USA > Massachusetts > Commonwealth history of Massachusetts, colony, province and state, volume 1 > Part 24
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The Massachusetts magistrates first presented their case with a plea for joint action against these irreligious radicals. The Commissioners hereupon recommended laws forbidding the Quakers to come into the United Colonies, or if already there to remain, which laws the four General Courts passed. Two years later they advised a still harsher law in order to check the continued proselyting by the sect : anyone convicted as a Quaker who returned to the United Colonies was to be imprisoned and then banished under penalty of death in case of a second return. Only Massachusetts was so severe as to adopt these measures in all their rigor, and added to them penalties for any who defended the heretics.
In the interval between these pronouncements, the Commis- sioners, as guardians of the welfare of the Puritans in the new world, felt called upon to exhort Rhode Island to follow their example, lest by means of trading intercourse, infection ยท spread from the Quakers in Rhode Island to her neighbors. The answers of Rhode Island are a triumph for toleration. As usual, the tone of the Commissioners when dealing with the liberal-minded little colony was stern, and that govern- ment read the letter as a veiled threat to coerce them by economic boycott. For Rhode Island this would have been ruinous.
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Nevertheless she returned an outright refusal to punish any persons "for only declaring by words, etc., theire mindes and understandings concerning the things and ways of God". Moreover, these people who panted for martyrdom were al- ready beginning to loathe Rhode Island where they encoun- tered no opposition from the civil authority. Since freedom of conscience was one of the fundamentals of the colony char- ter, she could not require, she concluded, more of the Quakers than obedience to the laws of England.
The United Colonies took no reproach unto themselves for their bigotry. On the contrary, they thought: "Yf thus we be for God he will certainely be with vs, And though the God of the world (as he is stiled) be worshipped, and by vsurpation sett vpon his throane in thte maine and greatest part of America, yet this small parte and portion may be vin- dicated as by the right hand of Jehovah, and justly called Emmannuells land".
BOUNDARY QUESTIONS (1657-1667)
Yet such piety did not prevent new quarrels from arising within the Confederation. Disputes developed in 1657 over title to the so-called Pequod country, lands between the Paw- catuck and Thames rivers, claimed by both Massachusetts and Connecticut by right of conquest in the Pequod war. Not long after, the adjudicating Commissioners set the Mystic river as the boundary between Connecticut's lands on the west and Massachusetts's on the east; Rhode Island also be- came involved in the squabble when planters from about Nar- ragansett Bay began to push westward across the Pawcatuck river.
Acrimonious correspondence ensued between the Commis- sioners and the General Courts and actual deeds of violence within the contested districts occurred. But in 1663 Connec- ticut's newly won charter rights gave her an immeasurable accretion of strength and she succeeded gradually in forcing Massachusetts to withdraw altogether. The fight with Rhode Island, Connecticut then carried on for herself with the Com- missioners' aid, until at length King Charles took the decision into his own hands.
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THE REVISED CONSTITUTION
By the royal charter granted to Connecticut New Haven colony was incorporated with Connecticut. It was a bitter blow to the little theocracy, and Massachusetts and Plymouth stood by her in protesting. To Massachusetts also the change could not have been agreeable, for now Connecticut would be strong enough to challenge her primacy. For two years New Haven struggled, only to yield to the inevitable in December, 1664. Not until three years later did Massachusetts and Ply- mouth acquiesce in the incorporation.
THE REVISED CONSTITUTION (1665-1672)
Several years elapsed after the Restoration of Charles II who apparently took notice of the colonial Confederation, without objecting to it. What then was the chagrin of the United Colonies to receive in 1665 intimations of royal dis- pleasure with the combination. Royal Commissioners sent over the summer before to report upon conditions in the col- onies took occasion to pronounce the union a usurpation of the King's prerogative. The King had been informed, so they announced, that "that that union was a war combination made by the four colonies when they had a design to throw off their dependence on England and for that purpose."
The royal agents endeavored to elict a statement from Ply- mouth that she would not consider herself bound by the terms of the Confederation to refuse His Majesty's authority even if her associates were to do so. Plymouth's reply was sooth- ing, but Massachusetts took great umbrage at these implica- tions and sent Charles a detailed account of the good work of the Confederation "which is the wall and bulworke, under God, against the heathen." His Majesty was evidently reas- sured and no further steps were taken against the union.
