EPISODE 96: The Wildest Man You Have Never Heard Of: Thomas Morton

History on Fire

Daniele Bolelli

Society & Culture

4.7 • 5.9K Ratings

🗓️ 6 December 2022

⏱️ 149 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

“The Puritans feared that which was undomesticated.” Jeff Hendricks “Our earliest American heroes were Morton’s oppressors, Endicott, Bradford, Miles Standish. Merry Mount’s been expunged from the official version because it’s the story not of a virtuous utopia but of a utopia of candor. Yet it’s Morton whose face should be carved in Mount Rushmore.” Philip Roth “He held out the promise of America as an earthly paradise, a pagan, not a protestant prospect, a zone of pleasure, not salvation through suffering.” John Seelye “Drink and be merry, merry, merry boys; Let all your delight be in the Hymens joys… Or make green garlands, bring bottles out And fill sweet nectar freely about. Uncover thy head and fear no harm; For here’s good liquor to keep it warm. Then drink and be merry, Or yet, lasses in beaver coats come away, Yee hall be welcome to us night and day. To drink and be merry.” Thomas Morton Today we are going to play with one of the greatest stories you probably have never heard of. Even in U.S. very little known about this story and it’s a crime. If you have even a superficial knowledge of American history, you have almost certainly heard about the settlers who came to Plymouth in 1620. What you may not have heard about is that shortly thereafter a gentleman named Thomas Morton set up a different colony just down the road from Plymouth. At a time when most people arrived to Plymouth in chains, as indentured servants, Morton abolished servitude in his settlement he called Merrymount. At a time when his neighbors in Plymouth were brutally squashing religious dissent, Morton encouraged religious freedom. And on top of it all, he and his friends entertained extremely friendly relations with Native tribes even openly intermarrying. What makes the story even crazier is that Merrymount was well on its way to be more successful than Plymouth. When new settlers arrived on American shores, many took one look at ultra-strict Plymouth, another look at the freedom to be enjoyed at Merrymount and didn’t need to be told twice which way to go. The only reason why Merrymount didn’t make it in the history books you may have read is because the pilgrims turned to violence to destroy a community whose existence was a challenge to all of their beliefs. From that day forward, the name of Thomas Morton has largely been erased from history. Some people could refer to Morton as a victim of the Puritan brand of cancel culture. The Puritan story became mainstream, and Morton’s name disappeared. This episode fixes this mistake. If you feel generous and enjoy History on Fire, please consider joining my Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/historyonfire to access plenty of bonus content. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	What are you like history or not if you care about bravery, wisdom, passion, larger than life characters and some of the most emotionally intense moments in human experience you have come to the right place?
0:12.0	Danielle Bellelli is a university history professor, writer and martial artist and he shall be your guide in a journey to the place where history and epic collide.
0:42.0	Let's go to the history of fire.
0:52.0	Hello and welcome to episode 96 of history of fire.
0:58.0	The primary thing that keeps history of fire going is listener support through Patreon.
1:06.0	So I would like to invite you guys if you enjoyed the show to please a support show at patreon.com for our slash history on fire.
1:16.0	I don't need a crazy percentage of you to actually jump in and support on Patreon. I only need maybe 1 to 2%. 2% would be fantastic even 1%. I can kind of live with it.
1:29.0	I'm right now at about 0.5%. So I definitely need a few more people to make sure everything keeps running smoothly.
1:38.0	So if you feel like joining the sweet folks partying with their harder money because they enjoy the show, the lowest level of membership is at $5 a month, which honestly with the level of inflation that's going on right now, $5 a month is pretty much what you give to people you don't like.
1:54.0	It's like you used to be, you say you pay for, now I am hesitant to say what you pay for with $5. You pay for hardly anything with $5 bucks anymore.
2:03.0	By any case, if you feel like doing that, I would be eternally grateful.
2:08.0	Speaking of people I'm eternally grateful to, there are a few folks who donated the highest possible level on Patreon.
2:15.0	And I want to say thank you to Marc Chang, Chimi Moxam, Gail Goodwin, Jesus Renteria and Geoffrey Tolfson. You folks are my heroes.
2:26.0	Since I'm doing shout outs, I want to give a shout out to Rob Papa George of Fanicle who recently fought in Bellator in MMA, sporting the history of fire log on his shorts and on his banner.
2:41.0	Infinite thanks Rob, much, much appreciated.
2:46.0	Last but not least before we get going, I'm partnered up with a company called Geek Nation Tour, so I'm going to be going in tentatively right now with April 2023 for a tour in Japan, exploring the history of the samurai, particularly the earlier period around the gameplay war and all the way up to the attempted Mongol invasions.
3:07.0	If you feel like joining me on this adventure, I will put a link in the episode notes also if you just search Geek Nation Tour and you put the war summarize, gonna pop up.
3:18.0	I warn you, definitely not cheap, but that's because we do a whole lot of stuff during those days in Japan.
3:26.0	So just letting you know in case you're interested.
3:29.0	And instead of all that, I will now shut up as far as the intro goes and we got the ball rolling.
3:36.0	Let me start things out by giving a big thank you to Bernie Mau Polski from Fan of History Podcast.
3:45.0	He was very helpful in crafting some of the research for this episode, chatting with me about exchanging ideas.
	...

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