Chapter VIII The Growth of a Frontier
In the first chapter we called attention to the importance of the Appalachian barrier in long confining the process of colonizing within bounds, and preventing that wide dispersion which rendered so precarious the hold of France upon its far larger American empire. The relation of area to barrier, in that section chosen by the English, was, indeed, almost ideal for the formation of colonies, and, subsequently, of a nation through their union. While the mountains kept the original settlements within bounds until their population and institutions had both had opportunity to develop and take strong root, the extent of the continental mass behind, simple in its physiographic features, was sufficient for the growth of almost unlimited numbers and a unified state, and, so, for the effective influence upon the world of whatever form of culture might there arise. The West Indian colonies, on the other hand, in spite of their rapid growth, could not fail, eventually, to become politically unimportant, merely from their limited area and resulting limited population. Barbadoes, for example, comprised only one hundred and sixty-six square miles, the equivalent of one seventh of the land-surface of Rhode Island, or one fiftieth of that of Massachusetts. Within a century from its settlement, it contained no ungranted or uncultivated land—a condition which must have been approximated long before.423 The possibility of growth, beyond a certain point, was, therefore, lacking in the islands, and, from the same cause, their development was to a great extent uninfluenced by another factor, which was of marked importance in the continental colonies and the nation for two centuries and a half. This factor was the constantly advancing frontier, with its radical reactions upon the thought and institutions of the also constantly expanding older settlements.
American political thought has been moulded, to a very great extent, by the two ideals, of unrestricted competition in exploiting the resources of the continent, and of a democracy fostered by the semi-isolated and self-reliant life of the frontier, with its comparative equality of opportunity and of economic status. Both these ideals, until a recent period, were developed by the presence of free land, in which they had largely had their origin.424 As we have already pointed out, land in New England, in the earliest period, was to be obtained without either purchase price or rent, to which fact, perhaps, had been due the large non-Puritan immigration that mingled with the religious stream from 1630 to 1640.
It is also to the influence of the frontier that the American intellect owes some of its most marked characteristics: its restlessness, its preoccupation with the practical, its lack of interest in the æsthetic and philosophical, its desire for ends and neglect of means, its preference of cleverness to training, its self-confidence, its individualism, and its extreme provinciality. The influence, moreover, has been a continuing one, for almost every decade in American history, until 1890, witnessed the creation of a new frontier, which lay just a little beyond the settled regions, and reacted upon them.425
In describing the first expansion of the New England frontier, therefore, we are concerned with the earliest manifestation of one of the most potent forces in American history. The fringe of little settlements along the coast had been, indeed, the frontier of Europe; but with the planting of settlements farther inland, an American frontier came into existence, to react upon what, with the rapid movement of time characteristic of a new country, soon became the conservative, older East. That frontier has always been the refuge of the restless and the discontented, of those who have desired a freer, if not greater, economic opportunity, as well as of those who have been unable to adjust themselves to the prosaic life of a settled community, with its penalties of one sort or another for such as will not yield at least lip-service to its social, religious, or political beliefs. In Massachusetts there was no more room—if, indeed, there were as much—for those who disagreed with the authorities in any particular, than there had been at home; and those who came to that colony in the hope of enjoying any larger degree of religious toleration or civil liberty than in England were promptly disillusioned. About the time of the last events described in the preceding chapter, the prospects for freedom of thought or action must have looked as dark to the dwellers in Massachusetts not wholly in sympathy with the rulers’ policy, as it had looked to those same rulers in the old country, when they met at the Earl of Lincoln’s, and decided to remove to the wilderness. The opposition having become the government, it was now forcing a new opposition to follow the same course, involuntarily by banishment or voluntarily by free migration. Before continuing the story of that movement, however, we must allude briefly to that portion of the European frontier which lay northward of the Puritan settlements, and which, like them, had been formed by immigration from the Old World.
During the period we are now discussing, the history of Maine was the story of confused grants of territory and of the planting of small isolated farming, fishing, and trading communities. The existence led by the inhabitants, in their solitary shacks or little villages, was that of a rough border life in which the monotony of the hard, bitter winters, and the routine of planting, fishing, or bargaining for furs, was punctuated by an occasional murder among themselves, and by quarrels, sometimes bloody, with the Indians and the French.
In 1629, the Province of Maine, as granted to Mason and Gorges seven years previously, was divided between them, Mason accepting as his share that portion lying between the Merrimac and the Piscataqua,—which received the name of New Hampshire,—while Gorges retained the balance, extending from the Piscataqua to the Kennebec.426 Mention has previously been made of the small beginnings at Pemaquid, Sheepscot, and Monhegan to the eastward, and of Portsmouth and Dover in what now became Mason’s particular province. The settlements next planted, at Richmond’s Island, Pejebscot, around Casco Bay, and elsewhere, were the work of servants for English merchants or of individual emigrants, and were hampered by the conflicting claims arising from the carelessly drawn patents.427 Gorges himself became interested in a new attempt to colonize, and his nephew, William, was sent over as governor of a little colony planted at York, which later was to become the subject of one of those grandiose schemes of government to which the old knight was so uncontrollably addicted.428 All of these early plantings, however, were of slight historical importance.
Although settlement was proceeding slowly and painfully, the vast forests and many rivers of the province offered a rich field for the exploitation of the fur trade, which was the main object of the French in the north, and one of the principal resources of the English settlements as well. The traffic, indeed, had been the means by which the Plymouth Pilgrims had bought their freedom from their merchant partners, and we have already noted that colony’s activities on the Kennebec. A tragic incident that occurred at their little post on that stream, located at what is now Augusta, is of interest mainly as revealing the aggressive attitude which was later to become the settled policy of the Massachusetts colony in relation to its neighbors. Early in 1634, one Hocking, a fellow employed in an enterprise of Lords Say, Brook, and others, on the Piscataqua, tried to poach upon the Pilgrims’ patented lands, and even to pass the trading station, in order to intercept the Indians carrying their furs. The Pilgrims’ agents acted with restraint; but in the course of the dispute, Hocking wantonly killed one of their men; whereupon a companion of the slain man, “that loved him well,” as Bradford records, shot Hocking dead.429
Although the Plymouth men had been entirely in the right, a garbled version of the affair was sent to England and also to Massachusetts. Needless to point out, that colony had absolutely no jurisdiction whatever in the quarrel, which had occurred far outside its bounds, and not even in the unclaimed wilderness, but within the legal limits of its older neighbor. Nevertheless, the authorities at Boston arrested John Alden, one of the Plymouth magistrates, who happened to be there at the moment, and who had been at the Kennebec when the affray occurred.430 This was naturally resented, even by the peace-loving Pilgrims, and letters requesting Alden’s release were dispatched by the Plymouth government to Dudley. One of these, at least, that governor tried to suppress, but “Captaine Standish requiring an answer thereof publickly in the courte,” he was forced to produce it.431 Alden was released, but Standish, who had been the bearer of the letter, was bound over to appear at the next Massachusetts court, to testify to the Pilgrims’ patent. Finally, after Winslow and Bradford themselves had gone to Boston and conferred with Winthrop, the matter was adjusted, and Dudley and Winthrop wrote to the Lords in England the true version of the murder; but it was not likely that the other settlements would soon forget the high-handed proceedings of the Bay Colony in an affair so obviously beyond its jurisdiction.432
But the trading post on the Kennebec was not the sole concern of the Pilgrims in Maine, nor was that province the scene merely of contentions arising from conflicting English land-grants, or from rival colonial jurisdictions. It had been the stage on which the curtain had first risen in the struggle for empire between England and France, and was now to witness new episodes in that long drama. Still farther north the contest had recently become acute. Sir William Alexander, by virtue of an English grant, had claimed a large portion of French America, and Sir William Kirk had seized Port Royal and Quebec. By the treaty of St. Germain, however, in 1632, England agreed to restore “all places occupied in New France, Acadia, and Canada by the subjects of the King of Great Britain,” although the boundaries of those vaguely localized regions were not specified, and remained matters for contention, which meant raiding and Indian warfare, for over a century to come.433
Meanwhile, several more places had been occupied by the Pilgrims and those associated with the Plymouth colony. In 1630, a “very profane young man,” Edward Ashley by name, had started a trading post on the Penobscot, which the Pilgrims feared might injure their fur business on the Kennebec.434 In spite of scruples, therefore, they joined with Ashley, and that person having been drowned at sea, after being released from the Fleet prison in London, they came into sole possession.435 They did not long enjoy it in peace, however, for the following year the French descended upon them and carried away all their goods, valued at nearly £500, leaving word with the agents that “some of the Isle of Rey gentlemen had been there.” Allerton, who had broken with the Pilgrims, had also begun to trade, at Machias; and, a couple of years later, suffered in like manner from the French, who killed two of his men, and carried off all the others, as well as the whole stock of goods, which, as Bradford says “was the end of that projecte.”436
In spite of their own heavy loss, the Pilgrims had clung to the Penobscot until, in 1635, d’Aulnay, acting under orders from the French King to clear the coast of the English as far as Pemaquid, seized the post, and shipped the local agents back to Plymouth. The Pilgrims hired a vessel, and dispatched an armed force to try to regain possession; but, owing to the conduct of the man whom they had engaged to effect the enterprise, it failed miserably, and they merely entailed upon themselves a heavy additional loss. Massachusetts, when called upon for help, though she realized the danger to herself from the increasing aggressiveness of the French, refused aid unless the infinitely poorer Plymouth colony would bear the entire expense. That colony was, therefore, obliged to desist, and Bradford bitterly complained that not only did the Bay people thus do nothing to defend the common frontier, but that, owing to their cupidity, they even sold food and ammunition to the French, and so increased the menace both from them and their Indian allies.437
In Mason’s province of New Hampshire, settlement, though more peaceful, was also proceeding but slowly beyond the Dover and Portsmouth plantations already noted. As the settlers of those two places were Episcopalians, and as an opportunity was offered to buy out the Hilton interest in the former, the Massachusetts leaders urged some of their friends in England to acquire it, with the result that Lords Say and Brook, Sir Richard Saltonstall, and others came into possession, and sent out additional colonists.438 This pouring of new wine into the old Dover bottle produced a series of explosions, which subsequently prepared the way for annexation by Massachusetts. Mason died in 1635, and bequeathed his province to his family.439 Two years later occurred the Antinomian controversy in Massachusetts, and the expulsion of Wheelwright, whom, when discussing that episode, we left on his way to New Hampshire. He succeeded in making the winter trip to the settlements on the Piscataqua, and the following spring, with a few associates and the help of his new hosts, he founded the town of Exeter, the inhabitants entering into a written compact for their self-government.440 That the Massachusetts authorities would have preferred that he should die alone in the winter’s snow is hardly a charitable supposition; but just what they did wish for is uncertain; for they wrote a letter of remonstrance to the New Hampshire people, saying that they “looked at it as an unneighborly part” that they should help any one expelled by themselves.441
One of these northern towns, from its first settlement, had been considered by Massachusetts as under its own jurisdiction. In March, 1637, the General Court had ordered that a plantation should be started at Wenicunnett,—the name being later changed to Hampton,—a little more than three miles north of the Merrimac.442 It was thus slightly outside of the bounds of the patent, if that were construed, as it had been construed to that time, to include only such land north of the river as lay within three miles of it.443 The project may mark, however, the first tentative step toward the colony’s later, and wholly unwarranted, interpretation of that instrument, so as to include all the territory lying south of a line drawn due east from a point three miles north of the most northerly part of that stream, to the ocean, thus including practically all of New Hampshire and a large part of Maine. About a year and a half after the “bound house” was built, a group of colonists went to take possession of the new site. The Exeter men at once objected to this encroachment of Massachusetts on their neighborhood; but the General Court replied that the new settlement was within their patent, and that they looked upon the protest as “against good neighborhood, religion and common honesty.” They did, however, quietly send out a surveying party, and having found that the part above Pennacook was north of the line of 43½ degrees, they phrased a new answer to Exeter’s renewed protest, saying that, while they relinquished none of their rights, nevertheless, as the Exeter men did not profess to claim anything which might fall within the Massachusetts patent, the matter would be allowed to rest. The way was thus left open for future aggression, and the Court immediately proceeded to erect the new settlement into a legal town.444
The frontier north of Massachusetts had thus, for the most part, come into being without any action on her part, except in the two settlements last noted. Owing to the location between the French and English, and the uncompromising geographic factors of soil and climate, the vast forested area, comprising over two thirds of all New England, increased but little in population throughout the century; and by 1700 New Hampshire had but six thousand souls, or less than that of the Bay Colony at the time that Wheelwright left it. The northern provinces, unhappily for themselves, were destined to play the part of buffer states between the French, with their savage allies, and the more safely located colonies in the south.
