| I. | The American Background | [1] |
| II. | Staking Out Claims | [26] |
| III. | The Race for Empire | [41] |
| IV. | Some Aspects of Puritanism | [64] |
| V. | The First Permanent Settlement | [86] |
| VI. | New England and the Great Migration | [118] |
| VII. | An English Opposition becomes a New England Oligarchy | [146] |
| VIII. | The Growth of a Frontier | [175] |
| IX. | Attempts to Unify New England | [206] |
| X. | Cross-Currents in the Confederacy | [231] |
| XI. | The Defeat of the Theocracy | [253] |
| XII. | The Theory of Empire | [278] |
| XIII. | The Reassertion of Imperial Control | [310] |
| XIV. | The Inevitable Conflict | [338] |
| XV. | Loss of the Massachusetts Charter | [364] |
| XVI. | An Experiment in Administration | [398] |
| XVII. | The New Order | [431] |
| Index | [457] |
ILLUSTRATIONS
| New England in 1640 | [Frontispiece] |
| Manuscript Map of the New England Coast, 1607-8 (believed to have been drawn by Champlain) | [40] |
| Page from Bradford's History, on which is the Mayflower Compact | [98] |
| Streams of Emigration from England, 1620 to 1642 | [120] |
| An Original Share in the Massachusetts Bay Company | [128] |
| Document signed by Uncas and his Squaw | [204] |
| Page from John Winthrop's Journal | [232] |
| Letter from the Earl of Clarendon to the Governor of Connecticut | [332] |
| Warrant signed by Governor Winslow of Plymouth for the Sale of Indian Captives as Slaves | [360] |
| Reverend John Cotton's opinion that Philip's Son should be put to Death | [362] |
| Demand for Surrender of Sir Edmund Andros | [430] |
| Original Draft of Indented Bills of 1690 | [442] |
| Testimonial to the good character of Rebecca Nourse, executed as a Witch | [454] |
THE FOUNDING OF
NEW ENGLAND
CHAPTER I
THE AMERICAN BACKGROUND
In the name of the country which to-day occupies the major part of the inhabitable portion of North America is indicated the twofold nature of its history; for the story of the United States may evidently be approached, either from the standpoint of a federal nation, or from that of its component political units. These units, although in themselves separate states, are geographically divided from one another, for the most part, by boundaries which are purely artificial. Natural frontiers consist of the sea, deserts, mountains, rivers, and the now almost obsolete ones of forests and swamps. A glance at the map shows that such natural barriers are only a negligible part of the boundaries between our various states and territories. Rivers alone form an exception, and these, for several reasons, are the least satisfactory for the purpose.[[1]] Were the federal tie dissolved, and these now united commonwealths to become completely independent, and possibly hostile, the artificial character of their limits would at once become obvious.
From this it has followed, as settlement has gradually spread over the continent, bringing innumerable communities into existence, that these have tended to group themselves into sections, united by common modes of thought, ways of life, and economic needs. Histories of the individual states are almost as arbitrarily localized as the histories of the counties within them; but the story of any of the sections into which the country has divided from time to time possesses an organic unity created by the forces of life itself.
Some of these divisions have tended to remain permanent, while others have passed with the development of the country. During the colonial period, when the English inhabited only the comparatively narrow strip of land between the sea and the mountain-barrier of the Appalachian system, the colonists fell into three natural groups,—the New England, the Middle, and the Southern,—determined by climatic, economic, and cultural conditions. These factors, operating with others somewhat more fortuitous, made the distinctions both lasting and marked, the extreme northern and southern groups exhibiting their differences more clearly than the intermediate one lying between them.
When the frontier was extended west of the mountain-barrier,—and, indeed, on a smaller scale, even earlier,—another grouping came into existence, that of East and West, or old settlement and frontier. This division was also to persist, with an ever-enlarging East and an ever-retreating West. If the economic and political ideas of these new sections were to remain somewhat sharply contrasted, the distinctions between the original extreme eastern groups were also continued, like lengthening shadows across the mountain ridges, and the whole country was to find itself aligned in two hostile groupings in the most tragic division that it has yet had to face—that between the North and the South.