The Wordy Shipmates Part 2

In the U.S.A., we want to sing along with the chorus and ignore the verses, ignore the blues. That is why the "city on a hill" is the image from Winthrop's speech that stuck and not "members of the same body." No one is going to hold up a cigarette lighter in a stadium to the tune of "mourn together, suffer together." City on a hill, though-that has a backbeat we can dance to. And that's why the citizens of the United States not only elected and reelected Ronald Reagan; that's why we are are Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan.

Remember this? In 1987, when President Reagan finally went on national TV to apologize for his underlings' secret and illegal weapons sales to Iran in exchange for hostages and to purchase weapons for anticommunist Nicaraguan death squads, he said, "A few months ago I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that's true, but the facts and evidence tell me it is not."

By the time Reagan delivered his farewell address on January 11, 1989, I was a college radio newscaster at KGLT in Bozeman, Montana, cutting reel-to-reel tape from the AP feed. I'll never again have a job that cathartic, literally slicing the news with a razor blade. Once sliced and spliced, Reagan's self-congratulatory benediction went out to the station's listeners, including students, ranchers, minimum-wage dishwashers, skiers driving up to Bridger Bowl, guys in bands who were trying to decide whether or not to move to Seattle, and members of the community food co-op who would rant with equal fervor against organized religion and refined sugar.

In his speech, Reagan brought up John Winthrop yet again, calling the Puritan governor "an early freedom man" from whom he got his sound bite about the city on a hill. He continued: I've spoken of the s.h.i.+ning city all my political life, but I don't know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind, it was a tall proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind-swept, G.o.d-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace, a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity, and if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That's how I saw it, and see it still.And how stands the city on this winter night? More prosperous, more secure, and happier than it was eight years ago. But more than that, after two hundred years, two centuries, she still stands strong and true on the granite ridge, and her glow has held steady no matter what storm.

My heart told me that wasn't true. The facts and evidence also told me that wasn't true.

Remember Winthrop's city? Where "the rich and mighty should not eat up the poor"? Where "if thy brother be in want and thou canst help him . . . if thou lovest G.o.d thou must help him"?

President Reagan did not utter the word "AIDS" in public until more than 20,000 people had died from the disease. His appointed officials embezzled funds earmarked for cleaning up toxic waste sites and gave the money to Republican candidates. He cut school lunch programs for needy children. He fired 11,345 striking air traffic controllers, which, according to the Village Voice, Village Voice, led to 253 deaths due to controller errors over the next ten years. He cut the budget for the Department of Housing and Urban Development from $32 billion in 1981 to $7.5 billion in 1988; two million Americans were homeless by 1989. The only federal department whose budget was not cut, but increased, was the Department of Defense; that was because the president's white whale was the Soviet Union. Being ready and able to bomb the h.e.l.l out of the evil empire was the nation's top priority and if that meant thousands of poor kids had to skip lunch or sleep in cars in poisoned neighborhoods, so be it. led to 253 deaths due to controller errors over the next ten years. He cut the budget for the Department of Housing and Urban Development from $32 billion in 1981 to $7.5 billion in 1988; two million Americans were homeless by 1989. The only federal department whose budget was not cut, but increased, was the Department of Defense; that was because the president's white whale was the Soviet Union. Being ready and able to bomb the h.e.l.l out of the evil empire was the nation's top priority and if that meant thousands of poor kids had to skip lunch or sleep in cars in poisoned neighborhoods, so be it.

The statistics above are alarming enough. But the way Reagan not only ignored the facts-the truth didn't feel feel true-but simply said that all was s.h.i.+ny in the city of his mind, was extra galling. As Abraham Lincoln put it in an exasperated letter to his friend Joshua Speed in 1855, complaining about slavery and religious intolerance, he would "prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty-to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure and without the base alloy of hypocrisy." true-but simply said that all was s.h.i.+ny in the city of his mind, was extra galling. As Abraham Lincoln put it in an exasperated letter to his friend Joshua Speed in 1855, complaining about slavery and religious intolerance, he would "prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty-to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure and without the base alloy of hypocrisy."

A few weeks after Reagan's 1989 farewell address aired, a new Elvis Costello alb.u.m showed up at the radio station and the DJs wore out the grooves on " Tramp the Dirt Down," in which the singer hoped he would live long enough to see the death of Reagan's transatlantic best friend, Margaret Thatcher, so he could jump up and down on her grave. I confess that became my Reagan fantasy, too. Until his ghastly, slow death from Alzheimer's disease deprived any detractor with half a heart of even that petty, dirt-tramping thrill.

In 2004, I did watch Reagan's funeral at the National Cathedral on live TV. The ailing Thatcher sent a video eulogy, quoting Arnold Bennett that Reagan personified "the great cause of cheering us all up."

Former senator John C. Danforth gave the homily, reading from that part of the Gospel of Matthew from which Winthrop himself cribbed the city-on-a-hill image: "You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hid." Danforth continued: Winthrop believed that the eyes of the world would be on America because G.o.d had given us a special commission, so it was our duty to s.h.i.+ne forth. The Winthrop message became the Reagan message. It rang of optimism, and we longed to hear it, especially after the dark years of Vietnam and Watergate. It was a vision with policy implications.America could not hide its light under a bushel. It could not turn in on itself and hunker down. Isolationism was not an option. Neither was protectionism. We must champion freedom everywhere. We must be the beacon for the world.

Danforth went on to say, "If ever we have known a child of light, it was Ronald Reagan. He was aglow with it. He had no dark side, no scary hidden agenda."

Maybe some of the people there pictured the late president's winning smile and smiled themselves. I just sat there frowning on my couch, picturing secret crates of weapons being unloaded from a cargo plane in Iran to pay for secret crates of weapons being unloaded from a cargo plane in Nicaragua.

Sandra Day O'Connor read an excerpt from Winthrop's "A Model of Christian Charity." She reminded the congregation, "The city on the hill pa.s.sage was referenced by President Reagan in several notable speeches." Appointed by Reagan, O'Connor was the first woman to serve on the Supreme Court, and thus an obvious choice to speak at his memorial service.

John Winthrop, however, must have been rolling over in his grave, wondering when did women become magistrates and how come one of them is reading his sermon, considering he was the man who barked at female heretic Anne Hutchinson, "We are your judges and not you ours."

