England for many years; but how well it has justified itself! Such
words are a living power, surviving the lapse of many generations, and
flaming up fresh and vigorous above the decay of centuries. The
patriotism which they express is of more avail than the victories of
armies and of navies, for these may be won in an ill cause; but the
dauntless utterances of men who would rather perish than fail to keep
faith with God and with their forefathers is a victory for mankind, and
is everlasting. How poor and vain in comparison with this stern and
sincere eloquence seem the supple time-service and euphemism of vulgar
politicians of whose cunning and fruitless spiderwebs the latter years
have been so prolific. It is worth while to do right from high motives,
and to care for no gain that is not gained worthily. The men of
Massachusetts who lived a hundred years before Jefferson were Americans
of a type as lofty as any that have lived since; the work that was
given them to do was so done that time can take away nothing from it,
nor add anything. The soul of liberty is in it. It is easy to "believe
in" our country now, when it extends from ocean to ocean, and is the
home of seventy-five million human beings who lead the world in
intelligence, wealth, and the sources of power. But our country two
hundred years ago was a strip of sea-coast with Indians on one side and
tyrants on the other, inhabited by a handful of exiles, who owned
little but their faith in God and their love for the freedom of man. No
lesser men than they could have believed in their country then; and
they vindicated their belief by resisting to the last the mighty and
despotic power of England.
On November 30, 1683, the decision was made known: "The deputies
consent not, but adhere to their former bills." A year afterward the
English court, obstinate in the face of all remonstrances, adjudged the
royal charter of Massachusetts to be forfeited. It had been in
existence all but half a century. It was no more; but it had done its
work. It had made Massachusetts. The people were there--the men, the
women and the children--who would hand on the tradition of faith and
honor through the hundred years of darkness and tribulation till the
evil spell was broken by the guns of Bunker Hill. Royal governors might
come and go; but the people were growing day by day, and though
governors and governments are things of an hour, the people are
immortal, and the time of their emancipation will come. By means of the
charter, the seed of liberty was sown in favorable soil; it must lie
hid awhile; but it would gather in obscurity and seeming death the
elements of new and more ample life, and the genius of endless
expansion, Great men and nations come to their strength through great
trials, so that they may remember, and not lightly surrender what was
so hardly won.
The king's privy council, now that Massachusetts lay naked and helpless
before them, debated whether she should be ruled by English laws, or
whether the king should appoint governors and councils over her, who
should have license to work their wills upon her irresponsibly, except
in so far as the king's private instructions might direct them. A
minority, represented by Lord Halifax, who carried a wise head on young
shoulders, advised the former plan; but the majority preferred to
flatter Charles's manifest predilection, and said--not to seem
embarrassingly explicit--that in their opinion the best way to govern a
colony on the other side of an ocean three thousand miles broad, was to
govern it--as the king thought best!
So now, after so prolonged and annoying a delay, the royal libertine
had his Puritan victim gagged and bound, and could proceed to enjoy her
at his leisure. But it so fell out that the judgment against the
charter was received in Boston on the second of July, 1685, whereas
Charles II. died in London on February 6th of the same year; so that he
did not get his reward after all: not, at least, the kind of reward he
was looking for. But, so far as Massachusetts was concerned, it made
little difference; since James II. was as much the foe of liberty as
was his predecessor, and had none of his animal amiability. The last
act of the Massachusetts assembly under the old order was the
appointing of a day of fasting and prayer, to beseech the Lord to have
mercy upon his people.
The reign of James II. was a black season for the northern American
colonies; we can say no better of it than that it did not equal the
bloody horrors which were perpetrated in Scotland between 1680 and
1687. Massacres did not take place in Massachusetts; but otherwise,
tyranny did its perfect work. The most conspicuous and infamous figures
of the time are Sir Edmund Andros and Edward Randolph.
