City on a Hill： The Misunderstood Legacy of Pilgrims and Puritans ｜ The American Story ｜ Ep 2
Episode Stats
Words per minute
140.68697
Harmful content
Misogyny
1
sentences flagged
Toxicity
5
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Hate speech
32
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Summary
One guy's near-death plunge changes history, and it's wild how much one life, dangling by a thread or a rope, can shape a nation. This episode is adapted from the novel, The Pilgrims and the Puritans, by David Barton and Tim Barton.
Transcript
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Its swirling, heaving waves sprawled to infinity in every direction.
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An endless blue-gray highway tormenting the 102 men and women and children
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crammed into a tiny cargo ship that wasn't designed for passengers.
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Sometimes the thunderous waves battering the timber hull
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would just let up long enough for the desperate or the foolish, depending on who you ask,
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to scramble up to the main deck for a deep breath of fresh air. For John Howland, a British man in
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his early 20s, the bracing wind and cold ocean spray against his face helped chase away the
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nausea if only just for a few minutes. He had to escape the windowless, cramped belly of the ship
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where the stench of vomit hung in the stale air.
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He was just a hired servant for one of the many dreamers on board this rickety vessel.
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In a split second, John Howland is plunged into a nightmare.
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A massive rogue wave smashes over the ship's railing,
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and no one even notices at first. In an era when most people can't swim, and the ship can't just
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throw it in reverse, this is a death sentence. John thrashes in the freezing water, his lungs
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are burning with the ocean, as the ship labors on without him. Then, he glimpses a rope in the
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water within reach. Instinctively, desperately, he snags it and clamps on with both fists.
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The rope trailing behind the ship is one of the halyards, used to raise and lower the sail.
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It's his only hope. He clings for dear life, dragging through the pounding surf like a ragdoll,
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the saltwater scraping down his throat and burning his eyes, and finally, incredibly,
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Slowly and steadily, they manage to reel him in.
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And John finally splats on the deck and rolls over on his back,
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sputtering, shivering uncontrollably, gasping, head spinning, dumbfounded that he's still alive.
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The hard-boiled crew mutters curses about these seasick novices
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that they're hauling across the Atlantic to a forbidding wilderness.
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Ten kids, then grandkids, then great-grandkids.
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and somebody else that would make an impact in America,
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The Beginnings, adapted from the book of the same title by David Barton and Tim Barton.
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Episode 2, City on a Hill, The Misunderstood Legacy of Pilgrims and Puritans.
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Queen Elizabeth I, the virgin queen with her fiery red hair and iron will,
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she had no tolerance for dissent in her church. In 1593, she ordered the execution of John
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Greenwood, a bold English reformer who had the audacity to say that no monarch could be the head
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of the church. That belonged solely to Christ. Greenwood, a leader in the underground congregations,
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was charged with denying Her Majesty's supremacy and attacking the established order. He was hanged.
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His death a public spectacle meant to terrify others into submission.
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It was all part of a broader crackdown by a queen who insisted that spiritual obedience was the state's business.
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Parliament, backing the queen, passed harsh laws mandating prison time for anybody who dared deny her religious authority.
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No bail, no mercy, just iron bars for those who would not bow.
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Surviving this oppressive atmosphere were the separatists.
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These were a group of everyday farmers and believers from central England who also refused
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to play along, but they worshipped in secret, knowing full well that their gatherings were
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treasonous act. Hunted like criminals, they often lost homes and livelihoods and their freedom.
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These separatists, they were distinct from the larger group of Puritans in England.
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While Puritans aimed to purify or fix the Church of England from within, staying loyal despite
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their gripes, the separatists wanted a clean break. No more tainted rituals, no more state
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control. They dreamed of an independent faith community accountable only to the scripture
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and to each other. The separatists were not actually called pilgrims in their time. That
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term didn't become common until the 1820s when a pilgrim society was formed to celebrate the 200th
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anniversary of the colony's founding. But since they're so much better known today as pilgrims,
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A group of 125 pilgrims made the risky decision to flee for Holland.
