evident in the accounts of these towns, such as Pynchon's in 1694,
complaining of the decay of the fortifications at Hatfield, Hadley, and
Springfield: "the people a little wilful. Inclined to doe when and how
they please or not at all."[51:2] Saltonstall writes from Haverhill
about the same time regarding his ill success in recruiting: "I will
never plead for an Haverhill man more," and he begs that some meet
person be sent "to tell us what we should, may or must do. I have
laboured in vain: some go this, and that, and the other way at pleasure,
and do what they list."[51:3] This has a familiar ring to the student of
the frontier.
As in the case of the later frontier also, the existence of a common
danger on the borders of settlement tended to consolidate not only the
towns of Massachusetts into united action for defense, but also the
various colonies. The frontier was an incentive to sectional combination
then as it was to nationalism afterward. When in 1692 Connecticut sent
soldiers from her own colony to aid the Massachusetts towns on the
Connecticut River,[52:1] she showed a realization that the Deerfield
people, who were "in a sense in the enemy's Mouth almost," as Pynchon
wrote, constituted her own frontier[52:2] and that the facts of
geography were more compelling than arbitrary colonial boundaries.
Thereby she also took a step that helped to break down provincial
antagonisms. When in 1689 Massachusetts and Connecticut sent agents to
Albany to join with New York in making presents to the Indians of that
colony in order to engage their aid against the French,[52:3] they
recognized (as their leaders put it) that Albany was "the hinge" of the
frontier in this exposed quarter. In thanking Connecticut for the
assistance furnished in 1690 Livingston said: "I hope your honors do not
look upon Albany as Albany, but as the frontier of your honor's Colony
and of all their Majesties countries."[52:4]
The very essence of the American frontier is that it is the graphic line
which records the expansive energies of the people behind it, and which
by the law of its own being continually draws that advance after it to
new conquests. This is one of the most significant things about New
England's frontier in these years. That long blood-stained line of the
eastern frontier which skirted the Maine coast was of great importance,
for it imparted a western tone to the life and characteristics of the
Maine people which endures to this day, and it was one line of advance
for New England toward the mouth of the St. Lawrence, leading again and
again to diplomatic negotiations with the powers that held that river.
The line of the towns that occupied the waters of the Merrimac, tempted
the province continually into the wilderness of New Hampshire. The
Connecticut river towns pressed steadily up that stream, along its
tributaries into the Hoosatonic valleys, and into the valleys between
the Green Mountains of Vermont. By the end of 1723, the General Court of
Massachusetts enacted,--
That It will be of Great Service to all the Western Frontiers,
both in this and the Neighboring Government of Conn., to Build
a Block House above Northfield, in the most convenient Place
on the Lands called the Equivilant Lands, & to post in it
forty Able Men, English & Western Indians, to be employed in
Scouting at a Good Distance up Conn. River, West River, Otter
Creek, and sometimes Eastwardly above the Great Manadnuck, for
the Discovery of the Enemy Coming towards anny of the frontier
Towns.[53:1]
The "frontier Towns" were preparing to swarm. It was not long before
Fort Dummer replaced "the Block House," and the Berkshires and Vermont
became new frontiers.
