Pilgrim John Winthrop Dreams of a City on a Hill, 1630

Now the only way to avoid this shipwreck, and to provide for our posterity, is to follow the counsel of Micah, to do justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with our God. For this end, we must be knit together, in this work, as one man. We must entertain each other in brotherly affection. We must be willing to abridge ourselves of our superfluities, for the supply of others’ necessities. We must uphold a familiar commerce together in all meekness, gentleness, patience and liberality. We must delight in each other; make others’ conditions our own; rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, as members of the same body. So shall we keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace.

The Lord will be our God, and delight to dwell among us, as His own people... “may the Lord make it like that of New England.”

But if our hearts shall turn away, so that we will not obey, but shall be seduced, and worship other Gods, our pleasure and profits, and serve them; it is propounded unto us this day, we shall surely perish out of the good land whither we pass over this vast sea to possess it...

Winthrop was a Massachusetts Puritan. The Pilgrims were from Plymouth. They were separate colonies, with separate governors, until 1692. If you go to the Massachusetts State House, so I’ve been told, you can see portraits of every governor. For the early years they have the Plymouth ones as well as the Massachusetts ones.

In 1632, Governor Winthrop went to Plymouth to meet Governor Bradford, and on the return trip, in the absolute middle of nowhere, was carried over the North River, or the Indian Head River (the name changes in that area) by one James Luddam. There were no bridges, and no ferries, and that was the closest place to the coast you could get across without swimming. The place is still called Luddam’s Ford.

John Winthrop, and Ronald Reagan’s Shining City on a Hill, that he sometimes included in speeches.

Excerpt from Reagan’s farewell speech to the nation, Jan 1989:

“I’ve thought a bit of the ``shining city upon a hill.’’ The phrase comes from John Winthrop, who wrote it to describe the America he imagined. What he imagined was important because he was an early Pilgrim, an early freedom man. He journeyed here on what today we’d call a little wooden boat; and like the other Pilgrims, he was looking for a home that would be free.

I’ve spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don’t know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind-swept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That’s how I saw it, and see it still.”

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