Still it appeared wise for the Confederation to make itself inconspicuous for a time. Furthermore, the incorporation of New Haven with Connecticut destroyed the applicability of the original Articles. Hence either a new covenant or a formal dissolution was needed. Plymouth voted for the latter, be- cause, as she stated, it was too expensive to send Commission- ers to make decisions which experience proved might be dis- regarded by any one confederate when they became incon- venient. Nevertheless she continued to elect Commissioners,
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and 1667 found her consulting with Massachusetts and Con- necticut over new Articles of Confederation. After all, the general feeling in Plymouth, as elsewhere, seemed to be that the association was valuable, particularly for coping with the Indians. By 1672 a newly constituted Confederation of three was in full working order.
The revised Articles settled forever the painful question of the Commissioners' powers in offensive war by vesting the right to declare such war in the General Courts. To the General Courts also was given all control in civil matters and the power to permit of the extension or combination of the colonies or Confederation. The vote of five of the six Com- missioners was to carry any motion; but if five could not agree, the matter was to be referred to the General Courts. Triennial meetings were specified-two in Boston and two in Hartford to every one in Plymouth; and the quotas of men for aid in emergency were changed to thirty from Plymouth, sixty from Connecticut and one hundred from Massachusetts. Otherwise the Articles were practically as in the original agreement.
Two facts are noticeable about this new Confederation. First, care was taken to embody a statement in the Articles that the union was for the purposes of serving the King, so that any lingering sparks of royal wrath might be extin- guished. Secondly, the Commissioners' authority was so re- duced as to render them dependent upon the General Courts in the most important decisions and to transform them from a sort of federal congress with discretionary powers into an advisory body or a conclave of instructed ambassadors.
The need of a strong central administration was now less. The Dutch, since 1664 English subjects of the province of New York, were no longer to be feared. The long years of peace with the Indians had sufficed to win some of the savages to more civilized ways. And the increased size and power of the individual colonies made close union a less essential source of strength.
REVIVAL OF ACTIVITY (1673-1691)
As the authority of the Commissioners was restricted, the scope and value of their activities narrowed. Their manage-
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ment of foreign relations hereafter was confined to a single episode in 1673 when a Dutch fleet captured and held New York for a few months. A pompous letter to the Dutch com- mander and some ineffective recommendations of prepared- ness to the General Courts were the whole extent of their achievement. A few attempts to settle inter-colonial disputes over land titles proved equally futile. In Indian concerns, on the other hand, the Commissioners continued to be useful agents of control. The missionary work among the natives was carried on capably under their guidance down to 1684, though there is evidence that they permitted a share of the funds of the Corporation to go to the support of Harvard College. How better could God be served? As regarded Indian hostilities, moreover, their work was still important. The unaltered need of colonial unity for defense was to be proved in King Philip's War.
Philip, sachem of the Mount Hope Indians, began his at- tacks against the English in June, 1675, but the confederates made no attempt at united counter action until September when the Commissioners held their regular meeting. By that time it was obvious that this was to be no sporadic outburst but a long, merciless war. So the Commissioners made large scale preparations by calling for one thousand men to be in readiness to march at a moment's notice-527 from Massa- chusetts, 315 from Connecticut, and 158 from Plymouth. But they formulated no plan of campaign and created no central command. Instead, the commander-in-chief was to be the chief military officer of the colony in which the fighting was taking place.
By November closer cooperation became manifestly neces- sary. The Narragansetts with whom Massachusetts and Con- necticut had patched up a treaty in the summer were giving such indubitable proofs of treachery that the Commissioners declared war against them. To render effective the projected invasion of the Narragansett country, a second contingent of one thousand men was raised, and this time a single supreme commander, Josiah Winslow, was appointed. After the launch- ing of this expedition the Commissioners acted for several months with some success as a central Council of War. They raised relieving contingents ; they enlisted the Pequod and Mo-
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hegan braves on the colonial side; they endeavored to establish a single commissary for the united army ; and they were con- stantly ready with their advice to Winslow.
Unhappily the illness of General Winslow early in 1676 resulted in the reversion to a decentralized, haphazard scheme of defense. Individual colony troops conducted their own manoeuvres, and the federal Commissioners had no further responsibility during the war. Perhaps considering the ubi- quity of the Indians' attacks in the ensuing months, separate action was as effective as joint. During the months of its management of the war, although the federal board had not always been able to secure compliance with its orders, and although efficiency in a modern sense had been wanting in its regime, nevertheless it made possible concerted measures at a time when they were highly useful, and where delay due to lack of machinery for cooperation might have been fatal.
