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New England Colonies Essay

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The New England Colonies

The colonies of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut made up the New England colonies. Most of the Europeans in the New England colonies were there to escape the religious persecution they faced in England. They practiced a lot of different things in these colonies compared to the middle and southern and colonies of colonial america. The New England colonists, except for Rhode Island, were predominantly Puritans who practiced very strict religious lives. The civil government in these colonies dealt quite harshly with those who dared to disagree with the Puritan church. People were being exiled for speaking out against Puritanism. They whipped baptists. They cropped, or cut off, the ears of Quakers. They even went as far as to hang Quaker missionaries. They did all of this in an order to proselytize and convert people to be Puritan. Laws in the New England colonies made everyone attend a house of worship pay taxes that would be used to fund the salaries of the ministers. Government in the New England colonies were based upon elements of theocracy. The leaders and officials got their authority from a divine guidance and their civil authority was to enforce religious conformity. Citizens that didn’t follow the Puritan’s religious beliefs were considered to be a threat to the civil order and would get severely punished for it. The New England churches functioned a lot differently from the churches back in England.

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