Tag:

laws

Plymouth Colony Drafts the First Laws in North America

Democracy formally took root in colonial North America on Oct. 4, 1636, when Plymouth Colony drew up the first written legal code on the continent.

Plymouth Colony was settled in 1620 by Anglicans and Separatists, also known as Brownists, and later known together as the Pilgrims. The Pilgrims believed God commended them to adopt democracy as their form of government. And that government should enforce religious belief.

A typical house in Plymouth Colony, recreated at Plimoth Patuxet.

By 1636, Plymouth Colony had fewer than 3,000 inhabitants. The Massachusetts Bay Colony would eventually eclipse it in wealth and population and absorbed the entire colony.

In the beginning, the laws of Plymouth Colony only carried the weight of a proclamation by the General Court. But in 1636 the court put them into a code known as the “General Fundamentals.”

Plymouth Colony Bill of Rights

The legal code included a rudimentary bill of rights and guaranteed trial by jury. It levied taxes, decreed the distribution of land and set out punishments for specific crimes. Several crimes carried the death penalty: treason, murder, witchcraft, arson, sodomy, rape, bestiality, adultery, and cursing or smiting one’s parents.

The Book of the General Laws of the Inhabitants of the Jurisdiction of New-Plimouth

Plymouth magistrates, however, rarely meted out the death penalty. Only one sex crime ever resulted in an execution: Thomas Granger in 1642 for bestiality.

Edward Bumpus received a death sentence for “striking and abusing” his parents in 1679. But he received only a severe whipping due to his insanity. The alleged killers of a Praying Indian named John Sassamon in 1675, which set off King Philip’s War, also received the death penalty.

Rules for Adultery

Convicted adulterers were to be punished by wearing the letters ‘A’ and ‘D’ sewn on to their garments. Nathaniel Hawthorne, of course, used that in his short story, The Scarlet Letter. Anyone convicted of burglary got the letter ‘B’ branded onto his hand. Profanity got you not more than three hours in the stock. Whipping or a fine of 40 shillings went to those who traveled, worked or participated in sports on the Sabbath.

Watching their language.

The General Fundamentals began with a preamble that declared “the associates of the Colony of New Plimouth” as “free born subjects of the kingdom of England.” As such, they had all the privileges of Englishmen. They didn’t have a charter, but believed that God wanted democratic government.

The first article of the General Fundamentals was a declaration of self-rule, stating,

That no act, imposition, law or ordinance be made or imposed upon us at present or to come, but such as has been or shall be enacted by the consent of the body of freemen or associates, or their representatives legally assembled; which is according to the free liberties of the freeborn people of England.

The second article established the election calendar, including “a free election annually, of governor, deputy governor, and assistants. But only freemen –men of property who belonged to the church — could vote.

Plymouth Colony also drew up laws for preaching the Gospel to indigenous people and for admitting them as preachers.

Historic Thanksgiving Foods now available in paperback. Order your copy here from Amazon.

This story about Plymouth Colony last updated in 2023.

Images: Plymouth Colony house by By Ben Franske – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4459090.

9 comments 5.1K views

The ‘Loyal Nine’ Christen the Boston Liberty Tree

Andrew Oliver discovered on August 14, 1765 that he had made a terrible career move – a decision that ultimately gave birth to the Liberty Tree of Boston, an important symbol of revolutionary fervor in the Massachusetts Colony.

When Parliament passed the Stamp Act in March of that 1765, Oliver, secretary to the province of Massachusetts and brother-in-law of future governor Thomas Hutchinson, won the appointment of tax stamp administrator for Massachusetts.

A 1774 British print depicts the tarring and feathering of Boston Commissioner of Customs John Malcolm in front of the Liberty Tree of Boston.

Though he did not favor the act personally, Oliver went along with the new job. The act required that documents, such as newspapers and contracts, bear the stamp showing taxes had been paid on them. This was something of an escalation of the disagreements between the colonies and the crown.

While England had long sought ways to make the colonies pay their own way, the Stamp Act would have teeth. Wills, contracts and other documents would have no legal weight if they were not written on paper that bore the official stamp. Being the administrator of the tax stamps would be a powerful and lucrative position.