In tracing the foundations of the latter, we find the influence of Massachusetts far more potent, for they were being laid mainly by men who found scant room in that increasingly reactionary commonwealth. The founders of Rhode Island and Connecticut alike condemned the religious and political policy that the Bay Colony had now definitely made its own; and the more democratic and tolerant forms of government, which developed in the two former, “represented more nearly the principles which underlie the government of the United States to-day than any other of the British colonies.”445 The seeds of both political and religious liberty had been brought to America by the Massachusetts colonists; but the leaders, partly from a dread of losing their own influence, and partly from a genuine fear of noxious weeds, had done their best to interfere with their growth. The founders of Rhode Island and Connecticut, with less desire for personal power, and greater courage as to tares in the wheat, watered and nursed the seeds of liberty, which bore an abundant harvest. In Rhode Island, indeed, the weeds flourished riotously; but the faith of the founders was justified in both colonies, and their commonwealths marched with Holland at the head of those struggling for human freedom, while England and Massachusetts yet lagged and nagged.
The lands around Narragansett Bay had been known for some time to be attractive as sites for colonizing, when Williams made his way thither after his banishment, in the winter of 1636. In spite of frequent trading with the Indians, however, only one settler had as yet located there permanently. William Blackstone, who had left England because he disliked the tyranny of the Lord-bishops, and who had, as we have seen, an equal aversion for that of the Lord-brethren, had quietly left his plantation in Massachusetts, and betaken himself to the wilderness north of Providence.446 A lover at once of peace, of books, and of freedom, there is something singularly attractive in his little known personality. He called his new home “Study Hill”; and there in his orchard grew the first “yellow sweetings” ever known, which, later, when he occasionally preached to the newcomers, he handed around, “to encourage his younger hearers.”
Thus, while, owing to the great services Williams was to render the colony, he is entitled to the name of its founder, he was not its first settler, nor was the little band that planted Providence with him in 1636 the only one to lay the foundations of the future commonwealth. Nor had he himself, apparently, any intention of doing so. “It pleased the most high,” he wrote, many years afterward, “to direct my steps into this Bay, by the loving private advice of that very honored soul Mr. John Winthrop the Grandfather, who, though he was carried with the stream for my banishment, yet he personally and tenderly loved me to his last breath. It is not true, that I was imployed by any, made covenant with any, was supplied by any, or desired any to come with me into these parts.”447 The others came, however, and the leading idea of the settlement was reiterated four years later in the proposals for a form of government, when the “arbitrators” noted that they agreed “as formerly hath bin the liberties of the town, so still, to hould forth liberty of conscience.”448
In 1638, another group, of eighteen persons, including William Coddington, settled the town of Portsmouth; and in the following year, that little hamlet planted an offshoot at Newport, while a few individuals from both Providence and Portsmouth organized Warwick.449 These four towns were absolutely independent of each other, and of any superior government of any sort, except England. Although Newport and Portsmouth partially combined in 1640, it was not until seven years later, when the charter of 1644 finally went into effect, that there was any colony of Rhode Island, or a united government over the several settlements.450 It thus offered a great contrast to the Massachusetts colony, in which the towns were the creatures of the General Court; and it was this extreme looseness of organization, combined with religious toleration, which formed the leading characteristic of the Rhode Island political experiment. Although the settlers at Providence had signed an agreement to unite for purposes of government, there were no town officers, and practically no organization, until four years later. The agreement was merely to yield obedience to such orders “as shall be made for public good of the body in an orderly way, by the major consent of the present inhabitants, masters of families, incorporated together in a Towne fellowship, and others whom they shall admit unto them only in civil things.” These masters of families met once a fortnight, discussed their common affairs, and decided them by majority vote.451 The government was thus almost a pure democracy, only women, minors, and bachelors being excluded. Even when the towns were united, and a more elaborate governmental machinery was set up, the extremely democratic trend of thought was evidenced in the remarkable provision that the General Assembly could not initiate legislation, but that laws were first to be considered in each town, and that only after all four had considered them, were they to be sent to be acted upon by the Assembly, all legislative initiative thus being retained in the hands of the people.452
With such looseness of organization, and extreme individuality of thought and action, another characteristic was bound to be lack of harmony, with frequent bickerings and disputes. These were soon in evidence, and it was found also that a pure democracy and absence of restraint were not compatible with orderly living. As the commonwealth grew, the difficulties were met in the spirit of men who, believing in liberty and toleration, were yet forced to make concessions to human nature; while, on the other hand, the Massachusetts authorities met their difficulties in the spirit of men who honestly disbelieved in democracy and toleration, and whose concessions were forced by a growing demand for things in which they had no faith. In Connecticut, also, the leaders were, happily, on the side of that part of the people, important in all the colonies, who were struggling upward toward a larger liberty, and who, even in Massachusetts, were slowly bringing it into being.
Knowledge of the existence of the Connecticut River, and of the advantages of its rich bottoms as sites both for trading and for planting, seems to have been first acquired by the English through information given to the Pilgrims by the Dutch. Friendly intercourse between Plymouth and New Amsterdam had been opened by the latter as early as 1626; and the Dutch not only taught the Pilgrims the value of wampum in the Indian trade, but, seeing how barren a site they had chosen for their settlement, told them of the Connecticut, and “wished them to make use of it.” However, “their hands being full otherwise, they let it pass” until, having been solicited by Indians who had been driven from their homes there by invading Pequots from the West, they dispatched several exploring and trading expeditions in 1633.453 The same Indians had also earlier requested the Massachusetts people to make a settlement, but they had declined.454 The Pilgrims, having made up their minds to erect a permanent trading post on the river, also asked the Bay people to join them; and when the latter refused, alleging their poverty, they even offered to provide the capital for both if Massachusetts would assume half the responsibility. This, likewise, being refused, the Pilgrims went on with the project alone, after telling the Bay authorities that they could have no cause to complain, as they had now had ample opportunity to join; to which they assented.455 This was in the middle of July, and although the Massachusetts leaders had done their best to discourage the Pilgrims, by telling them the place was “not fit for plantation,” and by picking other flaws in the project, nevertheless, four weeks later, they had themselves dispatched a bark to Connecticut to trade, and John Oldham, going overland, had also spied out the resources of the place, and trafficked with the Indians there.456 In view of all their actions, then and subsequently, it would seem difficult to avoid the conclusion that the Massachusetts authorities, having been offered by their neighbors a chance to share in a profitable opportunity, deliberately tried, by fraud and force, not only to obtain all the profits for themselves, but to prevent the very people whose enterprise it was from retaining any share in it. Not possessing the interpretative advantages of a New England ancestry, one is, perhaps, limited to remarking that the business dealings of ultra-religious people are often peculiar.
The Dutch, meanwhile, seem to have repented of their former hospitality, probably because of the warnings that the English had early sent them of their encroachment upon English territory, and of the rapid growth of the eastern colonies, which might threaten even their occupation of the Hudson.457 Hearing of the projected settlement by Plymouth, a party was sent from New Amsterdam in January to buy land from the Indians,458 and some of the Dutch were already ensconced in a little fort, on the present site of Hartford, when the English arrived in the late summer. In spite of Dutch protests, however, the Pilgrims, in their “great new barke,” sailed past the fort, and, passing north of the bounds of the Hollanders’ Indian purchase, settled at what is now Windsor, buying the soil from its savage occupants. A later attempt by the Dutch to dislodge them by threatened violence proved unavailing.459
Meanwhile, on the same day on which Winthrop recorded in his Journal the results of the Massachusetts expedition to Connecticut, he also entered the arrival of the ship Griffin, eight weeks from England, with John Cotton, Thomas Hooker, Samuel Stone, and John Haynes among her passengers. Cotton, as we have seen, remained in Boston, but the others immediately went on to Newtown, where a body of Hooker’s English congregation had preceded him by a year.460 Of this transplanted body, Hooker and Stone now became pastor and teacher. It is not likely that Hooker, with the political views he possessed, could have found the Massachusetts atmosphere congenial; and a year later, he and his congregation applied to the General Court for permission to remove to Connecticut. The reasons they gave were the lack of land for expansion at Newtown, the fear that otherwise Connecticut might fall into the hands of other English or the Dutch, and, lastly, “the strong bent of their spirits to remove thither.” The Court, however, refused the petition, alleging many reasons, which, in the main, came to the fear that such a defection would weaken the colony, and tend to draw away future emigrants from it.461 In the debates on the subject, a majority of the deputies were in favor of allowing Hooker and his party to leave if they wished, while a majority of the magistrates opposed it. This raised the question whether the magistrates could veto a vote of the more numerous body of deputies, which was the more popular and democratic of the two. As the result of a sermon preached by Cotton the contest, which had promised to become bitter, was postponed, and the Newtown settlers were granted additional land in their present neighborhood.462 The incident is interesting, not only as marking the beginning of the political struggle between the two elements in the legislature, which we shall have occasion to follow later, but also as an early example of that fear which the East has always had of the growth of its western frontier and its desire to check it.
Owing to continued pressure, however, the legislature withdrew its opposition the following year, and in 1635 permission was granted the towns of Watertown, Roxbury, and Dorchester to move anywhere, provided that they would continue subordinate to the Massachusetts government—a condition which that government had no legal right to impose. A few months later it went further, indeed, and passed a law that no one could leave the colony without permission of a majority of the magistrates.463 As, under a previous law, no one could settle in Massachusetts without the consent of the half-dozen or more men mainly in control, so now no one, however uncongenial his surroundings or urgent his need, could leave without permission from the same little group.
Parties from Dorchester at once availed themselves of the Court’s consent to leave, and by July were arriving daily on the Connecticut. On that river no spot would suit them except that already bought and occupied by the Pilgrims, from which the Massachusetts people now tried to oust them. In reply to a protest from Governor Bradford, the Dorchester men had the effrontery to answer that, as to the land settled by the Pilgrims, God “in a faire way of providence tendered it to us.” Upon this bit of fraud and hypocritical cant, Bradford caustically commented that they should “abuse not Gods providence in such allegations.” Massachusetts, however, was strong, and the Plymouth people were weak; and although the latter did finally wring a reluctant acknowledgment that the right was on their side, nevertheless they were forced to yield fifteen sixteenths of their land, and were allowed only one sixteenth and a little money, in an enterprise which was wholly theirs, in which they had courteously tendered Massachusetts a half interest, and which was located entirely outside any territory to which that colony had any legal title. There was good reason for Bradford’s note in his diary, that the controversy was ended, “but the unkindness not so soone forgotten.”
The winter was very severe, and many of the new settlers were obliged to return to Boston; but in the spring, Hooker, with most of his congregation, emigrated to the river, traveling overland, with their herds of cattle, the precursors of an endless western stream. These newcomers, Bradford carefully notes, as we also are glad to do, treated the Pilgrims more fairly. By the end of 1636, there may have been eight hundred people in Connecticut, settled mainly at Hartford, Windsor, and Wethersfield, while the little settlement of Springfield, within the legal limits of Massachusetts, had also been planted.464
These settlements, at first, were merely plantations and not organized towns. They apparently had no officers, except constables,—who, Massachusetts tried to require, should be sworn by one of her own magistrates,—and the body politic consisted of the inhabitants, who met together, as we have found them doing in Rhode Island, to decide upon their common interests. The territory, however, in which they were located, was also claimed at the time by a group of patentees, including Lords Say, Brook, and others, who had been granted the lands by the Earl of Warwick in 1632, but who had made no attempt to enter upon them until three years later, when they sent John Winthrop, Jr., to act as governor, and took other action looking toward settlement. Winthrop, who had come to Boston in the ship with young Vane, was there at the time that the emigration from Massachusetts took place, and Hooker and the other emigrants consulted him concerning such rights as his principals might claim. As a result, an agreement, to last one year, was entered into between Winthrop, acting for Say, Brook, and their associates, and Hooker and his, which provided that a court of eight magistrates should be created, with power to summon a General Court, until further advices could be received from England. This agreement, for purposes of record, was ratified in the Massachusetts General Court, but was not a “commission” from that colony, as often stated.465
On May 31, 1638, when a new form of government was under consideration, Hooker preached his famous sermon, in which he laid down the doctrines that “the choice of public magistrates belongs unto the people by Gods own allowance,” and that “they who have the power to appoint officers and magistrates, it is in their power, also, to set bounds and limitations of the power and place unto which they call them,” because “the foundation of authority is laid, firstly, in the free consent of the people.”466 Neither to Hooker, nor to his fellow colonists of Connecticut, was this last principle new, either in theory or in practice. He was arguing, not for a democratic government, which they already possessed, but for a fixed code of laws to rule the magistrates in their actions. The following year, the constitution of the new government was adopted by the residents of the plantations of Hartford, Wethersfield, and Windsor.467 That constitution provided for a General Court, in which each of the three original plantations should be represented by four deputies, and which should have the authority to incorporate towns. It was only subsequent to the creation of this general government by the inhabitants of the commonwealth, that the towns, as political entities, came into being. Freemen were merely required to be passed upon by the General Court, no religious qualification being attached to the franchise. It is noteworthy that the governor was not allowed to serve for two successive terms, and that no reference was made to any external authority, not even to that of the king.
