USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > Municipal history of the town and city of Boston during two centuries : from September 17, 1630, to September 17, 1830 > Part 32
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the year 1795. "We may remark," says a writer in the Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, ( Vol. vi., First Series, p. 69,) "that Boston was not only the capital of Massachusetts, but the town most celebrated of any in North America. Its trade was extensive ; and the name often stands for the country in old authors."
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first settlement, is not solitary or exclusive; it is shared with Massachusetts ; with New England; in some sense, with the whole United States. For what part of this wide empire, be it sea or shore, lake or river, mountain or valley, have the descend- ants of the first settlers of New England not traversed ? what depth of forest, not penetrated ? what danger of nature or man, not defied ? Where is the cultivated field, in redeeming which from the wilderness, their vigor has not been displayed ? Where, amid unsubdued nature, by the side of the first log hut of the settler, does the school-house stand and the church spire rise, unless the sons of New England are there? Where does im- provement advance, under the active energy of willing hearts and ready hands, prostrating the moss-covered monarchs of the wood, and from their ashes, amid their charred roots, bidding the greensward and the waving harvest to upspring, and the spirit of the fathers of New England is not seen, hovering, and shed- ding around the benign influences of sound, social, moral, and reli- gious institutions, stronger and more enduring than knotted oak, or tempered steel ? The swelling tide of their descendants has spread upon our coasts; ascended our rivers; taken possession of our plains. Already it encircles our lakes. At this hour the rushing noise of the advancing wave startles the wild beast in his lair among the prairies of the West. Soon it shall be seen climbing the Rocky Mountains; and, as it dashes over their cliffs, shall be hailed by the dwellers on the Pacific, as the har- binger of the coming blessings of safety, liberty, and truth.
The glory, which belongs to the virtues of our ancestors, is seen radiating from the nature of their design; from the spirit in which it was executed ; and from the character of their insti- tutions.
That emigration of Englishmen, which, two centuries ago, resulted in the settlement, on this day, of this metropolis, was distinguished by the comparative greatness of the means em- ployed, and the number, rank, fortune, and intellectual endow- ments of those engaged in it, as leaders, or associates. Twelve ships, transporting somewhat less than nine hundred souls, constituted the physical strength of the first enterprise. In the course of the twelve succeeding years, twenty-two thousand souls emigrated in one hundred and ninety-two ships, at a cost, including the private expenses of the adventurers, which cannot
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be estimated in our currency, at less than one million of dollars. At that time the tide of emigration was stayed. Intelligent writers of the last century assert, that more persons had subse- quently gone from New England to Europe, than had come to it during the same period from that quarter of the globe. A cotemporary historian 1 represents the leaders of the first emigra- tion, as " gentlemen of good estate and reputation, descended from, or connected by marriage with, noble families; having large means, and great yearly revenue sufficient in all reason to content ; their tables abundant in food, their coffers in coin; possessing beautiful houses, filled with rich furniture ; gainful in their business, and growing rich daily ; well provided for them- selves, and having a sure competence for their children; want- ing nothing of a worldly nature to complete the prospects of ease and enjoyment, or which could contribute to the pleasures, the prospects, or the splendors of life."
The question forces itself on the mind, Why did such men emigrate ? Why did men of their condition exchange a plea- sant and prosperous home for a repulsive and cheerless wilder- ness ; a civilized for a barbarous vicinity ? Why, quitting peaceful and happy dwellings, dare the dangers of tempestuous and unexplored seas, the rigors of untried and severe climates, the difficulties of a hard soil, and the inhuman warfare of a savage foe ? An answer must be sought in the character of the times; and in the spirit, which the condition of their native country and age had a direct tendency to excite and cherish.