The Hudson River likewise was recognized as another line of advance
pointing the way to Lake Champlain and Montreal, calling out demands
that protection should be secured by means of an aggressive advance of
the frontier. _Canada delenda est_ became the rallying cry in New
England as well as in New York, and combined diplomatic pressure and
military expeditions followed in the French and Indian wars and in the
Revolution, in which the children of the Connecticut and Massachusetts
frontier towns, acclimated to Indian fighting, followed Ethan Allen and
his fellows to the north.[54:1]
Having touched upon some of the military and expansive tendencies of
this first official frontier, let us next turn to its social, economic,
and political aspects. How far was this first frontier a field for the
investment of eastern capital and for political control by it? Were
there evidences of antagonism between the frontier and the settled,
property-holding classes of the coast? Restless democracy, resentfulness
over taxation and control, and recriminations between the Western
pioneer and the Eastern capitalist, have been characteristic features of
other frontiers: were similar phenomena in evidence here? Did
"Populistic" tendencies appear in this frontier, and were there
grievances which explained these tendencies?[54:2]
In such colonies as New York and Virginia the land grants were often
made to members of the Council and their influential friends, even when
there were actual settlers already on the grants. In the case of New
England the land system is usually so described as to give the
impression that it was based on a non-commercial policy, creating new
Puritan towns by free grants of land made in advance to approved
settlers. This description does not completely fit the case. That there
was an economic interest on the part of absentee proprietors, and that
men of political influence with the government were often among the
grantees seems also to be true. Melville Egleston states the case thus:
"The court was careful not to authorize new plantations unless they were
to be in a measure under the influence of men in whom confidence could
be placed, and commonly acted upon their application."[55:1] The
frontier, as we shall observe later, was not always disposed to see the
practice in so favorable a light.
New towns seem to have been the result in some cases of the aggregation
of settlers upon and about a large private grant; more often they
resulted from settlers in older towns, where the town limits were
extensive, spreading out to the good lands of the outskirts, beyond easy
access to the meeting-house, and then asking recognition as a separate
town. In some cases they may have been due to squatting on unassigned
lands, or purchasing the Indian title and then asking confirmation. In
others grants were made in advance of settlement.
As early as 1636 the General Court had ordered that none go to new
plantations without leave of a majority of the magistrates.[55:2] This
made the legal situation clear, but it would be dangerous to conclude
that it represented the actual situation. In any case there would be a
necessity for the settlers finally to secure the assent of the Court.
This could be facilitated by a grant to leading men having political
influence with the magistrates. The complaints of absentee proprietors
which find expression in the frontier petitions of the seventeenth and
early eighteenth century seems to indicate that this happened. In the
succeeding years of the eighteenth century the grants to leading men and
the economic and political motives in the grants are increasingly
evident. This whole topic should be made the subject of special study.
What is here offered is merely suggestive of a problem.[56:1]
The frontier settlers criticized the absentee proprietors, who profited
by the pioneers' expenditure of labor and blood upon their farms, while
they themselves enjoyed security in an eastern town. A few examples from
town historians will illustrate this. Among the towns of the Merrimac
Valley, Salisbury was planted on the basis of a grant to a dozen
proprietors including such men as Mr. Bradstreet and the younger Dudley,
only two of whom actually lived and died in Salisbury.[56:2] Amesbury
was set off from Salisbury by division, one half of the signers of the
agreement signing by mark. Haverhill was first seated in 1641, following
petitions from Mr. Ward, the Ipswich minister, his son-in-law, Giles
Firmin, and others. Firmin's letter to Governor Winthrop, in 1640,
complains that Ipswich had given him his ground in that town on
condition that he should stay in the town three years or else he could
not sell it, "whenas others have no business but range from place to
place on purpose to live upon the countrey."[56:3]
Dunstable's large grant was brought about by a combination of leading
men who had received grants after the survey of 1652; among such grants
was one to the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company and another to
Thomas Brattle of Boston. Apparently it was settled chiefly by others
than the original grantees.[57:1] Groton voted in 1685 to sue the
"non-Residenc" to assist in paying the rate, and in 1679 the General
Court had ordered non-residents having land at Groton to pay rates for
their lands as residents did.[57:2] Lancaster (Nashaway) was granted to
proprietors including various craftsmen in iron, indicating, perhaps, an
expectation of iron works, and few of the original proprietors actually
settled in the town.[57:3] The grant of 1653-4 was made by the Court
after reciting: (1) that it had ordered in 1647 that the "ordering and
disposeing of the Plantation at Nashaway is wholly in the Courts power";
(2) "Considering that there is allredy at Nashaway about nine Families
and that severall both freemen and others intend to goe and setle there,
some whereof are named in this Petition," etc.