O'Connor read slowly, her voice small and grave. She sounded like an old woman whose friend has died. She will pause slightly when she gets to the word "mourn." The text was edited beforehand. This is everything she read: Now, the only way to provide for posterity is to follow the counsel of Micah: to do justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with our G.o.d.We must delight in each other, make others' conditions our own, rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work as members of the same body.The Lord will be our G.o.d and delight to dwell among us as his own people.For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us so that if we shall deal falsely with our G.o.d in this work we have undertaken and so cause him to withdraw his present help from us, we shall be made a story and a byword through the world.

At that moment, there was one story known through the world, a byword on everyone's lips: Abu Ghraib. A couple of weeks before O'Connor said that last line, I went to New York University to hear a speech given by one of the people sitting there in the National Cathedral-former vice president Al Gore-demanding that another person sitting there-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld-resign because of the revelation that American Military Police officers had tortured, raped, and killed Iraqi prisoners at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib penitentiary.

Everyone in the cathedral, everyone watching on television, hearing O'Connor's voice, had seen the appalling photos-naked prisoners made to pile themselves into a human pyramid as their American captors stood behind them, smiling at the camera and making the "thumbs-up" sign; prisoners made to line up for snapshots of their genitalia; prisoners bleeding because they had been bitten by dogs.

In his NYU speech, Gore asked of Rumsfeld and the president he serves (who would of course also be there amongst them at Reagan's funeral), "How dare they drag the good name of the United States of America through the mud of Saddam Hussein's torture prison?"

Like Winthrop, like Reagan, like Danforth at Reagan's funeral, Gore cited the Sermon on the Mount. "In my religious tradition," he remarked, "I have been taught that . . . 'a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. . . . Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.' "

Gore even implied that these crimes against Iraqi prisoners of war were an offense not just to us, right now, but to our Puritan forebears: What a terrible irony that our country, which was founded by refugees seeking religious freedom-coming to America to escape domineering leaders who tried to get them to renounce their religion-would now be responsible for this kind of abuse.Ameen Saeed al-Sheikh told the Was.h.i.+ngton Post Was.h.i.+ngton Post that he was tortured and ordered to denounce Islam. And after his leg was broken one of his torturers started hitting it while ordering him to curse Islam and then, "They ordered me to thank Jesus that I'm alive." that he was tortured and ordered to denounce Islam. And after his leg was broken one of his torturers started hitting it while ordering him to curse Islam and then, "They ordered me to thank Jesus that I'm alive."

Gore used the argument of American exceptionalism (first set forth by John Cotton and John Winthrop and their comrades) to bemoan this betrayal of American exceptionalism-how we as a people "consistently choose good over evil in our collective aspirations more than the people of any other nation," how Lincoln, early on in the Civil War, called for saving the Union because it was the "last best hope of earth."

That was the speech in which Lincoln pointed out "we cannot escape history." Well, we can't. I can't really fault Gore for saying that what happened at Abu Ghraib is sickening, not only because it's just plain sickening but because America is supposed to be better than that. No: best. I hate to admit it, but I still believe that, too. Because even though my head tells me that the idea that America was chosen by G.o.d as His righteous city on a hill is ridiculous, my heart still buys into it. And I don't even believe in G.o.d! And I have heard the screams! Why is America the last best hope of Earth? What if it's Liechtenstein? Or, worse, Canada?

The thing that appeals to me about Winthrop's "Christian Charity" and Cotton's "G.o.d's Promise to His Plantation" from this end of history is that at least the arrogant ballyhoo that New England is special and chosen by G.o.d is tempered by the self-loathing Puritans' sense of reckoning. The same wakefulness the individual Calvinist was to use to keep watch over his own sins Winthrop and Cotton called for also in the group at large. This humility, this fear, was what kept their delusions of grandeur in check. That's what subsequent generations lost. From New England's Puritans we inherited the idea that America is blessed and ordained by G.o.d above all nations, but lost the fear of wrath and retribution.

The eyes of all people are upon us. And all they see is a mash-up of naked prisoners and an American girl in fatigues standing there giving a thumbs-up. As I write this, the United States of America is still a city on a hill; and it's still s.h.i.+ning-because we never turn off the lights in our torture prisons. That's how we carry out the sleep deprivation. And all they see is a mash-up of naked prisoners and an American girl in fatigues standing there giving a thumbs-up. As I write this, the United States of America is still a city on a hill; and it's still s.h.i.+ning-because we never turn off the lights in our torture prisons. That's how we carry out the sleep deprivation.

At the Ma.s.sachusetts State Archives in Boston, a.s.sistant Archivist Michael Comeau shows me the most important item John Winthrop packed in his luggage on the Arbella Arbella-the Charter of the Ma.s.sachusetts Bay Company granted by King Charles I. Comeau points to the "bug-eyed" portrait of Charles lording over the upper-left-hand corner of the first page.

There is a little hole above Charles's head, but otherwise the doc.u.ment is in terrific shape. I ask Comeau if that has anything to do with the New Englanders' sense of historic self-importance. "Oh my G.o.d," he answers, "these people killed themselves to make sure there was a paper trail." In fact, not only did they take excellent care of the Charter itself, they saved the original beeswax seal. He opens a box containing some brown globs he admits "look like a cow pie. At the time it would have been a vibrant red. Now it looks like dirt."

The beginning of the Charter alludes to the evolution of the Ma.s.sachusetts Bay Company, how King James, Charles's father, gave patents for land in New England dating back to 1607 to the Virginia Company of Plymouth, which turned into the Council of New England, which turned into the Ma.s.sachusetts Bay Company. I'm guessing part of the point of this is to rea.s.sure Charles that he is not condoning some newfangled religious experiment but rather continuing to support a practical, moneymaking venture approved by his father. The Charter b.u.t.ters up Charles by referring to his dad as "our most dear and royal father, King James, of blessed memory."

The Charter authorized the Ma.s.sachusetts Bay Company to colonize all the land between three miles north of the Merrimack River and three miles south of the Charles River, stretching "from sea to sea" (i.e., all the way to the Pacific), including "soils, grounds, havens, ports, rivers, waters, fis.h.i.+ng, mines, any minerals, as well royal mines of gold and silver, as other mines and minerals, precious stones, quarries, and all and singular other commodities" therein. Just so long as the company's executives make no laws "contrary or repugnant to the laws and statutes" of England.