The colonists had a long history of sliding around many of England’s trade rules that were designed to raise revenue, but the stamp act, colonists feared, would be hard to get around. No stamp and a contract could be ruled invalid. Making matters worse, the tax had to be paid in British Pounds Sterling.

Access to hard currency was always a problem in the colonies. And by refusing payments in either local currencies or other forms, the colonies could find themselves hard pressed to have enough British money available to meet their needs.

The Liberty Tree

Though the tax as proposed was relatively modest, the more forward thinking colonists realized the amounts could be raised at will once the precedent of a tax was established. And the merchants who were skilled at avoiding British laws realized that their skills could soon be rendered worthless.

These merchants in Boston were the early forerunners of the Sons of Liberty, and a group of them formed a political organization called “The Loyal Nine.” They set about fending off the Stamp Act. Their protests went public on August 14, 1765, when they hanged Andrew Oliver in effigy from a tree at the corner of Orange (now Washington) and Essex Streets.

On that day, the Liberty Tree was born. At first, the officials didn’t know exactly what to make of the protest. They debated responding and removing the dummy from the tree. But they concluded that taking action would provoke a response when the protest was meant to be peaceful. They were wrong.

The protesters had every intention of driving their point home. As the day wore on, they took the dummy down from the tree and proceeded to march to a building Oliver had constructed at his wharf. Believing that the structure was intended to be part of the Stamp Act enforcement, the group tore it down.

They then proceeded to Oliver’s home, where they burned the dummy and ransacked his offices. Oliver resigned. He told the Loyal Nine that he would not enforce the Stamp Act.

Death of Andrew Oliver

Similar tactics were employed elsewhere in the colonies, and soon the King found himself with no way to implement the tax. Though later repealed, it had set some important precedents. Among them: the establishment of the Liberty Tree as a rallying point for the Sons of Liberty and their followers.

It would serve its purpose for 10 years. Both the Patriots and the British troops used it as a scene for tar and feathering. The British used it to make their point when handing out punishments to the rebels.

The tree was a rallying point for patriots right up until its end, during the siege of Boston in 1775. In 1776, the British troops chopped it down in a show of defiance before they fled the city. Andrew Oliver, by then, was no longer around to care about the tree.

After his elevation to lieutenant governor when Hutchinson assumed the governorship in 1771, he died in 1774. The Sons of Liberty had grown much larger by that point, and were so boisterous that few of Oliver’s family dared attend his funeral for fear of attack.

This story last updated in 2022.

11 comments 2.7K views

Henry Knox: Six Surprising Facts About the Father of American Artillery

Henry Knox, born July 25, 1750, was best known for his continuous military service under General Washington for the duration of the American Revolution. He commanded the American artillery and later served as secretary of war.

Henry Knox by Charles Wilson Peale

His great achievements include organizing the efforts to haul 58 artillery pieces to Boston from Fort Ticonderoga and Crown Point to help push the British from the city. He then continued to direct the artillery throughout the war, including the successful siege at Yorktown.

On and off the battlefield, Henry Knox was a remarkable man, both for his actions and his role during the times in which he lived.

1. Henry Knox Married a Loyalist

Lucy Flucker didn’t come from just any loyalist family. Her father served as the British secretary of the province of Massachusetts. At 17, she fell in love with Henry Knox, though she well knew he leaned toward the colonial rebels. You might think that upon marrying quite a bit over his station, Henry would see that his in-laws offered better prospects than following his own instincts. But it turned out differently. After their marriage, Henry and Lucy evacuated Boston when the British tightened their control over the city. Lucy’s family returned to England and she never saw them again.

2. He died broke

Knox had a rags-to-riches-to-rags life. After his service in government ended, Knox did not return to his trade selling books in Boston. Rather, he moved to Maine where his wife had inherited considerable property. He built the Knox mansion, named Montpelier by Lucy, in Thomaston. He then set about trying to make a fortune from the Maine woods. Unfortunately, he spent his final years struggling to try to repay his loans, which by the time of his death far exceeded the value of his assets.

