A writ of _quo warranto_ was brought against it; and it was proposed to send Sir Ferdinando to govern New England with viceregal powers like those afterward exercised by Andros.
For a moment the danger seemed alarming; but, as Winthrop says, "the Lord frustrated their design." It was noted as a special providence that the ship in which Gorges was to sail was hardly off the stocks when it fell to pieces. Then the most indefatigable enemy of the colony, John Mason, suddenly died. The king issued his famous writ of ship-money and set all England by the ears; and, to crown all, the attempt to read the Episcopal liturgy at St. Giles"s church in Edinburgh led straight to the Solemn League and Covenant. Amid the first mutterings of the Great Rebellion the proceedings against Ma.s.sachusetts were dropped, and the unheeded colony went on thriving in its independent course. Possibly too some locks at Whitehall may have been turned with golden keys, [9] for the company was rich, and the king was ever open to such arguments. But when the news of his evil designs had first reached Boston the people of the infant colony showed no readiness to yield to intimidation. In their measures there was a decided smack of what was to be realized a hundred and forty years later. Orders were immediately issued for fortifying Castle Island in the harbour and the heights at Charlestown and Dorchester. Militia companies were put in training, and a beacon was set up on the highest hill in Boston, to give prompt notice to all the surrounding country of any approaching enemy.
While the ill will of the home government thus kept the colonists in a state of alarm, there were causes of strife at work at their very doors, of which they were fain to rid themselves as soon as possible. Among all the Puritans who came to New England there is no more interesting figure than the learned, quick-witted pugnacious Welshman, Roger Williams. He was over-fond of logical subtleties and delighted in controversy. There was scarcely any subject about which he did not wrangle, from the sinfulness of persecution to the propriety of women wearing veils in church. Yet, with all this love of controversy, there has perhaps never lived a more gentle and kindly soul. Within five years from the settlement of Ma.s.sachusetts this young preacher had announced the true principles of religious liberty with a clearness of insight quite remarkable in that age. Roger Williams had been aided in securing an education by the great lawyer Sir Edward c.o.ke, and had lately taken his degree at Pembroke College, Cambridge; but the boldness with which he declared his opinions had aroused the hostility of Laud, and in 1631 he had come over to Plymouth, whence he removed two years later to Salem, and became pastor of the church there. The views of Williams, if logically carried out, involved the entire separation of church from state, the equal protection of all forms of religious faith, the repeal of all laws compelling attendance on public worship, the abolition of t.i.thes and of all forced contributions to the support of religion. Such views are to-day quite generally adopted by the more civilized portions of the Protestant world; but it is needless to say that they were not the views of the seventeenth century, in Ma.s.sachusetts or elsewhere. For declaring such opinions as these on the continent of Europe, anywhere except in Holland, a man like Williams would in that age have run great risk of being burned at the stake. In England, under the energetic misgovernment of Laud, he would very likely have had to stand in the pillory with his ears cropped, or perhaps, like Bunyan and Baxter, would have been sent to jail. In Ma.s.sachusetts such views were naturally enough regarded as anarchical, but in Williams"s case they were further complicated by grave political imprudence. He wrote a pamphlet in which he denied the right of the colonists to the lands which they held in New England under the king"s grant. He held that the soil belonged to the Indians, that the settlers could only obtain a valid t.i.tle to it by purchase from them, and that the acceptance of a patent from a mere intruder, like the king, was a sin requiring public repentance. This doctrine was sure to be regarded in England as an attack upon the king"s supremacy over Ma.s.sachusetts, and at the same time an incident occurred in Salem which made it all the more unfortunate. The royal colours under which the little companies of militia marched were emblazoned with the red cross of St. George. The uncompromising Endicott loathed this emblem as tainted with Popery, and one day he publicly defaced the flag of the Salem company by cutting out the cross. The enemies of Ma.s.sachusetts misinterpreted this act as a defiance aimed at the royal authority, and they attributed it to the teachings of Williams. In view of the king"s unfriendliness these were dangerous proceedings. Endicott was summoned before the General Court at Boston, where he was publicly reprimanded and declared incapable of holding office for a year. A few months afterward, in January, 1636, Williams was ordered by the General Court to come to Boston and embark in a ship that was about to set sail for England. But he escaped into the forest, and made his way through the snow to the wigwam of Ma.s.sasoit. He was a rare linguist, and had learned to talk fluently in the language of the Indians, and now he pa.s.sed the winter in trying to instill into their ferocious hearts something of the gentleness of Christianity. In the spring he was privately notified by Winthrop that if he were to steer his course to Narragansett bay he would be secure from molestation; and such was the beginning of the settlement of Providence. [Sidenote: From religious dissensions; Roger Williams]
Shortly before the departure of Williams, there came to Boston one of the greatest Puritan statesmen of that heroic age, the younger Henry Vane. It is pleasant to remember that the man and Anne who did so much to overthrow the tyranny of Strafford, who brought the military strength of Scotland to the aid of the hard-pressed Parliament, who administered the navy with which Blake won his astonishing victories, who dared even withstand Cromwell at the height of his power when his measures became too violent,--it is pleasant to remember that this admirable man was once the chief magistrate of an American commonwealth. It is pleasant for a Harvard man to remember that as such he presided over the a.s.sembly that founded our first university. Thorough republican and enthusiastic lover of liberty, he was spiritually akin to Jefferson and to Samuel Adams. Like Williams he was a friend to toleration, and like Williams he found Ma.s.sachusetts an uncomfortable home. In 1636 he was only twenty-four years of age, "young in years," and perhaps not yet "in sage counsel old." He was chosen governor for that year, and his administration was stormy. Among those persons who had followed Mr.
Cotton from Lincolnshire was Mrs. Anne Hutchinson, a very bright and capable lady, if perhaps somewhat impulsive and indiscreet. She had brought over with her, says Winthrop, "two dangerous errors: first, that the person of the Holy Ghost dwells in a justified person; second, that no sanctification can help to evidence to us our justification." Into the merits of such abstruse doctrines it is not necessary for the historian to enter. One can hardly repress a smile as one reflects how early in the history of Boston some of its characteristic social features were developed. It is curious to read of lectures there in 1636, lectures by a lady, and transcendentalist lectures withal! Never did lectures in Boston arouse greater excitement than Mrs. Hutchinson"s.
