American Pageant Chapter 4

1. The Puritans were able to leave all they had in England to seek religious, political, and economical freedom from the English throne by building a new civilization in Massachusetts, an unexplored and foreign terrain for almost all the Puritans. First of all, the Puritans were English protestants, who wanted the Church of England reformed and perished of all Roman Catholic remnants but did not want to separate from the Church; they were “non-separatists” unlike the Pilgrims ("Religion and the Founding of the American Republic"). Then, in the 1620s, the Puritans faced religious persecution for not following religious beliefs that they absolutely hated ("Religion and the Founding of the American Republic"). In these times of turmoil, the Puritans fled to America from England; from the period of 1629 to 1639, 20,000 men, women, and children fled to settle in the Massachusetts Bay Colony (Bettlock). It was only until 1640, …show more content…
By then tens of thousands of people, most of them leading prosperous lives in England, left what they had economically back in their home country to risk life in a foreign land for the sake of religion (Bettlock).

Sources
Bettlock, Lynn. "New England 's Great Migration." A Survey of New England: 1620 - 1640. N.p.,
n.d. Web. 28 Sept. 2015. .

"Religion and the Founding of the American Republic." Library of Congress. N.p., n.d. Web. 28
Sept. 2015. .

2. The Puritans formed the basis of American democracy with their town meetings, suffrage system, written agreements, etc. Town meetings were held by the