the reign of Charles II. it becomes a dangerous source of weakness to
Massachusetts. At the outset the opposition seems to have been strongest
in Dorchester, Newtown, and Watertown. When the Board of Assistants
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 Assistants.
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 passed 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
noble 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 sturdy 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 Massachusetts 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 Massachusetts 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 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." On the 14th of January,
1639, all the freemen of the three towns assembled at Hartford and
adopted a written constitution in which the hand of the great preacher
is clearly discernible. It is worthy of note that this document 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 constitution 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 assembly. [11] This little federal
republic was allowed to develop peacefully and normally; its
constitution was not violently wrenched out of shape like that of
Massachusetts at the end of the seventeenth century. It silently grew
till it became the strongest political structure on the continent, as
was illustrated 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 constitution]

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 Sassacus, chief sachem of the Pequots.
Negotiations concerning this outrage had gone on between Sassacus 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, "God 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 embassy 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
Sassacus to do his utmost to compass the ruin of the English. The
superstitious 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 Massachusetts
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 Sassacus 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 embassy 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, massacred ten people, and carried away two girls.
[Sidenote: Sassacus is foiled by Roger Williams] [Sidenote: The Pequots
take the warpath alone]

Wrought up to desperation by these atrocities, the Connecticut men
appealed to Massachusetts and Plymouth for aid, and put into service
ninety of their own number, under command of John Mason, an excellent
and sturdy 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 Massachusetts 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 Sassacus was a god 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 assault 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
sturdy sapling-trunks, set firm and deep into the ground, the narrow
interstices between them serving as loopholes wherefrom to reconnoitre
any one passing by and to shoot at assailants. 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
bloody 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. Sassacus
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 Massachusetts
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
Massachusetts, 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 Massachusetts where
it was some time before the disfranchisement 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 passage 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 assume 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 Massachusetts. 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 homogeneous 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 class. 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 class 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
class 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
"Hell-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 homogeneous in character to
a remarkable degree, and they were drawn from the sturdiest 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: "God 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 homogeneity 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 assume 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 God 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 Massachusetts 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 constitution 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 godly 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 hit 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
institutions 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 class, 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 assumed to be a
sacred duty which the community owed to every child born within its
jurisdiction. In ignorance, the Puritans maintained, lay the principal
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
noble 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, illustrious 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 illustrated
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 Massachusetts, 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 circumstances contributed to
modify the Puritan ideal, gradually breaking down the old theocratic
exclusiveness and strengthening the spirit of religious liberty.

Scarcely had the first New England colonies been established when it was
found desirable to unite them into some kind of a confederation. It is
worthy of note that the separate existence of so many colonies was at
the outset largely the result of religious differences. The uniformity
of purpose, great as it was, fell far short of completeness. [Sidenote:
Existence of so many colonies due to slight religious differences]

Could all have agreed, or had there been religious toleration in the
modern sense, there was still room enough for all in Massachusetts;
and a compact settlement would have been in much less danger from the
Indians. But in the founding of Connecticut the theocratic idea had less
weight, and in the founding of New Haven it had more weight, than
in Massachusetts. The existence of Rhode Island was based upon that
principle of full toleration which the three colonies just mentioned
alike abhorred, and its first settlers were people banished from
Massachusetts. With regard to toleration Plymouth occupied a middle
ground; without admitting the principles of Williams, the people of that
colony were still fairly tolerant in practice. Of the four towns of New
Hampshire, two had been founded by Antinomians driven from Boston, and
two by Episcopal friends of Mason and Gorges. It was impossible that
neighbouring communities, characterized by such differences of opinion,
but otherwise homogeneous in race and in social condition, should fail
to react upon one another and to liberalize one another. Still more was
this true when they attempted to enter into a political union. When, for
example, Massachusetts in 1641-43 annexed the New Hampshire townships,
she was of necessity obliged to relax in their case her policy of
insisting upon religious conformity as a test of citizenship. So in
forming the New England Confederacy, there were some matters of dispute
that had to be passed over by mutual consent or connivance. [Sidenote:
It led to a notable attempt at federation]

The same causes which had spread the English settlements over so wide a
territory now led, as an indirect result, to their partial union into a
confederacy. The immediate consequence of the westward movement had been
an Indian war. Several savage tribes were now interspersed between the
settlements, so that it became desirable that the military force should
be brought, as far as possible, under one management. The colony of
New Netherlands, moreover, had begun to assume importance, and the
settlements west of the Connecticut river had already occasioned hard
words between Dutch and English, which might at any moment be followed
by blows. In the French colonies at the north, with their extensive
Indian alliances under Jesuit guidance, the Puritans saw a rival power
which was likely in course of time to prove troublesome. With a view to
more efficient self-defence, therefore, in 1643 the four colonies of
Massachusetts, Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven formed themselves
into a league, under the style of "The United Colonies of New England."
These four little states now contained thirty-nine towns, with an
aggregate population of 24,000. To the northeast of Massachusetts,
which now extended to the Piscataqua, a small colony had at length been
constituted under a proprietary charter somewhat similar to that held by
the Calverts in Maryland. Of this new province or palatinate of Maine
the aged Sir Ferdinando Gorges was Lord Proprietary, and he had
undertaken not only to establish the Church of England there, but also
to introduce usages of feudal jurisdiction like those remaining in the
old country. Such a community was not likely to join the Confederacy;
apart from other reasons, its proprietary constitution and the feud
between the Puritans and Gorges would have been sufficient obstacles.

As for Rhode Island, on the other hand, it was regarded with strong
dislike by the other colonies. It was a curious and noteworthy
consequence of the circumstances under which this little state was
founded that for a long time it became the refuge of all the fanatical
and turbulent people who could not submit to the strict and orderly
governments of Connecticut or Massachusetts. All extremes met on
Narragansett bay. There were not only sensible advocates of religious