The general civil and religious aspect of the English nation, in the age of our ancestors, and in that immediately preceding their emigration, was singularly hateful and repulsive. A foreign hierarchy, contending with a domestic despotism for infallibility and supremacy, in matters of faith. Confiscation, imprison- ment, the axe and the stake, approved and customary means of making proselytes and promoting uniformity. The fires of Smithfield, now lighted by the corrupt and selfish zeal of Roman pontiff's ; and now rekindled, by the no less corrupt and selfish zeal of English sovereigns. All men clamorous for the rights of conscience, when in subjection; all actively persecuting, when in authority. Everywhere religion considered as a state
1 Johnson's " Wonder-Working Providence of Sion's Saviour in New Eng- land," ch. 12.
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entity, and having apparently no real existence, except in asso- ciations in support of established power, or in opposition to it.
The moral aspect of the age' was not less odious than its civil. Every benign and characteristic virtue of Christianity was publicly conjoined, in close alliance with its most offensive opposite. Humility wearing the tiara, and brandishing the keys, in the excess of the pride of temporal and spiritual power. The Roman pontiff, under the title of " the servant of servants," with his foot on the neck of every monarch in Christendom ; and under the seal of the fisherman of Galilee, dethroning kings and giving away kingdoms. Purity, content, and self-denial preached by men, who held the wealth of Europe tributary to their luxury, sensuality, and spiritual pride. Brotherly love in the mouth, while the hand applied the instrument of torture. Charity, mutual forbearance, and forgiveness chanted in unison with clanking chains and crackling fagots.
Nor was the intellectual aspect of the age less repulsive than its civil and moral. The native charm of the religious feeling lost, or disfigured amidst forms, and ceremonies, and disciplines. By one class, piety was identified with copes, and crosiers, and tippets, and genuflexions. By another class, all these were abhorred as the tricks and conjuring garments of popery, or at best, in the language of Calvin, as " tolerable fooleries;" while they, on their part, identified piety with looks, and language, and gestures, extracted or typified from Scripture, and fashioned according to the newest "pattern of the mount." By none were the rights of private judgment acknowledged. By all, creeds, and dogmas, and confessions, and catechisms, collected from Scripture with metaphysical skill, arranged with reference to temporal power and influence, and erected into standards of faith, were made the flags and rallying points of the spiritual swordsmen of the church militant.
The first emotion, which this view of that period excites, at the present day, is contempt or disgust. But the men of that age are no more responsible for the mistakes into which they fell, under the circumstances in which the intellectual eye was then placed, than we, at this day, for those optical illusions to which the natural eye is subject, before time and experience have corrected the judgment, and instructed it in the true laws of nature and vision. It was their fate to live in the crepuscular
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state of the intellectual day, and by the law of their nature they were compelled to see things darkly, through false and shifting mediums, and in lights at once dubious and deceptive. For centuries, a night of Egyptian darkness had overspread Europe, in the " palpable obscure " of which, priests and monarchs and nobles had not only found means to inthral the minds of the multitude, but absolutely to lose and bewilder their own. When the light of learning began to dawn, the first rays of the rising splendor dazzled and confused, rather than directed the mind. As the coming light penetrated the thick darkness, the ancient cumulative cloud severed into new forms. Its broken masses became tinged with an uncertain and shifting radiance. Sha- dows assumed the aspect of substances; the evanescent sugges- tions of fancy, the look of fixed realities. The wise were at a loss what to believe, or what to discredit; how to quit, and where to hold. On all sides sprang up seets and parties, infinite in number, incomprehensible in doctrine ; often imperceptible in difference ; yet each claiming for itself infallibility, and, in the sphere it affected to influence, supremacy; each violent and hostile to the others, hanghty and hating its non-adhering brother, in a spirit wholly repugnant to the humility and love inculcated by that religion, by which each pretended to be actu- ated; and ready to resort, when it had power, to corporal penal- ties, even to death itself, as allowed modes of self-defence and proselytism.