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Now, this was a land known for its religious tolerance.
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Among them was William Bradford, an 18-year-old orphan,
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already earning respect for his steady demeanor and deep convictions.
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In the Dutch town of Leiden, they found relief, no persecution for what they believed.
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As foreigners, they were barred from the Dutch craft guilds, forcing them into low-paying, back-breaking jobs in the textile industry, weaving, spinning, and dyeing cloth for meager wages.
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Their standard of living plummeted, and their community struggled to grow.
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after all who wanted to join the life of endless toil and poverty.
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William Bradford captured the frustration in his writings, quote,
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Some preferred and chose the prisons in England
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rather than this liberty in Holland with these afflictions.
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It wasn't just economic hardship that gnawed at them.
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Dutch society, with its bustling ports and cosmopolitan vibe,
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expose their youth to what the Pilgrims called licentiousness, loose morals or wild behavior,
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and influences that pulled their kids away from their Christian upbringing.
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If they stayed, would the next generation forget the boundaries of their faith?
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Their Pilgrim identity might dissolve with this foreign nation,
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with kids becoming more Dutch than English, more worldly than godly.
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Where on earth could such a small church truly be itself?
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They needed a place where they could isolate, build, and preserve their way of life without these temptations.
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This is when opportunity knocked, courtesy of the Virginia Company,
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yes, the same enterprise behind the sloppy, chaotic, gold-obsessed Jamestown venture that we visited in Episode 1.
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Desperate for colonists to develop their vast land claims,
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the company granted the Pilgrims attractive land near the mouth of the Hudson River.
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It was on the northern edge of the Virginia Territory,
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a spot mapped by explorers like Captain John Smith,
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These investors covered the cost of the ships and the crew
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and the year's worth of supplies in hopes of future returns.
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The group left Holland for England to rendezvous with their two ships,
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William Bradford, by then 30 years old, recounted their heart-wrenching farewell.
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which had been their resting place near 12 years.
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squeezing everybody into the Mayflower. Finally, on September 6th, 1620, they departed with 102
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passengers and 37 crew members. 41 of the passengers were pilgrims. The other 61 were
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hired workers, merchants, and non-believers lured by adventure, pay, or both. There weren't any
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plush accommodations here. The Mayflower was mainly a cargo vessel, not built for that many passengers.
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The ship was 100 feet long, 24 feet wide, with four masts.
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It had an upper deck for the crew, a middle deck for the passengers, and a lower cargo hold for supplies.
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And if that wasn't bad enough, they shared the same space with a shallop.
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That's a 30-foot sailboat that would be used for exploring the coast once they reached the New World.
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The total living space for the passengers was 58 by 24 feet.
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Constant rocking induced seasickness, the air reeked of vomit and sweat and human waste.
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Meals were mostly hardtack biscuits, salted pork or fish, and beer, which was safer to drink than water, and even given to the kids.
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Malnutrition quickly set in, dehydration worsened, scurvy afflicted them with its bleeding gums and painful joints.
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But incredibly, a pilgrim named Elizabeth Hopkins gave birth amid the squalor, a boy they named Oceanus.
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A month into their journey, a ferocious North Atlantic storm battered the Mayflower.
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During one especially violent storm, the main beam cracked.
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The Pilgrims and crewmen had a meeting debating whether to turn back,
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The Pilgrims had brought along William Bradford's printing press.
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But this printing press had broken just before the journey,
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He said in prayer, he felt the Lord wanted him to take the printing press.
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He said the Lord told him to put it on the ship.
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It contained a large jack screw that was now the exact tool they needed.
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The crew used that jack screw to raise the beam back into place where it could be secured.
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So they were able to limp on, averaging less than two miles an hour over the 3,000-mile trip.
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After 66 days of their excruciating ocean crawl, finally, land.
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Storms had driven them 250 miles north of their target,
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toward a hook of land that curled up like a beckoning finger.