Andros, born in 1637, was thirty-seven years of age when he came to the
colonies as governor of New York on behalf of the Duke of York. He was
a lawyer, and a man of energy and ability; and his career was on the
whole successful, from the point of view of his employers and himself;
his tenure of office in New York was eight years; he was governor of
New England from 1686 to 1689, when he was seized and thrown in jail by
the people, on the outbreak of the Revolution in England; and he
afterward governed Virginia for seven years (1692-1698), which finished
his colonial career. But from 1704 to 1706 the island of Jersey, in the
English Channel, was intrusted to his rule; and he died in London,
where he was born, in 1714, being then seventy-seven years old, not one
day of which long life, so far as records inform us, was marked by any
act or thought on his part which was reconcilable with generosity,
humanity or honor. He was a tyrant and the instrument of tyranny,
hating human freedom for its own sake, greedy to handle unrighteous
spoils, mocking the sufferings he wrought, triumphing in the injustice
he perpetrated; foul in his private life as he was wicked in his public
career. A far more intelligent man than Berkeley, of Virginia, he can,
therefore, plead less excuse than he for the evil and misery of which
he was the immediate cause. But no earthly punishment overtook him; for
kings find such men useful, and God gives power to kings in this world,
that mankind may learn the evil which is in itself, and gain courage
and nobility at last to cast it out, and trample it under foot.
James II. was that most dangerous kind of despot--a stupid, cold man;
even his libertinism, as it was without shame, so was it without
passion. In his public acts he plodded sluggishly from detail to
detail, with eyes turned downward, never comprehending the larger scope
and relations of things. He was incapable of perceiving the vileness,
cruelty, or folly of what he did; the almost incredible murders in
Scotland never for a moment disturbed his clammy self-complacency.
Perhaps no baser or more squalid soul ever wore a crown; yet no doubt
ever crept into his mind that he was God's chosen and anointed. His
pale eyes, staring dully from his pale face, saw in the royal
prerogative the only visible witness of God's will in the domain of
England; the atmosphere of him was corruption and death. But from 1685
to 1688 this man was absolute master of England and her colonies; and
the disease which he bred in English vitals was hardly cured even by
the sharp medicine of the Boyne.
By the time Andros came to New England, he had learned his business.
The year after his appointment to New York, he attempted to assert his
sovereignty up to the Connecticut River; but he was opposed by deputy
governor Leet, a chip of the old roundhead block, who disowned the
patent of Andros and practically kicked him out of the colony.
Connecticut paid for her temerity when the owner of Andros became king.
In the meanwhile he returned to New York, where he was not wanted, but
was tolerated; the settlers there were a comfortable people, and
prosperous in the homely and simple style natural to them: they
demanded civil rights in good, clear terms, and cannot be said to have
been unduly oppressed at this time. New York for awhile included the
Delaware settlements, and Andros claimed both east and west Jersey. The
claim was contested by Carteret and by the Quakers. When the Jersey
commerce began to be valuable, Andros demanded tribute from the ships,
and shook the Duke's patent in the people's faces. They replied, rather
feebly, with talk of Magna Charta. In 1682, the western part came by
purchase into Quaker ownership, and, three years afterward, the eastern
part followed by patent from the Duke. To trace the vicissitudes of
this region to their end, it was surrendered to England in 1702, and
united to New York; and in 1788, in compliance with the desire of the
inhabitants, it became its own master. The settlers were of composite
stock: Quakers, Puritans, and others; and at the time of the Scotch
persecutions, large numbers of fugitive Covenanters established
themselves on the eastern slopes. The principle on which land was
distributed, in comparatively small parcels, made the Jerseys a
favorite colony for honest and industrious persons of small means; and,
upon the whole, life went well and pleasantly with them.
