Creative Books

"Here," wrote a
Virginia planter, traveling in New England in the early thirties,
"is not apparent a hundredth part of the abject squalid poverty that
our State presents." [Footnote: "Minor's Journal," in Atlantic
Monthly, XXVI., 333.]
The morale of New England was distinctive. Puritanism had founded
the section, and two centuries of Calvinistic discipline had molded
the New England conscience. That serious self-consciousness, that
self-scrutiny, almost morbid at times, by which the Puritan tried to
solve the problem of his personal salvation, to determine whether he
was of the elect, [Footnote: Wendell, Cotton Mather, 6.] was
accompanied by an almost equal anxiety concerning the conduct of his
neighbors. The community life of New England emphasized this trait.
Tudor, who was not friendly to the ideals of the "land of steady
habits," criticized "the narrowing influence of local policy," and
lamented the "sort of habitual, pervading police, made up of
Calvinistic inquisition and village scrutiny" in Connecticut.


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