A History of the American People

Winthrop's career and views raised fundamental issues at the time, which have continued to
reverberate through American history and political discourse. Where does freedom end and
authority begin? What was the role of the magistrate? And how should he combine the need for
order and the commands of justice with the Christian virtue of mercy? There is no doubt that
Winthrop himself thought deeply about these issues, communing and agonizing with himself in
his journal. Generations of American historians have been sharply divided on his civic merits. In
the 1830s, George Bancroft depicted him as a pioneer in laying down representative government
in America. Later in the century Brooks Adams and Charles Francis Adams emphasized his
authoritarian character and his propensity to persecute intellectual opponents-blaming him for
the bigotry in the colony which later produced the witchhunting catastrophe in Salem. In the
1930s Perry Miller and Samuel Eliot Morison stressed that Winthrop was a man of religion first,
that his political philosophy was a projection of his Christian beliefs, thus indicating to what
extent New England was a kind of theocracy, a deliberate attempt to erect a system of
government in conformity with Christ's teaching. Yet another historian, Edmund Morgan, went
further and argued that Winthrop's magistracy was a continuing struggle, in fashioning this
Christian-utopian society, to prevent the separatist impulse, so strong among New England
settlers from undermining corporate responsibility, and instead to harness the colonists' sense of
righteousness to the cause of social justice.
Winthrop emerges from the chronicle of events as a severe and often intolerant man, and that
is how his critics saw him. He regarded himself as a man chosen by God and the people to create
a new civil society from nothing by the light of his religious beliefs, and he prayed earnestly to
discharge this mandate virtuously. He admitted his shortcomings, at any rate to himself. His
political theory was clear. Man had liberty not to do what he liked-that was for the beasts-but to
distinguish between good and evil by studying God's commands, and then to do that only which is good.' If, by God's grace, you were given this liberty, you had a corresponding duty to obey divinely sanctioned authority. In the blessed colony of Massachusetts, freemen chose their rulers. But, once chosen, the magistrate's word must be obeyed-it was divine law as well as man's. If his commands were not just and honest, his authority was not genuine,but a distemper thereof.'
Man was sinful, and struggling with his sinful nature. So sometimes magistrates had to exercise
mercy and forgiveness. But, equally, final impenitence and stiff-necked obstinacy in sin had to
be deal with ruthlessly. Conversely, the people should forgive magistrates their occasional errors
of judgment. And if these errors were persisted in, then the people had the right of removal.
Winthrop could claim that he was freely elected governor of the colony, not just once but four
times, and that therefore he embodied representative government. Moreover it has to be said, on
his behalf, that he implanted this system of government firmly in American soil, so that at the
end of twenty years the colony had been built up from nothing to a body politic which was
already showing signs of maturity, in that it was reconciling the needs of authority with the needs
of liberty.
The success of the Bay Colony in this respect would not have been possible without the sheer
space America afforded. America had the liberty of vast size. That was a luxury denied to the
English; the constraints of their small island made dissent a danger and conformity a virtue. That
indeed was why English settlers came to America. A man could stand on Cape Cod with his face
to the sea and feel all the immensity of the Atlantic Ocean in front of him, separating him, like a
benevolent moat, from the restrictions and conformities of narrow Europe. And, equally, he
could feel behind him-and, if he turned round, see it-the immensity of the land, undiscovered,
unexplored, scarcely populated at all, a huge, experimental theater of liberty. In a way, the most