Abstract
The Puritan experience during the early years of the Massachusetts Bay Colony provides crucial insight into the concept of representation. Close attention to Puritan political thought and activity reveals that substantive ideas about human nature, community, and government purpose helped shape the concept of representation. This study suggests that a historical and regime-bound understanding of representation—one that gives due weight to political struggles and competing understandings of human nature, community, and government purpose—offers a useful way to understand the concept’s development in the United States.
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Notes
Hannah Pitkin, The Concept of Representation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967). For further discussion of this perspective, see Jane Mansbridge, “Rethinking Representation,” American Political Science Review 97 (2003): 515–28.
Important and helpful works in this area include Dennis Thompson, Just Elections: Creating a Fair Electoral Process in the U.S. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002); Douglas Amy, Real Choices/New Voices (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002); David T. Canon, “Electoral Systems and the Representation of Minority Interests in Legislatures,” Legislative Studies Quarterly 2 (1999): 331–85; David Lublin, The Paradox of Representation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999).
Benjamin Bishin, Tyranny of the Minority: The Subconstituency Politics Theory of Representation (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2009). Other important works in this approach include Warren E. Miller and Donald E. Stokes, “Constituency Influence in Congress,” The American Political Science Review 57 (1963): 45–56; Morris Fiorina, Representatives, Roll Calls and Constituencies (Lexington, MA: DC Heath, 1974); R. Douglas Arnold, The Logic of Congressional Action (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992); Joshua D. Clinton, “Representation in Congress: Constituents and Roll Calls in the 106th House,” Journal of Politics 68 (2006): 397–409.
Other approaches use the normative representational expectations of the author. By normative, I mean specifically the historical expectations of Americans over time.
Skowronek and Orren, in specifying the meaning of “American political development,” helpfully drew boundaries around an approach that they saw as becoming too “freewheeling” and diffuse. Their definition, however, may be contested. For a reminder of the possibilities, see Julian E. Zelizer, “Stephen Skowronek’s Building a New American State and the Origins of American Political Development,” Social Science History 27 (2003), 425–41.
Sidney Milkis, Review of “The Search for American Political Development, by Karen Orren and Stephen Skowronek,” Journal of Politics 68 (2006): 753–55.
Ibid., 754. See also Michael Kammen’s edited volume exploring the “contrapuntal” nature of America: The Contrapuntal Civilization (New York: Crowell, 1971).
James Morone, Hellfire Nation: The Politics of Sin in American History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003).
Alfred De Grazia, Public and Republic: Political Representation in America (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1985), x.
My claim is not that these ideas completely dictate the concept of representation. Certainly, economics and other factors play a role. I do claim, however, that these ideas contributed to concepts of representation in significant ways that have often been overlooked. A rich literature has explored and documented the connection between ideas and institutions. The present essay was particularly inspired by Rogan Kersh, Dreams of a More Perfect Union (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001); James Morone, The Democratic Wish: Popular Participation and the Limits of American Government (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998); Joseph M. Bessette, The Mild Voice of Reason: Deliberative Democracy and American National Government (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997).
W.W. Abbot, The Colonial Origins of the United States (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1975), 38.
The phrase “evil and declining times” is from a letter by John Winthrop to his wife Margaret, on the eve of leaving, 15 May 1629. Reprinted in Darrett B. Rutman, John Winthrop’s Decision for America (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1975), 80.
Donald S. Lutz, ed., Colonial Origins of the American Constitution (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1998), xxv–xl.
Perry Miller, The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1954), 376.
From the Westminster Confession, as cited in Philip Schaff, The Creeds of Christendom (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1881), 1:772.
Miller, Seventeenth Century, 376.
Ibid., 384; Edmund S. Morgan, The Puritan Dilemma (Boston: Little Brown, 1958), 136.
Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter (New York: Bantam, 1986), 218.
A New York Times article from November 1897 declares that this verse is one of the only to remain untouched through the many editions of the Primer.
Wilson Carey McWilliams, The Idea of Fraternity in America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973), 114. See also Miller, Seventeenth Century, 253.
Miller, Seventeenth Century, 240–56.
McWilliams, Fraternity, 121.
Ibid., 119.
Michael Zuckerman, Peaceable Kingdoms: New England Towns in the Eighteenth Century (New York: Knopf, 1970), 6.
Winthrop’s views were widely shared, and he tends to speak for a status quo. Nevertheless, to ascribe his views to all magistrates would be misleading. For more on this point, see Louise Breen’s Transgressing the Bounds: Subversive Enterprises among the Puritan Elite in Massachusetts, 1630–1692. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001).
John Winthrop, “A Modell of Christian Charity,” Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society (Boston, 1838), 3rd Series, no. 7, 40. I have modernized the spelling.
Ibid., 45.
Ibid.
The notable alternative was the “Presbyterian” form, a hierarchical church organization.
Winthrop, Modell, 46.
