The generosity of my friend Mr. Frank Hamilton Cushing in putting at my disposal the unpublished results of his researches among the Zunis is in keeping with the originality and power of his mind. Without his aid my attempt would have been impossible. I have also to thank Prof. Henry C. Chapman, J. A. Gordon, M. D., Prof. William James, and Alpheus Hyatt, Esq., for the kindness with which they assisted me. I feel that any merit this volume may possess is due to these gentlemen; its faults are all my own.

BROOKS ADAMS. QUINCY, _September_ 17, 1886.

CONTENTS.

PREFACE

CHAPTER I. THE COMMONWEALTH

CHAPTER II. THE ANTINOMIANS

CHAPTER III. THE CAMBRIDGE PLATFORM

CHAPTER IV. THE ANABAPTISTS

CHAPTER V. THE QUAKERS

CHAPTER VI. THE SCIRE FACIAS

CHAPTER VII. THE WITCHCRAFT

CHAPTER VIII. BRATTLE CHURCH

CHAPTER IX. HARVARD COLLEGE

CHAPTER X. THE LAWYERS

CHAPTER XL. THE REVOLUTION

PREFACE TO NEW EDITION.

CHAPTER I

I wrote this little volume more than thirty years ago, since when I have hardly opened it. Therefore I now read it almost as if it were written by another man, and I find to my relief that, on the whole, I think rather better of it than I did when I published it. Indeed, as a criticism of what were then the accepted views of Massachusetts history, as expounded by her most authoritative historians, I see nothing in it to retract or even to modify. I do, however, somewhat regret the rather acrimonious tone which I occasionally adopted when speaking of the more conservative section of the clergy. Not that I think that the Mathers, for example, and their like, did not deserve all, or, indeed, more than all I ever said or thought of them, but because I conceive that equally effective strictures might have been conveyed in urbaner language; and, as I age, I shrink from anything akin to invective, even in what amounts to controversy.

Therefore I have now nothing to alter in the _Emancipation of Massachusetts_, viewed as history, though I might soften its asperities somewhat, here and there; but when I come to consider it as philosophy, I am startled to observe the gap which separates the present epoch from my early middle life.