Introduction

Congregationalists were no strangers to revolution by the late eighteenth century. They first came to New England because of a revolution in religion, which began with the Protestant Reformation. By the end of the seventeenth century, New England puritans had participated in two more revolutions, which took place an ocean away. The English Civil Wars (1642-1649) and the Glorious Revolution of 1688 both had significant consequences for England’s Atlantic empire. The Body of Liberties, a legal code adopted by Massachusetts in 1641, ensured local self-government for churches and towns.

As they established themselves in New England, puritans created independent churches in each town centered on congregations who believed strongly in a right to govern themselves. Congregational churches in New England were organized as communities of believers who voluntarily formed a covenant to join together and practice their faith. Congregationalists believed in the ability of individuals to read and interpret the Bible for themselves and that all were spiritually equal. Each congregation was autonomous, chose their own ministers, and decided who could be a member.

Congregationalists’ preference for self-government increasingly came into conflict with British colonial policies in the 1760s and 1770s. All New Englanders worried as crises over the Stamp Act (1765), the Townshend Acts (1767), the Boston Massacre (1770), the Boston Tea Party (1773), and the Quebec Act (1774) erupted in their communities. Many Congregationalists feared that if Britain sent an Anglican bishop and allowed greater toleration of religious minorities, it would undermine the special status of Congregationalism in New England.

The Congregational meetinghouse was at the center of nearly every town in New England. During the Revolutionary era, the church served as a community space. Meetinghouses were not only for religious services, they were also spaces for political meetings and debates about liberty. Churches became sites of protest and even military targets when the Revolutionary War broke out.

Some blamed Congregationalism and Congregational clergy for stirring up a rebellion. Loyalist Joseph Galloway argued in his reflections on the “American Rebellion” published in 1780 that the War was instigated by “Congregational and Presbyterian republicans.” This group of “dangerous” men united with colonists who owed money to British merchants. Others believed, as Mary Counce reported hearing in a 1776 letter (Object #2), that Congregational churches like Old South in Boston had always been "houses of sedition."

The outcome of the Revolutionary War—American independence from the British empire—was far from certain. During the early years of the conflict, much of the fighting took place in New England. When the shot heard around the world rang out in April 1775, it was within steps of the Congregational meetinghouse in Lexington, Massachusetts. It was a long and difficult war, which lasted until 1783. It challenged the convictions of even the most fervent patriots and loyalists, and caused hardship, death, and chaos for those who wished to remain neutral.

The American Revolution brought with it many changes, not just for the new nation, but for Congregationalists. They saw the War’s successful conclusion and independence in religious terms. For some, it seemed providential, as if God had intervened on their behalf. Others cast the separation from Britain as the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy.

Throughout the lead-up, fighting, and aftermath of the War, one idea in particular captured the attention of Congregationalists from all walks of life: liberty.

But what did Congregationalists mean when they spoke of liberty?

Congregationalists interpreted liberty through their own religious framework, which included principles of autonomy, fellowship, and consensus. In their discussions, they gave voice to the tension between the idea of liberty and the reality of it for women, indentured and enslaved people, free African Americans, Indigenous nations, loyalists, and religious minorities. In particular, slavery was a religious issue debated by Congregationalists before, during, and after the American Revolution. Congregationalists noted the hypocrisy of slavery, and some wondered whether God would continue to be on their side if such an immoral practice persisted in the new nation.

For the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution, the Congregational Library & Archives presents this online exhibition exploring the quest for liberty by New England Congregationalists in an age of revolution. The objects in this exhibition are drawn from the collections of the Congregational Library & Archives and the New England’s Hidden Histories project. They illustrate how Congregationalists attempted to explore and define the meaning of liberty while navigating the violence and destruction of war.

The exhibition is organized chronologically, starting with a sermon from 1750 about the origins of the crisis, and continuing from the outbreak of fighting in 1775 through the end of the Revolutionary War in 1783. The exhibition concludes with several objects which speak to the legacy of the American Revolution and its unfinished business.

To navigate the exhibition, use the arrows at the bottom of the page. Hover over the icons in the center of the page to switch to full screen, change the width of the panels, view captions, or follow links to related resources.

Object 1. Jonathan Mayhew, A discourse concerning unlimited submission and non-resistance to the higher powers: with some reflections on the resistance made to King Charles I, and on the anniversary of his death... the substance of which was delivered in a sermon preached in the West Meeting-House in Boston the Lord's-day after the 30th day of January, 1749/50 (Boston: 1750)

Historians have pointed in many directions for the ideological origins of the American Revolution. For Revolutionary leader John Adams, one origin was in the writings of Rev. Jonathan Mayhew (1720-1766). Adams sent Mayhew’s sermon, A discourse concerning unlimited submission, to Thomas Jefferson years after the War. He told him it was a sort of catechism that instructed him in the development of his revolutionary thinking and became “indelibly grafted on [his] Memory.”

