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and memory have largely faded from more common understandings of America’s
beginnings. Some of this can be chalked up to the banal observation that folks with some
reason for expertise in history tend to have more historical knowledge than the masses.
But the gulf between what many of these specialists claim for Winthrop and what most
Americans know about Winthrop is too wide for this simple reason alone.
A more robust explanation may be found in the fact that understandings and
attitudes about John Winthrop are connected to larger debates about Puritanism in
general. Though most writers of our history rarely question that the Puritans profoundly
influenced our American civilization, there is considerable disagreement about whether
that influence has been for good or ill. Accordingly, there is a long and venerable
tradition that praises John Winthrop and the ideals he planted in the New World even as a
strong counter-tradition of denigrating all things Puritan has broadly diminished
Winthrop’s prominence in the pantheon of American founders.
To the extent that these very different traditions reflect and partially determine a
stark moral polarization in American politics, the recognition of such ought to be cause
for concern. Modern democracies certainly do not require perfect, or even significant,
unity on all matters—even all moral matters. But such divisiveness concerning the nature
of our beginnings must, at some point, undermine a useful democratic power that can
only be found in some degree of shared moral assumption and aspiration.
Fortunately, America is not solely limited to the resources of these two competing
traditions. A vital, if often unrecognized, exception to these monochromatically positive
or negative images of Winthrop can be found in the writings of Nathaniel Hawthorne,
particularly the Scarlet Letter. Given the prominence of this novel—it remains a widely
Convention