USA > Massachusetts > Commonwealth history of Massachusetts, colony, province and state, volume 1 > Part 22
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Not until the next spring, however, did Commissioners meet to draw up articles of confederation. Then only the four Puritan colonies, Massachusetts, Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven, were represented. Rhode Island, "that cage of unclean birds," because of her religious views, was no more acceptable to Massachusetts as an associate in 1643 than in 1640. To the religious intolerance which debarred Rhode Is- land was added in the case of Gorges's province a not un- characteristic snobbishness. "They ran a different course from us," says John Winthrop, "both in their ministry and civil ad- ministration; for they had lately made Acomenticus (a poor village) a corporation, and had made a taylor their mayor, and had entertained one Hvll, an excommunicated person and very contentious, for their minister." So two groups of Eng- lish settlers were left to face alone the dangers of the frontier, rather than have the Puritan colonies-to put the most gen- erous interpretation on their action,-run the risk of the con- tamination of association with neighboring colonies of their own nation and religious faith.
For this was to be a Puritan League and its Puritan char- acter is important. Its formation follows close upon the out-
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break of civil war in England. For the Puritan colonies the struggle of Parliament with Charles had a twofold result: it left them without the potential aid of the manpower or money of their friends in England; but it also rendered them free from interference to work out their own destinies. It was at once a responsibility and a rare opportunity. While it is doubtful whether Massachusetts leaders in 1643 dared hope for the creation in New England of an independent Puritan state, federated or otherwise, clearly the cause of Congrega- tionalism in the new world could be best promoted by con- solidating its strength. Thus also the conversion of the In- dians could be most easily forwarded. In addition, though not stressed, in confederation lay the strongest chance of the colonies' mere survival.
The delegates who met in Boston in May, 1643 were emi- nent men in the colonies: from Massachusetts Governor Win- throp, Dudley and Bradstreet of the magistrates, Gibbons, Tyng and Hathorne of the deputies ; from Plymouth, Winslow and Collier ; from New Haven, Eaton and Grigson; and from Connecticut, Haynes and Hopkins, together with Fenwick of Saybrook. It is noteworthy that these men were treated as ambassadors of independent states.
ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION (1643)
The articles of confederation they drew up created "a firme and perpetuall league of ffrendship and amytie for offence and defence, mutuall advice and succour upon all just occations both for preserueing and propagating the truth and liberties of the Gospell and for their owne mutuall safety and wellfare."
The name chosen was the United Colonies of New England. Administration of matters of common concern to the con- federates was vested in eight Commissioners, two elected yearly from each colony. These Commissioners were to be members of the established Congregational church. They were to meet annually in September. Their powers extended to the management of war and peace and to all other negotia- tions with foreigners or Indians. They were to assign the quotas of men and money for any expedition undertaken by the confederates, the rate being according to poll of all men
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between the ages of sixteen and sixty in each colony. In the emergency of hostile invasion of any jurisdiction, three magis- trates of that colony might call for immediate aid, whereupon Massachusetts should send one hundred men, armed and pro- visioned for service, the other three colonies forty-five men each. Yet even in such case at least six of the eight Com- missioners must vote the justice of this defensive war before the cost might be levied upon the confederates. The internal assessment and collection of any levy was left to the individual colonies.
General problems of a civil nature were also to be consid- ered by the Commissioners, but the territorial and govern- mental integrity of each colony within its own bounds was carefully guaranteed. Furthermore, to insure sufficient check upon the Commissioners, when fewer than six of the eight were in agreement, any project under discussion had to be accepted by unanimous vote of the four General Courts. Pro- cedure to make easy the return of fugitives from justice and of servants who had fled from one jurisdiction into another was also specified, and it is interesting to observe how closely the Fugitive Slave Clause of the United States Constitution of 1789 parallels this early predecessor. The only arrange- ment made for the enforcement of federal acts consisted in giving the Commissioners right to take action against any colony that failed to live up to the terms of the compact. The admission of new members to the confederation, the combin- ing of two into one jurisdiction and the addition of existing plantations to any of the colonies must be sanctioned by the Commissioners. This provision, possibly aimed at Massachu- setts, would prevent the disproportionate growth in power of any one of the colonies.