It was the fate of the ancestors of New England to have their lot cast in a state of society thus unprecedented. They were of that class of the English nation, in whom the systematic per- secutions of a concentrated, civil, and ecclesiastical despotism had enkindled an intense interest concerning man's social and religious rights. Their sufferings had created in their minds a vivid and inextinguishable love of civil and religious liberty ; a fixed resolve, at every peril, to assert and maintain their natural rights. Among the boldest and most intelligent of this class of men, chiefly known by the name of Puritans, were the founders of this metropolis. To a superficial view, their zeal seems directed to forms and ceremonies and disciplines which have become at this day obsolete or modified, and so seems mistaken or misplaced. But the wisdom of zeal for any object is not to be measured by the particular nature of that object, but by the
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nature of the principle, which the circumstances of the times or of society have identified with such object. Liberty, whether civil or religious, is among the noblest objects of human regard. Yet, to a being constituted like man, abstract liberty has no existence, and over him no practical influence. To be for him an efficient principle of action, it must be embodied in some sensible object. Thus, the form of a cap, the color of a surplice, ship-money, a tax on tea or on stamped paper, objects in them- selves indifferent, have been so inseparably identified with the principle temporarily connected with them, that martyrs have died at the stake, and patriots have fallen in the field, and this wisely and nobly for the sake of the principle, made by the cir- cumstances of the time to inhere in them.
Now, in the age of our fathers, the principle of civil and reli- gious liberty became identified with forms, disciplines, and modes of worship. The zeal of our fathers was graduated by the importance of the inhering principle. This gave elevation to that zeal. This creates interest in their sufferings. This entitles them to rank among patriots and martyrs who have voluntarily sacrificed themselves to the cause of conscience and their country. Indignant at being denied the enjoyment of the rights of conscience, which were in that age identified with those sensible objects, and resolute to vindicate them, they quitted country and home, crossed the Atlantic, and, without other auspices than their own strength and their confidence in heaven, they proceeded to lay the foundation of a commonwealth, under the principles, and by the stamina of which, their posterity have established an actual and uncontroverted independence, not less happy than glorious. To their enthusiastic vision all the com- forts of life and all the pleasures of society were light and worth- less in comparison with the liberty they sought. The tempest- uous sea was less dreadful than the troubled waves of civil dis- cord ; the quicksands, the unknown shoals, and unexplored shores of a savage coast, less fearful than the metaphysical abysses and perpetually shifting whirlpools of despotic ambi- tion and ecclesiastical policy and intrigue; the bow and the tomahawk of the transatlantic barbarian, less terrible than the flame and fagot of the civilized European. In the calm of our present peace and prosperity, it is difficult for us to realize or appreciate their sorrows and sacrifices. They sought a new
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world, lying far off in space, destitute of all the attractions which make home and native land dear and venerable. Instead of cultivated fields and a civilized neighborhood, the prospect before them presented nothing but dreary wastes, cheerless climates, and repulsive wildernesses possessed by wild beasts and sava- ges ; the intervening ocean unexplored and intersected by the fleets of a hostile nation ; its usual dangers multiplied to the fancy, and, in fact, by ignorance of real hazards and natural fears of such as the event proved to be imaginary.
" Pass on," exclaims one of these adventurers,1 " and attend, while these soldiers of faith ship for this western world; while they and their wives and their little ones take an eternal leave of their country and kindred. With what heart-breaking atlec- tion did they press loved friends to their bosoms whom they were never to see again! their voices broken by grief, till tears streaming eased their hearts to recovered speech again ; natural affections clamorous, as they take a perpetual banishment from their native soil ; their enterprise scorned; their motives derided; and they counted but madmen and fools. But time shall dis- cover the wisdom with which they were endued, and the sequel shall 'show how their policy overtopped all the human policy of this world."
Winthrop, their leader and historian, in his simple narrative of the voyage, exhibits them, when in severe sufferings, resigned ; in instant expectation of battle, fearless; amid storm, sickness, and death, cahn, confident, and undismayed. " Our trust," says he, " was in the Lord of hosts." For years, Winthrop, the leader of the first great enterprise, was the Chief Magistrate of the infant metropolis. His prudence guided its councils. His valor directed its strength. His life and fortune were spent in fixing its character, or in improving its destinies. A bolder spirit never dwelt, a truer heart never beat in any bosom. Had Boston, like Rome, a consecrated calendar, there is no name better entitled than that of Winthrop to be registered as its " patron saint."