While the descent of the “Fundamental Orders” of Connecticut can be traced in every step from the earliest charters of the trading companies, the transition was now complete. From such as we saw Tudor monarchs granting to merchants in the fifteenth century, past all those which we have noted as milestones by the way, the progress had been as steady as it was unperceived, from the privileges possessed by a few expatriated English traders and their clerks, dwelling among foreigners, to the self-governed commonwealth of a people in a land which they had made their own. While the charters, however, served as the framework of their government, the foundation of their political philosophy was found in the church covenant, which the Separatists had used in Europe for forty years before the Mayflower sailed; and the constitution of Connecticut was thus equally descended from religious theory and from the practice of trade.
Although there was little in the Fundamental Orders, as settled in 1639, which cannot be found in previous custom or legislation in Massachusetts or Plymouth, nevertheless, only those elements which were of a democratic tendency were put into the new constitution, and there was distinctly a more democratic attitude on the part of the leaders and people than in the Bay Colony. Such provisions as that making the governor ineligible for immediate reëlection, and the franchise independent of religious qualification, probably show a reaction from the rule of Massachusetts.
The contrasted influences which the new colony and its parent were bringing to bear upon the development of American thought at this time may best be illustrated by the theories of their several leaders. Perhaps the two most influential men in New England in 1640, and the two who most deserved the positions assigned them, were John Winthrop, the leader in Massachusetts, and Thomas Hooker, the leader in Connecticut. Winthrop’s opinion of democracy as “the worst of all forms of government,” we have already noted, and may contrast with Hooker’s belief that the complete control of their rulers “belongs unto the people by Gods own allowance.” In the important question whether judges should render arbitrary decisions wholly according to their personal views, or be limited by a fundamental body of laws, the two leaders were equally far apart. “Whatsoever sentence the magistrate gives,” wrote Winthrop, who opposed any such limitation, “the judgment is the Lord’s, though he do it not by any rule prescribed by civil authority.”468 “That in the matter which is referred to the judge,” asserted Hooker, on the other hand, “the sentence should lie in his breast, or be left to his discretion, according to which he should go, I am afraid it is a course which wants both safety and warrant. I must confess, I ever looked at it as a way which leads directly to tyranny, and so to confusion, and must plainly profess, if it was in my liberty, I should choose neither to live nor leave my posterity under such a government.”469
The aristocratic and oligarchical tendencies at work in Massachusetts there received enormous additional strength from the fact that the clergy were almost a unit in their support of reactionary ideas. This was a defect which was, to a certain extent, inherent in the Calvinistic ministry; and the failure of the contemporary Puritan colony in the Caribbean was, in considerable measure, due to the outrageous claims of the Puritan ministers there upon the civil power.470 The influence of the Puritan clergyman upon his more devout followers could be equaled only by that of the Catholics, and it is difficult for the modern layman to realize its full extent. It came about in part from the Puritan doctrine already noted, that nothing in life was untinged with a religious aspect. If no one dreams now of any necessity of consulting the clergy, as such, with reference to the fashion in clothes or the economic and social policy of the nation, it is partly because those matters are no longer considered as religious, but purely temporal. The opinion of a clergyman, therefore, is of no more value than that of the well-informed layman, with his broader practical experience of life, if, indeed, of as much. One does, however, have recourse to a specialist, and a banker’s opinion is sought on finance, and a doctor’s on health. As, according to Puritan theory, there was no act which was not of a religious or moral character, the clergyman was, so say, a specialist on one aspect of everything, and from that standpoint his advice must be sought in every detail of life, and his influence was correspondingly great.
The individuals who emigrated to Rhode Island and Connecticut were mainly those who were dissatisfied with the restrictions imposed by Massachusetts. That process of secondary selection had now begun which was to continue to winnow out from every new community the most adventurous and independent, and to plant them again to the westward in still newer settlements, where, in turn, the process would again be repeated. In the colonies now forming, therefore, there was a freer opportunity for the seeds of liberty to grow than in the old Bay. The new commonwealths had, in addition, the great advantage that in them, at least at their beginning, the influence of the clergy was wholly upon the side of freedom; and in estimating the results of priestly power in New England, it is only just to recall that Roger Williams and Thomas Hooker were clergymen, as well as the narrower divines of Boston and her sister towns.
The westward movement of New England was to continue until her sons and her institutions were to be found in a continuous chain of communities from Portland on the Atlantic to Portland on the Pacific, and the influence of New England thought upon the life of the nation cannot be overestimated. In so far as the origins of that thought can be traced back to any definite leaders, or individual colonies, it was evidently the ideas of Williams and Hooker, rather than those of Winthrop, with all his high qualities, which were to dominate the American people, and to be absorbed into their very being.
At the same time that these new communities and influences were coming into existence, there was the possibility of another experiment being tried, in colonial matters, of a radically different sort.
The group of Puritan leaders, Warwick, Say, Brook, and others, whom we noted earlier as being interested in promoting Puritan colonization both in New England and in the Caribbean, had continued to be actively engaged in colonizing the latter; while by their acquisition of the Hilton patent in New Hampshire, and the grant in Connecticut, they were still in possession of large tracts in the former. Since the emigration of Winthrop in 1630, affairs in England had not improved politically, though they had distinctly done so economically. About 1634 or 1635, nearly all of the group of leaders with whom we are particularly concerned suffered in one way and another from the influence of the Court party. Warwick, who had been forced out of the Council for New England three years earlier, was attacked under the forest laws, and also made to divide his lord-lieutenancy of Essex. Pym was sued by the Attorney-General, and Barrington, Say, and Brook suffered in their estates.471 In July, Humphrey, the Earl of Lincoln’s brother-in-law, arrived in Massachusetts with “propositions from some persons of great quality and estate,” who were thinking of emigrating if satisfactory arrangements could be made.472 In October, the younger Winthrop went to England, returning a year later with his commission as governor of a projected colony at the mouth of the Connecticut.473 At the end of November, 1635, twenty men arrived there, and under the direction of Lyon Gardiner, a fort was erected at Saybrook. Saltonstall, one of the patentees, had also, a few months earlier, attempted to plant some men higher up the river; but they had been driven out by the same lawless Dorchester party that had fallen on the Pilgrims, causing Saltonstall a loss of £1000.474
Among the proposals made by Say, Brook, and the others to Massachusetts, as conditions of their emigrating to New England, it was stipulated that there should be two ranks in the commonwealth—gentlemen and freeholders; that the power of making and repealing laws should belong to both ranks, but that the governor should always be chosen from the higher. To these and the other proposals the authorities in the colony wholly agreed, but with the proviso that the church-membership qualification for the franchise must be retained.475 The theocracy of Massachusetts, under the guidance of its ministers, had drifted far from the current of English life. Englishmen have always had a thoroughly healthy hatred of ecclesiastical rule in civil affairs, and, whatever country squires, noblemen’s factors, or tradesmen and mechanics, might be willing to do, it could not be possible that such men as Warwick, Say, Brook, and Pym could place their political rights and careers wholly in the hands of the narrow-minded ministers and congregations of the little Massachusetts town churches. On that account, and because of the turn of affairs in England, the project was given up, and when, three years later, Warwick, Brook, Say, and Darley announced definitely that they were going to emigrate, it was not to New England but to their island in the Caribbean. Although they were not permitted to do so, the fact marks the distinct breach which had now taken place between the rulers of Massachusetts and the leaders of the Puritan party in England. The mistaken policy of the colony, which earlier had brought alarmed protests from her less powerful friends at home, had now definitely alienated her most influential ones. The selfish attitude toward her neighbors, already shown upon the Penobscot, the Piscataqua, and the Connecticut, and which, unfortunately, was to become more aggressive and unscrupulous, also lost her the friendship of her sister colonies. The result was that, when the real struggle came with the English government, a generation later, Massachusetts, although, thanks to her geographical position and aggressive acquisitiveness, she had become the most powerful of the New England group, found herself with hardly a friend in the old country or the new.
The work of extending the frontier was not a mere matter of discussions or of peaceful penetration into an untenanted wilderness. Owing to the great plague, which had so nearly annihilated the natives in the regions where the settlers had first planted, the Indian danger had never been a serious one, and no such massacre as almost wiped out the Virginia colony need have been apprehended. The savage, however, had been an important element in the life of the settlements. As friend or spying enemy, he was as constantly in and out of the little villages as he is of the pages of the early records. Although there was, unluckily, little that the white man could teach him that was of any service, he, on the contrary, taught the colonists many a useful lesson. He showed them how and where to plant, trapped their game and gathered in their stock of furs, guided them through the almost trackless forests, and, in a multitude of ways, gave them knowledge of the land which they had entered and of the products it might yield. In the background, nevertheless, always lurked the danger that the natives might grow tired of being slowly dispossessed, that they might decide to make an end of a situation which the more far-sighted among them could not fail to see would inevitably more and more narrow the free range for their savage life. In the fifteen years since Bradford and his little band had landed in an almost deserted spot, the white population had grown alarmingly. Moreover, their increasing numbers and desire for expansion would naturally lead the settlers to adopt a more aggressive attitude toward the natives in any dispute occurring between them. There was more and more probability of trouble, arising from individual outrage on the part of an unscrupulous or ruffianly white, or of some aggrieved or drunken Indian, of which the organized power of the former would but too likely take full advantage. The Old Testament texts on dealing with those outside the pale of God’s chosen people offered little comfort to the Indian, should the Puritan divines ever start on the war-path.
At the beginning of 1633 word was received in Boston that a certain Captain Stone had been murdered by the Pequots, or Indians allied to them, after having landed at the mouth of the Connecticut. The exact truth of what occurred is not known. Stone, who was a trader from Virginia, was a drunken, dissolute, and thoroughly worthless character, and very likely provoked the natives by some act. On the other hand, their stories of what happened did not agree, and were not above suspicion.476 The Massachusetts authorities reported the matter to Virginia, and no further action was taken until the following year, when an embassy from the Pequots arrived at Boston. That tribe had become embroiled in a quarrel with the Narragansetts on the east, and the Dutch on the west, and were, therefore, anxious to smooth their relations with the English. They agreed to deliver up the two men who had killed Stone, to surrender their rights to Connecticut, and to pay damages in furs and wampum. A few days later a number of Narragansetts appeared, who had come to waylay the Pequots on their way home; but the Massachusetts authorities purchased the safety of the savages and promise of peace between the two tribes, by offering the Narragansetts some of the Pequot wampum. Although the Bay Colony had thus bought the Pequot title to Connecticut with the blood of the slain Virginian, the natives had no idea, apparently, of observing the terms of the bargain, nor did the English take further steps in the matter until two years later, when the younger Winthrop, then at Saybrook, was commissioned to treat with the savages regarding rumors of recent outrages, and to declare war if he could not obtain satisfaction.477
A fortnight later news came of the murder of John Oldham, and the capture of two boys, in his small boat, while off Block Island on a trading voyage. The natives of that island, who were subordinate to the Narragansetts, were the guilty parties, but the crime seems to have been committed with the connivance of the Narraganset sachems, except Canonicus and Miantanomo. Through the intercession of Roger Williams, the latter sachem secured the release of the two youngsters, while emissaries of Massachusetts, who went to treat with Canonicus, returned home fully satisfied. So far, matters had been conducted reasonably and patiently. Suddenly, however, on the advice of the Massachusetts magistrates and ministers, the policy was completely changed, and a course of blundering stupidity and criminal folly was entered upon. John Endicott, with about a hundred volunteers, was ordered to proceed to Block Island, where he was instructed to put all the men to death, without making any effort to distinguish between guilty and innocent. The women and children were to be carried off, and possession taken of the island. Thence he was to go on to the Pequots, demand the murderers of Stone and Oldham, and a thousand fathoms of wampum, and to secure, by consent or force, some of the children as hostages.478
Endicott possessed none of the qualities of a military leader, and although his lack of knowledge prevented this bloody decree from being carried out, he managed to do just enough to enrage the savages without intimidating them. The party, after two days’ searching, failed to find the island Indians, who were in hiding in the underbrush, but burned their wigwams, mats, and provisions, staved their canoes, and valiantly slew their dogs. They next proceeded to Saybrook, where Lyon Gardiner, who, in his little outpost, was responsible for the lives of twenty-four men, women, and children, did his best to warn Endicott of his folly. The corn-fields of the Saybrook people were two miles from the fort, and if the Indians, who had shown themselves suspiciously unfriendly of late, should be stung to revenge by Endicott, starvation and massacre would confront the settlement. “You come hither to raise these wasps about my ears,” said Gardiner, “and then you will take wings and flee away.” In spite of the dictates of common sense and humanity, Endicott proceeded to do just that. At Pequot Harbor he killed two Indians, burned many wigwams, staved the canoes, and then sailed away to the safety of Boston, leaving Saybrook and the towns on the Connecticut at the mercy of the savages, whom Massachusetts had now roused to fury.479
The Pequots immediately made peace with the Narragansetts, urging them to a common war against the English. Such a combination, under the circumstances, would have meant a disaster of the first magnitude, and Massachusetts was now forced to ask the help of the only man who could avert it, but whom she had already driven from her company—Roger Williams. In response to most urgent appeals sent from the Governor and Council, he at once started, “all alone in a poore canow, and to cut through a stormie wind with great seas, every minute in hazard of life, to the Sachem’s house.” There he remained three days, and by means of his friendship with Miantanomo, he won the Narragansetts back to the side of the English, and broke up the proposed alliance between the savages. In consequence of this inestimable service, Winthrop and some of the Massachusetts council, Williams wrote, “debated whether or no I had not merited, not only to be recalled from banishment, but also to be honored with some mark of favor”; but neither the authorities nor the contemporary historians, except Winthrop, had the generosity to say a word of the man who had saved New England.480 In the fall, Miantanomo and other Narragansett sachems went to Boston, and signed a treaty with the English, which included an offensive alliance against the Pequots.