At this point in the story of the founding of Ma.s.sachusetts Bay, many accounts have a lot of folksy fun with a yarn about how sneaky it was of the Ma.s.sachusetts Bay Company to "forget" to put into the Charter that the doc.u.ment remain in England, and that the company's administrative meetings must also be held in England as previous charters had. This allows the company to take the Charter with them abroad, making self-government in Ma.s.sachusetts possible with little royal oversight. In that scenario, says Michael the archivist, "Winthrop steals the Charter in the dark of night." So the founding of Ma.s.sachusetts becomes a Bugs Bunny cartoon-King Charles, in hunting cap, is outsmarted by the wascally Winthrop.

Our folksy fun, however, is ruined by annoying scholars whose painstaking hard work has uncovered the murkier, less dramatic truth, requiring footnotes about the Third Charter of Virginia of 1612 or the East India Company's royal charter of 1600 allowing its officers to meet "in such convenient place" they "shall think fit." Librarian Ronald Dale Karr writes, "The omission of a designated meeting place in the Ma.s.sachusetts Bay Charter of 1629 was thus neither unprecedented nor unusual." This debunks, says Michael, the myth of "the deviousness of Winthrop."

If the potential for colonial self-government wasn't exactly new, Winthrop and Co. still exploited this loophole like none before them had dared.

One innovation in the Charter does afford Americans front-row seats at the birth of the national pastime-regularly scheduled voting. The Charter states that the Ma.s.sachusetts governor, deputy governor, and the representatives known as "a.s.sistants" are to be voted in or out every spring. Historian Samuel Eliot Morison opined, " The particular feature of this charter which proved so successful and enduring as to become an American inst.i.tution was the principle of stated elections." This is, he continues, "in contrast to the English or parliamentary system."

This is still true. As an American, I am entirely flummoxed by the w.i.l.l.y-nilly process by which the Brits acquire a new prime minister. It seems like one afternoon after tea they decide to get rid of the old one, then the majority party in the House of Commons picks the person they most want to yell at on C-SPAN's Prime Minister's Questions, Prime Minister's Questions, then the new prime minister goes to Buckingham Palace and for two minutes the whole country politely pretends he was the queen's idea. then the new prime minister goes to Buckingham Palace and for two minutes the whole country politely pretends he was the queen's idea.

U.S. citizens can thank the Ma.s.sachusetts Bay colonists for breaking with that tradition. While Americans choose a new president in a process that is as insane as the way the United Kingdom ends up with a new prime minister-given the fact that the Electoral College makes sure our president is chosen by three counties in Florida and Ohio (or nine Supreme Court justices)-at least we can print "Election Day" in our calendars ahead of time. And looking forward to that date circled in November can get a citizen through a lot of cold nights. As Morison noted, the Ma.s.sachusetts Bay's "corporate mode of election put an almost continuous check on both executive officers and representatives. It became an essential principle of every state const.i.tution and the federal const.i.tution."

The Ma.s.sachusetts Bay Colony becomes, under this Charter, a sort of republic-the most severely limited, totalitarian, closed-minded, vindictive, hard-a.s.s republic possible. But the democratic impulse is a mutating virus that adapts and changes, quickens and grows; it is contagious, and the Charter is one important sneeze.

At first, the General Court in 1630 consisted of eight people-the governor, the deputy governor, and six other magistrates called a.s.sistants. But within a year, a hundred others, church members all, known as "freemen," are sworn in to court; they are granted the power to elect the a.s.sistants, who in turn elect the governor. But by 1632, the freemen raise a stink and are allowed to elect the governor directly. They are, however, required to take an oath that they will be "obedient" to the governor and a.s.sistants. They also pledge to rat out their neighbors by alerting the governor and a.s.sistants "of any sedition, violence, treachery, or other hurt or evil which I shall know, hear, or vehemently suspect to be plotted or intended against the said commonwealth, or the said government established."

The vow of obedience and that thing about vehement suspicions doesn't exactly make the democratic idealist in me want to hum the trombone part from "Stars and Stripes Forever." Still, got to start somewhere. So it's worth celebrating, a little, that within two years of the Ma.s.sachusetts Bay Company's arrival on these sh.o.r.es, a hundred white male religious fanatics get to pick their own dictator in a show of hands. Winthrop will be that dictator on and off until he dies.

Winthrop and the other a.s.sistants get their authoritari anism from the same place they derive all their other beliefs-the Bible. Winthrop railed, "If we should change from a mixed aristocracy to mere democracy, first we should have no warrant in Scripture for it for there was no such government in Israel." He continues, calling democracy "the meanest and worst of all forms of government . . . a manifest breach of the Fifth Commandment."

The Fifth Commandment is honor your father and mother. To these people, "father and mother" are not merely biological parents. Martin Luther wrote the best explanation of how the Fifth Commandment extends beyond the nuclear family and into public life: In this commandment belongs a further statement regarding all kinds of obedience to persons in authority who have to command and govern. For all authority flows and is propagated from the authority of parents. . . . They are all called fathers in the Scriptures, as those who in their government perform the functions of a father, and should have a paternal heart toward their subordinates.

That explanation goes a long way toward explaining Winthrop's seemingly schizophrenic behavior. By setting limits on dissent, Winthrop's government is facing a question asked of and by every government. But according to the Puritans' interpretation of the Fifth Commandment, a governor is also a patriarch. This requires tough love, but love nonetheless. How the Fifth Commandment informs Winthrop's conduct is best explained in the person of Philip Ratcliffe, he of the sliced-off ears.

Recall that Winthrop was one of the magistrates who convicted Ratcliffe of "scandalous invectives against our churches and government." Which is to say Ratcliffe broke the Fifth Commandment twice over by failing to honor both his church fathers and his legislative/judicial fathers of the General Court. His punishment, besides the ear lopping and a whipping, is banishment.

Earlier, I mentioned in pa.s.sing that throughout his tenure as governor, the townspeople accused Winthrop of leniency. The example I gave was the Bostonians' disgust that Winthrop allowed a couple of men who had been banished to loiter in Boston. Winthrop's reasoning was that "being in the winter, they must otherwise have perished" if they were forced to hike into the icy wilderness right away.

