SOURCE: "Seventeenth-Century Nihilism" and "The New England Way," in The Puritan Dilemma: The Story of John Winthrop, edited by Oscar Handlin, Little, Brown and Company, 1958, pp, 134-54, 155-73.

A respected American historian, Morgan is the author of such studies as The Puritan Family (1944), Birth of the Republic, 1763-89 (1956), and Roger Williams: The Church and State (1967). In the following excerpt, from his monograph on Winthrop, Morgan gives an account of Winthrop's role in the trial of Anne Hutchinson and in the writing of the Body of Liberties document.

On September 18, 1634, two hundred passengers disembarked at Boston's bustling, cluttered landing place and picked their way through the dirty streets. The squalor of the place was enough to make them quail, but they reminded themselves that it was holy ground, where they might worship God without bishops or kings or Romanizing ritual. Among the arrivals who strengthened their resolution with this...