From Salem and Charlestown, the places of their first land- ing, they ranged the Bay of Massachusetts to fix the head of the settlement. After much deliberation, and not without opposi-
1 Johnson, in his Wonder-Working Providences of Sion's Saciour in New England, ch. xii.
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tion, they selected this spot, known to the natives by the name of Shawmut, and to the adjoining settlers by that of Trimount- ain ; the former indicating the abundance and sweetness of its waters ; the latter, the peculiar character of its hills.
Accustomed as we are to the beauties of the place and its vicinity, and in the daily perception of the charms of its almost unrivalled scenery, - in the centre of a natural amphitheatre, whose sloping descents the riches of a laborious and intellectual cultivation adorn, - where hill and vale, river and ocean, island and continent, simple nature and unobtrusive art, with con- trasted and interchanging harmonies, form a rich and gorgeous landscape, we are little able to realize the almost repulsive aspect of its original state. We wonder at the blindness of those who, at one time, constituted the majority, and had well- nigh fixed elsewhere the chief seat of the settlement. Nor are we easily just to Winthrop, Johnson, and their associates, whose skill and judgment selected this spot, and whose firmness settled the wavering minds of the multitude upon it, as the place for their metropolis; a decision which the experience of two centu- ries has irrevocably justified, and which there is no, reason to apprehend that the events or opinions of any century to come will reverse.
'To the eyes of the first emigrants, however, where now exists a dense and aggregated mass of living beings and material things, amid all the accommodations of life, the splendors of wealth, the delights of taste, and whatever can gratify the culti- vated intellect, there were then only a few hills, which, when the ocean receded, were intersected by wide marshes, and when its tide returned, appeared a group of lofty islands, abruptly rising from the surrounding waters. Thick forests 'concealed the neighboring hills, and the deep silence of nature was broken only by the voice of the wild beast or bird and the warwhoop of the savage.
The advantages of the place were, however, clearly marked by the hand of nature ; combining at once present convenience, future security, and an ample basis for permanent growth and prosperity. Towards the continent it possessed but a single avenue, and that easily fortified. Its hills then commanded, not only its own waters, but the hills of the vicinity. At the bottom of a deep bay, its harbor was capable of containing the proudest
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navy of Europe; yet, locked by islands, and guarded by wind- ing channels, it presented great difficulty of access to strangers, and to the inhabitants great facility of protection against mari- time invasion ; while to those acquainted with its waters, it was both easy and accessible. To these advantages were added goodness and plenteousness of water, and the security afforded by that once commanding height, now, alas! obliterated and almost forgotten, since art and industry have levelled the predo- minating mountain of the place; from whose lofty and impos- ing top the beacon fire was accustomed to rally the neighboring population on any threatened danger to the metropolis. A sin- gle cottage, from which ascended the smoke of the hospitable hearth of Blackstone, who had occupied the peninsula several years, was the sole civilized mansion in the solitude ; the kind master of which, at first, welcomed the coming emigrants ; but soon, disliking the sternness of their manners and the severity of their discipline, abandoned the settlement. His rights, as first occupant, were recognized by our ancestors ; and, in November, 1634, Edmund Quincy, Samuel Wildbore, and others, were authorized to assess a rate of thirty pounds for Mr. Blackstone,1 on the payment of which all local rights in the peninsula became vested in its inhabitants.
The same bold spirit which thus led our ancestors across the Atlantic, and made them prefer a wilderness where liberty might be enjoyed, to civilized Europe where it was denied, will be found characterizing all their institutions. Of these, the limits of the time permit mne to speak only in general terms. The scope of their policy has been usually regarded as though it were restricted to the acquisition of religious liberty in the relation of colonial dependence. No man, however, can truly understand their institutions and the policy on which they were founded, without taking as the basis of all reasonings concerning them, that civil independence was as truly their object as religious liberty .; 2 in other words, that the possession of the former was,
1 Winthrop, vol. i. p. 45; note by J. Savage.
2 The testimony of Chalmers, in his Political Annals of the United Colonies, to the early and undeviating spirit of independence which actuated the first emigrants to Massachusetts, is constant, unequivocal, and conclusive. Those annals were written during the American Revolution, and published in the year 1780, in the heat of that controversy, and under the auspices of the British government. A few extracts from that work, tending to show the pertinacious
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in their opinion, the essential means, indispensable to the secure enjoyment of the latter, which was their great end.