Meanwhile, the results of the folly that Massachusetts had perpetrated, and against which Plymouth as well as Saybrook had formally protested, now made themselves felt.481 Three men were killed at Saybrook, another was roasted alive, a trader was murdered at Six-mile Island, then two more at Saybrook, and another on his way up the river. At Wethersfield, nine men were slaughtered, and two young girls carried into captivity.482 The horrors of Indian warfare became the hourly dread of every inhabitant along the frontier, thanks to the Massachusetts magistrates and ministers. Having, as Gardiner predicted, raised the wasps about his ears and those of all the English along the river, Massachusetts now asked help of Plymouth, as she had before turned to Williams. That colony agreed to lend aid, but in doing so, recalled to her stronger neighbor how she had refused help against the French when the Pilgrims were the petitioners; how she had interfered with their trade on the Kennebec; and how she had deprived their Connecticut pioneers of their lands.483
But the settlers on the latter river could not await the slow movements of the Bay Colony, if the lives of their wives and children were to be saved. At the Connecticut General Court of May 1, 1637, war was declared against the Pequots, and ninety men, from the three plantations, were levied for immediate service.484 The expedition, under command of Captain John Mason, with some Indian auxiliaries under Uncas, immediately proceeded to Saybrook, where they were joined by Underhill, who happened to be there, and a few additional men.485 A skirmish, in which the Indians, whose fidelity had been doubted, acquitted themselves loyally, encouraged them not a little. The original plan had been to sail down the coast to the Pequot River and to attack the enemy directly, but this was wisely changed at the suggestion of Mason. According to the new plans, the party set sail for Narragansett Bay, with the design of then returning overland, and making a surprise attack on the Pequots, who were expecting it from the water. After landing on the shore of the Bay, and being reinforced by several hundred Narragansetts, Mason marched his band from eight in the morning until an hour after dark, when they camped about two miles from the Pequot fort. It had been decided to attack only the larger of the two villages, a palisadoed enclosure of an acre or two.486 About one o’clock, the English were on the march again, but were deserted by all the Indians, Narragansetts and Mohegans alike, before reaching the fort. The palisade having two entrances, opposite one another, it was agreed that two parties, led respectively, by Mason and Underhill, should make simultaneous attacks upon them. In spite of the fact that the Indians had been warned, by the barking of their dogs, of the approach of the enemy, Mason boldly jumped over the brush piled at the entrance, and was followed by his men. The other party also entered at the opposite side, and the slaughter of the dazed and half-awakened savages began. Seeing, however, that the resistance might prove too much for his men, Mason snatched a torch from a wigwam and set fire to the village, which, owing to the strong wind blowing, was soon ablaze. The English now had only to withdraw, and to shoot any wretched savage who attempted to climb over the palisade. In the early dawn of that May morning, as the New England men stood guard over the flames, five hundred men, women, and children were slowly burned alive.487 Not over eight escaped, and there were but seven captives. The English lost two killed and twenty wounded. It is difficult to imagine what thoughts must have been in the minds of the Puritans as they slowly roasted the Indian women and children. Mason merely notes that, by the providence of God, there were one hundred and fifty more savages than usual in the village that night.
The English, carrying their wounded, retreated to the ships,—which fortunately had come into Pequot Harbor,—as the savages from the smaller village were hampering their movements. With the vessels had also arrived Captain Patrick and forty men from Massachusetts, that colony having voted one hundred and sixty, and Plymouth sixty, although too late to take part in the expedition. The bulk of the Pequot nation was now destroyed, and it remained only to make an end of the few hundred who had thus far escaped. Sassacus, the sachem, being repudiated by his own followers, fled with seventy warriors to the Mohawks, and the English indefatigably ran down detached parties. In a swamp twenty miles from the Dutch line, eighty of the Pequots’ “stoutest men,” with two hundred old people, women, and children, made a last stand. After being subjected to the fire of the English for some hours, the two hundred non-combatants surrendered, while the warriors fought to the last man, twenty finally escaping through the surrounding lines. The other savages turned against the all but annihilated Pequots, and “happy were they,” wrote Mason, “that could bring in their heads to the English: Of which there came almost daily to Windsor or Hartford.” In all, during the campaign, over seven hundred were killed or made captive.488
Of the prisoners some were divided between Uncas and the Narragansetts, while the rest were kept by the English, or sold into bondage in the West Indies.489 In the division of this human spoil, the clergy took its part. “Sir,” wrote the Reverend Mr. Peter to Governor Winthrop, “Mr. Endecot and myself salute you in the Lord Jesus. Wee have heard of a dividence of women and children in the bay and would bee glad of a share viz: a young woman or girle and a boy if you thinke good. I wrote to you for some boyes for Bermudas, which I thinke is considerable.”490 Fifteen boys and two women were sent thither as slaves, but whether for the profit of the Reverend Peter, Winthrop does not say. Roger Williams pleaded over and over again, but in vain, with the Massachusetts authorities for a more lenient course. “Since the Most High delights in mercy, and great revenge hath bene allready taken,” he advised incorporating the survivors among the friendly Indians; but though, only a short time before, the Massachusetts authorities had been pleading with Williams to save themselves, they now turned a deaf ear to his intercession for the natives.491 The Narragansetts and Mohegans were both anxious to adopt the few survivors of their powerful enemies, according to Indian custom, so that Williams’s suggestions were as practicable as they were merciful. Two hundred were finally so allotted by Connecticut, when the last remnants of the Pequots submitted and the River plantations entered into a treaty with Uncas and Miantanomo.492 From the end of the Pequot war, all the New England colonies adopted not only Indian but negro slavery, and it was wholly due to economic, and not ethical, causes that the institution did not take root. In the one small locality in all New England where it proved profitable, it did so root itself, and the importing of slaves for use in the other colonies long constituted an important part of Puritan trade.493
The contest between the English and the Indians had been inevitable from the start. The murders of the two traders were but the sparks that touched off the explosive material which had long been accumulating. The struggle, with varying details and proximate causes, but based upon the unchanging fundamental conflict of the natures and economic interests of the two races, was to be repeated over and over again as the American frontier advanced. Endicott’s stupid campaign, and, perhaps the too thorough absorption of Old Testament examples, had made the struggle almost inhumanly bloody in the first advance of that frontier in New England. The effect, however, was complete. It was to be nearly forty years before the savages regained sufficient strength, and found a leader to attempt again to dispute the relentless advance of the Puritan planters.
CHAPTER IX | | ATTEMPTS TO UNIFY NEW ENGLAND
As a result of the complete crushing of the power of the Pequots their whole country was opened to peaceful settlement, and the extension of the frontier in that direction became rapid. Within about two years from the signing of the treaty with the savages, the foundations were laid of Guilford, New Haven, Milford, Stratford, Fairfield, Norwalk, and Stamford along the Sound, and of Southampton and Southold on the eastern end of Long Island, thus making a continuous line of English settlement up to the Dutch boundary, if not, indeed, within it.494
For its size, New Haven was undoubtedly the wealthiest colony in New England, its assessed valuation, the year after it was planted, having been £33,000, or the present equivalent of, perhaps, $700,000.495 Its founders, under the leadership of the Reverend John Davenport, a Nonconformist London clergyman, and Theophilus Eaton, a schoolmate of his, had arrived in the early summer of 1637, just in time to take part in the Antinomian controversy and the taxes for the Pequot war. Mr. Davenport was requested to contribute to the former, and Mr. Eaton to the latter.496 Their company was a distinguished one, including several other wealthy London merchants besides Eaton; five ministers; four school-teachers, among whom was the first president of Harvard; the father of Elihu Yale, the founder of Yale University; and Michael Wigglesworth, the “lurid morning star” of New England verse.497 Both Davenport and Eaton had been, for some years, members of the Massachusetts Bay Company, and that company’s colony made great efforts to retain the new body of settlers within its own bounds. While the leaders took under consideration the various offers made to them, they either found them unsatisfactory, or had already determined to establish an independent colony of their own.498 After Eaton had examined the country around Quinnipiack, it was decided to plant there, and seven men were left to guard the site during the winter, the whole company following in the spring. Not only were the resources of the colonists unusually ample, but their preparations seem to have been exceptionally complete, and the little town soon contained the most stately dwellings in all New England. Some idea of their scale may be gained from the reputed presence in Davenport’s of thirteen fireplaces, and of nineteen in Eaton’s.499 The intention, apparently, was not only to found a Puritan state, but to have it become the chief mercantile centre of the New World, which accounts for their having built, as one of their Massachusetts critics wrote, “as if trade and merchandize had been as inseparably annexed to them as the shadow is to the body, in the shining of the sun.”500 One disaster followed another in their business ventures, however, and the dreams of the merchant-founders were never realized.
Davenport and most of his company were not only Puritans, but of the strictest sect, and the Bible Commonwealth which they proceeded to form was of the most extreme type. Like the Connecticut and Rhode Island people, they were without a charter, and were mere squatters upon the soil; but in June, 1639, a meeting was held of the “free planters,” to discuss a frame of government to replace a previously signed plantation covenant, now lost. We have no knowledge of what constituted a “free planter,” but the term undoubtedly excluded a large number of males in the settlement. The proceedings took the form of queries put by Mr. Davenport, upon which those present voted by raising hands. As a result of unanimous votes at this meeting, the fundamental agreement provided that the franchise should be restricted to church members, and that the free planters should choose twelve men, to whom should be intrusted the sole right of selecting from among the rest of the colonists those who should become church members and freemen, and who were to have the power of appointing magistrates from among themselves, of making and repealing laws, and, in fact, of performing all public duties.501 This was legalizing the most extreme claims of the Massachusetts oligarchy. Only one voice, apparently that of Eaton, was raised to protest “that free planters ought not to give this power out of their hands”; but he was, of course, overruled. Four months later, at the October court, it was further voted that “the worde of God shall be the only rule to be attended unto in ordering the affayres of government in this plantation.”502 As had been the case in Connecticut, no mention had been made of allegiance to England; but in this additional step, the new colony swept away all obligation to observe the common and statute laws of the mother-country. The conflicting texts of the Bible, as arbitrarily chosen and interpreted by the small self-perpetuating group of rulers, became the only laws that might safeguard, or hazard, the rights of dwellers in New Haven and the affiliated church-towns which soon sprang up. The reactionary thought of the framers of these fundamental orders, however, was to be without appreciable influence upon the growth of colonial political theory as then developing; for New Haven was to have only a quarter of a century of independent but unimportant life before being absorbed by Connecticut, while a more and more democratic tendency was manifesting itself in all the colonies, even in Massachusetts.
