28. The New England Confederation

The experience of the Puritan colonies in the joint aggression against the Pequots, added to the continuing drive of Massachusetts Bay for domination over its neighbors, led to a more formal bond between them.

As early as 1634 Massachusetts had moved in to establish control over a wholly Pilgrim trading post on the Kennebec in Maine. It arrested a Plymouth magistrate there and forced Plymouth leaders to go to Boston to settle the matter. Similarly, the following year Massachusetts forced Pilgrims out of land that they had settled on the Connecticut River, to permit Bay settlers to occupy the land. Massachusetts also pressed claims for large portions of Connecticut and Plymouth territory, and we have seen its designs on Rhode Island.

The first discussion of a confederation between the Puritan colonies occurred at the synod of August-September 1637 for the condemnation of Anne Hutchinson. The synod was attended by ministers from Connecticut and Massachusetts. Governor Winthrop of Massachusetts suggested to the Connecticut ministers that the synod become a regular annual meeting of the ministers of both areas because of their mutual “distaste for unauthorized interpretation.” In the spring of 1638 Roger Ludlow, an advocate of strong government in Connecticut, inquired further about a confederation, as did John Davenport and Theophilus Eaton of New Haven. Connecticut sent John Haynes to Massachusetts to confer on the matter, but Massachusetts insisted on control of the upper Connecticut Valley about Springfield—crucial to the fur trade—which Connecticut refused to acknowledge. Massachusetts proposed setting up a commission with absolute power to settle all disputes between the colonies, and without reference to the separate assemblies. In this way, Massachusetts hoped to gain control of the sister colonies, deeming it far easier to dominate a group of magistrates than the elected General Courts of the various colonies. But Thomas Hooker pointed out that the terms proposed by Massachusetts exceeded the “limits of that equity which is to be looked at in all combinations of free states.” To prevent oligarchic control by the joint magistrates of the colonies, Hooker insisted that any such commissioners be elected.

The confederation proposed at this time therefore proved abortive. The joint Pequot War effort and the growing united interest in preventing asylum from being granted to runaway indentured servants, however, caused the Puritan colonies to draw closer together. Despite this, Massachusetts continued its aggressive expansion, seizing, as we have seen, the New Hampshire settlements. Similarly, Connecticut and New Haven were settling in territory claimed arbitrarily by the Dutch and liked the idea of a confederation for defending it. Furthermore, the civil strife in England was making the New England colonies even more self-governing than before and giving them an opportunity to carry more weight by acting jointly.

Finally, in the fall of 1642 Plymouth proposed a confederation provided that the General Court of each colony ratify all agreements. Connecticut also agreed to send delegates to a meeting in the spring, quickly making sure that Saybrook was incorporated within its realm before the confederation was formed. In May 1643 Massachusetts, Connecticut, Plymouth, and New Haven colonies agreed to form the “Confederation of the United Colonies of New England.”

The Articles of Confederation declared its purpose to be “a firm and perpetual league of friendship, for offense and defense... both for preserving and propagating the truths of the Gospel and for their mutual safety and welfare.” The General Court of each colony was to elect two commissioners to meet once a year and on special occasions. These eight commissioners had the power to declare war, make peace, and allocate military expenses among the colonies in proportion to their population. But approval of each colony’s General Court was needed to levy the tax. For commissioners to reach any decision whatever required an affirmative vote of six of the eight. The commissioners were also to make recommendations to the specific colonies, settle boundary disputes, and provide for the capture of fugitives—for example, runaway servants. There was no executive; annually one of the commissioners was chosen president, and he served merely as moderator of the proceedings. All the commissioners had to be Puritan church members.

No colony was bound by the commissioners’ decisions unless its General Court approved. Thus each colony could nullify any decisions affecting it, and insure against aggrandizement by the new centralized power.

One important provision of the confederation was to guarantee the independence and given territory of each member colony. For this reason, Massachusetts moved to reject a proposal to admit the Maine settlements to the confederation, since Massachusetts was preparing to confiscate them. Rhode Island was not admitted for similar reasons, and also because its individualistic policies were a standing reproach to the other colonies. Thus, Rhode Island’s continual refusal to coerce the return of fugitives and runaway servants from the other colonies—the colony was preserving itself as a haven for the oppressed—was itself a vital blow to the structure of caste and persecution in the other New England colonies. Hence, Rhode Island’s application for admission in 1648 was rejected unless it agreed to become part of Massachusetts Bay—a condition that Rhode Island, of course, angrily rejected.

This first confederation of colonies in the New World was modeled on the United Provinces of the Netherlands, which had been established by the Union of Utrecht in 1579. The United Provinces was a loose confederation of seven provinces for purposes of defense. Deputies were selected by the autonomous provinces, each of which had to approve the decisions of the union for it to be bound by the union’s actions. Many New Englanders had experienced the workings of such a confederation during their previous exile in the Netherlands.

