American Heroes

by Edmund S. Morgan

  Christians were supposed to have a special love for one another, as Winthrop pointed out in the “Modell,” and Christian love found its highest symbolic expression in the sacrament. It was accordingly of special importance that no one partake of the sacrament while entertaining hostile thoughts or intentions toward his neighbor. William Perkins, the standard authority for Puritans, made the point in his Cases of Conscience that the sacrament “is a Communion, whereby all the receivers, joyntly united together in love, doe participate of one and the same Christ. And therefore, as no man in the old law might offer his Sacrifice, without a fore-hand agreement with his brother; so no Communicant may partake with others at this Table, without reconciliation, love, and charitie.”

  As communion was a time for reconciliation, reconciliation might also be a time for communion. Before setting out on the high seas for strange lands, captain, crew, and passengers might take the sacrament in celebration of their mutual love and in hope of concord and amity in the voyage. Atlantic voyages in the sixteenth, as in the seventeenth, century could present a formidable challenge to anyone’s charity toward those with whom he was obliged to rub elbows day and night. Men might be aboard ship without interruption for as much as three months and, of course, even longer on voyages into the Pacific or the Indian Ocean. A “voyage” might be an expedition of several ships, but most of the ships themselves were small, some of them only thirty or forty tons, and the size of the crew was extremely large by modern standards in proportion to the size of the vessel (as many as one man for every two or three tons), partly because sailing vessels of that day required large crews, partly because masters anticipated that many would die during the trip. Fifty men crowded aboard a vessel of a hundred tons barely had standing room on the decks. As the weeks aboard wore on, tempers grew short, and it required firm discipline to prevent flare-ups of violence. Yet seamen were scarcely the mildest and most tractable of men. The history of countless voyages shows that they frequently refused to take a ship where they were ordered. Indeed, it would appear that a wise master did not give orders without ascertaining in advance that his men were willing to carry them out.

  Precisely because a long sea voyage pressed human patience to its limits, a successful leader had to take advantage of every possible means of maintaining harmony and agreement in his followers. The great captains of the day were men who knew how to command loyalty, obedience, and even love under the most trying conditions. When dissension did break out, they knew how to deal with it swiftly and surely. Some have suffered in reputation, and perhaps rightly, because they were capable of swift, decisive, and utterly ruthless action. Francis Drake, on his way round the world, had a friend beheaded because Drake suspected him of creating a faction.

  Prevention was better than such drastic cures, and it is not unlikely that the leaders of a voyage took some pains to exhort their fellow voyagers to peace and harmony. The records of voyages seldom tell us much about the initial stages when such speeches would have been most appropriate. Unless some unusual event occurred, all we get is the date of the vessel’s or fleet’s departure, the winds they encountered, when they made the Azores or Madeira or the Canaries or Cape Verde, and so on. But occasionally one gets a glimpse of the commander instructing his men to “love one another,” as in John Hawkins’s orders to his fleet as they left the Canaries in 1564 for Guinea and the Caribbean. Sebastian Cabot’s instructions to Sir Hugh Willoughby and Richard Chancellor in their search for a northeast passage in 1553 began with an admonition that the officers of the expedition “be so knit and accorded in unitie, love, conformitie, and obedience in every degree on all sides, that no dissention, variance, or contention may rise or spring betwixt them and the mariners of this companie, to the damage or hinderance of the voyage: for that dissention (by many experiences) hath overthrown many notable enterprises and exploits.”

  There is more detail in an episode on Sir Anthony Sherley’s privateering expedition to the West Indies in 1596, because Sherley fell sick at Cape Verde and thought himself near death. Gathering his “captains, masters, and officers” about him, he made

  a very pithie and briefe speech, tending to this purpose: That as we were Christians and all baptised and bred up under one and the true faith, so wee should live together like Christians in the feare and service of God: And as we were the subjects of our most excellent sovereigne, and had vowed obedience unto her: so we should tend all our courses to the advancement of her dignity, and the good of our countrey, and not to enter into any base or unfit actions. And because we came for his [Sherley’s] love into this action that for his sake we would so love together as if himselfe were still living with us, and that we would follow (as our chiefe commander) him, unto whom under his hand he would give commission to succeede himself: all which with solemne protestation we granted to obey.

  Edward Fenton on a voyage to South America in 1582–83 carried two chaplains, and on the first Sunday aboard one of them, John Walker, preached “of concorde and the coming of the holy ghost.” Although Walker repeated his admonitions to love and concord in a later sermon, the voyage failed for lack of these virtues. Fenton was a poor leader, given to quarreling himself and unable to prevent it among his men. Robert Dudley on a voyage to Guiana a dozen years later was more successful, perhaps because he was aware of the need for love and concord. According to the account of one of his captains, Dudley inaugurated his expedition with a ceremony designed to establish harmony:

  Havinge allreadie sent his provision unto Southampton by his servants the which shoulde give attendance on him in this viage, hee sett forwarde himselfe and came unto Hampton, where retayninge a sufficient and able companie, not without his great chardge for the throughlie manninge of his shippinge for the viage, [he] gave a speciall commaundement unto all his companies that they shoulde generallie provide themselves to goe with him the Sonday followinge, beinge the thirde day of November, to the church and theare accompany him for the reverent receavinge of the Holie Communion, and after at his chardge to dine with him all togeather, as members united and knitt together in one bodie.

