The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 by Julian Hawthorne

J >> Julian Hawthorne >> The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1

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England could not categorically refute these arguments; but she could
reply that her granting of a charter to the colonies had implied some hold
upon them, including a first lien upon commercial products; while so far
as governmental jurisdiction was concerned, it might be considered an open
question whether the colonies were capable of adequately governing
themselves, and she was therefore warranted, in the interests of order, in
exercising that function herself. But the reply was a weak one; and when
the colonists rejoined that the charter, if it had any practical
significance at all, merely gave expression to a friendly interest in the
adventure, as a parent might give a son a letter hoping that he would do
well; and that the question of government was not an open one, inasmuch as
the orderliness and efficiency of their institutions were visible and
undeniable:--it was left to England only to say that, once an English
subject, always an English subject, and that when she commanded the
colonies must comply.

As a matter of fact, she avoided as much as possible putting this
ultimatum in precise words; and the colonies were at least as reluctant to
oppose a definite defiance. Diplomacy labors long before acknowledging a
finality. There was on both sides a deeply-rooted determination to
prevail; but an open rupture was shunned. Furthermore, a strong sentiment
of loyalty existed in the colonies, which sentimentally and sometimes
practically injured the logic of their attitude. They acknowledged the
English king to be theirs; they addressed him in deferential and
submissive terms; they wished, in some sense, to keep hold of their
mother's hand, and yet they protested against the maternal prerogative.
Their status was anomalous; and it is easy to say that they should have
declared their purpose, from the first, to be an independent nation in the
full sense of the world. But the logical and the natural are often at
variance. Liberty is not necessarily attainable only through political
independence. The colonists, if they wished to be another England in
miniature, had not contemplated becoming a people foreign to England, in
the sense that France or Spain was. They loved the English flag, in spite
of the cross which Endicott disowned; they were proud of the English
history which was also theirs. Why should they sever themselves from
these? It was not until English injustice and selfishness, long endured,
became at last unendurable, that the resolve to live truly independent, or
to die, fired the muskets of Lexington and Concord.

The most galling of the measures which weighed upon New England was that
called the Navigation Acts. These were passed in the interests of the
English trading class, and by their influence. In their original form, in
1661, they had involved no serious injury to the colonies, and had,
moreover, been so slackly enforced that they were almost a dead letter.
But after Charles II. came to the throne, they assumed a more virulent
aspect. They forbade the importation into the colonies of any merchandise,
except in English bottoms, captained by Englishmen, thus excluding from
American ports every cargo not owned by British merchants. On the other
hand, they decreed that no American produce should find its way into other
than English hands, except such things as the English did not want, or
could buy to better advantage elsewhere; and even these could be disposed
of at no ports nearer England than the Mediterranean. Next, by an
extension of the Acts, the inhabitants of one colony were forbidden to
deal with those of another except on payment of duties intended to be
prohibitory. And finally, the colonists were enjoined not to manufacture
even for their private consumption, much less for export, any goods which
English manufacturers produced. They could do nothing but grow crops, and
the only reason that anything whatever was permitted to go from the
colonies to foreign ports, was in order that the former might thus get
money with which to pay for the forced importations from England. The
result of such a policy was, of course, that money was put into the
pockets of English shopkeepers, but all other Englishmen gained nothing,
and the colonists lost the amount of the shopkeepers' profit, as well as
the incidental and incalculable advantages of free enterprise.

[Illustration: A Quaker in the Stocks]

These laws pressed most severely on Massachusetts, because her shipping
exceeded that of all the other colonies, and the smuggling which their
geographical peculiarities made easy to them was impossible for her.
Besides, manufacturing was never followed by the southern colonies, and
their chief products, tobacco and cotton, not being grown elsewhere, could
be sold at almost as good a profit in England as anywhere else.

But if Massachusetts was the chief object of these oppressive measures,
she was also more inflexible than the other colonies in insisting upon her
rights. The motto of the Rattlesnake flag carried at the beginning of the
Revolution--"Don't tread on Me"--expressed the temper of her people from
an early period in her history. We shall shortly see how resolutely and
courageously she fought her battle against hopeless odds. Meanwhile, we
may inquire how and why the other colonies of the New England
confederation fared better at the hands of the mother country.

