Colonial America

by Richard Middleton, Anne Lombard

  These various tensions erupted into hostilities in 1675. In January of that year a Christian Indian was murdered, supposedly at the instigation of Philip, who suspected him of spying for the English. Three of Philip's men were tried and executed for the crime. Angered by this clear attempt by Plymouth to assert political authority over his people, Philip and the non-Christianized faction of the Wampanoags prepared for war, beginning their campaign with an assault on the English settlement at Swansea. At this point a general uprising by the native peoples does not seem to have been planned; however, once Massachusetts went to the aid of Plymouth, a wider conflict developed. After Philip persuaded the Nipmucks to enter the war, fighting spread to the upper Connecticut Valley and the town of Northfield had to be abandoned in September 1675. Up to this point the Narragansetts had remained neutral, but the colonists themselves precipitated their entry into the war. When information was received in November that some Narragansetts were harboring some of Philip's women and children in an area of Rhode Island known as the Great Swamp, the United Colonies sent a combined force under Josiah Winslow against them. Winslow's force killed 300 men, women, and children. As at the Pequot fort in 1637, most of the victims were burned to death, for the first thing Winslow did was to surround the Narragansett fort with a ring of fire. This savage assault promptly increased support for Philip, since considerable numbers of the Indians now realized that they were fighting for their lives. Plymouth and Providence came under fire, as did Weymouth and Sudbury, only 20 miles from Boston. Most notable was the routing of a force under Captain Lathrop in the Connecticut Valley, in which 60 of Lathrop's men were killed. Philip achieved another success near Providence when 60 men under Captain Pierce died.

  Well into the winter of 1675, the war seemed to favor Philip and his allies, whose daring raids had proved too much for the slow-footed colonists. The English were internally divided. Many towns resisted the colony's attempt to impress young men from established families into the militia, drafting poor men and outsiders instead. The draftees understandably made poor soldiers, since they were committed neither to the towns that had impressed then, nor to the war itself.10 Philip himself had significant support not only from local tribes but also from various Abenaki peoples to the north. However, one critical Native American group failed to back him: the members of the Iroquois League. Even as the war was being fought the Iroquois had begun the negotiations with New York's Governor Andros that would eventually lead to the Covenant Chain alliance. In early 1676, urged on by New York's Governor Andros, the Mohawks agreed to enter the war on the side of the English. When Philip sought the assistance of the Mahican nation, he was attacked by the Mohawks and forced to withdraw with heavy losses. The setback proved especially calamitous because the winter fighting had depleted the Wampanoags' reserves of food, ammunition, and shelter.

  In the end, Philip and his allies were defeated because the United Colonies with their population of 70,000, their reserves of food and ammunition, and their significant numbers of Indian allies were better equipped to fight a sustained total war. Native American societies, with their delicate balance between humans and nature, were far too easily disrupted by prolonged warfare. Women and children were especially vulnerable if their crops and habitations were destroyed prior to the onset of winter. In addition, Philip had to contend with the colonists' Indian allies, though ironically the Massachusetts government had not initially appreciated their help. This failure by Massachusetts in particular proved significant, for it was not until Indian allies were enlisted that the war finally changed in the colonists' favor. As John Eliot readily confessed: “In our first war with the Indians, God pleased to show us the vanity of our military skill, in managing our arms after the European mode. Now we are glad to learn the skulking way of war.”

  As a result many members of the various tribal groups were steadily tracked down, killed, or sold into slavery in the West Indies, as indeed were Philip's own family, after he had been cornered and shot in a swamp. Others fled to the north, taking refuge among the Abenakis in northern New England or creating new villages in New France. Fighting ended in southern New England by the summer of 1676, though it continued on the Maine frontier until 1678. The Indians of southern New England were effectively reduced to remnant communities cooped up in special villages, their way of life and environment destroyed forever. Among the casualties were Eliot's praying towns, most of whose inhabitants, though firmly loyal to the English, had been interned on Deer Island near Boston in conditions of great hardship. Indeed, in the confusion some were shipped to the West Indies, despite the protests of Eliot and Samuel Gookin that this contravened the Puritan obligation to convert the native peoples. Afterwards only four praying towns remained, while Eliot's seminary at Harvard produced only one Indian minister before it closed in 1692.11 The prospects for interethnic harmony even among the converted had been hopelessly compromised.

  As in Virginia, the net result of the war was the clearing of the coastal areas for exclusive white settlement. The war had been fought at a terrible price. Twelve towns had been destroyed, almost half the rest had suffered some damage, one out of every 15 men of military age had been killed, and all of the United Colonies had incurred large debts. Moreover, damage of another kind had been inflicted, that to the New Englanders' sense of identity and purpose. During the war they had committed as many atrocities as the enemy, disemboweling their dead and placing their heads on poles as trophies. The conundrum of living in a wilderness while attempting to remain a civilized and godly people was profoundly unsettling.12 The scars of the war were to remain for a long time.