Many of her hearers forsook the teachings of the regular ministers, to follow her. [Sidenote: Henry Vane and Anne Hutchinson]
She was very effectively supported by her brother-in-law, Mr.
Wheelwright, an eloquent preacher, and for a while she seemed to be carrying everything before her. She won her old minister Mr. Cotton, she won the stout soldier Captain Underhill, she won Governor Vane himself; while she incurred the deadly hatred of such men as Dudley and Cotton"s a.s.sociate John Wilson. The church at Boston was divided into two hostile camps. The sensible Winthrop marvelled at hearing men distinguished "by being under a covenant of grace or a covenant of works, as in other countries between Protestants and Papists," and he ventured to doubt whether any man could really tell what the difference was. The theological strife went on until it threatened to breed civil disaffection among the followers of Mrs. Hutchinson. A peculiar bitterness was given to the affair, from the fact that she professed to be endowed with the spirit of prophecy and taught her partisans that it was their duty to follow the biddings of a supernatural light; and there was nothing which the orthodox Puritan so steadfastly abhorred as the anarchical pretence of living by the aid of a supernatural light. In a strong and complex society the teachings of Mrs. Hutchinson would have awakened but a languid speculative interest, or perhaps would have pa.s.sed by unheeded. In the simple society of Ma.s.sachusetts in 1636, physically weak and as yet struggling for very existence, the practical effect of such teachings may well have been deemed politically dangerous. When things came to such a pa.s.s that the forces of the colony were mustered for an Indian campaign and the men of Boston were ready to shirk the service because they suspected their chaplain to be "under a covenant of works," it was naturally thought to be high time to put Mrs.
Hutchinson down. In the spring of 1637 Winthrop was elected governor, and in August Vane returned to England. His father had at that moment more influence with the king than any other person except Strafford, and the young man had indiscreetly hinted at an appeal to the home government for the protection of the Antinomians, as Mrs. Hutchinson"s followers were called. But an appeal from America to England was something which Ma.s.sachusetts would no more tolerate in the days of Winthrop than in the days of Hanc.o.c.k and Adams. Soon after Vane"s departure, Mrs. Hutchinson and her friends were ordered to leave the colony. It was doubtless an odious act of persecution, yet of all such acts which stain the history of Ma.s.sachusetts in the seventeenth century, it is just the one for which the plea of political necessity may really be to some extent accepted.
We now begin to see how the spreading of the New England colonization, and the founding of distinct communities, was hastened by these differences of opinion on theological questions or on questions concerning the relations between church and state. Of Mrs. Hutchinson"s friends and adherents, some went northward, and founded the towns of Exeter and Hampton. Some time before Portsmouth and Dover had been settled by followers of Mason and Gorges. In 1641 these towns were added to the domain of Ma.s.sachusetts, and so the matter stood until 1679, when we shall see Charles II. marking them off as a separate province, under a royal government. Such were the beginnings of New Hampshire. Mrs.
Hutchinson herself, however, with the rest of her adherents, bought the island of Aquedneck from the Indians, and settlements were made at Portsmouth and Newport. After a quarter of a century of turbulence, these settlements coalesced with Williams"s colony at Providence, and thus was formed the state of Rhode Island. After her husband"s death in 1642, Mrs. Hutchinson left Aquedneck and settled upon some land to the west of Stamford and supposed to be within the territory of the New Netherlands. There in the following year she was cruelly murdered by Indians, together with nearly all her children and servants, sixteen victims in all. One of her descendants was the ill.u.s.trious Thomas Hutchinson, the first great American historian, and last royal governor of Ma.s.sachusetts.
To the dangers arising from the ill-will of the crown, and from these theological quarrels, there was added the danger of a general attack by the savages. Down to this time, since the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, the settlers of New England had been in no way molested by the natives. Ma.s.sasoit"s treaty with the Pilgrims was scrupulously observed on both sides, and kept the Wampanoags quiet for fifty-four years. The somewhat smaller tribe which took its name from the _Ma.s.sawachusett_, or Great Hill, of Milton, kept on friendly terms with the settlers about Boston, because these red men coveted the powerful aid of the white strangers in case of war with their hereditary foes the Tarratines, who dwelt in the Piscataqua country. It was only when the English began to leave these coast regions and press into the interior that trouble arose. The western sh.o.r.es of Narragansett bay were possessed by the numerous and warlike tribe of that name, which held in partial subjection the Nyantics near Point Judith. To the west of these, and about the Thames river, dwelt the still more formidable Pequots, a tribe which for bravery and ferocity a.s.serted a preeminence in New England not unlike that which the Iroquois league of the Mohawk valley was fast winning over all North America east of the Mississippi. North of the Pequots, the squalid villages of the Nipmucks were scattered over the beautiful highlands that stretch in long ridges from Quinsigamond to Nichewaug, and beyond toward blue Monadnock. Westward, in the lower Connecticut valley, lived the Mohegans, a small but valiant tribe, now for some time held tributary to their Pequot cousins, and very restive under the yoke. The thickly wooded mountain ranges between the Connecticut and the Hudson had few human inhabitants. These hundred miles of crag and forest were a bulwark none too wide or strong against the incursions of the terrible Mohawks, whose name sent a shiver of fear throughout savage New England, and whose forbearance the Nipmucks and Mohegans were fain to ensure by a yearly payment of blackmail. Each summer there came two Mohawk elders, secure in the dread that Iroquois prowess had everywhere inspired; and up and down the Connecticut valley they seized the tribute of weapons and wampum, and proclaimed the last harsh edict issued from the savage council at Onondaga. The scowls that greeted their unwelcome visits were doubtless nowhere fiercer than among the Mohegans, thus ground down between Mohawk and Pequot as between the upper and the nether millstone. [Sidenote: From the Indians: the Pequot supremacy]
Among the various points in which civilized man surpa.s.ses the savage none is more conspicuous than the military brute force which in the highest civilization is always latent though comparatively seldom exerted. The sudden intrusion of English warfare into the Indian world of the seventeenth century may well have seemed to the red men a supernatural visitation, like the hurricane or the earthquake. The uncompromising vigour with which the founders of Ma.s.sachusetts carried on their work was viewed in some quarters with a dissatisfaction which soon thrust the English migration into the very heart of the Indian country.