Succeeding meetings of the Commissioners were largely concerned with the knotty problem of adjusting the war debts. In 1678 they also undertook correspondence with Governor Andros of New York over a raid of the Mohawks upon the praying Indians of Natick. Massachusetts alone finally set- tled matters with the guilty tribe, for, as she wrote their chief, "There are other Indians for you to fall vpon, whose pursuing and destroying wee shall take kindly from your hand." The Confederation was becoming increasingly insignificant. The Lords of Trade in England were already evolving a new scheme of colonial union, in which consideration of Puritan- ism was to play no part.
Some suspicion of a rebellious purpose in the existing com- bination seems to have persisted abroad, and Massachusetts's uncompromising attitude did nothing to allay such distrust. Fearful of the fate which was indeed to overtake them, the United Colonies, upon their Commissioners' recommenda- tions, observed days of "solemn humiliation" to pray the Lord to confound their enemies. In vain. In 1686 the Dominion of New England was established which automatically wiped out the separate colonial governments and their league.
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SERVICES OF CONFEDERATION
END OF THE CONFEDERATION
The Confederation was never formally dissolved. After the overthrow of the Dominion government in 1689, steps were taken to resurrect the union in order better to secure the colonies from the Indian attacks in Maine and from French and Indian hostilities on the northwest frontier. Ply- mouth was particularly eager for such reconstruction, doubt- less because in the Confederation she hoped to find a safe- guard against Massachusetts swallowing her up. But no defi- nite renewal of the compact ensued ; the revival was only nom- inal. Still it facilitated promptness of action and gave a valu- able sense of cohesion. Thus the colonial expedition of 1690, against Quebec and Montreal, that extraordinary and ill-fated attempt of a few hundred men to capture an empire, may be called in some ways the work of the United Colonies. It formed a fitting climax to a long career. In 1691 Plymouth's incorporation with Massachusetts ended all possibility of per- petuation of the New England Confederation.
THE SERVICES OF THE CONFEDERATION (1643-1686)
In view of the inherent weaknesses of the union, it might seem extraordinary that it endured so long. Dissension was quite inevitable in any combination based on so unequal a compact. The conflict between Massachusetts and her lesser associates foreshadowed the struggle between the big states and the little in drawing up the Constitution in 1787. Fur- thermore, inability to execute its orders and, most fatal of all, lack of federal revenues, left the central government the toy of the General Courts.
The fact that the union functioned at all proves the need of it. It is customary to think of the Confederation as little more than an incident in colonial history, and its concerns as rather trivial. The reverse is true. A wise solution of the problems which confronted the United Colonies during the 1640's and '50's was essential to their safety and well-being. And even after the Restoration the union was useful.
It is, moreover, probable that this first colonial union was valuable as an example to the eighteenth century colonies.
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Some arrangements established by the United Colonies appar- ently lived on in custom to be extended eventually to all the thirteen states by the Articles of Confederation of 1778, such as the provisions for recognizing the judicial decisions of the court of one colony in every other; for returning fugitive servants; and for employing one standardized measure in all the colonies.
Although the Articles and acts of the Commissioners were not printed at the time of the Revolution, memory of their forbears' achievement was the common heritage of a large part of New England. What had been done in 1643 could be done again. In fact, the similarity in the phrasing of parts of the 1643 compact and Franklin's plan of 1775 shows clearly that that great statesman was familiar with and in- fluenced by the earlier document. The very existence of the seventeenth century union must have served as inspiration to the colonists of a later day.
Still the chief significance of the New England Confed- eration lies in its importance as a system of colonial defense. Contemporaries regarded it as a vital source of strength. The efforts of Rhode Island and the Maine settlements to gain admission to its shelter testifies to this. Within the fold, the most influential men of the colonies, frequently governors and deputy governors, served as Commissioners: John Win- throp the Elder, John Winthrop the Younger, William Brad- ford, John Endecott, Edward Hopkins, Theophilus Eaton, William Leete, Simon Bradstreet, Josiah Winslow, and a score of others only less eminent.