The effects of the frontier life, and of the distance separating England from her colonies, were already beginning to show themselves strongly. The semi-independent communities which had been established in Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New Haven were entirely without legal authority; and the two latter, in their “constitutions,” had utterly ignored the existence of any power outside of themselves. The situation was not wholly overlooked in England, but as the crisis in public affairs there was rapidly drawing near, the authorities were helpless to interfere. A new demand for the return of the Massachusetts charter, when flatly refused by that colony in 1638,503 could not be followed by any show of force; and during the next twenty-two years—which were those of the Civil War, the fall of the Stuart monarchy, and the reign of Cromwell—the New England colonies pursued their way almost wholly without reference to the power of England.
The influence of the frontier was being felt in their domestic concerns as well. Although the most aggressively radical of the inhabitants of Massachusetts had, perhaps, gone to the other colonies, there to establish themselves in greater freedom, the struggle of the citizens continued, nevertheless, against the arbitrary power of their government. From the first, the body of magistrates had acted in a judicial, as well as an executive, capacity. The only rule by which they were guided is indicated by a resolution in the General Court of 1636, which provided that they should “determine all causes according to the lawes nowe established, and where there is noe law, then as neere the lawe of God as they can.”504 As English law, in many cases, was not justly applicable, and as, in others, it was largely neglected, this really meant the comparatively few laws already enacted in the colony, and the same arbitrary selection and interpretation of Old Testament texts that we have just noted in New Haven. As the magistrates acted as both attorneys and judges, and as no appeals were permitted from their decisions, no accused person had any protection against them. Anyone, therefore, who might be obnoxious to the ruling powers on account of his views, could not hope for justice; and the so-called trials of Mrs. Hutchinson, Wheelwright, and other notable offenders, were, in reality, not trials at all, but “relentless inquisitions used by the government for the purpose of crushing opposition.”505 That condition was not, indeed, peculiar to Massachusetts, and was probably just as true of contemporary England. It was Hooker’s glory in Connecticut to have raised his voice, as the leader of that colony, to plead for a legal restraint upon this arbitrary exercise of the judicial power of government, and for the creation of a body of fundamental law. In 1639, a committee was appointed in that colony for the purpose of drawing up such a code. The same had been formally demanded in Massachusetts even earlier, but there the wishes of the people had been steadily opposed by their leaders.
While the Massachusetts trials of the type just noted were exceptional, and in general, when passions were not aroused, the ordinary course of justice was fairly equitable, nevertheless, the entire absence of any restraint upon the unbridled will of the magistrates was a source of apprehension to the more serious thinking and liberty-loving residents of Massachusetts, outside the ring of authority. Not only was any opposition to the course pursued by the government liable to result in banishment, with the complete uprooting of a man’s life, and perhaps the financial ruin of himself and his family, but in trivial matters all the inhabitants, and more particularly, of course, the four fifths who were not church members, were liable to constant interference by the authorities. Such a law, for example, as that declaring that whosoever should “spend his time idlely or unproffitably” should suffer such penalty “as the court shall thinke meete to inflicte”506 was typical, both in its utter lack of definition of the nature of the crime, and in its failure to specify the penalty to be incurred by the criminal.
In spite of the demands of the people in Massachusetts, however, it was not until 1640 that a draft of a fundamental law seems to have really been considered. The clergy and most of the magistrates had been opposed to any limitation of arbitrary authority, and had fought the requests with what their modern defender has called the weapon of “a good-natured procrastination,” but which may have worn another aspect to some at the time.507 Finally, in 1641, an Abstract of Laws, or Body of Liberties, was passed, which marked a distinct step forward, though by no means assuring full protection. One draft, which was not, however, accepted, was based entirely upon Bible texts, of which, characteristically, but two were drawn from the New Testament and forty-six from the Old.508 Additional safeguards were required, and four years later, the whole discussion as to specific penalties for specific offenses was again reopened. The clergy and Winthrop still opposed any limitation upon judicial authority, the Governor, indeed, going so far as to say that God had made specific penalties only in certain cases, and as “judges are Gods upon earth,” their power should not be more limited than his—which might be denominated strong doctrine.509 In spite of all opposition, however, a new code, based in part upon the Body of Liberties, was finally secured and printed in 1648, twenty years after the first demand, and ten after Hooker’s famous sermon at Hartford.510
The antagonism to the power of the magistrates was manifested also by new episodes in the struggle between them and the more democratic deputies, which we noted as beginning at the time of the Connecticut emigration. A dispute over the ownership of a sow, between a poor widow and a rich man notorious for his unjust business dealings, was finally brought to the General Court for decision. The evidence was by no means convincing, and the Court was divided, with a majority of the magistrates in favor of a verdict for the rich Keaynes, and a majority of the deputies in favor of the poor widow. The point was thus raised again as to whether the small number of magistrates, by a negative vote, could block the will of the much larger body of deputies.511 Winthrop wrote a treatise on the question, appealing to certain English precedents and the Old Testament, and stated that, if the magistrates were not allowed to veto the action of the deputies, the colony would be a democracy and “there was no such government in Israel.”512 So implacably did the grim shades of Moses and Aaron block the paths of Boston Common. The magistrates, in view of the strong opposition that developed, offered to leave the matter to the clergy, and to give way if the decision were adverse. They knew, of course, that it would not be so, and Winthrop records that it was “their only care to gain time,” until the people could be brought to the heel of their clerical leaders as usual. As part of the plan, the members of the Court were asked to take advice before the next meeting; and it is interesting as showing the normal danger for the ordinary citizen in discussing public matters, that a special act should be thought necessary making it “no offence for any, either publicly or privately, to declare their opinion in the case, so it were modestly.”513 The following year, a compromise was effected, which, however, was distinctly in favor of the magistrates; and thereafter the deputies and the magistrates sat as two separate houses, each with a negative vote on the other.514
Another incident in the struggle, which soon occurred, involved both the question of the power of the local government over the colonists, and the relations of the colony to the home government in England. In 1644, it was suggested to the General Court that the condition of the large number of unrepresented inhabitants be improved by increasing the civil privileges that a citizen might possess without being a church member, such privileges then being limited, apparently, to a small share in local town business.515 Nothing, however, was done, and two years later, a petition signed by a Dr. Robert Child, Samuel Maverick, and five others was presented, reciting that there were many thousands in the colony who were debarred from all participation in government, although they paid taxes and were subject to military and other duties. Child was a newcomer, “a gentleman and a scholar,” and a graduate of the University of Padua. Maverick was the richest of the “old planters,” and the only freeman who was not a church member—a privilege which he owed to the circumstances connected with the first planting of the colony, as already related. Thomas Fowle, another of the signers, was a merchant; while yet another, David Yale, was a man of property, and both a stepson of Theophilus Eaton of New Haven and a brother-in-law of Governor Hopkins of Connecticut. At this very time, he was acting as attorney for the Earl of Warwick.516 The motives of the signers may not have been wholly disinterested, but the effort to make out that they were persons of no importance in the colony has been overdone.517
The petitioners desired that “members of the church of England, not scandalous in their lives and conversations,” be admitted to the churches, and that “civil liberty and freedom be forthwith granted to all truly English, equall to the rest of their countrymen, as in all plantations is accustomed to be done, and as all freeborne enjoy in our native country.”518 Other reforms were demanded, and although some of the charges were overdrawn, nevertheless, the main point was not fairly met in the lengthy reply prepared by Winthrop, Dudley, and others of the court.519 That point was that in an English colony, and upon English soil, the great majority of the inhabitants were debarred from a share in the government because of beliefs which would not have so disfranchised them in the home country. No amount of legal casuistry expended upon the charter, and no amount of sophistry employed in explaining the relations between the colony and England, could alter that fact, nor the additional one that Massachusetts was a colony and not an independent nation. As the request of the petitioners was for such liberties only as they would have possessed at home, and not for general religious toleration, an appeal to England was natural, and was set on foot as soon as the reply of the magistrates was received. Winthrop, however, declared that he would not tolerate such an appeal, and the petitioners were heavily fined by the court, and two of them imprisoned.520 Child, and some of the others insisting upon going to England, they were seized just before the ship sailed, their baggage and houses were searched, and they themselves imprisoned. As some of the magistrates had not agreed to the earlier proceedings, they were not consulted in the present one, which was distinctly of a Star-Chamber sort. Among the papers of Dand, another signer, was found one suggesting the appointment of a royal governor, for which he also was promptly put in jail. Vassall and Fowle finally reached England; but the political situation there by 1647 had become such as to preclude any consideration of colonial matters.
The tide of popular rights in the colonies was rising, however, and “all the troubles of New England” were “not at the Massachusetts,” as Winslow wrote to Winthrop, nor were high-handed proceedings wholly limited to that commonwealth. In Plymouth, a written proposal, favored by many of the inhabitants and of the deputies, was presented to the General Court, “to allow and maintaine full and free tollerance of religion to all men that would preserve the civill peace and submit unto government.” “You would have admired [wondered] to have seen,” wrote Winslow, “how sweet this carrion relished to the pallate of most of the deputies.” “Notwithstanding it was required, according to order, to be voted,” the Governor would not permit any vote to be taken; and the effort thus to extend to others the same freedom that the leading founders of the colony had availed themselves of for twelve years in Holland was summarily suppressed.521
During the decade we have been considering, the struggle of Englishmen at home for the preservation of their liberties against the incompetent and reactionary rule of the second Stuart, had left that ruler but little leisure to consider the American colonies. Except for occasional and ineffectual efforts to retain some control over them by the home government, they had been left free to work out their own theories, untrammeled by any higher power. By 1640, the scattered settlements in Maine, the towns in New Hampshire, the Bay Colony, Plymouth, the four separate towns in what is now Rhode Island, Saybrook, the affiliated towns of New Haven, and the river settlements of Connecticut, were pursuing their several ways virtually as independent states, preëmpting lands, erecting governments, treating with the natives, with each other, and with the French and Dutch, as if they were sovereign powers. Nor was there anything to prevent innumerable other petty states, each with its few square miles of territory, and ruling according to its own ideas, from arising over all New England, save as restrained by the jealousy of those already in existence. If this tendency had not been restrained, New England might have come in time to be a checker-board of tiny republics, engaged in constant disputes over boundaries and other relations at home, and, should the shield of England cease to protect them, the prey of foreign foes abroad.
There were three possible methods of preventing this development of a Puritan Balkans. England might assert her rights legitimately, and endeavor to bring some sort of uniformity and order out of what might otherwise become an impossible situation; one or another of the colonies might, by force of greater strength, subdue its weaker neighbors, and thus create one or several greater states; or, finally, a confederation might be formed of all of them. Under the circumstances, the legal and logical method would have been some sort of imperial control by the mother-country, but that was out of the question unless the English government was strong and united enough to enforce her will, and wise and experienced enough to make it acceptable to the colonists. For the present, that solution was impossible. Of the other two, the first would naturally appeal to a strong and aggressive colony like Massachusetts, while a confederacy would be favored by her weaker but no less independent neighbors. Both the latter plans were tried, and the intercolonial relations of the next quarter of a century were largely the result of these two conflicting methods of unifying New England being pursued simultaneously.
Owing to the death of Mason, and the failure of Gorges’s plans for Maine, the settlements north of Massachusetts were without a settled government, and the inhabitants do not seem to have had the ability to create a stable one for themselves, which was so marked a characteristic of those in Massachusetts and Plymouth, Connecticut and New Haven. We have already seen how Massachusetts, by an unwarrantable construction of her charter, had begun to lay claim to all the land of New Hampshire and Maine lying eastward of the most northerly source of the Merrimack, although the whole course of the Crown and Council for New England at the time of the grant showed that such a claim was absolutely untenable. Nor, in the beginning, had the Massachusetts leaders dreamed of making it,522 and it was, in fact, as Professor Osgood says, “more clearly an usurpation than was any later act of the crown which affected New England.”523 The decision, otherwise favorable to Massachusetts, of the English Chief Justices in 1677, declaring the interpretation claimed to be utterly without warrant, and reassigning the lands to the heirs of the two original patentees, seems entirely just.524
Early in 1641, a dispute between church factions in Dover, headed by two contending clergymen, gave Massachusetts a chance to intervene. Captain Underhill, who had been banished from that colony at the time of the Hutchinson controversy, was then on the Piscataqua, and, perhaps with an idea of once more ingratiating himself with the home authorities, sent a petition to the Massachusetts Court, asking aid for himself and his party. Massachusetts at once dispatched a magistrate and two clergymen, and the Underhill party were victorious, the clergyman heading the opposing faction having opportunely turned out to be a personally immoral character.525 The Dover patentees, Warwick, Say, and the others, who had purchased the patent in the interests of Massachusetts some years before, now passed the grant, with slight reservations, to that colony, which at once annexed the town.526 A temporary government was installed, and, two years later, it was agreed that the inhabitants should have the privilege of freemen to manage their local affairs, and to elect deputies, even though they were not church members.527 Thus a right not yielded to four fifths of her own citizens was granted to those in her new possessions, and imperial ambition seems to have won the first victory over Israelitish polity. This provision not only disproved her former claim that civil order could not be maintained without forced religious conformity, but, combined with the further provision that the settlers in the newly annexed territory should be subject only to local, and not to general, taxation, it tended to show that she herself did not believe the claims she made as to the interpretation of the charter.528 If she really considered that the territory now being seized under pretext of ownership was as indubitably hers as that south of the Merrimack, why did she thus deprive herself of the right of religious and fiscal control?
