1/3/2019 Early American Writers: John Smith, John Winthrop & Roger Williams - Video & Lesson Transcript

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Early American Writers: John Smith, John Winthrop & Roger Williams

Lesson Transcript

John Smith, John Winthrop, and Roger Williams were early American settlers who in uenced the politics and
literature of the colonies. In this lesson, we'll look closer at each of these men and their important writings.

A New World
America in the 16th and 17th centuries was a wild place. Most of the continent was still unexplored,
and the few Europeans who had settled along the East Coast were faced with a dangerous and
di cult life. Nature, disease, and politics all combined to make life hard, and many people died
within a few years of moving to the colonies.

In the midst of all the hardship, three men in uenced both the political and literary landscape of
America: John Smith, an explorer and founder of the Virginia colony; John Winthrop, a lawyer and
founder of the Massachusetts colony; and Roger Williams, a theologian and founder of the
Providence Plantation in what is today Rhode Island. All three in uenced the course of history
through their writing and political works.

Let's look a little closer at each of them and some of their most famous writing.

John Smith
Captain John Smith came to the New World in 1606, as part of a group hired by the Virginia
Company of England to explore and settle in America. His strong work ethic and negotiation skills
made him a leader among the settlers in the Jamestown colony. Smith's explorations of Virginia
and New England led him to write many books on the geography of the colonies.

Most famously, though, Smith's explorations and his position in the Jamestown colony led him into
many interactions with American Indians, particularly the Powhatans. He wrote of these
interactions in his two most famous books, A True Relation of Such Occurrences and Accidents of Note
as Happened in Virginia and The Generall Historie of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles.
Isles

In the second of these books, he tells the most famous story associated with him. This is the story
of the Powhatan chief's daughter, Pocahontas. According to Smith's book, he was captured and
taken to meet the chief of the Powhatan tribe in 1607. When he was going to be killed by the
Indians, Pocahontas saved him by throwing her body on his.

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There are some questions about the veracity of his story. First, the story does not appear in his rst
book, which was published just a year after the event supposedly happened. When Smith nally
published it in The Generall Historie, it was 17 years later.

In addition, in a book published several years after The Generall Historie, Smith tells an almost
identical story about being captured by Turks in Hungary in 1602, several years before the
Pocahontas incident supposedly happened. This, plus the long delay in his telling the Pocahontas
story, implies that perhaps the story didn't happen or was exaggerated.

Most of Smith's writings were motivated by his desire to convince people to move to the colonies.
As such, they are both adventure stories and descriptions of life in the colonies. He often wrote
about the opportunities to make money in the colonies, promoting the idea of industry that would
become a cornerstone of the American dream.

John Winthrop
A few years after John Smith was writing about Pocahontas and the Virginia Colony, another settler
from England crossed to America. John Winthrop was a Puritan lawyer who helped found the
colony at Massachusetts Bay. Starting in 1630, Winthrop served as governor for the Massachusetts
Bay colony for 12 of its rst 20 years.

Winthrop's most enduring legacy in American politics and writing began before he even arrived in
America. En route to America, he gave a lay sermon called A Modell of Christian Charity,
Charity which laid
out plans for how the Puritans would live and conduct their faith once they arrived in America. He
believed that settling in the colonies was a special pact between God and the Puritans, which would
allow God's ideal society to ourish in the New World. He described the new colony as 'a city on a
hill', a phrase that even 21st century politicians have quoted to describe America.

Winthrop's other famous work is a diary of his life in the colonies, published under the title The
History of New England.
England The diary describes the day-to-day and political life of Winthrop and the
people of the Massachusetts Bay colony, and has become a major resource for historians studying
New England in the 1630s and 1640s.

Roger Williams
As Winthrop arrived in Massachusetts Bay, Roger Williams arrived in Boston from London. Williams
was a minister whose beliefs were radical for the day. He believed in complete separation from the
Church of England, as opposed to simply reforming it as the Puritan's did. He also believed in the
separation of church and state, publicly speaking out against magistrates in the Massachusetts
colony who punished people for religious violations like idolatry or working on the Sabbath.

Williams and his wife began their American life in the Plymouth and Salem colonies, but in 1636,
only ve years after arriving in Massachusetts, he was banished from the colony for speaking out
against the Massachusetts charter because he believed that the land should be bought from the

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American Indians. As a result of his banishment, Williams moved south and founded a new colony
he named Providence, which became the future capital of the state of Rhode Island.

Williams wrote several pamphlets and books during his lifetime on topics as diverse as linguistics,
religion, and politics. His book The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution, for Cause of Conscience is his most
famous work. The book is written as a conversation between truth and peace, and in it, he makes
an argument for states to uphold the freedom of people to follow their conscience, an argument
close to his heart in personal and political arenas.

Lesson Summary
John Smith, John Winthrop, and Roger Williams were early American settlers who in uenced the
politics and history of the United States. Smith's books described the day-to-day life, opportunity,
and geography of the Virginia colony, as well as a questionable account with an Indian woman
named Pocahontas. Winthrop's lay sermon coined the phrase 'city on a hill' to describe America
and his diary became an important book in the history of Massachusetts. Williams' books and
pamphlets promoted his ideals, including separation from the Church of England, separation of
church and state, and the freedom of all citizens to follow their conscience.

Learning Outcome
After you have completed this lesson, you should know the great in uence the colonial writers John
Smith, John Winthrop and Roger Williams had not only on the colonies and Europe but early
American literature as well.

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