The lesser colonies had from the beginning been jealous of Massachusetts and apprehensive of her domineering atti- tude. Yet why had Massachusetts submitted to a burden more than that of any of her confederates, with no more voice in decisions than they? Probably for three reasons. In the first place, her preëminence was recognized by holding the Commissioners' meeting twice as often in Boston as in any of the other three colonial capitals. Since no machinery was provided by the Articles of Confederation for executing
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the Commissioners' acts, it fell to the General Courts to carry out federal orders, and primarily to the government of the colony where the meeting took place. In the second place, the Commissioners were likely to be influenced by the opinion of the magistrates in whose midst they sat. Hence Massa- chusetts did win a substantial power in the Confederation. On the other hand, she must have felt it unwise to hold out for additional votes. Danger of Indian attack was only less grave for her than for her weaker neighbors. Religion and security alike called for union.
A careful comparison of this document with the Dutch Union of Utrecht of 1579 makes it certain that that docu- ment was well known to the draftsmen of the first federal con- stitution in the history of America. The title of "United Provinces" reappeared in "United Colonies." Some of the details are manifestly based on the Dutch prototype, though the New Englanders avoided the provision for unanimous consent of all the members for important decisions. The rela- tion of this part of the New England Confederation to the later constitution of the United States will be treated in later chapters of this work.
MACHINERY OF THE CONFEDERATION
The Articles made no attempt to lay down any definite form of procedure for the federal officers. Indeed even the method of their selection by the four colonies was not specified. In Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven they were generally elected by the freemen of the colonies. In Massachusetts, ac- cording to Winthrop, "The magistrates and deputies had form- erly chosen the commissioners, but the freemen, looking at them as general officers, would now (1646) choose them them- selves, and the rather because some of the deputies had formerly been chosen to that office which gave offence to our confederates, and to many among ourselves, for it being an affair of so great moment, the most able gentlemen in the whole country were the fittest for it."
The delegates to the first meeting in September 1643 had all been members of the committee to draft the terms of union, and this circumstance doubtless facilitated their evolving a
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satisfactory system of conducting business. And the advan- tages of experienced representatives was so obvious that each colony was at pains to choose every year at least one Com- missioner who had served in that capacity before. Thus a certain continuity of policy and procedure was attained.
The Articles called for a president, elected at each session by the Commissioners from among themselves, to act merely as a presiding officer, with no power of veto or right to check the presentation or progress of business. This honor rotated regularly, since it became customary to elect one of the Com- missioners of the jurisdiction where the meeting was taking place. These sessions were more often held in Boston than in any other one place, not only because the Articles stipulated two meetings there to every one in Plymouth, Hartford, or New Haven, but because practically all the emergency sessions were called by Massachusetts.
Just how discussion was carried on at these meetings is im- possible to say. Despite the fact that full minutes were kept, in order that each colony might have a copy of all proceedings, as provided by the Articles, there is no indication as to who kept these minutes or who took charge of letters and other official papers. Certainly no definite, permanent arrangement for a secretariat was made. This casualness is in fact typical of the freedom from red tape which characterized the Com- missioners' work throughout. Discussion was apparently al- ways free and for the most part singularly equable. When any of the Commissioners dissented from the course voted by the majority, care was taken to make note of this contrary vote, with a brief statement of the reason, much as is done in decisions of the United States Supreme Court today. So successful were the Commissioners in reaching agreement that such dissent was rare; and it was never necessary to refer any subject to the General Courts for final settlement. In general, the Confederation was directed by judicious, intelligent men acting as the delegates of their respective colonies.
