Massachusetts : a guide to its places and people, Part 6

Author:
Publication date: 1937
Publisher: Boston : Houghton Mifflin Company
Number of Pages: 802

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The later migration evolved from this insignificant Dorchester fishing enterprise on Cape Ann. Conant's failure left many of his English backers dissatisfied but still anxious to experiment in empire-building. The Reverend John White, John Endicott, and John Humphrey were the most restive spirits in this group. These men were Puritans who, unwilling to separate from the Established Church, believed that the Church might be purified from within; they hoped that a colony in America would provide an opportunity for the free exercise of their beliefs and

Massachusetts: The General Background

would serve as a 'bulwark against the kingdom of Antichrist.' The Council for New England was respectfully petitioned for a grant of land, which was approved in March, 1628. The petitioners were given control of the territory between a point three miles south of the Charles River and another three miles north of the Merrimack, running from sea to sea. Armed with this grant, a shipload of settlers under Endicott set sail for Salem in 1628, where Conant and his band had moved two years before. Meanwhile royal sanction was sought and obtained, and in 1629 their 'dread sovereign' issued a charter confirming the grant from the Council of New England.

This royal act created the Massachusetts Bay Company, and it was upon the basis of this charter that the democracy and expansion of the Massachusetts Bay Colony developed. The colony was to be admin- istered by two general courts; the first was to be made up of all the stock- holders or freemen and was to hold quarterly sessions, at one of which the members of the other court were to be selected in the form of a governor, deputy governor, and eighteen assistants. The use of the term 'freemen' as a designation for members of the General Court laid the basis for the representative system as it later emerged in Massachusetts. Equally important was the failure of the charter to state that meetings of the Court must be held in England. This made it possible for the charter and the entire government of the colony to be transferred to America.

Certain prominent Puritan leaders in England, notably John Winthrop, recognized this vital fact. They perceived that if the charter was removed to America the colony would virtually be free of English control and could, therefore, become a Puritan commonwealth governed by Biblical principles. Winthrop's arguments prevailed, and the company resolved to move entirely to Massachusetts and to change from a trading company with Puritan sympathies to a Puritan colony. In return, Winthrop agreed to emigrate with his considerable group of followers. In March, 1630, they set out confidently, and with them went the charter. A new type of English colony was automatically established, and Massachusetts became a self-contained corporate colony markedly different from earlier proprietary colonies like Virginia.

Salem, which had pleased Roger Conant, did not please Winthrop, who had become the colony's first governor, and he moved first to Charlestown and then to Boston, leaving the other communities as towns to join those that grew up around Boston harbor. A period of almost unprecedented growth followed, and by 1640 sixteen thousand

Enough of Its History to Explain Its People

people had joined in the Great Migration to Massachusetts, for which English religious and economic conditions were largely responsible. The Puritans had joined forces with the Parliamentary Party, which opposed James I and had lost. Charles I dissolved his third Parliament in 1629, and entered upon ar. eleven-year period of personal rule designed partly to stamp out dissent and entrench the Anglican Church. Puritan dis- satisfaction was aggravated by economic distress, particularly in the eastern and southeastern counties, the principal sources of emigration to America. Puritan discontent was reflected in the number of settlements - Medford, Roxbury, Dorchester, Lynn, Cambridge - which were made on the Bay Company's land during the era of Jacobin dictator- ship.

While the Massachusetts Bay charter contained intimations of de- . mocracy, growth was slow. The leaders of the colony planned a social order in which individual freedom was to be sublimated to the will of God as interpreted by His clergy. The Governor and his assistants de- voted themselves to this end. They refused to summon a meeting of the General Court until one hundred and nine freemen, insisting on their charter right, demanded that this be done. So firmly did Winthrop and his clerical allies believe that they alone were the proper interpreters of the Divine will that they illegally vested nearly all governmental powers within themselves before succumbing to this popular pressure by pro- viding that only church members could sit in the General Court. This occasioned a growing discontent which culminated in 1634, when the freemen demanded to see the charter. The Governor dared not refuse, and the indignant members of the General Court, realizing that their rights had been infringed, hastily passed legislation which would vest governmental authority for all time in their own hands.