Well, Ratcliffe was one of those men Winthrop refused to kick out into the cold. And I think it's because Winthrop takes the Fifth Commandment seriously. He sees himself as a father and the other colonists as his children. Is this condescending? Absolutely. Does it explain his contradictory words and deeds, the disconnect between the ideal of the colonists being "members of the same body" and chopping off a loudmouth's ears? I think it does. A father sometimes plays the doting dad who buys his son a Popsicle, or he can be the furious punisher of the phrase "wait until your father gets home." By banis.h.i.+ng Ratcliffe, Winthrop was disowning him; by letting Ratcliffe stay in Boston until the weather warmed up, Winthrop was looking out for his safety. Winthrop was one of those parents who never wants to see his kid again but drives him to the bus station to make sure he leaves town warm and dry.

A settler named Thomas Wiggin described Winthrop as "ruling with much mildness" toward the law-abiding. As for troublemakers, Wiggin claimed Winthrop was "strict in execution of Justice . . . to the terror of offenders."

If the Fifth Commandment accounts for Winthrop and his fellow magistrates' style of governing, I think it also explains their conciliatory att.i.tudes toward the monarchy and the Church of England-why they are not Separatists like their neighbors in Plymouth. Remember the "Humble Request," the open letter the colonists sent to King Charles and the Church before their departure? It was addressed to "Reverend Fathers." It called the Church of England "our dear mother," proclaiming that their hope for salvation "we have received in her bosom and sucked it from her b.r.e.a.s.t.s."

Also recall the Charter's description of King James as "our most dear and royal father."

This paternal and maternal language is not mere empty words to these Puritans. They believe the Fifth Commandment requires them to obey the parental authority of king and church. Or at least appear to.

At the Ma.s.sachusetts Historical Society in Boston, I visit the reading room. It's like a cartoon of East Coast finery: dark wood paneling, oil paintings on the wall of ill.u.s.trious, staring Bostonians whose eyes accuse visitors who went to state schools west of the Mississippi, "You're not from around here, are you?"

I was there to read John Winthrop's journal. The actual thing. It's hard not to look at the water stains and imagine they came from Atlantic sea spray during the crossing. I don't think Winthrop was any more nervous leaving England than I was leafing through such a brittle, wrinkly, nearly four-hundred-year-old book.

The library a.s.sistant, who was helpful and diligent, bordering on liturgical, handed me the first volume, then the third, wincing that the second volume "burned up in a fire." Which happened nearly two hundred years ago, but this true-blue young archivist is still in mourning.

Winthrop's handwriting was so dreadful I could only make out a handful of words, from "Arbella" "Arbella" on the first page to a "G.o.dly" here and a "temptations" there. There is an autograph, "Your loving son, John Winthrop," pasted in at the end of the third volume by a Winthrop heir who found the signature from Winthrop Jr. to his father and didn't want it to get lost. For some reason that made them both seem so alive and so odd-to follow an endearment like "your loving son" with a last name, being simultaneously heartfelt and formal-much like Winthrop himself. (The younger Winthrop's hand is also represented in the first volume's endpapers, where he drew plans for houses and forts for his father.) on the first page to a "G.o.dly" here and a "temptations" there. There is an autograph, "Your loving son, John Winthrop," pasted in at the end of the third volume by a Winthrop heir who found the signature from Winthrop Jr. to his father and didn't want it to get lost. For some reason that made them both seem so alive and so odd-to follow an endearment like "your loving son" with a last name, being simultaneously heartfelt and formal-much like Winthrop himself. (The younger Winthrop's hand is also represented in the first volume's endpapers, where he drew plans for houses and forts for his father.) I found myself fixated on the third volume's sad, blank pages when the diary stops cold in 1649. That's when Winthrop died. I stared at all that yellowing emptiness and remembered seeing the globe in Will Rogers's office when I toured his house in Santa Monica; there are pencil marks all over it that Rogers, an avid aviator, made when he was planning his flights around the world, and it's just so poignant to see those lines, since he died in a plane crash, but it's even more poignant to think about a kid from Oklahoma who par-layed a few jokes and rope tricks into seeing the world. Just as it is touching to look at Winthrop's drawings in his diary of the coastlines of Maine and Ma.s.sachusetts, sketched from the deck of the Arbella, Arbella, and marvel at how far he had come and wonder if he was concentrating on the contours of the sh.o.r.eline to take his mind off his fear of actually stepping onto the strange new continent before him and commencing his strange new life. and marvel at how far he had come and wonder if he was concentrating on the contours of the sh.o.r.eline to take his mind off his fear of actually stepping onto the strange new continent before him and commencing his strange new life.

Luckily, the Ma.s.sachusetts Historical Society has published the entirety of Winthrop's journals, including the unfortunate second volume, which had already been transcribed before the blaze.

The first journal's endpapers, where Winthrop jotted down odds and ends of information in preparing for the Atlantic crossing in 1630, doc.u.ment the extremes of what he had on his mind before leaving home.

Winthrop writes down instructions for making gunpowder, putting up a chimney, and building a small boat. He makes lists of the provisions for the voyage, including thirty bushels of oatmeal, forty bushels of peas, two wooden bowls, two barrels of cider, the equivalent of ten thousand gallons of beer, 138 wooden spoons, and "11 Ferkins of b.u.t.ter," a ferkin (or firkin) being a "unit of capacity," according to my dictionary, "equal to half a kilderkin." (That clears that up.) But Winthrop also jots down a list of Bible verses having to do with charity and generosity that he will refer to when he writes "A Model of Christian Charity." These pa.s.sages include "Give to him that asketh thee" from the Sermon on the Mount; and Isaiah 58, which touts that for those who give their bread to the hungry and clothe the naked, "thine health shall spring forth speedily; and 2 Corinthians 9:7, in which "G.o.d loveth a cheerful giver."

