of this stronghold was over the trunk of a felled tree some two feet in
diameter and slippery with snow and ice. A stout block-house filled with
sharpshooters guarded this rude bridge, which was raised some five feet
from the ground. Within the palisaded fortress perhaps not less than
2000 warriors, with many women and children, awaited the onset of the
white men, for here had Canonchet gathered together nearly the whole of
his available force. This was a military mistake. It was cooping up his
men for slaughter. They would have been much safer if scattered about in
the wilderness, and could have given the English much more trouble. But
readily as they acknowledged the power of the white man, they did not
yet understand it. One man's courage is not another's, and the Indian
knew little or nothing of that Gothic fury of self-abandonment which
rushes straight ahead and snatches victory from the jaws of death. His
fortress was a strong one, and it was no longer, as in the time of the
Pequots, a strife in which firearms were pitted against bow and arrow.
Many of the Narragansetts were equipped with muskets and skilled in
their use, and under such circumstances victory for the English was not
to be lightly won. [Sidenote: Expedition against the Narragansetts]

On the night of December 18 their little army slept in an open field
at Pettyquamscott without other blanket than a "moist fleece of snow."
Thence to the Indian fortress, situated in what is now South Kingston,
the march was eighteen miles. The morrow was a Sunday, but Winslow
deemed it imprudent to wait, as food had wellnigh given out. Getting up
at five o'clock, they toiled through deep snow till they came within
sight of the Narragansett stronghold early in the afternoon. First came
the 527 men from Massachusetts, led by Major Appleton, of Ipswich, and
next the 158 from Plymouth, under Major Bradford; while Major Robert
Treat, with the 300 from Connecticut, brought up the rear. There were
985 men in all. As the Massachusetts men rushed upon the slippery bridge
a deadly volley from the blockhouse slew six of their captains, while
of the rank and file there were many killed or wounded. Nothing daunted
they pressed on with great spirit till they forced their way into the
enclosure, but then the head of their column, overcome by sheer weight
of numbers in the hand-to-hand fight, was pushed and tumbled out into
the swamp. Meanwhile some of the Connecticut men had discovered a path
across the partly frozen swamp leading to a weak spot in the rear, where
the palisades were thin and few, as undue reliance had been placed upon
the steep bank crowned with a thick rampart of bushes that had been
reinforced with clods of turf. In this direction Treat swept along with
his men in a spirited charge. Before they had reached the spot a heavy
fire began mowing them down, but with a furious rush they came up, and
climbing on each other's shoulders, some fought their way over the
rampart, while others hacked sturdily with axes till such a breach was
made that all might enter. This was effected just as the Massachusetts
men had recovered themselves and crossed the treacherous log in a second
charge that was successful and soon brought the entire English force
within the enclosure. In the slaughter which filled the rest of that
Sunday afternoon till the sun went down behind a dull gray cloud, the
grim and wrathful Puritan, as he swung his heavy cutlass, thought of
Saul and Agag, and spared not. The Lord had delivered up to him the
heathen as stubble to his sword. As usual the number of the slain
is variously estimated. Of the Indians probably not less than 1000
perished. Some hundreds, however, with Canonchet their leader, saved
themselves in flight, well screened by the blinding snow-flakes that
began to fall just after sunset. Within the fortified area had been
stored the greater part of the Indians' winter supply of corn, and the
loss of this food was a further deadly blow. Captain Church advised
sparing the wigwams and using them for shelter, but Winslow seems to
have doubted the ability of his men to maintain themselves in a position
so remote from all support. The wigwams with their tubs of corn were
burned, and a retreat was ordered. Through snowdrifts that deepened
every moment the weary soldiers dragged themselves along until two hours
after midnight, when they reached the tiny village of Wickford. Nearly
one-fourth of their number had been killed or wounded, and many of the
latter perished before shelter was reached. Forty of these were buried
at Wickford in the course of the next three days. Of the Connecticut men
eighty were left upon the swamp and in the breach at the rear of the
stronghold. Among the spoils which the victors brought away were a
number of good muskets that had been captured by the Nipmucks in their
assault upon Deerfield. [Sidenote: Storming of the great swamp fortress,
December 19]

This headlong overthrow of the Narragansett power completely changed the
face of things. The question was no longer whether the red men could
possibly succeed in making New England too hot for the white men, but
simply how long it would take for the white men to exterminate the red
men. The shiftless Indian was abandoning his squalid agriculture and
subsisting on the pillage of English farms; but the resources of the
colonies, though severely taxed, were by no means exhausted. The dusky
warriors slaughtered in the great swamp fight could not be replaced;
but, as Roger Williams told the Indians, there were still ten thousand
white men who could carry muskets, and should all these be slain, he
added, with a touch of hyperbole, the Great Father in England could send
ten thousand more. For the moment Williams seems to have cherished a
hope that his great influence with the savages might induce them to
submit to terms of peace while there was yet a remnant to be saved; but
they were now as little inclined to parley as tigers brought to bay, nor
was the temper of the colonists a whit less deadly, though it did not
vent itself in inflicting torture or in merely wanton orgies of cruelty.
[Sidenote: Effect of the blow]

