A popular history of the United States of America, Vol. 1 (of 2)

On the 5th of February, 1631, the very ship which came like the herald of God’s mercy to the famishing people, changing their solemn fast and humiliation into a day of thanksgiving, brought with its other freight “a young minister, godly and zealous, having precious gifts,” a better freight even than bread to the famishing, but which at the same time might be regarded as its type. This was Roger Williams, one of the noblest spirits of an age which abounded in great men.

Roger Williams possessed one of those rarely-gifted minds which perceives truth at a glance. Looking beyond the advancement of his age, he stood forth as the firm advocate and prophet of that diviner knowledge which is compassed by Christianity, but which the highest Christian professors, except in very rare instances, comprehend only piecemeal.

Like the rest of his suffering brethren, Roger Williams was a Puritan, and fled to America to escape persecution. Unlike them, however, amid the afflictions of persecution he had attained to a profound knowledge, either through the grasp of a great intellect, or the single-mindedness of a child-like spirit, both of which were portions of his character. He saw that the office of civil magistrate was to restrain crime, not to control opinion; to punish guilt, not to violate the freedom of the human soul.

Arrived in Massachusetts, he found the churches there not free as the gospel would make them; and great was the excitement produced by the doctrines which he promulgated—“the ill-egg of toleration,” as it was now termed. Nevertheless the people of Salem invited him to become their minister, at which the court of Boston “marvelled,” and before long his friends at Salem were required to give him up. He then withdrew to Plymouth, whence after two years he was recalled to Salem by those who could never forget his mild virtues and his great doctrines.

Controversy on controversy succeeded; the magistrates asserted their laws of intolerance, insisted on the presence of every man at public worship, in the very spirit of that intolerant and legislative religion which had driven them from their native land. Williams stood forth as the unflinching champion of religious liberty, of the sanctity of opinion and the freedom of the human mind, and as the bold assailant of soul-oppression, “the removal of which yoke,” said he, “will prove an act of righteousness to the enslaved nations.” Besides these doctrines, he so steadfastly maintained the original right of the Indians to their land, that he even questioned the validity of any grant of their territory from an English monarch to his subjects.

The teachings of this apostle of liberty were considered subversive of all good government; the ministers in a body declared “any one worthy of banishment” who should assert, as Williams had done, that magistrates ought not to interfere even to stop a church from heresy, or that an English royal grant was wanting in moral validity. A committee of divines was sent to Salem “to deal with him and the church in a church way,” and a tract of land to which the people of Salem laid claim was withheld from them as a punishment. Williams, seeing his townspeople thus suffering on his account, wrote a letter to all the churches of which these magistrates were members, asking that they might be admonished of their injustice. This was the finishing stroke to his offending. The general court proceeded to disfranchise Salem until apology should be made for the letter. All now yielded to the storm; not a voice in Salem was raised in his behalf; even his wife reproached him as an evil-doer. But Christ, his great master, had been deserted by all, even by the beloved disciple. Williams could not forget this trial of his prototype; and declared to the court before which he was arraigned that “he was ready to be bound and banished, nay, even to die in New England, rather than renounce the opinions which had dawned upon him in the clearness of light.”

The court, influenced by Cotton, pronounced against him the sentence of exile, but as winter was at hand, he was allowed to remain till spring. This reprieve gave time for the affection of his friends to revive; throngs collected to hear the beloved pastor so soon to be removed from them. Twofold value seemed now to attach to his opinions; his views began to spread; his enemies were alarmed; and it was resolved at once to remove him on board a pinnace and ship him off to England. But he was already gone. It was now the depth of winter; for fourteen weeks, he says, he was sorely tossed in a bitter season, not knowing what bread or bed meant; often in a stormy night he had neither food, fire, nor company, nor better lodging than a hollow tree. But God was with him through all, and cared for him; he was fed in the wilderness as the prophet had been of old. The Indians were his friends; already while residing at Plymouth he had become acquainted with their principal sachems, and studied their language until he was able to converse with them freely. Their simple hearts had opened to his apostolic virtues; the cruel chiefs of the forest declared that they loved him as their son.

