9781422274163

A Pilgrim leader says a prayer before the first Thanksgiving meal in the colony, which was shared with local Native Americans in 1621. The purpose of Thanksgiving was to thank God for the colony’s successful harvest.

Bay Colony. Over the next ten years, about 20,000 more Puritans landed in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. However, although the Puritans came to America to escape persecution and to have religious freedom, they did not necessarily want to extend that freedom for other people. They passed strict laws based on Puritan teachings, and those who broke them were punished or expelled from the colony. One of those who was expelled was a Puritan minister named Roger Williams. He was shunned due to his controversial beliefs, so be broke away and started the new colony that would become Rhode Island. Williams was one of the first to propose the idea of “separation of church and

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Religious Freedom in the United States