Mendon, begun in 1660 by Braintree people, is a particularly significant
example. In 1681 the inhabitants petitioned that while they are not "of
the number of those who dwell in their ceiled houses & yet say the time
is not come that the Lord's house should be built," yet they have gone
outside of their strength "unless others who are proprietors as well as
ourselves, (the price of whose lands is much raysed by our carrying on
public work & will be nothing worth if we are forced to quit the place)
doo beare an equal share in Town charges with us. Those who are not yet
come up to us are a great and far yet abler part of our
Proprietors . . ."[57:4] In 1684 the selectmen inform the General Court
that one half of the proprietors, two only excepted, are dwelling in
other places, "Our proprietors, abroad," say they, "object that they see
no reason why they should pay as much for thayer lands as we do for our
Land and stock, which we answer that if their be not a noff of reason
for it, we are sure there is more than enough of necessity to supply
that is wanting in reason."[58:1] This is the authentic voice of the
frontier.
Deerfield furnishes another type, inasmuch as a considerable part of its
land was first held by Dedham, to which the grant was made as a
recompense for the location of the Natick Indian reservation. Dedham
shares in the town often fell into the hands of speculators, and
Sheldon, the careful historian of Deerfield, declares that not a single
Dedham man became a permanent resident of the grant. In 1678 Deerfield
petitioned the General Court as follows:
You may be pleased to know that the very principle & best of
the land; the best for soile; the best for situation; as lying
in y{e} centre & midle of the town: & as to quantity, nere
half, belongs unto eight or 9 proprietors each and every of
which, are never like to come to a settlement amongst us,
which we have formerly found grievous & doe Judge for the
future will be found intollerable if not altered. O{r}
minister, Mr. Mather . . . & we ourselves are much discouraged
as judging the Plantation will be spoiled if thes proprietors
may not be begged, or will not be bought up on very easy terms
outt of their Right . . . Butt as long as the maine of the
plantation Lies in men's hands that can't improve it
themselves, neither are ever like to putt such tenants on to
it as shall be likely to advance the good of y{e} place in
Civill or sacred Respects; he, ourselves, and all others that
think of going to it, are much discouraged.[59:1]
Woodstock, later a Connecticut town, was settled under a grant in the
Nipmuc country made to the town of Roxbury. The settlers, who located
their farms near the trading post about which the Indians still
collected, were called the "go-ers," while the "stayers" were those who
remained in Roxbury, and retained half of the new grant; but it should
be added that they paid the go-ers a sum of money to facilitate the
settlement.
This absentee proprietorship and the commercial attitude toward the
lands of new towns became more evident in succeeding years of the
eighteenth century. Leicester, for example, was confirmed by the General
Court in 1713. The twenty shares were divided among twenty-two
proprietors, including Jeremiah Dummer, Paul Dudley (Attorney-General),
William Dudley (like Paul a son of the Governor, Joseph Dudley), Thomas
Hutchinson (father of the later Governor), John Clark (the political
leader), and Samuel Sewall (son of the Chief Justice). These were all
men of influence, and none of the proprietors became inhabitants of
Leicester. The proprietors tried to induce the fifty families, whose
settlement was one of the conditions on which the grant was made, to
occupy the eastern half of the township reserving the rest as their
absolute property.[59:2]
The author of a currency tract, in 1716, entitled "Some Considerations
upon the Several Sorts of Banks," remarks that formerly, when land was
easy to be obtained, good men came over as indentured servants; but now,
he says, they are runaways, thieves, and disorderly persons. The remedy
for this, in his opinion, would be to induce servants to come over by
offering them homes when the terms of indenture should expire.[60:1] He
therefore advocates that townships should be laid out four or five miles
square in which grants of fifty or sixty acres could be made to
servants.[60:2] Concern over the increase of negro slaves in
Massachusetts seems to have been the reason for this proposal. It
indicates that the current practice in disposing of the lands did not
provide for the poorer people.
