A Brief History of the United States Part 6

This done, the work of choosing a site for their homes began, and for several weeks little parties explored the coast before one of them entered a harbor and selected a spot which John Smith had named Plymouth. [4] To this harbor the _Mayflower_ was brought, and while the men were busy putting up rude cabins, the women and children remained on the s.h.i.+p.

THE FIRST WINTER was a dreadful one. The Pilgrims lived in crowded quarters, and the effects of the voyage and the severity of the winter sent half of them to their graves before spring. But the rest never faltered, and when the _Mayflower_ returned to England in April, not one of the colonists went back in her. By the end of the first summer a fort had been built on a hill, seven houses had been erected along a village street leading down from the fort to the harbor, six and twenty acres had been cleared, and a bountiful harvest had been gathered. Other Pilgrims came over, the neighboring Indians kept the peace, and the colony was soon prosperous.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SITE OF THE FORT AT PLYMOUTH. In the old "burying ground."]

PLYMOUTH, OR THE OLD COLONY.--As soon as the colony was planted, steps were taken to buy the land on which it stood. The old Plymouth Company (pp. 38, 39), organized in 1606, was succeeded in 1620 by a new corporation called the Council for New England, which received a grant of all the land in America between 40 and 48 of north lat.i.tude. From this Council for New England, therefore, the Pilgrims bought as much land as they needed. The king, however, refused to give them a charter, so the people of Plymouth, or the Old Colony as it came to be called, managed their own affairs in their own way for seventy years. At first the men a.s.sembled in town meeting, made laws, and elected officers. But when the growth of the colony made such meetings unwieldy, representative government was set up, and each settlement sent two delegates to an a.s.sembly.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GRAVE OF MILES STANDISH, near Plymouth.]

THE SALEM COLONY.--Shortly after 1620, attempts were made to plant other colonies in New England. [5] Most of them failed, but some of the colonists made a settlement called Naumkeag. Among those who watched these attempts with great interest was John White, a Puritan rector in England.

He believed that the time had come for the Puritans to do what the Separatists had done. The quarrel between the king and the Puritans was then becoming serious, and the time seemed at hand when men who wished to wors.h.i.+p G.o.d according to their conscience would have to seek a home in America. White accordingly began to urge the planting of a Puritan colony in New England. So well did he succeed that an a.s.sociation was formed, a great tract of land was obtained from the Council for New England, and in 1628 sixty men, led by John Endicott, settled at Naumkeag and changed its name to Salem, which means "peace."

THE Ma.s.sACHUSETTS BAY COLONY.--The members of the a.s.sociation next secured from King Charles I a charter which made them a corporation, called this corporation The Governor and Company of Ma.s.sachusetts Bay in New England, and gave it the right to govern colonies planted on its lands. More settlers with a great herd of cattle were now hurried to Salem, which thus became the largest colony in New England.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE EARLY NEW ENGLAND COLONIES.]

THE GREAT PURITAN MIGRATION.--The same year (1629) that the charter was obtained, twelve leading Puritans signed an agreement to head an emigration to Ma.s.sachusetts, provided the charter and government of the company were removed to New England. One of the signers was John Winthrop, and by him in 1630 nearly a thousand Puritans were led to Salem. Thence they soon removed to a little three-hilled peninsula where they founded the town of Boston. More emigrants followed, and before the end of 1630 seventeen s.h.i.+ps with nearly fifteen hundred Puritans reached Ma.s.sachusetts. They settled at Boston, Charlestown, Roxbury, Dorchester, Watertown, and Cambridge.

The charter was brought with them, the meetings of the company were now held in the colony, and so many of the colonists became members of the company that Ma.s.sachusetts was practically self-governing. Before long a representative government was established in the colony, each town electing members of a legislature called the General Court. Every town also had its local government carried on by town meetings; but only church members were allowed to vote.

