The industrial system inaugurated at Plymouth was, like that adopted for Jamestown, pure communism. The governor and assistants organized the settlers into a working band, all produce going into a common stock, from which the wants of the people were first supplied: the surplus to be the profit of the corporation. As in the case of Jamestown, the London partners were not pleased with the results of the speculation, and in harshly expressing their dissatisfaction soon fell into a wordy dispute with the colonists.
Thirty-five new settlers came out in the autumn of 1622, and thereafter nearly every year brought increase in the number; but the partners failed to ship supplies with the new-comers, deeming it proper that the colony should be self-supporting; and this neglect still further strained existing relations.
In 1624 the communal system was partially abandoned, each freeman being allowed one acre as a permanent holding. This land was to be as close to the town as possible; for the climatic conditions, the necessity for protection against Indians, and the desire for ease of assemblage at worship, made it important that the settlement should be compact,—in sharp distinction to the scattered river-side plantations of the South. In 1627 each household was granted twenty acres as a private allotment; but for many years there existed as well a system of common tillage and pasturage similar to that with which the colonists were familiar in the English villages. About the same time (1627) the colonists purchased the interest of their London partners for eighteen hundred pounds, and became wholly independent of dictation from England.
Up to this time many of the new colonists were sent or selected by the London shareholders, and were not always congenial to the Pilgrims. It now rested with them to invite whom they might; and as a result many of their faith from England were brought over. In 1643 there were three thousand inhabitants in the eight distinct towns comprising Plymouth colony; there were also several independent trading and fishing stations along the coast established under the auspices of the Plymouth Company. The colony was beyond the danger of abandonment.
The early history of Plymouth is a story full of painful details of suffering. It was a long time before the people became inured to the rigorous climate; the tedious winters were often seasons of much hardship and privation. The life they led was toilsome, but they bore up under it bravely.
The original colonists were kind and considerate to the aborigines, and for many years were the firm friends and allies of Massasoit, head chief of the Pokanokets, whose lands they had occupied. Whites were not always as comfortable neighbors as the savages. Thomas Weston, one of the London partners, sent out (1622) an independent colony of seventy men to Wessaugusset, about twenty-five miles north of Plymouth. They were an idle, riotous set, and after making serious trouble with the Indians, a year or two later returned to England. |Relations with white neighbors.| In 1623, Robert Gorges, son of Ferdinando, was appointed governor-general of the country by the Council for New England, and in person attempted to form a colony upon land patented to him "on the northeast side of Massachusetts Bay," but soon abandoned his enterprise and returned home. In 1625, Captain Wollaston appeared with a number of indented white servants and started a colony on the site of the Quincy of to-day. But this form of slave labor not being suited to the democratic conditions of New England life, Wollaston took his servants to the more congenial climate of Virginia, and his plant was taken possession of by his partner, Thomas Morton, who styled the settlement Merrymount. Morton was much disliked by the Puritans, who were scandalized at his free-and-easy habits, regarded the apparently innocent sports in which he encouraged his people as "beastly practices," and charged him with the really serious offence of selling rum and firearms to the natives. The Plymouth militia dispersed the merrymakers and sent Morton to England (1628).
Several Church of England men, representatives of Robert Gorges,—who had a patent for a strip of territory ten miles coastwise and thirty miles inland,—had come out in 1623, among them William Blackstone, settling on Shawmut peninsula, now Boston, Thomas Walford at Charlestown, and Samuel Maverick at Chelsea. Blackstone afterwards vacated his peninsula in favor of the Puritans of Charlestown. Maverick, in his palisaded fort, was a man of importance, and afterwards a royal commissioner to the colonies. There was also a small trading station at the mouth of the Piscataqua, and another at Nantasket, with here and there an individual plantation. With most of these the Plymouth people had business relations, but little else in common.