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relief mixed with uncertainty they were out of bounds way outside of their legal
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charter which meant no one technically had the authority to tell anyone else
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what to do mutters of rebellion stirred among the non-pilgrim on board once
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they landed they'd fend for themselves answer to nobody do whatever they
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wanted real lord of the flies kind of stuff which forced an urgent question
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who governs when there is no official authority they were in the wrong place
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face, facing an unknown wilderness, and anarchy was brewing. As they anchored, the true test of
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survival was just beginning, with winter's icy grip waiting to claim its toll. See if this sounds
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familiar to you. You're going about your day, doing all the things you normally do, and then
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out of nowhere it hits you, pain. You can actually remember the time when it wasn't there, when you
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didn't have to think about it, you didn't have to work around it, you didn't have to stop what you
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were doing all the time because something in your body was deciding, yeah, I'm done for the day.
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But somewhere along the line, it just showed up and then it just stayed. I lived through that.
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know the product or whatever. She said, I heard it and you should take it and try it. And I did.
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Since the Pilgrims had landed far from their intended Virginia territory,
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41 men gathered in the Mayflower's main deck cabin
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It was a bare-bones agreement affirming loyalty to King James,
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but forming a civil body politic for self-governance,
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to pass just and equal laws by majority consent.
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a voluntary agreement among equals rooted in their Christian conviction,
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No grand constitution, but a pact that bound everybody under mutual rules.
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Now, the ink would mean nothing if the shore killed them first.
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They still had to survive the first winter in a world that didn't know them and didn't know them anything.
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William Bradford captured the electric moment when they finally stepped ashore at Cape Cod.
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Being thus arrived in a good harbor and brought safe to land,
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they fell upon their knees and blessed the God of heaven who had brought them over the vast and furious ocean
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and delivered them from all the perils and miseries thereof,
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again to set their feet on the firm and stable earth, their proper element.
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Bradford and the scouting party launched the shallop to explore,
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They chose a harbor on the mainland, later named Plymouth.
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It had clearly been the site of some sort of settlement.
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They even found stashes of dried corn, but it was completely deserted.
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The area had once been home to the Patuxent tribe.
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They were fierce, fierce warriors, but they were wiped out by a devastating plague,
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likely smallpox, introduced by the British or French fishermen a few years before the Pilgrims arrived.
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Well, the epidemic killed up to 95% of the local peoples,
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leaving villages abandoned and survivors too terrified to return because they feared a supernatural curse.
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Bradford reflected on how if the Patuxic had survived the settlers might have
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met a gruesome end. About three years before a French ship was wrecked at Cape
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Cod but the men got ashore and saved their lives and a large part of their
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provisions. When the Indians heard of it they surrounded them and never left
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watching and dogging them till they got the advantage and killed them. All but
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three or four, whom they kept, and sent from one sachem to another, making sport with them and
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using them worse than slaves. While Bradford was away with the scouting party, his wife Dorothy
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accidentally fell from the Mayflower and drowned in the freezing water of Provincetown Harbor.
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She was 23. Was it truly an accident in the icy winds, or was she overcome with despair in this
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harsh, harsh new world. There has been speculation about suicide through the years, but there's no
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historic evidence to support that theory. Bradford was silent about the tragedy in his writings, but
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the loss undoubtedly shattered him. He was now a widower in an unforgiving land.
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It was the first heartbreak in a flood of tragedy yet to come.
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as a winter descended the pilgrims disembarked and scrambled to build shelters simple huts with
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thatched roofs but the harsh new england cold combined with their weakened states unleashed
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a wave of illness scurvy from vitamin deficiency pneumonia from exposure death came quickly
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that in two or three months' time, half of their company died,
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being the depth of winter and wanting houses and other comforts,
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That of one hundred and odd persons, scarce fifty remained.
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there was but six or seven persons, who, to their great commendations be it spoken,
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spared no pain, night nor day, but with abundance of toil and hazard of their own health,
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fetched them wood, made them fires, dressed them meat, made their beds, washed their loathsome
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clothes, clothed and unclothed them, in a word, did all the homely and necessary offices for them,
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which dainty and queasy stomachs cannot endure to hear named. And all this willingly and cheerfully,
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without any grudging in the least, showing herein their true love unto their friends and brethren,
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a rare example and worthy to be remembered. Two of these seven were Mr. William Brewster,
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their revered elder, and Miles Standish, their captain and military commander,
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unto whom myself and many others were much beholden in our low and sick condition.
