Political+Conditions

**The Legacy of the Puritans** **Political conditions** ====The puritans conceived on individual effort and morality as the only way of achieving both economic success and personal salvation. They were ambitious and insisted on saving money and sizing opportunities in what they considered as a hostile environment. Therefore, the new found land, America would become a New World of opportunities. It was the last Promised Land for the new people of god who saw their journey across the Atlantic as a new biblical exodus. This group of people brought with them foundations for a new society: mixture of democracy and authoritarian theocracy. There society was to be shaped by a pact between responsible individuals but under God’s eyes. Like the pilgrim fathers of 1620, in 1629, twenty puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Company signed an agreement by which they intended to protect themselves against any outside control. ====

====Freedom was restricted by a religious ideal, a theocracy that appointed the responsible and holy authority of religious elite. ==== ====In 1635, Roger Williams, minister of Salem, claimed the right to every man to follow his conscience and in effect, he was banished and forced to leave the country. He continued by getting a Royal charter for a colony he named “Rhode Island”, and granting freedom of conscience. ====