Part 6 (2/2)

These bloodthirsty counsels did not prevail, but the course that was adopted did not lack in harshness. Among the sachems a dozen leading spirits were hanged or shot, and hundreds of captives were s.h.i.+pped off to the West Indies to be sold into slavery; among these was Philip's little son. The rough soldier Church and the apostle Eliot were among the few who disapproved of this policy. Church feared it might goad such Indians as were still at large to acts of desperation. Eliot, in an earnest letter to the Federal Commissioners, observed: ”To sell souls for money seemeth to me dangerous merchandise.” But the plan of exporting the captives was adhered to. As slaves they were understood to be of little or no value, and sometimes for want of purchasers they were set ash.o.r.e on strange coasts and abandoned. A few were even carried to one of the foulest of mediaeval slave-marts, Morocco, where their fate was doubtless wretched enough. [Sidenote: Indians sold into slavery]

In spite of Church's doubts as to the wisdom of this harsh treatment, it did not prevent the beaten and starving savages from surrendering themselves in considerable numbers. To some the Federal Commissioners offered amnesty, and the promise was faithfully fulfilled. Among those who laid down arms in reliance upon it were 140 Christian Indians, with their leader known as James the Printer, because he had been employed at Cambridge in setting up the type for Eliot's Bible. Quite early in the war it had been discovered that these converted savages still felt the ties of blood to be stronger than those of creed. At the attack on Mendon, only three weeks after the horrors at Swanzey that ushered in the war, it was known that Christian Indians had behaved themselves quite as cruelly as their unregenerate brethren. Afterwards they made such a record that the jokers and punsters of the day--for such there were, even among those sombre Puritans--in writing about the ”Praying Indians,” spelled _praying_ with an _e_. The moral scruples of these savages, under the influence of their evangelical training, betrayed queer freaks. One of them, says Mrs. Rowlandson, would rather die than eat horseflesh, so narrow and scrupulous was his conscience, although it was as wide as the whole infernal abyss, when it came to torturing white Christians. The student of history may have observed similar inconsistencies in the theories and conduct of people more enlightened than these poor red men. ”There was another Praying Indian,” continues Mrs. Rowlandson, ”who, when he had done all the mischief he could, betrayed his own father into the English's hands, thereby to purchase his own life; ... and there was another ... so wicked ... as to wear a string about his neck, strung with Christian fingers.” [Sidenote: Conduct of the Christian Indians]

Such incidents help us to comprehend the exasperation of our forefathers in the days of King Philip. The month which witnessed his death saw also the end of the war in the southern parts of New England; but, almost before people had time to offer thanks for the victory, there came news of bloodshed on the northeastern frontier. The Tarratines in Maine had for some time been infected with the war fever. How far they may have been comprehended in the schemes of Philip and Canonchet, it would be hard to say. They had attacked settlers on the site of Brunswick as early as September, 1675. About the time of Philip's death, Major Waldron of Dover had entrapped a party of them by an unworthy stratagem, and after satisfying himself that they were accomplices in that chieftain's scheme, sent them to Boston to be sold into slavery. A terrible retribution was in store for Major Waldron thirteen years later. For the present the hideous strife, just ended in southern New England, was continued on the northeastern frontier, and there was scarcely a village between the Kennebec and the Piscataqua but was laid in ashes. [Sidenote: War with the Tarratines, 1676-78]

By midsummer of 1678 the Indians had been everywhere suppressed, and there was peace in the land. For three years, since Philip's ma.s.sacre at Swanzey, there had been a reign of terror in New England. Within the boundaries of Connecticut, indeed, little or no damage had been inflicted, and the troops of that colony, not needed on their own soil, did n.o.ble service in the common cause.