To the modern these scenes of carnage are painful to contemplate. In the
wholesale destruction of the Pequots, and to a less degree in that of
the Narragansetts, the death-dealing power of the white man stands forth
so terrible and relentless that our sympathy is for a moment called
out for his victim. The feeling of tenderness toward the weak, almost
unknown among savages, is one of the finest products of civilization.
Where murderous emotions are frequently excited, it cannot thrive. Such
advance in humanity as we have made within recent times is chiefly
due to the fact that the horrors of war are seldom brought home to
everybody's door. Either war is conducted on some remote frontier, or if
armies march through a densely peopled country the conditions of
modern warfare have made it essential to their efficiency as military
instruments that depredation and riot should be as far as possible
checked. Murder and pillage are comparatively infrequent, massacre
is seldom heard of, and torture is almost or quite as extinct as
cannibalism. The mass of citizens escape physical suffering, the angry
emotions are so directed upon impersonal objects as to acquire a strong
ethical value, and the intervals of strife may find individual soldiers
of hostile armies exchanging kindly services. Members of a complex
industrial society, without direct experience of warfare save in this
mitigated form, have their characters wrought upon in a way that is
distinctively modern, as they become more and more disinclined to
violence and cruelty. European historians have noticed, with words
of praise, the freedom from bloodthirstiness which characterizes the
American people. Mr. Lecky has more than once remarked upon this humane
temperament which is so characteristic of our peaceful civilization, and
which sometimes, indeed, shows the defects of its excellence and tends
to weaken society by making it difficult to inflict due punishment upon
the vilest criminals. In respect of this humanity the American of the
nineteenth century has without doubt improved very considerably upon his
forefathers of the seventeenth. The England of Cromwell and Milton
was not, indeed, a land of hard-hearted people as compared with their
contemporaries. The long experience of internal peace since the War
of the Roses had not been without its effect; and while the Tudor and
Stuart periods had atrocities enough, we need only remember what was
going on at the same time in France and Germany in order to realize how
much worse it might have been. In England, as elsewhere, however, it
was, when looked at with our eyes, a rough and brutal time. It was a day
of dungeons, whipping-posts, and thumbscrews, when slight offenders were
maimed and bruised and great offenders cut into pieces by sentence of
court. The pioneers of New England had grown up familiar with such
things; and among the townspeople of Boston and Hartford in 1675 were
still many who in youth had listened to the awful news from Magdeburg or
turned pale over the horrors in Piedmont upon which Milton invoked the
wrath of Heaven. [Sidenote: Growth of humane sentiment in recent times]

When civilized men are removed from the safeguards of civilization and
placed in the wilderness amid the hideous dangers that beset human
existence in a savage state of society, whatever barbarism lies latent
in them is likely to find many opportunities for showing itself.
The feelings that stir the meekest of men, as he stands among the
smouldering embers of his homestead and gazes upon the mangled bodies
of wife and children, are feelings that he shares with the most
bloodthirsty savage, and the primary effect of his higher intelligence
and greater sensitiveness is only to increase their bitterness. The
neighbour who hears the dreadful story is quick to feel likewise, for
the same thing may happen to him, and there is nothing so pitiless as
fear. With the Puritan such gloomy and savage passions seemed to find
justification in the sacred text from which he drew his rules of life.
To suppose that one part of the Bible could be less authoritative than
another would have been to him an incomprehensible heresy; and bound
between the same covers that included the Sermon on the Mount were tales
of wholesale massacre perpetrated by God's command. Evidently the
red men were not stray children of Israel, after all, but rather
Philistines, Canaanites, heathen, sons of Belial, firebrands of hell,
demons whom it was no more than right to sweep from the face of the
earth. Writing in this spirit, the chroniclers of the time were
completely callous in their accounts of suffering and ruin inflicted
upon Indians, and, as has elsewhere been known to happen, those who
did not risk their own persons were more truculent in tone than the
professional fighters. Of the narrators of the war, perhaps the fairest
toward the Indian is the doughty Captain Church, while none is more
bitter and cynical than the Ipswich pastor William Hubbard. [Sidenote:
Warfare with savages likely to be truculent in character]

While the overthrow of the Narragansetts changed the face of things, it
was far from putting an end to the war. It showed that when the white
man could find his enemy he could deal crushing blows, but the Indian
was not always so easy to find. Before the end of January Winslow's
little army was partially disbanded for want of food, and its three
contingents fell back upon Stonington, Boston, and Plymouth. Early in
February the Federal Commissioners called for a new levy of 600 men to
assemble at Brookfield, for the Nipmucks were beginning to renew their
incursions, and after an interval of six months the figure of Philip
again appears for a moment upon the scene. What he had been doing, or
where he had been, since the Brookfield fight in August, was never
known. When in February, 1676, he re-appeared it was still in company
with his allies the Nipmucks, in their bloody assault upon Lancaster.
On the 10th of that month at sunrise the Indians came swarming into the
lovely village. Danger had already been apprehended, the pastor, Joseph
Rowlandson, the only Harvard graduate of 1652, had gone to Boston to
solicit aid, and Captain Wadsworth's company was slowly making its
way over the difficult roads from Marlborough, but the Indians were
beforehand. Several houses were at once surrounded and set on fire,
and men, women, and children began falling under the tomahawk. The
minister's house was large and strongly built, and more than forty
people found shelter there until at length it took fire and they were
driven out by the flames. Only one escaped, a dozen or more were slain,
and the rest, chiefly women and children, taken captive. The Indians
aimed at plunder as well as destruction; for they were in sore need of
food and blankets, as well as of powder and ball. Presently, as they saw
Wadsworth's armed men approaching, they took to flight and got away,
with many prisoners and a goodly store of provisions. [Sidenote: Attack
upon Lancaster, February 10, 1676]