And now, his flight being in the winter, he came to the Indians. Alone, and on foot, he arrived at Seekonk on the Pawtucket river, and was kindly received by Massasoit, the sachem. Seekonk lay, however, within the Plymouth grant, and this was not to be his abiding place. God, rather than man, willed not that he should remain here. In a short time he received a letter from Winslow, the governor of Plymouth, an excellent man, who was secretly his friend, “lovingly advising him, since he was fallen into the edge of their bounds, to remove to the other side of the water, where the country would be all free before him.”

Williams received this friendly advice as the council of God, and directed his course to Narragansett Bay. In the month of June, he, and five of his friends who had followed him into exile, landed from a frail Indian canoe on a spot near the mouth of the Moshassuck river. Tradition has hallowed the spot as being near a spring of clear water, which remains to this day. Here he took up his abode, calling the place Providence, in grateful commemoration of God’s merciful providence to him in his distress. He had landed within the territory of the Narragansett Indians, the sachems of whom were the aged Canonicus and his nephew, the bold Miantonomoh, who received him kindly and granted him a settlement on their borders. Here for two years he lived, labouring not alone as a preacher of the gospel, though his daily life was a gospel sermon, but, as he himself says, “day and night, at home and abroad, on the land and the water, at the hoe and the oar for bread.” During this time he was joined by many others, and probably, also, by his wife and family. In March, 1638, he received a free gift of territory from the associate chiefs “in consideration,” say they, “of the many kindnesses and services he hath continually done for us, we do freely give unto him all that land” which is then primitively indicated by the boundary of rivers and great hills, “with its grass and meadows and fresh waters.”

The exile Williams, like Joseph of old, was now a prince among his brethren, but instead of assuming in his own person lordship and dominion, this simple-minded follower of Christ divided the land into twelve parts, one of which he gave to each of the friends who were with him, reserving for himself only an equal portion with them, his allotment, containing two fields, which he had on his first coming purchased from the Indians and planted with his own hands; one of which fields he called “What-cheer,” which being words learned from the English, was the first Indian salutation he received in the land of his exile; and the other, “Saxifrax Hill.” He had not come thither to seek his own aggrandisement, but, as he says, “his soul’s desire was to do the nation good;” and now that God had given him an opportunity to test and establish his principles, he firmly commenced his work, determining to “found a commonwealth, where a pure democracy should prevail, and the magistrate should rule only in civil things.” He desired, as he himself says, that it might be a shelter for persons distressed for conscience; and so it in truth became.

From whatever side the character of Roger Williams is viewed, it is equally admirable; suffering from persecution, he himself never was a persecutor, and no sentiment of revenge found a place in his heart; like the Great Master, whose true disciple he was, he pitied and forgave his enemies, and sought only to do them good: so much so, indeed, that we shall presently find him endangering his own life to insure their safety. “Many hearts,” it is related, “seeing the steadfast nobility of his conduct, were touched with relentings.” Winslow, who had always been his secret friend, visited him on one occasion, and being affected by the poverty which surrounded him, left a piece of gold for the supply of himself and family; even his enemies confessed “that he had the root of the matter in him;” and his friends declare him to have been “one of the most disinterested of men, a most pious and heavenly-minded soul.”

Thus was established the province of Rhode Island, which was confirmed by free charter, granted by the parliament, in 1651, to Roger Williams and his twelve friends under the title of “Providence Plantation, in the Narragansett Bay in New England.” A still more liberal charter was granted to them by Charles II., which empowered them to “rule themselves, and such as should inhabit within their bounds, by such a form of civil government as by the voluntary agreement of the greater number should be found most serviceable, and to make suitable and agreeable to the laws of England so far as the nation and constitution of the place would admit.” In a letter from Roger Williams to Captain John Mason we read, “our grant is crowned with the king’s extraordinary favour to this colony, as being a banished one, in which his majesty declared himself that he would experiment whether civil government could consist with such liberty of conscience. This, his majesty’s grant, startled his majesty’s high officers of state who were to view it, in course, before the sealing, but fearing the lion’s roaring, they crouched against their wills in obedience to his majesty’s pleasure.

