A word from Churchlady: American originalism—what we don't get taught
Liberal Librarian’s excellent essay on Robespierre and the forces of social revolution led me to finally write this bit. I was a PhD candidate in social movements and change doing work looking at the creation of a working class in the move from colony to state and nation in New England. What I found, poring over handwritten legal and town archival materials, is a world unlike our own that bears understanding. Colonial MA was, first, totally decentralized. The Great and General Court passed laws pertaining to the rights of the Crown and nothing about daily life, commerce, production. The largest number of laws passed ever before 1776 was 15. Law, society, and economics were governed exclusively by the towns. All prices – ALL of them - were set for the year by the town based on an agreed value of Indian corn. Trade was mostly barter since there was no real specie. Commerce was strictly regulated as was production with the market towns requiring pre-approved admittance to sell and rese...