The first movement, however, was directed against the encroachments of the New Netherlands. In October, 1634, some men of Plymouth, led by William Holmes, sailed up the Connecticut river, and, after bandying threats with a party of Dutch who had built a rude fort on the site of Hartford, pa.s.sed on and fortified themselves on the site of Windsor.
Next year Governor Van Twiller sent a company of seventy men to drive away these intruders, but after reconnoitring the situation the Dutchmen thought it best not to make an attack. Their little stronghold at Hartford remained unmolested by the English, and, in order to secure the communication between this advanced outpost and New Amsterdam, Van Twiller decided to build another fort at the mouth of the river, but this time the English were beforehand. Rumours of Dutch designs may have reached the ears of Lord Say and Sele and Lord Brooke--"fanatic Brooke," as Scott calls him in "Marmion"--who had obtained from the Council for New England a grant of territory on the sh.o.r.es of the Sound.
These n.o.blemen chose as their agent the younger John Winthrop, son of the Ma.s.sachusetts governor, and this new-comer arrived upon the scene just in time to drive away Van Twiller"s vessel and build an English fort which in honour of his two patrons he called "Say-Brooke."
Had it not been for seeds of discontent already sown in Ma.s.sachusetts, the English hold upon the Connecticut valley might perhaps have been for a few years confined to these two military outposts at Windsor and Saybrook. But there were people in Ma.s.sachusetts who did not look with favour upon the aristocratic and theocratic features in its polity. The provision that none but church-members should vote or hold office was by no means unanimously approved. We see it in the course of another generation putting altogether too much temporal power into the hands of the clergy, and we can trace the growth of the opposition to it until in the reign of Charles II. it becomes a dangerous source of weakness to Ma.s.sachusetts. At the outset the opposition seems to have been strongest in Dorchester, Newtown, and Watertown. When the Board of a.s.sistants undertook to secure for themselves permanency of tenure, together with the power of choosing the governor and making the laws, these three towns sent deputies to Boston to inspect the charter and see if it authorized any such stretch of power. They were foremost in insisting that representatives chosen by the towns must have a share in the general government. Men who held such opinions were naturally unwilling to increase the political weight of the clergy, who, during these early disputes and indeed until the downfall of the charter, were inclined to take aristocratic views and to sympathize with the Board of a.s.sistants.
Cotton declared that democracy was no fit government either for church or for commonwealth, and the majority of the ministers agreed with him. Chief among those who did not was the learned and eloquent Thomas Hooker, pastor of the church at Newtown. When Winthrop, in a letter to Hooker, defended the restriction of the suffrage on the ground that "the best part is always the least, and of that best part the wiser part is always the lesser;" Hooker replied that "in matters which concern the common good, a general council, chosen by all, to transact businesses which concern all, I conceive most suitable to rule and most safe for relief of the whole." It is interesting to meet, on the very threshold of American history, with such a lucid statement of the strongly contrasted views which a hundred and fifty years later were to be represented on a national scale by Hamilton and Jefferson. There were many in Newtown who took Hooker"s view of the matter; and there, as also in Watertown and Dorchester, which in 1633 took the initiative in framing town governments with selectmen, a strong disposition was shown to evade the restrictions upon the suffrage.
While such things were talked about in the summer of 1633 the adventurous John Oldham was making his way through the forest and over the mountains into the Connecticut valley, and when he returned to the coast his glowing accounts set some people to thinking. Two years afterward a few pioneers from Dorchester pushed through the wilderness as far as the Plymouth men"s fort at Windsor, while a party from Watertown went farther and came to a halt upon the site of Wethersfield.
A larger party, bringing cattle and such goods as they could carry, set out in the autumn and succeeded in reaching Windsor. Their winter supplies were sent around by water to meet them, but early in November the ships had barely pa.s.sed the Saybrook fort when they found the river blocked with ice and were obliged to return to Boston. The sufferings of the pioneers, thus cut off from the world, were dreadful. Their cattle perished, and they were reduced to a diet of acorns and ground-nuts.
Some seventy of them, walking on the frozen river to Saybrook, were so fortunate as to find a crazy little sloop jammed in the ice. They succeeded in cutting her adrift, and steered themselves back to Boston.
Others surmounted greater obstacles in struggling back through the snow over the region which the Pullman car now traverses, regardless of seasons, in three hours. A few grim heroes, the nameless founders of a n.o.ble commonwealth, stayed on the spot and defied starvation. In the next June, 1636, the Newtown congregation, a hundred or more in number, led by their st.u.r.dy pastor, and bringing with them 160 head of cattle, made the pilgrimage to the Connecticut valley. Women and children took part in this pleasant summer journey; Mrs. Hooker, the pastor"s wife, being too ill to walk, was carried on a litter. Thus, in the memorable year in which our great university was born, did Cambridge become, in the true Greek sense of a much-abused word, the _metropolis_ or "mother town" of Hartford. The migration at once became strong in numbers.
During the past twelvemonth a score of ships had brought from England to Ma.s.sachusetts more than 3000 souls, and so great an accession made further movement easy. Hooker"s pilgrims were soon followed by the Dorchester and Watertown congregations, and by the next May 800 people were living in Windsor, Hartford, and Wethersfield. As we read of these movements, not of individuals, but of organic communities, united in allegiance to a church and its pastor, and fervid with the instinct of self-government, we seem to see Greek history renewed, but with centuries of added political training. For one year a board of commissioners from Ma.s.sachusetts governed the new towns, but at the end of that time the towns chose representatives and held a General Court at Hartford, and thus the separate existence of Connecticut was begun. As for Springfield, which was settled about the same time by a party from Roxbury, it remained for some years doubtful to which state it belonged.
