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Roger Williams Landing
Here in this 19th century engraving Roger Williams is depicted upon his arrival in Rhode Island being greeted by the local Narragansett Indians. Though his relationship with the Indians was good for a long while, in 1675 it took a turn for the worse. In that year a group of Narragansetts attacked Providence and burned Williams's house to the ground.
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Pilgrims
This illustration depicts a man and a woman in the style of dress of the Pilgrims.
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A Quakers Meeting
This Dutch engraving shows a Quaker meeting in process. As moved by the spirit, any member could address a Quaker fellowship. And this meant Quaker women had far more freedom than did Puritan women. Here a Quaker woman takes her stand on a barrel to speak her mind. But this drawing is a critical one. Handwritten words beneath the picture ridicule the speaker's audacity, noting that St. Paul of the New Testament forbade women from public speaking.
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A Witch Trial
Here an accused "witch" in Puritan Massachusetts is held captive in the stocks.
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Cotton Mather
Cotton Mather, shown here in ecclesiastical garb and wig, was one of the most learned of all the colonists, and the author of hundreds of books. But he was also deeply superstitious and possessed a fearful intensity, and he helped foster the witch mania that overtook Salem, Massachusetts in 1692.
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Cotton Mather on witchcraft
Cotton Mather's writings on the Salem witchcraft crisis were republished in this 1846 book edited by Henry Jones. During the terrible year of 1692 hundreds of women and men were arrested, and twenty were executed as witches. Mather, who considered himself a mere chronicler of these events, in fact helped to foster them.
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James Madison
James Madison, shown here as he looked when president, was Thomas Jefferson's closest friend and political ally. In 1786, as a member of the Virginia legislature, Madison helped get enacted Thomas Jefferson's Statute for Religious Freedom, which effectively separated church and state within Virginia.
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George Mason
George Mason, a distinguished patriot from Virginia, grew increasingly rigid as he aged. During the period leading up to the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom, a belligerent Mason ended up alienating James Madison.
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The Bill of Rights
It is not unimportant that in the Bill of Rights (shown here) the opening sentence of the first amendment guarantees the freedom of religion in America.
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