Colonial times, they eveu hanged a witch. We would refer all such to Bancroft's History, from which we learn that in the month of December, A. D. 1659, on Boston Commons, and within a stone's throw of Faneuil Hall and Old South Church, spoken of on the anniversary occasion referred to, these Pilgrims and Puritan fathers tried, by their Colonial law, Marmaduke Stephen- son, William Robinson and Mary Dyer for the odious crime of being Quakers and dis-
senting from the Puritan Church and its form of religion; that Robinson and Ste- phenson were put to death by hanging, and the historian Bancroft, says, 'Mary Dyer was reprieved, yet not until the rope had been fastened around her neck.' She was con- veyed out of the colony, but soon returning she also was hanged for the same offense on Boston Commons.
"It is said in history that when the colonial court was deliberating as to the best manner of executing these three faultless persons, the advice of John Wilson, a noted Congrega- tionalist minister, was asked. No sooner so- licited than the reply was: ' Hang them or else, -' drawing his finger athwart his throat, as if he would have said, 'dispatch them this way.' And these three Quakers were led forth to execution on Boston Commons, guilty of no crime but that of being Quakers and dissenting from Puritan worship. John Wilson, the minister above referred to, fol- lowed and insulted them at every step to the gallows, with such language as: 'Shall such jacks as you come in before authority with your hats on,' etc.
" Impartial history shows that the colonies for one-half a century, from 1620 onward, composed of the descendants of the Pilgrims, fused with the Puritans, all believing in the same religions creed and dogmas, were oli- garchies in the strictest sense. A certain amount of property and a profession of their religious belief were prerequisites to the rights of citizenship. Judge Story says, that five- sixths of the people of the colony of Massa- chusetts were disfranchised, that they were denied even the right of petition. Had the political principles of the Puritans and Pil- grims been incorporated in our national gov- ernment there would have been a whipping post for incorrigible Baptists, like Roger Williams, and Quakers, like William Penn.
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in every village and hamlet. Let us look again to history with an impartial eye, we can deny, in the light of the record, and truthfully too, that we are indebted to the Puritans or Pilgrims for our religious or po- litical freedom, or for any part of our form of free government, as was claimed on the anni- versary referred to. On the contrary, they believed in a complete union of church and State, and passed, in all the colonies, cruel laws for the persecution of Baptists, Quakers and others who would not adopt their theology and worship at their churches.
It might be shown from history how dis- senters from their religion were fined for ab- . senting themselves from congregational wor- ship; how they were thrust into prison, and into stocks and cages; how they were pre- vented from disposing of their property by will, because they could not verify their last will and testament with an oath; how they were stripped to their waists, women as well as men, tied to the hind part of a cart and dragged through the most public streets from town to town, "and slashed" on their way until they were dragged beyond the limits of the Commonwealth; how they were driven out at the dead of night, amid snows and frosts, and were branded R, for rogue, and H, for heretic; how the Puritan colonial court ordered their ears cropped and their tongues bored through with red-hot irons; how they were hung for dissenting from the established colonial religion, and indignity heaped upon their dead bodies. It will be remembered that the great offense for which Roger Williams was sentenced to banishment by the Puritan colonial court, was for advo- cating complete religious liberty. He was driven from his home and family by the Puri- tans into the forest, inhabited only by sav- ages, amid the snows of a New England win- ter. After wandering in the forests for weeks,
he came to a place on the sea shore, which he called Providence. He was there soon sur- rounded by a few followers, to whom he preached the doctrine of a complete separa- tion of church and State. Williams and John Clark obtained a charter of lands from the parliament of England, and Williams and Clark incorporated into the charter the principles of complete religious freedom, and separation of church and State in 1682. William Penn imitated the example of Will- iams and Clark, and the Puritan colonies were compelled to fall in, as an advancing civilization was burning off their flinty faces of intolerance.