United, these earnest Puritans could face a hostile world with comparative confidence. The menace from the Dutch and French in the early years was unquestionably great. Little stood between the Dutch and the gradual acquisition of the whole Connecticut valley and lands west. Easily might the French have pushed their trading posts and authority ever further down the coast from Acadia. Had the New Eng- landers not presented a united front in opposition, united in fact as well as in sentiment, the loss or at best the pinching of the English colonies into a dwarfing, constricted area would, it seems, have been inevitable. Still more terribly real was the danger from the Indian, who watched with growing distrust
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and anger the steady encroachment of the white men on his hunting grounds. The effects of King Philip's War were devastating; if the conflict had come thirty years earlier, as it nearly did, it is doubtful whether the colonies could have survived at all. It was the Confederation of the plantations that averted the war until their roots had struck deep enough to withstand the storm. To the Puritan union we probably owe the survival of "Emmanuells land."
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
[See bibliographies to chapters vi (Indians), viii (Sister Settlements), xv (Economic) ; xix (Expansion) ; and the General Bibliography at the end of Volume V.]
Official records are available as follows :
"The acts of the Commissioners of the United Colonies of New England" in Records of the Colonies of New Plymouth. Vols. IX, X (Boston, State Printer, 1859) .- Extracts from the Acts of the Commissioners are in Public Records of the Colony of Connecticut Vol. III, (Hartford State Printer, 1850-1890) .- Full minutes of the meet- ings and the correspondence of the federal commissioners from 1643 to 1684, including the Articles of Confederation. The most important source of information about the Confederation.
ADAMS, James Truslow .- The Founding of New England (Boston, At- lantic Monthly Press, 1921) .- Chs. ix, xiii, xiv relate to inter colonial affairs, readable.
BANCROFT, George .- History of the United States (6 vols., Revised ed., Boston, Little Brown, 1879) .- Vol., Chap. x-Diffuse but reliable. BRADFORD, William .- History of Plimoth Plantation. (First print Boston, Wright & Potter Printing Co., 1898) .- Especially pp. 496-526. Diary of the first Governor of Plymouth; causes for confederating ; full text of the Articles of Confederation; relations with the Indians down to 1645.
BUFFINTON, Arthur Howard .- New England and the Western Fur Trade (Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Transactions Vol. XVIII, 160-192, Jan., 1916) .- A scholarly study of the part the fur trade played in the problems of the Commissioners.
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, American and West Indies .- Summaries of events in the United Colonies, particularly contests over land titles; documents reflecting official English attitude toward the confederation.
Documentary History of the State of New York, (4 vols., Albany, 1849) .- Vol II Accounts of the joint enterprises of New England and New York 1689-1691.
Documents Relative to the Colonial History of the State of New York (15 vols., Albany, 1856-1861), Vols. I. II, III, IX, XII, XIII, XIV .- Full of valuable official correspondence and contemporary comments, on relations between the United Colonies and the Dutch.
DOYLE, J. A .- English Colonies in America: The Puritan Colonies (2 vols., New York, Holt, 1889) .- Especially Vol. I, 220-319, Vol. II, 60-61, 102-105, 124, 155, 174 .- A useful detailed account of the forma- tion and chief work of the first seven years of the union.
FISKE, John .- The Beginnings of New England (Boston, Houghton, Mifflin, 1890). Chapter iv .- A presentation of the Confederation as the creation of theocratic colonies.
FROTHINGHAM, Richard .- Rise of the Republic of the United States (5th ed., Boston, Little Brown, 1890) .- Chap. ii is an interpretation of the work of the Confederation and of its relations to England.
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SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
HART, Albert Bushnell and CHANNING, Edward .- American History Leaflet, no. 7 (N. Y. Lovell, 1793) .- No. 7 is a reprint of the Articles of Confederation and brief selections from the Acts of the Com- missioners.
HODGE, Helen Henry .- "Massachusetts and the New England Confed- eration" South Atlantic Quarterly, III, 273-284, 349-355; July, Oct. 1904) .- Inaccurate in detail, yet a useful survey of the position of Massachusetts in the union.
HUBBARD, William .- A General History of New England (Massa- chusetts Historical Society, Cambridge, 1815) .- Especially 465-520, 542-550, 571-575 .- Written by a seventeenth century Massachusetts minister. Data on events down to 1649 culled from Winthrop; later material fragmentary.
HUTCHINSON, Thomas .- The History of Massachusetts from 1628 until the year 1750 (2 vols., 3d ed., Boston, 1795) .- Vol. I includes much in- teresting comment and useful information obtained direct from sources.