MAINE AND NEW HAMPs.h.i.+RE.--About two years after the founding of Plymouth, the Council for New England granted to John Mason and Sir Ferdinando Gorges (gor'jess) a large tract of land between the rivers Merrimac and Kennebec. In it two settlements (now known as Portsmouth and Dover) were planted (1623) on the Piscat'aqua River, and some fis.h.i.+ng stations on the coast farther north.

In 1629 the province was divided. Mason obtained a patent (or deed) for the country between the Merrimac and the Piscataqua, and named it New Hamps.h.i.+re. Gorges received the country between the Piscataqua and the Kennebec, which was called Maine.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ENGLISH ARMOR. Now in Ess.e.x Hall, Salem.]

UNION WITH Ma.s.sACHUSETTS.--The towns on the Piscataqua were small fis.h.i.+ng and fur-trading stations, and after Mason died (1635) they were left to look out for themselves. With two other New Hamps.h.i.+re towns (Exeter and Hampton) they became almost independent republics. They set up their own governments, made their own laws, and owed allegiance to n.o.body save the king. Ma.s.sachusetts, however, claimed as her north boundary an east and west line three miles north of the source of the Merrimac River. [6] She therefore soon annexed the four New Hamps.h.i.+re towns, and gave them representation in her legislature.

If the claim of Ma.s.sachusetts was valid in the case of the New Hamps.h.i.+re towns, it was equally so for those of Maine. But it was not till 1652, after Gorges was dead and the settlers in Maine (at York, Wells, and Kittery) had set up a government of their own, that these towns were brought under her authority. Later (1677), Ma.s.sachusetts bought up the claim of the heirs of Gorges, and came into possession of the whole province.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ROGER WILLIAMS FLEES TO THE WOODS.]

RHODE ISLAND.--Among those who came to Salem in the early days of the Ma.s.sachusetts Bay Colony, was a Puritan minister named Roger Williams. [7]

But he had not been long in the colony when he said things which angered the rulers. He held that all religions should be tolerated; that all laws requiring attendance at church should be repealed; that the land belonged to the Indians and not to the king; and that the settlers ought to buy it from the Indians and not from the king. For these and other sayings Williams was ordered back to England. But he fled to the woods, lived with the Indians for a winter, and in the following summer founded Providence (1636). [8]

And now another disturber appeared in Boston in the person of Anne Hutchinson, [9] and in a little while she and her followers were driven away. Some of them went to New Hamps.h.i.+re and founded Exeter (p. 60), while others with Anne herself went to Rhode Island in Narragansett Bay, and founded Portsmouth and Newport.

For a time each of the little towns, Providence, Portsmouth, and Newport, arranged its own affairs in its own way, but in 1643 Williams obtained from the English Parliament a charter which united them under the name of The Incorporation of Providence Plantations on the Narragansett Bay in New England.

CONNECTICUT FOUNDED.--Religious troubles did not end with the banishment of Williams and Anne Hutchinson. Many persons objected to the law forbidding any but church members to vote or hold office. So in 1635 and 1636 numbers of people, led by Thomas Hooker and others, went out (from Dorchester, Watertown, and Cambridge) and founded Windsor, Wethersfield, and Hartford in the Connecticut River valley. Later a party (from Roxbury) settled at Springfield. For a while these four towns were part of Ma.s.sachusetts. But in 1639 Windsor, Hartford, and Wethersfield adopted a const.i.tution [10] and founded a republic which they called Connecticut.

THE NEW HAVEN COLONY.--As the quarrel between the Puritans and the king was by this time very bitter, the Puritans continued to come to New England in large numbers. Some of them made settlements on Long Island Sound. A large band under John Davenport founded New Haven (1638). Next (in 1639) Milford and Guilford were started, and then (in 1640) Stamford.

In 1643 the four towns joined in a sort of union and took the name New Haven Colony.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PURITAN DRESS.]

