AN ARRIVAL, A UNIVERSITY, AND A STATE.
“Three things are of the first importance—good men, education, and
a settled commonwealth.”
LORD BACON.
Spite of internecine struggle and transatlantic intrigue, New England
walked steadily on in the path towards material prosperity. It was
inevitable; for the parents of success were within her borders:
essential godliness was in her right hand, and the habit of thrift
was in her left. It is very probable that prosperity was helped
instead of hindered by the agitation which was begotten of the
official acts of the colonial government. The stir served to keep
Christendom agog for the latest news from America. “What are these
Pilgrims now at?” was the inquiry incessantly on every lip. Thus it
was that the name and action of New England became as prominently
familiar in the _salons_ of the ultramontanists in Europe, and in the
club-rooms of the riotous cavaliers, as in the humble dwellings of
the godly Puritans.
Besides, agitation in its turn begot progress. Where there is silence
there is death. If the Alps, piled in cold, still sublimity, are the
emblem of fat and contented despotism, the ocean is the symbol of
democracy; for it is pure and useful only because never motionless.
At all events, the progress of New England was unique and
unprecedented. “_Nec minor ab exordio_,” says Cotton Mather, “_nec
major incrementis ulla_.”[882] Never was any thing more lowly in
inception or more mighty in increase. In 1635, twenty ships dropped
anchor in Boston and Plymouth harbors;[883] and in that single year
three thousand new settlers were added to the Pilgrim colonies.[884]
Men came over fast and
“Thick as autumnal leaves that strow the brooks
In Vallambrosa, where the Etruscan shades,
High overarched, imbower.”
And these, like their predecessors, were of “the best.”[885]
With them landed an illustrious _trio_—Hugh Peters, the younger
Winthrop, and Sir Harry Vane.[886] The fiery Peters came from one
exile to another; for he had been pastor of an English church at
Rotterdam. He was an enlightened republican, public spirited,
prodigiously energetic, and eloquent, already endowed with those high
qualities which soon afterwards pushed him into prominence in the
English civil war as the coadjutor of Cromwell, the jailor of Charles
I., and an echoer of the regicidal verdict.[887]
During his seven years’ sojourn in New England, Hugh Peters was
settled at Salem as the successor of Roger Williams.[888] At once
his restless and various activity bubbled over into works of
utility.[889] He was minister, he was politician, he was factotum.
He saw the commercial capabilities of America, and set himself to
develop them. He “went from place to place,” says Winthrop, “laboring
both publicly and privately to raise men up to a public frame of
spirit, and so prevailed, that he procured a good sum of money to set
on foot a systematic fishing business.”[890]
The younger Winthrop was Hugh Peters’ _compagnon de voyage_. ’Tis
related of a son of Scipio Africanus that, proving degenerate, the
scoffing Romans forced him to pluck off a signet-ring which he wore,
with his father’s face engraved upon it. There was no occasion for
such public discipline in this case, for young Winthrop was, in
Cotton Mather’s phrase, _Bonus a bono, pius a pio_, the son of a
father like himself. After an exemplary and studious boyhood, he had
followed the elder Winthrop to New England; where, dowered with the
advantages of extensive travel and consummate education, he had been
annually elected one of the gubernatorial assistants—an honor which
was continued even when he returned to Europe for a space.[891]
He now came armed with the authority of Lord Say and the “good
Lord Brooke,” the original patentees of Connecticut, to plant a
new colony, of which he should be governor.[892] “But inasmuch as
many good people from Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth had already
taken possession of a part of his demesne, this courteous and godly
gentleman would give them no molestation; but saying, ‘the land
is broad,’ he accommodated the matter with them, and then sent a
convenient number of men to erect a town and fort at the mouth of the
Connecticut, which he called, after the patrons of the enterprise,
_Say-brook_. By this happy action, the planters farther up the river
had no small kindness done them; while the Indians, who might else
have been even more troublesome than they soon proved, were kept in
some awe.”[893]
Winthrop was one of the few early Pilgrims who had been graduated
at a university, yet was not won to lay aside his layman garb for
the clerical robe. “It is a singular fact,” observes Elliot, “that,
possessed as he was of scholarly and scientific tastes, he took hold
resolutely of the material life of his plantation at Saybrook, and
worked to shape it well, as the base of the superior structure which
he meant to rear upon it. He appreciated what scholars and idealists
are prone to forget, the prime value of a good material foundation.
For many years he was chosen governor of the colony, and in that
position he gave universal satisfaction. For his vices and his
enemies, if he had either, they are forgotten.
“He was too large a man to engage in the persecution of the Quakers,
which he always opposed; and if he believed in witchcraft, a rank
superstition at that time common, it was as a query, not as a fact.
