But with all her power and all her greatness she [New England] has a bar upon her escutcheon which time never can efface and history never forget. It was her religious persecution and fanaticism. No sooner had our Pilgrim fathers found themselves free from the religious oppressions of their native land, than they assumed the right to dictate, and usurped the power to say which was the true church, and to condemn the unbelievers. The followers of George Fox, the founder of the Society of Friends in England, fled to this country that they too might enjoy religious freedom; but no sooner did they arrive here than they were branded by the Puritan clergy as witches, heretics, and of being possessed of the devil. And the heartrending cruelties of the reformation were reenacted. The people derisively called the Friends, Quakers, and every one appearing in the plain and simple garb of a Friend was immediately subjected to every possible indignity; nor were women or children spared. Women and young girls were stripped to the waist and lashed in the public squares until the blood flowed to the very ground, they unflinchingly suffered their ears to be cut off, unmercifully were they tied to the tails of carts and dragged through the streets, and with an unfaltering step and a quiet, serene countenance did both men and women ascend the scaffold aud there render up their lives, without a reproach upon their lips; and for what? for the sake of their religion. The sufferings and persecutions of the early Friends is a sad history, and in reviewing the history of New England we approach this period with feelings of both regret and gratification. Regret that such dark days should ever have hung over New England; gratification, that she has thrown off that mantle of darkness and has secured to her people unlimited religious liberty.
This subject, the persecution of Friends, was not touched upon without great reluctance in this work, but as it exercised so much influence over the actions of our ancestors it became necessary....
http://books.google.com/books?hl=en...a=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result#PPA3,M1
pp 13 & 14
