How Did The Puritans Come To America?

903 Words2 Pages

1. The Puritans came to America because they wanted a place where they could practice their own religion without being persecuted for their dissent from the Church of England. However, their behaviors could be considered hypocritical because they did the same to dissenters of their own religion like Anne Hutchinson and Roger Williams. Any religion or set of beliefs will have people who disagree, and both the Anglican Church and the Puritans understandably did not want these people. As more people arrived in the New World, however, the Puritans found it increasingly difficult to keep their community pure and were forced to accept more people.
2. During England's internal conflicts with the English Civil War, the colonies were able to settle without much interference and developed a sense of independence. When England began to pose restrictions such as the Navigation Act and the Molasses Act that were unfavorable to the colonies, they began to question England's …show more content…

Indentured servants were the first "slaves", but after Bacon's Rebellion, many landowners realized that these servants were becoming more and more rebellious. They looked for an alternative workforce that would be easier to control, and found their answer in African slaves. Slavery was an important institution in colonial America because of the necessity of labor to cultivate cash. Agriculture was the most prevalent industry throughout the colonies, and in order to make a lot of money off of crops, cheap labor was integral. The slave trade had enormous cultural and psychological effects on Africans. Generations and generations of Africans were stripped of any freedom they had before, forced to work, and were treated as nothing more than property. For the New World, slavery became integrated into the basis of its economy and it was something many felt they couldn't live without. This institution of slavery would cause decades of conflict and bloodshed in the future, shaping the history of

Open Document