At the opening session of the General Court, May 31,1638, Mr. Hooker preached a sermon of wonderful power, in which he maintained that "the foundation of authority is laid in the free consent of the people,"
"that the choice of public magistrates belongs unto the people by G.o.d"s own allowance," and that "they who have power to appoint officers and magistrates have the right also to set the bounds and limitations of the power and place unto which they call them." On the 14th of January, 1639, all the freemen of the three towns a.s.sembled at Hartford and adopted a written const.i.tution in which the hand of the great preacher is clearly discernible. It is worthy of note that this doc.u.ment contains none of the conventional references to a "dread sovereign" or a "gracious king," nor the slightest allusion to the British or any other government outside of Connecticut itself, nor does it prescribe any condition of church-membership for the right of suffrage. It was the first written const.i.tution known to history, that created a government, [10] and it marked the beginnings of American democracy, of which Thomas Hooker deserves more than any other man to be called the father. The government of the United States today is in lineal descent more nearly related to that of Connecticut than to that of any of the other thirteen colonies. The most noteworthy feature of the Connecticut republic was that it was a federation of independent towns, and that all attributes of sovereignty not expressly granted to the General Court remained, as of original right, in the towns. Moreover, while the governor and council were chosen by a majority vote of the whole people, and by a suffrage that was almost universal, there was for each township an equality of representation in the a.s.sembly. [11] This little federal republic was allowed to develop peacefully and normally; its const.i.tution was not violently wrenched out of shape like that of Ma.s.sachusetts at the end of the seventeenth century. It silently grew till it became the strongest political structure on the continent, as was ill.u.s.trated in the remarkable military energy and the unshaken financial credit of Connecticut during the Revolutionary War; and in the chief crisis of the Federal Convention of 1787 Connecticut, with her compromise which secured equal state representation in one branch of the national government and popular representation in the other, played the controlling part. [Sidenote: Connecticut Pioneers] [Sidenote: The first written const.i.tution]
Before the little federation of towns had framed its government, it had its Indian question to dispose of. Three years before the migration led by Hooker, a crew of eight traders, while making their way up the river to the Dutch station on the site of Hartford, had been murdered by a party of Indians subject to Sa.s.sacus, chief sachem of the Pequots.
Negotiations concerning this outrage had gone on between Sa.s.sacus and the government at Boston, and the Pequots had promised to deliver up the murderers, but had neglected to do so. In the summer of 1636 some Indians on Block Island subject to the Narragansetts murdered the pioneer John Oldham, who was sailing on the Sound, and captured his little vessel. At this, says Underhill, "G.o.d stirred up the hearts" of Governor Vane and the rest of the magistrates. They were determined to make an end of the Indian question and show the savages that such things would not be endured. First an emba.s.sy was sent to Canonicus and his nephew Miantonomo, chief sachems of the Narragansetts, who hastened to disclaim all responsibility for the murder, and to throw the blame entirely upon the Indians of the island. Vane then sent out three vessels under command of Endicott, who ravaged Block Island, burning wigwams, sinking canoes, and slaying dogs, for the men had taken to the woods. Endicott then crossed to the mainland to reckon with the Pequots.
He demanded the surrender of the murderers, with a thousand fathoms of wampum for damages; and not getting a satisfactory answer, he attacked the Indians, killed a score of them, seized their ripe corn, and burned and spoiled what he could. But such reprisals served only to enrage the red men. Lyon Gardiner, commander of the Saybrook fort, complained to Endicott: "You come hither to raise these wasps about my ears; then you will take wing and flee away." The immediate effect was to incite Sa.s.sacus to do his utmost to compa.s.s the ruin of the English. The superst.i.tious awe with which the white men were at first regarded had been somewhat lessened by familiar contact with them, as in Aesop"s fable of the fox and the lion. The resources of Indian diplomacy were exhausted in the attempt to unite the Narragansett warriors with the Pequots in a grand crusade against the white men. Such a combination could hardly have been as formidable as that which was effected forty years afterward in King Philip"s war; for the savages had not as yet become accustomed to firearms, and the English settlements did not present so many points exposed to attack; but there is no doubt that it might have wrought fearful havoc. We can, at any rate, find no difficulty in comprehending the manifold perplexity of the Ma.s.sachusetts men at this time, threatened as they were at once by an Indian crusade, by the machinations of a faithless king, and by a bitter theological quarrel at home, in this eventful year when they laid aside part of their incomes to establish Harvard College. [Sidenote: Origin of the Pequot War]
The schemes of Sa.s.sacus were unsuccessful. The hereditary enmity of the Narragansetts toward their Pequot rivals was too strong to be lightly overcome. Roger Williams, taking advantage of this feeling, so worked upon the minds of the Narragansett chiefs that in the autumn of 1636 they sent an emba.s.sy to Boston and made a treaty of alliance with the English. The Pequots were thus left to fight out their own quarrel; and had they still been separated from the English by the distance between Boston and the Thames river, the feud might very likely have smouldered until the drift of events had given a different shape to it. But as the English had in this very year thrown out their advanced posts into the lower Connecticut valley, there was clearly no issue from the situation save in deadly war. All through the winter of 1636-37 the Connecticut towns were kept in a state of alarm by the savages. Men going to their work were killed and horribly mangled. A Wethersfield man was kidnapped and roasted alive. Emboldened by the success of this feat, the Pequots attacked Wethersfield, ma.s.sacred ten people, and carried away two girls.