RELATIONS WITH THE INDIANS (1643-1653)
The first problem to confront the newly founded Confed- eration was the settlement of a quarrel between the great Narragansett tribe and the Mohegans. A recent treaty be-
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tween the two peoples bound them to refer any difference to the English before resorting to war. With true Indian disre- gard of treaties, not long after in the course of a dispute, Miantonomo, the powerful young Narragansett chief, with a thousand braves, treacherously fell upon Uncas, the Mohegan. Miantonomo, nevertheless, was defeated and captured; and Uncas, unwilling to incur both the displeasure of the white men and the vengeance of the Narragansetts, applied to the English for advice about what to do with his royal captive. While he sought out the Commissioners, met in Boston for their first session, he entrusted his prisoner to the magistrates at Hartford. Thus the United Colonies were directly in- volved.
Although the Commissioners and some of the Massachusetts elders with whom they consulted professed to judge the case solely as it concerned Uncas, obviously considerations of ex- pediency for the United Colonies determined their decision. Here was a dangerous savage in their grasp. Miantonomo at liberty held the lives and property of hundreds of New Eng- land colonists in the hollow of his hand, and there was some reason to believe he was conspiring to use his power against them. With Miantonomo dead, the Narragansetts and their confederates, the Nyanticks, would be crippled. The Commis- sioners felt that it was no time for clemency: Uncas was in- structed to put Miantonomo to death. At a distance of three centuries, this sentence seems harsh, for the evidence of Mian- tonomo's plots against the English is meagre, and the troubles were accented by his death.
For the Narragansetts never forgave the United Colonies. The history of the Commissioners' dealings with them for the next seven years, possibly for the next thirty, is the story of their rage and desire for vengeance, of their fear and dis- trust of the United Colonies. First they attempted to revenge themselves upon Uncas, but since he was protected by the Eng- lish, in 1645 they planned a surprise attack upon the white men. Timely warning from Roger Williams, however, and the prompt vigorous action of the Commissioners averted war. The determination of the small force dispatched to the Narra- gansetts to treat and the extent of the military preparations throughout the colonies convinced the Indians that they might
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better bide their time. So they signed a treaty binding them- selves to keep peace with the United Colonies.
The following five years proved the futility of trying to restrain savages by a "scrap of paper." Every term of the covenant was repeatedly broken and only a series of lucky accidents, coupled with skillful diplomacy on the part of the Commissioners, prevented the Narragansetts effecting a gen- eral Indian uprising of proportions to have utterly wiped out the English settlements. The Commissioners discovered that the wampum, which, according to treaty should have been paid over to the English, had been sent by the Narragansetts to the Mohawks to induce them to take the warpath against the United Colonies. The Pocumtucks around Deerfield also were to have joined in hostilities. The latter were already at the place of rendezvous awaiting the Mohawks when the agents of the Commissioners sought them out.
No wonder the Puritans thought Jehovah had them under His special protection. The Mohawks failed to appear. A few days before, the murder of two of their braves by French traders had resulted in turning their tomahawks against New France instead of New England. Discouraged by the withdrawal of their allies, the Pocumtucks were dis- suaded from war by the tact and eloquence of the Commis- sioners' men. Then the Narragansetts abandoned the attack too. With the frustration of this conspiracy its fomenters became for a time more tractable, and comparative quiet pre- vailed until 1653.
EXTERNAL RELATIONS
Meanwhile other difficulties required a share of the Com- missioners' attention. At their first meeting New Haven petitioned for support against the Swedes and Dutch on Dela- ware Bay where New Haven merchants had been trying to establish a trading post. The Commissioners undertook to send a protest to the Governor of the Swedish settlement and a demand for satisfaction for damage done New Haven. To the Dutch governor a similar letter was dispatched with, to be sure, the addition of a list of wrongs done within New England to Connecticut as well as to New Haven. Negotia- tions with the Swedes never went beyond a sparse exchange
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of letters. New Haven, unable to recover her losses on the Delaware from either Swedes or Dutch, was eventually forced to abandon the whole enterprise.