Plymouth was at first governed in primary assembly with a governor and assistants elected by popular vote. As the colony grew and new towns were organized by compact bodies of people detaching themselves from the parent settlement, it became inconvenient for all of the people frequently to assemble in Plymouth. The representative system was adopted in 1638, each township sending two delegates to an administrative body called the General Court, in which the governor and assistants also sat. It was some years later before the General Court was given law-making powers, this privilege being retained by the whole body of freemen. For sixteen years the laws of England were in vogue, but in 1636 a code of simple regulations was adopted, more especially suited to the community. The assistants, with the aid of the jury, tried cases as well as aided the governor in the conduct of public affairs. Purely local matters were managed by primary assemblies in the several towns, and petty cases were tried by town magistrates.
Many features of American government and character may be readily traced to the influence of Plymouth. It was the first permanent colony in New England; it had become well established before another was planted, and therefore served in some sense as a model for its successors. It was a community of Independents acting without a charter, working out their own career practically free from royal supervision or veto, and with an elective governor and council. The Plymouth people were closely knit: their struggle for existence had been hard, and it had taught them the value of solidarity; they set the example of a compact religious brotherhood; they were good traders, cultivated peace with the Indian tribes, and advanced their towns only so fast as they needed room for growth and could hold and cultivate the land. In many respects Plymouth may be regarded as a modern American State in embryo.
Three several times (1618, 1676-77, and 1690-91) the colony endeavored, as a measure of self-defence, to obtain a charter from the Crown; but failed in each application,—at first through the influence of the prelates, and afterwards because of the jealousy of its neighbors. Finally, in 1691, Plymouth was incorporated with Massachusetts and lost its identity.
51. Massachusetts founded (1630).
The Plymouth Company did business in a rather haphazard Way. Land-grants were freely made to all manner of speculators, many of them members of the corporation, with little or no regard to the geography of New England. These grants were dealt out to third parties, often with a lordly indifference to previous patents. The result was that holdings frequently overlapped each other, giving rise to boundary quarrels which lasted through several generations of claimants.
In 1623, an association of merchants in Dorchester, England, sent out a party to form a colony near the mouth of the Kennebec, where they had fishing interests. The master, however, landed his men at Cape Ann, in Massachusetts Bay, the site of the present Gloucester. Roger Conant, who, withdrawing from Plymouth "out of dislike of their principles of rigid separation," had made an independent settlement at Cape Ann, was appointed local manager for the Dorchester merchants. In 1626 the merchants abandoned their colony as unprofitable, most of the settlers returning to England; and Conant led those remaining to Salem, then called Naumkeag.
John White, a conforming Puritan rector at Dorchester, determined to make this settlement of Dorchester men a success. To the settlers at Naumkeag he sent urgent advice to stay, while at home he set on foot a movement which resulted in a definite scheme of colonization. The arbitrary policy of Charles I. towards dissenters had greatly alarmed the Puritans, and White's plan of "raising a bulwark against the kingdom of Antichrist" in America had the support of many wealthy and influential men.
In 1628, six persons, heading the movement, obtained from the Plymouth Company a patent for a strip about sixty miles wide along the coast,—from three miles south of Charles River to three miles north of the Merrimack, and westward to the Pacific Ocean, which in those days was thought to be not much farther away than the river discovered by Hendrik Hudson in 1609. This patent conflicted with grants already issued (1622 and 1623) to Sir Ferdinando Gorges, his son Robert, and John Mason, of whom we shall hear later on.
In September, 1628, John Endicott, gentleman, one of the patentees, arrived at Salem with sixty persons, to reinforce the colony already there, and supersede Conant. The following spring, the patentees being organized as a trading company, the king granted them a charter styling the corporation the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England; their only relationship to the Plymouth Company was now that of purchasers of a tract of the latter's land.
Under this trading charter the whole body of freemen, or members of the company, was to elect annually a governor, a deputy-governor, and eighteen assistants, who were to meet monthly to perform such public duties as might be imposed upon them by the quarterly meeting of the company, or "Quarter Court." There was also to be an annual meeting, known as "General Court," or "Court of Elections." Laws were to be adopted by the general assembly of "freemen,"—that is, of stockholders,—not contrary to the established laws of England. Endicott was continued as governor of the colony, which was at once recruited by three hundred and eighty men and women of the better grade of colonizing material.