Among the captives was Mary Rowlandson, the minister's wife, who
afterward wrote the story of her sad experiences. The treatment of the
prisoners varied with the caprice or the cupidity of the captors. Those
for whom a substantial ransom might be expected fared comparatively
well; to others death came as a welcome relief. One poor woman with a
child in her arms was too weak to endure the arduous tramp over the icy
hillsides, and begged to be left behind, till presently the savages
lost their patience. They built a fire, and after a kind of demon dance
killed mother and child with a club and threw the bodies into the
flames. Such treatment may seem exceptionally merciful, but those modern
observers who best know the Indian's habits say that he seldom indulges
in torture except when he has abundance of leisure and a mind quite
undisturbed. He is an epicure in human agony and likes to enjoy it in
long slow sips. It is for the end of the march that the accumulation
of horrors is reserved; the victims by the way are usually despatched
quickly; and in the case of Mrs. Rowlandson's captors their irregular
and circuitous march indicates that they were on the alert. Their
movements seem to have covered much of the ground between Wachusett
mountain and the Connecticut river. They knew that the white squaw of
the great medicine man of an English village was worth a heavy ransom,
and so they treated Mrs. Rowlandson unusually well. She had been
captured when escaping from the burning house, carrying in her arms her
little six-year-old daughter. She was stopped by a bullet that grazed
her side and struck the child. The Indian who seized them placed the
little girl upon a horse, and as the dreary march began she kept moaning
"I shall die, mamma." "I went on foot after it," says the mother, "with
sorrow that cannot be expressed. At length I took it off the horse, and
carried it in my arms till my strength failed me, and I fell down with
it .... After this it quickly began to snow, and when night came on they
stopped. And now down I must sit in the snow, by a little fire, and a
few boughs behind me, with my sick child in my lap, and calling much for
water, being now, through the wound, fallen into a violent fever ....
Oh, may I see the wonderful power of God that my spirit did not utterly
sink under my affliction; still the Lord upheld me with his gracious and
merciful spirit." The little girl soon died. For three months the weary
and heartbroken mother was led about the country by these loathsome
savages, of whose habits and manners she gives a vivid description. At
first their omnivorousness astonished her. "Skunks and rattlesnakes, yea
the very bark of trees" they esteemed as delicacies. "They would pick up
old bones and cut them in pieces at the joints, ... then boil them and
drink up the liquor, and then beat the great ends of them in a mortar
and so eat them." After some weeks of starvation Mrs. Rowlandson herself
was fain to partake of such viands. One day, having made a cap for one
of Philip's boys, she was invited to dine with the great sachem. "I
went," she says, "and he gave me a pancake about as big as two fingers.
It was made of parched wheat, beaten, and fried in bear's grease; but I
thought I never tasted pleasanter meat in my life." Early in May she was
redeemed for 20 pounds, and went to find her husband in Boston, where
the Old South Church society hired a house for them. [Sidenote: Mrs.
Rowlandson's narrative]

Such was the experience of a captive whose treatment was, according to
Indian notions, hospitable. There were few who came off so well. Almost
every week while she was led hither and thither by the savages. Mrs.
Rowlandson heard ghastly tales of fire and slaughter. It was a busy
winter and spring for these Nipmucks. Before February was over, their
exploit at Lancaster was followed by a shocking massacre at Medfield.
They sacked and destroyed the towns of Worcester, Marlborough, Mendon,
and Groton, and even burned some houses in Weymouth, within a dozen
miles of Boston. Murderous attacks were made upon Sudbury, Chelmsford,
Springfield, Hatfield, Hadley, Northampton, Wrentham, Andover,
Bridgewater, Scituate, and Middleborough. On the 18th of April Captain
Wadsworth, with 70 men, was drawn into an ambush near Sudbury,
surrounded by 500 Nipmucks, and killed with 50 of his men; six
unfortunate captives were burned alive over slow fires. But Wadsworth's
party made the enemy pay dearly for his victory; that afternoon 120
Nipmucks bit the dust. In such wise, by killing two or three for one,
did the English wear out and annihilate their adversaries. Just one
month from that day Captain Turner surprised and slaughtered 300 of
these warriors near the falls of the Connecticut river which have
since borne his name, and this blow at last broke the strength of
the Nipmucks. [Sidenote: Virtual exterminations of the Indians,
February--August, 1676]

