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Article: Political Exiles to the United States
- Article from:
- Dictionary of American History
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POLITICAL EXILES TO THE UNITED STATES
POLITICAL EXILES TO THE UNITED STATES.
America has been envisioned by some as a haven for religious and political exiles since the earliest settlement attempts in what is now Florida by French Huguenots in the sixteenth century. Though these early refugee colonies did not survive, English Puritans established successful colonies in Massachusetts, while Charles I of England chartered a viable Catholic colony in Maryland. As political dissidents and others were banished in increasing numbers from the French and Spanish empires, the British colonies in North America became used as a place to relieve the pressures caused by those thought to be ...