She next claimed and absorbed the town of Exeter, and her new claims, extending to Maine, there came into conflict with those of Gorges and the Pilgrims. The latter, indeed, had lately heard her state that she was entitled to a part of the town of Plymouth itself, and she did encroach upon the Plymouth territory.529 A further enlargement of her power to the south, and one obviously outside her jurisdiction, was next made within the present limits of Rhode Island.
Samuel Gorton, from his heretical notions in religion, according to the Gospel of New England, and his somewhat explosive efforts to defend persons he thought oppressed by the colonial authorities, had led a troubled and troubling life in Massachusetts, Plymouth, Portsmouth, and Providence. Indeed, in his wandering course through the Puritan heavens, he seems to have been as fatally followed by trouble as a comet by its luminous tail. As he punctuated his career by denominating the Massachusetts magistrates “a generation of vipers,” the Governor of Plymouth, “Satan,” and the justice of Portsmouth, “a just-ass,” he can hardly be said to have had an ingratiating way with the authorities, although no crime could be laid at his door. The people of that day had an insatiable passion for ploughing in the theological field, which was always proving as full of unexploded shells as any on the modern battle-front of France, and Gorton seems to have had a fatal facility for turning these up. He had already been blown out of three colonies, when, after some experience with him, the men of Providence decided that he or they must leave. Finally banished, he made an Indian purchase, and settled some miles to the south.
This, however, was not far enough for his former neighbors, who, in 1641, asked assistance from Massachusetts in ridding them of Gorton. That colony refused to consider the request, unless Providence would place herself under her jurisdiction.530 The matter became complicated by a dispute between Miantanomo and two other sachems, arising out of Gorton’s purchase, and the sachems also applied to Massachusetts. Both they and the Providence men were received under her jurisdiction, and the next move was to send a force of forty armed men to take Gorton and his party into custody.531 Even those opposed to him in Providence suggested arbitration; but the Massachusetts clergy advised the magistrates that this was not an “honorable” course, as the Gorton party “were no state, but a few fugitives living without law or government,” and “their blasphemous and reviling writings” could be “purged away only by repentence and public satisfaction.”532 The case was, therefore, prejudged without a hearing, and the more summary method was taken of trying to set fire to the log fort in which Gorton and his company had taken refuge.
It must be presumed that the ministers of Christ considered this as a more “honorable” course than arbitration with “a few fugitives” from their vindictiveness. The attack was made on a Sabbath morning, and even the heretical Gorton was naturally surprised.533 In receiving the Indians under their jurisdiction, Massachusetts had required that the savages should not profane that day by doing any work upon it, and that they should not kill any man but upon just cause and authority.534 The attempt, immediately following, on the part of that colony’s expedition, to burn their fellow white men alive during church hours, because they were too impatient to wait, may have struck their new savage subjects as a little incongruous. Nine of the Gortonists were captured, taken to Boston, and imprisoned. The clergy called for blood, and gave their written opinion that all nine of the prisoners “deserved death by the law of God.” In this unjust and inhuman decision, all the magistrates but three concurred, and it was prevented from passing only by the people’s representatives among the deputies. Finally, the prisoners were condemned to be distributed among seven towns, there to be “kept to worke for their living, and wear irons upon one leg, and not to depart the limits of the town, nor by word or writing maintain any of their blasphemous or wicked errors upon pain of death.”535 The sentence was executed and the prisoners were kept in irons until the following year; when the growing popular disapproval of the clergy’s actions caused their victims to be suddenly released and banished.536
The Massachusetts authorities had thus utilized the request of one faction in a settlement wholly outside their own limits, to extend their jurisdiction. They had attempted, upon a charge of heresy directed against persons living in another colony, to murder the entire body of the opposing faction, after refusing the arbitration proposed by that faction’s own enemies. When the decree was finally softened to banishment, this was held to include exclusion of the prisoners from their former homes, now considered as part of the Bay Colony. They had seized and sold the cattle and goods of the unfortunate people, to pay the expenses of their so-called trial and illegal detention. In all this, there had not been even the fallacious plea, as in the case of Williams and Mrs. Hutchinson, that the civil peace of Massachusetts had been endangered.
The outcome showed, however, that the cruel and immoral power of the clergy and magistrates was coming to be opposed by a growing body of healthy and liberal opinion. The bloody sentence demanded by them had been refused by the people’s leaders, and public opinion had finally secured the reversal, within a year, of the milder one that had been executed. The confusion of Gorton’s own religious views, and his incoherence in expressing them, could in themselves have won him little popular support.537 What the people were groping after was the right of the individual to think and act for himself, so long as the state was not endangered, as had been clearly expressed in the Plymouth petition. The road was to be long and bloodstained, but there was now no doubt that the people of Massachusetts intended to travel it, and that their feet were at last set in the right direction.
By 1640, although new arrivals had not been coming in so rapidly of late, the population of the New England settlements had grown to about eighteen thousand. Moreover, they had, on the whole, been prosperous. We have already seen how even Plymouth, with its slender resources, its poor soil, and its ill-chosen site, had yet achieved more than economic independence, and we have noted the financial resources of New Haven. The capital and numbers of Massachusetts were, of course, far larger than those of either of the others, and it was estimated that that colony had spent, in its first dozen years, nearly £200,000, or in our day, perhaps, five million dollars, in making its settlement.538 Possessed of the unrestricted resources of a continent, and having suffered no losses from Indians or foreign foe, New England was apparently in a sound economic condition, when suddenly the crash came. “Merchants would sell no wares but for ready money,” Winthrop wrote in 1640; “men could not pay their debts though they had enough, prices of lands and cattle fell soon to the one-half, yea to a third, and after one-fourth part.”539 The Massachusetts General Court was soon called upon to pass special legislation to assist debtors, as the suffering became general.
In spite of their enormous natural resources, the colonies, like all new countries, lacked capital in the form of money. They borrowed heavily from England and imported from her still more heavily in food, clothes, and manufactured goods, without as yet having developed sufficient export trade to enable them to meet their foreign bills.540 The inherent unsoundness of the position had been concealed, temporarily, by the effects of the continued influx of new settlers on a large scale, which had created a demand for all the colonists’ surplus in the shape of everything required by a planter during his first years. Prices of both goods and lands advanced steadily, as a fire is blown into flame by a forced draught. Suddenly the tide of immigration stopped entirely; the exceptional demand, which had come to be regarded as normal, ceased; English merchants naturally required payment on overdue accounts; and all the familiar phenomena of an economic crisis became evident.
It is usually stated that emigration from England stopped because the prospect there had become so much brighter for the Puritans that there was no longer reason for leaving home.541 This, however, by no means meets all the requirements of the case. We have already seen that the great majority of the people who had been coming to New England had not joined the churches there, although in the main of Puritan stock. Nor, at the time in question, did the Puritan leaders in England, in spite of altered conditions, by any means relax their efforts to plant Puritan colonies. In fact, such men as Say and Pym were more enthusiastic than ever in their plans. These efforts, however, were no longer directed toward New England, but in quite other directions.542 By her religious persecutions and peculiar church-membership requirement for the franchise, Massachusetts had, little by little, antagonized all her old friends at home, from the Earl of Warwick down, who had been constantly calling the attention of her leaders to the fact that no more people, not even Puritans, would go to her if she did not discontinue her career of persecution. By that course she had already virtually excluded from her portion of the English Empire all Englishmen not acceptable to her clergy and a dozen of her leading laymen. This closed her ports to almost the entire stream of English emigration, which continued large, although somewhat changed in character, while the labor of her former friends was now expended in diverting what remained of the Puritan element itself in that stream away from, instead of toward, Massachusetts.
In this connection, Winthrop wrote bitterly to Lord Say, complaining of his efforts to induce settlers to go out from England to the Caribbean instead of to New England. To this, Say made a long reply, rebuking the authorities in the colony for their misuse of Scripture texts to further their own views, and ended with the admonition that “for what you say of the church not compatable with another frame of government, I pray putt away that error... the church beinge wholly spirritual, can subsist with any forme of outward government.”543
Not only, however, did immigration to Massachusetts stop, but there threatened to be an emigration from that colony to the English leaders’ Caribbean settlement. John Humphrey, one of the most influential of the original planters, who had not prospered in the Bay, was made Governor of the West Indian Puritan settlements, and, in 1641, sailed thither with several hundred Massachusetts people.544 Many others removed to other colonies, and Winthrop relates, with evident relish, the misfortunes which befell them as God’s judgment upon them for leaving.545 That the influences checking the growth of Massachusetts were not wholly due to general conditions is indicated also by the fact that, while her population, in the next two decades, was considerably less than doubled, that of New Hampshire was nearly tripled, Rhode Island increased five-fold, and Connecticut four-fold.546 The actual numbers are even more striking than the percentages. Massachusetts, starting the period with fourteen thousand, added less than ten thousand, while the other three, beginning with but three thousand, added nearly nine thousand. Connecticut’s growth, moreover, was made in spite of the fact that apparently Massachusetts made even greater efforts to divert emigrants from that colony than were being made in England to divert them from herself; so that Hooker, in complaining of the methods employed by her citizens, was forced to write to Winthrop, that “such impudent forgery is scant found in hell.”547
In the absence of any attempt by England to unify these scattered settlements, the only tendency toward unification, as against the centrifugal forces at work, had been the process of annexation and attempted domination by Massachusetts. The growth of the frontier, however, with the resultant Pequot war, had fostered a sense of unity in the face of a common danger among those exposed to it. As Professor Turner points out, in speaking of the colonies in general, particularism was always strongest in those not so exposed, and the Indian frontier “stretched along the western border like a cord of union.”548 The extension, northward and westward, had also brought the English into immediate and hostile contact with both French and Dutch. Apparently as a result of the somewhat inefficient joint action in the Pequot war, a confederation between the colonies was informally discussed at Boston in 1637, and a draft prepared by Massachusetts the following year.549 Connecticut objected to one of the terms, the ground of her dislike, Winthrop wrote, being her “shyness of coming under our government.”550 The smaller colony, however, had, within a few years, so far got over her shyness as to be ready to “entertain a firm combination for a defensive and offensive war, and all other mutual offices of love,” as the records somewhat quaintly word it.551 The decrease in immigration, and the business panic throughout the colonies, may have helped to bring them to a more realizing sense of their isolation from England, and of the need of mutual dependence, which was greatly increased by a threatened renewal of Indian hostilities in 1642. The latter is the sole reason given by Bradford for the remarkable effort now made to combine the colonies into a confederation, in regard to which all our contemporary authorities are singularly silent.552
The settlements, however, were well fitted to be thus joined in closer bonds, in spite of minor differences. The country in which they were planted formed a geographical unit, the natural boundaries of which were emphasized by the human elements of hostile French, Indians, and Dutch. The economic and social life, based upon the geographical, religious, and political factors, was, in the main, remarkably homogeneous. Their attitude toward English policy, and their trade-relations with the rest of the empire, were very similar. There was not only no such clashing of interests as divided them from the staple colonies of the West Indies, but not even the minor differences that would have made impossible such a combination between Pennsylvania and Virginia. United action in the Indian war, and the religious Synod of the same year, had been the first steps taken in the formation of the political machinery for consideration of joint affairs. The way was smoothly paved, therefore, for the establishment of a genuine union.