One of the most agreeable figures in our colonial history is the son of
that John Winthrop who brought the first colonists to Massachusetts Bay,
on June 22, 1630. He had been born at Groton, in England, in 1606, and was
therefore fifty-six years old when he returned to that country as agent
for Connecticut, and obtained its charter from Charles. He had been
educated at Dublin, and before emigrating to the colonies had been a
soldier in the French wars, and had traveled, on the Continent. After
landing at Boston, he had helped his father in his duties, and had then
founded the town of Ipswich in Massachusetts. None was more ardent than he
in the work of preparing a home for the exiles in the wilderness; he added
his own fortune to that of his father, and thought no effort too great. In
him the elements were so kindly mixed that his heart was as warm and his
mind as liberal as his energy was tireless; it was as if a Roger Williams
had been mingled with an elder Winthrop; enthusiasm and charity were
tempered with judgment and discretion. The love of creating means of
happiness for others was his ruling motive, and he was gifted with the
ability to carry it out; he felt that New England was his true home,
because there he had fullest opportunity for his self-appointed work. It
is almost an effort for men of this age to conceive of a nature so pure as
this, and a character so blameless; we search the records for some
weakness or deformity. But all witnesses testify of him with one voice;
and it may be borne in mind that the spirit of Puritanism at that epoch
was mighty in the individual as in the community, purging the soul of many
self-indulgent vices which the laxity and skepticism of our time
encourage; and when, in addition, there is a nation to be made on
principles so lofty as those which Puritanism contemplated, one can
imagine that there would be little space for the development of the lower
instincts, or the unworthier ambitions. When all is said, however,
Winthrop the Younger still remains a surprising and rare type; and it is
an added pleasure to know that in all that he undertook he was successful
(he never undertook anything for himself), and that he was most happy in a
loving wife and in his children. It was a rounded life, such as a romancer
hardly dares to draw; yet there may be many not less lovely, only less
conspicuously placed.

When there was need for a man to go to England and plead before the king
for Connecticut--of which, for fourteen consecutive years thereafter, he
was annually elected governor--who but Winthrop could be selected? He went
with all the prayers of the colony for his good fortune; and it was of
good omen that he met there, in the council for the colonies appointed by
the king, Edward Hyde, first Earl of Clarendon and Lord Chancellor, then
in the prime of his career, and two years younger than Winthrop; and
William Fiennes, Viscount Saye and Sele, who was in the eightieth and
final year of his useful and honorable career, and who, in 1632, had
obtained a patent for land on the Connecticut river. Through his influence
the interest of the Lord Chamberlain was secured, and Clarendon himself
was cordial for the charter. With such support, the way was easy, and the
document was executed in April of 1662. It gave the colonists all the
powers of an independent government. There was no reservation whatever;
their acts were not subject even to royal inspection. Nevertheless,
Charles, by effecting the amalgamation of New Haven with Hartford, not
altogether with the consent of the former, arbitrarily set aside the
provision of the federation compact which forbade union between any of its
members except with the consent of all; and thereby he asserted his
jurisdiction (if he chose to exercise it) over all the colonies. He could
give gracious gifts, but on the understanding that they were of grace, not
obligation. In the oppression of Massachusetts, this served as an
unfortunate precedent.

Nor must it be forgotten that the happiness of Connecticut was in part
due to the fact that, as a matter of high policy, it was desired to
conciliate her at Massachusetts's expense. Massachusetts was much the
strongest of the colonies; her tendency to disaffection was known in
England; and it seemed expedient to place her in a position isolated from
her sisters. Were all of them equally wronged, their union against the
oppressor was inevitable. Connecticut and Rhode Island could be of small
present value to England from the commercial standpoint, and their
heartfelt loyalty seemed cheaply purchased by suffering that value to
accumulate. Charles could be lavish and reckless, and he was
constitutionally "good-humored"--that is, he liked to have things go
smoothly, and if anybody suffered, wished the fact to be kept out of his
sight. But he was incapable of generosity, in the sense of voluntarily
sacrificing any selfish interest for a noble end; and if he patted
Connecticut on the back, it was only in order that she might view with
toleration his highway robbery of her sister.