[Sidenote: Sa.s.sacus is foiled by Roger Williams] [Sidenote: The Pequots take the warpath alone]
Wrought up to desperation by these atrocities, the Connecticut men appealed to Ma.s.sachusetts and Plymouth for aid, and put into service ninety of their own number, under command of John Mason, an excellent and st.u.r.dy officer who had won golden opinions from Sir Thomas Fairfax, under whom he had served in the Netherlands. It took time to get men from Boston, and all that Ma.s.sachusetts contributed to the enterprise at its beginning was that eccentric daredevil John Underhill, with a force of twenty men. Seventy friendly Mohegans, under their chief Uncas, eager to see vengeance wrought upon their Pequot oppressors, accompanied the expedition. From the fort at Saybrook this little company set sail on the twentieth of May, 1637, and landed in brilliant moonlight near Point Judith, where they were reinforced by four hundred Narragansetts and Nyantics. From this point they turned westward toward the stronghold of the Pequots, near the place where the town of Stonington now stands. As they approached the dreaded spot the courage of the Indian allies gave out, and they slunk behind, declaring that Sa.s.sacus was a G.o.d whom it was useless to think of attacking. The force with which Mason and Underhill advanced to the fray consisted of just seventy-seven Englishmen. Their task was to a.s.sault and carry an entrenched fort or walled village containing seven hundred Pequots. The fort was a circle of two or three acres in area, girdled by a palisade of st.u.r.dy sapling-trunks, set firm and deep into the ground, the narrow interstices between them serving as loopholes wherefrom to reconnoitre any one pa.s.sing by and to shoot at a.s.sailants. At opposite sides of this stronghold were two openings barely large enough to let any one go through. Within this enclosure were the crowded wigwams. The attack was skilfully managed, and was a complete surprise. A little before daybreak Mason, with sixteen men, occupied one of the doors, while Underhill made sure of the other. The Indians in panic sought first one outlet and then the other, and were ruthlessly shot down, whichever way they turned. A few succeeded in breaking loose, but these were caught and tomahawked by the Indian allies, who, though afraid to take the risks of the fight, were ready enough to help slay the fugitives. The English threw firebrands among the wigwams, and soon the whole village was in a light blaze, and most of the savages suffered the horrible death which they were so fond of inflicting upon their captives. Of the seven hundred Pequots in the stronghold, but five got away with their lives. All this b.l.o.o.d.y work had been done in less than an hour, and of the English there had been two killed and sixteen wounded. It was the end of the Pequot nation. Of the remnant which had not been included in this wholesale slaughter, most were soon afterwards destroyed piecemeal in a running fight which extended as far westward as the site of Fairfield. Sa.s.sacus fled across the Hudson river to the Mohawks, who slew him and sent his scalp to Boston, as a peace-offering to the English. The few survivors were divided between the Mohegans and Narragansetts and adopted into those tribes. Truly the work was done with Cromwellian thoroughness. The tribe which had lorded it so fiercely over the New England forests was all at once wiped out of existence. So terrible a vengeance the Indians had never heard of. If the name of Pequot had hitherto been a name of terror, so now did the Englishmen win the inheritance of that deadly prestige. Not for eight-and-thirty years after the destruction of the Pequots, not until a generation of red men had grown up that knew not Underhill and Mason, did the Indian of New England dare again to lift his hand against the white man. [Sidenote: And are exterminated]
Such scenes of wholesale slaughter are not pleasant reading in this milder age. But our forefathers felt that the wars of Canaan afforded a sound precedent for such cases; and, indeed, if we remember what the soldiers of Tilly and Wallenstein were doing at this very time in Germany, we shall realize that the work of Mason and Underhill would not have been felt by any one in that age to merit censure or stand in need of excuses. As a matter of practical policy the annihilation of the Pequots can be condemned only by those who read history so incorrectly as to suppose that savages, whose business is to torture and slay, can always be dealt with according to the methods in use between civilized peoples. A mighty nation, like the United States, is in honour bound to treat the red man with scrupulous justice and refrain from cruelty in punishing his delinquencies. But if the founders of Connecticut, in confronting a danger which threatened their very existence, struck with savage fierceness, we cannot blame them. The world is so made that it is only in that way that the higher races have been able to preserve themselves and carry on their progressive work.
The overthrow of the Pequots was a cardinal event in the planting of New England. It removed the chief obstacle to the colonization of the Connecticut coast, and brought the inland settlements into such unimpeded communication with those on tide-water as to prepare the way for the formation of the New England confederacy. Its first fruits were seen in the direction taken by the next wave of migration, which ended the Puritan exodus from England to America. About a month after the storming of the palisaded village there arrived in Boston a company of wealthy London merchants, with their families. The most prominent among them, Theophilus Eaton, was a member of the Company of Ma.s.sachusetts Bay. Their pastor, John Davenport, was an eloquent preacher and a man of power. He was a graduate of Oxford, and in 1624 had been chosen vicar of St. Stephen"s parish, in Coleman street, London. When he heard that Cotton and Hooker were about to sail for America, he sought earnestly to turn them from what he deemed the error of their ways, but instead he became converted himself and soon incurred the especial enmity of Laud, so that it became necessary for him to flee to Amsterdam. In 1636 he returned to England, and in concert with Eaton organized a scheme of emigration that included men from Yorkshire, Hertfordshire, and Kent.
The leaders arrived in Boston in the midst of the Antinomian disputes, and although Davenport won admiration for his skill in battling with heresy, he may perhaps have deemed it preferable to lead his flock to some new spot in the wilderness where such warfare might not be required. The merchants desired a fine harbour and good commercial situation, and the reports of the men who returned from hunting the Pequots told them of just such a spot at Quinnipiack on Long Island Sound. Here they could carry out their plan of putting into practice a theocratic ideal even more rigid than that which obtained in Ma.s.sachusetts, and arrange their civil as well as ecclesiastical affairs in accordance with rules to be obtained from a minute study of the Scriptures. [Sidenote: The colony of New Haven]
In the spring of 1638 the town of New Haven was accordingly founded.
The next year a swarm from this new town settled Milford, while another party, freshly arrived from England, made the beginnings of Guilford. In 1640 Stamford was added to the group, and in 1643 the four towns were united into the republic of New Haven, to which Southold, on Long Island, and Branford were afterwards added. As being a confederation of independent towns, New Haven resembled Connecticut. In other respects the differences between the two reflected the differences between Davenport and Hooker; the latter was what would now be called more radical than Winthrop or Cotton, the former was more conservative.
In the New Haven colony none but church-members could vote, and this measure at the outset disfranchised more than half the settlers in New Haven town, nearly half in Guilford, and less than one fifth in Milford.
This result was practically less democratic than in Ma.s.sachusetts where it was some time before the disfranchis.e.m.e.nt attained such dimensions.