Although the company was chartered as a trading corporation, its principal object was not gain, but to found a religious commonwealth. It was composed of men of rare ability and tact, as well as of consummate courage. Among them were members of parliament, diplomats, state officials, and some of the brightest and most liberal-minded clergymen in England. The church which they set up in Salem was not at first avowedly Separatist, like that of Plymouth; it was simply a purified English church, with a system of faith and discipline such as they had long insisted upon in the ranks of the mother-church. But under the circumstances this purified church was as independent in its character as the professedly Separatist congregations of Plymouth; and it was not long, as one step led to another, and persecution hurried them on, before the Massachusetts Puritans were, like their brethren in England, full-fledged Independents.
Soon there was taken the most important step of all. The Massachusetts company, in the desire for still greater independence, removed its seat of government to the colony, thus boldly transforming itself, without legal sanction, from an English trading company into an American colonial government. In April, 1630, eleven vessels went out to Massachusetts Bay, with a large company of English reformers; and during the year there crossed over to America not less than a thousand English men and women who had found the arbitrary rule of Charles quite unbearable. |Character of the founders.| John Winthrop, a wealthy Suffolk gentleman forty-two years of age, and one of the strongest and most lovable characters in American history, was the first governor under the new arrangement. Thomas Dudley, the deputy, was a stern and uncompromising Puritan, cold and narrow-minded. Francis Higginson, the first teacher, who had come over with Endicott, but died in 1630, was a Cambridge alumnus who had lost his church in Leicestershire because of nonconformity. Skelton, the pastor, was also a Cambridge man.
52. Government of Massachusetts (1630-1634).
There were now too many people assembled at the port of Salem for the supply of food, and sickness and hunger prevailed to such an alarming degree that many died in consequence. It became necessary to divide, and independent congregations were established, on the Salem model, at Charlestown, Cambridge, Watertown, Roxbury, and later at Boston, which soon became the capital of the colony (September, 1630). Morton, who had returned to Merrymount, was again driven from the country; Sir Christopher Gardiner, a disturbing element among the settlers, was obliged to withdraw to the Piscataqua: the Puritans now held Massachusetts Bay, and brooked no rival claimants. In establishing this commonwealth in America, the Puritan founders were determined to have things their own way.
It was early decided by the General Court (1631) that none but church members should be admitted as freemen. Four times a year the freemen were to meet in quarter court, and with them the governor, his deputy, and the assistants. But, as in Plymouth, it was found after a time that the towns and the freemen had so multiplied that this primary assemblage became inconvenient. In 1630 the assistants were given the power to elect the governor and deputy governor, and also to make laws. Then it came about that in certain cases the control of the colony was in the hands of only five of the assistants, which made the government almost oligarchical. The cap-sheaf was applied when (1631) it was ordered that the assistants were to hold office so long as the freemen did not remove them.
That same year, however, came a vigorous protest against this autocratic rule. The Watertown freemen declined to pay a tax of £60, levied by the assistants for fortifications built at Cambridge. It was argued that a people who submitted to taxation without representation were in danger of "bringing themselves and posterity into bondage." The next General Court accepted this plea as valid, and a House of Representatives was inaugurated on the plan of the English Commons, each town sending two deputies, and the governor and assistants sitting as members.
For a time the freemen resumed the right of election of governor and deputy-governor, but soon handed this duty over to the representatives. Voting by ballot was introduced in 1634, and the freemen, who had become annoyed at threats from England of interference with their charter, asserted their independence of the official class by rebuking the assistants, turning Winthrop out of office, electing Dudley as governor, making new rules for the election of deputies, providing for an oath of allegiance to the colony, and placing their representative system on an enduring foundation. Ten years later (1644), as the result of a quarrel between the assistants and the deputies, growing out of a petty civil suit over a lost pig, the colonial parliament became bicameral, the assistants forming one house, and the deputies the other.
