Plymouth and Massachusetts P2

Last week we talked about the Pilgrims and the Massachusetts Colony producing a very different legacy than the Virginia Colony which produced chattel slavery. So while the Virginia Colony was professedly Christian, the colonies in what became Massachusetts strove to be Biblical, which made a significant difference in behavior as well as public policy. For example, Virginia's first code of laws acknowledged the Scriptures in general but cited no specific verse as the basis for its laws and politics, but the legal code in Massachusetts contained specific Scripture references accompanying the various provisions of the code.

Also, the king gave the Pilgrim settlers some of his land in the New World, just as he had the Virginia settlers. But because the Pilgrims more fully understood the Bible's teachings on private property, they went directly to neighboring Indian tribes to purchase land from them at mutually agreed-upon prices.

Content Sourced From “The American Story The Beginnings. By David Barton & Tim Barton”