Pennsylvania
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Who are the Quakers?
Founder William Penn, was a Quaker. In 1661, 4,000 English Quakers had been jailed, including Penn himself four times. The Quakers were a group of Protestants who believe that God offered salvation to all and placed an “inner light” inside each person. Quakers socially and politically were Pennsylvania’s first citizens.
Pennsylvania’s Time as a Colony of Diversity and Prosperity
Our early days of Pennsylvania colony offered us both religious toleration, and economic opportunity. William Penn had received his charter around the year 1681, he wanted to raise money by selling our land to groups of wealthy Quaker merchants. This brought in ordinary settlers, which left us to be promised to have, self-government, freedom of religion, and reasonably priced land available. Penn just knew our colony was going to develop. If it wasn’t for Pennsylvania I wouldn’t have been able to live in a population, with rapid growth, of other people like myself at the time. I didn’t speak the same language as others who were living around me, and some of us didn’t even practice the same religion. The people in Pennsylvania including myself, were able to live wherever we wanted to, and how we wanted to take an interest in economic activities that were very profitable. I always knew the focus was based on the New World vs. the Old World, because the European immigrants of this time were servants, who worked for pay due to the Captain of the Ships, for the coast of transportation to our colony. I remember close to the year 1700, things started to take a turn. The Pennsylvania Assembly had passed laws for slavery, and slavery started to leave us questioning, how its power had started to shape early weaknesses for America.
Oakes, James. Of the People: A History of the United States. Second ed. Vol. 1. New York: Oxford UP, 2013. 90-123. Print.