There had been a healthy renewal of immigration to Massachusetts in 1633 because of increased harshness towards Puritans in England, and a number of strong men,—such as Sir Henry Vane and Hugh Peter,—destined to play no inconsiderable part in the history of America and England, were among the new arrivals. There were other Puritans higher in the social scale who would have liked to come,—such as Lord Say and Sele, and Lord Brook; but their proposition (1636) that an hereditary order of nobility be established in the province, did not meet with popular favor; a desire to be free from such distinctions was one of the causes which had impelled thousands to flee to America. A little later (1638) the freemen put down another attempt at aristocratic rule,—a movement looking to the establishment of a permanent council, whose members were to hold for life or until removed for cause.
53. Internal Dissensions in Massachusetts (1634-1637).
In 1634 the colony, now firmly planted with free English institutions in full force, contained about four thousand inhabitants, resident in sixteen towns. The old log-houses of the first settlers were gradually giving way to commodious frame structures with gambrel roofs and generous gables. The fields were being fenced, roads laid out between the towns, and watercourses bridged; and the farms were beginning to take on an air of prosperity. Goats, cattle, and swine abounded. Adventurous trading skippers, often in home-made boats, had cautiously worked their way through Long Island Sound as far as the Dutch settlements at New York, and up the coast to the Piscataqua, doing a small business by barter. Salt fish, furs, and lumber were exported to England, the vessels bringing back manufactured articles; for as yet the industries of New England were few and crude.
The Massachusetts colonists were for the most part middle-class Englishmen, and education was general among them. Many were graduates of Cambridge, and the clergymen had, as conscientious Reformers seeing no hope of improvement in the English Church, abandoned comfortable livings at home to take charge of rude Independent meeting-houses in America. In 1636, an appropriation of £400—a very large sum, considering the means of the province—was made by the General Court to found a college at Cambridge, that "the light of learning might not go out, nor the study of God's Word perish." Two years later (1638) the Rev. John Harvard, a graduate of Emmanuel College, who had come out in 1637, dying, left his library and a legacy of £800 to the new institution of learning, "towards the erecting of a college;" and the Court decreed that it should bear his name. For two centuries the college continued to receive grants from the commonwealth.
While the colonists were thus bravely making progress in laying the foundations of liberal institutions in America, there were troubles brewing both at home and abroad. The uncongenial spirits whom they had driven from Massachusetts Bay made complaints in England of the ill-treatment they had received, and carried to Archbishop Laud and other members of the Privy Council reports that the Puritans were setting up in America a practically independent state and church. As an immediate consequence, emigrants, early in 1634, were not permitted to go to New England without taking the royal oath of allegiance and promising to conform to the Book of Common Prayer.
In April a royal commission of twelve persons was appointed, ostensibly to take charge of all the American colonies, secure conformity, and even to revoke charters; but it was well understood that Massachusetts was especially aimed at. The Massachusetts people were speedily ordered to lay their charter before the Privy Council. Their answer, however, was withheld, pending prayerful consideration. Meanwhile Dorchester, Charlestown, and Castle Island were fortified; a military commission was set to work to collect and store arms; militiamen were drilled; arrangements were made on Beacon Hill, in Boston, for signalling the inhabitants of the interior in case of an attack; the people were ordered on pain of death, in the event of war, to obey the military authorities, and no longer to swear allegiance to the Crown, but to the colony of Massachusetts.
But the men of the colony were politic as well as pugnacious, and despatched Winslow to England to make peace with the authorities. While he was in London, in February, 1635, the Plymouth Company surrendered its charter to the king, with the condition that the latter should annul all existing titles in New England, and partition the country in severalty among the members of the Plymouth council. In accordance with this arrangement, a writ of quo warranto was issued against the Massachusetts charter, it was declared null and void, and Gorges was authorized to be viceregal governor of New England.
Winslow was imprisoned in England for four months for having broken the ecclesiastical law in celebrating marriages in the Plymouth colony, but upon his release did good diplomatic work and neutralized much of the opposition. Meanwhile, another and stricter order was sent out to the Massachusetts Company to surrender its charter. This again was met by silence and renewed military preparations. English Puritans were at this time attempting to leave for America in great numbers, on account of acts of royal tyranny. The difficulty with the Scotch Church ensued, and by 1640 the Long Parliament was in session. In the excitement occasioned by the Puritan rising in the mother-land, the day of punishment for Massachusetts was postponed.