Henry Knox by Gilbert Stuart 1806

3. He fathered many things

Knox literally fathered 13 children, most of whom did not survive to adulthood. But he also is the figurative father to the American artillery, including the industries needed to support it. Early on, he advocated the creation of the West Point military academy. And the Society of the Cincinnati, the fraternal organization that formed for Revolutionary War veterans, credits him with first proposing its organization as far back as 1775.

4. He witnessed the Boston Massacre

One of the earliest records of Knox’s life was his testimony about the events of the evening of the Boston Massacre. Knox witnessed a scuffle between some rowdy patriots and British troops. He tried to calm the situation, but failed. Knox ultimately testified on behalf of the British soldiers, providing details about what happened that night.

5. He was nearly replaced as commander of the artillery

American diplomat Silas Deane worked in Europe to recruit experienced military leaders to come assist the colonists in developing their military capabilities. He enticed French artillery specialist Philippe Charles Tronson du Coudray to join the American cause in 1777, with a promise that he would lead the artillery. General Washington had to intervene with Congress on Knox’s behalf to prevent the appointment. Washington succeeded in having du Coudray appointed to a lower position. The matter then ended in September of the year when du Coudray fell from his horse into the Schuylkill River in Pennsylvania and drowned.

6. He turned down a British commission

Several biographers claim that Knox could, if he had chosen, gotten a commission as an officer in the British army. They report that his father-in-law, originally reluctant to have his daughter marry a bookseller at all, later tried to make the best of it by arranging a commission for Knox. Knox, however, declined the offer.

This story was updated in 2021.

15 comments 6.2K views

Flashback Photo: Exploding Steamboats Cause Congress To Act

[jpshare]

Steamboat Lexington tragedy by Nathaniel Currier

The tendency of steamboats to blow up and catch fire became such a concern by 1838 that the U.S. Congress created the Steamboat Inspection Service on July 7.

Its purpose was to ‘provide better security of the lives of passengers on board of vessels propelled in whole or in part by steam.’

The spectacular explosion of the SS Moselle in the Ohio River on April 25, 1838, no doubt contributed to the passage of the act. The vessel’s boiler exploded just east of Cincinnati, killing 160 of the estimated 300 passengers.

The Steamboat Inspection Service was soon found to be inadequate. On Jan. 13, 1840, the SS Lexington was en route to Stonington, Conn., from New York when it caught fire, killing all but four of the 143 passengers and crew. She was carrying a cargo of 150 bales of cotton, which were stored next to the casings around the smokestack. The casings ignited, the fire spread to the cotton and the crew was unable to extinguish the flames. Lifeboats were inadequate and sank almost immediately after they were launched. Passengers drowned or froze to death. The four who survived had clung to bales of cotton floating in the water.

Just before he joined Ives, Nathaniel Currier had a blockbuster hit with his print of Awful Conflagration of the Steamboat Lexington, a tragic fire that killed 139 people aboard a steamship in Long Island Sound.

Between 1847 and 1852 an unusual number of steamboats exploded, caught fire or collided. Congress passed another law, the Steamboat Act of May 30, 1852. It required testing of boilers, safety valves and licensing of pilots.

Steamboat Lexington before the tragedy

2 comments 1.3K views

Crystal Eastman Keeps Her Name, Doesn’t Do Housework

Crystal Eastman wanted to change the world for women and to change the way women lived in the world. For that, she was called “the most dangerous woman in America.” That has changed to “the most neglected political leader in America” because of her pioneering legislation and the permanent political organization she formed.

A suffragette, magazine editor and lawyer, she inspired her fans and vexed her critics. In November of 1916, she managed it once again, this time when the papers reported on her second marriage. “Miss Crystal Eastman, radical feminist, suffrage leader and birth control advocate, wants to be known by her maiden name.”

The story aimed to shock. But she went one better in 1923, when she published a confessional article in a magazine: Marriage Under Two Roofs. It described how she and her husband decided to live in separate residences. “…it has given us the one serene and happy period of all our married life,” she wrote.

