The famous words, “all men are created equal” were penned by a Virginian, but New England demonstrated more forms of equality in 1776. Although the American embrace of equality has come from many sources, New England has contributed in particular ways. New England patterns of land ownership, exemplified by the family farm, helped promote more long-term economic opportunity, compared to the plantation system in the South or the patron tradition in Latin America. Yankee migrants to upstate New York brought with them a culture that encouraged democratized religion and female engagement in the public arena, primarily through voluntary societies and the first women’s rights movement. All of these developments met with complications and resistance, but the drive for equal opportunity and equal rights, which continues in various forms today, has a rich heritage, including historical developments in New England.
Jay Case is Professor of History at Malone University. He has taught a wide range of history classes at Malone in American, African and Latin American history. His main areas of scholarly interest are in American Religious history, particularly 19th-century evangelicalism and the missionary movement. He has also published articles and book chapters on African American Christianity, world Pentecostalism, Methodism and religion in Brazil. In 2012 he published a book, An Unpredictable Gospel: American Evangelicals and World Christianity, 1812-1920 from Oxford University Press. He is currently working on a religious biography of Bob Dylan.