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Forty-seven of the 102 Mayflower passengers died. Forty-seven, including thirteen of the
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eighteen pilgrim women. Only three families remained intact. In March 1621, with grief
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permeating the camp, a glimmer of hope arrived in the form of an unexpected visitor.
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An Indian strode confidently into their settlement and blew their minds with his greeting in English,
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But about the 16th of March, a certain Indian came boldly amongst them
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and spoke to them in broken English, which they could well understand, but marveled at it.
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At length they understood by discourse with him that he was not of these parts,
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but belonged to the eastern parts, where some English ships came to fish,
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with whom he was acquainted and could name sundry of them by their names amongst whom he had got his
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language. This was Samoset a native of Maine who had picked up bits of English over the years from
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British cod fishermen. He explained the devastation of the Patuxic community and how their tribes were
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afraid to come near the place where the pilgrims had set up their base camp. He told them also of
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another Indian whose name was Squanto a native of this place who had been in England and could speak
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better English than himself. A few days later, Samoset returned with Squanto. The Pilgrims were
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awestruck by his fluent English, and even more so by his story. In 1614, Captain John Smith,
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the same John Smith from the Jamestown colony, explored New England's coast and left one of
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his associates, Thomas Hunt. He was to establish a trading relationship with the Indians in Cape
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cod. Instead, Hunt eventually kidnapped a group of 24 Indians and sailed for Spain, where he hoped
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to turn a quick profit by selling them into slavery. Among this group of Indians was a Patuxic
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tribe member named Squanto. In Spain, a group of Spanish monks rescued the Indians, treated their
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wounds, and then tried to teach them Christianity. Somehow, the monks helped Squanto get into England,
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where he hoped to hitch a ride back to North America.
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He lived with a merchant's family for a few years where he learned English.
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He finally found passage back across the Atlantic,
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landing six months before the pilgrims arrived.
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When he reached his home, the village was completely abandoned.
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Eventually, he learned from all the other local Indians
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about the devastating illness that wiped out his entire tribe.
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Squanto became invaluable, serving as a translator and a go-between for the Wampanoag chief
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Massasoit. The Pilgrims negotiated a treaty with Massasoit, mutual aid against enemies,
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no harm to one another. The agreement lasted 54 years. It's the only treaty between English
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colonists and Native Americans to be honored throughout the lives of everyone who signed it.
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In Squanto, he became a fixture of the Pilgrims' lives.
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He showed them where to hunt deer, how to catch fish, and identify edible plants.
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He taught them how to plant corn, using fish for fertilizer.
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He helped them set up fur trading relationships with various tribes.
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He was a miraculous godsend for the Pilgrims.
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Imagine a guy just shows up who happens to speak fluent English,
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understands their Christian faith and their British culture,
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and is able to help them keep peace with the local tribes
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and teach them essential wilderness survival skills.
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Squanto continued with them and was their interpreter
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and was a special instrument sent of God for their good beyond their expectation.
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where to take fish and to procure other commodities
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and was also their pilot to bring them to unknown places for their profit
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the Mayflower's captain determined it was finally time to set sail for England.
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Return to the safety and comforts of civilization
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where so many of their friends and family members had already died.
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Remarkably, not a single pilgrim boarded the ship.
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By November, a modest harvest inspired a day of Thanksgiving.
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Bradford invited Massasoit, who showed up with 90 Indians and 5 deer.
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Not exactly the turkey and pie affair we imagined in elementary school,
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but it was a major celebration of survival and God's provision.
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Still, the following year brought more tragedy.
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During a trade mission with Bradford and other pilgrim men,
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that he might go to the Englishman's God in heaven.
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and bequeathed several of his things to some of his English friends as remembrances.
