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and connected me with, a descendant of Jesse Hawley, the subject of one of the book’s chapters. Trudy Hawley’s family records provided information not otherwise available. I was also delighted to be reunited with cartographer Rob McCaleb of XNR Productions, who had created the maps for my previous book. Once again he has turned words into maps that reduced me to one word: “exactly.” His geodetic eye also spotted an element in the battles fought by James Brittain that had gone unnoted by historians of North Carolina and Georgia’s violent boundary dispute, leading to its being noted for the first time in this book.

I also want to express my gratitude to the Bender Library at American University for the privileges it extended to me. And a special thanks to Professor William W. E. Slights—a profound influence on my life when I was his student at the University of Wisconsin, and a dear friend ever since—who generously shared his knowledge of colonial era English abbreviations. I also received valuable assistance from Robert S. Davis Jr., Frank Drohan, and Paul Schmidt, in addition to Lauren Leeman of the State Historical Society of Missouri, Kari Schleher of the University of New Mexico Library, and Arlene Balkansky of the Serial and Government Publications Division of the Library of Congress. Ms. Balkansky, in addition to all her help with the resources of the Library of Congress, devoted time to reading each chapter as it was first drafted, spotting textual errors and even problems in the flow and arc of the draft. All of this not only exceeded the duties in her job description but also those in our wedding vows from over thirty years ago.

RHODE ISLAND

ROGER WILLIAMS

The Boundary of Religion

It has fallen out sometimes that both Papists and Protestants, Jews and Turks, may be embarked in one ship.… All the liberty of conscience that ever I pleaded for turns upon these two hinges: that none of these Papists, Protestants, Jews or Turks be forced to come to the ship’s private prayers or worship, nor compelled from their own particular prayers or worship, if they practice any.

—ROGER WILLIAMS, 16541

Roger Williams believed in the separation of Church and State … for religious reasons. A devout Puritan minister, he fervently believed that Christians violated the word of God when they mandated religious acts.2 Williams’s views were too pure for the Puritans. They kicked him out of Massachusetts. In the wilderness lands of the Narragansett Indians, Williams arranged to create a haven for people of all faiths (and of no faith), which came to be called Rhode Island.

The story of Rhode Island’s founding for purposes of religious freedom typically omits Williams’s religious motive. Teaching his reasoning in a public school risks, ironically, crossing the boundary between church and state. Aside from that, his religious motive has often been omitted because it makes his achievement less purely secular, less “American.”3 The American quest for a purely secular government reveals the odd couple who became the nation’s cultural parents: the Enlightenment and the Puritans.4 Consequently, the church/state conflicts Williams confronted in creating Rhode Island continue to this day.

Roger Williams (ca. 1603-1683) (photo credit 1.1)

One of the first issues Williams faced began as soon as he arrived in Massachusetts in 1631: who owns the earth? Did the king of England, ruling by divine right, have the authority to claim possession of land upon which non-Christians lived? Williams maintained that the answer was no. Here again, his reasons were religious: a state that, on the basis of Christianity, asserts authority over a land where non-Christians live violates the Christian (meaning Puritan, as interpreted by Williams) necessity of separating church and state.

Williams’s view was not likely to sit well with British authorities, upon whom the Massachusetts colonists depended for protection. Williams also believed that the Puritan Church, to remain pure of the corruption in the Church of England, should officially separate