With the Dutch, on the other hand, the United Colonies treated for years. The confederating of the powerful Bay Colony with Connecticut and New Haven was a blow to New Netherland, for the Dutch West India Company now could not hope so to man its colony as to compete on equal terms with the New Englanders. The Dutch had been established on the Connecticut River, at the present site of Hartford, since 1633; and it was therefore with justifiable wrath that they saw English settlers planting under the very walls of their fort and cutting in upon their trade with the Indians in various places west of the river. New Netherland claimed all the territory between the Delaware and Connecticut Riv- ers, but in face of Connecticut's and New Haven's policy of peaceful penetration, crowding ever westward and pushing the Dutch further and further out of New England, she could do little but protest.
Angry correspondence with the Dutch Governor over the offenses and retaliations arising from such a situation was conducted from 1643 on by the federal Commissioners, and constituted business as important as any with which they had to deal. Grievances on either side multiplied with each year, varying in seriousness from the harboring of fugitive ser- vants and the sale of firearms to the Indians, to the seizure by the Dutch colony government of a Dutch trader's vessel within New Haven harbor. Matters were at length composed enough to make possible a treaty in 1650. It was a triumph for the English. New Netherland was forced to accept as her eastern boundary a line drawn on Long Island south from Oyster Bay; and on the mainland due north from the west side of Greenwich Bay.
Foreign relations could not, however, be confined to the Swedes and Dutch. In 1644 while the exchange of letters with those neighbors to the south and west was continuing and while the Indians threatened, an unpleasant affair with the French to the north and east obtruded itself upon the Commissioners' notice. The trouble began a year earlier when Massachusetts unwisely gave some support, unofficial
From an engraving in the Boston Athenaeum
GOVERNOR PETER STUYVESANT OF NEW NETHERLAND
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EXTERNAL RELATIONS
but still substantial, to M. de la Tour of St. Johns, who pro- fessed to be the royal Governor of the French province of Acadia. Too late Massachusetts discovered that his rival, D'Aulnay of Penobscot, was the Governor recognized by the crown of France. Massachusetts volunteers had already done D'Aulnay much damage, and he had replied by issuing com- missions for seizing Massachusetts ships. Alarmed at the prospect of the destruction of her shipping and yet eager to maintain the highly lucrative fur trade with La Tour, the Massachusetts magistrates were in a quandary. They made conciliatory overtures to D'Aulnay and then hastened to turn the matter over to the federal Commissioners.
It was no easy situation. In 1644 the success of Charles I was still possible, and the Puritan colonies, as Parliamentary sympathizers, had no desire to incur the further displeasure of the King by an injudicious affront to France, his friend. The Commissioners therefore immediately approved Massa- chusetts's offer to D'Aulnay of reparation, although they rec- commended the issue of counter commissions against his ship- ping, if he persisted in hostility. Massachusetts did manage to negotiate with D'Aulnay a provisional treaty, pending the Commissioners' ratification; but hardly had it been completed before Massachusetts merchants broke it, so D'Aulnay averred, by carrying provisions to his enemy La Tour.
Since the treaty had expressly sanctioned Massachusetts trade with any person "either French or other wheresoever they dwell," D'Aulnay was at length mollified and persuaded to ratify the treaty as the Commissioners had already done. A gift which the Frenchmen agreed to accept in lien of £8000 damages was sent in the shape of a sedan chair, booty from a Spanish prize captured in the West Indies and "worth" says Winthrop, "forty or fifty pounds where it was made but of no comfortable use to us."
Thereafter relations between the United Colonies and the French were more easy. Indeed all was so peaceable that in 1647 there came from Canada a proposal for free trade be- tween New England and New France; and three years later a further request for cooperation in making war upon the French enemy, the Iroquois. But the Commissioners had seen
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enough of intermeddling with their neighbors' troubles and no further dealings between the French and the United Colonies ever took place.
SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS BETTERMENT
Though questions of Indian and foreign policy constantly engaged the Commissioners during the early years of the union-and were most vital to the safety of the United Colo- nies-the federal officials still found time to pass upon various matters calculated to promote the general welfare of the Con- federates and to facilitate smooth relations between them- selves. Thus they recommended to the General Courts measures to expedite justice, probating of wills, and settlement of intestacy cases in all the colonies. They provided for bet- ter communication by arranging for the building of a road from Massachusetts to Connecticut.