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Despite the blow, the loss of their indispensable guide,
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the pilgrims slowly learned to stand on their own.
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In 1623, the widower, William Bradford, married Alice Southworth,
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herself a young widow with two sons from the pilgrim community in Holland.
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And very slowly, very slowly, against all odds, the colony began to grow roots.
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In 1630, the now Governor Bradford started writing the vital history volume he called of Plymouth Plantation.
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But the Corps held because its substance was their Christian faith and devotion to Scripture.
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Meanwhile, as the tiny little outposts stabilized, forces beyond their control were brewing back in England.
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There was a new king, new pressures, and it threatened the spiritual cousins that the pilgrims had left behind.
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In the 1620s, England's political and religious landscape grew increasingly hostile towards the Puritans.
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Remember, these were not the full separatists that the Pilgrims were,
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who had entirely cut ties with the Church of England.
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The Puritans were the reformers determined to cleanse the Church while staying within the fold.
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But the tensions escalated after Charles I took the throne in 1625.
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His policies enforced Anglican ceremonies that pilgrims saw as idolatrous.
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Ministers were suspended. They were jailed for non-compliance.
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In 1629, a savvy group of Puritans and merchants persuaded King Charles,
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to grant a charter for the Massachusetts Bay Company.
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Initially viewed as a commercial venture for fur trading and fishing,
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He was a respected lawyer driven by his deep, deep faith.
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Winthrop and his allies envisioned the colony as a sanctuary for persecuted Puritans
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and a model wilderness Zion, a society that would embody godly principles.
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Unlike the Virginia Company, theirs did not require the company's headquarters to be in London.
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This allowed Puritans to relocate governance to America.
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Stockholders who were not on board with this plan resigned.
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Puritans took control and elected John Winthrop as the future colony's governor.
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At 40 years old, Winthrop became the Moses of this Puritan exodus.
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In 1630, he led 700 colonists aboard 11 ships, launching the Great Migration, a 16-year wave that brought over 20,000 Puritans to New England.
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They weren't poor refugees, but often middle-class families with skills and resources who could fund churches, schools, and farms.
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On the flagship Arabella, Winthrop composed a sermon he titled, A Model for Christian Charity.
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It outlined their covenant, communal support, humility, and a divine purpose.
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For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill.
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If we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken,
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and so cause him to withdraw his present help from us,
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we shall be made a story and a byword through the world.
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Crossing the Atlantic was the Puritans' declaration of independence from the Church of England.
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They planned to create a model society for proper worship,
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and basing laws and government on biblical precepts.
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In popular culture, Puritans always get a bad rap.
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They're portrayed as stern, scowling, killjoys, witch hunters, obsessed with sin.
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And a lot of that is due to the works of somebody like Nathaniel Hawthorne.
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He wrote a novel in 1850 called The Scarlet Letter, or Arthur Miller's 1953 play The Crucible.
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These stories amplify Puritan flaws for dramatic effect,
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and the fictionalized versions that created the stereotype that just stuck.
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An honest look reveals that Puritans were complex, devout, yes,
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but not humorless prudes. They drank beer as a staple, they wore colorful clothing, not just
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black, and they celebrated sex within marriage as a gift from God. They were highly literate,
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they insisted on education for all, so individuals could read the Bible themselves. In 1636 they
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founded Harvard University to train ministers, ensuring an educated clergy. Their society drew
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from the whole Bible to emphasize family, community, and moral discipline. They built a
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government that, in hindsight, looks like a practice run for the later American institutions.
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As the English population grew in Massachusetts Bay Colony, power evolved from the original tight
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circle led by John Winthrop to a broader representative system. Official members of
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the Puritan churches, called freemen, were allowed to vote. Freemen elected two or three deputies
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from each town who had to serve as a representative. By 1644, they had a two-house legislature and
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scripture was always consulted as their standard in making laws. The Puritan experiment largely
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worked and New England's colonies thrived compared to those in the south. Fewer indentured servants
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meant less transient labor. There was no planter elite class system, so there was more equality in
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Puritan society. More women, more intact families fostered stability and population growth.