  Dudley later became a Catholic and may already have leaned that way—he named a cape on Trinidad after the “divine Mary.” John Hawkins, on the other hand, was something of a Puritan. But the need for Christian charity on a sea voyage was neither Puritan nor Catholic. It was a condition of survival.

  The founding of a new colony was as hazardous an enterprise as the voyage to it, and one to which concord and amity were equally crucial. The expedition that founded the first permanent English settlement at Jamestown, in 1607, nearly foundered at the outset in the dissension among members of the governing council, but it was not for lack of exhortations to and affirmations of the kind of love that Winthrop later demanded. Before the expedition had fairly established itself at Jamestown, Captain Christopher Newport, in command of the ships, played Winthrop’s role in an attempt to foster love and unity. According to the most detailed surviving account, Newport being

  no lesse carefull of our amitye and combyned friendship then became him in the deepe desire he had of our good, vehemently with ardent affectyon wonne our harts by his fervent perswaysyon to uniformity of consent, & callmed that (out of our love to him) with ease, which I doubt, without better satisfactyon, had not contentedly been caryed. We confirmed a faythfull love one to another, and, in our hartes, subscribed an obedyence to our superyors this day [June 10, 1607].

  Like many another love feast, this one did not endure for long. Two years later Robert Gray, in a sermon entitled A Good Speed to Virginia, was still pleading for love: “All degrees and sorts of people which have prepared themselves for this Plantation must be admonished to preserve unitie, love and concord amongst themselves: for by concord small things increase and growe to great things, but by discord great things soone come to nothing.” Virginia remained on the verge of coming to nothing for a good many years. As late as the 1630s Governor Harvey and his council were continually at loggerhe
ads. But like other Englishmen they knew that the solution must lie in Christian charity. On one occasion in 1631 when they determined to bury the hatchet, they joined in a lengthy declaration of love that began by crediting God with having “inspired the spirit of peace into our hearts and calmed those thoughts and purposes of contention and bitterness, whereby distraction hath happened to our councells and consultations.” Henceforth “all jarrings, discords and dissentions” would be “wholly laid aside, love embraced, and all be unanimously reconciled.” To this end, they exhorted themselves,

  lett us prepare ourselves with that Psalmist, to goe into the house of God, and after due consideration & contrition for our sinnes, seale and deliver this our concord peace and love, with the seale of that most blessed sacrament of the body and blood of our Saviour, who hath called us to the union of our fayth & made us members of his body, that living together in peace in this world, wee may live with him in eternall peace in the world to come.

  None of these exhortations and rituals in Virginia served quite as high a purpose as Winthrop’s, and none reached his level of discourse. Stephen Foster has brilliantly exhibited the creative application that Winthrop made of accepted Christian doctrine in the “Modell.” The point here is to suggest not only that Winthrop was developing a conventional doctrine but also that he wrote or spoke in a context where that doctrine was regularly called upon for an immediate practical purpose, a purpose that Winthrop, too, embraced even as he exalted it into something more than the success of a voyage.

  The New England Puritans had a creative genius for adapting old forms to new conditions. Out of a variety of local institutions—parish, borough, manor—they created the New England town. Out of English common law and assorted biblical injunctions, they created a systematic code of laws. John Winthrop, like any good captain, knew that his expedition could founder on dissension. In New England his special gift lay in bringing disagreements to a happy issue. In the “Modell of Christian Charity” he did what he could to forestall trouble. At the same time he turned a captain’s exhortation into a statesman’s proclamation of the new Canaan.

  —1987

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The Puritans and Sex

  HENRY ADAMS ONCE OBSERVED that Americans have “ostentatiously ignored” sex. He could think of only two American writers who touched upon the subject with any degree of boldness—Walt Whitman and Bret Harte. Since the time when Adams made this penetrating observation, American writers have been making up for lost time in a way that would make Harte, if not Whitman, blush. And yet there is still more truth than falsehood in Adams’s statement. Americans, by comparison with Europeans or Asiatics, are squeamish when confronted with the facts of life. My purpose is not to account for this squeamishness but simply to point out that the Puritans, those bogeymen of the modern intellectual, are not responsible for it.

  At the outset, consider the Puritans’ attitude toward marriage and the role of sex in marriage. The popular assumption might be that the Puritans frowned on marriage and tried to hush up the physical aspect of it as much as possible, but listen to what they themselves had to say. Samuel Willard, minister of the Old South Church in the latter part of the seventeenth century and author of the most complete textbook of Puritan divinity, more than once expressed his horror at “that Popish conceit of the Excellency of Virginity.” Another minister, John Cotton, wrote,

  Women are Creatures without which there is no comfortable Living for man: it is true of them what is wont to be said of Governments, That bad ones are better than none: They are a sort of Blasphemers then who dispise and decry them, and call them a necessary Evil, for they are a necessary Good.