“Some of yours, as I lately heard,” continues he, “told tales to the Archbishop of Canterbury, that we are a profane people, and do not keep the Sabbath, but some do plough, etc. But first you told him not how we suffer freely all other persuasions, yea the Common Prayer, which you yourselves will not suffer.”

But leaving Roger Williams established now at the head of a province, we will return to the year after his banishment, when, as he says, “the Lord drew the bow of the Pequod warriors against the country.” The English had at this time extended themselves into Connecticut, which was inhabited by Pequods, a fierce tribe which could muster at least 700 warriors. In 1634, the Pequods murdered the crew of a small trading vessel on the Connecticut river, but pleading self-defence as their excuse, and making submission, the government of Massachusetts passed over the offence, and a league of amity was formed between them, the Pequods being at the same time reconciled with their old enemies, the Narragansetts. The Pequods, however, were no sooner relieved from fear of the Narragansetts, than, naturally false and treacherous, they resolved to attack the English, and accordingly murdered a man with horrible circumstances of cruelty. This outrage and breach of faith were only inadequately punished, and the Pequods, emboldened by what seemed the feebleness of the English, determined on forming an alliance with the Narragansetts and Mohegans for the complete extermination of the English. This became known to Roger Williams, then a banished man among the Narragansetts, and with a noble Christian spirit he informed his persecutors of the dangers which impended. A universal terror prevailed, and there was none to help them but Roger Williams. The governor and council of Boston wrote beseeching him to use his speediest endeavours with his friends, the Mohegans and Narragansetts, to prevent their league of destruction with the bloody Pequods. “And the Lord,” says he, “helped me to put my life into my hands;” and scarcely acquainting his wife, he embarked, all alone, in a poor canoe, and through a violent storm reached the dwelling of the sachem. Here he found the Pequod ambassadors reeking as it seemed with blood; and for three days and three nights the tardy business of mediation kept him among them whose bloody knives he expected each night at his own throat. The Narragansetts and Mohegans wavered, but God was with the messenger of peace, and “wondrously preserved and helped him.” The terrible league was broken, and the Narragansetts and Mohegans were induced by Williams to become allies of the English. A braver, nobler action never was performed. The banished man had heaped coals of fire on the heads of his persecutors. After this generous act of interference on their behalf, some of the leading men of Massachusetts wished that, at least, the sentence of banishment against him should be revoked; but the fear of his principles and his influence overcame the sense of gratitude, and he remained a banished man.

The same year that Roger Williams was expelled from Massachusetts, Anne Hutchinson, a woman of deep religious experience and great powers of mind, arrived with her husband and family from England. Religious discussion was at this time one of the occupations of the Puritans of Boston; twice, or oftener, in the week, they met to canvass the sermons of the preceding Sabbath, in order that the religious life might be kept active. Men, however, were only admitted on these occasions, and this, to the masculine intellect and large spirit of Anne Hutchinson, seemed like doing the divine work only by halves. She therefore opened similar meetings in her own house, to which her own sex were invited. Twice in the week were these meetings held, and soon attracted great numbers of the principal women of the place. Henry Vane, the once popular governor, who had, by this time, been discovered to hold heretical opinions, favoured her greatly; her views were supported by her brother-in-law, John Wheelwright, a highly respected and learned minister, and even by the orthodox Cotton. Nevertheless, it was soon noised abroad that this eloquent and able woman was promulgating all kinds of new and unthought-of heresies. Her views, it was said, threatened destruction to church and state. The utmost excitement prevailed; sermons were preached, public discussions were held, and finally a synod was convened, which ended by banishing her and her friends. Vane, in the meantime, had returned to England, and Cotton, afraid of the storm, attached himself to the persecuting party.

