CHAPTER X
CROSS-CURRENTS IN THE CONFEDERACY
From the formation of the Confederacy in 1643, until the restoration of the English monarchy in 1660, the colonies were practically free to make what use they could of an entire liberty of action, unhampered by any serious attempt on the part of the British government to interfere with them. The whole situation was favorable. The settlements had passed the experimental stage, and were well rooted. If the decline in immigration entailed certain disadvantages, on the other hand it relieved the existing order from the necessity of absorbing new elements. The more powerful colonies had signed articles of union, and no Indian war of any magnitude was to interrupt their peaceful development. The economic position slowly improved, and reached a sounder basis than before. Yet the pages which record the story of those seventeen years are among the least attractive in New England history. There is hardly an incident to stir the imagination or to fire a noble pride. Freed from all restraint, the best use that the colonies could make of their liberty was to quarrel among themselves over boundaries, annexations, and taxes; to contend, without honor, with the Dutch and French; to carry on inglorious controversies with the savages; and to indulge in the only example of bloody religious persecution that the United States has known. Looking at the history of those years, however, from the standpoint of the development of personal liberty, there were two movements that redeem its otherwise disheartening aspects. One was the bringing of order out of chaos in Rhode Island, where the settlers proved that democracy and a broad toleration could, after all, be combined with political stability. The other was the success of the people of Massachusetts in securing the fundamental body of laws already noted, and the unmistakable rejection of their theocratical leaders, lay and clerical.
On the return of Acadia to France by the treaty of St. Germain, one Claude de Razilly had been commissioned to rule the territory; and after his death, three years later, d'Aulnay and de la Tour, both of whom had possessed grants and trading posts within his jurisdiction, aspired to replace him in the supreme command.[[558]] After various encounters, in one of which d'Aulnay captured de la Tour, the latter, in 1643, arrived at Boston with one hundred and forty men, and asked for help against his rival. Winthrop, who was then governor, called together a few of the magistrates and deputies, who assured de la Tour that, although they could not grant him aid officially, he might have permission to hire ships and engage volunteers for his expedition.[[559]] “The rumour of these things soon spreading,” however, they encountered so much adverse criticism that Winthrop consulted with additional members of the Court, and, of course, the clergy. The question was long debated, whether it was lawful for Christians to aid idolaters, and, somewhat more pertinently, whether it was expedient in this particular case. The debate is given at length by Winthrop, and affords an instructive example of Puritan casuistry. A matter of so much importance should, of course, have been referred to the General Court, and, also, under the terms of the new Confederacy, to the Commissioners of that body. The Boston merchants, however, seem to have brought powerful influences to bear, and the little job in dollar-diplomacy was rushed through, regardless of obligations or consequences. The question was not referred to the Court, Winthrop wrote, because if it “had been assembled, we knew they would not have given him aid without consent of the commissioners of the other colonies, and for a bare permission, we might do it without the court.”[[560]] Saltonstall and others afterwards wrote, strongly condemning the action, urging that the real rights of the case had not been known, that wars involving the subjects of another nation ought not to be undertaken without the knowledge of the home government; and brushed away the sophistical distinctions made by the Boston clique between private permission by the colony's rulers and their official sanction. “D'Aulnay, nor France,” they wrote, “are not so feeble in their intellectuals as to deeme it no act of state.”[[561]]
Page from John Winthrop's Journal
Original in Massachusetts Historical Society