At the time of the return of Andros to England, in 1682, the assembly
decreed free trade, and Dongan, the new Roman Catholic governor,
permitted them to enact a liberal charter. In the midst of the
happiness consequent upon this, the Duke became king and lost no time
in breaking every contract that he had, in his unanointed state,
entered into. Taxes arbitrarily levied, titles vacated in order to
obtain renewal fees, and all the familiar machinery of official robbery
were put in operation. But Dongan, a kindly Kildare Irishman--he was
afterward Earl of Limerick--would not make oppression bitter; and the
New Yorkers were not so punctilious about abstract principles as were
the New England men. Favorable treaties were made with the Indians; and
the despot's heel was not shod with iron, nor was it stamped down too
hard. The Dongan charter, as it was called, remained in the colony's
possession for over forty years. The rule of Dongan himself continued
till 1688.
Andros, after an absence from the colonies of five years, during which
time a native but unworthy New Englander, Joseph Dudley, had acted as
president, came back to his prey with freshened appetite in 1686. He
was royal governor of all New England. Randolph, an active subordinate
under Dudley, had already destroyed the freedom of the press. Andros's
power was practically absolute; he was to sustain his authority by
force, elect his own creatures to office, make such laws as pleased
him, and introduce episcopacy. He forbade any one to leave the colony
without leave from himself; he seized a meeting house and made it into
an Episcopal church, in spite of the protests of the Puritans, and the
bell was rung for high-church service in spite of the recalcitrant
Needham. Duties were increased; a tax of a penny in the pound and a
poll tax of twenty pence were levied; and those who refused payment
were told that they had no privilege, except "not to be sold as
slaves." Magna Charta was no protection against the abolition of the
right of Habeas Corpus: "Do not think the laws of England follow you to
the ends of the earth!" Juries were packed, and Dudley, to avoid all
mistakes, told them what verdicts to render. Randolph issued new grants
for properties, and extorted grievous fees, declaring all deeds under
the charter void, and those from Indians, or "from Adam," worthless.
West, the secretary, increased probate duties twenty-fold. When
Danforth complained that the condition of the colonists was little
short of slavery, and Increase Mather added that no man could call
anything his own, they got for answer that "it is not for his majesty's
interest that you should thrive." In the history of Massachusetts,
there is no darker day than this.
The great New England romancer, writing of this period a hundred and
seventy years later, draws a vivid and memorable picture of the people
and their oppressors. "The roll of the drum," he says, "had been
approaching through Cornhill, louder and deeper, till with
reverberations from house to house, and the regular tramp of martial
footsteps, it burst into the street. A double rank of soldiers made
their appearance, occupying the whole breadth of the passage, with
shouldered matchlocks, and matches burning, so as to present a row of
fires in the dusk. Their steady march was like the progress of a
machine, that would roll irresistibly over everything in its way. Next,
moving slowly, with a confused clatter of hoofs on the pavement, rode a
party of mounted gentlemen, the central figure being Sir Edmund Andros,
elderly, but erect and soldier-like. Those around him were his favorite
councilors, and the bitterest foes of New England. At his right rode
Edward Randolph, our arch-enemy, that 'blasted wretch,' as Mather calls
him, who achieved the downfall of our ancient government, and was
followed with a sensible curse, through life and to his grave. On the
other side was Bullivant, scattering jests and mockery as he rode
along. Dudley came behind, with a downcast look, dreading, as well he
might, to meet the indignant gaze of the people, who beheld him, their
only countryman by birth, among the oppressors of his native land. The
captain of a frigate in the harbor, and two or three civil officers
under the Crown, were also there. But the figure that most attracted
the public eye, and stirred up the deepest feeling, was the Episcopal
clergyman of King's Chapel, riding haughtily among the magistrates in
his priestly vestments, the fitting representative of prelacy and
persecution, the union of church and state, and all those abominations
which had driven the Puritans to the wilderness. Another guard of
soldiers, in double rank, brought up the rear. The whole scene was a
picture of the condition of New England, and its moral, the deformity
of any government that does not grow out of the nature of things and
the character of the people. On one side the religious multitude, with
their sad visages and dark attire, and, on the other, the group of
despotic rulers, with the high churchman in the midst, and here and
there a crucifix at their bosoms, all magnificently clad, flushed with
wine, proud of unjust authority, and scoffing at the universal groan.