They also secured financial aid for poor scholars at Harvard College by dint of urging upon the various Colonial govern- ments the piety of helping them. Although, as was pointed out to the Commissioners, God had hitherto carried on the work of this School of the Prophet by a special hand, and that not without some evident fruit and success, God's hand had been cramped and the colonies must lend assistance. The forwarding of such a project was wholly befitting a confed- eration whose purpose was in part the maintenance of the Gospel. Consequently the Commissioners recommended an annual contribution of a fourth of a bushel of corn from every family in the United Colonies able and willing to give to the college. In response to this appeal Massachusetts, Connecticut and New Haven appointed in every plantation collectors of the "college corn."
President Dunster in fact found the Commissioners' assist- ance so efficient in procuring funds that he wrote to consult about other college business : on how to roof the buildings, how to obtain books for the library, and, most poignant of all, how to secure the President's salary. On these subjects the Commissioners vouchsafed no advice.
Few events in New England history indicate more clearly the extent to which the interests and hopes of the Puritan
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leaders centered on religion than the activities of the confed- erate Commissioners in serving as guardians of the faith. They early considered ways of stopping the spreading course of religious error, and they succeeded in launching discussion which ended in a church synod in 1646. They sent warning to the colony governments to keep due watch "at the doores of God's house, that none be admitted as members of the body of Christ but such as hold foorth effectuall calling." They even went so far as to recommend orders "against excess and disorder in apparrell drincke and all other loose and sinfull miscarriages ... their fruites ... beinge nothinge better then the wild vines or brambles in the wildernes."
ECONOMIC AFFAIRS
Of more material usefulness were the endeavors of the central administration in economic matters. By the 1640's commerce in the United Colonies had attained sizeable pro- portions and there was real justification for some federal reg- ulation of inter-colonial trade. The Commissioners, who as a board were always eager to extend the power of the federal government, in the early years made the most of the oppor- tunity thus offered them. In the first place, they proclaimed a uniform measure of eight gallons for all the confederates. Later they advised the prohibition of mackerel fishing before the fish had spawned, since mackerel was "the most staple comoditie in this Country and might bee much more benificiall then yett it hath bine if wisly managed." In 1644 they put a stop to the flooding of colonial markets with Connecticut grain by prevailing upon that General Court to forbid the sale of grain, meal or flour outside the colony except over- seas. In an effort to stabilize currency, they labored to secure a standardized quality of peage; and three of the four colony Courts acted upon their suggestions.
Their most ambitious scheme, however, the organization of a United Colonies joint stock company for trade with the Indians was never carried out. They proposed to raise £10,000 as capital which factors appointed by the Commissioners should employ in pursuing the fur trade. There is no reason to suppose that such an enterprise might not have been both
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practicable and profitable. Although Massachusetts hailed the idea with enthusiasm, Plymouth's unconditional refusal to participate put an end to it.
Over one phase of Indian trade, the sale of firearms and ammunition to the natives, the Commissioners kept always a watchful eye. This dangerous traffic they studied to destroy.
Nor were these services all. During the first decade of the confederation, the federal delegates of two of the colonies several times acted as arbitrators of quarrels between the other two. By this system of adjudication Woronoak (Westfield, Massachusetts) was decreed part of the jurisdiction of Mas- sachusetts instead of Connecticut. A far more difficult ques- tion of jurisdiction, submitted to the Connecticut and New Haven Commissioners to decide between the claims of Mas- sachusetts and Plymouth to Warwick (Rhode Island)-a case infinitely complicated by the stormy relations between the settlers there, Samuel Gorton's company, and Massachusetts -proved after two years discussion to have been debated in vain, since the English Parliament ordained that Warwick should pertain to Rhode Island.
IMPOST CONTROVERSY (1646-1650)
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