Colonizing expands in the American Northeast_美文

Colonizing expands in the American Northeast

Roger Williams began speaking and writing about his ideas. He wrote a book arguing that it was wrong to punish people for having different beliefs. Then he declared that the European settlers were stealing land that belonged to the Indians. He said the king of England had no right to let people settle on land that was not his.

The Puritan leaders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony forced Roger Williams to leave the colony in sixteen thirty-six. He traveled south. He bought land from local Indians and started a city, Providence. The English Parliament gave him permission to establish a new colony, Rhode Island, with Providence as its capital. As a colony, Rhode Island accepted people of all religious beliefs, including Catholics, Quakers, Jews and even people who did not believe in God.

Roger Williams also believed that governments should have no connection to a church. This idea of separating church and state was new. Later it would become one of the most important of all the governing principles of American democracy.

Other colonies were started by people who left Massachusetts to seek land. One of those colonies was Connecticut. A group led by a Puritan minister named Thomas Hooker left Boston in sixteen thirty-six. They moved inland and settled near the Connecticut River. Others soon joined them.

Other groups from Massachusetts traveled north to find new homes. The king of England had given two friends a large piece of land in the north. The friends divided it. John Mason took what became the colony of New Hampshire. Ferdinando Gorges took the area that later became the state of Maine. Maine was never a colony -- it remained a part of Massachusetts until the United States was established in seventeen seventy-six.