Discontent bred of these struggles accelerated the settlement of Massachusetts and the rest of New England. As long as the magistrates could direct the course of this westward movement they approved, if only for the reason that God's word was planted in the wilderness. Land was granted freely to any group of town proprietors who were church members, and tier upon tier of frontier towns were created as population flowed westward from England through Boston. On the south shore were founded Duxbury (1632), Scituate (1633), Hingham (1636), Barnstable (1638), Yarmouth (1639), Marshfield (1640), and Eastham (1649); on the broad fields of the north shore Saugus, later named Lynn (1631), Ipswich (1634), Marblehead (1635), Newbury (1635), Rowley (1639), and Salisbury (1640), while to the west Cambridge or Newtowne (1631),

Massachusetts: The General Background

Dedham (1636), Braintree (1640), Concord or Musketequid (1635), and Sudbury (1639) steadily advanced the course of settlement.

While the peopling of Massachusetts continued, Boston was sending out its inhabitants to settle other New England colonies. In 1635 the Reverend Thomas Hooker's congregation at Cambridge, dissatisfied with the ruling hand of John Cotton and other Boston clergy, and moved by 'a strong bent of their spirits for change,' gave Connecticut its first English inhabitants by founding Hartford. In the same year Wethersfield and Windsor, Connecticut, were established by mass migrations from Watertown and Dorchester, and in 1636 a group from Roxbury laid out the first fields of Springfield. From Massachusetts Bay, too, went Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson, expelled for their principles, to found Providence and Newport in Rhode Island; John Wheelwright, likewise banished, made the weary journey to Exeter, New Hampshire, to establish a more democratic church. The same spirit of revolt against the established order that had sent Puritans to America thus led to a dispersion of their numbers and ideas in the wilderness.

The social, economic, and spiritual influences which have distinguished Massachusetts from the other States were implanted in these towns. Nature ordained small-scale agriculture as the basis of Colonial economic life in Massachusetts. Rough, rocky soil made the clearing and cultiva- tion of large plots of land impossible, and only interested labor could make it reasonably productive. Slavery was tried during Colonial days, but when found to be unprofitable was soon abandoned. The cold winters of Massachusetts made a compact form of settlement imperative; homes were clustered about a central green or common and the fields scattered nearby. Even though this encouraged sociability, the Puritan farmer preferred to utilize the long winter months in making furniture, harnesses, and the many other things needed by his family that his meagre income from the soil would not permit him to buy. Thus developed the fabled New England jack-of-all-trades whose descendants were equipped to take over mechanical tasks when mills began to invade Massachusetts early in the nineteenth century.

Situated on the village common in the center of the towns was the church. A closely knit settlement mitigated the influence of the frontier, which might have arrested the formal observance of religion. Long winter evenings afforded ample opportunity for introspection and made the Puritans more righteous and godly than their English brethren. In such society the minister became an outstanding figure; he was each

Enough of Its History to Explain Its People

town's acknowledged leader and frequently, in addition, its lawyer, doctor, and schoolmaster. His rule was not absolute, however, for each community was governed by a town meeting, in which every church member had an equal voice. This essentially democratic institution was one of the most enduring contributions of Massachusetts, through which its people received the training necessary to provide political leadership in the Revolution.

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These town meetings not only managed ordinary governmental func- tions, but the life of each inhabitant was carefully regulated. Individual liberty was sacrificed to detailed legislation regulating habits and social conduct. Even dress was regarded as a legitimate field for official scrutiny. These 'blue laws,' as they have since been called, represented a desire for simplicity natural to a group that had rebelled against the ceremony of the Established Church; they reflected, too, the realization that hard work was necessary to conquer a wilderness. The shiftless were 'warned out' of Massachusetts towns, holidays such as Christmas were forbidden, Maypoles and similar frivolities were discouraged. There was work to be done, and the town fathers were determined to see that no one shirked. The Sabbath alone was exempted, not solely because of Biblical injunc- tion but because a day of rest was required by hard-working colonizers.