In Ma.s.sachusetts and Plymouth, on the other hand, the destruction of life and property had been simply frightful. Of ninety towns, twelve had been utterly destroyed, while more than forty others had been the scene of fire and slaughter. Out of this little society nearly a thousand staunch men, including not few of broad culture and strong promise, had lost their lives, while of the scores of fair women and poor little children that had perished under the ruthless tomahawk, one can hardly give an accurate account. Hardly a family throughout the land but was in mourning. The war-debt of Plymouth was reckoned to exceed the total amount of personal property in the colony; yet although it pinched every household for many a year, it was paid to the uttermost farthing; nor in this respect were Ma.s.sachusetts and Connecticut at all behind-hand.

[Sidenote: Destructiveness of the war]

But while King Philip's War wrought such fearful damage to the English, it was for the Indians themselves utter destruction. Most of the warriors were slain, and to the survivors, as we have seen, the conquerors showed but scant mercy. The Puritan, who conned his Bible so earnestly, had taken his hint from the wars of the Jews, and swept his New English Canaan with a broom that was pitiless and searching.

Henceforth the red man figures no more in the history of New England, except as an ally of the French in b.l.o.o.d.y raids upon the frontier. In that capacity he does mischief enough for yet a half-century more, but from central and southern New England, as an element of disturbance or a power to be reckoned with, he disappears forever.

CHAPTER VI.

THE TYRANNY OF ANDROS.

The beginnings of New England were made in the full daylight of modern history. It was an age of town records, of registered deeds, of contemporary memoirs, of diplomatic correspondence, of controversial pamphlets, funeral sermons, political diatribes, specific instructions, official reports, and private letters. It was not a time in which mythical personages or incredible legends could flourish, and such things we do find in the history of New England. There was nevertheless a romantic side to this history, enough to envelop some of its characters and incidents in a glamour that may mislead the modern reader. This wholesale migration from the smiling fields of merry England to an unexplored wilderness beyond a thousand leagues of sea was of itself a most romantic and thrilling event, and when viewed in the light of its historic results it becomes clothed with sublimity. The men who undertook this work were not at all free from self-consciousness.

They believed that they were doing a wonderful thing. They felt themselves to be instruments in accomplis.h.i.+ng a kind of ”manifest destiny.” Their exodus was that of a chosen people who were at length to lay the everlasting foundations of G.o.d's kingdom upon earth. Such opinions, which took a strong colour from their a.s.siduous study of the Old Testament, reacted and disposed them all the more to search its pages for ill.u.s.trations and precedents, and to regard it as an oracle, almost as a talisman. In every propitious event they saw a special providence, an act of divine intervention to deliver them from the snares of an ever watchful Satan. This steadfast faith in an unseen ruler and guide was to them a pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night. It was of great moral value. It gave them clearness of purpose and concentration of strength, and contributed toward making them, like the children of Israel, a people of indestructible vitality and aggressive energy. At the same time, in the hands of the Puritan writers, this feeling was apt to warp their estimates of events and throw such a romantic haze about things as seriously to interfere with a true historical perspective. [Sidenote: Romantic features in the early history of New England]

Among such writings that which perhaps best epitomizes the Puritan philosophy is ”The Wonder-working Providence of Zion's Saviour in New England,” by Captain Edward Johnson, one of the princ.i.p.al founders of Woburn. It is an extremely valuable history of New England from 1628 to 1651, and every page is alive with the virile energy of that stirring time. With narrative, argument, and apologue, abounding in honesty of purpose, sublimity of trust, and grotesqueness of fancy, wherein touching tenderness is often alternated with sternness most grim and merciless, yet now and then relieved by a sudden gleam of humour,--and all in a style that is usually uncouth and harsh, but sometimes bursts forth in eloquence worthy of Bunyan,--we are told how the founders of New England are soldiers of Christ enlisted in a holy war, and how they must ”march manfully on till all opposers of Christ's kingly power be abolished.” ”And as for you who are called to sound forth his silver trumpets, blow loud and shrill to this chiefest treble tune--for the armies of the great Jehovah are at hand.” ”He standeth not as an idle spectator beholding his people's ruth and their enemies' rage, but as an actor in all actions, to bring to naught the desires of the wicked, ...