"It is said by Bancroft, the historian, ' that freedom of conscience and unlimited freedom of mind was, from the first, the trophy of Roger Williams and his Baptist friends.' True liberty of conscience was not under- stood or practiced in America until Williams and John Clark taught it amid the fires of Puritan prosecutions. Gov. Hopkins says, ' Roger Williams justly claims the honor of being the first legislator in the world that fully provided for and established a free, full and absolute liberty of conscience.' Judge Story says: 'To Roger Williams belongs the renown of establishing in this country, in in 1636, a code of laws in which we read for the first time since christianity ascended the throne of Cæsar, that conscience should be free, and men should not be punished for worshiping God in any way they pleased.'
" It is sometimes claimed by men in the churches of this day representing the Puri- tan faith and sometimes upon anniversaries, like those referred to, that the Pilgrims and Puritans fled from persecution in England; that they could not be guilty of such crime themselves in this country. History shows this to be a mistake. About the year 1644, persecutions of the Baptists and Quakers
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were so rife and disgraceful in the Puritan colonies, that King Charles II forbid such persecutions by the following mandamus : 'Gov- ernors of our plantations in New England: -If there be any of those people called Quakers, now condemned to suffer death, or other corporal punishment, or that are im- prisoned, you are commanded to proceed no farther therein.' And Lord Brougham said: "Long after the mother country had relin. quished her acts of persecution, the Puritan colonies of America continued to persecute Baptists and Quakers in the most intolerant manner.'
"The representatives of the Pilgrim and Puritan faith may continue their anniversa- ries, and pronounce their eulogies, and boast as proudly of their church ancestry as they please, but they can never blot out those dark pages of history, they can never purge the craggy hills of New England from the blood of innocent martyrs."
To these and still other attacks, Rev. Dr. Edwards wrote a reply and published it in the Tribune of February. By reference to Dr. Edwards' remarks, it will be noticed that, as if anticipating criticism, he had fortified himself by the clear distinction between the Puritans and Pilgrims. And "Independent" could only attack him by first denying that there was any difference between the two. Here is the Doctor's keen retort to "Indepen- dent:"
" Ens. TRIBUNE :- I have been a little sur- prised to find that the few remarks made by by myself and the addresses and poem deliv- ered by others at the 259th anniversary of the landing of the Plymouth Pilgrims, have called forth in your paper so much criticism. These utterances seemed to me so much in the line of well-known and acknowledged history, that if they were criticised at all, it would be for the want of startling novelty.
" Allow me to say at the outset that I have never been engaged in a newspaper contro- versy, and will not allow myself to be so en- gaged now; but will ouly tresspass upon your space sufficient to establish two points.
"And the first is this: That the misdeeds of the Puritans of Boston and Salem, and other places named in the criticism of " In- dependent" are not at all relevant. All of this is entirely without bearing upon the subject. We were celebrating the landing of the Pil- grims at Plymouth, and not the landing of the Puritans in Boston. If we had been commemorating the settlement of Princeton it would certainly not have been relevant to recount the faults of the early pioneers of Galesburg and Chicago, and to charge them upon Princeton. That distinction I took pains to point ont in my remarks. If any statements concerning Plymouth are denied they can easily be substantiated. I do not see that they are denied, even in this criti- cism.
"The second point on which I wish to dwell a moment is this: I am willing to go farther than the criticised remarks extend, and to say that the persecutions of the Puritans were less fierce, less malignant, less unreasonably intolerant than the persecutions which they themselves, and others like them, were suffer- ing at about the same time in Europe. No one denies that the Puritans committed acts of intolerance. But our proposition is that they were no worse in this respect than their neighbors and, indeed, that they were some- what better. Independent does not seem to think so. Let us look at the facts, at what the world was doing at or about the time of the Plymouth Colony.
"In the first place, the Pilgrims Jeft En- gland because of persecution by an intolerant church and a tyrannical government. They were subjected to fines and imprisonment.