The Church gave Massachusetts more than blue laws. It initiated, among other things, the educational development of America. Puri- tanism presupposed an intelligent clergy capable of interpreting Scrip- ture, and literate worshipers who could understand the Bible and the long sermons to which they were subjected. Schools, therefore, were essential for the training of clergymen as well as their congregations. In 1636 the General Court appropriated a sum of money to start the College of New- towne or Cambridge, a college endowed by John Harvard with his books, his money, and his name. Popular education, however, dates from 1647, when a law requiring elementary schools in towns of fifty families and secondary schools in those double that size or larger was enacted. Al- though not free, these schools were open to all, and laid the foundation of the American educational system.

Massachusetts was permitted to develop its peculiar social and religious institutions because of the preoccupation of the mother country. From the time of its founding until 1660 the colony was virtually independent of England, then engrossed in civil war and the Cromwellian Protectorate. The Puritan colonies were able in 1643 to form the New England Con- federation as a bulwark of defense against the Indians and the Dutch of New York. With the restoration of Charles II in 1660, however, Massa-

Massachusetts: The General Background

chusetts entered upon a new era which saw the Bible Commonwealth gradually evolve into an orderly crown colony, similar to Virginia or the other English outposts along the coast.

This change was possible partly because Puritan excesses had led to a declining interest in religion in Massachusetts. In the 1650's, for example, all of the forces of Puritanism were focused on a few troublesome Quakers who had made their way into the colony. They were beaten and banished, only to return in quest of martyrdom, with which the magis- trates unwittingly provided them. Such willful persecution turned the people against the clergy and magistrates who had for so long dominated Massachusetts. The younger people who had not suffered for their religion as had their parents and the rising secular commercial class demanded a government less completely dominated by the Church. They won their first victory in 1657 with the adoption of the Half Way Covenant, which allowed baptized as well as converted church members to exercise the franchise, but it was not until the overthrow of the Massachusetts charter in 1684 that the Bible Commonwealth completely vanished.

The withdrawal of the charter on which the Bay Colony had rested its early governmental system was a natural result of the Stuart Restoration. The tendency throughout the Empire after 1660 was toward tightening imperial control and drawing the colonies closer together that they might be useful to the mother country. This the Massachusetts leaders, un- disciplined by twenty years of imperial inefficiency, resisted vigorously, refusing to grant liberty of conscience or citizenship to members of the Church of England, openly snubbing royal commissions or agents sent to investigate conditions, and flagrantly violating the laws with which Parliament was attempting to regulate the Empire's trade. Justly in- dignant, the English Government began court proceedings against Massachusetts that culminated in 1684 in a decree cancelling the Massa- chusetts charter.

A new government known as the Dominion of New England was provided for Massachusetts. This was an attempt to centralize all the northern colonies so that royal control could be effected. Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Maine and later New York and New Jersey were united into a single governmental unit under the control of Sir Edmund Andros. Although an able administrator, he immediately provoked colonial wrath by what were considered tyrannical acts. For a time Massachusetts resisted his orders in every conceivable way and the Reverend Increase Mather, President of Harvard College,

Enough of Its History to Explain Its People

was sent to England to protest directly to James II. When the news of the Glorious Revolution in England (1688) which toppled the last of the Stuart monarchs from the throne and elevated William and Mary in their stead reached the colony, the Puritans seized the opportunity to stage their own revolt against Andros. The Dominion of New England was overthrown, and a provisional government was set up until the will of the new rulers could be learned.

Massachusetts hoped for a restoration of its old charter, but this was not in conformity with the new Colonial policy. The new instrument of government issued by William and Mary in 1691 created a royal colony similar to Virginia or Maryland, established boundaries, and solidified institutions in a form that was to endure until the Revolution. During its period of independence Massachusetts had launched an imperialistic policy of its own and had annexed Maine and New Hampshire; now New Hampshire was taken away, but Massachusetts was given juris- diction over Plymouth and the islands south of Cape Cod. The Governor of the Bay Colony was henceforth to be appointed by the Crown, and the old assistants became the Governor's Council, elected by the Assembly. Two legislative houses (which had actually existed in Massachusetts since 1644, when a dispute between the assistants and freemen over the ownership of a stray sow drew them to separate chambers) were recog- nized by the new charter. One of the most important provisions of the new charter abolished church membership as a prerequisite for voting; Massachusetts was to be a civil rather than a Bible Commonwealth.