  These sentiments did not arise from an interpretation of marriage as a spiritual partnership, in which sexual intercourse was a minor or incidental matter. Cotton gave his opinion of “Platonic love” when he recalled the case of

  one who immediately upon marriage, without ever approaching the Nuptial Bed, indented with the Bride, that by mutual consent they might both live such a life, and according did sequestring themselves according to the custom of those times, from the rest of mankind, and afterwards from one another too, in their retired Cells, giving themselves up to a Contemplative life; and this is recorded as an instance of no little or ordinary Vertue; but I must be pardoned in it, if I can account it no other than an effort of blind zeal, for they are the dictates of a blind mind they follow therein, and not of that Holy Spirit, which saith It is not good that man should be alone.

  Here is as healthy an attitude as one could hope to find anywhere. Cotton certainly cannot be accused of ignoring human nature. Nor was he an isolated example among the Puritans. Another minister stated plainly that “the Use of the Marriage Bed” is “founded in mans Nature,” and that consequently any withdrawal from sexual intercourse upon the part of husband or wife “Denies all reliefe in Wedlock vnto Human necessity: and sends it for supply vnto Beastiality when God gives not the gift of Continency.” In other words, sexual intercourse was a human necessity and marriage the only proper supply for it. These were the views of the New England clergy, the acknowledged leaders of the community, the most Puritanical of the Puritans. As proof that their congregations concurred with them, one may cite the case in which the members of the First Church of Boston expelled James Mattock because, among other offenses, “he denyed Coniugall fellowship vnto his wife for the space of 2 years together vpon pretense of taking Revenge upon himself for his abusing of her before marryage.” So strongly did the Puritans insist upon the sexual character of marriage that one New Englander considered himself slandered when it was reported “that he Brock his deceased wife’s hart with Greife, that he wold be absent from her 3 weeks together when he was at home, and wold never come nere her, and such Like.”

  There was just one limitation that the Puritans placed upon sexual relations in marriage: sex must not interfere with religion. Man’s chief end was to glorify God, and all earthly delights must promote that end, not hinder it. Love for a wife was carried too far when it led a man to neglect his God:

  …sometimes a man hath a good affection to Religion, but the love of his wife carries him away, a man may bee so transported to his wife, that hee dare not bee forward in Religion, lest hee displease his wife, and so the wife, lest shee displease her husband, and this is an inordinate love, when it exceeds measure.

  Sexual pleasures, in this respect, were treated like other kinds of pleasure. On a day of fast, when all comforts were supposed to be forgone in behalf of religious contemplation, not only tasty food and drink were to be abandoned but sexual intercourse, too. On other occasions, when food, drink, and recreation were allowable, sexual intercourse was allowable as well, though of course only between persons who were married to each other. The Puritans were not ascetics; they never wished to prevent the enjoyment of earthly delights. They merely demanded that the pleasures of the flesh be subordinated to the greater glory of God: husband and wife must not become “so transported with affection, that they look at no higher end than marriage it self.” “Let such as have wives,” said the ministers, “look at them not for their own ends, but to be fitted for Gods service, and bring them nearer to God.”

  Toward sexual intercourse outside marriage the Puritans were as frankly hostile as they were favorable to it in marriage. They passed laws to punish adultery with death, and fornication with whipping. Yet they had no misconceptions as to the capacity of human beings to obey such laws. Although the laws were commands of God, it was only natural—since the fall of Adam—for human beings to break them. Breaches must be punished, lest the community suffer the wrath of God, but no offense, sexual or otherwise, could be occasion for surprise or for hushed tones of voice. How calmly the inhabitants of seventeenth-century New England could contemplate rape or attempted rape is evident in the following testimony offered before the Middlesex County Court of Massachusetts:

  The examination of Edward Wire taken the 7th of october and alsoe Zachery
Johnson. who sayeth that Edward Wires mayd being sent into the towne about busenes meeting with a man that dogd hir from about Joseph Kettles house to goody marches. She came into William Johnsones and desired Zachery Johnson to goe home with her for that the man dogd hir. accordingly he went with her and being then as far as Samuell Phips his house the man over tooke them. which man caled himselfe by the name of peter grant would have led the mayd but she oposed itt three times: and coming to Edward Wires house the said grant would have kist hir but she refused itt: wire being at prayer grant dragd the mayd between the said wiers and Nathanill frothinghams house. hee then flung the mayd downe in the streete and got atop hir; Johnson seeing it hee caled vppon the fellow to be sivill and not abuse the mayd then Edward wire came forth and ran to the said grant and took hold of him asking him what he did to his mayd, the said grant asked whether she was his wife for he did nothing to his wife: the said grant swearing he would be the death of the said wire. when he came of the mayd; he swore he would bring ten men to pul down his house and soe ran away and they followed him as far as good[y] phipses house where they mett with John Terry and George Chin with clubs in there hands and soe they went away together. Zachy Johnson going to Constable Heamans, and wire going home. there came John Terry to his house to ask for beer and grant was in the streete but afterward departed into the towne, both Johnson and Wire both aferme that when grant was vppon the mayd she cryed out severall times.