A thorough, detailed, and fascinating sociological analysis of the Puritan and Quaker mindsets and the influence they exerted over the respective cultures they founded in Boston and Philadelphia even long after their obvious dominance had subsided.
Both denominations were lower-class English utopian sects generated by the Protestant Reformation seeking a return to basic primitive purity in the Garden of Eden of the New-World Promised Land. The Calvinist Puritans set great store in education, and became accustomed to being governed by the leaders of their congregations. Quakers, on the other hand, carried Pietist individualism to the extreme with deliberate absence of governing authority and even structure. While the Puritan clergymen became educated statesmen in the communities of Massachusetts Bay, the individualistic Quakers let their consciences be guided by mystical personal revelations, and refrained from interfering in any non-Quaker's affairs (although extremely strict with fellow Quakers), assuming a consensus would emerge among the spiritually like-minded (i.e., public opinion). This attitude was also obviously congenial to the Pietist German Protestant utopian sects recruited to populate an outer belt of counties surrounding Philadelphia.
The coercive Puritans of Massachusetts Bay guarded their religious dogma jealously and imposed it upon all members of their communities. Creating educational institutions which reinforced their intellectual orthodoxies, their leadership formed a hereditary ruling caste which even became known as Brahmins after the priestly Indian estate. When they converted from Puritan to Unitarian, their entire communities converted in lockstep, adhering to the Old-World concept of religious uniformity within each State, a characteristic of Reformation Geneva, and in particular the English consolidation of civil and spiritual control. They gave credence to the sanctity of the civil authority, as well as its conformity with the religious authority. When Roman Catholicism became predominant, the Catholic Church wielded more influence in Boston than anywhere else in the nation. The evangelistic Puritan temperament and forceful educational institutions (branded by Thomas Jefferson as breeding grounds for extremist absolutists and monarchists) came to dominate not only other colonies which they spawned, but also neighboring cultures and even eventually the nation as a whole.
Quaker educational institutions, on the other hand, tended to stress practical scientific and vocational rather than philosophical training, which Taoist Quakers considered responsible for propagating erroneous superstitious rituals accumulated over time by all the ancient religions (Francis Bacon's "Idols of the Theater"). Philadelphia high society (although soon becoming predominantly conventional Anglican/Episcopalian, as did the feudal proprietary Penn family, at odds in many respects with Quakerism) grew accustomed to ceding its government to fanatical outside strongmen who controlled police departments, and lower-class political machines, which filled the vacuum and left them free to pursue their individual interests. Relatively few of the establishment ever sought or achieved the widespread personal acclaim so avidly pursued by their Massachusetts counterparts. To the Calvinist Puritans, politics was a reputable calling, whereas Philadelphia high society considered it an unsavory and contemptible occupation (a self-fulfilling prophesy).
Strains of these two contrasting creeds both continue to assert themselves in control of U.S. culture to the present day. Historian David Hackett Fischer later expanded upon this theme in his book 'Albion's Seed,' viewing the American Civil War as a resumption of the English Civil War featuring the same ideologies clashing.
The author's methodology comparing quantity of entries in the Dictionary of American Biography grows a bit tiresome to the lay reader, although it presumably has some validity.
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