But Massachusetts did not follow this suggestion of a homestead policy.
On the contrary, the desire to locate towns to create continuous lines
of settlement along the roads between the disconnected frontiers and to
protect boundary claims by granting tiers of towns in the disputed
tract, as well, no doubt, as pressure from financial interests, led the
General Court between 1715 and 1762 to dispose of the remaining public
domain of Massachusetts under conditions that made speculation and
colonization by capitalists important factors.[60:3] When in 1762
Massachusetts sold a group of townships in the Berkshires to the highest
bidders (by whole townships),[60:4] the transfer from the
social-religious to the economic conception was complete, and the
frontier was deeply influenced by the change to "land mongering."
In one respect, however, there was an increasing recognition of the
religious and social element in settling the frontier, due in part, no
doubt, to a desire to provide for the preservation of eastern ideals and
influences in the West. Provisions for reserving lands within the
granted townships for the support of an approved minister, and for
schools, appear in the seventeenth century and become a common feature
of the grants for frontier towns in the eighteenth.[61:1] This practice
with respect to the New England frontier became the foundation for the
system of grants of land from the public domain for the support of
common schools and state universities by the federal government from its
beginning, and has been profoundly influential in later Western States.
Another ground for discontent over land questions was furnished by the
system of granting lands within the town by the commoners. The principle
which in many, if not all, cases guided the proprietors in distributing
the town lots is familiar and is well stated in the Lancaster town
records (1653):
And, whereas Lotts are Now Laid out for the most part Equally
to Rich and poore, Partly to keepe the Towne from Scatering to
farr, and partly out of Charitie and Respect to men of meaner
estate, yet that Equallitie (which is the rule of God) may be
observed, we Covenant and Agree, That in a second Devition and
so through all other Devitions of Land the mater shall be
drawne as neere to _equallitie according to mens estates_ as
wee are able to doe, That he which hath now more then his
estate Deserveth in home Lotts and entervale Lotts shall haue
so much Less: and he that hath Less then his estate Deserveth
shall haue so much more.[62:1]
This peculiar doctrine of "equality" had early in the history of the
colony created discontents. Winthrop explained the principle which
governed himself and his colleagues in the case of the Boston committee
of 1634 by saying that their divisions were arranged "partly to prevent
the neglect of trades." This is a pregnant idea; it underlay much of the
later opposition of New England as a manufacturing section to the free
homestead or cheap land policy, demanded by the West and by the labor
party, in the national public domain. The migration of labor to free
lands meant that higher wages must be paid to those who remained. The
use of the town lands by the established classes to promote an approved
form of society naturally must have had some effect on migration.
But a more effective source of disputes was with respect to the relation
of the town proprietors to the public domain of the town in contrast
with the non-proprietors as a class. The need of keeping the town
meeting and the proprietors' meeting separate in the old towns in
earlier years was not so great as it was when the new-comers became
numerous. In an increasing degree these new-comers were either not
granted lands at all, or were not admitted to the body of proprietors
with rights in the possession of the undivided town lands. Contentions
on the part of the town meeting that it had the right of dealing with
the town lands occasionally appear, significantly, in the frontier towns
of Haverhill, Massachusetts, Simsbury, Connecticut, and in the towns of
the Connecticut Valley.[63:1] Jonathan Edwards, in 1751, declared that
there had been in Northampton for forty or fifty years "two parties
somewhat like the court and country parties of England. . . . The first
party embraced the great proprietors of land, and the parties concerned
about land and other matters."[63:2] The tendency to divide up the
common lands among the proprietors in individual possession did not
become marked until the eighteenth century; but the exclusion of some
from possession of the town lands and the "equality" in allotment
favoring men with already large estates must have attracted ambitious
men who were not of the favored class to join in the movement to new
towns. Religious dissensions would combine to make frontier society as
it formed early in the eighteenth century more and more democratic,
dissatisfied with the existing order, and less respectful of authority.
