Final answer:
The author contrasts the Puritans with other groups by presenting two historical perspectives: one that views the Puritans as repressive and undemocratic, and another that sees them as contributors to American intellectual life and promoters of liberty and American virtues. Understanding Puritanism is considered essential for understanding America's foundation.
Step-by-step explanation:
The author compares the Puritans to other groups of their time by discussing various perspectives from historical literature. On one hand, the Puritans have been criticized by historians such as Charles Francis Adams, Brooks Adams, and H. L. Mencken for establishing undemocratic colonies that repressed dissenters and stifled intellectual life, similar to the attitude of those censoring books and advocating for prohibition. This viewpoint paints the Puritans as a group who created a "glacial period" in American intellectual life and as a middle-class economic ideology aimed at maintaining control over the lower classes.
Conversely, a different set of historians, including John Gorham Palfrey and Samuel Elliot Morison, credit the Puritans with positive contributions to American society, such as establishing the first public school system and college in the Americas, and for being torchbearers of liberty in search of religious freedom. They argued that the austerities of the Puritans were necessary responses to the harsh conditions they faced and that the Puritans promoted virtues like hard work, thriftiness, and social responsibility, which are often associated with the American ethos. Additionally, the Puritans saw themselves as the chosen people building a new Christian utopia, akin to a "city on a hill," as envisioned by John Winthrop.
The debate over Puritan contributions remains a source of historical controversy, but there is acknowledgement that understanding Puritanism is crucial for understanding America's roots and development. Despite their theological rigidity and restrictive social practices, their intellectual contributions and promotion of literacy, as demonstrated by their establishment of a printing press and the publication of the Bay Psalm Book, highlight their complex influence on American life.