Meanwhile the Narragansetts and Wampanoags had burned the towns of
Warwick and Providence. After the wholesale ruin of the great "swamp
fight," Canonchet had still some 600 or 700 warriors left, and with
these, on the 26th of March, in the neighbourhood of Pawtuxet, he
surprised a company of 50 Plymouth men under Captain Pierce and slew
them all, but not until he had lost 140 of his best warriors. Ten days
later Captain Denison, with his Connecticut company, defeated and
captured Canonchet, and the proud son of Miantonomo met the same fate
as his father. He was handed over to the Mohegans and tomahawked. The
Narragansett sachem had shown such bravery that it seemed, says the
chronicler Hubbard, as if "some old Roman ghost had possessed the body
of this western pagan." But next moment this pious clergyman, as if
ashamed of the classical eulogy just bestowed upon the hated redskin,
alludes to him as a "damned wretch." [Sidenote: Death of Canonchet]

The fall of Canonchet marked the beginning of the end. In four sharp
fights in the last week of June, Major Talcott, of Hartford, slew
from 300 to 400 warriors, being nearly all that were left of the
Narragansetts; and during the month of July Captain Church patrolled the
country about Taunton, making prisoners of the Wampanoags. Once more
King Philip, shorn of his prestige, comes upon the scene. We have seen
that his agency in these cruel events had been at the outset a potent
one. Whatever else it may have been, it was at least the agency of the
match that explodes the powder-cask. Under the conditions of that savage
society, organized leadership was not to be looked for. In the irregular
and disorderly series of murdering raids Philip may have been often
present, but except for Mrs. Rowlandson's narrative we should have known
nothing of him since the Brookfield fight.

At length in July, 1676, having seen the last of his Nipmuck friends
overwhelmed, the tattered chieftain showed himself near Bridgewater,
with a handful of followers. In these his own hunting-grounds some of
his former friends had become disaffected. The daring and diplomatic
Church had made his way into the wigwam of Ashawonks, the squaw sachem
of Saconet, near Little Compton, and having first convinced her that a
flask of brandy might be tasted without fatal results, followed up his
advantage and persuaded her to make an alliance with the English. Many
Indians came in and voluntarily surrendered themselves, in order to
obtain favourable terms, and some lent their aid in destroying their old
sachem. Defeated at Taunton, the son of Massasoit was hunted by Church
to his ancient lair at Bristol Neck and there besieged. His only escape
was over the narrow isthmus of which the pursuers now took possession,
and in this dire extremity one of Philip's men presumed to advise his
chief that the hour for surrender had come. For his unwelcome counsel
the sachem forthwith lifted his tomahawk and struck him dead at his
feet. Then the brother of the slain man crept away through the bushes to
Church's little camp, and offered to guide the white men to the morass
where Philip lay concealed. At daybreak of August 12 the English
stealthily advancing beat up their prey. The savages in sudden panic
rushed from under cover, and as the sachem showed himself running at the
top of his speed, a ball from an Indian musket pierced his heart, and
"he fell upon his face in the mud and water, with his gun under him."
His severed head was sent to Plymouth, where it was mounted on a pole
and exposed aloft upon the village green, while the meeting-house
bell summoned the townspeople to a special service of thanksgiving.
[Sidenote: Death of Philip, August 12]

It may be supposed that in such services at this time a Christian
feeling of charity and forgiveness was not uppermost. Among the captives
was a son of Philip, the little swarthy lad of nine years for whom Mrs.
Rowlandson had made a cap, and the question as to what was to be done
with him occasioned as much debate as if he had been a Jesse Pomeroy
[34] or a Chicago anarchist. The opinions of the clergy were, of course,
eagerly sought and freely vouchsafed. One minister somewhat doubtfully
urged that "although a precept in Deuteronomy explicitly forbids killing
the child for the father's sin," yet after all "the children of Saul and
Achan perished with their parents, though too young to have shared their
guilt." Thus curiously did this English reverence for precedent, with a
sort of grim conscientiousness colouring its gloomy wrath, search for
guidance among the ancient records of the children of Israel. Commenting
upon the truculent suggestion, Increase Mather, soon to be president of
Harvard, observed that, "though David had spared the infant Hadad, yet
it might have been better for his people if he had been less merciful."
These bloodthirsty counsels did not prevail, but the course that was
adopted did not lack in harshness. Among the sachems a dozen leading
spirits were hanged or shot, and hundreds of captives were shipped off
to the West Indies to be sold into slavery; among these was Philip's
little son. The rough soldier Church and the apostle Eliot were among
the few who disapproved of this policy. Church feared it might goad such
Indians as were still at large to acts of desperation. Eliot, in an
earnest letter to the Federal Commissioners, observed: "To sell souls
for money seemeth to me dangerous merchandise." But the plan of
exporting the captives was adhered to. As slaves they were understood to
be of little or no value, and sometimes for want of purchasers they were
set ashore on strange coasts and abandoned. A few were even carried to
one of the foulest of mediaeval slave-marts, Morocco, where their fate
was doubtless wretched enough. [Sidenote: Indians sold into slavery]