In this sermon, delivered in 1750 at the West Church in Boston, Mayhew outlined a theological justification for resistance to authority under certain conditions. He argued that while obedience to authority was the duty of all Christians, tyrannical rulers must be opposed as King Charles I was by Parliament. It may seem strange that Mayhew would write about events that took place a century earlier in England. But the English Civil War and execution of Charles I were events of profound significance to New England puritans. They viewed themselves as the true descendants of the English dissenting tradition, and they had kept this alive as an integral part of their public memory for generations. Mayhew concluded his sermon with a warning: “Let us prize our freedom; but not use our liberty for a cloak of maliciousness.” He cautioned against extremes and urged his audience to remember that “government is sacred, and not to be trifled with.”

Jonathan Mayhew was the son of Experience Mayhew, a puritan missionary on Martha’s Vineyard. He attended Harvard and was ordained at the West Church in Boston in 1747. Mayhew was considered by many of his fellow Boston ministers to be liberal, if not radical, in his beliefs. He gave sermons and published works that advocated for freedom of conscience, and that were generally opposed to Calvinist thinking. Mayhew died in 1766 at the young age of 45 from a fever. He did not live to see independence, but his ideas inspired the Revolutionary generation.

Read Jonathan Mayhew's full sermon here.

Above: Portrait of Jonathan Mayhew by John Greenwood, date unknown. Oil on canvas. Congregational Library & Archives.

Object 2. Mary Counce, Boston Massacre poem in the Hunt Family correspondence, 1768-1789, Susan Counce Hunt papers

Mary Counce (1735-1801) wrote about her experiences living in Boston during the American Revolution. Her papers ended up in the collection of her daughter, Susan Counce Hunt. Most of her writings are religious in nature including copious notes about sermons she heard. At the age of 20, she wrote that she had been “a sinner in my early childhood and youth,” and much of her diary is concerned with how she struggled with feelings of unworthiness. Surprisingly, Counce’s papers also included an original poem about the Boston Massacre.

The Boston Massacre took place on March 5, 1770. British troops had been stationed in Boston since October 1768, when they arrived to quell riots and attacks on customs officials enforcing taxes on imported goods. Fighting broke out between soldiers and Boston laborers, and on the night of March 5, a crowd surrounded a group of British soldiers who then opened fire. Three people in the crowd were killed, and two others later died from their wounds. In her poem, Counce expressed her horror and feelings of helplessness in the face of such violence.

In a letter written a few years later in 1776, Mary Counce wrote to her future husband that she would not leave Boston. She wrote about some of the conflicts between loyalists and patriots, disclosing a tense conversation about Old South Church, which had been occupied by British troops and used as a stable. Counce wrote that “a young man tould me the Old South Meeting house had Ben a house of siddition [sedition] Evre sence it had ben Built." Even worse, he "hoped it would be a Riding house for horses as Long as he Lived." Counce told him "I should hear the Gospell of Christ preached theire a gain.” She noted that this impudent man had “fled with the enemy” while she preferred to stay and “see Glorious things done for Emericae [America].”

View Mary Counce’s poem and read the transcription here.

Above: The Boston Massacre by Paul Revere, 1770. Metropolitan Museum of Art. 

Object 3. Old South Church, Admissions, 1669-1855.

The records of the Old South Church include the names of many famous Bostonians. An entry from 1771 notes that “Phillis, servant to Mr. Wheatley” was granted admission to membership in the church.

Phillis Wheatley Peters (c.1753-1784) was captured from her home in West Africa as a child and brought to Boston. She was enslaved by John and Susanna Wheatley, who renamed her after the ship she arrived on, The Phillis. In 1771, as indicated in the church records, she joined the Old South Church. This was a significant choice, as her enslavers were members of a different congregation. At that time, there were more Black parishioners at Old South than other Boston Congregational churches. Many Black Congregationalists had joined during the religious revival that begain in the 1730s known as the Great Awakening. Wheatley Peters wrote a poem eulogizing evangelical leader George Whitefield in 1770 and may have heard him preach in Boston. Black church members were required to sit in segregated seating at Old South—signifying that they could be spiritually equal but not socially equal.

In 1773, Wheatley Peters published a book of thirty-nine poems, the first book of poetry published by a Black woman in North America. The volume was printed in London and arrived in Boston in September on one of the ships involved in the Boston Tea Party. She was emancipated after her book was published and married John Peters in 1778.