In other words, after Winthrop has acquired all his b.u.t.ter firkins, food stirrers, and beer, along with six dozen candles, twenty thousand biscuits, and twenty-nine sides of beef, he goes through the Bible and writes down a bunch of verses commanding him to be willing to cheerfully give all that stuff away. My firkin is your firkin My firkin is your firkin being one of Christianity's primary creeds. He is simultaneously imagining an idealistic city on a hill, and making sure that city has nine hundred pounds of cheese. being one of Christianity's primary creeds. He is simultaneously imagining an idealistic city on a hill, and making sure that city has nine hundred pounds of cheese.

Winthrop's journal proper begins on March 29, 1630, "near the Isle of Wight, in the Arbella, Arbella, a s.h.i.+p of three hundred and fifty tons." Named for one of Winthrop's s.h.i.+pmates, the highfalutin Lady Arbella Johnson, the a s.h.i.+p of three hundred and fifty tons." Named for one of Winthrop's s.h.i.+pmates, the highfalutin Lady Arbella Johnson, the Arbella Arbella and the other vessels in the fleet will not reach open sea for nearly two weeks, working their way past Yarmouth and Plymouth and the Isles of Scilly off England's southwest coast. Before then, Winthrop will witness a Dutch s.h.i.+p get stuck on a rock. He will have breakfast with the caretaker of Yarmouth Castle, an "old sea captain in Queen Elizabeth's time." He will bemoan that his son Henry, who had gone ash.o.r.e for cows, was unable to rejoin the and the other vessels in the fleet will not reach open sea for nearly two weeks, working their way past Yarmouth and Plymouth and the Isles of Scilly off England's southwest coast. Before then, Winthrop will witness a Dutch s.h.i.+p get stuck on a rock. He will have breakfast with the caretaker of Yarmouth Castle, an "old sea captain in Queen Elizabeth's time." He will bemoan that his son Henry, who had gone ash.o.r.e for cows, was unable to rejoin the Arbella Arbella because of high winds-his only hope being that Henry can hitch a ride with one of the other New England-bound vessels. (He does.) And if that's not enough to worry about, with eight possibly Spanish s.h.i.+ps approaching, Winthrop almost goes to war. The Lady Arbella and the other women and children are sent belowdecks. The men get out their weapons, which is to say they fetched their muskets and "went to prayer upon the upper deck." In the end, they were not enemy s.h.i.+ps, "and so," writes Winthrop, "(G.o.d be praised) our fear and danger was turned into mirth and friendly entertainment." because of high winds-his only hope being that Henry can hitch a ride with one of the other New England-bound vessels. (He does.) And if that's not enough to worry about, with eight possibly Spanish s.h.i.+ps approaching, Winthrop almost goes to war. The Lady Arbella and the other women and children are sent belowdecks. The men get out their weapons, which is to say they fetched their muskets and "went to prayer upon the upper deck." In the end, they were not enemy s.h.i.+ps, "and so," writes Winthrop, "(G.o.d be praised) our fear and danger was turned into mirth and friendly entertainment."

His notes on the Atlantic crossing are so detailed in terms of position and wind direction-N by NW, S by SW, etc.-that one could probably re-create the Arbella Arbella's route fairly accurately. And by "one" I do not mean me. I get seasick on the ferry to Weehawken. I think I would have preferred being burned at the stake in England to sailing to America because the best thing about death by fire is that it tends to be so nice and dry. I've always loved the story of the founding of New England for the same reason I have a thing for surfing movies and Moby-d.i.c.k Moby-d.i.c.k-I'm afraid of water, so the only thing I'll dive into is a narrative account.

To see a s.h.i.+p similar to the Arbella, Arbella, you can go to Plymouth, Ma.s.s., and climb aboard the replica you can go to Plymouth, Ma.s.s., and climb aboard the replica Mayflower II, Mayflower II, which to me is a claustrophobic floating vomitorium I couldn't stand to be on for more than nine minutes, much less nine weeks. (A replica which to me is a claustrophobic floating vomitorium I couldn't stand to be on for more than nine minutes, much less nine weeks. (A replica Arbella Arbella was built for Ma.s.sachusetts' 300th anniversary in 1930; but, according to Francis Bremer, it ended up beached at Salem's Pioneer Village and the city of Salem tore the thing down after it "became a haunt for youths indulging in various questionable activities." Winthrop would surely approve of this crackdown, having mused in his journal during the Atlantic crossing that a servant girl got drunk because it is "a common fault in our young people, that they gave themselves to drink hot waters very immoderately.") was built for Ma.s.sachusetts' 300th anniversary in 1930; but, according to Francis Bremer, it ended up beached at Salem's Pioneer Village and the city of Salem tore the thing down after it "became a haunt for youths indulging in various questionable activities." Winthrop would surely approve of this crackdown, having mused in his journal during the Atlantic crossing that a servant girl got drunk because it is "a common fault in our young people, that they gave themselves to drink hot waters very immoderately.") In terms of historical tourism, the Pilgrims of 1620 get all the glory. Families, my own included, plan vacations around visiting Plymouth's Mayflower II Mayflower II and "Plimoth Plantation," the re-created colonial English and Wampanoag village on the outskirts of town. My sister Amy, my then-seven-year-old nephew Owen, and I visited it one summer. It is peopled by actors who will not, under any circ.u.mstances, break character-not even when Owen suggested they could really spruce up their cramped little houses by shopping at Home Depot or maybe Lowe's because Lowe's offers "everyday low prices." We strolled around the dusty paths among men and women in colorful seventeenth-century garb. (When Owen asked a woman in a blue skirt why she wasn't wearing black like Pilgrims are supposed to, she said that only rich people wear black, and then sneered at me and my ripped black T-s.h.i.+rt as if I were Marie Antoi nette.) We then made the acquaintance of one Englishman Amy dubbed the "Pilgrim Archie Bunker." We had just ambled through the Wampanoag village and watched a woman cooking with a clay pot, so Owen had indigenous people on his mind. He told Archie about his collection of Hopi and Navajo kachina dolls he started the previous summer when we went to the Grand Canyon. After an annoying back-and-forth in which Archie determined we apparently came from New Spain and were therefore suspected of Catholicism, we returned to the subject of kachinas. Archie backed away from Owen and asked him if they're poppets. No, Owen said, "Not puppets-wood carvings." I told him a poppet is a doll used in witchcraft. "You know, like when s...o...b..-Doo goes to Salem." Owen shook his head at Archie and said, "Kachinas are G.o.ds, Hopi and Navajo G.o.ds." Archie pointed his finger at Owen's chest and raised his voice, "Not the true G.o.d Jesus Christ!" Then he told Owen he's never shot an Indian personally but he wouldn't lose any sleep over it if he did, and that he would trade with the Indians, though he would never give them anything of value, perhaps "a pot that was full of holes." Then my sister grabbed Owen by the arm and said, "Come on, Owen. Let's get out of here before Mama punches a Pilgrim." and "Plimoth Plantation," the re-created colonial English and Wampanoag village on the outskirts of town. My sister Amy, my then-seven-year-old nephew Owen, and I visited it one summer. It is peopled by actors who will not, under any circ.u.mstances, break character-not even when Owen suggested they could really spruce up their cramped little houses by shopping at Home Depot or maybe Lowe's because Lowe's offers "everyday low prices." We strolled around the dusty paths among men and women in colorful seventeenth-century garb. (When Owen asked a woman in a blue skirt why she wasn't wearing black like Pilgrims are supposed to, she said that only rich people wear black, and then sneered at me and my ripped black T-s.h.i.+rt as if I were Marie Antoi nette.) We then made the acquaintance of one Englishman Amy dubbed the "Pilgrim Archie Bunker." We had just ambled through the Wampanoag village and watched a woman cooking with a clay pot, so Owen had indigenous people on his mind. He told Archie about his collection of Hopi and Navajo kachina dolls he started the previous summer when we went to the Grand Canyon. After an annoying back-and-forth in which Archie determined we apparently came from New Spain and were therefore suspected of Catholicism, we returned to the subject of kachinas. Archie backed away from Owen and asked him if they're poppets. No, Owen said, "Not puppets-wood carvings." I told him a poppet is a doll used in witchcraft. "You know, like when s...o...b..-Doo goes to Salem." Owen shook his head at Archie and said, "Kachinas are G.o.ds, Hopi and Navajo G.o.ds." Archie pointed his finger at Owen's chest and raised his voice, "Not the true G.o.d Jesus Christ!" Then he told Owen he's never shot an Indian personally but he wouldn't lose any sleep over it if he did, and that he would trade with the Indians, though he would never give them anything of value, perhaps "a pot that was full of holes." Then my sister grabbed Owen by the arm and said, "Come on, Owen. Let's get out of here before Mama punches a Pilgrim."