In spite of Church's doubts as to the wisdom of this harsh treatment,
it did not prevent the beaten and starving savages from surrendering
themselves in considerable numbers. To some the Federal Commissioners
offered amnesty, and the promise was faithfully fulfilled. Among those
who laid down arms in reliance upon it were 140 Christian Indians, with
their leader known as James the Printer, because he had been employed at
Cambridge in setting up the type for Eliot's Bible. Quite early in the
war it had been discovered that these converted savages still felt the
ties of blood to be stronger than those of creed. At the attack on
Mendon, only three weeks after the horrors at Swanzey that ushered in
the war, it was known that Christian Indians had behaved themselves
quite as cruelly as their unregenerate brethren. Afterwards they made
such a record that the jokers and punsters of the day--for such there
were, even among those sombre Puritans--in writing about the "Praying
Indians," spelled _praying_ with an _e_. The moral scruples of these
savages, under the influence of their evangelical training, betrayed
queer freaks. One of them, says Mrs. Rowlandson, would rather die than
eat horseflesh, so narrow and scrupulous was his conscience, although it
was as wide as the whole infernal abyss, when it came to torturing
white Christians. The student of history may have observed similar
inconsistencies in the theories and conduct of people more enlightened
than these poor red men. "There was another Praying Indian," continues
Mrs. Rowlandson, "who, when he had done all the mischief he could,
betrayed his own father into the English's hands, thereby to purchase
his own life; ... and there was another ... so wicked ... as to wear
a string about his neck, strung with Christian fingers." [Sidenote:
Conduct of the Christian Indians]

Such incidents help us to comprehend the exasperation of our forefathers
in the days of King Philip. The month which witnessed his death saw also
the end of the war in the southern parts of New England; but, almost
before people had time to offer thanks for the victory, there came news
of bloodshed on the northeastern frontier. The Tarratines in Maine had
for some time been infected with the war fever. How far they may have
been comprehended in the schemes of Philip and Canonchet, it would be
hard to say. They had attacked settlers on the site of Brunswick as
early as September, 1675. About the time of Philip's death, Major
Waldron of Dover had entrapped a party of them by an unworthy stratagem,
and after satisfying himself that they were accomplices in that
chieftain's scheme, sent them to Boston to be sold into slavery. A
terrible retribution was in store for Major Waldron thirteen years
later. For the present the hideous strife, just ended in southern New
England, was continued on the northeastern frontier, and there was
scarcely a village between the Kennebec and the Piscataqua but was laid
in ashes. [Sidenote: War with the Tarratines, 1676-78]

By midsummer of 1678 the Indians had been everywhere suppressed, and
there was peace in the land. For three years, since Philip's massacre
at Swanzey, there had been a reign of terror in New England. Within
the boundaries of Connecticut, indeed, little or no damage had been
inflicted, and the troops of that colony, not needed on their own soil,
did noble service in the common cause.

In Massachusetts and Plymouth, on the other hand, the destruction of
life and property had been simply frightful. Of ninety towns, twelve had
been utterly destroyed, while more than forty others had been the scene
of fire and slaughter. Out of this little society nearly a thousand
staunch men, including not few of broad culture and strong promise, had
lost their lives, while of the scores of fair women and poor little
children that had perished under the ruthless tomahawk, one can hardly
give an accurate account. Hardly a family throughout the land but was
in mourning. The war-debt of Plymouth was reckoned to exceed the total
amount of personal property in the colony; yet although it pinched every
household for many a year, it was paid to the uttermost farthing; nor
in this respect were Massachusetts and Connecticut at all behind-hand.
[Sidenote: Destructiveness of the war]

But while King Philip's War wrought such fearful damage to the English,
it was for the Indians themselves utter destruction. Most of the
warriors were slain, and to the survivors, as we have seen, the
conquerors showed but scant mercy. The Puritan, who conned his Bible so
earnestly, had taken his hint from the wars of the Jews, and swept
his New English Canaan with a broom that was pitiless and searching.
Henceforth the red man figures no more in the history of New England,
except as an ally of the French in bloody raids upon the frontier. In
that capacity he does mischief enough for yet a half-century more, but
from central and southern New England, as an element of disturbance or a
power to be reckoned with, he disappears forever.




CHAPTER VI.

THE TYRANNY OF ANDROS.


The beginnings of New England were made in the full daylight of modern
history. It was an age of town records, of registered deeds, of
contemporary memoirs, of diplomatic correspondence, of controversial
pamphlets, funeral sermons, political diatribes, specific instructions,
official reports, and private letters. It was not a time in which
mythical personages or incredible legends could flourish, and such
things we do find in the history of New England. There was nevertheless
a romantic side to this history, enough to envelop some of its
characters and incidents in a glamour that may mislead the modern
reader. This wholesale migration from the smiling fields of merry
England to an unexplored wilderness beyond a thousand leagues of sea was
of itself a most romantic and thrilling event, and when viewed in the
light of its historic results it becomes clothed with sublimity. The men
who undertook this work were not at all free from self-consciousness.
They believed that they were doing a wonderful thing. They felt
themselves to be instruments in accomplishing a kind of "manifest
destiny." Their exodus was that of a chosen people who were at length
to lay the everlasting foundations of God's kingdom upon earth. Such
opinions, which took a strong colour from their assiduous study of the
Old Testament, reacted and disposed them all the more to search its
pages for illustrations and precedents, and to regard it as an oracle,
almost as a talisman. In every propitious event they saw a special
providence, an act of divine intervention to deliver them from the
snares of an ever watchful Satan. This steadfast faith in an unseen
ruler and guide was to them a pillar of cloud by day and of fire by
night. It was of great moral value. It gave them clearness of purpose
and concentration of strength, and contributed toward making them,
like the children of Israel, a people of indestructible vitality and
aggressive energy. At the same time, in the hands of the Puritan
writers, this feeling was apt to warp their estimates of events and
throw such a romantic haze about things as seriously to interfere with a
true historical perspective. [Sidenote: Romantic features in the early
history of New England]