having also the ordering of every weapon in its first produce, guiding every shaft that flies, leading each bullet to his place of settling, and weapon to the wound it makes.” To men engaged in such a crusade against the powers of evil, nothing could seem insignificant or trivial; for, as Johnson continues, in truly prophetic phrase, ”the Lord Christ intends to achieve greater matters by this little handful than the world is aware of.” [Sidenote: Edward Johnson]

The general sentiment of the early New England writers was like that of the ”Wonder-working Providence,” though it did not always find such rhapsodic expression. It has left its impress upon the minds of their children's children down to our own time, and has affected the opinions held about them by other people. It has had something to do with a certain tacit a.s.sumption of superiority on the part of New Englanders, upon which the men and women of other communities have been heard to comment in resentful and carping tones. There has probably never existed, in any age or at any spot on the earth's surface, a group of people that did not take for granted its own preeminent excellence. Upon some such a.s.sumption, as upon an incontrovertible axiom, all historical narratives, from the chronicles of a parish to the annals of an empire, alike proceed. But in New England it a.s.sumed a form especially apt to provoke challenge. One of its unintentional effects was the setting up of an unreal and impossible standard by which to judge the acts and motives of the Puritans of the seventeenth century. We come upon instances of harshness and cruelty, of narrow-minded bigotry, and superst.i.tious frenzy; and feel, perhaps, a little surprised that these men had so much in common with their contemporaries. Hence the interminable discussion which has been called forth by the history of the Puritans, in which the conclusions of the writer have generally been determined by circ.u.mstances of birth or creed, or perhaps of reaction against creed. One critic points to the Boston of 1659 or the Salem of 1692 with such gleeful satisfaction as used to stir the heart of Thomas Paine when he alighted upon an inconsistency in some text of the Bible; while another, in the firm conviction that Puritans could do no wrong, plays fast and loose with arguments that might be made to justify the deeds of a Torquemada. [Sidenote: Acts of the Puritans often judged by a wrong standard]

From such methods of criticism it is the duty of historians as far as possible to free themselves. If we consider the Puritans in the light of their surroundings as Englishmen of the seventeenth century and inaugurators of a political movement that was gradually to change for the better the aspect of things all over the earth, we cannot fail to discern the value of that sacred enthusiasm which led them to regard themselves as chosen soldiers of Christ. It was the spirit of the ”Wonder-working Providence” that hurled the tyrant from his throne at Whitehall and prepared the way for the emanc.i.p.ation of modern Europe. No spirit less intense, no spirit nurtured in the contemplation of things terrestrial, could ever have done it. The political philosophy of a Vane or a Sidney could never have done it. The pa.s.sion for liberty as felt by a Jefferson or an Adams, abstracted and generalized from the love of particular liberties, was something scarcely intelligible to the seventeenth century. The ideas of absolute freedom of thought and speech, which we breathe in from childhood, were to the men of that age strange and questionable. They groped and floundered among them, very much as modern wool growers in Ohio or iron-smelters in Pennsylvania flounder and grope among the elementary truths of political economy. But the spirit in which the Hebrew prophet rebuked and humbled an idolatrous king was a spirit they could comprehend. Such a spirit was sure to manifest itself in narrow cramping measures and in ugly acts of persecution; but it is none the less to the fortunate alliance of that fervid religious enthusiasm with the Englishman's love of self-government that our modern freedom owes its existence. [Sidenote: Spirit of the Wonder-working Providence]

The history of New England under Charles II. yields abundant proof that political liberty is no less indebted in the New World than in the Old to the spirit of the ”Wonder-working Providence.” The theocratic ideal which the Puritan sought to put into practice in Ma.s.sachusetts and Connecticut was a sacred inst.i.tution in faults of the defence of which all his faculties were kept perpetually alert. Much as he loved self-government he would never have been so swift to detect and so stubborn to resist every slightest encroachment on the part of the crown had not the loss of self-government involved the imminent danger that the ark of the Lord might be abandoned to the wors.h.i.+ppers of Dagon.