We shall not understand the relative radicalism of parts of the
Berkshires, Vermont and interior New Hampshire without enquiry into the
degree in which the control over the lands by a proprietary monopoly
affected the men who settled on the frontier.
The final aspect of this frontier to be examined, is the attitude of the
conservatives of the older sections towards this movement of westward
advance. President Dwight in the era of the War of 1812 was very
critical of the "foresters," but saw in such a movement a safety valve
to the institutions of New England by allowing the escape of the
explosive advocates of "Innovation."[63:3]
Cotton Mather is perhaps not a typical representative of the
conservative sentiment at the close of the seventeenth century, but his
writings may partly reflect the attitude of Boston Bay toward New
England's first Western frontier. Writing in 1694 of "Wonderful Passages
which have Occurred, First in the Protections and then in the
Afflictions of New England," he says:
One while the Enclosing of _Commons_ hath made Neighbours,
that should have been like Sheep, to _Bite and devour one
another_. . . . Again, Do our _Old_ People, any of them _Go
Out_ from the Institutions of God, Swarming into New
Settlements, where they and their Untaught Families are like
to _Perish for Lack of Vision_? They that have done so,
heretofore, have to their Cost found, that they were got unto
the _Wrong side of the Hedge_, in their doing so. Think, here
_Should this be done any more?_ We read of Balaam, in Num. 22,
23. He was to his Damage, _driven to the_ Wall, when he would
needs make an unlawful Salley forth after the _Gain_ of this
World. . . . Why, when men, for the Sake of Earthly Gain,
would be _going out_ into the _Warm_ Sun, they drive _Through
the Wall_, and the _Angel of the Lord_ becomes their Enemy.
In his essay on "Frontiers Well-Defended" (1707) Mather assures the
pioneers that they "dwell in a Hatsarmaneth," a place of "tawney
serpents," are "inhabitants of the Valley of Achor," and are "the Poor
of this World." There may be significance in his assertion: "It is
remarkable to see that when the Unchurched Villages, have been so many
of them, _utterly broken up_, in the _War_, that has been upon us, those
that have had _Churches_ regularly formed in them, have generally been
under a more _sensible Protection_ of Heaven." "Sirs," he says, "a
_Church-State_ well form'd may fortify you wonderfully!" He recommends
abstention from profane swearing, furious cursing, Sabbath breaking,
unchastity, dishonesty, robbing of God by defrauding the ministers of
their dues, drunkenness, and revels and he reminds them that even the
Indians have family prayers! Like his successors who solicited
missionary contributions for the salvation of the frontier in the
Mississippi Valley during the forties of the nineteenth century, this
early spokesman for New England laid stress upon teaching anti-popery,
particularly in view of the captivity that might await them.
In summing up, we find many of the traits of later frontiers in this
early prototype, the Massachusetts frontier. It lies at the edge of the
Indian country and tends to advance. It calls out militant qualities and
reveals the imprint of wilderness conditions upon the psychology and
morals as well as upon the institutions of the people. It demands common
defense and thus becomes a factor for consolidation. It is built on the
basis of a preliminary fur trade, and is settled by the combined and
sometimes antagonistic forces of eastern men of property (the absentee
proprietors) and the democratic pioneers. The East attempted to regulate
and control it. Individualistic and democratic tendencies were
emphasized both by the wilderness conditions and, probably, by the prior
contentions between the proprietors and non-proprietors of the towns
from which settlers moved to the frontier. Removal away from the control
of the customary usages of the older communities and from the
conservative influence of the body of the clergy, increased the
innovating tendency. Finally the towns were regarded by at least one
prominent representative of the established order in the East, as an
undesirable place for the re-location of the pillars of society. The
temptation to look upon the frontier as a field for investment was
viewed by the clergy as a danger to the "institutions of God." The
frontier was "the Wrong side of the Hedge."