Phillis Wheatley Peters’ poems expressed themes of piety and liberty. She pointed out the inconsistency of these ideas with slavery. She wrote that “In every human Breast, God has implanted a Principle, which we call Love of Freedom.” When war broke out in 1775, she sent a poem to General George Washington, reminding him that he was fighting for “freedom’s cause.” In a 1778 poem, she asked Americans to consider whether God would continue to show them favor while many among them remained enslaved:

But how, presumptuous shall we hope to find
Divine acceptance with th' Almighty mind --
While yet (O deed ungenerous!) they disgrace
And hold in bondage Afric's blameless race;
Let virtue reign -- And those accord our prayers
Be victory our's, and generous freedom theirs.

View Phillis Wheatley Peters’ 1771 church admission record here.

Above: Portrait of Phillis Wheatley, attributed to Scipio Moorhead. Library of Congress. (This work is in the public domain)

Object 4. Massachusetts Convention of Congregational Ministers record book, 1749-1789

The Massachusetts Convention of Congregational Ministers formed in the late seventeenth century to maintain fellowship among ministers. The group gathered once a year to listen to sermons, distribute aid, and discuss challenges facing their congregations. Congregational churches may have been communities unto themselves, but ministers still needed support from their colleagues.

On May 31, 1775, the Convention of Congregational Ministers met in Watertown (now the provincial capital with Boston occupied by the British) to discuss their role in the new war. First, the ministers voted to share the use of the meetinghouse with the Provincial Congress of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay. Then, the ministers wrote an address to Joseph Warren, president of this new governing body. They told him they were “Deeply impressed with Sympathy for the distresses of our much injured and oppressed Country” and noted that the ministers endorsed the government “in whose wisdom & integrity under the Smiles of Divine Providence we cannot but express our entire Confidence.”

Finally, the Convention voted to supply the newly raised army with chaplains. They invoked the “Guidance & Protection of that Providence which, from the first settlement of this Country, has so remarkably appeared for the Preservation of its Civil and Religious Rights." As a body, the Massachusetts Convention of Congregational Ministers declared that God was on their side.

As these convention records demonstrate, New England’s Congregational clergy were largely united in support for the War. There were, however, some exceptions. Rev. Dr. Mather Byles, grandson of Increase Mather, was removed from his position as minister at the Hollis Street Church in Boston in 1776 for supporting the loyalist cause. He was arrested for his views–one of the charges against him was that he had publicly prayed for the King–but he remained in Boston throughout the War. Other Congregational ministers, as indicated in the next object, may have expressed doubts about the patriot cause only to be met with violence and intimidation.

View the record book of the Massachusetts Convention of Congregational Ministers and read the transcription here.

Above: Portrait of Mather Byles by John Singleton Copely. Congregational Library & Archives.

Object 5. Marlborough Association records, 1725-1802

The Marlborough Association formed in 1725 with ministers from Marlborough and several surrounding towns in central Massachusetts. The Association served a similar role to the Massachusetts Convention, encouraging fellowship among ministers on a more local level.

The Marlborough Association’s meeting minutes began to show signs of community tensions after the passage of the Intolerable Acts in 1774:

"Not only the provincial troubles affect us, the divisions in the churches in many instances fill us with sorrow. Surely, the Lord is angry, and it becomes us to be deeply humble."

They interpreted the “provincial troubles”–taxes, protests, and boycotts–as signs of God’s disfavor with the people of Massachusetts. They also referred to “divisions in the church,” which may have meant disagreements within congregations about loyalty or resistance to British authority. Consensus was critically important to congregations that could not function without general agreement among their members but was also particularly difficult to achieve during wartime when loyalties were divided. The Association continued to meet during the war years. Nearly every meeting included a discussion of public calamities, the spread of dysentery, or of holding days of fasting and prayer.

The Marlborough Association records also reveal a story of violence and intimidation against a Congregational minister with divergent views. In August 1777, the meeting minutes noted that the windows in Rev. Aaron Smith’s study had been shot out at midnight, “as if aimed to take away his life.” Smith had been the minister of the First Church in Marlborough for over 30 years, but some members of his congregation were not happy with his ministry and had been pushing him to leave.  Smith was rumored to hold loyalist sympathies, and the damage to his house and threat of violence that night was likely due to this tension. He requested a separation from his church through an ecclesiastical council citing his poor health. He left Marlborough in 1778 and died a few years later.

Although several new ministers were invited to settle there following Smith's departure, none accepted until two years after the War ended. Every congregation had the right to choose its own minister, but consensus, in this case, was only achieved through coercion.