It was in Ma.s.sachusetts, where the theocracy was strongest, that the resistance to Charles II. was most dogged and did most to prepare the way for the work of achieving political independence a century later.

Naturally it was in Ma.s.sachusetts at the same time that the faults of the theocracy were most conspicuous. It was there that priestly authority most clearly a.s.serted itself in such oppressive acts as are always witnessed when too much power is left in the hands of men whose primary allegiance is to a kingdom not of this world. Much as we owe to the theocracy for warding off the encroachments of the crown, we cannot be sorry that it was itself crushed in the process. It was well that it did not survive its day of usefulness, and that the outcome of the struggle was what has been aptly termed ”the emanc.i.p.ation of Ma.s.sachusetts.” [Sidenote: Merits and faults of the theocracy]

The basis of the theocratic const.i.tution of this commonwealth was the provision by which the exercise of the franchise was made an incident of church-members.h.i.+p. Unless a man could take part in the Lord's Supper, as administered in the churches of the colony, he could not vote or hold office. Church and state, parish and town, were thus virtually identified. Here, as in some other aspects of early New England, one is reminded of the ancient Greek cities, where the freeman who could vote in the market-place or serve his turn as magistrate was the man qualified to perform sacrifices to the tutelar deities of the tribe; other men might dwell in the city but had no share in making or executing its laws. The limitation of civil rights by religious tests is indeed one of those common inheritances from the old Aryan world that we find again and again cropping out, even down to the exclusion of Catholics from the House of Commons from 1562 to 1829. The obvious purpose of this policy in England was self-protection; and in like manner the restriction of the suffrage in Ma.s.sachusetts was designed to protect the colony against aggressive episcopacy and to maintain unimpaired the uniformity of purpose which had brought the settlers across the ocean. Under the circ.u.mstances there was something to be said in behalf of such a measure of self-protection, and the principle required but slight extension to cover such cases as the banishment of Roger Williams and the Antinomians. There was another side to the case, however. From the very outset this exclusive policy was in some ways a source of weakness to Ma.s.sachusetts, though we have seen that the indirect effect was to diversify and enrich the political life of New England as a whole. [Sidenote: Restriction of the suffrage to church members]

At first it led to the departure of the men who founded Connecticut, and thereafter the way was certainly open for those who preferred the Connecticut policy to go where it prevailed. Some such segregation was no doubt effected, but it could not be complete and thorough. Men who preferred Boston without the franchise to Hartford with it would remain in Ma.s.sachusetts; and thus the elder colony soon came to possess a discontented cla.s.s of people, always ready to join hand in glove with dissenters or mischief-makers, or even with emissaries of the crown. It afforded a suggestive commentary upon all attempts to suppress human nature by depriving it of a share in political life; instead of keeping it inside where you can try conclusions with it fairly, you thrust it out to plot mischief in the dark. Within twenty years from the founding of Boston the disfranchis.e.m.e.nt of such citizens as could not partic.i.p.ate in church-communion had begun to be regarded as a serious political grievance. These men were obliged to pay taxes and were liable to be called upon for military service against the Indians; and they naturally felt that they ought to have a voice in the management of public affairs. [Sidenote: It was a source of political discontent]

Besides this fundamental ground of complaint, there were derivative grievances. Under the influence of the clergy justice was administered in somewhat inquisitorial fas.h.i.+on, there was an uncertainty as to just what the law was, a strong disposition to confuse questions of law with questions of ethics, and great laxity in the admission and estimation of evidence. As early as 1639 people had begun to complain that too much power was rested in the discretion of the magistrate, and they clamoured for a code of laws; but as Winthrop says, the magistrates and ministers were ”not very forward in this matter,” for they preferred to supplement the common law of England by decisions based on the Old Testament rather than by a body of statutes. It was not until 1649, after a persistent struggle, that the deputies won a decisive victory over the a.s.sistants and secured for Ma.s.sachusetts a definite code of laws. In the New Haven colony similar theocratic notions led the settlers to dispense with trial by jury because they could find no precedent for it in the laws of Moses. Here, as in Ma.s.sachusetts, the inquisitorial administration of justice combined with partial disfranchis.e.m.e.nt to awaken discontent, and it was partly for this reason that New Haven fell so easily under the sway of Connecticut. [Sidenote: Inquisitorial administration of justice]