54. Religious Troubles in Massachusetts (1636-1638).
The opposition at home, occasioned by differences in religious belief, was not, however, so easily thrust aside. Roger Williams, an able and learned, but bigoted young Welshman, a graduate from Pembroke College, Cambridge, came out to Plymouth in 1631. His tongue was too bold to suit the English ecclesiastical authorities, and to gain peace he had been obliged to depart for the colonies. In 1633 he went to Salem, where he became pastor of the church. Williams was fond of abstruse metaphysical discussion, and he was an extremist in thought, speech, and action; but while his arguments were phrased in such manner as often to make it difficult for us to understand him, the views he held were in the main what we style modern. He opposed the union of church and state, such as obtained in Massachusetts, where political power was exercised only by members of the congregation; he was opposed to enforced attendance on church, and would have done away with all contributions for religious purposes which were not purely voluntary. Such doctrines were, however, held to be dangerous to the commonwealth; and indeed expression of them would not at that time have been permitted in England nor in many parts of Continental Europe. But this was not all. Williams in a pamphlet pronounced it as his solemn judgment that the king was an intruder, and had no right to grant American lands to the colonists; that honest patents could only be procured from the Indians by purchase; and that all existing titles were therefore invalid. This was deemed downright treason, which he was compelled by the magistrates to recant. At Salem, Endicott, who was one of his disciples, became so heated under his pastor's teachings that, in token of his hatred of the symbols of Rome, he cut the cross of St. George from the English ensign. The General Court, greatly alarmed lest these proceedings should anger the king, reprimanded Endicott; and, because of his "divers new and dangerous opinions," ordered Williams (January, 1636) to return to England. The latter escaped, and passed the winter in missionary service among the Indians. In the spring, privately aided by the lenient Winthrop, the troublesome agitator passed south, with five of his followers, to Narragansett Bay, and there established Providence Plantation.
Mrs. Anne Hutchinson arrived in Boston from England in the autumn of 1634. She was a woman of brilliant parts, but impetuous and indiscreet, and by instinct an agitator. Her religious views are described by Winthrop as containing "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." This is cloudy to a modern layman. The theory is styled Antinomian by its enemies, and was substantially as follows: Any person in a "state of grace" or "justification" is at the same time "sanctified;" since he is both justified and sanctified, the person of the Holy Ghost dwells in his heart, and his acts cannot in the nature of things partake of sin: therefore he need have no great concern about the outward aspect of his works. This doctrine was contrary to that entertained by the Puritans, who believed that a person must be first justified by faith, and then sanctified by works. They thought the Antinomian dogma open to pernicious interpretation, and not conducive to the welfare of society. Its advocacy threw Boston into a great ferment.
Mrs. Hutchinson soon had a large following, among whom were Wheelwright, John Cotton, and Thomas Hooker, of the ministers; while among laymen who were well inclined towards her doctrine was the younger Henry Vane, then governor of the colony, who was in later years to become prominent as one of the leaders in the English Commonwealth. In the conditions then existing in Massachusetts Mrs. Hutchinson's teachings were considered dangerous to the State; they opposed the authority of the ecclesiastical rulers, and this tended to breed civil dissension. One of her supporters, Greensmith, was fined £40 by the General Court (March, 1637) for publicly declaring that all the preachers except Cotton, Wheelwright, and Thomas Hooker taught a covenant of works instead of a covenant of grace, the difference between which, the layman Winthrop said, "no man could tell, except some few who knew the bottom of the matter." At the same time Wheelwright was found guilty of sedition because in a sermon he had counselled his hearers to fight for their liberties, but with weapons spiritual, not carnal. When the Boston church supported their minister, the Court responded by voting to hold its next meeting at Newtown (Cambridge), where it might deliberate amid quieter surroundings than at Boston.
When the Court of Election met at Newtown (May, 1637), Vane and his friends were, in the course of a tumultuous session, dropped out of the government, Winthrop was again chosen governor, and the uncompromising heretic-hater Dudley deputy-governor. Vane departed for England in disgust, never to return. For a time it seemed as if peace had come under the politic Winthrop, and the Hutchinsonians gave evidences of a desire to compromise. In a few months, however, the Court re-opened the whole controversy by legislating against all new-comers who were tainted with heresy. The old warfare broke out again. The charges of sedition against Wheelwright were renewed, he was banished, and fled, with a few adherents, to the Piscataqua.
