Williamstown, Massachusetts

“ Brave Winthrop, marching with the city elegants, seems to have been a little startled to find how wonderfully human were the hard-handed men of the Eighth Massachusetts. It takes all the nonsense out of everybody, or ought to do it, to see how fairly the real manhood of a country is distributed over its surface. And then, just as we are beginning to think our own soil has a monopoly of heroes as well as of cotton, up turns a regiment of gallant Irishmen, like the Sixty-ninth, to show us that continental provincialism is as bad as that of Coos County, New Hampshire, or of Broadway, New York. ”

“ To understand the brief career of Williams at Salem and its catastrophe, we must recall the character of colonial life in Massachusetts at the time. There were already sixteen settlements or "towns" on the shores of Massachusetts Bay, with an indefinite stretch of gloomy wilderness for background, the dwelling place of countless savages and wild beasts. The population of all the settlements may have summed up five thousand people—enough to have made one prosperous village. ”

“ Whatever multiplies pleasant historical reminiscences and bonds of association between different States, ought to be gathered up and kept fresh in the minds of all. The fact that when Massachusetts was suffering from a fiery and bloody, but brief, persecution by its own Government, New York opened so kind and secure a shelter for those fortunate enough to escape to it, ought to be forever held in grateful remembrance by the people of the old Bay State, and constitutes a part of the history of the Empire State, of which she may well be proud. ”

“ Thus many men of wealth and education, whose conservatism would naturally have prevented their taking rash steps in their opposition to the Crown, were led to join in the Massachusetts enterprise. In April, 1630, eleven vessels sailed for America, and by the end of the year about a thousand persons had emigrated to the new colony and founded such towns as Boston, Charlestown, and Watertown. They chose as governor a wealthy and highly educated Suffolk gentleman, John Winthrop, [29] and under his able administration the colony began a career of great prosperity and importance. ”

“ He who strikes the first blow merits all thanks. May my descendants be as grateful to these Boston men as I am now to the Boston men of two centuries ago. And may they remember ancestral perils and difficulties kindly, as I now recall how godly Puritans once brandished ruder axes and bill-hooks, opening paths of future peace on the shores of Massachusetts.
Our ascent was steady, along the gorge of the S’Kamish, ever in this same dense forest. We had, however escaped from the monotony of the bare fir-trunks. ”

“ Happily for Massachusetts, there has never been a time when all her children could be docile under such a rule; and, among her champions of freedom, none have been braver than those who have sprung from the ranks of her ministry, as the fate of Roger Williams had already proved. ”

“ In intellectual tastes, as in all else, the Union showed well-marked divisions between New England, New York, Pennsylvania, and the Southern States. New England was itself divided between two intellectual centres,—Boston and New Haven. The Massachusetts and Connecticut schools were as old as the [Pg 76] colonial existence; and in 1800 both were still alive, if not flourishing.
Society in Massachusetts was sharply divided by politics. In 1800 one half the population, represented under property qualifications by only some twenty thousand voters, was Republican. ”

“ Winthrop lived to see Boston, which he had founded, a thriving and prosperous capital; and the state, of which he brought over the charter, extended by successive settlements over a wide territory, and represented, in its little legislature, by deputies from nearly thirty separate towns. Other colonies had planted themselves around Massachusetts, and a New England confederation had been formed under his auspices, of which he was the first president. Free schools had been established, and a college incorporated and organized. ”

“ The Mount Wollaston settlement was, indeed, the first recorded instance of what in later Massachusetts history is technically known as “a liquor nuisance,” and the neighbors determined that considerations of public safety required that it should be abated. Those were primitive times. They enjoyed few of the advantages of our more developed civilization, and while there were no ladies of the vicinage to wait upon the then lord of Merry Mount in a spirit of prayerful remonstrance, there was also no State constabulary before whom the “rumseller” trembled and fled. ”