  It was to address such doubts that the general court of Massachusetts agreed to a new congregational synod in 1679. At the top of the agenda was the perceived declension in New England's religiosity. The ministers, however, were unable to suggest anything other than the old shibboleths of a more rigorous observance of the sabbath, stricter parental control of unruly children, a closer regulation of taverns, and a turning away from material goods. The last, they believed, could be achieved by new sumptuary laws regulating the clothing which people were permitted to wear.

  Meanwhile the threat of further English intervention remained omnipresent, though Massachusetts continued doggedly to resist the Crown's authority. Massachusetts continued to mint the 1652 pine tree shilling, an abuse of one of the Crown's most cherished privileges. The province had also unilaterally reasserted control over New Hampshire and Maine, despite the recommendations of the commissioners in 1665. New Hampshire was finally declared a royal province in 1680, but Massachusetts kept its grasp on Maine, angering the Crown further by buying out the heirs of Sir Fernando Gorges in an attempt to make good its claim. Royal officials once more ordered Massachusetts to send envoys to England to answer Randolph's charges that it was flouting English laws.

  Massachusetts still hoped that the government of Charles II would either lack the means to implement its plans or be overthrown by a coup d'état. During 1680 England was convulsed by a Whig opposition attempt in Parliament to curb the Crown. God had saved Massachusetts from the ravages of King Philip; a similar miracle might also save it from Charles II. Holding onto this vain hope, the general court continued to drag its feet. The court obstructed Randolph when he returned in 1681 with a permanent commission as collector of the customs by appointing its own naval officer. Of the 34 vessels prosecuted by Randolph, colonial judges released every one and made Randolph pay the costs. Meanwhile the collector catalogued so many colonial misdemeanors that even the lackadaisical Charles II could not but take action eventually. Apart from their infractions of the trade laws, Randolph noted that the Puritans continued to persecute Quakers, failed to take the oath of allegiance, and omitted the king's name in their official proceedings. The day of reckoning could not be far off.

  3 New Jersey and Pennsylvania: The Beginnings

  Randolph's concern for the Quakers was judicial rather than religious, for like most English people he did
not believe in toleration. Religious persecution was rife in England too. The Test Acts of 1673 and 1678, for example, imposed religious tests for public office by specifically excluding Catholics from holding office and sitting in Parliament. In the colonies, however, few suffered so severely as the Society of Friends, or Quakers, as they were commonly called because they allegedly trembled or quaked at the name of the Lord.

  The Quakers were followers of George Fox, an itinerant preacher who wanted to restore Christianity to its original simplicity. Fox and his followers were part of the Protestant Reformation, and like other dissenters, they criticized religious ritual and hierarchy within the church. But quite unlike the Puritans, they believed that everyone could be saved, since all were the children of God and could experience his inner light. They therefore had no need of a formal priesthood or liturgy like the Bible and Book of Common Prayer. Even the Holy Trinity was of little importance. They relied solely on the innate goodness of the individual and the power of communal prayer to produce an environment in which they could live in “holy conversation.”

  These views were naturally abhorrent to the other churches, which considered them a denial of everything they believed necessary for salvation. Unfortunately the Quakers exacerbated their persecution by further deviations from accepted community standards. One problem was their refusal to swear oaths on the Bible, an act which, they argued, would imply that they were not telling the truth on other occasions. Another was their view that the taking of life could never be justified. This belief led them to refuse to perform militia service or to pay taxes even for self-defense. Finally they insisted upon wearing plain black garments which visibly set them apart from the rest of the population. They suffered cruelly both in England and in America.

  The Quakers, however, did not lack support. Many of them did well in commerce, because of their truthfulness and penchant for hard work. They also made an exceptional convert in a well-connected young gentleman with considerable wealth, William Penn. Penn's father, who had been a senior naval commander during the first and second Dutch wars, subsequently introduced his son to both Charles II and James, duke of York. This personal connection was to be of immense value, for it enabled Penn, like Maryland's Lord Baltimore, to use his influence to secure a refuge for his coreligionists. Penn's motives were not totally altruistic; like all New World proprietors he was anxious to increase his own wealth by acquiring land and participating in the fur trade.

  Penn first attempted to establish a settlement in America in 1676, when he and several other Quakers became trustees for a Quaker investor in the colony of West New Jersey. New Jersey had been part of New Netherland until the duke of York granted it in 1664 to Sir George Carteret and John Lord Berkeley, noblemen who had supported him during the English Civil War. At this point the settler population did not exceed 200 (mainly Dutch) settlers living in Bergen County, though the number grew following the sale by New York's new governor of 400,000 acres to some Long Island Puritans, who created the townships of Elizabeth and Newark (hereafter referred to as the Elizabeth and Newark associates). Later on, Scottish Presbyterian and English Quaker settlers would settle the western portion of the territory. The two Jersey proprietors, who were also involved in the Carolinas, did little to advance their new possessions and subsequently divided the territory into two smaller colonies, East and West Jersey. In 1674, Berkeley sold his holdings in West Jersey to two Quaker investors, Edward Byllinge and John Fenwick.