Among such writings that which perhaps best epitomizes the Puritan
philosophy is "The Wonder-working Providence of Zion's Saviour in New
England," by Captain Edward Johnson, one of the principal founders of
Woburn. It is an extremely valuable history of New England from 1628 to
1651, and every page is alive with the virile energy of that stirring
time. With narrative, argument, and apologue, abounding in honesty
of purpose, sublimity of trust, and grotesqueness of fancy, wherein
touching tenderness is often alternated with sternness most grim and
merciless, yet now and then relieved by a sudden gleam of humour,--and
all in a style that is usually uncouth and harsh, but sometimes bursts
forth in eloquence worthy of Bunyan,--we are told how the founders of
New England are soldiers of Christ enlisted in a holy war, and how they
must "march manfully on till all opposers of Christ's kingly power be
abolished." "And as for you who are called to sound forth his silver
trumpets, blow loud and shrill to this chiefest treble tune--for the
armies of the great Jehovah are at hand." "He standeth not as an idle
spectator beholding his people's ruth and their enemies' rage, but as an
actor in all actions, to bring to naught the desires of the wicked, ...
having also the ordering of every weapon in its first produce, guiding
every shaft that flies, leading each bullet to his place of settling,
and weapon to the wound it makes." To men engaged in such a crusade
against the powers of evil, nothing could seem insignificant or trivial;
for, as Johnson continues, in truly prophetic phrase, "the Lord Christ
intends to achieve greater matters by this little handful than the world
is aware of." [Sidenote: Edward Johnson]

The general sentiment of the early New England writers was like that
of the "Wonder-working Providence," though it did not always find such
rhapsodic expression. It has left its impress upon the minds of their
children's children down to our own time, and has affected the opinions
held about them by other people. It has had something to do with a
certain tacit assumption of superiority on the part of New Englanders,
upon which the men and women of other communities have been heard
to comment in resentful and carping tones. There has probably never
existed, in any age or at any spot on the earth's surface, a group of
people that did not take for granted its own preeminent excellence. Upon
some such assumption, as upon an incontrovertible axiom, all historical
narratives, from the chronicles of a parish to the annals of an empire,
alike proceed. But in New England it assumed a form especially apt to
provoke challenge. One of its unintentional effects was the setting up
of an unreal and impossible standard by which to judge the acts and
motives of the Puritans of the seventeenth century. We come upon
instances of harshness and cruelty, of narrow-minded bigotry, and
superstitious frenzy; and feel, perhaps, a little surprised that
these men had so much in common with their contemporaries. Hence the
interminable discussion which has been called forth by the history of
the Puritans, in which the conclusions of the writer have generally been
determined by circumstances of birth or creed, or perhaps of reaction
against creed. One critic points to the Boston of 1659 or the Salem of
1692 with such gleeful satisfaction as used to stir the heart of Thomas
Paine when he alighted upon an inconsistency in some text of the Bible;
while another, in the firm conviction that Puritans could do no wrong,
plays fast and loose with arguments that might be made to justify the
deeds of a Torquemada. [Sidenote: Acts of the Puritans often judged by a
wrong standard]

From such methods of criticism it is the duty of historians as far as
possible to free themselves. If we consider the Puritans in the light
of their surroundings as Englishmen of the seventeenth century and
inaugurators of a political movement that was gradually to change for
the better the aspect of things all over the earth, we cannot fail to
discern the value of that sacred enthusiasm which led them to regard
themselves as chosen soldiers of Christ. It was the spirit of the
"Wonder-working Providence" that hurled the tyrant from his throne at
Whitehall and prepared the way for the emancipation of modern Europe. No
spirit less intense, no spirit nurtured in the contemplation of things
terrestrial, could ever have done it. The political philosophy of a Vane
or a Sidney could never have done it. The passion for liberty as felt
by a Jefferson or an Adams, abstracted and generalized from the love
of particular liberties, was something scarcely intelligible to the
seventeenth century. The ideas of absolute freedom of thought and
speech, which we breathe in from childhood, were to the men of that age
strange and questionable. They groped and floundered among them, very
much as modern wool growers in Ohio or iron-smelters in Pennsylvania
flounder and grope among the elementary truths of political economy. But
the spirit in which the Hebrew prophet rebuked and humbled an idolatrous
king was a spirit they could comprehend. Such a spirit was sure to
manifest itself in narrow cramping measures and in ugly acts of
persecution; but it is none the less to the fortunate alliance of
that fervid religious enthusiasm with the Englishman's love of
self-government that our modern freedom owes its existence. [Sidenote:
Spirit of the Wonder-working Providence]