“ His observations at Boston confirm his observations at Philadelphia and New York. “I meet,” he writes, “with the same opinions as in the provinces already visited, only expressed with greater violence and acrimony. The four provinces composing New England — Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire — appear to be more firmly united among themselves, on account of the community of interests, than the remaining colonies. Massachusetts in particular, the most wealthy and populous, gives the impulse and the signal of independence to the rest. ”

“ Site of First Church and Governor Bradford's House at Plymouth.
It was a momentous step when the government of this colony was
transferred to New England. Winthrop was chosen Governor, others of the
Company elected to minor offices, and they, with no fewer than one
thousand new colonists, sailed for this side the Atlantic. In
Massachusetts, therefore, a trading company did not beget, as elsewhere,
but literally became a political state. Many of the Massachusetts men,
in contrast with those of Plymouth, had enjoyed high consideration at
home. Yet democracy prevailed here too. ”

“ Connecticut, which was lenient in its treatment, had but little trouble, and Governor Winthrop of that colony told the Massachusetts magistrates that he would go down on his bare knees to beg that they would not execute the death-penalty. Plymouth was more influenced by its powerful neighbor, and one of the magistrates, deposed for his toleration of the sect, wrote of the persecution in Massachusetts, “we expect that we must do the like, we must dance after their Pipe ”

“ A further inquiry into causal agencies is needed, and the best field for it is furnished by that theocratic Puritanism which cast out Roger Williams,—the Puritanism of the four confederated New England colonies, and especially of Massachusetts. No one can deny that in Massachusetts, during the nineteenth century, liberal thought has advanced further and has permeated the community more thoroughly than in any other state of the American Union. For at least three generations the intellectual ferment upon which liberal thought in the United States has thriven has come chiefly from Massachusetts. ”

“ The settlers of New Hampshire were mostly Puritans, and thoroughly in sympathy with the political-religious system of Massachusetts. Massachusetts obtained jurisdiction over Maine through purchase from Gorges, and that territory remained attached to Massachusetts until 1820. Vermont had no separate existence until the Revolution.
The colonies of Connecticut and New Haven were in full sympathy with the religious and political system of Massachusetts. ”

“ As we drive along we cut out [Pg 242] cubic pieces of the pink delicacy. Never have we tasted such a water-melon. It has not been wilted by a long, hot train journey, but has just come from the field, and is fresh and delicious.
At Williamsburg we stay at the Colonial Inn, a most pleasant hostel, on old Duke of Glouchester Street. Williamsburg, known then as Middle Plantation, was the settlement to which the Jamestown settlers moved when they found Jamestown Island too damp and malarial for permanent occupancy. It is one of the most interesting Colonial towns in the United States. ”

“ None the less Old Spain well deserved a portion at least of that familiar title, for, next to the town of Plymouth, it is the oldest settlement in Massachusetts. And when we speak of the oldest settlements in Massachusetts, we speak of communities which may fairly lay claim to a very respectable degree of antiquity; not of the greatest, it is true, for all antiquity is relative, and that of America scarcely deserves the name by the side of what England has to show ”

“ Arts and craft shops have been developed, as well as an extensive educational program, making it possible to observe and study many aspects of life as it was in the 80-year period when Williamsburg was the capital of Virginia after the removal of the seat of government from Jamestown in 1699. ”

“ Whereas, upon some reasons and grounds, there are to remove from this our Commonwealth and body of the Massachusetts in America divers of our loving friends and neighbors, freemen and members of Newtown, Dorchester, Watertown, and other places, who are resolved to transport themselves and their estates unto the river of Connecticut, there to reside and inhabit ”

“ The founders of Massachusetts were Puritan leaders and men of affairs whom King Charles I incorporated in 1629 under the title: "The governor and company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England." In this case the law did but incorporate a group drawn together by religious ties. "We must be knit together as one man," wrote John Winthrop, the first Puritan governor in America. Far to the south, on the banks of the Delaware River, a Swedish commercial company in 1638 made the beginnings of a settlement, christened New Sweden ”