In Ma.s.sachusetts after 1650 the opinion rapidly gained ground that all baptized persons of upright and decorous lives ought to be considered, for practical purposes, as members of the church, and therefore ent.i.tled to the exercise of political rights, even though unqualified for partic.i.p.ation in the Lord's Supper. This theory of church-members.h.i.+p, based on what was at that time stigmatized as the ”Halfway Covenant,”

aroused intense opposition. It was the great question of the day. In 1657 a council was held in Boston, which approved the principle of the Halfway Covenant; and as this decision was far from satisfying the churches, a synod of all the clergymen in Ma.s.sachusetts was held five years later, to reconsider the great question. The decision of the synod substantially confirmed the decision of the council, but there were some dissenting voices. Foremost among the dissenters, who wished to retain the old theocratic regime in all its strictness, was Charles Chauncey, the president of Harvard College, and Increase Mather agreed with him at the time, though he afterward saw reason to change his opinion, and published two tracts in favour of the Halfway Covenant. Most bitter of all toward the new theory of church-members.h.i.+p was, naturally enough, Mr. Davenport of New Haven. [Sidenote: The ”Halfway Covenant”]

This burning question was the source of angry contentions in the First Church of Boston. Its teacher, the learned and melancholy Norton, died in 1663, and four years later the aged pastor, John Wilson, followed him. In choosing a successor to Wilson the church decided to declare itself in opposition to the liberal decision of the synod, and in token thereof invited Davenport to come from New Haven to take charge of it.

Davenport, who was then seventy years old, was disgusted at the recent annexation of his colony to Connecticut. He accepted the invitation and came to Boston, against the wishes of nearly half of the Boston congregation who did not like the illiberal principle which he represented. In little more than a year his ministry at Boston was ended by death; but the opposition to his call had already proceeded so far that a secession from the old church had become inevitable. In 1669 the advocates of the Halfway Covenant organized themselves into a new society under the t.i.tle of the ”Third Church in Boston.” A wooden meeting-house was built on a lot which had once belonged to the late governor Winthrop, in what was then the south part of the town, so that the society and its meeting-house became known as the South Church; and after a new church founded in Summer Street in 1717 took the name of the New South, the church of 1669 came to be further distinguished as the Old South. As this church represented a liberal idea which was growing in favour with the people, it soon became the most flouris.h.i.+ng church in America. After sixty years its numbers had increased so that the old meeting-house could not contain them; and in 1729 the famous building which still stands was erected on the same spot,--a building with a grander history than any other on the American continent, unless it be that other plain brick building in Philadelphia where the Declaration of Independence was adopted and the Federal Const.i.tution framed. [Sidenote: Founding of the Old South Church, 1669]

The wrath of the First Church at this secession from its ranks was deep and bitter, and for thirteen years it refused to entertain ecclesiastical intercourse with the South Church. But by 1682 it had become apparent that the king and his friends were meditating an attack upon the Puritan theocracy in New England. It had even been suggested, in the council for the colonies, that the Church of England should be established in Ma.s.sachusetts, and that none but duly ordained Episcopal clergymen should be allowed to solemnize marriages. Such alarming suggestions began to impress the various Puritan churches with the importance of uniting their forces against the common enemy; and accordingly in 1682 the quarrel between the two Boston societies came to an end. There was urgent need of all the sympathy and good feeling that the community could muster, whereby to cheer itself in the crisis that was coming. The four years from 1684 to 1688 were the darkest years in the history of New England. Ma.s.sachusetts, though not lacking in the spirit, had not the power to beard the tyrant as she did eighty years later. Her att.i.tude toward the Stuarts--as we have seen--had been sometimes openly haughty and defiant, sometimes silent and sullen, but always independent. At the accession of Charles II. the colonists had thought it worth while to send commissioners to England to confer with the king and avoid a quarrel. Charles promised to respect their charter, but insisted that in return they must take an oath of allegiance to the crown, must administer justice in the king's name, and must repeal their laws restricting the right of suffrage to church members and prohibiting the Episcopal form of wors.h.i.+p. [Sidenote: Founding of the Old South Church, 1669] [Sidenote: Demands of Charles II.]