The power of the clergy reached its extreme point in New Haven, where each of the towns was governed by seven ecclesiastical officers known as "pillars of the church." These magistrates served as judges, and trial by jury was dispensed with, because no authority could be found for it in the laws of Moses. The legislation was quaint enough, though the famous "Blue Laws" of New Haven, which have been made the theme of so many jests at the expense of our forefathers, never really existed. The story of the Blue Laws was first published in 1781 by the Rev. Samuel Peters, a Tory refugee in London, who took delight in horrifying our British cousins with tales of wholesale tarring and feathering done by the patriots of the Revolution. In point of strict veracity Dr. Peters reminds one of Baron Munchausen; he declares that the river at Bellows Falls flows so fast as to float iron crowbars, and he gravely describes sundry animals who were evidently cousins to the Jabberwok. The most famous pa.s.sage of his pretended code is that which enacts that "no woman shall kiss her child on the Sabbath," and that "no one shall play on any instrument of music except the drum, trumpet, or jewsharp." [Sidenote: Legend of the "Blue Laws"]
When the Long Parliament met in 1640, the Puritan exodus to New England came to an end. During the twenty years which had elapsed since the voyage of the Mayflower, the population had grown to 26,000 souls. Of this number scarcely 500 had arrived before 1629. It is a striking fact, since it expresses a causal relation and not a mere coincidence, that the eleven years, 1629-1640, during which Charles I. governed England without a parliament, were the same eleven years that witnessed the planting of New England. For more than a century after this there was no considerable migration to this part of North America. Puritan England now found employment for all its energies and all its enthusiasm at home. The struggle with the king and the efforts toward reorganization under Cromwell were to occupy it for another score of years, and then, by the time of the Restoration the youthful creative energy of Puritanism had spent itself. The influence of this great movement was indeed destined to grow wider and deeper with the progress of civilization, but after 1660 its creative work began to run in new channels and a.s.sume different forms. [Sidenote: End of the Puritan exodus]
It is curious to reflect what might have been the result, to America and to the world, had things in England gone differently between 1620 and 1660. Had the policy of James and Charles been less formidable, the Puritan exodus might never have occurred, and the Virginian type of society, varied perhaps by a strong Dutch infusion, might have become supreme in America. The western continent would have lost in richness and variety of life, and it is not likely that Europe would have made a corresponding gain, for the moral effect of the challenge, the struggle, and the overthrow of monarchy in England was a stimulus sorely needed by neighbouring peoples. It is not always by avoiding the evil, it is rather by grappling with it and conquering it that character is strengthened and life enriched, and there is no better example of this than the history of England in the seventeenth century.
On the other hand, if the Stuart despotism had triumphed in England, the Puritan exodus would doubtless have been swelled to huge dimensions. New England would have gained strength so quickly that much less irritation than she actually suffered between 1664 and 1689 would probably have goaded her into rebellion. The war of independence might have been waged a century sooner than it was. It is not easy to point to any especial advantage that could have come to America from this; one is rather inclined to think of the peculiarly valuable political training of the eighteenth century that would have been lost. Such surmises are for the most part idle. But as concerns Europe, it is plain to be seen, for reasons stated in my first chapter, that the decisive victory of Charles I. would have been a calamity of the first magnitude. It would have been like the Greeks losing Marathon or the Saracens winning Tours, supposing the worst consequences ever imagined in those hypothetical cases to have been realized. Or taking a more contracted view, we can see how England, robbed of her Puritan element, might still have waxed in strength, as France has done in spite of losing the Huguenots; but she could not have taken the proud position that she has come to occupy as mother of nations. Her preeminence since Cromwell"s time has been chiefly due to her unrivalled power of planting self-supporting colonies, and that power has had its roots in English self-government. It is the vitality of the English Idea that is making the language of Cromwell and Washington dominant in the world.
CHAPTER IV.
THE NEW ENGLAND CONFEDERACY.
The Puritan exodus to New England, which came to an end about 1640, was purely and exclusively English. There was nothing in it that came from the continent of Europe, nothing that was either Irish or Scotch, very little that was Welsh. As Palfrey says, the population of 26,000 that had been planted in New England by 1640 "thenceforward continued to multiply on its own soil for a century and a half, in remarkable seclusion from other communities." During the whole of this period New England received but few immigrants; and it was not until after the Revolutionary War that its people had fairly started on their westward march into the state of New York and beyond, until now, after yet another century, we find some of their descendants dwelling in a homelike Salem and a Portland of charming beauty on the Pacific coast.
Three times between the meeting of the Long Parliament and the meeting of the Continental Congress did the New England colonies receive a slight infusion of non-English blood. In 1652, after his victories at Dunbar and Worcester, Cromwell sent 270 of his Scottish prisoners to Boston, where the descendants of some of them still dwell. After the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, 150 families of Huguenots came to Ma.s.sachusetts. And finally in 1719, 120 Presbyterian families came over from the north of Ireland, and settled at Londonderry in New Hampshire, and elsewhere. In view of these facts it may be said that there is not a county in England of which the population is more purely English than the population of New England at the end of the eighteenth century. From long and careful research, Mr. Savage, the highest authority on this subject, concludes that more than 98 in 100 of the New England people at that time could trace their origin to England in the narrowest sense, excluding even Wales. As already observed, every English shire contributed something to the emigration, but there was a marked preponderance of people from the East Anglian counties.
[Sidenote: The exodus was purely English]
The population of New England was nearly as h.o.m.ogeneous in social condition as it was in blood. The emigration was preeminent for its respectability. Like the best part of the emigration to Virginia, it consisted largely of country squires and yeomen. The men who followed Winthrop were thrifty and prosperous in their old homes from which their devotion to an idea made them voluntary exiles. They attached so much importance to regular industry and decorous behaviour that for a long time the needy and shiftless people who usually make trouble in new colonies were not tolerated among them. Hence the early history of New England is remarkably free from those scenes of violence and disorder which have so often made hideous the first years of new communities.
Of negro slaves there were very few, and these were employed wholly in domestic service; there were not enough of them to affect the industrial life of New England or to be worth mentioning as a cla.s.s. Neither were there many of the wretched people, kidnapped from the jails and slums of English sea-ports, such as in those early days when negro labour was scarce, were sent by ship-loads to Virginia, to become the progenitors of the "white trash." There were a few indented white servants, usually of the cla.s.s known as "redemptioners," or immigrants who voluntarily bound themselves to service for a stated time in order to defray the cost of their voyage from Europe. At a later time there were many of these "redemptioners" in the middle colonies, but in New England they were very few; and as no stigma of servitude was attached to manual labour, they were apt at the end of their terms of service to become independent farmers; thus they ceased to be recognizable as a distinct cla.s.s of society. Nevertheless the common statement that no traces of the "mean white" are to be found in New England is perhaps somewhat too sweeping. Interspersed among those respectable and tidy mountain villages, once full of such vigorous life, one sometimes comes upon little isolated groups of wretched hovels whose local reputation is sufficiently indicated by such terse epithets as "Hardscrabble" or "h.e.l.l-huddle." Their denizens may in many instances be the degenerate offspring of a sound New England stock, but they sometimes show strong points of resemblance to that "white trash" which has come to be a recognizable strain of the English race; and one cannot help suspecting that while the New England colonies made every effort to keep out such riff raff, it may nevertheless have now and then crept in. However this may be, it cannot be said that this element ever formed a noticeable feature in the life of colonial New England. As regards their social derivation, the settlers of New England were h.o.m.ogeneous in character to a remarkable degree, and they were drawn from the st.u.r.diest part of the English stock. In all history there has been no other instance of colonization so exclusively effected by picked and chosen men. The colonists knew this, and were proud of it, as well they might be. It was the simple truth that was spoken by William Stoughton when he said, in his election sermon of 1688: "G.o.d sifted a whole nation, that He might send choice grain into the wilderness." [Sidenote: Respectable character of the emigration]
This matter comes to have more than a local interest, when we reflect that the 26,000 New Englanders of 1640 have in two hundred and fifty years increased to something like 15,000,000. From these men have come at least one-fourth of the present population of the United States.