THE UNITED COLONIES OF NEW ENGLAND.--Thus there were planted in New England between 1620 and 1643 five distinct colonies, [11] namely: (1) Plymouth, or the Old Colony, (2) Ma.s.sachusetts Bay Colony, (3) Rhode Island, or Providence Plantations, (4) Connecticut, and (5) the New Haven Colony.

In 1643 four of them--Plymouth, Ma.s.sachusetts, Connecticut, and New Haven --united for defense against the Indians and the Dutch, [12] and called their league "The United Colonies of New England." This confederation maintained a successful existence for forty-one years.

EFFECT OF THE CIVIL WAR IN ENGLAND.--When the New England confederation was formed, the king and the Puritans in old England had come to blows, and civil war was raging there. During the next twenty years no more English colonies were planted in America. War at once stopped the stream of emigrants. The Puritans in England remained to fight the king, and numbers went back from New England to join the Parliamentary army. For the next fifteen years population in New England increased slowly.

TRADE AND COMMERCE.--Life in the New England colonies was very unlike that in Virginia. People dwelt in villages, cultivated small farms, and were largely engaged in trade and commerce. They bartered corn and peas, woolen cloth, and wampum with the Indians for beaver skins, which they sent to England to pay for articles bought from the mother country. They salted cod, dried alewives and ba.s.s, made boards and staves for hogsheads, and sent all these to the West Indies to be exchanged for sugar, mola.s.ses, and other products of the tropics. They built s.h.i.+ps in the seaports where lumber was cheap, and sold them abroad. They traded with Spain and Portugal, England, the Netherlands, and Virginia.

[Ill.u.s.tration: STONE HAND MILL. Brought from England in 1630 and used for grinding flour. Now in Ess.e.x Hall, Salem, Ma.s.s.]

SCARCITY OF MONEY.--The colonists brought little money with them, and much of what they brought went back to England to pay for supplies. Buying and trading in New England, therefore, had to be done largely without gold or silver. Beaver skins and wampum, bushels of corn, produce, cattle, and even bullets were used as money and pa.s.sed at rates fixed by law. [13] In the hope of remedying the scarcity of money, the government of Ma.s.sachusetts ordered that a mint should be set up, and in 1652 Spanish silver brought from the West Indies was melted and coined into Pine Tree currency. [14]

[Ill.u.s.tration: SPINNING WOOL.]

MANUFACTURES.--That less gold and silver might go abroad for supplies, home manufactures were encouraged by gifts of money, by exemptions of property from taxation, and by excusing workmen from military duty. The cultivation of flax was encouraged, children were taught to spin and weave, and gla.s.s works, salt works, and iron furnaces were started.

[Ill.u.s.tration: YARN REEL. [15] In Ess.e.x Hall, Salem, Ma.s.s.]

On the farms utensils and furniture were generally made in the household.

Almost everything was made of wood, as spoons, tankards, pails, firkins, hinges for cupboard and closet doors, latches, plows, and harrows. Every boy learned to use his jack-knife, and could make brooms from birch trees, bowls and dippers and bottles from gourds, and b.u.t.ter paddles from red cherry. The women made soap and candles, carded wool, spun, wove, bleached or dyed the linen and woolen cloth, and made the garments for the family.

They knit mittens and stockings, made straw hats and baskets, and plucked the feathers from live geese for beds and pillows.

THE HOUSES.--On the farms the houses of the early settlers were of logs, or were framed structures covered with s.h.i.+ngles or clapboards. The tables, chairs, stools, and bedsteads were of the plainest sort, and were often made of puncheons, that is, of small tree trunks split in half. Sometimes the table would be a long board laid across two X supports. This was "the board," around which the family sat at meals. [16] In the better houses in the towns the furniture was of course very much finer.

THE VILLAGES.--The center of village life was the meetinghouse, or church.

