Colonial New England: Public Violence And Communitarian Justice
This idea of order as organic unity was deeply imbedded in the cosmology of English Calvinism. But the ordering institutions of New England were drawn from a different source—mainly those that had existed in the towns of East Anglia. The builders of the Bay Colony chose very selectively from these English precedents. In the first generation, for example, they decided not to introduce the office of sheriff. That hated symbol of Royal prerogative and aristocratic power was not welcome in early New England. Neither, at first, did they have any use for the peace-keeping officers of the Anglican church such as beadles and other parish policeman who were chosen by vestry and clergy to collect tithes and keep order. Through the first half of the seventeenth century, the Bay colonists did without these unpopular officials.
Puritan Massachusetts turned instead to the most communitarian of English peace keepers—the village constable. This was an ancient office, derived from the borsholders, headboroughs, and boroughheads and reeves who were elected by an English township or tithing, rather than being appointing by higher authority. In New England, the constable was an officer of the town, chosen by his neighbors, his duty was to serve processes, execute warrants, deliver writs, make arrests, and summon town meetings. He could also be called upon to collect taxes, organize elections, look after lost goods, recover stray animals, keep a record of newcomers to the town and arrest “such strange persons as do walk abroad in the night…and sleep in the day; or which do haunt any house, where is suspicion of bawdie.” He was also required to visit and inspect all the households in the town at least once in every three months and each year to read all the laws pertaining to the Sabbath. When serious trouble threatened, the constable was not expected to deal with it himself, but to summon all the men of the town, who were required by law to support him. In New England, the community itself was the ultimate peacekeepers…
Comparatively low rates of violent crime persisted in New England for 300 years and more. Timothy Dwight observed that most people throughout this region never bothered to bar their houses, or to keep their valuables under lock and key, even in sea port towns. A lawyer in Beverly, Massachusetts wrote in 1840 that “during a practice of nearly forty years he had never known a native of Beverly convicted of any heinous crime.” Harriet Beecher Stowe believed that her New England generation was a place “where one could go to sleep at all hours of day or night with the house door wide open, without bolt or bar, yet without apprehension of any to molest or make afraid.”
Violent crime which invaded the domestic peace of a Puritan household was punished with special rigor in New England. The Massachusetts laws against burglary were exceptionally severe, and court proceedings still more so. The people of this culture had a particular horror of violence which threatened the home.
Mob violence was also comparatively uncommon in Puritan New England, except in sea port town such as Salem, Marblehead and Boston. Savage [race] riots sometimes occurred in those troubled communities. The worst happened in Marblehead in 1677. After several fishing crews had been taken by the Indians, a mob of fishermen’s’ wives seized two Indian captives and literally tore them limb from limb. A witness reported:
The women surrounded them…and laid violent hands upon the captives, some stoning us and me in the meantime, because we would protect them…then, with stones, billets of wood, and what else they might, they made an end of these Indians. We were kept at such a distance that we could not see them til they were dead, and then found them with their heads off and gone, and their flesh in a manner pulled from their bones. And such was the tumultation these women made, that…they suffered neither constable nor mandrake, nor any other person to come near them, until they had finished their bloody purpose.
–Excerpt from “Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America” by David Hackett Fischer
“In the first generation, for example, they decided not to introduce the office of sheriff. That hated symbol of Royal prerogative and aristocratic power was not welcome in early New England.”
Though my ancestry is primarily Scandinavian, I apreciate these literary excerpts which lend depth to my otherwise rudimentary understaning of our Anglican cultural herrtiage, such as English common law. This concept of a village constable is also consistent with the Catholic doctrine of subsidiarity, the notion that civic matters should be handled by the smallest, lowest, most local, or least centralized authority feasible.
In our perilous times, we Aryans native to the North American continent must borrow from the best elements of our various cultural streams from Europe regardless of their specific geographic origin within Europe or whether they come from relgious or secular traditions.
Although John Calvin’s theology does not resonate with me; although I lean libertarian in political matters; although psychospiritually I lean Nordic Pagan and Aryan Vedic; and although as a former Army officer I firmly believe that Prussian / German doctrine are superior to all others, I shall without reservation join those comrades of any philosophic or religious stripe who will muster the wherewithal to engage the enemies of our beleaugered race. As the late Harold Covington reiterated in his compelling novels, the overarching priority is simply the 14 words.
Anyway, I thought I would suggest that our modern version of the popularly elected county sheriff, its royalist origins nothwistanding, may be a good working model for securing the peace and order at the local level in Aryan commjnities. He reports, not to the major or county executive or state governor, but directly to the people who elected him, and he can appoint and arm deputies as from the citizenry. Recently I have read that more and more sheriffs in western states like Wyoming, Kansas, and Arizona are publicly stating that they will refuse to enforce federal or state orders to confiscate weapons from law-abiding constituents
My2 bits.
Puritans were part of the Church of England, they made an impact on the colonies during the 17century. They were very strict and rigorous in their practice and customs, either you believe in God or you didn’t believe, which was a terrible sin and they saw you as a heathen/infidel, which was never welcomed in their community (hence the Indians, who they considered pagans). I don’t want to drag religion into this, but that’s the kind of people they were. They were very staunch believers and built their communities accordingly, thus the ascetic way they set rules and regulations, abiding by certain standards, frowning upon anything that was considered rebellious, impiety and immoral. They knew if they let one agnostic into their group it would only poison their society, setting in loose morals, that they so richly talked about in the many books I read from writers during those times. However, Puritans were not the only religious groups within the colonies. Everyone within the colonies practiced a different form of Christianity, and on the Sabbath they congregated to the church they purposely built in the middle of the town. Whether religion had a part to play in New England or other moral integrity that unified them, they were built as a whole society to be productive, righteous, and stand up citizens, shunning away decadence which rotted society from within. They had a hub that held them together, that unified them whether it was their loyalty to their race, their ideology, their traditions or their faith, it brought them together and it kept them from becoming destructive.