His leisure hours were devoted to science; and his contributions to
the old ‘Royal Society of London,’ of which he was an early member,
were highly valued. Indeed, Boyle and other scientific scholars at
one period had a plan for joining their fellow-student in the New
World, for the purpose of pushing their investigations of natural
knowledge.”[894]
The last member of this famous group, Sir Harry Vane junior, was at
this time but twenty-three,[895] and he came out much against the
wishes of a father who stood as high in the confidence of the queen
of England as Strafford did in the affections of the king.[896] “Let
him go,” said Charles to the perturbed courtier, when he learned
that Harry had turned Puritan and proposed to emigrate—“Let him go;
my word for’t, he’ll soon sicken on’t and be back, if you give him
consent to remain in those parts for three years.”[897]
So the devout boy embarked. On reaching Boston, he was saluted
with enthusiasm. His high birth, his sacrifices, his Puritanism,
his splendid talents, every thing about him, served to enlist the
sober Pilgrims in his favor; and this effect was heightened by his
personal beauty, singular learning, and ingratiating manners.[898]
As the Bostonians knew him better they liked him better; soon he was
the most popular man in the colony; and in 1636 he was elected to
fill the gubernatorial chair—elected over the heads of Winthrop, and
Dudley, and the elders of our Israel, which they might and did look
upon as a freak of democratic strategy quite superfluous.[899]
The first public act of the three friends was, to placate a long
smouldering feud between Winthrop and Dudley. Winthrop was accused
of over-leniency in his politics; Dudley was charged with undue
severity. A friendly convention was held; the questions at issue were
kindly talked over. Vane and Peters counselled mutual forbearance;
and the quarrel ended with a “loving reconciliation” never afterwards
broken.[900]
Some little time after Winthrop and Dudley, under Vane’s auspices,
had given each other the kiss of peace and gone home arm in arm,
with the fire of their differences definitively quenched, measures
were matured to plant a college in New England. Nothing more finely
exhibits the wisdom of the Pilgrim Fathers than their watchful and
ample provision for education, which Bacon has fitly termed the
“sheet-anchor of peaceful commonwealths.” In their estimation, its
importance was second to nothing but religion, whose handmaid it was.
They longed to rear a race of cultured men—to plant a school which
should elbow out of America those wicked universities which were
then the pests of Europe—vicious sinks which Beza called _Flabella
Satanæ_, Satan’s fans; and which Luther styled _Cathedras pestilentiæ
et antichristi luminaria_, seats of pestilence and beacons of
antichrist; where, under the tuition of the Jesuits, immorality was
made a fine art, and ferocity was taught as a cardinal virtue.
With this twofold object, a public school was called into life at
Cambridge in 1636; and in that same year the General Court made a
grant of four hundred pounds, which formed the legs on which the
infant university first toddled.[901] Later, John Harvard bequeathed
eight hundred pounds and his library to help forward the scholastic
venture; whereupon the grateful authorities eternized the donor’s
name by calling the school HARVARD COLLEGE.[902]
Henceforth New England had a “city of books.” Harvard college
speedily became a nursery of piety, and was to America, as Livy said
of Greece, _sal gentium_.[903] In narrating this achievement, the
quaint divine who heaped together the mingled wheat and chaff of
the _Magnalia_, cites triumphantly the language of the orator who
chanted pæans to the English Cambridge: “We have now provided—and let
envy be as far removed from this declaration as is falsehood—that
in popular assemblies stone shall not talk to stone; that the
church shall not lack priests, or the bar jurists, or the community
physicians; for we have supplied the church, the government, the
senate, and the army, with accomplished men.”[904]
Thus the new university was rightly esteemed an ornament and a
civilizer; for learning, as the poet has hymned it,
“Chastens the manners, and the soul refines.”[905]
The school is at once preserver and benefactor; it is _urbis
medicus_, the physician of the state.
And now the settlements along the coast-line of Massachusetts
were become “like hives overstocked with bees; and many of the
new inhabitants began to entertain the thought of swarming into
plantations farther in the interior.” The fifteen thousand settlers
in Massachusetts felt crowded. They longed to imitate the Plymouth
Pilgrims, who had sent out a forlorn hope to colonize Windsor, and
the venture of the younger Winthrop at Saybrook. They too, longed
“To descry new lands,
Rivers and mountains, in this spotty globe.”