Mrs. Hutchinson was placed on trial (November, 1637) and commanded to leave the colony, which she did in March following, and went to Rhode Island. Seventy-six of her followers were disarmed, some were disfranchised, others fined, and still others "desired and obtained license to remove themselves and their families out of the jurisdiction." Quiet once more prevailed. Wheelwright recanted after a time, and was permitted to resume his habitation in Boston; and many others of the disaffected were finally restored to citizenship.
The little commonwealth had been shaken to its foundations by a controversy which to-day—-when religion and politics are separated, to the advantage of both—would be considered of small moment even in one of our rural villages; but the State and the Church were one in the colony of Massachusetts, and ecclesiastical contumacy was political contumacy as well. Under such conditions there could safely be neither liberty of opinion nor of speech; the welfare of a government thus constituted lay in stern repression. The suppression and banishment of Roger Williams and Mrs. Hutchinson were eminently successful in restoring order and public security, in the train of which came increased immigration and greater prosperity.
55. Indian Wars (1635-1637).
While these things were going on in Boston and Newtown, warfare of another sort was in progress to the south. In 1635 residents of Massachusetts made a settlement on the Connecticut river, on the site of Windsor, above the Dutch fort at Hartford; and later in the same year another party, under John Winthrop the younger, built Saybrook, at the mouth of the stream. These Connecticut settlements formed an outpost in the heart of the Indian country, and trouble was inevitable.
At last the attitude of the Pequods, the tribe occupying the lower portion of the Connecticut valley, became unbearable; they interfered with immigrants going overland, and rendered trade by sea dangerous. They endeavored to enlist the sympathy of the Narragansetts in their forays. Could these tribes have formed a coalition, it seems likely that the New England colonists, then few and weak, must have been driven into the sea. Roger Williams, bearing no malice towards his old enemies in Massachusetts, averted this calamity. As the result of great exertions on his part, the Narragansetts were induced to disregard the overtures of their old enemies, the Pequods, and the Connecticut Indians went alone upon the war-path. They made life a burden to the settlers in the little towns of Saybrook, Hartford, Windsor, and Wethersfield. An appeal for aid went up from the colonists in the Connecticut valley to Massachusetts and Plymouth, and was promptly answered.
In the little intercolonial army of some three hundred men, Captains John Mason of Windsor and John Underhill of Massachusetts were the leading figures. The Pequods were surprised in their chief town (May 20, 1637), the walls of which were burned by the whites, while volleys of musketry were poured into the crowd of savages, who huddled together in great fear. Says Underhill, "It is reported by themselves that there were about four hundred souls in this fort, and not above five of them escaped out of our hands;" others report that seven hundred Pequods fell on that terrible day. Of the besiegers but two were killed, though a quarter of the force were wounded. From this scene of slaughter the victorious colonists marched through the rest of the enemy's territory, burning wigwams and granaries, taking some of the survivors prisoners, to be sold into slavery, and so thoroughly scattering the others that the Pequod tribe never reorganized; the expedition had thoroughly uprooted it.
56. Laws and Characteristics of Massachusetts (1637-1643).
For more than ten years after the planting of Massachusetts the magistrates dispensed justice according to their understanding of right and wrong; there were no statutes, neither had the English common law been officially recognized, except so far as it was understood that Englishmen carried the law of their land with them in emigrating to America. "In the year 1634," says Hutchinson, "the plantation was greatly increased, settlements were extended more than thirty miles from the capital town, and it was thought high time to have known established laws, that the inhabitants might no longer be subject to the varying uncertain judgments which otherwise would be made concerning their actions. The ministers and some of the principal laymen were consulted with about a body of laws suited to the circumstances of the colony, civil and religious. Committees of magistrates and elders were appointed" from year to year by the General Court, but it was not until 1641 that a body of statutes was finally adopted.