Crystal Eastman

Crystal Eastman from a 1910 newspaper

She was born in Marlborough, Mass., on June 25, 1881, to two Congregationalist ministers, Samuel and Annis Eastman. Her mother was one of the first women ordained in the United States. Crystal had a younger brother, Max Eastman, who would work with her on radical causes. The family soon relocated to Canandaigua, N.Y., in the Burned-Over District, a hotbed of reform and religious fervor.

By 1916, Crystal Eastman had earned a law degree from New York University, a master’s in sociology from Columbia and a B.A. from Vassar. Shortly after school, she worked on an investigation of labor conditions in Pittsburgh. From there she went on to agitate for safe workplaces and medical care for workers injured on the job.

She helped write New York state’s workers compensation laws, the first in the nation. Then she went to work in President Wilson’s administration investigating workplace safety.

She abhorred the general condition of women in the country, both in the workplace and in the home. But her feminism had a very practical strain, and she saw the suffrage movement as just the start of progress for women.

Perhaps most controversially, she saw a woman’s need to control whether and how many children she had as critical to gaining equality.

Crystal Eastman, Socialist

In the age of industrialization and worker exploitation, Eastman saw socialism as the solution. As a rabble-rousing speaker addressing both socialist and feminist themes, as well as her staunch opposition to World War I, she was well-received at gatherings of activists and by the general public.

Virtually no account of Eastman’s activities fails to mention her beauty and vitality. At nearly six feet tall, she stood out in any gathering. Though consumed by serious issues, she also enjoyed the arts, music and theater. And she loved to laugh.

At the same time, Eastman had no interest in managing a home, and had little use for housekeeping skills. She despised the idea that women should rely on men. And she believed – probably an idea inherited from her mother – that women should compete directly with men in the workplace. The idea of male superiority, she argued, was a myth. If allowed to compete, she believed, women would do just fine.

Post-Suffrage

Her ideas delighted audiences. But once woman won the right to vote in 1920, the divisions within the women’s movement grew more pronounced. Eastman, who had co-founded the precursor to the ACLU, wanted the National Women’s Party to embrace a wide range of issues. Those included equal pay, equal treatment under the law and reproductive rights.

Other elements of the movement, however, had not signed on for change so radical. They wanted the vote, and they got it with the 19th Amendment. Eastman viewed universal suffrage as a starting point. She made that point in a speech, “Now We Can Begin.” In it, she argued for women’s economic independence — and for men to share in the housework.

“No woman who allows husband and children to absorb her whole time and interest is safe from disaster,” she said.

Eastman’s outspoken socialism caused a problem for some leaders in the post-suffrage women’s movement. Others found her unconventional views on sexual liberation for women to be off-putting. They wanted a lower profile for her.

Eastman then joined up with the group that authored the first Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution in 1923 – the same one resurrected and defeated in the 1970s.

Downhill

Professionally, Eastman’s life took a difficult turn. From 1918 to 1921, she and her now more-famous brother Max published the Liberator, a progressive magazine. She served as its managing editor until the two sold it. After that, she found it harder to get work because of her support for communism.

Her first, brief marriage ended in divorce.

Her second husband, pacifist Walter Fuller, had come to America to avoid World War I. He moved to England to work as an editor, and Eastman shuttled between the U.S. and the UK. Her heart belonged to America, but her family’s best hopes for financial support lay in Britain.

The year 1927 found Eastman and her husband contemplating a return to the United States. She traveled first, and word soon followed that Walter had died – victim of a stroke. Eastman, who had suffered from shaky health for years, then died on July 8, 1928 of nephritis. Friends rallied to raise her two children, Jeffrey and Annis.

Her obituary from the Nation magazine reminded people of her impact. “When she spoke to people—whether it was to a small committee or a swarming crowd—hearts beat faster. She was for thousands a symbol of what the free woman might be.”

This story was updated in 2022.

2 comments 1.7K views

Flashback Photo: Connecticut Cracks Down on the Horseless Carriage With the 1st Speed Limit

[jpshare]

1901 Kidder Steam Wagon by the Kidder Motor Vehicle Co. in New Haven, Conn.

On May 21, 1901, the Connecticut Legislature passed a speed limit law aimed at mitigating a brand-new menace on the roads: the automobile.