I used to feel a little sorry for the Ma.s.sachusetts Bay colonists of 1630, whose story is told, if at all, in negligible plaques and statues no Bostonian notices on the way to work. Plymouth has Plymouth Rock, and Boston has, in a gla.s.s case at the State House, "one of the oldest upholstered chairs made in New England"-an item that doesn't lend itself to cries of "Honey, pack up the car." One reason for that is that the Boston founders were more successful city builders. Which stands to reason, since they weren't just building a city. They were building a city on a hill. Unlike Plymouth, which is beholden to the Pilgrims to this day for its livelihood because nothing much happened in that town after its original settlers died. Which is why the Plymouth Colony was actually absorbed into the Ma.s.sachusetts Bay Colony in 1691. Boston, with its fine harbor, kept moving and growing and building right on top of the Winthrop fleet's foundations. Literally: the office building that was Boston's first steel-frame "skysc.r.a.per" was built in 1893 on top of the site of Winthrop's Boston house.

Plus, having been to Plymouth, I now feel confident that Winthrop and his s.h.i.+pmates would appreciate being spared the indignity of fame. I am thinking specifically of the Mayflower Mayflower replica with a waterslide jutting from its deck in the Pilgrim Cove Pool at Plymouth's John Carver Inn. replica with a waterslide jutting from its deck in the Pilgrim Cove Pool at Plymouth's John Carver Inn.

Would William Bradford, who wrote of the Mayflower Mayflower's voyage that "many were afflicted with seasickness," ever stop throwing up if he spent an afternoon watching my nephew come shooting out of the s.h.i.+p's slide, giggling, over and over again, each time making a loud, highly chlorinated splash? Would Bradford point out that half the Mayflower Mayflower pa.s.sengers died their first year in Plymouth so maybe it's disrespectful to turn the vessel into a cannonball-launcher next to a hot tub? Or that he and the other Pilgrims came over on the real pa.s.sengers died their first year in Plymouth so maybe it's disrespectful to turn the vessel into a cannonball-launcher next to a hot tub? Or that he and the other Pilgrims came over on the real Mayflower Mayflower to follow rules more profound than "Do Not Slide Head First"? to follow rules more profound than "Do Not Slide Head First"?

During Winthrop's two months on the Atlantic, he writes of the cold and the fog. There are tempests. There are days when the sea is "beating us back as much as the wind put us forward." He sees a whale. The slovenly crew keeps the gun deck in "beastly" disorder, so Winthrop and the other officers organize a cleaning schedule. Some sick children are made to hold on to a rope in the suns.h.i.+ne to air them out. June 7 was a day of extreme emotional non sequi turs, in which Winthrop notes the pa.s.sengers caught twenty-six cod, "so we all feasted with fish this day. A woman was delivered of a child in our s.h.i.+p, stillborn."

Then, the next day, land ho. They could see Mount Desert Island off the coast of Maine. "And there came a smell off the sh.o.r.e like the smell of a garden," Winthrop wrote.

For four days, they followed the coastline down. At four o'clock in the morning, on Sat.u.r.day, June 12, they reached Cape Ann. Some Salem men, including John Endecott, came out in boats to fetch them. Endecott was the Ma.s.sachusetts Bay Company's advance man. He had led a small group of pioneers to America two years earlier to prepare the way for large-scale settlement. So that evening, Endecott and his fellows fed Winthrop supper in Salem, "a good venison pasty and good beer."

Compare that reception to William Bradford's description of the Mayflower Mayflower's landfall at Cape Cod ten years earlier. The Pilgrims were overjoyed that they had finally made it for, oh, two minutes, until they realized that "they had no friends to welcome them nor inns to entertain or refresh their weatherbeaten bodies; no houses or much less towns to repair to, to seek for succor."