MACDONALD, William .- Documentary Source Book of American His- tory, 1606-1675 (N. Y., Macmillan, 1916) .- No. 12 is the text of the Articles of Confederation.
MATHEWS, Mrs. Lois K .- "Benjamin Franklin's Plans for a Colonial Union," 1750-1775 (Am. Polit. Science Review, VIII, 393-412, Aug. 1914) .- An interesting analysis of the Articles of Confederation of 1643 on Franklin's draft of a federal Constitution in 1775.
OSGOOD, Herbert L .- The American Colonies in the Seventeenth Cen- tury (3 vols., New York, Macmillan, 1904) .- Vol. I, chap. x is the best condensed treatment of the Confederation.
PALFREY, John Gorham .- (5 vols. Boston, Little Brown, 1859) .- Vols. I, III strictly chronological; accurate presentation of the acts of the Commissioners.
RECORDS OF MASSACHUSETTS .- (Boston, 1854), Vols. 1-5. Records of the Colonies of New Plymouth, (Boston, 1855) Vols. 2-6, 11, Public Records of the Colony of Connecticut, (Hartford, 1850-1890), Vols. 1-4, Records of New Haven Colony, (Hartford, 1857-1858), 1638-1649, 1653-1665. Contains the responses of the Gen- eral Courts to the recommendations of the Commissioners.
SALMON, Lucy M .- "The Union of Utrecht" (American Historical As- sociation, Report, 1893, pp. 137-148) .- A study of the probable source of the political ideas embodied in the New England Confederation.
CHAPTER X
SOCIAL LIFE (1630-1689)
BY JAMES FORD Associate Professor of Social Ethics, Harvard University
POPULATION
The colonists of Massachusetts Bay in the seventeenth cen- tury were not a uniform social group, though relatively homo- geneous from the point of view of race, language and religion. The Pilgrims who first settled at Plymouth were English men and women of modest economic circumstances and, in the main, also of modest education, but of profound religious convictions for which they were ready at all times to sacri- fice comfort and security. There is little evidence that their brief residence in Holland had given them a cosmopolitan point of view, for the institutions which they developed in America were essentially English. From the beginning, how- ever, there were among them a few persons of considerable culture and training and the influence which they exercised is apparent throughout the Plymouth colony.
The Massachusetts Bay colony was from the outset some- what different from that of Plymouth both in its social make-up and in its ideals. Among its founders were men actuated by love of adventure and by economic motives, and the influence of members of the English gentry, though in main practice subordinated to "theocratic domination," tended to more cosmopolitanism in social life than was displayed in the Plymouth colony. J. R. Green says of them that they were not "broken men, adventurers, bankrupts, criminals or simply poor men and artisans. They were, in great part, men of the professions and middle classes, some of them men of large landed estates; some zealous clergymen, some shrewd Lon- don lawyers, or young scholars from Oxford ... driven from their fatherland not by earthly want or by greed
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of gold or by lust of adventure, but by the fear of God and the zeal of godly worship." Thus are described the colonists of 1630. Their successors were less uniform in type and included during the following half century representatives of many of the social groups of the England of that period, domi- nated, however, by the original settlers and their descendants and particularly by the Puritan clergy.
Plymouth had been settled by a company of seventy-three males and twenty-nine females, a group nearly cut in half by the privations of the first winter. Thirty-five more settlers arrived in the following fall and were distributed among the original families. In May, 1622, sixty-seven other persons arrived with Thomas Weston and settled in what is now Weymouth. These were largely returned to England in the following year. Another group settled in Wessagusset the following year but also were largely scattered within twelve months. By 1628, in addition to the settlement at Plymouth, there were small groups of settlers at the following places : Piscataqua (Portsmouth), Nantasket (now Hull), Naumkeag (now Salem), Winnisimmet (now Chelsea), Cocheco (Thompson's Island), Shawmut (now Boston), Mishawum (now Charlestown), Noddle's Island (South Boston) and Wessagusset. In 1624 there were approximately one hun- dred and eighty settlers within the bounds of the present Massachusetts and by 1630 the number in the Plymouth Colony was around three hundred. Twelve years later it had increased to three thousand, and included many "unruly ser- vants" and dissipated young men whose mode of living was different from that of the Pilgrims.
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