Connecticut, though assigned to a company in England, was early colonized by a detachment of Pilgrims from Massachusetts. In 1635, settlements were made at Hartford, Windsor, and Wethersfield. The following year, the excellent and illustrious Hooker led a company of one hundred persons through the forests to the delightful banks of the Connecticut, whose rich alluvial soil promised an easier support than the hard and stony land in the vicinity of Boston. They were scarcely settled before the Pequod War. Pequod war commenced, which involved all the colonies in a desperate and bloody contest with the Indians. But the Pequods were no match for Europeans, especially without firearms; and, in 1637, the tribe was nearly annihilated. The energy and severity exercised by the colonists, fighting for their homes, struck awe in the minds of the savages; and it was long before they had the courage to rally a second time. The Puritans had the spirit of Cromwell, and never hesitated to act with intrepid boldness and courage, when the necessity was laid upon them. They were no advocates of half measures. Their subsequent security and growth are, in no slight degree, to be traced to these rigorous measures,—measures which, in these times, are sometimes denounced as too severe, but the wisdom of which can scarcely be questioned when the results are considered. All the great masters of war, and of war with barbarians, have pursued a policy of unmitigated severity; and when a temporizing or timid course has been adopted with men incapable of being governed by reason, and animated by savage passions, that course has failed.
After the various colonies were well established in New England, and more than twenty thousand had emigrated from the mother country, they were no longer regarded with benevolent interest by the king or his ministers. The Grand Council of Plymouth surrendered its charter to the king, and a writ of quo warranto was issued against the Massachusetts colony. But the Puritans refused to surrender their charter, and prepared for resistance against the malignant scheme of Strafford and Laud. Before they could be carried into execution, the struggle between the king and the Long Parliament had commenced. The less resistance was forgotten in the greater. The colonies escaped the vengeance of a bigoted government. When the parliament triumphed, they were especially favored, and gradually acquired wealth and power. Union of the New England Colonies. The different colonies formed a confederation to protect themselves against the Dutch and French on the one side, and the Indians on the other. And this happily continued for half a century, and was productive of very important results. But the several colonies continued to make laws for their own people, to repress anarchy, and favor the cause of religion and unity. They did not always exhibit a liberal and enlightened policy. They destroyed witches; persecuted the Baptists and Quakers, and excluded them from their settlements. But, with the exception of religious persecution, their legislation was wise, and their general conduct was virtuous. They encouraged schools, and founded the University of Cambridge. They preserved the various peculiarities of Puritanism in regard to amusements, to the observance of the Sabbath, and to antipathy to any thing which reminded them of Rome, or even of the Church of England. But Puritanism was not an odious crust, a form, a dogma. It was a life, a reality; and was not unfavorable to the development of the most beautiful virtues of charity and benevolence, in a certain sphere. It was not a mere traditional Puritanism, which clings with disgusting tenacity to a form, when the spirit of love has departed; but it was a harmonious development of living virtues, which sympathized with education, with freedom, and with progress; which united men together by the bond of Christian love, and incited them to deeds of active benevolence and intrepid moral heroism. Nor did the Puritan Pilgrims persecute those who did not harmonize with them in order to punish them, but simply to protect themselves, and to preserve in their midst, and in their original purity, those institutions and those rights, for the possession of which they left their beloved native land for a savage wilderness, with its countless perils and miseries. But their hardships and afflictions were not of long continuance. With energy, industry, frugality, and love, they soon obtained security, comfort, and health. And it is no vain and idle imagination which assigns to those years, which succeeded the successful planting of the colony, the period of the greatest happiness and virtue which New England has ever enjoyed.
Equally fortunate with the Puritans were those interesting people who settled Pennsylvania. If the Quakers were persecuted in the mother country and in New England, they found a shelter on the banks of the Delaware. There they obtained and enjoyed that freedom of religious worship which had been denied to the great founder of the sect, and which had even been withheld from them by men who had struggled with them for the attainment of this exalted privilege.
