Commentary
Inside the First Amendment
By Charles C. Haynes
First Amendment Center senior scholar
Three hundred and fifty years ago, on Dec. 27, 1657, 30 inhabitants of Flushing, New Netherland (now New York), defied Gov. Peter Stuyvesant’s order barring townspeople from harboring Quakers.
“For our part,” they protested to Stuyvesant, “we cannot condemn [the Quakers], neither can we stretch out our hands against them, to punish, banish or persecute them.”
Today the signers of what…