When the people of Ma.s.sachusetts received this message they consented to administer justice in the king's name, but all the other matters were referred for consideration to a committee, and so they dropped out of sight. When the royal commissioners came to Boston in 1664, they were especially instructed to ascertain whether Ma.s.sachusetts had complied with the king's demands; but upon this point the legislature stubbornly withheld any definite answer, while it frittered away the time in trivial altercations with the royal commissioners. The war with Holland and the turbulent state of English politics operated for several years in favour of this independent att.i.tude of the colonists, though during all this time their enemies at court were busy with intrigues and accusations. Apart from mere slanders the real grounds of complaint were the restriction of the suffrage, whereby members of the Church of England were shut out; the claims of the eastern proprietors, heirs of Mason and Gorges, whose territory Ma.s.sachusetts had absorbed; the infraction of the navigation laws; and the coinage of pine-tree s.h.i.+llings. The last named measure had been forced upon the colonists by the scarcity of a circulating medium. Until 1661 Indian wampum had been a legal tender, and far into the eighteenth century it remained current in small transactions. ”In 1693 the ferriage from New York to Brooklyn was eight stivers in wampum or a silver twopence.” [35] As early as 1652 Ma.s.sachusetts had sought to supply the deficiency by the issue of s.h.i.+llings and sixpences. It was an affair of convenience and probably had no political purpose. The infraction of the navigation laws was a more serious matter. ”s.h.i.+ps from France, Spain, and the Canaries traded directly with Boston, and brought in goods which had never paid duty in any English port.” [36] The effect of this was to excite the jealousy of the merchants in London and other English cities and to deprive Ma.s.sachusetts of the sympathy of that already numerous and powerful cla.s.s of people. [Sidenote: Complaints against Ma.s.sachusetts]

In 1675, the first year of King Philip's War, the British government made up its mind to attend more closely to the affairs of its American colonies. It had got the Dutch war off its hands, and could give heed to other things. The general supervision of the colonies was a.s.signed to a standing committee of the privy council, styled the ”Lords of the Committee of Trade and Plantations,” and henceforth familiarly known as the ”Lords of Trade.” Next year the Lords of Trade sent an agent to Boston, with a letter to Governor Leverett about the Mason and Gorges claims. Under cover of this errand the messenger was to go about and ascertain the sentiments which people in the Kennebec and Piscataqua towns, as well as in Boston, entertained for the government of Ma.s.sachusetts. The person to whom this work was entrusted was Edward Randolph, a cousin of Robert Mason who inherited the property claim to the Piscataqua county. To these men had old John Mason bequeathed his deadly feud with Ma.s.sachusetts, and the fourteen years which Randolph now spent in New England were busily devoted to sowing the seeds of strife. In 1678 the king appointed him collector and surveyor of customs at the port of Boston, with instructions to enforce the navigation laws.

Randolph was not the man to do unpopular things in such a way as to dull the edge of the infliction; he took delight in adding insult to injury.

He was at once harsh and treacherous. His one virtue was pecuniary integrity; he was inaccessible to bribes and did not pick and steal from the receipts at the custom-house. In the other relations of life he was disenc.u.mbered of scruples. His abilities were not great, but his industry was untiring, and he pursued his enemies with the tenacity of a sleuth-hound. As an excellent British historian observes, ”he was one of those men who, once enlisted as partisans, lose every other feeling in the pa.s.sion which is engendered of strife.” [37] [Sidenote: The Lords of Trade] [Sidenote: Edward Randolph]

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