All this, however, need not dash our satisfaction at the advantages which
Connecticut enjoyed, and the good they did her. The climate and physical
nature of the country required an active and wholesome life in the
inhabitants, while yet the conditions were not so severe as to discourage
them. They were of a rustic, hardy, industrious temper, of virtuous and
godly life, and animated by the consciousness of being well treated. They
lived and labored on their farms, and there were not so many of them that
the farms crowded upon one another, though the population increased
rapidly. Each of them delighted in the cultivation of his private
"conscience"; and, in the absence of wars and oppressions, they argued one
with another on points of theology, fate, freewill, foreknowledge
absolute. They were far from indifferent to learning, but they liked
nothing quite so well as manhood and integrity. The Connecticut Yankee
impressed his character on American history, and wherever in our country
there has been evidence of pluck, enterprise and native intelligence, it
has generally been found that a son of Connecticut was not far off. They
were not averse from journeying over the earth, and many of them had the
pioneer spirit, and left their place of birth to establish a miniature
Connecticut elsewhere; their descendants will be found as far west as
Oregon, and their whalers knew the paths of the Pacific as well as they
did the channels of Long Island Sound. Tolerant, sturdy, pious, shrewd,
prudent and brave, they formed the best known type of the characteristic
New Englander, as represented by the national figure of Uncle Sam. They
were sociable and inquisitive, yet they knew how to keep their own
counsel; and the latch-string hung out all over the colony, in testimony
at once of their honesty and their hospitality. Few things came to them
from the outer world, and few went out from them; they were industrially
as well as politically independent. They were economical in both their
private and their public habits; no money was to be made in politics,
partly because every one was from his youth up trained in political
procedure; every town was a republic in little. The town meeting was open
to all citizens, and each could have his say in it, and many an acute
suggestion and shrewd criticism came from humble lips. It is in such town
meetings that the legislators were trained who then, and ever since, have
become leading figures in the statesmanship of the country. In England, a
hereditary aristocracy were educated to govern the nation; in the
colonies, a nation was educated to govern itself. Our system was the
sounder and the safer of the two. But the professional politician was then
unthought of; he came as the result of several conditions incident to our
national development; he has perhaps already touched his apogee, and is
beginning to disappear. The nation has awakened to a realization that its
interests are not safe in his hands.

Calvinism prevailed in the colony, as in Massachusetts; but there were
many of the colonists who did not attend at the meeting-house on the
Sabbath, not because they were irreligious or vicious, but either because
they lived far from the rendezvous, or because they did not find it a
matter of private conscience with them to sit in a pew and listen to a
sermon. Moreover, it was the rule among Calvinists that no one could join
in the Communion service who had not "experienced religion"; and many
excellent persons might entertain conscientious doubts whether this
mysterious subjective phenomenon had taken place in them. Pending
enlightenment on that point, they would naturally prefer not to sit beside
their more favored brethren during the long period of prayer and
discourse, only to be obliged to walk out when the vital stage of the
proceedings was reached. But it was also the law that only children of
communicants should receive baptism; and since not to be baptized was in
the religious opinion of the day to court eternal destruction, it will
easily be understood that non-communicating parents were rendered very
uneasy. What could they do? One cannot get religion by an act of will; but
not to get it was to imperil not only their own spiritual welfare, but
that of their innocent offspring as well; they were damned to all
posterity. The matter came up before the general court of Connecticut, and
in 1657 a synod composed of ministers of that colony and of Massachusetts
--New Haven and Plymouth declining to participate--sat upon the question,
and softened the hard fate of the petitioners so far as to permit the
baptism of the children of unbaptized persons who engaged to rear them in
the fear of the Lord. This "half-way covenant," as it came to be termed,
did not suit the scruples of Calvinists of the stricter sort; but it gave
comfort to a great many deserving folk, and probably did harm to no human
soul, here or hereafter.