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The cooler and healthier climate reduced diseases like malaria that plagued Virginia.
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The towns were compact, centered around a meeting house, and promoted communal oversight and support.
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It's really a modern-day cliché that these New England settlers simply landed and started
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stealing land from the American natives. Reality was much, much different. Yes, conflicts arose,
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tons of misunderstandings, violence, and atrocities committed by both sides in the fog of
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culture clashes. Yet the Pilgrims and Puritans frequently negotiated land deals with tribes,
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agreeing on payments in material goods that the Indians valued. Both parties signed treaties
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voluntarily, though the concepts of ownership differed and often led to further conflict.
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Still, many of the transactions were fair by contemporary standards, not outright theft.
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In the Puritans' relationship with the Indians, it was important for them to share their Christian faith.
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No one was dedicated more to this outreach than John Elliot.
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He was a missionary who arrived in 1631, known as the Apostles to the Indians.
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Eliot immersed himself in the Algonquin culture,
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learning the language and creating a written form, since none existed.
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publishing the first Indian language edition in 1663.
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he evangelized the Massachusetts Algonquin tribe for over 40 years,
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and Eliot traveled tirelessly to villages preaching and teaching. By 1674, the so-called
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praying Indian communities, which were Christian native villages, numbered 3,600 converts. The
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villages offered education, agriculture, and self-governance, which were often viewed as
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threats to traditional Indian society. Because their new Christian faith led them to reject
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certain native customs like ritual torture, polygamy, and shaman practices, the praying
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Indians sowed seeds of resentment in their original tribes. Tensions started to simmer.
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John Elliott's work, meant for harmony, unwittingly fueled divisions that would explode into catastrophe.
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be sure to read The American Story, The Beginnings
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came the Indians with great numbers upon Lancaster.
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Several houses were burning, and the smoke ascending to heaven.
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The father and the mother and a suckling child, which the Indians knocked on the head.
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The other two they took and carried away alive.
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One was knocked on the head, the other escaped.
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Another there was who, running along, was shot and wounded and fell down.
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He begged of them his life, promising them money.
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But they would not hearken to him, but knocked him in the head
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and stripped him naked and split open his bowels.
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At length they came and beset our own house.
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They shot against the house so that the bullets seemed to fly like hail
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and quickly they wounded one man among us, then another.
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and then a third. Some in our house were fighting for their lives, others wallowing
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in their blood. The house on fire over our heads, and the bloody heathen ready to knock
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us on the head if we stirred out. Then I took my children, and one of my sisters hers, to
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go forth and leave the house. My brother-in-law being before wounded in defending the house,
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in or near the throat, fell down dead, whereat the Indians scornfully shouted and hallooed
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and were presently upon him, stripping off his clothes. The bullets flying thick, one went
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through my side, and the same as would seem through the bowels and hand of my dear child
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in my arms. Thus were we butchered by those merciless heathen, standing amazed, with the
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blood running down to our heels. That is from the written account of Mary Rowlandson, the wife of
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Puritan minister who lived in Lancaster, Massachusetts. Mary and her three children were
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taken hostage and held for three months until colonists scraped together enough money to pay
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the ransom of 20 pounds. Her six-year-old daughter, Sarah, died from a gunshot wound a week into
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captivity. She was just one of hundreds of victims on both sides of a vicious, bloody conflict known
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as King Philip's War. In 1621, a treaty between the Pilgrims-led William Bradford and the Wampanoag
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tribe, led by Massasoit, lasted an amazing 54 years. No other historic treaty with Native
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Americans lasted longer than that one. But this piece, like a rope in the saltwater, eventually
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frayed, and when it fell apart, it did so in a tragic fashion. Chief Massasoit died in 1661.
