How the States Got Their Shapes Too_ The People Behind the Borderlines - Mark Stein [5]
From the founding of Rhode Island to the present, Americans have wrestled with the question, in what instances does divine authority negate civil authority? The fact that, under the Constitution, Americans agree on the validity of the question has not resulted in agreeing on the answer. From prayer in school to the teaching of evolution, to polygamy, same-sex marriage, medical decisions, and even the performance of autopsies, nearly every aspect of life in the United States has confronted questions of divine versus civil authority.
Did Roger Williams know the answers? If he did, it resides in his one work that seemingly has nothing to do with church or state. In 1643 he published A Key into the Language of America: Or, An Help to the Language of the Natives in that Part of America Called New England. The title suggests that the book is simply a guide to the language of the region’s Indians. Each chapter presents a group of indigenous words and phrases, explaining their meaning within the context of the tribe’s culture, noting their differences from European culture, and concluding with a scriptural reference placing that aspect of the natives’ culture within the context of Christian precepts. Williams’s “dictionary” was in fact a profound effort to increase understanding between the colonists and their Narragansett neighbors. As such, the most significant statement in A Key into the Language of America is its opening words: “I present you with a key.… A little key may open a box, where lies a bunch of keys.” In the life of Roger Williams, there is a key.
DELAWARE, MARYLAND, PENNSYLVANIA
AUGUSTINE HERMAN
Why We Have Delaware
By way of a little discourse on the supposed claim or pretence of my Lord Baltimore’s patent unto our aforesaid South River or Delaware … we utterly deny, disown, and reject any power and authority … that may or can legally come to reduce or subdue the said river and subjects.
—AUGUSTINE HERMAN, 16591
Delaware is a little rectangle with a scoop on top that occupies what would otherwise be the eastern end of Maryland. Since Maryland wouldn’t be that big even if it included Delaware, why do we have Delaware?
We have Delaware for the same reason the world had Bohemia—the birthplace of Augustine Herman, who grew up to become the man responsible for the existence of Delaware as a separate colony. Bohemia’s core was the western half of today’s Czech Republic, though at times it included various adjacent regions. Its population was a mix of Germanic people (among whom many, in the wake of Martin Luther, had left the Catholic Church to become Protestants), Slavic people (who adhered to the teachings of the Orthodox Church), and a sizable number of Jews. For Bohemia, creating a sense of itself as an entity was further complicated by the fact that it was periodically ruled by far more powerful entities that were sometimes Catholic, sometimes Protestant.
Delaware too began as a mix of people—Dutch, Swedes, Finns, and British Marylanders—living in a region that was periodically claimed by far more powerful colonies, both Catholic and Protestant. The Dutch laid claim to Delaware in 1624. They considered it the southern end of the New Netherlands, Holland’s vast North American colony that extended up from the Delaware Bay, crossed the Hudson River, and continued northeastward to the Connecticut River. England too laid claim to Delaware in its 1607 charter for Virginia, which included all the land from the top of New Jersey to the bottom of North Carolina, from the Atlantic to the Pacific. England’s King Charles I, figuring Virginia could spare