The history of New England under Charles II. yields abundant proof that
political liberty is no less indebted in the New World than in the Old
to the spirit of the "Wonder-working Providence." The theocratic ideal
which the Puritan sought to put into practice in Massachusetts and
Connecticut was a sacred institution in faults of the defence of
which all his faculties were kept perpetually alert. Much as he loved
self-government he would never have been so swift to detect and so
stubborn to resist every slightest encroachment on the part of the crown
had not the loss of self-government involved the imminent danger that
the ark of the Lord might be abandoned to the worshippers of Dagon.
It was in Massachusetts, where the theocracy was strongest, that the
resistance to Charles II. was most dogged and did most to prepare the
way for the work of achieving political independence a century later.
Naturally it was in Massachusetts at the same time that the faults
of the theocracy were most conspicuous. It was there that priestly
authority most clearly asserted itself in such oppressive acts as are
always witnessed when too much power is left in the hands of men whose
primary allegiance is to a kingdom not of this world. Much as we owe to
the theocracy for warding off the encroachments of the crown, we cannot
be sorry that it was itself crushed in the process. It was well that
it did not survive its day of usefulness, and that the outcome of
the struggle was what has been aptly termed "the emancipation of
Massachusetts." [Sidenote: Merits and faults of the theocracy]

The basis of the theocratic constitution of this commonwealth was the
provision by which the exercise of the franchise was made an incident of
church-membership. Unless a man could take part in the Lord's Supper, as
administered in the churches of the colony, he could not vote or
hold office. Church and state, parish and town, were thus virtually
identified. Here, as in some other aspects of early New England, one is
reminded of the ancient Greek cities, where the freeman who could
vote in the market-place or serve his turn as magistrate was the man
qualified to perform sacrifices to the tutelar deities of the tribe;
other men might dwell in the city but had no share in making or
executing its laws. The limitation of civil rights by religious tests is
indeed one of those common inheritances from the old Aryan world that
we find again and again cropping out, even down to the exclusion of
Catholics from the House of Commons from 1562 to 1829. The obvious
purpose of this policy in England was self-protection; and in like
manner the restriction of the suffrage in Massachusetts was designed
to protect the colony against aggressive episcopacy and to maintain
unimpaired the uniformity of purpose which had brought the settlers
across the ocean. Under the circumstances there was something to be
said in behalf of such a measure of self-protection, and the principle
required but slight extension to cover such cases as the banishment of
Roger Williams and the Antinomians. There was another side to the case,
however. From the very outset this exclusive policy was in some ways
a source of weakness to Massachusetts, though we have seen that the
indirect effect was to diversify and enrich the political life of New
England as a whole. [Sidenote: Restriction of the suffrage to church
members]

At first it led to the departure of the men who founded Connecticut,
and thereafter the way was certainly open for those who preferred the
Connecticut policy to go where it prevailed. Some such segregation was
no doubt effected, but it could not be complete and thorough. Men who
preferred Boston without the franchise to Hartford with it would remain
in Massachusetts; and thus the elder colony soon came to possess a
discontented class of people, always ready to join hand in glove with
dissenters or mischief-makers, or even with emissaries of the crown. It
afforded a suggestive commentary upon all attempts to suppress human
nature by depriving it of a share in political life; instead of keeping
it inside where you can try conclusions with it fairly, you thrust it
out to plot mischief in the dark. Within twenty years from the founding
of Boston the disfranchisement of such citizens as could not participate
in church-communion had begun to be regarded as a serious political
grievance. These men were obliged to pay taxes and were liable to be
called upon for military service against the Indians; and they naturally
felt that they ought to have a voice in the management of public
affairs. [Sidenote: It was a source of political discontent]

Besides this fundamental ground of complaint, there were derivative
grievances. Under the influence of the clergy justice was administered
in somewhat inquisitorial fashion, there was an uncertainty as to just
what the law was, a strong disposition to confuse questions of law with
questions of ethics, and great laxity in the admission and estimation of
evidence. As early as 1639 people had begun to complain that too much
power was rested in the discretion of the magistrate, and they clamoured
for a code of laws; but as Winthrop says, the magistrates and ministers
were "not very forward in this matter," for they preferred to supplement
the common law of England by decisions based on the Old Testament rather
than by a body of statutes. It was not until 1649, after a persistent
struggle, that the deputies won a decisive victory over the assistants
and secured for Massachusetts a definite code of laws. In the New Haven
colony similar theocratic notions led the settlers to dispense with
trial by jury because they could find no precedent for it in the laws of
Moses. Here, as in Massachusetts, the inquisitorial administration of
justice combined with partial disfranchisement to awaken discontent, and
it was partly for this reason that New Haven fell so easily under the
sway of Connecticut. [Sidenote: Inquisitorial administration of justice]

In Massachusetts after 1650 the opinion rapidly gained ground that all
baptized persons of upright and decorous lives ought to be considered,
for practical purposes, as members of the church, and therefore entitled
to the exercise of political rights, even though unqualified for
participation in the Lord's Supper. This theory of church-membership,
based on what was at that time stigmatized as the "Halfway Covenant,"
aroused intense opposition. It was the great question of the day. In
1657 a council was held in Boston, which approved the principle of the
Halfway Covenant; and as this decision was far from satisfying the
churches, a synod of all the clergymen in Massachusetts was held five
years later, to reconsider the great question. The decision of the synod
substantially confirmed the decision of the council, but there were some
dissenting voices. Foremost among the dissenters, who wished to retain
the old theocratic regime in all its strictness, was Charles Chauncey,
the president of Harvard College, and Increase Mather agreed with him
at the time, though he afterward saw reason to change his opinion, and
published two tracts in favour of the Halfway Covenant. Most bitter of
all toward the new theory of church-membership was, naturally enough,
Mr. Davenport of New Haven. [Sidenote: The "Halfway Covenant"]