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His firstborn and successor died the following year, so leadership then passed to Massasoit's
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second son, Medicom, whom the English called King Philip. Medicom looked at the growing villages of
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Christian Indians, the land deals, and constantly arriving ships, and saw a future that he did not
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want. Then, the spark. A praying Indian named John Sassamon, educated bilingual, reported to the
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Plymouth colonists that Medicom had planned war. A few days later, Sassamon's body was discovered
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under the ice of a pond. Plymouth tried and hanged three Wampanoags for the murder.
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To many natives, the trial felt like English law crossing into their sovereignty.
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His alliance of tribes launched attacks designed to erase English towns entirely.
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Every English settler in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut was to be killed.
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Starting in June 1675 and continuing for a year, raids torched the interior of Massachusetts.
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entire settlements were destroyed. Many Christian Indians fought with the colonists
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against Medicon. Others were suspected by both sides, confined or killed. The war was not a
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simple race line. It was, at its awful core, a collision over Christianity, sovereignty and
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survival. Atrocities mounted on both sides, scalps taken, heads on spike, villages burned to the
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ground. One of the most modern allegations is that King Philip's war was the result of Indians
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pushing back against the greedy, land-grabbing colonists that Indians were simply trying to
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regain, territory that was actually rightfully theirs. But Governor Josiah Winslow disagreed.
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I think I can clearly say that before these present troubles broke out,
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Many today reject this statement, accusing the colonists of taking an unfair advantage of the Indians,
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that they gave natives much less than what the land was worth.
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But this claim is misleading. It's a negotiated deal.
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Whenever the colonists and Indians negotiated a deal, each side voluntarily agreed to the terms.
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If they had not, then they wouldn't have signed it.
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For Medicom's forces, supplies dwindled, disease ravaged the ranks.
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In August 1676, Medicom was tracked down by the English and Indian allies.
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A Christian Indian who went by the name of John Alderman, shot him dead.
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The captain of the militia ordered that because
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Medicom had left so many European bodies to rot above ground.
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They quartered Medicom's body and sent it to pieces to towns all across New England.
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His head was posted on a stake and displayed in Plymouth for decades.
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The devastation set back English colonization by 30 years.
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And of the 90 towns in Massachusetts, 12 were completely destroyed, with 40 more badly damaged.
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the war resulted in the highest casualty rate by percentage of total population of any war in American history.
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William Bradford governed Plymouth until 1656, dying the following year at 68.
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His descendants include Noah Webster, the dictionary guy, the founder of Kodak, George Eastman,
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Julia Child, Norman Rockwell, presidents like John Adams, Zachary Taylor, and James Garfield.
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descended from these original passengers on the Mayflower.
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By 1691, Plymouth was absorbed into the much larger Massachusetts Bay Colony.
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but their deep commitment to God, community, self-government,
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and blossomed all over the next century in America.
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But much that is still good and right in the DNA of the United States of America
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today can be found and traced right back to that band of religious rebels
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crammed shoulder to shoulder together in the Mayflower.
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William Bradford, looking back, wrote the line that feels like a benediction.
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Thus, out of small beginnings, greater things have been produced by his hand,
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that made all things of nothing, and gives being to all things that are.
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And, as one small candle may light a thousand, so the light here kindled hath shone unto many, yea, in some sort to our whole nation.
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Let the glorious name of Jehovah have all the praise.
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In 1835, descendants erected an obelisk to mark Bradford's gravesite and burial hill in Plymouth.
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Chiseled into the stone is a wise warning written in Latin, which translates, quote,
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What our fathers with so much difficulty attained do not basely relinquish.
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More dark times lay ahead for those colonies, but so did, by God's grace, revival.
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Coming up on the American story, The Beginnings.
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They shriek without warning, speaking strange, unintelligible words.
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They clutch their heads in agony, convulsing, writhing on the floor,
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and curl themselves under the furniture as though trying to escape invisible claws.
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The town doctor, William Griggs, is quickly summoned.
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He examines them, his face growing more and more pale.
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He can't detect the obvious physical cause, and so he provides the only diagnosis a Puritan village would accept in New England in the late 1600s.
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Just a reminder, I'd love you to rate and subscribe to the podcast and pass this on to a friend so it can be discovered by other people.