The settlement of Massachusetts was made by the Puritans of England who were seeking a refuge from the oppression they had suffered in England on account of their religious beliefs and practices. They braved the stormy northern Atlantic to come to the wilderness. They braved the Indians to stay. They established their homes, their schools, their meeting-houses, their government, and dwelt according to the dictates of their consciences in that freedom which they had desired. No less for freedom did William Penn and his colony of Quakers come to the western hemisphere. They sought a place where they would be given a chance to worship God according to their belief. A peaceful sect, they sought peace, and they brought into the new country standards of living that set their impress upon the infant nation. Liberal to others as they desired liberality for themselves, they were destined to sow seeds of thought that were to be harvested in the effects of the Constitution of the republic, when it was formulated. The Huguenots in the Carolinas, fleeing religious persecution, found haven. Lord Baltimore established the Maryland colony of English Catholics who could not practise their religion in the old country. And where the motive for the establishment of the colony was not in itself purely a question of finding a place of religious freedom, the interrelationship of the colonies became so close that in time the spirit of religious freedom became warp of the fabric of the country that was to be the American nation. Political freedom was promoted, in the beginning, by the distance of the colonies from Europe. France, Spain, and England were too far away, and ocean travel too hazardous, to make the bond between the mother countries and the colonies tight. Men and women who had been venturesome enough to cross the seas were not of the sort who would be held for long by mere traditions of allegiance to old lands. Little by little the people of the colonies gained larger measures of political freedom until the time arrived when the unjust tax imposed by England aroused them to revolt. The Boston Tea Party expressed the spirit of America. The Declaration of Independence voiced America’s aspiration and America’s intention. The War of the Revolution settled the right of Americans to their own government. The Constitution of the United States guaranteed to Americans their rights to the enjoyment of that freedom which had been the mainspring of the foundation of the nation.