From Governor Winthrop’s journal, as cited in Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, “John Winthrop’s City of Women,” Massachusetts Historical Review 3 (2001): 26: “A woman of Boston congregation, having been in much trouble of mind about her spiritual estate, at length grew into utter desperation, and could not endure to hear of any comfort, etc. so as one day she took her little infant and threw it into a well, and then came into the house and said, now she was sure she should be damned, for she had drowned her child; but some, stepping presently forth, saved the child.”
Rutman, Winthrop’s Decision, 80.
Morgan, Dilemma, 86. The Charter did stipulate that colonial laws could not contradict English laws. This stipulation was frequently ignored in practice.
Nathaniel Shurtleff, ed., Records of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay of New England: Volume One, 1628–1641 (Boston: William White Press, 1853).
Morgan, Dilemma, 90–91.
This damaged the early idea of Puritan political community because of the arrival of many non-Puritans and the increased social and economic status of successful non-Puritans in the colony. Concessions to the non-Puritan element were made early and undermined the original vision long before the royal charter of 1691 had effectively ended the Puritan commonwealth in Massachusetts.
Morgan makes this claim as well in The Puritan Dilemma.
Miller calls this the social covenant; Morgan calls it political. I believe the latter better focuses our attention on the task at hand.
Miller, Seventeenth Century, 409.
John Miller, This New Man, The American (New York: McGraw Hill, 1974), 108.
The term “regenerate” refers to those who were sure of their salvation. Non-freemen also took oaths pledging themselves to the health of the community. However, they were largely kept from participation in colony-wide politics. At the local level, non-freemen were sometimes allowed to participate in politics by voting for local officials or taking part in town meetings.
Miller, quoting Puritan William Ames, Seventeenth Century, 402. See too Samuel Willard, An Exposition, or the Assembly’s Shorter Catechism in Two Hundred and Fifty Lectures (1726), 213.
“Oath of a Freeman,” 1631; from Lutz, Colonial Origins, 42.
Winthrop’s comments, made in 1645, are recorded in the records of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and known popularly as the “Little Speech on Liberty.” See <http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/WinLibe.html>, accessed on December 20, 2014. For the broader context of the speech and the contemporary account of its delivery, see Winthrop’s journal: James Savage, ed., History of New England from 1630 to 1649 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1853), 1:271–82.
Winthrop, Little Speech.
Winthrop claimed this discretion as part of the deference accorded a “calling.” That is, the magistrates were intended to be men of particular character and discernment, and these attributes in themselves suggested they had been “called” by God to seek and earn such high office. See, for example, Puritan minister William Perkins’ comments on 1 Corinthians, found in Edmund S. Morgan, Puritan Political Ideas (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965), 35–59.
Winthrop, Little Speech.
Ibid.
John Winthrop, “Arbitrary government described and the Government of the Massachusetts vindicated from that aspersion,” Harvard Classics: American Historical Documents, ed. Charles W. Eliot (New York: P.F. Collier and Son, 1910), Vol. 43, 94.
Gary B. Nash, The Urban Crucible: Social Change, Political Consciousness, and the Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979), 33.
For good discussions of the Colony’s political malcontents, see Robert Wall, Massachusetts Bay: The Crucial Decade, 1640–1650 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972); Bernard Bailyn, The New England Merchants in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979); Louise A. Breen, Transgressing the Bounds: Subversive Enterprises Among the Puritan Elite in Massachusetts, 1630–1692 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001).
Winthrop’s Journal, February 17 1631/32, as recorded in Savage, History of New England, 1:84.
Winthrop’s Journal, May 8 1632, as recorded in Savage, History of New England, 1:91–92.
Winthrop’s Journal, April 1, 1634, as recorded in Savage, History of New England, 1:153.
In 1639, the number of deputies allowed per town was fixed at two.
Shurtleff, Mass Bay Records, 1:118.
Robert C. Winthrop, Life and Letters of John Winthrop: 1630–1649 (Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1867), 113. Cotton’s views on representation were, nevertheless, sophisticated. See B. Katherine Brown, “A Note on the Puritan Concept of Aristocracy,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 41 (1954): 105–12.
It is true that Winthrop nevertheless was named an assistant. However, in an age where the appropriate punishment for a gentleman convicted of a minor crime was to be called “mister” no longer, the demotion would have been shameful.
Winthrop, Life and Letters: 1630–1649, 114. This and all future references are to the 1867 edition.
For more information on this dispute, see Winthrop’s Journal entry for September 4, 1634, as recorded in Savage, History of New England, 1:166–70.
Stoughton publicly disclaimed the essay during a General Court in 1635/36 and proposed that it be “burnt, as being weak and offensive.” His contrition earned him a relatively mild punishment: he was barred from office for three years. Shurtleff, Records, 1:135.
Shurtleff, Records, 1:170. Because the vote occurred before March 25th, the Julian Calendar showed the year as 1635. With our contemporary calendar, the year was 1636. To avoid confusion, it has become customary to use a slash year when dealing with dates that fall between January 1st and March 25th.
Wall, Crucial Decade, 51–55.
John Winthrop, Winthrop Papers: Volume Two (Norwood, MA: The Plimpton Press, 1931), 383.
Winthrop, Winthrop Papers, 2:387.