View the records of the Marlborough Association here.

Above: Photograph of First Church in Marlborough, Massachusetts. Daderot.

Object 6. Lancaster, Mass. First Church of Christ letter, 1779

The congregation of the First Church of Christ in Lancaster, Massachusetts also struggled to achieve consensus when they came up against the limits of toleration during the war years. Three members of this congregation signed a letter of complaint against their minister, Rev. Timothy Harrington (1715-1795) for being a loyalist and sympathetic to Catholics.

In the letter, written in 1779, members of the church said they had withdrawn from the congregation because they were aggrieved with Harrington. They complained that his “conduct is grossly contrary to God’s word.” They also accused him of “speaking evil of all of our civil rulers, congress, continental & provincial,” which they argued was “subversive of good order.” Even more troubling, he had been “preaching and speaking discouraging against the raising of men to go out in defense of our country.”

Perhaps worst of all, Harrington was known to be friendly with Catholics. Reportedly he told his congregation that the Quebec Act (which granted religious toleration to Catholics in newly acquired French Canadian territories in 1774) was a good thing. The Quebec Act had stirred up longstanding anti-Catholic and anti-French feelings among some Congregationalists. Like their puritan forebears, they tended to see a diabolical conspiracy in an act that granted religious toleration to Catholics.

There is no record of any action taken against Harrington as a result of this letter, although two years earlier the town's Committee of Safety had raised concerns about his loyalties. He remained with his congregation until his death, so they must have found a way to move forward together. His funeral sermon, given by his successor Rev. Nathaniel Thayer, reported that Harrington was of a mild disposition, affable, charitable, and “the friend of all.” Perhaps alluding to the controversy with his congregation, the sermon noted that although Harrington was “liberal in his views and sentiments, he ever professed to entertain a rational and manly concern for the civil and religious rights of mankind.” Unlike the church in Marlborough, Lancaster’s congregation did not break with their minister despite serious disagreements over the War. While the three members who signed the letter believed Harrington had broken his covenant with them, perhaps the majority of the congregation valued liberty of conscience and preferred to continue their fellowship with him.

View the letter written against Timothy Harrington here.

Above: Engraving of First Church of Christ, Lancaster, Massachusetts. Congregational Library & Archives. 

Object 7. Abigail Cleaveland music book, (undated)

What did the American Revolution sound like for Congregationalists? People in this period were accustomed to the peel of bells and the beat of drums summoning them to church. Across the eighteenth century, hymn singing by choirs gradually replaced psalm singing by congregations during worship.  

William Billings published his influential The New-England Psalm Singer: Or, the American Chorister in Boston in 1770. Billings was a member of the Brattle Street Church who taught in singing schools and composed early American sacred music. Singing schools became popular in New England during the Great Awakening as a way to express the spiritual feelings that came from evangelical rebirth.  

Billings wrote several patriotic songs about the American Revolution that conveyed themes of liberty and providence. The lyrics of a popular song during the War, “Chester,” invoked the idea of freedom and certainty in providence:  

Let tyrants shake their iron rod, 
And Slav'ry clank her galling chains, 
We fear them not, we trust in God, 
New England's God forever reigns. 

At some point, a young woman named Abigail Cleaveland (1759-1834) copied some of Billings’ songs into her own music book. Cleveland was born to Thankful Paine and Aaron Cleaveland in Canterbury, Connecticut. Her father, brother, and husband all served in the Continental Army. After marrying the son of Separatist minister Rev. John Cleaveland, she moved to Byfield, Massachusetts and joined the church in 1795.  

Abigail Cleaveland’s selection of songs was influenced by her evangelical faith as well as the War. She included “Providence” in her music book, a hymn with music by Billings and lyrics by Issac Watts, which begins, “Who shall the Lord’s elect condemn?” In addition to Billings, Cleaveland copied other popular songs from the Revolutionary era. One of these is “Bunker Hill: A Sapphic Ode.” This song, also called “The American Hero,” was from a poem written by Nathaniel Niles with music by Andrew Law. Niles was a Congregationalist from Rhode Island who later served in the U.S. House of Representatives from Vermont, and Law was a composer and singing teacher from Connecticut.  

Listen to a modern recording of the song “Bunker Hill” here.

Object 8. Timothy Dickinson autobiography, in the Timothy Dickinson papers, undated.

Like Mary Counce (Object #2), Timothy Dickinson (1761-1813) kept a record of his religious experiences and life during the War. Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massachusetts to Nathan Dickinson and Esther Fowler Dickinson. He suffered from ill health for much of his childhood. When he decided to enlist in the Continental Army at the age of 16, he noted that he hoped “a Change of Climate and Diet would make me hearty & restore Health to me again, as I had heard of several weakly Persons being made strong by going into this War.” 

