Difference Between North and SouthDifference Between North and SouthThroughout the course of history, humans have always strived to ascertain certain freedoms in order to better their lives. Humans in North America are no exception, and one of many freedoms they sought to attain was religious tolerance. Throughout the history of the British North American colonies prior to 1700, the extent of religious freedom allowed generally increased as you moved south and was rarely extended to any non-Christian.
The New England colonies were founded mainly by religious groups who sought freedom from the Church of England. The Separatist Pilgrims in Plymouth were the first group to seek freedom, and their leader, William Bradford, said his greatest fear was non-Puritan settlers. The non-Separatist Puritans, who merged with the Plymouth Colony to form the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1629, believed the purpose of the government was to enforce God’s laws. Only Puritans could be freemen and believer or nonbeliever, and everyone had to support the church through taxes. New Haven, which was later absorbed by Massachusetts, required compulsory church attendance and had the strongest church-government alliance of any region. The government enjoyed a high degree of social harmony because of common beliefs, a goal stated by Winthrop in his “City Upon a Hill” speech. Dissenters, such as Quakers, were fined, flogged, banished, and sometimes even hung. Two famous challengers of Puritan ideals were Anne Hutchison and Roger Williams, who were both banished to Rhode Island in 1638 and 1636, respectively. Williams ended up founding the first Baptist church in America at Providence. Rhode Island was the exception in New England. It was filled with outcasts, and complete freedom was offered, even to Catholics and Jews. There were no oaths regarding religious beliefs, no compulsory attendance at worship, and no taxes to support a state church. Other than this exception, most New England colonies extended little religious freedom to citizens that challenged the main religion of the colony.
The diverse middle colonies were much different. New Netherlands, which later became New York, was a mainly Dutch business venture. The Dutch West Indies Company was more interested in profit than religious unity, allowing very diverse religious and ethnic differences among the settlers. When it became New York, the diversity prevented a strong sense of community or control over religious practices. The Quakers of Pennsylvania, who focused on justice and peace, had been persecuted in other areas and thus, offered much religious freedom here. William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania and its holy experiment, believed strongly in human freedom and included strong religious freedom in Pennsylvania’s Frame of Government. Pennsylvania would even accept religious misfits exiled from other
n\ of Pennsylvania, and many of the Puritan Puritan colonists who found their lives threatened by secularism experienced some religious persecution. This was because, as it turned out, it was not the religion that threatened the other settlers, only the way in which they found themselves in a different culture . This was true in the Northern states, where large swaths of the population was Orthodox in religious beliefs, and yet religious discrimination was prevalent.
The Southern states had much better things to do than travel, trade and learn about the North. As far as the Civil Rights Movement was concerned, states in the South needed to be at the bottom of the hierarchy that put all their stock in religion. To that end, civil rights laws were enacted and laws were made to address a fundamental question of human freedom. As the states, from the Reconstruction to the Civil Rights Movement, began, they had to overcome their own differences while doing so. The first, of course, was to overcome prejudice, discrimination, war. The second was to be free to work for themselves. As soon as the people’s religious demands were met, they became aware of the reality that their own beliefs did not serve the long-term interests of the people, but they could become enemies of that people. A strong believer would often make religious arguments that might be politically unhelpful. Those efforts would be based on what they perceived to be the correct belief, and that belief would sometimes be based on their own beliefs, making faith more and more salient to others.
Another attempt to deal with prejudice came from New England, the great center of the Civil War. William Wilkes Booth was a well-known Boston lawyer. Booth was one of those two who was the president of the United States Supreme Court. In 1802, when the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled that the Bill of Rights was unconstitutional, there was resistance from many quarters in New England. The Massachusetts Supreme Court was willing to listen to the people, especially those who were willing to support slavery. They responded to the “Black Bill” written by Wilkes, which included the requirement that all slaves be hired by the county sheriff who hired them (instead of by the local blacksmith). The question of whether government should pay the cost of slavery for its use came up, but the court agreed. If state law were to include in its constitution a guarantee that its citizens would be paid compensation that not only wouldn’t make their lives harder for the government, but that that compensation could only be “paid” if someone was able to pay for such a job, then state law would be unconstitutional.
The Supreme Court did eventually have a majority, after a unanimous vote. After the passage of the Black Bill, it reversed itself in an unusual way. It overturned a legal precedent to make it unconstitutional to pay for slavery in Massachusetts, thereby establishing the constitutional guarantee in the First Amendment. A key passage in the Black Bill was thus written: [S]ome people shall not be forced to perform the acts they do for the benefit of the state. If the persons performing those acts should receive some benefit, they shall pay it as compensation for the right to perform those acts. But those exercising such right shall, at an instance, be required to