Anne Hutchinson Quotes
I am called here to answer before you, but I hear no things laid to my charge.
"The Examination of Mrs. Anne Hutchinson at the Court at Newtown." The Antinomian Controversy, 1636-1638: A Documentary History, edited by David D. Hall, 2nd ed., Duke University Press, 1990, p. 312.
Southerners were paranoid that the relatively new Republican party leaders were conspiring to foment slave rebellions. In particular, they believed that the Republican party was behind John Brown’s failed slave revolt at Harper’s Ferry. For many Republicans, Brown’s raid was understandable and even inevitable and moral, but there was no assistance provided to Brown by the Republican party of even members of its leadership. Democrats attacked the Republicans with this charge. There were some strong abolitionists who were Republicans who did believe that violence to end slavery was not only moral but was inevitable due to the intransigence of the South.
The admiral, who was the intellectual leader of the junta during the “Dirty War,” confessed to the facts but claimed that the drastic steps were appropriate and necessary. Further, that there was no “guilt” involved in an act of executive necessity. The court did not agree and he was convicted, but was later pardoned along with the other war criminals by President Carlos Menem.
Anne Hutchinson was a Puritan spiritual advisor, religious reformer, and an important participant in the Antinomian Controversy which shook the infant Massachusetts Bay Colony from 1636 to 1638. Her strong religious convictions were at odds with the established Puritan clergy in the Boston area and her popularity and charisma helped create a theological schism that threatened to destroy the Puritans' religious community in New England. She was eventually tried and convicted, then banished from the colony with many of her supporters.