There was, however, one stumbling-block, which was the intense local feeling and exaggerated sense of importance of the separate settlements. The leaders in each of them must often have dreamed of what the future might have in store for the little colonies in which they had cast their lots, but it is impossible to say what those dreams may have been. They could not have included the actual development of the present British Empire or of the United States, the creation of each of which has been largely dependent upon economic forces and scientific inventions beyond the vision of any seventeenth-century mind. Whatever their dreams may have been, in practice the leaders adopted an opportunist policy, which, in general, may be described as the endeavor to keep from being entangled with England without losing the value of her protection. That any of them could seriously have thought that their individual colonies, as such, could ever become powerful nations, is unlikely. Added, therefore, to their policy regarding England was probably an opportunist policy regarding their neighbors. The extent and nature of the New England country had, by this time, become fairly well known, and the rate of growth could be more or less accurately forecast. With extending frontiers and but ill-defined territorial limits, disputes, already occurring, could also be foreseen as bound to become more frequent and more serious.
All of the colonies had shown the tendency toward expansion. Plymouth had started her trading posts on the rivers of Maine and Connecticut; settlements multiplied in Rhode Island; New Haven, from the meadows of Quinnipiack, was soon planting on Long Island, and nearing the Dutch boundaries on the Sound; while Connecticut, through her purchase of Saybrook from the disappointed patentees in 1644,553 and her planting of towns westward even of New Haven’s expansion, was rapidly stretching east and west. Massachusetts had long adopted the definite policy of extending her claims and control as fast and as far as possible. In the race for land and power, her numbers, resources, and central position, all gave her immense advantages, to which was added the no mean one of an unscrupulous disregard for the prior rights of others. On the one hand, then, the weaker colonies might hope to gain from union some protection, not only from the Indian and the foreigner, but from the growing aggressiveness of Massachusetts. On the other, that colony might anticipate dominating the councils of the Confederacy, while free scope was still left for her own aggrandizement.
Although they were far inferior to her as military powers, the acknowledgment of Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven as of equal political weight in the Union served largely to protect them against the Bay Colony; but there was no such protection for Maine or for the towns in Rhode Island, which were refused admission to the league. The inhabitants of the former were not received, Winthrop wrote, because the people of Agamenticus had recently “made a taylor their mayor, and had entertained one Hull, an excommunicated person, and very contentious, for their minister.”554 These somewhat surprising reasons for refusing representation to the few inhabitants of a territory equal in size to all the rest of New England combined may be dismissed as not the true ones. We are more likely to find the latter in that new interpretation of her charter by which Massachusetts laid claim to all this vast tract, which she formally annexed ten years later. To have allowed its inhabitants representation in the proposed confederacy would have been to acknowledge their right to be considered an independent colony, and so would have placed awkward moral obstacles in the way of the manifest destiny of God’s elect. In regard to the Rhode Island plantations, in spite of Winthrop’s affection for Williams, the Bay Colony had always exhibited a vindictive spite, the extreme virulence of which it is somewhat difficult to understand, even after making all allowances for the known facts. In 1640, under the administration of Dudley, the Massachusetts General Court had received a letter from the magistrates of Connecticut, New Haven, and Aquidneck, “wherein they declared their dislike of such as would have the Indians rooted out,” and their desire of “seeking to gain them by justice and kindness,” although carefully watching them for any hostile intent. While the Massachusetts Court voted its assent, it also insisted that the answer should be addressed only to the magistrates of Connecticut and New Haven, formally excluding any communication with those of Aquidneck “as men not to bee capitulated withall by us, either for themselves or the people of the iland where they inhabit.”555 Silly bigotry, as well as intercolonial discourtesy, could hardly go further than in this childish refusal even to discuss a humanitarian project of importance and of common interest. The real motive, however, may have been, as in the case of Maine, to leave the way open to annexation by refusing to acknowledge any separate government; and when, a year after the confederacy was formed, the Rhode Island towns applied for admission, the answer, undoubtedly dictated by Massachusetts, was an “utter refusall” unless they would “absolutely and without reservacon submitt” to either Plymouth or herself.556
At the time of the formation of the Confederacy, Massachusetts had just driven the entering wedge at Providence and absorbed New Hampshire, and was engaged in encroaching upon the northern bounds of Plymouth and Connecticut. The three smaller colonies, therefore, had everything to gain by having their existence recognized by being admitted as political equals in the league; while they were further protected by the third clause in the Articles, which guaranteed the independence of each of them, and even forbade the voluntary union of any colony with another without consent of the Confederation. On the other hand, Massachusetts, with the rich territories to the north and south—which she was already absorbing—left open to her, had also much to gain by having a body that could give some sort of legal approval to her illegal poachings; and her own power, in extreme circumstances, could be counted upon to nullify any adverse vote. These were probably the reasons which induced her to enter a Confederation in which her two commissioners had only an equal voting power with those of each of the three smaller colonies in the governing board of eight.
Although the Articles of Confederation agreed that the four colonies should thereafter be known as the United Colonies of New England, the machinery set up was not that of a genuine federal state, but simply that of “a firme and perpetual league of friendship and amity for offence and defence, mutual advice and succor.”557 Even the very moderate powers granted the board of commissioners, which constituted the only organ of the league, tended to decline, and it can hardly be considered as other than a joint committee to consider matters of mutual interest and to proffer advice to the general courts of the several colonies. According to the Articles, however, the commissioners, when they met at the regular annual meetings, were to be possessed of full authority from their home courts to determine all military matters, it being provided that no colony should engage in either offensive or defensive war without the consent of at least six of the eight commissioners. This was the majority required to decide all other questions, and in case six could not agree, the matter in dispute was to be referred back to the general courts.
The Confederation, which no more recognized the existence of England than the “constitutions” of Connecticut and New Haven had done, possessed no means of operating directly upon the people as individuals, or of enforcing its will upon a recalcitrant colony. It was a useful piece of machinery, but not a new government, and it failed to call forth affection or loyalty from its members. It is impossible to say what it might have developed into had the colonies remained permanently as independent of England as they were until the restoration of the Stuarts in 1660. The various results of that event did away, in time, with the possibility, or the necessity, of such an organization. But, during the Union’s existence, it performed valuable service, not merely in accustoming the colonies to act together, but also in concentrating their resources in military emergencies, and, negatively, in saving the smaller members from the encroachments of Massachusetts. As was inevitable, that colony largely dominated its councils, and the attitude that the commissioners adopted upon questions of civil and religious polity was, in the main, that of Massachusetts rather than that of Plymouth or Connecticut. In all that concerned the liberty of the individual, the weight of their authority was, as a rule, thrown upon the side of reaction, rather than of progress. The small extent of their real powers, however, is indicated by the fact that the history of New England under the Confederacy continued to be the history of Massachusetts and her neighbors, and not that of the “United Colonies of New England.”
Notes
423. Worsley to Board of Trade, cited by Pitman, Development of British W. I., p. 70.
424. Cf. F. J. Turner, “Social Forces in American History”; Magazine of History, vol. XIII, p. 117.
425. Cf. the very suggestive article by F. J. Turner, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” Proceedings of State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1894, pp. 79-112.
426. Farnham Papers (Maine Historical Society, Portland, 1901), vol. I, pp. 96 ff. For the numerous grants of this period, cf. H. S. Burrage, Colonial Maine, pp. 197-226.
427. The patents may be found in the Farnham Papers, passim. The most accurate narrative account is that of Burrage, Colonial Maine. The Trelawney and Cammack patents, and an extremely valuable correspondence relating to conditions at this time, are in the Trelawney Papers; Maine Historical Society, 1884. Cf. also, J. P. Baxter, George Cleeve of Casco Bay (Gorges Society, Portland, 1885), pp. 27 ff.
428. Farnham Papers, vol. I, p. 159; Gorges, Briefe Narration, p. 79; Burrage, Colonial Maine, pp. 216 ff.
429. Bradford, Plymouth, p. 317.
430. J. Winthrop, History, vol. I, p. 156; Massachusetts Records, vol. I, p. 119.
431. Dudley’s reply, in Bradford, Plymouth, p. 320.
432. J. Winthrop, History, vol. I, pp. 162, 174.
433. The section of the treaty relating to America is in the Farnham Papers, vol. I, p. 176.
434. Bradford, Plymouth, pp. 258 ff.
435. Acts Privy Council, Colonial, vol. I, p. 172; Bradford, Plymouth, p. 275.
436. Bradford, Plymouth, pp. 293 f.; J. Winthrop, History, vol. I, pp. 139, 184.
437. Bradford, Plymouth, pp. 332 ff.; J. Winthrop, History, vol. I, pp. 198, 200, 246; Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., Series III, vol. VIII, p. 192; Massachusetts Records, vol. I, pp. 160 f.
438. New Hampshire Provincial Papers (Concord, 1867), vol. I, p. 157.
439. C. W. Tuttle, Captain John Mason; Prince Society, Boston, 1887. The will and notes are on pp. 391-408.
440. New Hampshire Provincial Papers, vol. I, pp. 131 f. The Indian deed, formerly thought to have been obtained by Wheelwright for the land, is now generally considered spurious. Ibid., pp. 136 f. Cf., however, Bell (John Wheelwright, pp. 79 ff.), who contends that it was genuine.
441. J. Winthrop, History, vol. I, p. 350.
442. Massachusetts Records, vol. I, pp. 167, 271; J. Dow, History of Town of Hampton (Salem, 1893), vol I, pp. 7 f.
443. It is noteworthy that in 1633, in a letter to Secretary Coke, Emanuel Downing asked that the charter limits be extended a little to the north, where were the best firs and timber. Cal. State Pap., Col., 1675-76, p. 74.
444. J. Winthrop, History, vol. I, pp. 349, 365; Massachusetts Records, vol. I, p. 259.
445. C. M. Andrews, The Colonial Period (New York, 1912), p. 28.
446. Lechford, Plain Dealing, p. 97. Cf. Adams, Three Episodes, vol. I, p. 328 n. Some time before Blackstone settled, Winter, Trelawney’s agent in Maine, thought of settling about Narragansett, and claimed that he had Warwick’s permission to plant a colony. Trelawney Papers, vol. I, p. 20.
447. Williams’s answer to the charges of Harris, in Rider, Rhode Island Tracts, No. 14 (Providence, 1888), p. 53. But Williams’s statements are often contradictory.
448. R. I. Records (Providence, 1856), vol. I, pp. 14, 28.
449. Ibid., pp. 45 ff., 87, 129.
450. Ibid., pp. 100 ff. Cf. Foster, Town Government in Rhode Island, pp. 10 ff.
451. R. I. Records, vol. I, p. 14; Letter from Williams to Winthrop; Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., Series IV, vol. VI, pp. 186 f.
452. Foster, Town Government, p. 19.
453. Bradford, Plymouth, pp. 222, 233, 311.
454. In 1631. J. Winthrop, History, vol. I, p. 62.
455. Bradford, Plymouth, pp. 312 f.; J. Winthrop (History, vol. I, p. 125) gives as reasons for refusal that the place was not fit for habitation on account of the Indians, the bar across the river, and the closing of navigation in winter. Even his admiring editor, Savage, was “constrained to remark” that these “look to me more like pretexts, than real motives,” and that the Pilgrims’ subsequent complaints of their treatment by Massachusetts “appear very natural, if not unanswerable” (p. 125 n.).
456. J. Winthrop, History, vol. I, p. 132. Doyle (Puritan Colonies, vol. I, p. 151), by a slip, wrongly dates the negotiations in 1634, making it appear that they followed the Massachusetts expeditions instead of preceding them.
457. Bradford, Letter-book, pp. 51 ff. The Dutch territorial claims were noted (supra, Chap. III). The English grant of this territory preceded Dutch discovery by three years, but the question was one of time between discovery and settlement, and of extension of territory from points discovered. There was no established international law by which this particular dispute could be settled. Individual opinion may differ as to the ethics of the case. To me, with no desire to make out a case either way, the legal points seem to be impossible of dogmatic answer.
458. Bradford, Plymouth, p. 313; Acts of the United Colonies, vol. II, p. 65 (Plymouth Records, X). These Acts, vols. I and II, form vols. IX and X of the Plymouth Records, and are hereafter cited as Acts United Colonies. J. R. Brodhead, History State of New York, vol. I, p. 204, gives the month as June; but the Records say January. Various Dutch documents, all of a later period, state that a settlement was contemplated, and possession taken, in 1623. Cf. Documentary History State of New York, vol. III, p. 50; N. Y. Colonial Docts., vols. I, pp. 286, 360, and II, p. 133. There is, however, no contemporary documentary evidence of it; and it is certain, at least, that there was no settlement actually made until that designed to forestall the English in 1633.
