Melting pots require toleration or they boil over. Captain William Byrd of Virginia traveled to New York in the 1680s and seconded Dongan’s observations on the absence of religion. He found it remarkable that the citizens were “not concerned with what religion their neighbor is, or whether he hath any or none.”55 This is not to say that Holland or New Amsterdam reached the modern ideal of religious freedom. But even a “grudging acceptance” from the authorities was hard to come by anywhere else.56 The distinction between tolerance and true freedom, neither of which the Puritans practiced, is
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