Short are the annals of a happy people; until the Revolutionary days
began, there is little to tell of Connecticut. The collegiate school which
half a generation later grew into the college taking its name from its
chief benefactor, Elihu Yale, had its early days in the village at the
mouth of the Connecticut river, named, after Lord Saye and Sele, Saybrook.
The institution of learning called after the pious and erudite son of the
English butcher of Southwark, founded on the banks of the river Charles
near Boston, had come into existence more than sixty years before; but
Yale followed less than forty years after the granting of the Connecticut
charter. New England people never lost any time about securing the means
of education.

The boundaries of Rhode Island were the occasion of some trouble; though
one might have supposed that since the area which they inclosed was so
small, no one would have been at the pains to dispute them. But in the
end, Roger Williams obtained the little he had asked for in this regard,
while as to liberties, his charter made his community at least as well off
as was Connecticut. Their aspiration to be allowed to prove that the best
civil results may be coincident with complete religious freedom, was
realized. Charles gave them everything; liberty for a people who thought
more of God than of their breakfasts, and whose habitation was too small
for its representation on the map to be seen without a magnifying glass,
could not be a dangerous gift. The charter was delivered in 1663 to John
Clarke, agent in England for the colony, and was taken to Rhode Island by
the admirable Baxter in November of that year. All the two thousand or
more inhabitants of the colony met together to receive the precious gift;
Baxter, placed on high, read it out to them with his best voice and
delivery, and then held it up so that all might behold the handsomely
engrossed parchment, and the sacred seal of his dread majesty King
Charles. What a picture of democratic and childlike simplicity! With how
devout and earnest an exultation did the people murmur their thanks and
applause! The crowd in their conical hats and dark cloaks, the chill
November sky, the gray ripples of Narragansett Bay, the background of
forest trees, of which only the oaks and walnuts still retained the red
and yellow remnants of their autumn splendor; the quaint little ship at
anchor, with its bearded crew agape along the rail; and Baxter the center
of all eyes, holding up the charter with a sort of holy enthusiasm! Such a
scene could be but once; and time has brought about his revenges. With
what demeanor would the throng at the fashionable watering place greet a
messenger from the English sovereign to-day! John Clarke, the Bedfordshire
doctor, to whose fidelity and persistent care the colony owed much, fully
participated in the contagion of goodness which marked the New England
emigrants of the period. He served his fellow colonists all his life, and
at his death left them all he had; and it seems strange that he should
have been one of the founders of aristocratic Newport, and its earliest
pastor. But it is not the only instance of the unexpected use to which we
sometimes put the bequests of our ancestors.