And the mercenary soldiers, waiting but the word to deluge the street
with blood, showed the only means by which obedience could be secured."
Education was temporarily paralyzed, and the right of franchise was
rendered nugatory by the order that oaths must be taken with the hand
on the Bible--a "popish" ceremony which the Puritans would not undergo.
The town meetings, which were the essence of New Englandism, were
forbidden except for the election of local officers, and ballot voting
was stopped: "There is no such thing as a town in the whole country,"
Andros declared. Verily, it was "a time when New England groaned under
the actual pressure of heavier wrongs than those threatened ones which
brought on the Revolution." Yet the spirit of the people was not
crushed; their leaders did not desert them; in private meetings they
kept their faith and hope alive; the ministers told them that "God
would yet be exalted among the heathen"; and one at least among them,
Willard, significantly bade them take note that they "had not yet
resisted unto blood, warring against sin!"
Boston was Andros's headquarters, and in 1688 was made the capital of
the whole region along the coast from the French possessions in the
north to Maryland in the south. But Andros had not yet received the
submission of Rhode Island and Connecticut. Walter Clarke was the
governor of the former colony in 1687, when, in the dead of winter,
Andros appeared there and ordered the charter to be given up. Roger
Williams had died three years before. Clarke tried to temporize, and
asked that the surrender be postponed till a fitter season. But Andros
dissolved the government summarily, and broke its seal; and it is not
on record that the Rhode Islanders offered any visible resistance to
the outrage. From Rhode Island Andros, with his retinue and soldiers,
proceeded to Hartford, which had lost its Winthrop longer ago than the
former its Williams. Governor Dongan of New York had warned Connecticut
of what was to come, and had counseled them to submit. Three writs of
quo warranto were issued, one upon another, and the colony finally
petitioned the king to be permitted to retain its liberties; but in any
case to be merged rather in Massachusetts than in New York. It was on
the last day of October, 1687; Andros entered the assembly hall, where
the assembly was then in session, with Governor Treat presiding. The
scene which followed has entered into the domain of legend; but there
is nothing miraculous in it; a deed which depended for its success upon
the secrecy with which it was accomplished would naturally be lacking
in documentary confirmation. Upon Andros's entrance, hungry for the
charter, Treat opposed him, and entered upon a defense of the right of
the colony to retain the ancient and honorable document, hallowed as it
was by associations which endeared it to its possessors, aside from its
political value. Andros, of course, would not yield; the only thing
that such men ever yield to is superior force; but force being on his
side, he entertained no thought of departing from his purpose. The
dispute was maintained until so late in the afternoon that candles must
be lighted; some were fixed in sconces round the walls, and there were
others on the table, where also lay the charter, with its engrossed
text, and its broad seal. The assemblymen, as the debate seemed to
approach its climax, left their seats and crowded round the table,
where stood on one side the royal governor, in his scarlet coat laced
with gold, his heavy but sharp-featured countenance flushed with
irritation, one hand on the hilt of his sword, the other stretched out
toward the coveted document:--on the other, the governor chosen by the
people, in plain black, with a plain white collar turned down over his
doublet, his eyes dark with emotion, his voice vibrating hoarsely as he
pleaded with the licensed highwayman of England. Around, is the ring of
strong visages, rustic but brainy, frowning, agitated, eager, angry;
and the flame of the candles flickering in their heavily-drawn breath.
Suddenly and simultaneously, by a preconcerted signal, the lights are
out, and the black darkness has swallowed up the scene. In the
momentary silence of astonishment, Andros feels himself violently
shoved aside; the hand with which he would draw his sword is in an iron
grasp, as heavy as that which he has laid upon colonial freedom. There
is a surging of unseen men about him, the shuffling of feet, vague
outcries: he knows not what is to come: death, perhaps. Is Sir Edmund
afraid? We have no information as to the physical courage of the man,
further than that in 1675 he had been frightened into submission by the
farmers and fishermen at Fort Saybrook. But he need not have been a
coward to feel the blood rush to his heart during those few blind
moments. Men of such lives as his are always ready to suspect
assassination.