“ Ten years after Patrick Henry's eloquent speech at Williamsburg against the Stamp Act, the people of Virginia were again deeply aroused; for King George, acting through Parliament, had sent 3,000 soldiers to Boston to force her unruly people and those of Massachusetts to obey certain of his commands. Virginia having given her hearty support to the people of Massachusetts, the royal Governor of Virginia drove the Colonial Assembly away from Williamsburg. But the people of Virginia, resolute in defence of their rights, elected a convention of their leading men, who met at old St. ”

“ During Roger Williams’ presidency, Warwick and Pawtuxet continued to be a source of vexation. Certain inhabitants of those settlements still rebelled against their proper authorities, claiming that they owed allegiance to Massachusetts alone. Even [Pg 150] the Indians used the name of the Bay Colony to cover acts of lawlessness. Roger Williams protested in writing to Massachusetts against her encouragement of such a state of affairs. ”

“ Although at odds with the theology of Massachusetts Bay, Williams remained in correspondence with Winthrop and others in Boston, by whom he was highly esteemed. He visited England in 1643 and 1652, and made the acquaintance of John Milton.
Besides the threat of an Indian war and their anxious concern for the purity of the Gospel in their churches, the colonists were haunted by superstitious forebodings of the darkest kind. ”

“ Something quaint, peremptory, old-world and feudal strikes the traveler as adhering in this custom, by which Wilmington constantly pays for the general safety of her promenaders with the offering of a citizen's life and limbs. This impression is right. The city is the best-defined spot on the American map where the South begins and the North ends. Wilmington is, for its own part, a perfect crystal of Yankee grit, run out and fixed in a country which in the highest [pg 371] degree represents the soft, contented, lazy, incoherent Bourbon temper. ”

“ April 1716, Williamsburg.—The first day, Governor Spotwood and I set out from Williamsburg about eight of the clock in the morning, and we went to Jamestown in a four-wheeled chaise. Jamestown is eight miles from Williamsburg, and situated close upon James River. This town consists chiefly in a Church, a Court House, and three or four brick houses, it was the former seat of the Government, but now it is removed to Middle Plantation, which they call Williamsburg. ”

“ On looking back at Massachusetts as she was in the year 1700, permeated with the evil theocratic traditions, without judges, teachers, or books, the mind can hardly fail to be impressed with the unconquerable energy which produced great jurists from such a soil; and yet in 1725 Jeremiah Gridley graduated from Harvard, who may fairly be said to have been the progenitor of a famous race; for long before the Revolution, men like Prat, Otis, and John Adams could well have held their own before any court of Common Law that ever sat. ”

“ Massachusetts extended her sway over Maine, and the Green Mountain territory was an uninhabited wilderness,7 to which New York and New Hampshire alike laid claim. The four commonwealths of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island had all been in existence, under one form or another, for more than a century. The men who were in the prime of life there in 1750 were the great-grandsons and great-great-grandsons of the men who crossed the ocean between 1620 and 1640 and settled New England. Scarcely two men in a hundred were of other than English blood. ”

“ It may perhaps be pardoned, if a far homelier, more modern, and even local, illustration be given of the present point, that trade makes roads. The western wall of Williamstown is the mountain range of the Taconics, whose general height is about 2000 feet above tide water at Albany. ”

“ President, I shall enter on no encomium upon Massachusetts; she needs none. There she is. Behold her, and judge for yourselves. There is her history; the world knows it by heart. The past, at least, is secure. There is Boston, and Concord, and Lexington, and Bunker Hill; and there they will remain for ever. ”

“ At the period of which I was dreaming, Williamsburg was the capital of the province, with a wide street named in honor of the Duke of Gloucester, and a college named after their late majesties, William and Mary, with a jolly Raleigh tavern and a stately Governor’s Palace ”