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They were stripped of their possessions, and left to starve and endure the inclemency of the weather unprotected. They were not even allowed to emigrate. When they tried to get away in small detachments, after sacrificing most of their property, they were hunted by the minions of a tyrannical court, and by a fierce mob. ‘At one time at Boston, in Lin- colnshire, a large party of them got safely at night on board ship. But the master was treacherous, and handed them over to the of- ficers with whom he was in complicity. Their goods were rifled and ransacked, the men were searched to their shirts for money; even the women were compelled to submit to like indignities, and thus outraged, insulted and robbed, they were led back to the town as a spectacle and wonder to the gaping crowd.' The same company, with some others, made afterward another attempt. When some of the men as a firm detachment, had gone on board a Dutch ship at a lonely place between Hull and Grimsby. the women and children, who were as yet on shore, were rushed upon by a fierce crowd, who were armed with ' bills, guns and other weapons.' The ship-master, seeing the danger, weighed anchor and de- parted, leaving the defenseless multitude on shore to the mercy of their merciless foes. All this and a thousand other harms and indigni- ties, which we have not time to relate, they suffered, for no other reason than because they quietly met at certain times for the wor- ship of God in their own way. And all these sufferings were inflicted upon them according to law.
" When the magistrates of Salem were exe- cuting witches, what was going on in the Old World? No less a man than the learned and humane Sir Matthew Hale had, not long before, done the same thing, as Chief Baron of the Court of Exchequer. Was it very unreasonable, in those days of slow
communication, that the Justices of a re- mote colony should accept for law what had been so proclaimed by that worthy Judge?
"'England in 1659 had not put to death a heretic for forty-three years,' says Inde- pendent. This statement is highly credita- ble to the Puritans' tolerance, for the year 1659 forms the close of their power in England. According to that statement, borrowed from my critic, it seems that the Puritans, during the whole period of their domination in that country, had not exe- cuted a single heretic. But, after the restoration, the policy was soon changed. No sooner had the power of the great Crom- well passed away, than the penal statutes against dissenters began to be re-enacted. The ungrateful king, Charles II, who had been helped to his throne by the Presbyte- rians, and who had solemnly and publicly promised them not only immunity from penalties but also a share in the Govern- ment, violated these promises, and de- nounced penalties against them and all other non-comformists. ' It was made a crime to attend a dissenting place of wor- ship. A single Justice of the Peace might convict without a jury, and might, for the third offense, pass sentence of transporta- tion beyond the sea for seven years. With refined cruelty, it was provided that the offender should not be transported to New England, where he was likely to find sympa- thizing friends. If he returned to his own country before the expiration of his term of exile, he was liable to capital punishment. The jails were soon crowded with dissent- ers, and among the sufferers were some of whose genius and virtue any Christian so- ciety might well be proud.' Witness, John Bunyan and the saintly Baxter.
"But this was only a mild beginning. Graham of Claverhouse, was employed by
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Charles II and his brother and successor, James II, to enforce compliance with the established religion in Scotland. The Cove. nanters-the Puritans of the North-were to be suppressed. Claverhouse was first sent out in 1677. Very faithfully he per- formed his work. I cite only a very few instances of the brutal severity that marked his career. John Brown, a poor carrier of Lanarkshire, was, for his singular piety, known as the Christian Carrier. He was long remembered as one well versed in divine things, and as so utterly blameless in life and peaceable in disposition, that the tyrants could find no offense in bim, except that he absented himself from the State Church. On the first of May he was cutting turf, when he was seized by Claver- house's dragoons, rapidly examined, con- victed of non-conformity, and sentenced to death. It is said that even among the soldiers, it was not easy to find an execu- tioner. The wife of the poor man was present. She led one child by the hand, and it was evident that she would soon have another to care for. The prisoner, raised above himself by the near prospect of death, prayed loud aud fervently, as one inspired, till Claverhouse, in a fury shot him dead. The poor woman cried in her agony, ' Well, sir, well. the day of reckoning will come.'
" Two artisans, Peter Gillies and John Bryce, were tried in Ayrshire, for holding certain doctrines, although it was conceded that they had committed no overt act. In a few hours they were convicted, hanged, and thrown into a hole under the gallows.