Then again, John Endecott is Winthrop's Welcome Wagon rep. Endecott does not go down in history for his warmth. Nathaniel Hawthorne describes him as "the Puritan of Puritans," a man "so stern" that he "seemed wrought of iron." Later on, Endecott will send Governor Winthrop a letter complaining about how it's frowned upon for a justice of the peace to hit someone. Because Endecott, a justice of the peace, has just punched a defendant-in court. "If you had seen the manner of his carriage," continues Endecott, "with such daring of me, with his arms akimbo, it would have provoked a very patient man." He says that if it were suddenly legal for a judge to go around clocking people, "you should not hear me complain."

So besides being cranky and pugilistic, Endecott has been the man in charge in Ma.s.sachusetts Bay up until the moment Winthrop gets there with the Charter and usurps him. On Boston Common there is a relief sculpture called the Founders Memorial that pictures the two men shaking hands on the sh.o.r.e, with the Arbella Arbella in the harbor behind them. In it, some of the men and women who have just disembarked from the s.h.i.+p, as well as a pair of Indians off to the side, witness this significant occasion as if all is well and good. But Endecott can't have been entirely thrilled with his sudden demotion. in the harbor behind them. In it, some of the men and women who have just disembarked from the s.h.i.+p, as well as a pair of Indians off to the side, witness this significant occasion as if all is well and good. But Endecott can't have been entirely thrilled with his sudden demotion.

Back at the Ma.s.sachusetts State Archives, Michael Comeau had shown me the copy of the Ma.s.sachusetts Charter given to Endecott. It is marked "dupl," indicating it is a duplicate, place-holder charter. But still, said Comeau, "Legend has it Endecott would wield it like a scepter."

Endecott would remain the mullah of Salem, which might have something to do with that town's touchy religious climate throughout the seventeenth century. The pa.s.sengers of the Winthrop fleet did not stick around. Deputy Governor Thomas Dudley later wrote, "Salem, where we landed, pleased us not."

So the colonists dispersed south, breaking off into various settlements such as Roxbury and Dorchester, Boston neighborhoods that would become famous in the twentieth century for race riots and the boy band New Kids on the Block.

Winthrop moved to Charlestown, just across the Charles River from what would become Boston, living in a structure that was part bachelor pad, part town hall, and that everyone called the Great House, probably because there wasn't a lot of compet.i.tion in the architectural excellence department.

The New England Puritans are not remembered for their sweetness, and yet there was much sweetness in them. This is especially true of Winthrop. For instance, he sailed to Ma.s.sachusetts alone to get settled. Until he could send for his wife, Margaret, he wrote her a letter proposing that they think of each other at a specific time twice a week, a sort of steady date on the astral plane. He promised, "Mondays and Fridays, at five of the clock at night, we shall meet in spirit till we meet in person." But Winthrop is so busy his first few months in Ma.s.sachusetts he sends Margaret a letter confessing he's been standing her up on their mental dates. "I own with sorrow that much business hath made me too often forget Mondays and Fridays," he wrote.

His earliest American journal entries are understandably brief. "Monday we kept a court," reads one. "My son, Henry Winthrop, was drowned at Salem," says another.

I read somewhere that remnants of the postholes from the Great House are visible in Charlestown. Turns out that's only true if it isn't snowing. Just across the Charlestown Bridge from Boston, the postholes, along with stones from the Three Cranes Tavern built on the site after the Great House was dismantled, are on view in lovely little City Square Park. The British burned down the tavern during the Battle of Bunker Hill in 1775. I can almost make out the intertwined foundations of the two buildings outlined on the ground.

So much history had already happened on this one patch of gra.s.s before the Declaration of Independence was even written. Coming from the West, where history, like everything else, is so spread out, and even then it's mostly grubby Indian wars and greedy copper barons with a little Lewis and Clark in between, I never get sick of the way every inch of Boston seems so jam-packed with the important past, how I'll just be walking down the street and see Sam Adams's grave right next to the sidewalk. On the cab ride to see Winthrop's postholes, past the North End with its Old North Church of "One if by land, and two if by sea" fame, my driver told me about the neighborhood's Great Mola.s.ses Flood of 1919, when a colossal tank of mola.s.ses broke apart and sent a sweet and gooey wave more than ten feet high cresting through town. "People drowned," he said, adding, "That neighborhood still has a lot of rats."

At City Square Park, I use my shoes as snow sc.r.a.pers so I can read the snowy plaques saying where Winthrop's front door or his wine cellar or kitchen had been. Unfortunately, my shoes are the dumbest possible ballet flats. Uncovering the "Timber Remains from Great House" marker soaks my socks.

This was where Winthrop wrote a letter to his wife on July 16, 1630. He tells her that he's too busy to write but wants her to know that "yet I live." Still, he opens up to her, allowing himself more sorrow over his son's death than that single sentence in his journal records. "We have met with many sad and discomfortable things . . . and the Lord's hand hath been heavy upon myself," he grumbles. Then this: "My son Henry! my son Henry! ah! Poor child!"

Remembering that outburst of pain, I look down at my soggy socks and over at the postholes of Winthrop's house. Then I just stare at Interstate 93 for a while, wondering how someone whose child had died could still believe in G.o.d, much less describe Him as "merciful" and "good."

Winthrop actually praises G.o.d for his misfortune. He rea.s.sures Margaret he doesn't regret coming, tells her not to worry about her impending voyage the following summer. "My most sweet wife," he coos, "be not disheartened."

How could she not be, though? In September, Winthrop would write Margaret a letter announcing, "Lady Arbella is dead. . . . Thus the Lord is pleased still to humble us. . . . He is our G.o.d, and may dispose of us as he sees good." Dispose-what an encouraging word to use around the poor woman he is trying to coax into making a transatlantic death trip. She'll go all that way only to be thrown away like Jehovah's trash.

Within a month, Winthrop records in his journal that Lady Arbella's husband, Isaac Johnson, also "died in sweet peace." Thus the two Ma.s.sachusetts settlers of the most n.o.ble birth were gone by autumn.

In the first year of settlement, the letters home were frequently grim epistles. Deputy Governor Thomas Dudley wrote to the Countess of Lincoln (the late Lady Arbella's mother), "We yet enjoy little to be envied, but endure much to be pitied in the sickness and mortality of our people. . . . There is not [one] house where there is not one dead." As for reinforcements from England, only the well-off need apply. Dudley, perhaps thinking sarcastically of the optimistic Ma.s.sachusetts seal, writes, "If there be any endowed with grace and furnished with means to feed themselves and theirs for eighteen months, and to build and plant, let them come over into our Macedonia and help us."