From the start, the commissioners were clearly extensions of the ruling magistracy of the colonies. First president of the confederation was Governor John Winthrop, and his sons and grandsons became commissioners as well as magistrates in Massachusetts and Connecticut. The same was true for the other Massachusetts signatory of the Articles of Confederation, Thomas Dudley; he and his sons-in-law were to become governors and commissioners. Similarly Theophilus Eaton, governor and commissioner from New Haven; his sons-in-law became magistrates and commissioners from New Haven and Connecticut.

The requirement that commissioners belong to the Puritan church soon bore fruit. One of their earliest proposals, in 1646, was in answer to a request of Massachusetts for a meeting of the elders of the New England churches “to consider some confession of doctrine and discipline with solid grounds to be approved by the churches.” After the Westminster Assembly in England adopted the Westminster Confession of Faith (1647), which espoused presbyterianism, a synod was held at Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1648, the same year in which the Cambridge Platform of the church was issued. The Platform accepted the Westminster Confession and provided that “idolatry, blasphemy, venting corruption and pernicious opinions are to be restrained and punished by the civil authority,” and “if any church one or more shall grow schismatical, rending itself from the communion of other churches, or shall walk incorrigibly or obstinately in any corrupt way of their own, contrary to the rule of the Word; in such case, the Magistrate is to put forth his coercive power, as the matter shall require.” The Massachusetts path of persecution had been confirmed by the United Colonies. The commissioners of the confederation also levied an annual contribution on the towns of the colonies for the support of Harvard College.

After the massacre of the Pequots, the Narragansetts became the main body of Indians in southern New England. We have seen how Massachusetts and the United Colonies tried to take over Warwick and the Narragansetts, only to be foiled by the submission of the Narragansetts to England through Samuell Gorton. The United Colonies, however, struggled hard to conquer the Narragansetts. In 1645 Miles Standish led a confederation force into Rhode Island to beat the Narragansett Indians into a “sober temper.” Foiled by Roger Williams’ negotiation of peace and neutrality with the Indians, the enraged Standish threatened to seize any settler helping the Indians.

The confederation scarcely fulfilled the high hopes of its founders, and largely because of continuing difficulties between Massachusetts and its fellow colonies, with Massachusetts aggressively pressing its claims against the others. Thus, Massachusetts and Connecticut quarreled over the land taken from the Pequots. For years, Massachusetts claimed the lands, granting large tracts to Governor Winthrop’s son John Jr., an assistant of the colony. Young Winthrop was even granted governmental power over his plantation. Finally, after the senior Winthrop’s death in 1649, his son accepted Connecticut jurisdiction and was soon to become a long-term governor of his adopted colony. A more important rift occurred over Springfield, the northernmost settlement on the Connecticut River. Geographically one of the Connecticut towns, Springfield, as the uppermost town on the river, was critically important in the beaver trade with the Indians. In the late 1640s, Connecticut levied a river tax on the various towns to finance its hastily purchased Fort Saybrook. Springfield, led by its virtual manorial lord, William Pynchon, refused to pay the tax, pointing out that it had joined Massachusetts upon the creation of the New England Confederation, and was therefore outside Connecticut’s jurisdiction. Massachusetts had appointed Pynchon as chief judge and magistrate; he ruled Springfield, and had a right of appeal to the court of assistants of the colony at Boston. To strengthen its claim on Springfield, Massachusetts now accepted deputies from the town to its General Court. Massachusetts of course backed Springfield’s refusal to pay and persisted in defying the confederation agreement to submit all such disputes to arbitration. Massachusetts also retaliated by taxing products of the other New England colonies entering Boston. For the remainder of the century, Springfield continued as a virtually independent republic, loosely under Massachusetts, and governed by Pynchon and his son John. Springfield, indeed, set up its own frontier trading posts at such new settlements as Westfield, Hadley, and Northampton.

Massachusetts also took the lead in aggressive actions of the United Colonies against other English colonies—for example, breaking off trade with Virginia, Bermuda, and Barbados for daring to continue their support of the royalist cause.

Most of the friction between Massachusetts and the other colonies occurred over acts of imperial aggression by one or the other against their French neighbors to the north or the Dutch to the south. The first confrontation occurred with the French. After the Virginians had sacked the French Jesuit settlement at Port Royal in 1613, the French created the Company of New France, with Cardinal Richelieu, chief minister to Louis XIII, as president. Richelieu granted his own company feudal rule of the land and a monopoly of the fur trade. England conquered the Acadian and some other Canadian settlements from France in the war of 1627–29, but these areas were restored in 1632 in return for a large dowry from the French bride of the English king Charles I.

