These colonists commenced the building of ships in the year 1634, and engaged in commerce, the African slave trade, being, from the beginning, a part of that commerce. By the year 1640, six large vessels had been built, and fitted out by the Boston merchants, which were sent on voyages to Spain, Madeira and the Canaries with cargoes of fish and staves, and brought back, among other things, cargoes of negroes from the coast of Africa for sale at Barbadoes and the other British West India Islands.
It was not a great while before the religious persecution in Massachusetts drove off a number of dissenters from the established faith, among them being the celebrated Roger Williams, the founder of the Baptists in America. These "heretics," as they were called, took refuge within the present limits of Rhode Island, where they established, at different points, separate governments for themselves, all of which were subsequently merged in that of Rhode Island. Emigrants from Massachusetts also established themselves at different points in the present limits of Connecticut and formed two separate governments, one called New Haven and the other Connecticut, which were afterwards united under that of Connecticut. Massachusetts set up a claim of jurisdiction over all of these settlements, but finally had to abandon it.
In the year 1641, the general court of Massachusetts, in which the legislative power was vested, adopted a code of fundamental laws called "Fundamentals" or "Body of Liberties," which were compiled from two separate drafts reported by those "Godly ministers," "the great Cotton" as he was called, and Nathaniel Ward, who had been appointed commissioners for that purpose. One of the "Liberties" provided that "There shall never be any bond-slavery, villanage nor captivity among us, unless it be lawful captives taken in just wars, and such strangers as willingly sell themselves or are sold unto us, and these shall have all the liberties and Christian usages which the law of God, established in Israel, requires. This exempts none from servitude who shall be judged thereto by authority." This surely was a one-sided idea of religious liberty; the "elect" gave themselves abundant liberty to do as they pleased in the matter. This "Fundamental" was twenty years in advance of any legislative enactment in Virginia recognizing the existence of slavery.
A confederacy was formed, in the year 1643, between the colonies of Massachusetts, Plymouth, Connecticut and New Haven, called the "United Colonies of New England" into which the "heretics" of Rhode Island were not permitted to enter. Slavery existed by law everywhere now in New England, including Rhode Island, and one of the stipulations of the compact, by which the United Colonies were bound, was that fugitive servants or slaves should be delivered up when fleeing from one province to another. The stipulation was almost in the identical terms of that long afterwards incorporated into the United States Constitution upon the same subject.
The harsh treatment pursued towards dissenters, including the most delicate females, who were sometimes stripped naked and whipped through the streets, and the trials and execution of persons as witches, furnish revolting details of the conduct of the "elect," but it is not intended to refer more particularly to that here. One fact, however, in regard to the history of Virginia and Massachusetts may be properly mentioned—as descendants of the latter's colonists have arraigned at the bar of public opinion, the people of Virginia, as well as the whole South upon the subject of slavery—and that fact is very suggestive.
In the year 1644, the Indians in Virginia, under the instigation of Opechancanough, successor of Powhatan, undertook to exterminate the colonists in that province, when five hundred persons, who were engaged in celebrating a victory of the king over the Parliamentary army in the war then raging, were massacred at the first surprise. A ship was sent to Boston to procure powder for the defence of the colony, but the general court declined to furnish it. This refusal was owing to the fact that the people of Virginia sympathized with the king in the pending struggle, and to the further fact that three ministers sent out from New England at the instance of some of the "elect," who had found their way into Virginia, were sent out of the province by Governor Berkeley for violating the law—Governor Winthrop declaring that the massacre of the Virginians was a punishment "for their reviling the Gospel and those faithful ministers."
A law was adopted in Connecticut, 1650, for selling debtors for debt, which remained in force more than a century and a half; and at the same time a law was adopted, upon the recommendation of the commissioners for the United Colonies of New England, providing that Indians refusing or neglecting satisfaction for injuries might be seized and delivered to the party injured "either to serve, or to be shipped out and exchanged for negroes, as the case will justly bear." About this time, the "heretics" at Warwick, one of the settlements in Rhode Island, complained that the authorities of Massachusetts had instigated the Indians to commit depredations upon them, and Easton, subsequently governor of Rhode Island, was reported to have said of the people of Massachusetts, that "the elect had the Holy Ghost and the devil indwelling." Upon hearing of the execution of two persons for witchcraft, the people of Warwick exclaimed "There are no witches on earth, nor devils, but the ministers of New England and such as they."
In 1676, a large number of captives, taken in the war against King Philip, in which all of New England was united, were made slaves of, many of them were sent from Boston to Bermuda and sold, including the infant son of King Philip, who, some of the most prominent ministers insisted, should be slain for his father's sins, though the more remunerative expedient of selling him was adopted. The captives who fell into the hands of the Rhode Islanders were distributed as slaves, and Roger Williams, the expelled "heretic" from Massachusetts, received a boy for his share. A large body of Indians assembled at Dover, at the conclusion of the war, to make peace, were treacherously captured and some two hundred of them were sent to Boston, where some were hung and the rest shipped off to be sold as slaves.