The Covenant & the Charter - The Garden and the Wilderness

American Political History · Apr 30, 2021 · 23m

Providence in 1636 was a handful of houses and a radical idea — that the state had no business in a person's relationship with God. The Bay Colony to the north had not forgotten Roger Williams, and it had not forgiven him. What followed was a systematic campaign to destroy what he had built: militiamen marching through his streets, land deeds forged in Bay courtrooms, Rhode Island's borders picked apart by neighbors who smelled weakness.

Williams fought back the only way he could. He sailed to England — through New Amsterdam, because the Bay had threatened to execute him if he set foot on…