But assassination is not an American method of righting wrong. Anon the
steel had struck the flint, and the spark had caught the tinder, and
one after another the candles were alight once more. All stared at one
another: what had happened? Andros, his face mottled with pallor, was
pulling himself together, and striving to resume the arrogant insolence
of his customary bearing. He opens his mouth to speak, but only a husky
murmur replaces the harsh stridency of his usual utterance. "What
devilish foolery is this--" But ere he can get further, some bucolic
statesman brings his massive palm down on the table with a bang that
makes the oaken plank crack, and thunders out--"The charter! Where's
our charter?"
Where, indeed? That is one of those historic secrets which will
probably never be decided one way or the other. "There is no
contemporary record of this event." No: but, somehow or other, one
hears of Yankee Captain Joe Wadsworth, with the imaginative audacity
and promptness of resource of his race, snatching the parchment from
the table in the midst of the groping panic, and slipping out through
the crowd: he has passed the door and is inhaling with grateful lungs
the fresh coolness of the cloudy October night. Has any one seen him
go? Did any one know what he did?--None who will reveal it. He is
astride his mare, and they are off toward the old farm, where his
boyhood was spent, and where stands the great hollow oak which, thirty
years ago, Captain Joe used to canvass for woodpeckers' nests and
squirrel hordes. He had thought, in those boyish days, what a good
hiding-place the old tree would make; and the thought had flashed back
into his mind while he listened to that fight for the charter to-day.
It did not take him long to lay his plot, and to agree with his few
fellow-conspirators. Sir Edmund can snatch the government, and scrawl
Finis at the foot of the Connecticut records; but that charter he shall
never have, nor shall any man again behold it, until years have passed
away, and Andros has vanished forever from New England.
Meanwhile, he returned to Boston, there, for a season, to make "the
wicked walk on every side, and the vilest to be exalted." Then came
that famous April day of 1689; and, following, event after event, one
storming upon another's heels, as the people rose from their long
bondage, and hurled their oppressors down. The bearer of the news that
William of Orange had landed in England, was imprisoned, but it was too
late. Andros ordered his soldiers under arms; but the commander of the
frigate had been taken prisoner by the Boston ship-carpenters; the
sheriff was arrested; hundreds of determined men surrounded the
regimental headquarters; the major resisted in vain; the colors and
drums were theirs; a vast throng at the town house greeted the
venerable Bradstreet; the insurrection was proclaimed, and Andros and
his wretched followers, flying to the frigate, were seized and cast
into prison. "Down with Andros and Randolph!" was the cry; and "The old
charter once more!" It was a hundred years to a day before that shot
fired at Concord and heard round the world.
CHAPTER NINTH
THE NEW LEAF, AND THE BLOT ON IT
Popular liberty is one thing; political independence is another. The
latter cannot be securely and lastingly established until the former
has fitted the nation to use it intelligently. When the component
individuals have thrown off the bondage of superstition and of
formulas, their next step must be, as an organization, to abrogate
external subordination to others, and, like a son come of age, to begin
life on a basis and with an aim of their own.
But such movements are organic, and chronologically slow; so that we do
not comprehend them until historical perspective shows them to us in
their mass and tendency. They are thus protected against their enemies,
who, if they knew the significance of the helpless seed, would destroy
it before it could become the invincible and abounding tree. Great
human revolutions make themselves felt, at first, as a trifling and
unreasonable annoyance: a crumpling in the roseleaf bed of the orthodox
and usual. They are brushed petulantly aside and the sleeper composes
himself to rest once more. But inasmuch as there was vital truth as the
predisposing cause of the annoyance it cannot thus be disposed of; it
spreads and multiplies. Had its opponents understood its meaning, they
would have humored it into inoffensiveness; but the means they adopt to
extirpate it are the sure way to develop it. Truth can no more be
smothered by intolerance, than a sown field can be rendered
unproductive by covering it with manure.