The changed governmental structure embodied in the charter of 1691 initiated the forces which almost a century later were to lead Massa- chusetts and the other colonies to the brink of revolt. Massachusetts farmers, accustomed to virtual freedom since 1630, resented the inter- ference of a governor appointed by the Crown. The charter gave the Governor the right to veto laws passed by the Assembly, but this ad- vantage was balanced by the Assembly's right to vote the Governor's salary. Conflict between these two branches of government, one repre- senting the Crown, the other representing the settlers, who were jealous of what they had come to regard as their rights, was continual after 1717. England's efforts to control the trade of her increasingly rebellious colony was the crux of the controversy.

The people of Massachusetts were peculiarly sensitive to commercial regulation, for by the beginning of the eighteenth century they were finding in the sea the riches which nature had denied them elsewhere. Starting with scattered fishing ventures, their trade had become in-

Massachusetts: The General Background

creasingly profitable as Yankee shippers used the abundant harbors and the plentiful supply of lumber for the construction of ships which scoured the seven seas in search of profits. Massachusetts gradually emerged as the carrier for America; her ships hauled the sugar of the West Indies and the tobacco of Virginia to the mother country, and returned laden with manufactured goods and luxuries for Colonial planter and merchant.

Engaged largely in trade, Massachusetts felt the effect of commercial regulation more than any other colony. Under the restrictions of the Restoration and the eighteenth century the market for many of the essential products of Colonial enterprise was confined to England, and the colonists were forbidden to secure their manufactured goods except through the mother country. These laws did little harm to the staple- producing colonies. Virginia could exchange her tobacco for the luxuries available in England, and Barbadoes could do the same with her sugar. But Massachusetts produced nothing that the mother country desired, her fish competed with those of Britain's fleets, and her agricultural goods found little market in a country still predominately rural. Yet the Bay Colony's growing population needed the products of English mills and factories, and Massachusetts in order to circumvent these commercial restrictions developed the famous Triangular Trade. Sugar and mo- lasses were brought from the West Indies in return for foodstuffs, lumber, livestock, and codfish. Molasses was transformed into rum, which was traded in Africa for slaves, who were then sold in the sugar-growing West Indian islands to obtain the gold required for English luxuries. While England had numerous possessions in the Caribbean region, the British islands were not large enough to absorb so great a volume of trade. The continued economic existence of the colony depended on an uninter- rupted trade with French, Spanish, and Dutch sugar islands, a trade made illegal by English commercial legislation.

Massachusetts did not feel the full weight of these burdensome laws for some time. England made few attempts to enforce them, and smuggling went on with the open connivance of royal governors and their agents, many of the colony's great fortunes being founded in this illegal but respectable trade. It was not until the close of the long series of wars with France which filled much of the eighteenth century that the mother country realized the full extent of commercial laxity. This conflict be- tween the two great colonial powers, which lasted for more than half a century, reached its culmination in the Seven Years' War (1756-63), which was touched off in America and offered a true test of the colony's loyalty to Crown and Empire. As in the previous contests, the Massa-

Enough of Its History to Explain Its People

chusetts back country was subjected to a series of raids by French and Indians who swept down the Champlain Valley from Canada. Eastern shippers, impervious to barbarities on the frontier, blithely continued their illicit traffic with the French sugar islands and with Canada. The French armies were supplied by this means with the foodstuffs necessary to ravage the Massachusetts hinterland. Enticed by the greater profits of wartime, thrifty Yankee captains carried on this trade with the enemy so extensively that England's superior navy was completely unable to starve the French West Indian possessions into submission; in fact, foodstuffs sold there more cheaply than in British islands. British officers found it cheaper to import grain from England than to compete in America's markets with traders who were anxious to sell to the enemy. Massachusetts, along with the other colonies, refused to provide ade- quately for its own defense or to bear what the home government con- sidered a just share of the war's expenses.