Dickinson enlisted in May 1777 and by June found himself at Fort Ticonderoga in New York. In July, the British Army under General John Burgoyne attacked. In October, Gen. Burgoyne surrendered to the Americans at Saratoga. On that day, Dickinson recalled that “there seem'd to be a strange Silence throughout the Camp at three o'clock P.M. - The Heroic Mandates were calmly given; arm yourselves, every American Hero arm for the Day will be ours by Gods Bles- sing."   

Soldiers like Dickinson were eager to interpret successes in battle as providential, indicating divine guidance and protection over their affairs. They were encouraged in this by their chaplains, sent by the Massachusetts Convention of Congregational Ministers (Object #4) to provide religious support to the army. Interpreting signs to try to discern God’s will was an important part of early New England culture. During the War, many Congregationalists believed that providence favored them and that their cause was morally justified.   

After Saratoga, Dickinson was sick for several months and returned home. In the spring of 1778, Dickinson enlisted again, this time for a nine-month term of service. He wrote that: “the only Motive I had in inlisting was - to serve my Country, & get money to support me at School which my Father told me should be appropriated for that use.” By the fall of 1779, he was discharged from service.  

With the end of the Revolutionary War, Dickinson was able to use his military pay for an education; he attended Dartmouth, graduating in 1785. Four years later, he was ordained at the First Congregational Church of Holliston, Massachusetts. He continued there as the minister until his death in 1813. It is not clear from his writings if he had always intended to pursue studies for the ministry or if his experience in the War drove him to consider a religious calling. It would have seemed self-evident to Dickinson that God intended this for him by preserving him in battle.  

View Timothy Dickinson’s autobiography and read the transcription here.

Above: Surrender of General Burgoyne by John Trumbull, 1821. Oil on canvas. United States Capitol. (This work is in the public domain)

Object 9. Church records, 1694-1817, First Church of Christ in Fairfield, Conn.

Violence and destruction affected many New England communities during the Revolutionary War, and churches were no exception. In a few instances, religious spaces were specifically targeted, such as the Old South Church in Boston. That meetinghouse had been a site of political meetings in the lead up to the War, and it was occupied by British soldiers and nearly destroyed in 1775 (Object #2).

In July 1779, a British fleet off the coast came to Fairfield, Connecticut and set fire to the town. The Congregational meetinghouse burned along with the Anglican church, nearly 100 homes, and many other buildings. The loss was noted in the church records: “Our holy and our beautiful house, where our fathers praised thee, is burnt up with fire and all our pleasant things are laid waste. The Lord gave, and the Lord taketh away.” A few days later, on Sunday, the congregation stoically “carried on religious exercises as usual” at the house of a deacon.

In the midst of the uncertainty and destruction of the War, church records show that the minister of the Congregational church in Fairfield, Rev. Andrew Eliot, Jr., continued to perform baptisms and marriages. One note recorded the baptism of five children in the Staples family who were baptized in March 1777, “in private on acct. of an alarm from a Fleet that came upon near to the Town & this family being about to disperse.”

The congregation included free and enslaved people of African descent, and Eliot performed baptisms and marriage ceremonies for Black members of the church during the War. In 1775, the records note that Eliot officiated the wedding of Nanny, a Black woman he enslaved in his household, and Toney, enslaved by Jeremiah Sherwood of nearby Greens Farms (now Westport, Connecticut). The War did not end slavery in Connecticut, but the state passed the Gradual Abolition Act in 1784, which slowly brought an end to slavery in the state by 1848. The first United States census, conducted in 1790, recorded three enslaved people in Eliot’s household.

View the Fairfield church records here.

Above: Postcard of Old Revolutionary Powder House in Fairfield, Connecticut. Congregational Library & Archives.

Object 10. Church records, 1744-1826, Byfield Parish Church in Byfield, Mass.

As the Revolutionary War dragged on, consensus did not emerge in Congregational communities about liberty, especially as it applied to enslavement. A woman called Violet was enslaved in the minister’s household in Byfield, Massachusetts during the War. Rev. Moses Parsons became minister of the Congregational church in Byfield in 1744 and served the parish for over four decades. The church records note that Violet “owned the covenant” (joined the church) in March 1764.