The influence of the clergy is well illustrated in the fact that the two codes finally submitted were the work of ministers,—John Cotton of Boston, and Nathaniel Ward of Ipswich. The latter's plan, in which he received the aid of Winthrop and others of the elders, was adopted in 1641, under the title of The Body of Liberties. In England, Ward had at one time been a barrister, and was well read in the common law, on which his code was mainly based, although it also contained many features of the law of Moses. Equal justice was vouchsafed to all, old or young, freeman or foreigner, master or servant, man or woman; persons and property were to be inviolable except by law; brutes were to be humanely treated; no one was to be tried twice for the same offence; barbarous or cruel punishments were forbidden; public records were to be open for inspection; church regulations were to be enforced by civil courts, and church officers and members were amenable to civil law; the Scriptures were to overrule any custom or prescription; the general rules of judicial proceedings were defined, as were also the privileges and duties of freemen, and the liberties and prerogatives of the churches; public money was to be spent only with the consent of the taxpayers. "There shall be no bond slaverie, villinage or Captivitie amongst us unles it be lawfull Captives taken in just warres, and such strangers as willingly selle themselves or are sold to us;" but all such were to be allowed "all the liberties and Christian usages which the law of god established in Israell." Notwithstanding this enlightened provision, persons continued to be born and to live and die as slaves within the boundaries of the commonwealth down to 1780. Servants fleeing from the cruelty of their masters were to be protected, and there was to be appeal from parental tyranny. "Everie marryed woeman shall be free from bodilie correction or stripes by her husband, unlesse it be in his owne defence upon her assalt." The capital offences, selected from the Scriptures, were twelve in number; among them were: "(2) If any man or woman be a witch (that is, hath or consulteth with a familiar spirit), they shall be put to death;" and "(12) If any man shall conspire and attempt any invasion, insurrection, or publique rebellion against our commonwealth, ... or shall treacherously and perfediouslie attempt the alteration and subversion of our frame of politie or Government fundamentallie, he shall be put to death." The essence of this Body of Liberties was afterwards incorporated into the formal laws of the colony. It was the foundation of the Massachusetts code.
Massachusetts was the first large colony in New England. Its people were educated, and as a rule of a higher social grade than those of Plymouth. Under a charter which contained many very liberal provisions, a highly organized government was developed, which served as a model to the other colonies, and had a wide influence in the building of a nation founded on the principles of self-government. Plymouth had, after sixteen years, separated into towns; but when organized town and church governments moved bodily from Massachusetts to found Connecticut, Massachusetts became the first mother of colonies. Massachusetts was bolder, more aggressive, and more tenacious of her liberties than any other of the American colonies; her people took firm, sometimes obstinate, stand for their rights as Englishmen, and were often alone in their early contentions for principles upon which in after years the Revolution was based. In their treatment of the Indians they were inclined to be more imperious than their neighbors.
57. Connecticut founded (1633-1639).
In 1633 Plymouth built a fur-trading house on the site of Windsor, on the Connecticut River. A party of Dutch traders from New York was already planted at Hartford, in "a rude earthwork with two guns," and strenuously objected to this intrusion; but the Plymouth men found trade with the Indians profitable, and stood their ground.
The same year the overland route to the Connecticut was explored by the Massachusetts trader, John Oldham, who was afterwards slain by the Pequods at Block Island. The favorable reports which Oldham carried back induced a number of people in Newtown (Cambridge), Dorchester, and Watertown, in the Massachusetts colony, to remove to the Connecticut and set up an independent State. "Hereing of ye fame of Conightecute river, they had a hankering mind after it." Ostensibly they sought better pasturage for their cattle, to prevent the Dutch from gaining a permanent hold on the country, and to plant an outpost in the Pequod country; but there also appear to have been some differences of opinion between these people and the Massachusetts authorities, growing out of the taxation of Watertown in 1631; and no doubt their ministers and elders—among whom were such strong men as Thomas Hooker, Samuel Stone, and Roger Ludlow—were desirous of greater recognition than they obtained at home. These differences were not so grave but that Massachusetts, after a spasm of opposition, formally permitted the migration, gave to the outgoing colonists a commission, and lent to them a cannon and some ammunition.
