History of New England, 1630-1649

This is the founding document of America, written by the man who made it. John Winthrop, governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, kept this chronicle of the first two crucial decades of English settlement in New England, and what emerges is not the sanitized myth of Pilgrim Thanksgiving but something far more vivid and troubling: a society born in religious fervor, governed by theocratic conviction, and constantly convulsed by internal conflict. Winthrop records the excommunication of Anne Hutchinson, a brilliant midwife whose theological gatherings challenged the colony's male ministers and paid the price. He documents the Pequot War, treaties with the Narragansett, and the birth of the United Colonies confederation. Most remarkably, he recounts the 'sow case' of 1641, a trivial civil suit over a pig that somehow exploded into a constitutional crisis, forcing the colony to choose between aristocratic rule and broader participation in government. The result was the establishment of the first bicameral legislature in American history. For anyone who wants to understand where the nation came from, not the myth but the actual, fractious, magnificent beginning, this is the source.