Roger Williams, later founder of Providence (RI), fell afoul of the Massachusetts Bay Puritans for, among other things, advocating a stricter separation of church and state and for declaring that the Massachusetts and Plymouth colonies had not properly purchased their land from the Native Americans. Anne Hutchinson was banished in 1638 for her lay preaching of “Antinomian” doctrines and for claiming the power of direct revelation.
G. Andrews Moriarty, “Social and Geographic Origins of the Founders of Massachusetts” in Commonwealth History of Massachusetts, ed. Albert Bushnell Hart (New York: The States History Company, 1927), 55.
For an overview of town life in Massachusetts, see George Lee Haskins, Law and Authority in Early Massachusetts (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 1960), 66–84.
T.H. Breen, Puritans and Adventurers: Change and Persistence in Early America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), 3–24.
Savage, History of New England, 2:204.
Ibid., 1:191.
John Dickinson, “The Massachusetts Charter and the Bay Colony (1628–1660),” in Commonwealth History of Massachusetts, ed. Hart, 119.
The controversy between Winthrop and Dudley occurred before the addition of deputies to the General Court. Dudley’s reward was, as discussed earlier, taking the governor’s seat from Winthrop in 1634.
Winthrop, Life and Letters, 91–101.
Ibid., 97.
Ibid., 133.
Ibid., 134. Winthrop wrote in the third person.
Jean Calvin, in the Institutes of the Christian Religion, makes clear that subjects are to submit to their magistrates, even if those magistrates prove to be inept or malicious. The single exception is if those magistrates prove impious, at which point continued submission means open rebellion to God’s law. See Book IV, Chapter XX, Section XXXII of Calvin’s Institutes.
Miller, Seventeenth Century, 422.
Rogers to John Winthrop, November 3, 1639. John Winthrop, Winthrop Papers: Volume One (Norwood, MA: Plimpton Press, 1929), 149–52.
In England, Ward was jailed by King James I for his support of a petition accusing one of the king’s chaplains of various religious corruptions. See Kenneth Shipps, “The Political Puritan,” Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture 45 (June 1976): 196–205.
F. C. Gray, “Remarks On the Early Laws of Massachusetts,” Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society (Boston: Little, Brown, 1843), 8:191.
Nathaniel Ward, The Simple Cobler of Aggawam in America, ed. by David Pulsifer (Boston: James Munroe and Company, 1843), 3.
Morgan, Genuine Article, 7.
Ibid., 10.
Savage, History of New England, 1:389.
Breen, Transgressing the Bounds, Chs. 1 and 3.
Bailyn, Merchants, 20–21.
Ibid., 39.
Ibid., 106–107; Breen, Transgressing the Bounds, 17–56.
Breen, Transgressing the Bounds, 20.
Ibid., 97.
William Vassal, a freeman and magistrate, led a group of non-freemen petitioners. His petition to the Plymouth Colony called for “full and free toleration of religion to all men that would preserve the civil peace and submit unto government.” This included those outside the English church, such as Catholics, Jews, and Muslims. See John Child, New England’s Jonas Cast Up at London (Boston: Parsons Lunt, 1869), xx.
Petition of Robert Child, as printed in New England’s Jonas Cast Up at London, 10–11. John Child reportedly wrote this work in 1647 to defend his brother.
Child, New England’s Jonas, 11.
Ibid., 12–13.
Ibid., 13–14.
Breen, Transgressing the Bounds, 97–102.
Initially fined for refusing to disavow the petition, Child was later fined far more severely when colonial authorities discovered, just before he left for England, that he intended to petition Parliament to bring a royal governor and Presbyterianism to the colony. Famed Plymouth Pilgrim Edward Winslow, already departing for England to head off Vassal’s challenge to that colony, agreed to represent the Bay Colony and strike back at these petitions before they could do damage. Winslow’s major defensive blow was delivered in his book, New England’s Salamander Discovered (London, 1647), available online at Mayflower History <http://mayflowerhistory.com/primary-sources-and-books/>, accessed on December 20,2014.
Miller, Seventeenth Century, 416.
Breen, Transgressing the Bounds, 53.
John Dickinson, “The Massachusetts Charter and the Bay Colony (1628–1660),” Commonwealth History of Massachusetts, 123. The immediate result of Child’s petition was the synod at Cambridge, which adopted the Cambridge Platform, the most famous declaration of Orthodox New England Congregational Puritanism.
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The author is grateful to Jeffrey Sedgwick, Jerome Mileur, and Ralph Whitehead for their early guidance and feedback on this work. The constructive feedback of the anonymous Polity referees and Cyrus Zirakzadeh improved the article immensely. The author is also thankful for the support and inspiration of his students and colleagues in the Department of Political Science and History at Ashland University. None of this would be possible without the extraordinary efforts of Dr. Eric Lamarre and the staff at Cleveland Clinic.
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Campbell, P. The Concept of Representation in American Political Development: Lessons of the Massachusetts Bay Puritans. Polity 47, 33–60 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1057/pol.2014.30
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/pol.2014.30