Online Texts for Craig White's Literature Courses
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from Chapter 21. "out of small beginnings greater things" & Chapter 23. "no longer any holding them together" |
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Instructor’s notes: The selections from these chapters show two different sides to the immigrant story and to the American narrative it generates.
Chapter 21 thanks God for the increasing prosperity and well-being of the Pilgrims' community after all their journeying, suffering, and toil, and imagines the Pilgrim community serving as a model for other communities.
Chapter 23 admits the ironical downside of the quest for prosperity in terms reminiscent of capitalism's "creative destruction." Against the idea of a small, close-knit village or church community formed by the original Pilgrims (and on a larger scale by the Boston Puritans), the community's increasing prosperity leads its members to move away to larger pieces of land and to found new churches. The irony that applies to all later immigrants is that, after immigrants leave their old traditional worlds with dreams of establishing their own traditional communities in a land of freedom and opportunity, the immigrants are surprised to see their children and neighbors leave them in turn, continuing a hyper-modern American society of relentless change.
from Chapter 21.
Thus out of small beginnings greater things have been produced by his hand that made all things of nothing, and gives being to all things that are; and as one small candle may light a thousand, so the light here kindled hath shone to many, yea in some sort to our whole nation; let the glorious name of Jehovah have all the praise.
[cf. John Winthrop's characterization of the Puritan community in A Model of Christian Charity: He shall make us a praise and glory that men shall say of succeeding plantations, "may the Lord make it like that of New England." For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us.]
from Chapter 23. "no longer any holding them together"
[¶23.1] Also the people of the plantation began to grow in their outward estates [wealth, possessions], by reason of the flowing of many people into the country, especially into the Bay of the Massachusetts [the Boston area, receiving the Puritan “Great Migration” of the 1630s-40s]; by which means corn and cattle rose to a great price, by which many were much enriched, and commodities grew plentiful; and yet in other regards this benefit turned to their hurt, and this accession of strength to their weakness.
[¶23.2] For now as their stocks increased, and the increase vendible [saleable], there was no longer any holding them together, but now they must of necessity go to their great lots [estates]; they could not other wise keep their cattle; and having oxen grown, they must have land for plowing and tillage. And no man now thought he could live, except he had cattle and a great deal of ground to keep them; all striving to increase their stocks.
[¶23.3] By which means they [the Pilgrims who lived together at Plymouth] were scattered all over the bay, quickly, and the town [Plymouth], in which they lived compactly [close together] till now, was left very thin, and in a short time almost desolate.
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[¶23.4] And if this had been all, it had been less, though too much; but the church must also be divided, and those that had lived so long together in Christian and comfortable fellowship must now part and suffer many divisions. First, those that lived on their lots on the other side of the bay (called Duxbury [map at right]) they could not long bring their wives and children to the public worship and church meetings here, but with such burden, as, growing to some competent number, they sued to be dismissed and become a body of themselves [i.e., their own Congregational Church]; and so they were dismissed (about this time), though very unwillingly. |
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[¶23.5] But to touch this sad matter, and handle things together that fell out afterward. To prevent any further scattering from this place, and weakening of the same, it was thought best to give out some good farms to special persons, that would promise to live at Plymouth, and likely to be helpful to the church or commonwealth, and so tie the lands to Plymouth as farms for the same; and there they might keep their cattle and tillage by some servants, and retain their dwellings here. And so some special lands were granted at a place general called Greens Harbor, where no allotments had been in the former division, a place very well meadowed, and fit to keep and rear cattle good store.
[¶23.6] But alas! this remedy proved worse then the disease; for within a few years those that had thus got footing there rent [tore] themselves away, partly by force, and partly wearying the rest with importunities and pleas of necessity, so as they [the original Pilgrim community] must either suffer them ["special persons" given good farms] to go, or live in continual opposition and contention. And others still, as they conceived themselves straitened [pinched], or to want accommodation, broke away under one pretence or other, thinking their own conceived necessity and the example of others a warrant sufficient for them. And this, I fear, will be the ruin of New England, at least of the churches of God there, and will provoke the Lord’s displeasure against them.
End Chapters 21 & 23
