and Protestant in
religion. The English, Dutch, Swedes, Germans, and even the
Scotch-Irish, who constituted practically the entire migration, were
less than two thousand years ago one Germanic race in the forests
surrounding the North Sea. The Protestant Reformation, sixteen centuries
later, began among those peoples and found in them its sturdiest
supporters. The doctrines of the Reformation, adapted as they were to
the strong individualism of the Germanic races, prepared the hearts of
men for the doctrines of political liberty and constitutional government
of the succeeding century. The Reformation banished the idea that men
must seek salvation through the intercession of priests and popes, who,
however sacred, are only fellow-men, and set up the idea that each soul
has direct access to God. With the Bible as a guide and his own
conscience as a judge, each man was accountable only to one divine
sovereign.

From the standpoint of the age this doctrine was too radical. It tended
to break up existing society into sects and factions, and to precipitate
those civil and religious wars which ended in a Catholic or aristocratic
reaction. When this reaction came, the numerous Protestant sects of the
extremer types found themselves the objects of persecution, and nothing
remained but to seek a new land where the heavy hand of repression could
not reach them. Thus America became the home of numberless religious
sects and denominations of these several races. From England came
Congregationalists (the "Pilgrims"), Puritans, Quakers, Baptists; from
Scotland and Ireland came Presbyterians; from Germany came Quakers,
Dunkards, Pietists, Ridge Hermits, Salzburgers, and Moravians.

It is not to be inferred that religious persecution alone in the early
colonial period caused emigration. In point of numbers commercial
enterprise was probably equally influential. In Holland all religious
sects were welcomed with a liberality far in advance of any other
nation, and at the same time the Dutch people were the most advanced in
the modern pursuits of trade and commerce. The Dutch settlement of New
Amsterdam was therefore a business enterprise, and neither before nor
after the conquest by the British was there any religious obstacle to
the reception of other races and religions. In this respect New York
differed widely from New England, where religious exclusiveness
preserved the English race as a peculiar people until the middle of the
nine