<P> The Puritans created a deeply religious, socially tight - knit, and politically innovative culture that still influences the modern United States . They fled England and attempted to create a "nation of saints" or a "City upon a Hill" in America, a community designed to be an example for all of Europe . </P> <P> Roger Williams preached religious toleration, separation of Church and State, and a complete break with the Church of England . He was banished from Massachusetts for his theological views and led a group south to found Providence in 1636 . It merged with other settlements to form the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, which became a haven for Baptists, Quakers, Jews, and others, including Anne Hutchinson who had been banished during the Antinomian Controversy . </P> <P> On March 3, 1636, the Connecticut Colony was granted a charter and established its own government . The nearby New Haven Colony was absorbed by Connecticut . Vermont was then unsettled, and the territories of New Hampshire and Maine were then governed by Massachusetts . </P> <P> King James II of England became concerned about the increasingly independent ways of the colonies, in particular their self - governing charters, open flouting of the Navigation Acts, and increasing military power . He decreed the Dominion of New England in 1686, an administrative union of all the New England colonies . Two years later, the provinces of New York (New Amsterdam) and New Jersey were added . The union was imposed from the outside and removed nearly all the popularly elected leaders, and it was highly unpopular among the colonists . The Connecticut Colony refused to deliver their charter to dominion Governor Edmund Andros in 1687, so he sent an armed contingent to seize it . According to popular legend, the colonists hid the charter inside the Charter Oak tree . King James was removed from the throne in the Glorious Revolution of 1689, and Andros was arrested and sent back to England by the colonists during the 1689 Boston revolt . </P>

Ne noteworthy change in the economy during the 1920s was