As early as 1634, Hooker’s parishioners, at Cambridge, had petitioned
the General Court to permit them “to look out either for enlargement
or removal.”[906] The authorities withheld their assent at the
outset; but when, in 1636, the motion was renewed, they said Yes.[907]
Hooker—whom Morton calls “a son of thunder”[908]—and Haynes were
the chief promoters of this project to remove.[909] The winter
of 1635-6 was spent in active preparation. Scouting parties were
thrown forward. In the opening of the year, Hartford was settled,
government was organized, civil order was established.[910] At the
same time pioneers went out from Dorchester, and pushing the earlier
Plymouth settlers from the ground, usurped Windsor in the name of
Massachusetts Bay.[911] Others quitted Watertown, and sat down at
Wethersfield;[912] while some left Roxbury, and were enchurched at
Springfield, which was afterwards found to lie within the boundary of
the old Bay State.[913]
But this emigration was merely preliminary; it was the first patter
of the coming shower; it was the scouts of the Pilgrims, making an
initial survey of the new Hesperia of Puritanism. In June, 1636, the
principal caravan, led by Thomas Hooker and John Haynes, began its
march. “There were of the company about one hundred souls, many
of them persons accustomed to the affluence and ease of European
life. They drove before them numerous herds of cattle; and thus they
traversed the pathless forests of Massachusetts, advancing hardly ten
miles a day through the tangled woods, across the swamps and numerous
streams, and over the highlands that separated the intervening
valleys; subsisting, as they slowly wandered along, on the milk of
the kine, who browsed on the fresh leaves and early shoots; having
no guide through the nearly untrodden wilderness but the compass,
and no pillow for their nightly rest but heaps of stones. How did
the hills echo with the unwonted lowing of the herds! How were the
forests enlivened by the fervent piety of Hooker! Never again was
there such a pilgrimage from the seaside ‘to the delightful banks’ of
the Connecticut.”[914]
The Pilgrims paused at Hartford, which the presence of Hooker and
Haynes soon lifted into the foremost importance, and it became the
Jerusalem of the west. The government was similar to that which
Winthrop, and Endicott, and Cotton had shaped at Boston, except that
now the church-membership test was omitted, church and state were
half-divorced, and all freemen were citizens[915]—liberality which
placed the new-born state close beside the Providence plantations in
magnanimous catholicity. Indeed, Haynes, whose plastic hand moulded
the primitive constitution of Connecticut, had gone through a bitter
experience in the trial and banishment of Roger Williams; and his
wiser statesmanship bade him beware lest, in steering clear of the
Scylla of anarchy, he should ground his politics on the Charybdis of
bigotry. His wise tact saved him from both perils, and enabled him,
while never interrupting the _entente cordiale_ with Massachusetts,
to open a friendly intercourse with the Rhode Island “heretics.”[916]
A twelvemonth after the arrival of the Pilgrims at Hartford, the
pioneers were flanked by an invasion of brother Puritans fresh
from England. New Haven was planted; and in 1637, Guilford was
colonized, and then Milford was settled.[917] These were independent
of Connecticut, and for upwards of forty years formed a separate
colony, called New Haven.[918] “The settlers,” says Cotton Mather,
“were under the conduct of as holy, and as prudent, and as genteel
persons, as ever visited these nooks of New England; and though they,
in a manner, stole out of Britain, being forbidden to sail, yet
they dropped here a plantation constellated with many stars of the
first magnitude; for if Theophilus Eaton and John Davenport were not
blazing lights, where shall we hunt for meteors?”[919]
The New-Haveners were traders; they believed more in commerce than
in husbandry, and so they “went down to the sea in ships.” But in
the wilderness traffic did not yield the dividends which it gave on
’change in London, or on the Rialtos of the world; so that in half a
decade their stock was spent, and they so nearly touched bottom that
they gladly turned for help to despised agriculture,[920] the surest
base for new states to build on.
For some months New Haven lacked a charter, and so floated
rudderless. But eventually the settlers formed themselves into a
body politic by mutual consent, and signed a kind of constitution
in a barn;[921] and this is the first political paper that
was ever cradled in a manger. It was generally _secundum usum
Massachusettensem_,[922] to follow Cotton Mather’s barbarous Latin;
or, in plain English, after the model of the Bay State theocracy.
“Thus it was,” exclaims a jubilant old chronicler, “that Jesus
Christ was worshipped in churches of an evangelical character in the
outermost wilderness; and from thence, if the inquirer were inclined
to make a sally across the channel to Long Island, he might have seen
the congregations of our God taking root in those wild wastes.”[923]
The New Haven and Connecticut colonists were for many years on the
verge of a quarrel with the Dutch at New Amsterdam, who felt that in
this territorial race they had been outstripped and outwitted, and
were consequently lifted out of their wonted phlegm by irritation.
The “Yankee” and the Dutchman carried on a lusty war of words about
their boundary lines, and for this good reason, there were none.
Irving tells us that the Dutch disliked the smell of onions; and that
the keen Yankee, knowing this, planted his rows each year a little
farther west, and before this invasion of onions the sad Dutchman
always retired with tearful eyes, leaving the polluted soil to the
onion planters.
But bright as seemed the portents, the colonists soon found
themselves environed by danger—girdled by a wall of fire. The hostile
Dutchman scowled in the west. The untrodden wilderness stretched
away on the north. Scores of weary, pathless miles separated them
from their brothers on the Atlantic coast. The vengeful Pequods
were panting for war in the southeast. They had found, not peace,
but a sword; their painful enterprise seemed but “a lure to draw
victims within the reach of the tomahawk.” Premonitory symptoms gave
warning that danger lurked in the covert beside every log-house
beyond the mountains. Soon the woods were ambuscaded, “and the
darkness of midnight began to glitter with the blaze of the frontier
cabins.” Then shrieked the ghastly Pequod, smeared in his horrid
paint. “Fathers found the blood of their sons fattening the wasted
cornfields; mothers were frozen by the war-whoop which disturbed the
peaceful slumber of the cradle.”