The early vicissitudes of Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont are hardly of
importance enough to warrant a detailed examination. Vermont was not
settled till well into the Eighteenth Century. Maine had been fingered by
the French, and used as a base of operations by fishermen, long before its
connection with Massachusetts; the persistency of Gorges complicated its
position for more than forty years. After his death, and in the
irresponsiveness of his heirs, the few inhabitants of the region were
constrained to shift for themselves; in 1652 the jurisdiction was found to
extend three miles north of the source of the Merrimack, and Massachusetts
offering its protection in enabling a government to be formed, and acting
upon the priority of its grant, annexed the whole specified region. But
more than twenty years afterward, in 1677, the English committee of the
privy council examined the charter, and found that Massachusetts had no
jurisdiction over Maine and New Hampshire (the separate existence of which
last had scarcely been defined). The direct object of this decision of the
committee was to provide the bastard son of Charles, Monmouth, with a
kingdom of his own; no one knew anything about the resources or
possibilities of the domain, and, omne ignotum pro magnifico, it was
surmised that it would yield abundant revenues. But Massachusetts did not
want the Duke for a neighbor; and while Charles was considering terms of
purchase, she bought up the Gorges claim for some twelve hundred pounds.
The Maine of that epoch was not, of course, the same as that of to-day;
the French claimed down to the Kennebec, and the Duke of York, not content
with New York, asserted his ownership from the Kennebec to the Penobscot;
so that for Massachusetts was left only what intervened between the
Kennebec and the Piscataqua. Being proprietor of this, she made it a
province with a governor and council whom she appointed, and a legislature
derived from the people; the province not relishing its subordination, but
being forced to submit. Two years later, in 1679, New Hampshire was cut
off from Massachusetts and made the first royal province of New England.
The people of the province were ill-disposed to surrender any of the
liberties which they saw their neighbors in the enjoyment of; and
disregarding the feelings of the king's appointee, its representatives
declared that only laws made by the assembly and approved by the people
should be valid. Robert Mason, who had a patent to part of the region,
finding himself opposed by the colonists, got permission from England to
appoint an adventurer, Edward Cranfield, governor; Cranfield went forth
with hopes of much plunder; but they would not admit his legitimacy, and
he took the unprecedented step of dissolving the assembly; the farmers
revolted, and their ringleader, Gove, was condemned for treason, and spent
four years in the Tower of London. It was another attempt to convince the
spirit of liberty by "the worst argument in the world"; but it was
ridiculous as well as bad in Gove's case; he was but a hard-fisted
uneducated countryman, whose belief that the patch of land he had cleared
and planted among the New England mountains was his, and not another's,
was not to be dissipated by dungeons. The disputed land-titles got into
the law courts, where judges and juries were fixed; but no matter which
way the decisions went, the people kept their own. Cranfield sent an
alarmist report of affairs to London, declaring that "factions" would
bring about a separation of the colony unless a frigate were sent to
Boston to enforce loyalty. Nothing was done. Cranfield tried to raise
money through the assembly by a tale about an invasion, which existed
nowhere save in his own imagination; the assembly refused to be stampeded.
The clergy were against him, and he attempted to overcome them by
restrictive orders; but they defied him; he imprisoned one of them, Moody;
and succeeded in disturbing church service; but the people would rather
not go to meeting than obey Cranfield. His last effort was to try to levy
taxes under pretense of an Indian war; but the people thwacked the tax
collectors with staves, and the women threatened them with hot water. A
call for troops to quell the disturbances was utterly disregarded. How was
a governor to govern people who refused to be governed?

Cranfield gave it up. He had been struggling three years, and had
accomplished nothing. He wrote home that he "should esteem it the greatest
happiness to be allowed to remove from these unreasonable people"; and
this happiness was accorded to him; it was the only happiness which his
appointment had afforded. New Hampshire was in bad odor with the English
government; but the farmers could endure that with equanimity. They had
demonstrated that the granite of their mountains had somehow got into
their own composition; and they were let alone for the present, the rather
since Massachusetts was enough to occupy the king's council at that time.

The fight between Massachusetts and Charles began with the latter's
accession in 1660, and continued till his death, when it was continued by
James II. The charter of the colony was adjudged to be forfeited in 1684,
twenty-four years after the struggle opened. While it was at its height,
the Indian war broke out to which the name of the Pokanoket chief, King
Philip, has been attached. Thus both the diplomacy and the arms of the
colony were tested to the utmost, at one and the same time; the American
soldiers were victorious, though at a serious cost of life and treasure;
the diplomatists were defeated; but Massachusetts had learned her strength
in both directions, and suffered less, in the end, by her defeat than by
her victory. The issue between England and her colony had become clearly
defined; the people learned by practice what they already knew in theory
--the hatefulness of despotism; and their resolve to throw it off when the
opportunity should arrive was not discouraged, but confirmed. From the
Indian war they gained less than a wise peace would have given them, and
they lost women and children as well as men. Such conflicts, once begun,
must be pushed to the extremity; but it cannot but be wished that the
people of Massachusetts might have found a means of living with the red
men, as their brethren in Pennsylvania did, in peace and amity. The
conduct of Indians in war can never be approved by the white race, but, on
the other hand, the provocations which set them on the warpath always can
be traced to some act of injustice, real or fancied, wanton or accidental,
on our part. King Philip was fighting for precisely the same object that
was actuating the colonists in their battle with King Charles. Doubtless
the rights of a few thousand savages are insignificant compared with the
higher principles of human liberty for which we contended; but Philip
could not be expected to acknowledge this, and we should extend to him
precisely the same sympathy that we feel for ourselves.

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