What distinguished the colony of Pennsylvania in the seventeenth pp. century?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Pennsylvania was the last colony the English established in America in the seventeenth century. Charles II had granted William Penn the vast tract of land south and west of New York to cancel the debt of his father Charles I to Penn's late father and to strengthen the English hold on the North American continent. A devout Quaker, Penn wanted his colony to be an experiment in religious freedom and pacifism and a haven for small farmers rather than large landowners. He had helped Quakers form the colony of West Jersey with the same ideals. Like all Quakers, Penn considered liberty a universal right rather than a privilege of the select, which explains the early opposition of his church to slavery. He believed in the fair treatment of Indians, bought their lands, offered refuge to tribes from other colonies, and insisted on peaceful relations with them. Pennsylvania's government had a proprietor-appointed council that created laws and a popularly elected assembly, in which the majority of male residents was able to vote. While the climate, cheap land, and religious toleration attracted immigrants from all over Western Europe, Pennsylvania offered only a "Christian liberty" and had a strict moral code.