Near by was the house of the minister, the inn or tavern, and the dwellings of the inhabitants. In early times, if the village was on the frontier or exposed to Indian attack it was guarded by blockhouses surrounded by a high stockade. These "garrison houses," as they were called, were of stone or logs, with the second story projecting over the first, and had loopholes in place of windows. Most of them have long since disappeared, but a few still remain, turned into dwellings. Sometimes there were three or more blockhouses in a village, and to these when the Indians were troublesome the farmers and their families came each night to sleep.

SCHOOLS.-Among the acts pa.s.sed by the General Court of Ma.s.sachusetts in early days were several in regard to education. In 1636 four hundred pounds [17] was voted for a public school. Two years later, John Harvard, a former minister, left his library and half his fortune to this school, and in grateful remembrance it was called Harvard College. Thus started, the good work went on. Parents and masters were by law compelled to teach their children and apprentices to read English, know the important laws, and repeat the orthodox catechism. Another law required every town of fifty families to maintain a school for at least six months a year, and every town of two hundred householders a primary and a grammar school, wherein Latin should be taught.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FAIRBANKS HOUSE, NEAR BOSTON. As it looks to-day. Built partly in 1650.]

PERSECUTION OF THE QUAKERS.--Though the Puritans suffered persecution in the Old World, they had not learned to be tolerant. As we have seen, no man could vote in Ma.s.sachusetts who was not a member of their church. They drove out Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson, and again and again, in later times, banished, or fined, imprisoned, and flogged men and women who wished to wors.h.i.+p G.o.d in their own way. When two Quaker women arrived (1656), they were sent away and a sharp law was made against their sect.

[18] But in spite of all persecution, the Quakers kept coming. At last (in 1659-61) three men and a woman were hanged on Boston Common because they returned after having once been banished. Plymouth and Connecticut also enacted laws against the Quakers. [19]

CONNECTICUT CHARTERED (1662).--By this time the days of Puritan rule in old England were over. In 1660 King Charles II was placed upon the throne of his father. Connecticut promptly acknowledged him as king, and sent her governor, the younger John Winthrop, to London to obtain a charter. He easily secured one (in 1662) which spread the authority of Connecticut over the New Haven Colony, [20] gave her a domain stretching across the continent to the Pacific, and established a government so liberal that the charter was kept in force till 1818. New Haven Colony for a time resisted; but one by one the towns which formed the colony acknowledged the authority of Connecticut.

THE SECOND CHARTER OF RHODE ISLAND.--Rhode Island, likewise, proclaimed the king and sought a new charter. When obtained (in 1663), it defined her boundaries, and provided for a form of government quite as liberal as that of Connecticut. It remained in force one hundred and seventy-nine years.

THE NEW COLONIAL ERA.--From 1640 to 1660 the English colonies in America had been left much to themselves. No new colonies had been founded, and the old ones had managed their own affairs in their own way. But with Charles II a new era opens. Several new colonies were soon established; and though Rhode Island and Connecticut received liberal charters, all the colonies were soon to feel the king's control. As we shall see later, Ma.s.sachusetts was deprived of her charter; but after a few years she received a new one (1691), which united the Plymouth Colony, Ma.s.sachusetts, and Maine in the one colony of Ma.s.sachusetts Bay. New Hamps.h.i.+re, however, was made a separate royal province.

SUMMARY

1. In 1620 a body of Separatists reached Cape Cod and founded Plymouth, the first English settlement north of Virginia.

2. Two years later the Council for New England granted land to Gorges and Mason, from which grew Maine and New Hamps.h.i.+re.

3. Between 1628 and 1630 a great Puritan migration established the colony of Ma.s.sachusetts Bay, which later absorbed Maine and New Hamps.h.i.+re.

4. Religious disputes led to the expulsion of Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson from Ma.s.sachusetts. They founded towns later united (1643) as Providence Plantations (Rhode Island).

5. Other religious disputes led to the migration of people who settled (1635-36) in the Connecticut valley and founded (1639) Connecticut.