How America came to be

Why anybody came at all

Before there was a country there were people getting on boats for reasons worth knowing.

People crossed for different reasons and it matters which. Some came for land, because in England land was owned by somebody already and here it looked as though it was not — a belief that was wrong, and the people who already lived here paid for that mistake for centuries.

Some came to be left alone about religion. The Pilgrims who landed at Plymouth in 1620 had already left England once, for the Netherlands, and left again because their children were becoming Dutch. Maryland was founded as a place where English Catholics could worship. Rhode Island was founded by Roger Williams after Massachusetts threw him out for arguing that the state had no business in anybody's conscience.

And many did not come by choice at all. The first Africans recorded arriving in English North America were brought to Virginia in 1619, and by the time of the Revolution about a fifth of the people in the colonies were enslaved. A country founded on the claim that all men are created equal was built, in large part, by people it did not count. Both of those things are true at once, and a child can hold both.

Questions to work through

1. List three different reasons people crossed the Atlantic. Which do you think was strongest?
2. Roger Williams was thrown out for saying government should stay out of religion. Where does that idea turn up later?
3. The Pilgrims left the Netherlands because their children were becoming Dutch. What were they afraid of losing?