At a parish meeting in December 1780, church deacon Benjamin Colman raised a public complaint against Parsons. Colman had accused his minister of “the wicked practice of man-stealing” and of recently trying to sell Violet for a large sum of money. At this point, Violet had been enslaved by the minister and a member of the church for nearly 20 years. The church voted to suspend Colman from church because they felt he behaved in an “unjust and unchristian manner” by calling out Parsons for enslaving Violet. Colman went to the minister’s house and asked Violet “whether she did not desire to be free.” She responded that she did. Parsons felt that this was undermining his authority, and he accused Colman of doing Satan’s work. A few months later, Colman submitted a letter to be read in the church and also published his remonstrance of the minister in the newspaper.

Colman argued that slavery was “evil wickedness” and that the reason the Americans were losing to the British was because of this sin. He noted that the War had been raging for five years and suggested that people ask themselves “what have we done to provoke our God?” He noted that enslaved people in Massachusetts had been petitioning for their freedom and that their demands had been ignored. He continued:

“We have taken them by cruel hands; rending parents from children and children from parents, and by violence brought them from their own native country and subjected them to the most abject slavery and bondage. Magistrates, ministers, and common people have had a hand in this iniquitous trade.”

Parsons died in 1783, and Colman apologized to the congregation and was allowed to rejoin. Violet was not mentioned in Parsons’ will, but in the early 1780s, legal slavery gradually came to end in Massachusetts as enslaved people successfully brought freedom suits to the courts.

Read the church meeting minutes about Benjamin Colman’s complaint in the Byfield Parish records here.

Above: Drawing of the Byfield Parsonage from John Louis Ewell, The Story of Byfield, 1904.

Object 11. Phillips Payson, A memorial of Lexington battle, and some signal interpositions of Providence in the American Revolution. A sermon preached at Lexington, on the nineteenth of April, 1782, the anniversary of the commencement of the war between Great Britain and America, which opened in a most tragical scene, in that town, on the nineteenth of April, 1775. (Boston: 1782)

The Americans won a significant victory in 1781 at Yorktown, but the War did not formally conclude until the Treaty of Paris in 1783. Rev. Phillips Payson (1736-1801) of the Congregational church in Chelsea, Massachusetts delivered a sermon in this interim period that attempted to define how the War should be remembered by Congregationalists. He argued the War was God’s will and interpreted many providential signs and wonders to support this view.

Payson preached this sermon at Lexington on the seventh anniversary of the battle that had begun the Revolutionary War. He took for his text Exodus 12:14, “And this Day shall be unto you for a Memorial.” Payson reminded his audience of the many cruelties and injustices the people of Lexington had faced during the War and sympathized that they “must still have aching hearts.”

Payson offered a vision of the new country that presaged manifest destiny—the idea that the United States was divinely entitled to expand its territory. He argued that the War happened “in the course of nature, and by the will of Heaven” and predicted that the time had come “when a new Empire should arise in the world, and a nation be born in a day.” Predicting the ambitions of the new nation, he went on to suggest that soon Canada and the West Indies would “become the property of these American States.” He contrasted the wicked and sinful British with liberty-loving Americans, who miraculously had won support even from their “natural enemies” the French.

Payson’s sermon looked both to the past and to the future with assured confidence that God was on the side of New England and the new nation. He was also active in the Massachusetts Convention of Congregational Ministers (Object #4), serving on several committees after the War.

Read the full sermon here.

Above: Photograph of Lexington Green and First Parish Church. Congregational Library & Archives.

Object 12. Gideon Hawley journal and letterbook, circa 1777-1806

The missionary journals of Rev. Gideon Hawley (1727-1807) are a remarkable record of the American Revolution and the impact of colonization and war on Indigenous nations. The Revolutionary War was destructive and disastrous for many Indigenous nations, whether they sided with the patriots or not.

Hawley graduated from Yale in 1749 and was ordained in 1754. He traveled as a missionary in New York and western Massachusetts before moving to a mission to the Mashpee Wampanoag on what is now known as Cape Cod. While his writings must be understood through the lens of colonialism, his diaries also contain information about how the Revolutionary War impacted the Mashpee.

Dozens of Mashpee Wampanoag men volunteered to fight with the patriots in the War. Hawley recorded a list of deaths among the Mashpee during the war years. Many were civilians who died as a result of fevers and consumption. This list also documented the service of several Mashpee men who died while serving in the Continental Army: Church Asher, Joseph Asher, Moses Job (a deacon in the Congregational church), James Keetoh, Elisha Keetoh, Zacheus Nanhund, and others.

Hawley’s diaries also included a petition he made to the Massachusetts General Court describing how white settlers stole land from the Mashpee during the War. In a later letter, Hawley noted that “Their land was coveted & there was a scheme laid a[s] early as 1757 to alienate it” and stated that during the Revolutionary War, he was “repeatedly tampered with” by white settlers who offered him money to collude with them to steal land from the Mashpee. He declined to participate, noting that his reason for not enriching himself at their expense was that he had already inherited land from his father, but moreover that he “considered their lands as sacred and not to be broke in upon, & set afloat.”

