The letters between Winthrop and his wife are an example of human love perfected by a higher love. He writes to her: "Neither can the sea drown thy husband, nor enemies destroy, nor any adversity deprive thee of thy husband." Shakspere has no note like that. Margaret writes from her country home to her husband in London: "My good husband, cheer up thy heart in the expectation of God's goodness to us, and let nothing dismay or discourage thee; if the Lord be with us, who can be against us? My grief is the fear of staying behind thee, but I must leave all to the good providence of God." She was obliged to stay behind in England, awaiting the birth of a child. On the eve of sailing he writes her: "I purpose, if God will, to be with thee upon Thursday come sen'night, and then I must take my leave of thee for a summer's day and a winter's day. The Lord our good God will (I hope) send us a happy meeting again in his good time. Amen! Being now ready to send away my letters, I received thine; the reading of it has dissolved my head into tears. Can write no more. If I live, I will see thee ere I go. I shall part from thee with sorrow enough; be comfortable, my most sweet wife, our God will be with thee. Farewell."
A few months later, across the pages of the Journal, full of the cares and anxieties of the struggling colony, shines a ray of pure joy. Margaret has come! And the whole community rejoices and makes cheer, with homely and hearty feasting, for the happiness of their good governor.
The actual conditions nourished homely virtues,—industry, thrift, self-reliance, family affection, civic responsibility. The greatness of early New England is partly measured by the fact that there were comparatively no dregs, no mass of ignorance and vice. It was not the individuals who rise into sight at this distance who were superior to the prominent men of England or France,—it was the lower stratum which was above that elsewhere. Two prime causes worked to this elevation,—the spiritual estimate of man and the economic conditions which offered independence to every one on the condition "work and save." The social and political conditions were largely shaped by these underlying facts.
The wrestle for a livelihood under stern material conditions was a prime factor in the making of New England. Whatever the creed might say, in practice Work was the equal partner of Faith in building manhood and the state. The soil was to their bodies what Calvinism was to their souls,—yielding nourishment, but only through a hard struggle. Its sterility drove them to the sea for a livelihood; they became fishermen; then, carrying their fish and lumber abroad, they grew into commerce. They traded along the coast, to the West Indies, to Europe, and so into their little province came the winds of the larger world. They learned the sailor's virtues,—his courage, his mingled awe and mastery of elemental forces, his sense of lands beyond the horizon. Well might Winthrop name the first ship he launched "The Blessing of the Bay."
The austere land had small room for slaves, dependent and incapable. One of the first large companies included some scores of bondmen; they landed to face a fierce and hungry winter, and straightway the bondmen were set free,—as slaves they would be an incumbrance; as freemen they could get their own living. The thrifty colonists of a later generation did a driving business in African slaves for their southern neighbors, but they had small use for them at home.
Winthrop's constant effort, as shown in his Journal, is for reason and right. It is the arguments for and against any course that he elaborates. Scarce a word of their sufferings or of his own feelings—but to know and do the right was all-important. The greatness of his own ideal is shown when he draws with a free hand, in the "Conclusions" or the "Model." In the Journal, he is laboring toward this under the iron conditions of actualities. He and his associates had to be strong-willed and stern; they were warring against tremendous difficulties—more tremendous to them because interpreted as the work of Satan, while even their God was an awful being.
Superstition throws a dark shadow over the chronicle. Even Winthrop was deeply infected by it. Disasters small and great were interpreted, on the Old Testament idea, as divine judgments. A boy seven years old fell through the ice and was drowned while his parents were at lecture, and his sister was drowned in trying to save him. "The parents had no more sons, and confessed they had been too indulgent towards him, and had set their hearts overmuch on him." A man working on a milldam kept on for an hour after nightfall on Saturday to finish it, and next day his child fell into a well and was drowned. The father confessed it as a judgment of God for his Sabbath-breaking.
There is not unfrequent mention of some woman driven by religious brooding to frenzy, sometimes to murder. The awful possibilities of hell for herself and her children wrought the mother-heart to madness. The religious guides of the people used unsparingly the appeal to fear. The belief in witchcraft, which long had scourged Europe, broke out in a panic of fear and cruelty. It was a tragic culmination of the worst elements,—superstition, malignity, ministerial tyranny. Then came the reaction, and with it a triumph of the wiser sense, the cooler temper, the layman's moderation, which thenceforth were to guide the commonwealth on a humbler but safer road.
In a dramatic sense the turning-point of the story—and the revelation of the saving power at the heart of this grim people—was when, after the witchcraft frenzy had subsided, Samuel Sewall, the chief justice of the colony, rose in his place in the meeting-house and humbly confessed before God and man that he had erred and shed innocent blood.
In the more prosaic temper of the next stage, a sturdy manhood sometimes flashes into poetry. So John Wise, a minister but the leader of the popular party in church government, strikes the high note of courage: "If men are trusted with duty, they must trust that, and not events. If men are placed at the helm to steer in all weather that blows, they must not be afraid of the waves or a wet coat."