During the summer of 1635 a Dorchester party planted a settlement at Windsor around the walls of the Plymouth post. Plymouth did not approve of this cavalier treatment of her prior rights by the Massachusetts pioneers, but was obliged to submit with what grace she might, as she had in many controversies with her domineering neighbor to the north.
That same autumn (1635) John Winthrop, Jr., appeared at the mouth of the Connecticut with a commission as governor, issued by Lord Brook, Lord Say and Sele, and their partners, to whom in 1631 Lord Warwick, as president of the council for New England, had granted all the country between the Narragansett River and the Pacific Ocean. Winthrop had just thrown up a breastwork when a Dutch vessel appeared on its way to Hartford with supplies for the traders, and was ordered back; thus were the New Amsterdam people cut off from a profitable commerce on the Connecticut, and from territorial expansion eastward, although their Hartford colony lived for many years.
The migration from Massachusetts to the Connecticut continued vigorously during 1636, and by the spring of 1637 the colony had a population of eight hundred souls, grouped in the three towns of Windsor, Hartford, and Wethersfield,—Winthrop's establishment at Saybrook being but a military station, which had no connection with the Massachusetts settlements up the river until 1644. The Pequod war, in 1637, stirred Connecticut to its centre. A force of about one hundred and fifteen Massachusetts and Connecticut men, under the command of Capt. John Mason of Windsor, was handled with much skill, and soon nearly annihilated the Pequod tribe. The Indians crushed, immigration was renewed, and prosperity became general throughout the valley.
58. The Connecticut Government (1639-1643).
During the first year the Connecticut towns were still claimed by the parent colony, and were controlled by a commission from Massachusetts. At the end of that time (1637) there was held a General Court, in which each town was represented by two magistrates, this body adopting such local regulations as were of immediate necessity.
In January, 1639, the three towns adopted a constitution in which Massachusetts acquiesced, thus practically abandoning her claims of sovereignty over them. This Connecticut constitution was undoubtedly, as Fiske says, "the first written constitution known to history that created a government,"—the "Mayflower" compact being rather an agreement to accept a constitution, while Magna Charta did not create a government. Bryce characterizes the Connecticut document as "the oldest truly political constitution in America." It is noticeable for the fact that it made no reference to the king or to any charter or patent; it was simply an agreement between colonists in neighboring towns, independent of any but royal authority, as to the manner of their local and general self-government. The governor and six magistrates (another name for assistants) were to be elected by a majority of the whole body of free men; but later, with the spread of the colony, voting by proxies was allowed. The governor alone need be a church member, and he was not to serve for two years in succession; but this restriction on re-election was abolished in favor of the younger Winthrop in 1660. Each town might admit freemen by popular vote; and it is noticeable that despite the fact that the original settlers of Connecticut came as organized congregations, with their ministers and elders, it was ordained there should be no religious restriction on suffrage, which was thus made almost unrestricted; the towns were to be represented in the General Court by two deputies each; the practical administration was in the hands of the governor and his assistants, who were also members of the General Court. In time the system became bicameral, the deputies forming the lower, and the council the upper house; the towns were allowed all powers not expressly granted to the commonwealth, the affairs of each being executed by a board of "chief inhabitants," acting as magistrates. The government of Connecticut was on the whole somewhat more liberal and democratic than that of Massachusetts, and was the model upon which many American States were afterwards built.
More than to any other man, the credit for this epoch-making constitution belongs to the Rev. Thomas Hooker, of Hartford, the leading spirit of the colony. He argued 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 God'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." These are truisms to-day, but in 1638 they were the utterances of a political prophet.
Under her liberal constitutional government, based upon the voice of the people, Connecticut was from the first a practically independent republic. The public officers were plain, honest men, who acceptably administered the affairs of the colony with small cost. The colonists were shrewd in political management, frugal in their expenditures, hard-working, and ingenious. Education flourished, a severe morality obtained, and religious persecution was unknown. Connecticut was noted among the colonies for its prosperity, independence, and enlightenment.
59. New Haven founded (1637-1644).