The master-passion of our early ancestors was dread of the
spirit of independence which characterized our ancestors, and corroborative of the position maintained in the text, cannot fail to be interesting.
" The charter of Charles I., obtained in March, 1628 - 9, was the only one which Massachusetts possessed prior to the Revolution of 1688, and contained its most ancient privileges. On this was most dexterously engrafted, not only the ori- ginal government of that colony, but even independence itself." Book I. c. vi. p. 136.
" The nature of their government was now (1634) changed by a variety of regulations, the legality of which cannot easily be supported by any other than those principles of independence which sprang up among them, and have at all times governed their actions." Book I. p. 158.
Concerning the confederation entered into by the United Colonies of New England in 1643, Chalmers thus expresses himself.
" The most inattentive must perceive the exact resemblance that confedera- tion bears to a similar junetion of the Colonies, more recent, [that of 1775] extensive, and powerful. Both originated from Massachusetts, always fruitful in projects of independence. Wise men at the era of both remarked, that those memorable associations established a complete system of absolute sovereignty, because the principles upon which it was erected NECESSARILY LED TO WHAT IT WAS NOT THE POLICY OF THE PRINCIPAL AGENTS AT EITHER PERIOD TO AVOW !
" The principles upon which this famous association [that of 1643] was formed, were altogether those of independency, and it cannot easily be supported on. any other. The consent of the governing powers in England was never applied for, and was never given." Book I. e. viii. pp. 177, 178.
" Principles of aggrandisement seem constantly to have been had in view by Massachusetts, as the only rule of its conduct." Book I. p. 180.
" Massachusetts, in conformity to its accustomed principles, acted, during the civil wars, ahnost altogether as an independent state. It formed leagues, not only with the neighboring colonies, but with foreign nations, without the con- sent or knowledge of the government of England. It permitted no appeals from its courts to the judicatories of the sovereign State, without which a depend- ence cannot be preserved or enforced ; and it refused to exercise its jurisdic- tion in the name of the Commonwealth of England. It assumed the goverment of that part of New England which is now called New Hampshire, and even . extended its power farther eastward over the Province of Maine; and, by force of arms, it compelled those who had fled from its persecutions beyond its bound- aries into the wilderness to submit to its authority. It erected a mint at Boston, impressing the year 1652 on the coin, as the era of independence. Though, as we are assured, the coining of money is the prerogative of the sovereign, and not the privilege of a colony.
"The practice was continued till the dissolution of its government ; thus evincing to all what had been foreseen by the wise, that a people of such principles, religious and political, settling at so great a distance from control, would necessarily form an independent State." Book I. c. viii. p. 181.
" The Committee of State of the Long Parliament having resolved to oblige Massachusetts to acknowledge their authority, by taking a new patent from them, and by keeping its courts in their name, that Colony, according to its wonted policy, by petition and remonstrance, declaring the love they bore the Parlia- ment, the sufferings they had endured in their cause, and their readiness to stand or fall with them, and by flattering Cromwell, prevailed so far as that the
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English hierarchy. . To place themselves locally beyond the reach of its power, they resolved to emigrate. To secure them- selves, after their emigration, from the arm of this their ancient
requisitions above-mentioned were never complied with, and the General Court consequently gained the point in the controversy." Book I. c. viii. pp. 184, 185.
" But Massachusetts did not only thus artfully foil the Parliament, but it out- fawned and outwitted Cromwell. They declined his invitation to assist his fleet and army, destined to attack the Dutch at Manhattan, in 1653, and acknowledg- ing the continued series of his favors to the Colonies, told him, that, "hucing been exercised with serious thoughts of its duty at that juncture, which were, that it was most agreeable to the gospel of peace, and safest for the plantations to forbear the use of the sword, if it had been misled, it humbly craved his pardon." Book I. c. viii. p. 185.
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