Sam Stabler is a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at Yale University, where he is studying social conflict in morally diverse societies. He is currently finishing a dissertation focused on understanding how such conflicts were shaped by the United States’ expansive colonial frontier. Empirically this means his work explores the religious and political uses of territory in the Puritan New England missionary context from colony founding (1630) through to the early national period (the early nineteenth century). Sam would like to thank Luke Wagner and Barbara Grossman-Thompson for their thoughtful comments on an earlier draft of this post.