This scandalous conduct convinced England that her whole Colonial administration needed reform, but it was this reform which finally led to America's successful struggle for independence. In that clash of mother country and colony Massachusetts played a leading part, not only be- cause a democratic tradition had been bred in her citizens for generations, but also because she, more than any other colony, was adversely affected by the new imperial policy. The first of these measures, the Sugar Act of 1764, made effective earlier prohibitions on trade with French or Spanish possessions; the second, the Stamp Act enacted a year later, provided for revenue stamps which were to be affixed to publications and to legal and commercial papers. Through these two measures the Crown hoped to raise a part of the revenue to maintain a body of troops in America neces- sary for the protection of the colonists against Indian attack, made im- minent in 1763 by the serious outbreak of border warfare known as Pontiac's Rebellion.

These two measures actually did much harm to Massachusetts. The Sugar Act practically ended the foreign trade on which the colony de- pended for its currency supply, while the Stamp Act drained the little money remaining away from Boston. Furthermore, Massachusetts was undergoing the usual post-war depression, which magnified the effects of the 'new acts. It is little wonder that Boston merchants, hurriedly re- trenching, agreed to wear no more lace and ruffles or that Boston trades- men were willing to appear only in American-made leather clothes. It is easy to understand, too, why Sam Adams and the little group of political leaders who gathered with him at the picturesque Boston tavern, the

Massachusetts: The General Background

Green Dragon, could stir up mobs which forced the resignation of the Massachusetts stamp collector and despoiled the house of Lieutenant Governor Thomas Hutchinson. Amidst this popular discontent a general boycott of English goods, in which Boston merchants joined with those of Philadelphia and New York, was easily accomplished, and it was this boycott, seriously injuring British manufacturers, who were already suffering from a depression similar to that being felt in America, that caused the repeal of the Stamp Act and the revision of the Sugar Act in 1766.

Peace, however, was not for long. In 1767 a series of revenue measures, the Townshend Acts, which levied duties on paint, glass, tea, and other products imported into the colonies, again stirred Massachusetts to a fever of resentment. Boston shippers were particularly alarmed by re- forms in the customs service that accompanied the Townshend Acts. A Board of Customs Commissioners was placed in the Bay Colony, and that threatened to bring to a complete end the little smuggling which was carried on after the passage of the Sugar Act. Again merchants, those of Boston this time taking the lead, protested by refusing to import English goods; again mobs roamed the Boston streets, harrying before them luck- less agents of the Crown. Mob rule reached its height when an angry crowd tried to prevent a customs agent from collecting duty on a cargo of wine that was about to be landed by John Hancock. The agent was, as he expressed it, 'hoved down' into the hold while the patriots gleefully carried the wine ashore. Protests such as these, together with a shifting point of view in England, finally led to the repeal of the Townshend Acts in 1770, but they also led to the establishment of a garrison in Boston that peace might be preserved in that turbulent city. The inevitable clash between these soldiers and the overwrought citizenry of Boston came on the night of March 5, 1770, when a mob that was taunting a sentry at the customs house was fired upon, giving first blood to the revolution not yet formally begun, and to history the 'Boston Massacre.'

For three years after the repeal of the Townshend Acts the controversy subsided. Prosperity returned and people everywhere forgot the few years of turbulence. They forgot that England still taxed their tea and molasses, and Sam Adams worked in vain to stir up sentiment against the mother country. Even John Adams, staunch patriot though he was, drank tea at John Hancock's home, and hoped it had been smuggled from Holland but did not take the pains to inquire.

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Massachusetts : a guide to its places and people, Part 6

Author: Publication date: 1937 Publisher: Boston : Houghton Mifflin Company Number of Pages: 802

Author:
Publication date: 1937
Publisher: Boston : Houghton Mifflin Company
Number of Pages: 802