Anne Hutchinson’s opinions were Antinomian; among other heretical opinions which are charged upon her by Winthrop, are these—that the Sabbath is but as other days, and that there is no resurrection of the body: and as an instance of her hardened state, he records, that “after she was excommunicated, her spirit, which seemed before to be somewhat dejected, revived, and she gloried in her sufferings, saying, ‘that they were the greatest happiness next to Christ that ever befell her.’” Noble spirit this of the true martyr, which the persecutor never understands.

As in Roger Williams’s case, the sentence of banishment was pronounced on her at the commencement of winter, and with a faint sentiment of mercy, she was allowed to remain close prisoner in a private house till the inclement season should be over. In the meantime, her husband and others of her party left Boston to seek for a new place of settlement, and finding one to their mind on the remote borders of the Plymouth grant, applied for it; but, says Winthrop, “the magistrates knowing their spirit, gave them a denial.”

Before the month of January was over, a warrant was sent to Anne Hutchinson, to order her departure. In the meantime, those of her family and friends who had set out to the south, intending to plant themselves in Delaware Bay, had been welcomed on their journey by Roger Williams, who induced them to remain in his neighbourhood; and by his influence, Miantonomoh conferred on them the beautiful island of Aquetneck, called by them, from an imagined resemblance to Rhodes, Rhode Island, in Narragansett Bay, and in the immediate neighbourhood of the Providence settlement. Here, says Winthrop, “Anne Hutchinson broached new heresies every year.”

The enlightened historian of the present day,^[2] reviewing the past in the calm spirit of philosophy and Christianity, speaks thus: “The spirit of the institutions established by this band of voluntary exiles—for the number was considerable which followed this noble woman into banishment—on the soil which they owed to the benevolence of the native, was derived from natural justice: by a social compact, signed by all, the government was based on the general consent; the forms of administration were borrowed from the Jews. Coddington was elected judge, and three elders were chosen assistants. The colony rested on the principle of intellectual liberty. The settlement prospered, and in 1641 its constitution was framed. It was ordained therefore by the whole body of freemen, ‘that the government be a democracy, or popular government, viz., It is in the power of the body of freemen orderly assembled, or the major part of them, to make or constitute just laws by which they will be regulated, and to depute from among themselves such ministers as will see them faithfully executed between man and man.’ It was further ordained that none be accounted a delinquent for doctrine. The little community was held together by affection and freedom of opinion. The seal of the state was a sheaf of arrows, and the motto Amor Vincit Omnia. The same year a patent was obtained from England through their friend, the now powerful Henry Vane.”

John Wheelwright, with other of Anne Hutchinson’s disciples, went to the north, where he purchased, in the valley of the Piscataqua, a tract of land from a celebrated Indian sorcerer, the chief of the Pennicook Indians, and founded the town of Exeter.

Of the remarkable woman, the head of this intellectual movement, which still survives in America, we have but little to relate, and that is sad as the last act of a tragedy. Leaving the state from which she was thrust out, she travelled by land through the wilderness to Providence, and thence joined her family and friends on their island settlement. Banishment had not, however, destroyed her influence in Massachusetts; she continued to draw after her such numbers that the wise men of Massachusetts suspected her of witchcraft. Her son and her son-in-law, both preachers, who had been in Barbadoes, returning thence to Boston, were heavily fined and imprisoned for preaching. Anne Hutchinson was now a widow, and as not even Rhode Island seemed a refuge from persecution, she and her family, the following year, removed still further south, to the borders of the Dutch settlements. Unfortunately, the Indians were at that time in a state of exasperation against the Dutch, and not discriminating between nations, set fire to the house of Anne Hutchinson, and, sorrowful to relate, she and all her family, with the exception of one child, sixteen persons in number, perished at midnight either by the flames or the cruel weapons of the Indians.