Striking as this fact may seem, it is perhaps less striking than the fact of the original migration when duly considered. In these times, when great steamers sail every day from European ports, bringing immigrants to a country not less advanced in material civilization than the country which they leave, the daily arrival of a thousand new citizens has come to be a commonplace event. But in the seventeenth century the transfer of more than twenty thousand well-to-do people within twenty years from their comfortable homes in England to the American wilderness was by no means a commonplace event. It reminds one of the migrations of ancient peoples, and in the quaint thought of our forefathers it was aptly likened to the exodus of Israel from the Egyptian house of bondage.
In this migration a principle of selection was at work which insured an extraordinary uniformity of character and of purpose among the settlers.
To this uniformity of purpose, combined with complete h.o.m.ogeneity of race, is due the preponderance early acquired by New England in the history of the American people. In view of this, it is worth while to inquire what were the real aims of the settlers of New England. What was the common purpose which brought these men together in their resolve to create for themselves new homes in the wilderness?
This is a point concerning which there has been a great deal of popular misapprehension, and there has been no end of nonsense talked about it.
It has been customary first to a.s.sume that the Puritan migration was undertaken in the interests of religious liberty, and then to upbraid the Puritans for forgetting all about religious liberty as soon as people came among them who disagreed with their opinions. But this view of the case is not supported by history. It is quite true that the Puritans were chargeable with gross intolerance; but it is not true that in this they were guilty of inconsistency. The notion that they came to New England for the purpose of establishing religious liberty, in any sense in which we should understand such a phrase, is entirely incorrect. It is neither more nor less than a bit of popular legend. If we mean by the phrase "religious liberty" a state of things in which opposite or contradictory opinions on questions of religion shall exist side by side in the same community, and in which everybody shall decide for himself how far he will conform to the customary religious observances, nothing could have been further from their thoughts. There is nothing they would have regarded with more genuine abhorrence. If they could have been forewarned by a prophetic voice of the general freedom--or, as they would have termed it, license--of thought and behaviour which prevails in this country to-day, they would very likely have abandoned their enterprise in despair. [12] The philosophic student of history often has occasion to see how G.o.d is wiser than man. In other words, he is often brought to realize how fortunate it is that the leaders in great historic events cannot foresee the remote results of the labours to which they have zealously consecrated their lives. It is part of the irony of human destiny that the end we really accomplish by striving with might and main is apt to be something quite different from the end we dreamed of as we started on our arduous labour. So it was with the Puritan settlers of New England. The religious liberty that we enjoy to-day is largely the consequence of their work; but it is a consequence that was unforeseen, while the direct and conscious aim of their labours was something that has never been realized, and probably never will be. [Sidenote: The migration was not intended to promote what we call religious liberty]
The aim of Winthrop and his friends in coming to Ma.s.sachusetts was the construction of a theocratic state which should be to Christians, under the New Testament dispensation, all that the theocracy of Moses and Joshua and Samuel had been to the Jews in Old Testament days. They should be to all intents and purposes freed from the jurisdiction of the Stuart king, and so far as possible the text of the Holy Scriptures should be their guide both in weighty matters of general legislation and in the shaping of the smallest details of daily life. In such a scheme there was no room for religious liberty as we understand it. No doubt the text of the Scriptures may be interpreted in many ways, but among these men there was a substantial agreement as to the important points, and nothing could have been further from their thoughts than to found a colony which should afford a field for new experiments in the art of right living. The state they were to found was to consist of a united body of believers; citizenship itself was to be co-extensive with church-membership; and in such a state there was apparently no more room for heretics than there was in Rome or Madrid. This was the idea which drew Winthrop and his followers from England at a time when--as events were soon to show--they might have stayed there and defied persecution with less trouble than it cost them to cross the ocean and found a new state. [Sidenote: Theocratic ideal of the Puritans]
Such an ideal as this, considered by itself and apart from the concrete acts in which it was historically manifested, may seem like the merest fanaticism. But we cannot dismiss in this summary way a movement which has been at the source of so much that is great in American history: mere fanaticism has never produced such substantial results. Mere fanaticism is sure to aim at changing the const.i.tution of human society in some essential point, to undo the work of evolution, and offer in some indistinctly apprehended fashion to remodel human life. But in these respects the Puritans were intensely conservative. The impulse by which they were animated was a profoundly ethical impulse--the desire to lead G.o.dly lives, and to drive out sin from the community--the same ethical impulse which animates the glowing pages of Hebrew poets and prophets, and which has given to the history and literature of Israel their commanding influence in the world. The Greek, says Matthew Arnold, held that the perfection of happiness was to have one"s thoughts. .h.i.t the mark; but the Hebrew held that it was to serve the Lord day and night.
It was a touch of this inspiration that the Puritan caught from his earnest and reverent study of the sacred text, and that served to justify and intensify his yearning for a better life, and to give it the character of a grand and holy ideal. Yet with all this religious enthusiasm, the Puritan was in every fibre a practical Englishman with his full share of plain common-sense. He avoided the error of mediaeval anchorites and mystics in setting an exaggerated value upon otherworldliness. In his desire to win a crown of glory hereafter he did not forget that the present life has its simple duties, in the exact performance of which the welfare of society mainly consists. He likewise avoided the error of modern radicals who would remodel the fundamental inst.i.tutions of property and of the family, and thus disturb the very groundwork of our ethical ideals. The Puritan"s ethical conception of society was simply that which has grown up in the natural course of historical evolution, and which in its essential points is therefore intelligible to all men, and approved by the common-sense of men, however various may be the terminology--whether theological or scientific--in which it is expounded. For these reasons there was nothing essentially fanatical or impracticable in the Puritan scheme: in substance it was something that great bodies of men could at once put into practice, while its quaint and peculiar form was something that could be easily and naturally outgrown and set aside. [Sidenote: The impulse which sought to realize itself in the Puritan ideal was an ethical impulse]
Yet another point in which the Puritan scheme of a theocratic society was rational and not fanatical was its method of interpreting the Scriptures. That method was essentially rationalistic in two ways.