459. Bradford, Plymouth, pp. 313 f. The Dutch side of the case is given in Acts United Colonies, ubi supra.
460. J. Winthrop, History, vol. I, p. 104.
461. Ibid., vol. I, p. 167.
462. Ibid., vol. I, p. 168; Massachusetts Records, vol. I, p. 129.
463. Massachusetts Records, vol. I, pp. 146, 148, 167.
464. Bradford, Plymouth, pp. 341 f.; J. Winthrop, History, vol. I, pp. 216, 223; B. Trumbull, History of Connecticut (New Haven, 1818), vol. I, p. 68.
465. Massachusetts Records, vol. I, pp. 170 f. Cf. W. DeL. Love, The Colonial History of Hartford (Hartford, 1914), pp. 70 ff. The earliest records of the three Connecticut towns are lost, but by using those of Springfield, Mr. Love has thrown much light upon the disputed points as to the origin of the Connecticut “constitution.”
466. The text of the sermon has not survived. The notes, by some hearer, which are all we have, are in G. L. Walker, Thomas Hooker (New York, 1891), p. 125, and elsewhere.
467. Public Records of Colony of Connecticut (Hartford, 1850), vol. I, pp. 20 ff. (Hereafter cited as Conn. Col. Records.)
468. Connecticut Historical Society Collections, vol. I, p. 17.
469. Letter to Winthrop, Ibid., p. 11.
470. Newton, Puritan Colonisation, pp. 160 ff. Cf. similar conditions in Bermuda, where the ministers went to such lengths as to “make a man quite out of love with the government of the clergy.” Cal. State Pap., Col., 1574-1660, p. 323.
471. Newton, Puritan Colonisation, p. 175.
472. J. Winthrop, History, vol. I, p. 160.
473. The commission and agreement are in Trumbull, Connecticut, vol. I, pp. 497 ff. The Warwick patent is given in vol. I, pp. 495 f. Cf. C. J. Hoadly, The Warwick Patent (Acorn Club, Hartford, 1902), pp. 7 ff.
474. Mass. Hist. Soc. Proceedings, Series IV, vol. VI, pp. 579 f.
475. The proposals and Cotton’s answer are in Hutchinson, History, vol. I, pp. 433 ff.
476. J. Winthrop, History, vol. I, pp. 132, 146; Bradford, Plymouth, pp. 323 ff.
477. J. Winthrop, History, vol. I, pp. 176 ff.; Mass. Hist. Soc. Proceedings, Series III, vol. III, pp. 130 f.
478. J. Winthrop, History, vol. I, pp. 229 f.
479. Ibid., vol. I, p. 232; John Underhill, “Newes from America,” Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., Series III, vol. VI, pp. 6-11; L. Gardiner, “Relation of the Pequot Wars,” Ibid., vol. III, pp. 138 ff.
480. Williams’s Letter to Mason, Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., Series I, vol. I, p. 177. J. Winthrop, History, vol. I, pp. 234, 237. Even Palfrey dismisses Williams’s services in three lines; History, vol. I, p. 460.
481. J. Winthrop, History, vol. I, p. 238.
482. Gardiner, “Relation,” pp. 143, 144, 148.
483. Bradford, Plymouth, pp. 352 ff.; J. Winthrop, History, vol. I, pp. 260 ff.
484. Conn. Col. Records, vol. I, p. 9.
485. The accounts do not agree. Cf. Mason, “A brief History of the Pequot War,” Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., Series II, vol. VIII, p. 134; Underhill, “Newes from New England,” p. 16; Gardiner, “Relation,” p. 149.
486. Mason, “Brief History,” p. 137; P. Vincent, “A true Relation,” Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., Series III, vol. VI, p. 38.
487. Mason says 600 to 700 (“Brief History,” p. 141); Underhill, 400 (“Newes from New England,” p. 25); Gardiner, 300 (“Relation,” p. 150). Mason’s account throughout is the most accurate.
488. Massachusetts Records, vol. I, p. 192; Plymouth Records, vol. I, p. 60; Mason, “Brief History,” pp. 141, 148; J. Winthrop, History, vol. I, p. 279.
489. Ibid., vol. I, p. 279.
490. Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., Series IV, vol. VI, p. 95.
491. Ibid., p. 225. Other quotations from Williams and others are conveniently gathered in G. H. Moore, Notes on the History of Slavery in Massachusetts (New York, 1866), pp. 1-10.
492. Text in E. R. Potter, “Early History of Narragansett”; Rhode Island Historical Society Collections, vol. III, pp. 177 f.
493. E. Channing, The Narragansett Planters (J. H. U. S., 1886), p. 10; W. E. B. DuBois, The Suppression of the African Slave Trade (Harvard Univ. Press, 1916), pp. 27 ff.
494. The Southampton settlers at first tried to plant well within it, but were forced out by the Dutch. Cf. N. Y. Col. Docts., vols. II, pp. 145 ff., and XIV, pp. 30 ff.; Adams, History of Southampton, pp. 48 ff.
495. Estimated from entry in Records of the Colony and Plantation of New Haven (Hartford, 1857), p. 25. Hereafter cited as New Haven Records.
496. J. Winthrop, History, vol. I, pp. 271 ff.; Massachusetts Records, vol. I, pp. 210, 225.
497. C. H. Levermore, Republic of New Haven (J. H. U. S., 1886), p. 8; E. E. Atwater, History of Colony of New Haven (New Haven, 1881), pp. 112 ff.
498. J. Winthrop, History, vol. I, p. 283; letter from Davenport and Eaton to Massachusetts, Bulletin New York Public Library, 1899, pp. 393 f.
499. Atwater, New Haven, pp. 393 f.
500. Hubbard, History of New England, p. 334.
501. New Haven Records, vol. I, pp. 11 ff.
502. Ibid., p. 21.
503. J. Winthrop, History, vol. I, p. 324; Acts Privy Council, Colonial, vol. I, pp. 217, 227 f.; Hutchinson, History, vol. I, pp. 84 ff., 442 ff.; Hazard, Historical Collections, vol. I, pp. 432 f.
504. Massachusetts Records, vol. I, p. 175.
505. Osgood, American Colonies, vol. I, p. 189.
506. Massachusetts Records, vol. I, p. 109.
507. Palfrey, History, vol. II, p. 22. For earlier efforts to secure its passage, cf. Massachusetts Records, vol. I, pp. 174, 222, 279, 292; J. Winthrop, History, vol. I, pp. 191, 240.
508. Cf. Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., Series I, vol. V, pp. 171 ff. The Body as passed is in Ibid., Series III, vol. VIII, pp. 216 ff.
509. Massachusetts Records, vol. II, pp. 92 ff.; “Arbitrary Government Described,” in R. C. Winthrop, J. Winthrop, vol. II, p. 448. Cf. also J. Winthrop, History, vols. I, pp. 388 ff., and II, pp. 67 ff.
510. Massachusetts Records, vol. II, pp. 61, 168, 262.
511. J. Winthrop, History, vols. I, pp. 377 ff.; and II, pp. 83 ff., 142 ff.
512. The essay is given in R. C. Winthrop, J. Winthrop, vol. II, pp. 427 ff.
513. J. Winthrop, History, vol. II, p. 143.
514. Massachusetts Records, vol. II, pp. 58 f.
515. J. Winthrop, History, vol. II, pp. 193, 349.
516. Cal. State Pap., Col., 1574-1660, p. 327.
517. J. Winthrop, History, vol. II, pp. 320 n., 358. Cf. Winslow, “New England’s Salamander,” in Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., Series III, vol. II, pp. 117 ff.
518. Hutchinson, Papers, vol. I, pp. 216 ff.; New England’s Jonas cast up in London, Force Tracts, vol. IV, pp. 8 ff.
519. Hutchinson, Papers, vol. I, pp. 223 ff.; J. Winthrop, History, vol. II, pp. 348 ff. Prof. G. L. Kittredge has recently written an elaborate account of Dr. Child—“Doctor Robert Child the Remonstrant,” reprinted from Publications, Col. Soc., Mass., 1919. It is a strong brief in defense of the action taken by the Massachusetts authorities, and contains the fullest and most accurate account of the Petition and the subsequent trials yet written. Prof. Kittredge is a firm supporter of the old theory that Child was plotting to overthrow the government in the interests of Presbyterianism. While this may be so, it seems not to cover the cases of the other remonstrants. The main interest of the affair for our present work, however, lies in the evidence afforded of discontent with the Puritan regime, and in that connection, Prof. Kittredge, after showing the extreme diversity of views held by the signers on most matters, speaks of “their discontent with the administration which was the sole binding element common to all the Remonstrants” (p. 29). He also states (p. 52), that “there was more or less public sentiment in favor of the defendants.”
520. Massachusetts Records, vol. II, pp. 196, 199, 205, 241.
521. Letter of Winslow to Winthrop, in Hutchinson, Papers, vol. I, p. 174.
522. Cf. letter of Emanuel Downing, already cited, asking for an extension of the charter limits northward, in 1633. Cal. State Pap., Col., 1675-76, p. 74.
523. Osgood, American Colonies, vol. I, p. 377.
524. Acts Privy Council, Colonial, vol. I, pp. 723 ff. Palfrey’s statement that the charter, “literally interpreted,” endowed Massachusetts with the lands claimed is hardly borne out by the facts. History, vol. I, p. 587. Cf., however, Burrage, Colonial Maine, p. 364.
525. J. Winthrop, History, vol. II, pp. 33 f.
526. Massachusetts Records, vol. I, p. 332; J. Winthrop, History, vol. II, p. 50. Apparently Strawberry Bank (Portsmouth) was also annexed. Cf. New Hampshire Provincial Papers, vol. I, p. 192.
527. Ibid., pp. 183 ff., 168.
528. New Hampshire Provincial Papers, vol. I, pp. 182, 184.
529. Bradford, Plymouth, pp. 367 ff.
530. J. Winthrop, History, vol. II, pp. 69 ff.; Rhode Island Historical Society Collections, vol. II, pp. 191 f.
531. J. Winthrop, History, vol. II, pp. 144 ff.; Massachusetts Records, vol. II, pp. 26 f., 40.
532. J. Winthrop, History, vol. II, pp. 168 f.
533. Gorton, Simplicities Defence; Force Tracts, vol. IV, pp. 58 ff.
534. J. Winthrop, History, vol. II, p. 147.
535. Ibid., vol. II, pp. 176 f.; Massachusetts Records, vol. II, pp. 51 ff.; Gorton, Simplicities Defence, pp. 66 ff.
536. J. Winthrop, History, vol. II, pp. 188 f.; Gorton, Simplicities Defence, p. 83.
537. Most of Gorton’s writings are as incoherent as they are vituperative. Age, however, seemed to clear his mind and style, and his letter to Morton, in 1669, defending himself from the charges in the latter’s book, was clear and dignified. It is given in Hutchinson, History, vol. I, pp. 467 ff.
538. Jeremiah Dummer, A Defence of the New England Charters (London, 1721), p. 9.
539. J. Winthrop, History, vol. II, p. 21; cf. also pp. 8, 29, 37.
540. A very complete list of imports could be made up from the bills of lading of the ships arriving in 1640, given in Acts Privy Council, Colonial, vol. I, p. 268.
541. This was Winthrop’s version: History, vol. II, p. 37.
542. Newton, Puritan Colonisation, pp. 287 ff.
543. Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., Series V, vol. I, p. 302; J. Winthrop, History, vol. I, pp. 399 f.
544. Manchester Papers, p. 424, cited by Newton, Puritan Colonisation, p. 292; J. Winthrop, History, vol. II, p. 15. There was also some movement the other way: 1200 persons are said to have gone from Barbadoes to New England from 1643 to 1647. Cal. State Pap., Col., 1661-68, p. 529.
545. J. Winthrop, History, vol. II, pp. 103 ff., 113, 156.
546. Century of Population, p. 9.
547. Letter in Connecticut Historical Society Collections, vol. I, pp. 4 ff.
548. Turner, Significance of the Frontier, p. 92.
549. J. Winthrop, History, vol. I, pp. 283 f.
550. Ibid., p. 342; Connecticut Historical Society Collections, vol. I, p. 9.
551. Conn. Col. Records, vol. I, p. 31.
552. Bradford, Plymouth, pp. 416 f.
553. Conn. Col. Records, vol. I, pp. 266 ff.
554. J. Winthrop, History, vol. II, p. 121.
555. J. Winthrop, History, vol. II, p. 24; Massachusetts Records, vol. I, p. 305.
556. Acts United Colonies, vol. I, p. 23.
557. The articles have been many times reprinted. The citations above are from Acts United Colonies, vol. I, pp. 3 ff.