As a community, the Mashpee hoped that military service in the Revolutionary War would protect their land and culture from further theft by white settlers. Instead, the Massachusetts state government reimposed limits on their autonomy, revoking their self-governing district status and placing them under a system of guardianship in 1789. The Congregational meetinghouse, built in 1758, still stands today on the land of the Mashpee Wampanoag.

View Gideon Hawley’s petition and read the transcription here.

Above: Postcard of the Mashpee Meetinghouse in Mashpee, Massachusetts, 1905.

Object 13. Lemuel Haynes, Letter from Lemuel Haynes to Timothy Cooley in the Granville, Mass. First Church of Christ records, 1757-1913.

Rev. Lemuel Haynes (1753-1833) was the first ordained Black Congregational minister. Haynes spent his childhood as an indentured servant in Granville, Massachusetts. In 1775, he volunteered to fight in the Revolutionary War and was, like Timothy Dickinson (Object #8), at the Battle of Ticonderoga. He was ordained in 1785 and served as a minister in communities in Connecticut, New York, and Vermont. After the War, Haynes preached and wrote about how slavery contradicted the ideology of liberty espoused by the patriots.

Haynes’ correspondence with his friend and fellow minister Rev. Timothy Mather Cooley (who wrote an early biography of Haynes) have been preserved in the records of the First Church of Granville, Massachusetts. Haynes’ letters offer a glimpse into his life as a minister in mostly white communities. In a 1796 letter, Haynes expressed his dissatisfaction with the state of religion in the new United States. In Vermont, where there were fewer Congregational churches than in the rest of New England, people seemed to be rejecting religion. “I think I never knew infidelity more prevalent,” Haynes wrote, “The truth of Divine revelation is called in question-- The doctrine of God's electing love is disputed which tends to enervate the foundation of all rational religion.”

Haynes partly blamed Thomas Paine, the popular polemicist and author of Common Sense, for this trend. When Haynes wrote his letter in 1796, Paine, who was a Deist, had recently published The Age of Reason, a blistering critique of organized religion. Haynes wrote to Cooley that “I have attended to all his writings on theology and can find little else but invective and the lowest kind of burlesque.” Although Paine and Haynes agreed on the abolition of slavery, Paine’s writing on religion was not likely to find support among Congregational ministers.

View Lemuel Haynes’ letter and read the transcription here.

Above: Lemuel Haynes autograph and engraved portrait, circa 1837. Bennington Museum.

Object 14. Mercy Otis Warren, History of the rise, progress, and termination of the American Revolution interspersed with biographical, political, and moral observations (Boston: 1805)

Mercy Otis Warren (1728-1814) rose to prominence during the Revolution as a committed patriot. After the war, she helped to frame public memory through her writing of one of the first histories of the Revolution.

Mercy Otis Warren was one of thirteen children born to James Otis and Mary Allyne Otis. She did not receive a formal education, but was educated by her uncle, Rev. Jonathan Russell, the Congregational minister of West Barnstable parish (view her baptism entry). She married James Warren in 1754, and they moved to Plymouth. During the War, he served in the Continental Army and as President of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress.

She wrote poetry, plays, and histories on political themes and corresponded with many of the movement’s leading figures, including John Adams, Abigail Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington. Her three-volume History of the rise, progress, and termination of the American Revolution, completed in 1805, was her magnum opus. It covered the period from the Stamp Act in 1765 to the adoption of the United States Constitution in 1789. Her assessment of the period was positive, but critical. She argued that slavery was inconsistent with the values of the Revolution and criticized the adoption of the Constitution without a Bill of Rights to protect liberties.

The American Revolution was a significant moment in time for women, providing new opportunities for some women to participate in the political sphere. But John Adams disagreed with Warren’s interpretation of the Revolution. In a letter to a friend critiquing Warren’s work, Adams wrote: “History is not the Province of the Ladies; These three volumes nevertheless contain many facts worthy of preservation.” Despite their differences, both had been raised in the Congregational church, and Adams would likely have agreed with Warren’s assertion that the patriots had been “remarkably directed by the finger of Divine Providence.”

Read Mercy Otis Warren’s History of the rise, progress, and termination of the American Revolution here.

Above: Portrait of Mercy Otis Warren by John Singleton Copely, circa 1763. Oil on canvas. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. (This work is in the public domain)

Conclusion

How did the Congregationalists who lived through the American Revolution interpret its consequences, successes, and failures?

