3. Topic: The Puritans and the Revolution. Thesis: The people who established the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the Puritans, where seemingly rigid, dogmatic and convinced of their purpose and place in the world and they neither professed democratic values nor respected individuals who questioned authority or their "betters." However the descendants of these same people, while professing many of these same core beliefs, started the American Revolution which was based on democratic and republican principles and questioned authority at almost every level.