By 1643 a virtual war had broken out between two French claimants to the rich prize of Acadia—especially to the fur monopoly and the feudal tenure. The losing claimant, Claude de la Tour, appeared at Boston in 1643, and Governor Winthrop and a few of the ruling oligarchs decided to give de la Tour secret support for an expedition against the French governor. In defiance of legality this crucial matter was referred neither to the General Court nor to the commissioners of the new Confederation of the United Colonies. Winthrop and the others did not submit the issue because they knew that this rash interference in French affairs would have been rejected. The purpose of the affair was to have a clique of Boston merchants join in plunder, and gain a share in the fisheries and the tempting Acadian fur monopoly.

The ignominious failure of the expedition swelled the rising opposition to the scheme in Massachusetts—an opposition led by the competing merchants from Salem and other outlying towns—and Winthrop was temporarily deposed in the 1644 election. Leader of the opposition to the Acadian adventure was Richard Saltonstall, a merchant of Ipswich, north of Salem. Still, the raiders did manage to plunder the plantation of the French governor, Charles d’Aulnay, and to bring back the booty to be sold at auction in Boston. The proceeds of the auction were divided among the raiders. The new governor, John Endecott, however, proclaimed the neutrality of Massachusetts in the intra-French war and offered d’Aulnay satisfaction. The commissioners of the United Colonies met in the fall of 1644 and sternly forbade all such secret plundering expeditions in the future. Finally, Massachusetts signed the Treaty of Boston with d’Aulnay in the fall of 1644, providing that the English in Massachusetts and the French in Acadia have a right to trade freely with each other and with any other peoples, and also providing that any disputes between the two parties be settled by peaceful means.

In the conflicts with the Dutch, on the other hand, it was the southern New England colonies that yearned to plunder the Dutch, and it was Massachusetts that held back from a war in which it was not economically concerned.

Connecticut and New Haven were early embroiled in problems with the Dutch. The original Dutch fort at Hartford was surrounded by English settlers, and the English pressed on to eastern Long Island. Such settlement was in itself highly legitimate, but this was not true of the accompanying political claims for governing these areas. New Haven also clashed with the Dutch and Swedes in the Delaware settlements, and was bitter not only at the Swedish and Dutch fur monopoly, but also at the Dutch for granting of asylum to runaway servants of the New Haven colonists.

The governor of Dutch New Netherland, Peter Stuyvesant, and the commissioners of the United Colonies, concluded the Treaty of Hartford in 1650, supposedly settling the large part of the disputes between them. The English were granted sovereignty over all land east of Greenwich, Connecticut, except for Fort Good Hope (Hartford), and over all of Long Island east of Oyster Bay. England, however, refused to ratify the treaty or to recognize any Dutch territory in America, and within a year, New Haven— backed by the United Colonies—attempted further expansion on the Delaware. What is more, the commissioners played a role in the passage of the anti-Dutch Navigation Act of 1651 in the English Parliament.

The following year, Cromwell launched his war of aggression against Holland, and New Haven and Connecticut whooped for war in earnest. They even stirred up false rumors of an alleged plot by Stuyvesant to incite the Indians to attack. Violating the treaty of 1650, Connecticut seized the Dutch fort at Hartford and forcibly incorporated the territory. And even Aquidneck, as we have seen, engaged in piracy against Dutch shipping. Furthermore, the English settlers in the New Netherland portion of Long Island—in the towns of Oyster Bay, Hempstead, Flushing, Jamaica, Newtown, and Gravesend—formed their own independent union.

Connecticut and New Haven, yearning for war, swung all but one of the commissioners to declare war against the Dutch, but Massachusetts coolly vetoed the scheme. Massachusetts asserted in its own curious but convenient interpretation of the Articles of Confederation, that the commissioners had no power to declare an offensive war. However, the Bay Colony was on completely sound legal ground in insisting on its right of nullification of the war decision as applied to itself. The Dutch model of the confederation, incidentally, had also stressed this right of nullification by each constituent province.

Why did Massachusetts balk at war? For one thing, it had no desire to put up two-thirds of the forces and the bulk of the finances for a war in which it could not gain. In fact, any Connecticut or New Haven accession to the lucrative Dutch fur trade with the Iroquois might well have been detrimental to Massachusetts’ trading interests.

Massachusetts was successful in blocking the war and the English war with the Dutch ended in 1654 without New England’s entering the fray. Ironically, a British fleet, sent to America to act against the Dutch, arrived after the end of the war; thwarted, it decided not to waste its preparations and it promptly seized Acadia from the French. It is no coincidence that the leader of the Massachusetts force that helped conquer Acadia was Major Robert Sedgwick, a prominent Boston fish merchant, eager to obtain access to the Acadian fisheries.