The September 30 entry of Winthrop's journal is historic if not exactly ill.u.s.trious. Winthrop mentions Boston for the very first time, noting that a goat died there.

Winthrop himself is mum on when or why he and his cronies decamped Charlestown for good and made Boston their new home. Edward Johnson, a woodworker who would go on to be one of the founders of the town of Woburn, later recalled that the reason Winthrop and his s.h.i.+pmates traded in Charlestown for Boston "was the want of fresh water." Charlestown had "but one spring," accessible only "when the tide was down."

Go to 276 Was.h.i.+ngton Street in Boston and see how Winthrop's luck would change by moving there. At that address, on the side of the Winthrop Building, the aforementioned first skysc.r.a.per in Boston, there are two plaques. One brags that it was the former "site of the home of the city's first colonial governor, John Winthrop." The other reads, "Here was the Great Spring which for more than two centuries gave water to the people of Boston." Thus did the governor, having learned from his Charlestown mistake, build his house next to the best spring in town.

The original white settler of Boston, then called Shamut, was Englishman William Blaxton (or Blackstone). He invited Winthrop and friends to join him across the Charles River. He had attended Cambridge University with Isaac Johnson and moved to land that is now Boston Common and Beacon Hill in 1625 after he jumped s.h.i.+p from an expedition. He built his little hermit cabin in what is now Louisburg Square, one of the fanciest addresses in town. (Louisa May Alcott lived and died there, and Senator John Kerry, a Winthrop descendant, lives there now.) So Blaxton welcomed the Puritans to join him. Apparently, he enjoyed their company so much that he soon moved to Rhode Island.

John Winthrop writes his wife his first letter marked "Boston in Ma.s.sachusetts" on November 29, 1630. In it, he cautions her to "provide well for the sea." Goodly portions of the letters he sends Margaret and his son John Jr. before they join him in Ma.s.sachusetts consist of the same sort of grocery lists Winthrop made before he left. Bring axes, linen, and "a large frying pan," he commands Margaret in one letter. He harangues John Jr. to ama.s.s peas and oatmeal ("as much as you can"), "sugar and fruit, pepper and ginger," goats, sheep, garlic, and onions. Winthrop advises him to pack these things in good barrels. After all, he sighs, "We have lost much by bad casks."

Winthrop's last journal entry for 1630 tells the harrowing story of Richard Garrett, a Boston shoemaker he knows from church. Garrett, his daughter, and five others went to Plymouth in a small boat "against the advice of his friends." A windstorm blew them out to sea. Finally, they saw land and made their way to sh.o.r.e. But the wind had splashed so much water into their boat that "some had their legs frozen into the ice, so as they were forced to be cut out." They tried to build a fire, but "having no hatchet, they could get little wood, and were forced to lie in the open air all night, being extremely cold." (Seriously, Margaret, don't forget that ax.) Come morning, two who could walk set out for Plymouth and met a couple of Indian women who had their husbands bring the pair of Bostonians "back to their wigwam, and entertained them kindly." The Indians then guided the two to Plymouth, where the authorities there sent out the seventeenth-century equivalent of a team of first responders, who tried to rescue the freezing others. Still, Garrett died two days later, "the ground being so frozen . . . they could not dig his grave." One of the Indians covered "the corpse" with "a great heap of wood to keep it from the wolves." Three more of them died, including one, wrote Thomas Dudley, who "rotted from the feet upwards where the frost had gotten most hold."

That first winter, living in a town where goats and people die, one of them by rotting "from the feet upwards," Winthrop's sermon about how the colonists would build some fancy city on a hill must have seemed, in retrospect, a tad laughable.

For six glorious weeks in 1999, CBS aired a sitcom with that very premise, in which an idealistic Puritan family called the Winthrops suffered through their grim first winter in colonial Ma.s.sachusetts. It was called Thanks. Thanks. As in Thanksgiving. As in As in Thanksgiving. As in thanks a lot. thanks a lot. The show was quickly canceled, but I cannot overstate how excited I was about it. I felt the way an avid stamp collector might if she found out CBS was about to debut its new series, The show was quickly canceled, but I cannot overstate how excited I was about it. I felt the way an avid stamp collector might if she found out CBS was about to debut its new series, CSI: Philately. CSI: Philately.

As the pilot begins, it's morning. Mrs. Winthrop yells at the children to get out of bed because their "boiling water's ready." Replies her son, "Water! Can I lick the spoon?"

The show's ongoing gag was how miserable all the settlers were-how hungry, how cold, how cramped. The Winthrop daughter, Abigail, was a typical sitcom teenage bombsh.e.l.l daughter. After a disagreement with her parents about boys, she lets loose the sort of routine girl outburst that's been seen on prime time since the dawn of Gidget. Gidget. "I hate my life!" she yells. But where a modern TV teenager would run upstairs and slam the door to her room, the seventeenth-century teenager, living in a tiny one-room cabin, can only run about a foot and a half before she throws herself face first onto a bed right next to the table where everyone would eat, if there was any food. "I hate my life!" she yells. But where a modern TV teenager would run upstairs and slam the door to her room, the seventeenth-century teenager, living in a tiny one-room cabin, can only run about a foot and a half before she throws herself face first onto a bed right next to the table where everyone would eat, if there was any food.

The main character, here named James Winthrop, though he's clearly modeled after John, is the lone dreamer in a town full of whiners. He welcomes in the spring, saying, "What a beautiful day it is. The snow is melting. Everyone out and about airing out their clothes, lugging out their dead."

On Thanks, Thanks, the optimism behind the image of the city on a hill was literally a joke. Says the Winthrop stand-in, "We're not the kind of people who are easily discouraged by a few snow flurries, a couple of head colds, the fifty-percent mortality rate." No, he says, they're "strong-willed people who never give up." the optimism behind the image of the city on a hill was literally a joke. Says the Winthrop stand-in, "We're not the kind of people who are easily discouraged by a few snow flurries, a couple of head colds, the fifty-percent mortality rate." No, he says, they're "strong-willed people who never give up."