It was the first numerical speed limit in the United States, and it was first enacted in Connecticut for a reason. Horseless carriage manufacturers were springing up all across turn-of-the-century New England, and New Englanders were buying – and driving — their products.

A 1917 trade publication refers to New England as ‘the great manufacturing center’ of the early days of the industry. By 1901, new cars were made from the Pawtucket Steamboat Co. in Pawtucket, R.I., to the Lane and Dailey Motor Co. in Barre, Vt.

Western Massachusetts and Connecticut were especially fertile territory for ambitious automotive startups. Frank Duryea built automobiles with internal combustion engines in several western Massachusetts factories, while The Holyoke Automobile Co. was making the Tourist Surrey and the Tourer in Holyoke, Mass. The Loomis Auto Car Co. in Westfield, Mass., produced the Loomis Runabout. Hartford’s leading auto manufacturer, the Columbia Automobile Company was pumping out hundreds of touring cars, runabouts and ‘gasoline electric vehicles.’

Siteamer manufacturers proliferated as steam engines had been around for awhile and their technology was well understood. By 1901, the Locomobile Company had just moved from Watertown, Mass., to Bridgeport, Conn., to mass-produce the finicky steam cars. Steamers were also made in New Haven, Conn., by the Kidder Motor Vehicle Co. ; in Melrose, Mass., by the Clark Automobile Co.; in Easton, Mass., by the Eclipse Automobile Co.; in Chicopee Falls, Mass., by the Overman Automobile Co.; and in Keene, N.H., by the Keene Automobile Co.

Taking It To Heart

For many, the newfangled machines were an unwelcome disruption to New England’s pastoral landscape. A Vermont farmer wrote that his horses took the arrival of the automobile much to heart.

My hostler did almost as much kicking as his four-footed charges. He insisted that he had to hunt for the horses in the hay loft, because they invariably went up the feed spout every time I started the engine in the stable: and when I asked him to wash the automobile, he fainted dead away, and revived only long enough to give his notice of departure.

Connecticut Rep. Robert Woodruff also took the arrival of the automobile much to heart. In 1901, he introduced a bill limiting motor vehicles to speeds of 8 mph in cities and 12 mph in the country.

That was a little too draconian for the Legislature, which raised the limit. Motor vehicles were not to go faster than 12 mph on city streets and 15 mph on country roads, according to Chapter 69 Public Acts of the State of Connecticut 1901.

However, drivers had to slow down when approaching or passing horse-drawn vehicles. To avoid scaring the animals, they had to come to a complete stop.

Antique New Hampshire speed limit sign

Not All That New

Limiting travelers’ speed on roadways wasn’t a new idea. In 1652, the colony of New Amsterdam (New York) imposed a stiff fine of two pounds Flemish, or about $150, on wagons, carts and sleighs driven at a gallop.

In the 1820s, Boston Mayor Josiah Quincy III was apprehended by the night watchman for speeding around the city on his sorrel horse.

The mayor was probably stopped because of an ordinance passed by Boston selectmen on Aug. 1, 1757, that ‘no Coach Slay Chair Chaise or other Carriage shall at such times, be drive at a greater Rate than a foot Pace…”

The selectmen’s reasoning? “Great Dangers arising oftentimes from Coaches Slays Chairs and other Carriages on the Lord’s days, as the People are going to, or coming from several Churches in this town, being driven with great Rapidity, and the Publick Worship being oftentimes much disturbed by such Carriages driving by the sides of Churches with great force in time thereof.”

The fine was 10 shillings. There is no record of whether Mayor Quincy received a ticket.

Two years after Connecticut passed the first speed limit, New York adopted the first comprehensive traffic code. Other states followed suit.

At least automobile drivers had a few years to enjoy the roads with some degree of freedom: The traffic light didn’t arrive in the U.S. until 1914, when the first was installed in Cleveland, Ohio.

5 comments 3.3K views

Newer Posts

Older Posts