First, the Puritan laid no claim to the possession of any peculiar inspiration or divine light whereby he might be aided in ascertaining the meaning of the sacred text; but he used his reason just as he would in any matter of business, and he sought to convince, and expected to be convinced, by rational argument, and by nothing else. Secondly, it followed from this denial of any peculiar inspiration that there was no room in the Puritan commonwealth for anything like a priestly cla.s.s, and that every individual must hold his own opinions at his own personal risk. The consequences of this rationalistic spirit have been very far-reaching. In the conviction that religious opinion must be consonant with reason, and that religious truth must be brought home to each individual by rational argument, we may find one of the chief causes of that peculiarly conservative yet flexible intelligence which has enabled the Puritan countries to take the lead in the civilized world of today. Free discussion of theological questions, when conducted with earnestness and reverence, and within certain generally acknowledged limits, was never discountenanced in New England. On the contrary, there has never been a society in the world in which theological problems have been so seriously and persistently discussed as in New England in the colonial period. The long sermons of the clergymen were usually learned and elaborate arguments of doctrinal points, bristling with quotations from the Bible, or from famous books of controversial divinity, and in the long winter evenings the questions thus raised afforded the occasion for lively debate in every household. The clergy were, as a rule, men of learning, able to read both Old and New Testaments in the original languages, and familiar with the best that had been talked and written, among Protestants at least, on theological subjects. They were also, for the most part, men of lofty character, and they were held in high social esteem on account of their character and scholarship, as well as on account of their clerical position. But in spite of the reverence in which they were commonly held, it would have been a thing quite unheard of for one of these pastors to urge an opinion from the pulpit on the sole ground of his personal authority or his superior knowledge of Scriptural exegesis. The hearers, too, were quick to detect novelties or variations in doctrine; and while there was perhaps no more than the ordinary human unwillingness to listen to a new thought merely because of its newness, it was above all things needful that the orthodox soundness of every new suggestion should be thoroughly and severely tested. This intense interest in doctrinal theology was part and parcel of the whole theory of New England life; because, as I have said, it was taken for granted that each individual must hold his own opinions at his own personal risk in the world to come. Such perpetual discussion, conducted, under such a stimulus, afforded in itself no mean school of intellectual training. Viewed in relation to the subsequent mental activity of New England, it may be said to have occupied a position somewhat similar to that which the polemics of the medieval schoolmen occupied in relation to the European thought of the Renaissance, and of the age of Hobbes and Descartes. At the same time the Puritan theory of life lay at the bottom of the whole system of popular education in New England. According to that theory, it was absolutely essential that every one should be taught from early childhood how to read and understand the Bible. So much instruction as this was a.s.sumed to be a sacred duty which the community owed to every child born within its jurisdiction. In ignorance, the Puritans maintained, lay the princ.i.p.al strength of popery in religion as well as of despotism in politics; and so, to the best of their lights, they cultivated knowledge with might and main. But in this energetic diffusion of knowledge they were unwittingly preparing the complete and irreparable destruction of the theocratic ideal of society which they had sought to realize by crossing the ocean and settling in New England. This universal education, and this perpetual discussion of theological questions, were no more compatible with rigid adherence to the Calvinistic system than with submission to the absolute rule of Rome. The inevitable result was the liberal and enlightened Protestantism which is characteristic of the best American society at the present day, and which is continually growing more liberal as it grows more enlightened--a Protestantism which, in the natural course of development, is coming to realize the n.o.ble ideal of Roger Williams, but from the very thought of which such men as Winthrop and Cotton and Endicott would have shrunk with dismay.
[Sidenote: In interpreting Scripture, the Puritan appealed to his reason] [Sidenote: Value of theological discussion]
In this connection it is interesting to note the similarity between the experience of the Puritans in New England and in Scotland with respect to the influence of their religious theory of life upon general education. Nowhere has Puritanism, with its keen intelligence and its iron tenacity of purpose, played a greater part than it has played in the history of Scotland. And one need not fear contradiction in saying that no other people in modern times, in proportion to their numbers, have achieved so much in all departments of human activity as the people of Scotland have achieved. It would be superfluous to mention the preeminence of Scotland in the industrial arts since the days of James Watt, or to recount the glorious names in philosophy, in history, in poetry and romance, and in every department of science, which since the middle of the eighteenth century have made the country of Burns and Scott, of Hume and Adam Smith, of Black and Hunter and Hutton and Lyell, ill.u.s.trious for all future time. Now this period of magnificent intellectual fruition in Scotland was preceded by a period of Calvinistic orthodoxy quite as rigorous as that of New England. The ministers of the Scotch Kirk in the seventeenth century cherished a theocratic ideal of society not unlike that which the colonists of New England aimed at realizing. There was the same austerity, the same intolerance, the same narrowness of interests, in Scotland that there was in New England. Mr. Buckle, in the book which thirty years ago seemed so great and stimulating, gave us a graphic picture of this state of society, and the only thing which he could find to say about it, as the result of his elaborate survey, was that the spirit of the Scotch Kirk was as thoroughly hostile to human progress as the spirit of the Spanish Inquisition! If this were really so, it would be difficult indeed to account for the period of brilliant mental activity which immediately followed. But in reality the Puritan theory of life led to general education in Scotland as it did in New England, and for precisely the same reasons, while the effects of theological discussion in breaking down the old Calvinistic exclusiveness have been ill.u.s.trated in the history of Edinburgh as well as in the history of Boston.
[Sidenote: Comparison with the case of Scotland]
It is well for us to bear in mind the foregoing considerations as we deal with the history of the short-lived New England Confederacy. The story is full of instances of an intolerant and domineering spirit, especially on the part of Ma.s.sachusetts, and now and then this spirit breaks forth in ugly acts of persecution. In considering these facts, it is well to remember that we are observing the workings of a system which contained within itself a curative principle; and it is further interesting to observe how political circ.u.mstances contributed to modify the Puritan ideal, gradually breaking down the old theocratic exclusiveness and strengthening the spirit of religious liberty.