  It was when these two men quarreled over their purchase that Penn became involved. The area's current legal status was unsatisfactory from his point of view, as the Jersey grant gave title to the land but did not officially grant governmental authority to pass laws protecting the Quaker religion. Once the duke of York finally confirmed the investors' right to establish a government, Penn and 11 other prominent Quakers jointly purchased East New Jersey for themselves in 1682. In that very transaction lay another problem: with so many proprietors, confusion was inevitable.

  Map 9 The middle colonies in the later seventeenth century.

  Penn decided to seek his own, more substantial, grant elsewhere. Knowing from his current investment that the lands west of the Delaware were still unclaimed, he sought a formal charter for them. Charles II, who had borrowed heavily from his father, the admiral, owed Penn a considerable sum. Once again the king used his claims to land in North America to pay off his debts to a friend.

  Penn's charter for the colony of Pennsylvania, awarded in February 1681, was another proprietary grant like those conveyed in Maryland, New York, and Carolina. Penn's lands were to extend from 12 miles north of Newcastle along the Delaware River until the forty-third parallel. He received extensive powers to distribute his lands on such terms as he chose, create manors, and make all laws and raise taxes, subject to “the advice, assent, and approbation of the Freemen of the said Country.” In an emergency he could issue ordinances without the assembly. Yet his power was not absolute, for all laws were to be forwarded within five years for inspection by the Privy Council, which could disallow those found to be inconsistent with English law. Furthermore, all commerce was to be “according to the lawes made or to be made within our Kingdom of England” and Penn was obliged to admit any officers sent for their enforcement. In return the king promised to levy no taxes except with “the consent of the Proprietary, or chief governor, or assembly, or by act of Parliament in England.”

  As was evident from the terms of Penn's charter, colonial administration was beginning to change. Now proprietary grants were coming to be conceived less like feudal palatines and more like grants of power to operate a division within an empire ultimately controlled by the Crown. Also, this charter mentioned Parliament for the first time, reflecting its new role in the administration of the colonies following the passage of the Navigation Acts. Ironically, at this very moment Charles II was trying to reduce Parliament's influence at home.

  These restrictions did not worry Penn unduly. No mention was made of religion beyond the right of 20 inhabitants to petition the bishop of London for a minister. Penn's own intention was that there should be no established church but that toleration would be the norm, resulting in a society where all Christians lived in harmony bound by mutual respect. Penn called this his “holy experiment,” although the kind of holy experiment he sought was very different from the one envisaged earlier by John Winthrop. Penn, like all Quakers, believed that people were intrinsically good and needed only marginal direction. This view was the exact opposite of the Puritan concept of human depravity. Hence the kind of autocratic, repressive government which Winthrop regarded as necessary had no place in Penn's scheme of things. To him persecution, not dissent, was the real crime.

  Like the Puritans, though, Penn's motives combined religious idealism with a desire to expand his own fortunes. This meant he had to attract investors and sell land to settlers, who would pay him modest quitrents. For investment capital, he turned to a group of wealthy Quakers, called the Free Society of Traders, who arranged for the purchase of various holdings of 10,000 acres each and also negotiated special privileges, including the choice of the best waterfront sites in the new city which Penn was planning. To attract settlers, Penn publicized his intention to offer them land on generous terms. In the spring of 1681, after appointing a council with himself as governor, Penn issued a document called “Concessions to the Province of Pennsylvania.” Its terms were remarkably generous: 50 acres were to be granted to every male servant on completion of his service, and all lands were to be subject to only a small quitrent of one shilling per 100 acres. No limit was placed on the size of holdings, though a certain proportion had to be settled within three years. Strict instructions were also issued concerning disputes with the Native Americans which were to be arbitrated between six whites and six Indians, with everyone treated equally before the law.13 Next Penn circulated a pamphlet in England, Wales, and parts of Holland and Germany, where the Society of Friends was also well established, descr
ibing the proposed settlement. Several English and Welsh groups, not all of them Quaker, immediately expressed interest, encouraged by Penn's offer that anyone participating in the purchase of the first 500,000 acres would receive a free lot in the new city. Some 600 people took advantage of this offer to become “First Purchasers.”

  As the first settlers began to arrive on the Delaware, a pleasing prospect awaited them. Penn had fortuitously obtained the best real estate on the east coast of America. The land along the river was extremely fertile, and a favorable site was quickly found on the banks of the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers for the principal town and port of Philadelphia, so called after the Greek word for brotherly love. The town was soon laid out in neat rectangular blocks as Penn desired, anticipating the later American gridiron style of urban planning. Houses were to be a certain distance apart to contain fires and to prevent the spread of disease. In the countryside, as well, Penn envisioned the orderly development of compact towns where settlers would work together to promote the common welfare.