Congregationalists embraced liberty in one of the many forms it took during the Revolutionary War. For some, this meant liberty to explore their faith in new ways. On the subject of slavery, for example, Mercy Otis Warren, Lemuel Haynes, Phillis Wheatley Peters, Violet, and Benjamin Colman concluded that it was a sin by which the new United States should not profit. Yet other Congregationalists seemed at best ambivalent, and it would take another war eighty years later before the legal end of enslavement in the United States. Furthermore, there was no consensus among Congregationalists on how liberty should be applied to women, free and enslaved Black people, Indigenous nations, loyalists, and religious minorities.

Other Congregationalists took a more triumphant view of the War’s successes and largely ignored its shortcomings. Philips Payson’s providential interpretation in his sermon at Lexington looked forward to the day when an American empire would spread across the West led by Congregational missionaries and settlers. It was an empire that would continue to dispossess Indigenous nations, like the Mashpee Wampanoag, of their land.

As New England’s religious landscape changed after the American Revolution with disestablishment, the Unitarian schism, and the growth in popularity of other denominations, Congregationalists faced the question of how much liberty of conscience they would support. In time, the decision was made for them. New state governments in New England ended their support of Congregational churches in the decades following the Revolutionary War. While Connecticut and New Hampshire disestablished the church in 1818 and 1819 respectively, the old puritan stronghold of Massachusetts held on until 1833.

These and other new ideas took root during the Revolutionary War years, and the idea of liberty in particular sparked conversations among Congregationalists that continues to have implications in the present. Does spiritual equality imply social and legal equality? Do all people have a right to govern themselves? What are the limits of religious toleration? Guided by their principles of autonomy, fellowship, and consensus, Congregationalists wrestled with these questions and gave voice to liberty during a turbulent and uncertain period in American history.

Further Reading

Albanese, Catherine L. Sons of the Fathers: The Civil Religion of the American Revolution. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1976. 
 
Boles, Richard. Dividing the Faith: The Rise of Segregated Churches in the Early American North. New York: New York University Press, 2020. 
 
Bonomi, Patricia U. Under the Cope of Heaven: Religion, Society, and Politics in Colonial America. United Kingdom: Oxford University Press, 1986. 
 
Cameron, Christopher. To Plead Our Own Cause: African Americans in Massachusetts and the Making of the Antislavery Movement. Ohio: Kent State University Press, 2014. 
 
Carté, Katherine. Religion and the American Revolution: An Imperial History. Williamsburg, Virginia: Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, 2021. 
 
Conroy, David W. In Public Houses: Drink & the Revolution of Authority in Colonial Massachusetts. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1995. 
 
Fischer, David Hackett. Paul Revere’s Ride. United Kingdom: Oxford University Press, 1994. 
 
Georgini, Sara. Household Gods: The Religious Lives of the Adams Family. United Kingdom: Oxford University Press, 2019. 
 
Gross, Robert A. The Minutemen and Their World. New York: Hill and Wang, 1976. 
 
Holton, Woody. Liberty Is Sweet: The Hidden History of the American Revolution. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2021. 
 
Juster, Susan. Disorderly Women: Sexual Politics & Evangelicalism in Revolutionary New England. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994. 
 
Mandell, Daniel R. Behind the Frontier: Indians in Eighteenth-Century Eastern Massachusetts. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996. 
 
Marini, Stephen A. Sacred Song in America: Religion, Music, and Public Culture. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003. 
 
McBride, Spencer W. Pulpit and Nation: Clergymen and the Politics of Revolutionary America. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2016. 
 
Waldstreicher, David. The Odyssey of Phillis Wheatley: A Poet’s Journeys through American Slavery and Independence. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023. 
 
Wintle, Thomas. A New England Village Church: the First Church in Lancaster: a Pictorial History, 1653 to the Present. Lancaster, MA: First Church of Christ in Lancaster, 1985. 
 
Young, Alfred F. The Shoemaker and the Tea Party: Memory and the American Revolution. Boston: Beacon Press, 1999.

Acknowledgements

Religion of Revolution: Congregational Voices on Liberty was curated by Tricia Peone and written by Tricia Peone and Kyle Roberts. The digital exhibition was designed by Zachary Bodnar. Graphics for the exhibition were created by Lauren Hibbert. 

Special thanks to Richard Boles, Katherine Carté, Sara Georgini, and Steve Marini for discussing the exhibition and sharing their insight and knowledge. Many thanks also to Meghan Wright and Billy McCarthy at the CLA for their help.

New England’s Hidden Histories has received generous support from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Council on Library and Information Resources.