In 1677, the Quakers obtained a charter which recognized the principle of democratic equality in the settlements in West Jersey; and in 1680, William Penn. William Penn received from the king, who was indebted to his father, a grant of an extensive territory, which was called Pennsylvania, of which he was constituted absolute proprietary. He also received a liberal charter, and gave his people privileges and a code of laws which exceeded in liberality any that had as yet been bestowed on any community. In 1682 he landed at Newcastle, and, soon after, at his new city on the banks of the Delaware, under the shelter of a large, spreading elm, made his immortal treaty with the Indians. He proclaimed to the Indian, heretofore deemed a foe never to be appeased, the principles of love which animated Fox, and which "Mary Fisher had borne to the Grand Turk." "We meet," said the lawgiver, "on the broad pathway of good faith and good will. No advantage shall be taken on either side, but all shall be openness and love. I will not call you children, for parents sometimes chide their children too severely; nor brothers only, for brothers differ. The friendship between me and you I will not compare to a chain, for that the rains might rust, or the felling tree might break. We are the same as if one man's body were to be divided into two parts; we are all one flesh and blood."
Such were the sublime doctrines which the illustrious founder of Pennsylvania declared to the Indians, and which he made the basis of his government, and the rule of his intercourse with his own people and with savage tribes. These doctrines were already instilled into the minds of the settlers, and they also found a response in the souls of the Indians. The sons of the wilderness long cherished the recollection of the covenant, and never forgot its principles. While all the other settlements of the Europeans were suffering from the hostility of the red man, Pennsylvania alone enjoyed repose. "Not a drop of Quaker blood was ever shed by an Indian."
William Penn, although the absolute proprietor of a tract of country which was nearly equal in extent to England, sought no revenue and no arbitrary power. He gave to the settlers the right to choose their own magistrates, from the highest to the lowest, and only reserved to himself the power to veto the bills of the council—the privilege which our democracies still allow to their governors.
Such a colony as he instituted could not but prosper. Its rising glories were proclaimed in every country of Europe, and the needy and distressed of all countries sought this realized Utopia. In two years after Philadelphia was settled, it contained six hundred houses. Peace was uninterrupted, and the settlement spread more rapidly than in any other part of North America.
New Jersey, Maryland, North and South Carolina, and Georgia, were all colonized by the English, shortly after the settlement of Virginia and New England, either by emigration from England, or from the other colonies. But there was nothing in their early history sufficiently marked to warrant a more extended sketch. In general, the Southern States were colonized by men who had not the religious elevation of the Puritans, nor the living charity of the Quakers. But their characters improved by encountering the evils to which they were subjected, and they became gradually imbued with those principles which in after times secured independence and union.
The settlement of Settlement of New York. New York, however, merits a passing notice, since it was colonized by emigrants from Holland, which was by far the most flourishing commercial state of Europe in the seventeenth century. The Hudson River had been discovered (1609) by an Englishman, whose name it bears, but who was in the service of the Dutch East India Company. The right of possession of the country around it was therefore claimed by the United Provinces, and an association of Dutch merchants fitted out a ship to trade with the Indians. In 1614, a rude fort was erected on Manhattan Island, and, the next year, the settlement at Albany commenced, chiefly with a view of trading with the Indians. In 1623, New Amsterdam, now New York, was built for the purpose of colonization, and extensive territories were appropriated by the Dutch for the rising colony. This appropriation involved them in constant contention with the English, as well as with the Indians; nor was there the enjoyment of political privileges by the people, as in the New England colonies. The settlements resembled lordships in the Netherlands, and every one who planted a colony of fifty souls, possessed the absolute property of the lands he colonized, and became Patroon, or Lord of the Manor. Very little attention was given to education, and the colonists were not permitted to make cotton, woollen, or linen cloth, for fear of injury to the monopolists of the Dutch manufactures. The province had no popular freedom, and no public spirit. The poor were numerous, and the people were disinclined to make proper provision for their own protection.
But the colony of the Conquest of New Netherlands. New Netherlands was not destined to remain under the government of the Dutch West India Company. It was conquered by the English in 1664, and the conquerors promised security to the customs, the religion, the institutions, and the possessions of the Dutch; and this promise was observed. In 1673, the colony was reconquered, but finally, in 1674, was ceded to the English, and the brother of Charles II. resumed his possession and government of New York, and delegated his power to Colonel Nichols, who ruled with wisdom and humanity. But the old Dutch Governor Stuyvesant remained in the city over which he had so honorably presided, and prolonged the empire of Dutch manners, if not of Dutch arms. The banks of the Hudson continued also to be peopled by the countrymen of the original colonists, who long preserved the language, customs, and religion of Holland. New York, nevertheless, was a royal province, and the administration was frequently intrusted to rapacious, unprincipled, and arbitrary governors.