"Three poor laborers, because they did not think it their duty to pray for non-elect persons, and could not pray for the King unless he was one of the elect, were shot down by a file of musketeers. Within an hour after their arrest the dogs were lapping up their blood. This was near Glasgow.
"A Covenanter, overcome by sickness, found shelter in the house of a respectable widow, and died there. The corpse was discovered by Claverhouse's agents, the poor woman's house was pulled down, her furniture car- ried away, her young son was carried before Claverhouse himself, shot dead, and buried in the moor.
"On the same day with the last mentioned murder, Margaret Maclachlan an aged wid- ow, and Margaret Wilson, a maiden of eighteen, suffered death for their religion, in Wigtonshire. They were tied to stakes on a spot which the Solway overflows twice a day. The older sufferer was placed nearer the advancing flood, in the hope that her last agonies might terrify the younger into submission. The sight was dreadful, but the courage of the survivor was sustained by a spirit as lofty as any that ever martyr exhibited. When she was almost dead, her cruel tormentors took her out and resusci- tated her. 'Will she take the abjura - tion ?' said the presiding officer. 'Never,' said the brave girl. And she was thrown back into the water.
" These sickening details might be indefi- nitely extended. We might also refer to that inhospitable persecution of the Hugue- nots, French Puritans, which occurred in England under James II. Also to the drag- onnades, under Louis XIV. in France, in which the same Huguenots were despoiled of their goods, harried in their houses, exposed to slow torture by fire, and to the cruelest and most indecent barbarities and insults. But I forbear. The enumeration thus far has been a painful task. But it was made necessary by the criticism of your corre- spondent. It shows clearly that the Puritan, though sometimes intolerant, was more sinned against than sinning. When the per- secution of his time comes to be added into one sum, it will be found that his share of
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the iniquities is but a a small fraction of the whole.
" Let me sum them up then, what seems to me the truth on these two points:
"1. The Pilgrims, whose anniversary we were celebrating, never persecuted anybody. Like their good and pious pastor, John Robinson, they recognized the fact that God had yet much new truth to reveal, and they placed no serious restriction upon the reason- able search for it.
" 2. Puritans, although in some cases intol- erant and narrow-minded, were yet as a whole, far less guilty than the general aver- age of the time in which they lived. Their vices were those of their era; their virtues were their own.
" I have no fear concerning the ultimate judgment of mankind on this matter. In past times the public mind has been abused by gross misrepresentations, and by forgeries, like the famous ' Blue Laws.' The enemies of the Puritans were very powerful and very unscrupulous. Many a slanderous tale told by disaffected parties, by criminals who had left New England for New England's good, was greedily listened to and published. But impartial history is doing them justice. They are coming forth from the ordeal of examina- tion, not indeed faultless, but certainly not the monsters they have been represented to be.
There is now in course of publication by tion why cannot the instances be given? the Massachusetts Historical Society, the diary, if so it may be called, of Samuel Sew- all, covering the time from 1671 to 1730, a period of fifty-nine years. Sewall was a Puritan of the Puritans, for thirty-six years a Justice, and for ten years the Chief Justice of the highest court in the province. He took part in the Salem witch trials, but afterward stood up before the whole congre- gation on the Sabbath, while the minister
read aloud his written confession of the great guilt which he had incurred in that transae- tion. This diary exhibits the Puritan's milder virtues, the genial side of his nature, the sincerity of his piety, the purity and sweetness of his domestic relations. It was evidently not written for publication, but now, about a century and a half after the death of its author, it has been at last secured, and is to be given to the world. To all who really desire to know the actual character of the Puritan, this journal is commended.
"A Few Questions Addressed to Truth- seekers. I want to ask a few questions, in view of the anonymous criticisms made upou the exercises of Forefathers' Day.
" Are ‘ grammar school histories,' 'pic- torial histories,' or even 'cyclopedias,' the best authorities for determining nice points in historical research? Are not the state- ments in such works rather too general for such a purpose ?
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