History of the United States. John Clark Ridpath
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College Founded.
18. In 1636 the general court of the colony passed an act appropriating between one and two thousand dollars to found a college. Newtown was selected as the site of the proposed school. Plymouth and Salem gave gifts to help the enterprise; and from villages in the Connecticut valley came contributions of corn and wampum. In 1638 John Harvard, a minister of Charlestown, died, bequeathing his library and nearly five thousand dollars to the school. To perpetuate his memory, the new institution was named Harvard College. At the same time the name of Newtown was changed to Cambridge.
19. The PRINTING-PRESS came also. In 1638 Stephen Daye, an English printer, arrived at Boston, and in the following year set up a press at Cambridge. The first American publication was an almanac for New England, bearing date of 1639. During the next year, Thomas Welde and John Eliot, two ministers of Roxbury, and Richard Mather, of Dorchester, translated the Hebrew Psalms into English verse. This was the first book printed in America.
20. New England was fast becoming a nation. Well-nigh fifty villages dotted the face of the country. Enterprises of all kinds were rife. Manufactures, commerce, and the arts were introduced. William Stephens, a shipbuilder of Boston, had already built and launched an American vessel of four hundred tons burden. Twenty-one thousand two hundred people had found a home between Plymouth Rock and the Connecticut.
The Union of the Colonies.
21. Circumstances suggested a union of the colonies. The western frontier was exposed to the hostilities of the Dutch on the Hudson. Similar trouble was apprehended from the French on the north. Indian tribes capable of mustering a thousand warriors were likely at any hour to fall upon the helpless villages. Common interests made a union indispensable.
22. The first effort to consolidate the colonies was ineffectual. But in 1643, a plan of union was adopted, by which Massachusetts, Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven were joined in a confederacy, called The United Colonies of New England. The chief authority was conferred upon an assembly composed of two representatives from each colony. These delegates were chosen annually at an election where all the freemen voted by ballot. There was no president other than the speaker of the assembly. Provision was made for the admission of other colonies into the union, but none were ever admitted.
23. At a meeting of the assembly in December, 1641, Nathaniel Ward brought forward a written instrument, which was adopted as the constitution of the State. This statute was called the Body of Liberties, and was ever afterward esteemed as the great charter of colonial freedom.
Persecution of the Quakers.
24. In July of 1656 the Quakers began to arrive at Boston. The first who came were Ann Austin and Mary Fisher. They were caught and searched for marks of witchcraft, and then thrown into prison. After several weeks' confinement they were brought forth and banished. Before the end of the year, eight others were arrested and sent back to England. A law was passed that Quakers who persisted in coming to Massachusetts should have their ears cut off and their tongues bored through with a red-hot iron. In 1657 the assembly of the four colonies convened, and the penalty of death was passed against the Quakers as disturbers of the public peace.
Trade Restrictions.
25. The English Revolution had now run its course. Cromwell was dead. Tidings of the restoration of Charles II. reached Boston on the 27th of July, 1660. On the reestablishment of the English monarchy, a law was passed by which all vessels not bearing the English flag were forbidden to trade in New England. Articles produced in the colonies and demanded in England should be shipped to England only. The products of England should not be manufactured in America, and should be bought from England only; and a duty of five per cent. was put on both exports and imports. This was the beginning of those measures which produced the American Revolution.
26. In 1664 war broke out between England and Holland. It became a part of the English plans to conquer the Dutch settlements on the Hudson. Charles II. was also anxious to obtain control of all the New England colonies. He therefore appointed four commissioners to settle colonial disputes, and to exercise authority in the name of the king. The real object was to get possession of the charter of Massachusetts. In July, 1664, the royal judges arrived at Boston. They were rejected in all the colonies except Rhode Island. Meanwhile, the English monarch, learning how his judges had been received, recalled them, and they left the country. For ten years after this event the colony was very prosperous.
Harvard College in 1770.
CHAPTER XIII.
Massachusetts.—War and Witchcraft.
THE old king Massasoit died in 1662. His son, Alexander, now became chief of the nation, but died within the year; and the chieftainship descended to the younger brother, Philip of Mount Hope. It was the fate of this brave man to lead his people in a final struggle against the whites. Causes of war already existed, and the time had come for the conflict.
King Philip's War.
2. The natives of New England had sold their lands. The English were the purchasers; the chiefs had signed the deeds; the price had been fairly paid. There were at this time in the country east of the Hudson about twenty-five thousand Indians and fifty thousand English. The young warriors could not understand the validity of land-titles. They sighed for the freedom of their fathers' hunting-grounds. The Wampanoags had nothing left but the peninsulas of Bristol and Tiverton. There were personal grievances also. King Alexander had been arrested, tried by an English jury, and imprisoned. He had caught his death-fever in a Boston jail. On the 24th of June, 1675, the village of Swanzey was attacked, and eight Englishmen were killed.
3. Within a week the militia of Plymouth, joined by volunteers from Boston, entered the enemy's country. A few Indians were overtaken and killed. The troops marched into the peninsula of Bristol, and compelled Philip to fly for his life. A general Indian war broke out. The hatred of the savages was easily kindled into hostility. For a whole year the settlements on the frontier became a scene of burning and massacre.
4. King Canonchet of the Narragansetts first made a treaty of peace with the English, but later violated it and chose to share the fate of Philip. But after much desperate fighting and heavy losses on both sides, the resources of the savages were exhausted and their numbers daily grew less. In April, 1676, Canonchet was captured on the banks of the Blackstone. Refusing to make a treaty, the haughty chieftain was put to death. Philip's company had dwindled to a handful. His wife and son were made prisoners; the latter was sold as a slave, and ended his life in the Bermudas. The savage monarch cared no longer to live. A company of soldiers surrounded him near his old home at Mount Hope. A treacherous Indian took a deadly aim at the breast of his chieftain. The report of a musket rang through the woods, and the king of the Wampanoags sprang forward and fell dead.
5. New England suffered terribly in this war. The losses of the war amounted to five hundred thousand dollars. Thirteen towns and six hundred dwellings lay in ashes. Six hundred men had fallen in the field. Gray-haired sire, mother and babe had sunk together under the blow of the Red man's tomahawk. Now there was peace again. The Indian race had been swept out of New England. The tribes beyond the Connecticut came and pleaded for their lives. The colonists returned to their farms and villages, to build new homes in the ashes of old ruins.
The Province of Maine.
6. The next trouble was concerning the province of Maine. Sir Ferdinand Gorges, the old proprietor, was now dead; but his heirs still claimed the territory. The people of Maine had put themselves under the authority of Massachusetts; but the heirs of Gorges carried the matter before the English council,