This burning question was the source of angry contentions in the First
Church of Boston. Its teacher, the learned and melancholy Norton, died
in 1663, and four years later the aged pastor, John Wilson, followed
him. In choosing a successor to Wilson the church decided to declare
itself in opposition to the liberal decision of the synod, and in token
thereof invited Davenport to come from New Haven to take charge of it.
Davenport, who was then seventy years old, was disgusted at the recent
annexation of his colony to Connecticut. He accepted the invitation
and came to Boston, against the wishes of nearly half of the Boston
congregation who did not like the illiberal principle which he
represented. In little more than a year his ministry at Boston was ended
by death; but the opposition to his call had already proceeded so far
that a secession from the old church had become inevitable. In 1669
the advocates of the Halfway Covenant organized themselves into a new
society under the title of the "Third Church in Boston." A wooden
meeting-house was built on a lot which had once belonged to the late
governor Winthrop, in what was then the south part of the town, so that
the society and its meeting-house became known as the South Church; and
after a new church founded in Summer Street in 1717 took the name of the
New South, the church of 1669 came to be further distinguished as the
Old South. As this church represented a liberal idea which was growing
in favour with the people, it soon became the most flourishing church
in America. After sixty years its numbers had increased so that the old
meeting-house could not contain them; and in 1729 the famous building
which still stands was erected on the same spot,--a building with a
grander history than any other on the American continent, unless it be
that other plain brick building in Philadelphia where the Declaration of
Independence was adopted and the Federal Constitution framed. [Sidenote:
Founding of the Old South Church, 1669]

The wrath of the First Church at this secession from its ranks was
deep and bitter, and for thirteen years it refused to entertain
ecclesiastical intercourse with the South Church. But by 1682 it had
become apparent that the king and his friends were meditating an attack
upon the Puritan theocracy in New England. It had even been suggested,
in the council for the colonies, that the Church of England should be
established in Massachusetts, and that none but duly ordained Episcopal
clergymen should be allowed to solemnize marriages. Such alarming
suggestions began to impress the various Puritan churches with the
importance of uniting their forces against the common enemy; and
accordingly in 1682 the quarrel between the two Boston societies came to
an end. There was urgent need of all the sympathy and good feeling that
the community could muster, whereby to cheer itself in the crisis that
was coming. The four years from 1684 to 1688 were the darkest years in
the history of New England. Massachusetts, though not lacking in the
spirit, had not the power to beard the tyrant as she did eighty years
later. Her attitude toward the Stuarts--as we have seen--had been
sometimes openly haughty and defiant, sometimes silent and sullen, but
always independent. At the accession of Charles II. the colonists had
thought it worth while to send commissioners to England to confer with
the king and avoid a quarrel. Charles promised to respect their charter,
but insisted that in return they must take an oath of allegiance to the
crown, must administer justice in the king's name, and must repeal their
laws restricting the right of suffrage to church members and prohibiting
the Episcopal form of worship. [Sidenote: Founding of the Old South
Church, 1669] [Sidenote: Demands of Charles II.]

When the people of Massachusetts received this message they consented to
administer justice in the king's name, but all the other matters were
referred for consideration to a committee, and so they dropped out of
sight. When the royal commissioners came to Boston in 1664, they were
especially instructed to ascertain whether Massachusetts had complied
with the king's demands; but upon this point the legislature stubbornly
withheld any definite answer, while it frittered away the time in
trivial altercations with the royal commissioners. The war with Holland
and the turbulent state of English politics operated for several years
in favour of this independent attitude of the colonists, though during
all this time their enemies at court were busy with intrigues and
accusations. Apart from mere slanders the real grounds of complaint
were the restriction of the suffrage, whereby members of the Church of
England were shut out; the claims of the eastern proprietors, heirs
of Mason and Gorges, whose territory Massachusetts had absorbed;
the infraction of the navigation laws; and the coinage of pine-tree
shillings. The last named measure had been forced upon the colonists by
the scarcity of a circulating medium. Until 1661 Indian wampum had been
a legal tender, and far into the eighteenth century it remained current
in small transactions. "In 1693 the ferriage from New York to Brooklyn
was eight stivers in wampum or a silver twopence." [35] As early as
1652 Massachusetts had sought to supply the deficiency by the issue of
shillings and sixpences. It was an affair of convenience and probably
had no political purpose. The infraction of the navigation laws was a
more serious matter. "Ships from France, Spain, and the Canaries traded
directly with Boston, and brought in goods which had never paid duty in
any English port." [36] The effect of this was to excite the jealousy
of the merchants in London and other English cities and to deprive
Massachusetts of the sympathy of that already numerous and powerful
class of people. [Sidenote: Complaints against Massachusetts]

In 1675, the first year of King Philip's War, the British government
made up its mind to attend more closely to the affairs of its American
colonies. It had got the Dutch war off its hands, and could give heed to