The expedition, however, had been allowed to sail, carrying a somewhat fatuous letter from Winthrop to d'Aulnay, stating that the Massachusetts volunteers were, if possible, to effect a reconciliation, that they possessed no commission, and that, if they did anything “against the rules of justice and good-neighborhood,” they should be held accountable.[[562]] In spite of this, some of the men attacked d'Aulnay's plantation, burned his mill, killed his cattle, and plundered one of his vessels of beaver skins. The latter were brought back to Boston and sold at auction, and the proceeds were divided among the soldiers.[[563]] The enterprise had been neither successful, glorious, nor profitable; and when de la Tour again applied for help, in July of the following year, Endicott, who had opposed the original participation of the colony, had succeeded Winthrop as governor. The only result of de la Tour's suit, therefore, was a proclamation of neutrality “till the next general court,” and the dispatch of a letter to d'Aulnay offering satisfaction, and likewise requesting it for his own earlier depredations on the Penobscot.[[564]] In September, the Commissioners of the United Colonies met and passed a resolution forbidding, in future, such acts of volunteers as Massachusetts had connived at.[[565]]
The struggle between the two rivals had not been limited to fighting in America, but had been carried on at the French Court, where each had striven for recognition. In this d'Aulnay had been successful, and the ignominious end of the whole matter for the English was that Massachusetts finally had to abandon her claims against him, and to make him a gift as an acknowledgment of her own wrong in joining de la Tour's expedition.[[566]] The affair, however, helped to strengthen the deputies against the body of ministers and magistrates, whose unwarranted action, as well as lack of statesmanship and even of common prudence, had been mainly instrumental in bringing unnecessary humiliation upon the colony without the consent of its representatives.
Nor did the Bay and other colonies derive much greater honor from their diplomacy with the Dutch, one of the main results of which, indeed, was to develop such a conflict of interests among themselves as threatened to break up the Confederation. As we have already seen, it was an open question whether England or Holland had the better title to the central portion at least, of the territory claimed by the latter. As to the title of the individual settlers, English and Dutch, on the Connecticut and the Delaware, it would appear that the Dutch, who were there by the authority of their home government, were in a much better legal position than the English, who were mere squatters in the wilderness, without any patent or charter rights. The New Englanders, however, outnumbered their neighbors twenty to one, and the land in dispute was good. The advice of the British Ambassador in the States General was, therefore, acted upon with the consciousness of overwhelming force. “Crowd on,” he wrote, “crowding the Dutch out of those places they have, but without hostility or any act of violence.”[[567]] Steadily the advancing flood of the English overwhelmed Dutch claims. It poured westward on Long Island and along the Sound, up the Connecticut,—encircling the little fort of Good Hope,—up the Housatonic, and stopped only a few miles from New Amsterdam itself. A trading company formed in New Haven, but including capitalists from Massachusetts, tried also to plant on the Delaware in despite of both Dutch and Swedes.[[568]] The situation was bound to result in constant causes for disputes, grave or trifling. At the bottom of all was the desire of the English for the land, and the sense of injury and inferior numbers on the part of the Dutch. Governor Kieft touched the point, when, in reply to a letter of complaint from the United Colonies, concerning some alleged misdemeanors by the garrison of the little Dutch post at Good Hope, he wrote that “when we heare the inhabitants of Hartford complayninge of us, we seem to heare Esops wolfe complayninge of the lambe.”[[569]]
The several attempts to plant forcibly on the Delaware were successfully repulsed by the two nations already in possession there; and in 1646, Kieft sent a protest to the New Haven magistrates against their settling on the Housatonic. To this they replied that they could not imagine what river the Dutch could mean, and unfairly offered to leave any dispute to the English Parliament as arbitrators; while at the New Haven court, “it was fully and satisfyeingly voted” that they would make good their titles “at the trading house, and leave the issue of things to God.”[[570]]
Contentions, new and old, dragged along, embittering relations, and filling a very large portion of the United Colonies' time and records. Finally, after Stuyvesant had been governor for three years, he went to Hartford to try to arrange an amicable settlement of all outstanding grievances between the colonies of the two nations. The negotiations were carried on in writing; and both then and in subsequent correspondence, it must be confessed that, in dignity and courtesy, the Dutch Governor shone by comparison with the English Commissioners. His tone throughout was statesmanlike and dignified, while that of the Puritans was frequently low, and, at times, insulting.