--. 
 
 
 s.-i 
 
 .s 
 
 .vlOS'ANC 
 
 ^P^ J>^s_ 
 <XL s s/Or
 
 
 ^dOS-ANCElfjV 
 71 t /O 
 
 g iftjUjH 
 I IjFli 
 
 <?. r ^ 
 
 .=> 
 
 1
 
 pmjj for Cnnnntitttt. 
 
 BEING AN 
 
 HISTORICAL ESTIMATE 
 
 OF THE STATE, 
 
 DELIVERED BEFORE 
 
 THE LEGISLATURE AND OTHER INVITED GUESTS, 
 
 FESTIVAL OP THE NORMAL SCHOOL IN NEW BRITAIN, JUNE 4, 1851. 
 
 BY HORACE BUSHNELL. 
 
 PRINTED BY ORDER OF THE LEGISLATURE. 
 
 HARTFORD : 
 
 BOSWELL AND FAXON 
 1851.
 
 pmlj for Cntttiniirnt, 
 
 BEING AN 
 
 HISTORICAL ESTIMATE 
 
 OF THE STATE, 
 
 DELIVERED BEFORE 
 
 THE LEGISLATURE AND OTHER INVITED GUESTS, 
 
 FESTIVAL OF THE NORMAL SCHOOL IN NEW BRITAIN, JUNE 4, 1851. 
 
 BY HORACE BUSHNELL 
 
 PRINTED BY ORDER OF THE LEGISLATURE. 
 
 HARTFORD : 
 
 BOSWELL AND FAXON. 
 1851. 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
 
 NOTE. 
 
 The festival, in connection with which this discourse was delivered, 
 celebrated the opening of the new building for the Normal School of 
 Connecticut ; a fine spacious structure, erected by the munificence of 
 the citizens of New Britain, and presented, on this occasion, to the 
 State.
 
 stae* 
 
 072- 
 ^7 . 
 
 SPEECH, &C. 
 
 FRIENDS AND FELLOW CITIZENS : 
 
 THE occasion which has brought us together celebrates 
 another stage of advance in the cause of public education in 
 our commonwealth. When I accepted the call to address you 
 on this occasion, I designed to prepare a theme immediately 
 related to the subject of popular education itself. But on more 
 mature consideration, taking counsel also of others, I have con- 
 cluded that, as the occasion belongs to the state, and as I am to 
 speak to the Legislature of the state, I cannot do better than to 
 make the state itself its character and wants and prospects 
 the subject of my address. And I do it the more readily, because 
 of the conviction I feel, and hope also to produce, that, if there 
 be any state in the world, whose history itself is specially ap- 
 propriate to a festival of popular education, that state is Con- 
 necticut. 
 
 It is a fact often remarked by the students of history, that all 
 the states or nations, that have most impressed the world by 
 their high civilization and their genius, have been small in ter- 
 ritorial extent. If we ask for the reason, it is probably because 
 society is sufficiently concentrated only in small communities, 
 to produce the intensest development of mind and character. 
 Hence it is not in the ancient Roman or Persian empires, but 
 in little sterile Attica, territorially small in comparison even 
 with Connecticut, that the chief lawgivers, philosophers, orators, 
 poets of antiquity have their spring ; sending out their unarmed 
 thoughts to subdue and occupy the mind of the world, in the 
 distant ages of time. So again, and probably for a similar
 
 reason, it is not in the great kingdoms or empires of Western 
 Europe, that the quickening po\vf!of modern history have 
 their birth ; but in the Florentine Republic, in Flanders, and 
 the free commercial cities, in Saxony, Holland, and England. 
 Here is the birth place of modern art. Here it is that man- 
 ufactures originate and flourish. Here it is that, having no 
 territory at home, commerce builds its ships and sends them out 
 to claim the seas for a territory. Here is the cradle of the 
 Reformation. Here the free principles of government, that 
 are running but not yet glorified, took their spring. 
 
 In view of facts like these, it is a great excellence of our 
 confederated form of government, that it combines the advan- 
 tages both of great and small communities. We have a com- 
 mon country, and yet we have many small countries ; a vast 
 republic that embosoms many small republics, each possessing 
 a qualified sovereignty, each to have a character and make a 
 history of its own. There is brought into play, in this manner, 
 without infringing at all on the general unity of the republic, 
 a more special and homelike feeling in the several states (sharp- 
 ened by mutual comparison) which, as a tonic power in society, 
 is necessary to the highest developments of character and civ- 
 ilization. Spreading out, in a vast republican empire that spans 
 a continent, we are thus to be condensed into small communi- 
 ties, each distinctly and completely conscious of itself, and all 
 acting as mutual stimulants to each other. Nor is any thing 
 more to be desired, in this view, than that we preserve our dis- 
 tinct position as states, and embody as much of a state feeling 
 as possible, about our several centers of public life and action. 
 Let Virginia have her "cavaliers" and her "old dominion." Let 
 Massachusetts be conscious always of Massachusetts, and let 
 every man of her sons, in every grade and party, exult in the 
 honors that crown her history. Let the Vermonter speak of 
 his " Green Mountain state," with the sturdy pride of a moun- 
 taineer. Let the sons of Rhode Island exult in the history and 
 spirit of their little fiery republic. This state feeling has an 
 immense value, and the want of it is a want much to be de- 
 plored. I would even prefer to have this feeling developed so 
 strongly as to create some friction between the citizens of the 
 different states, rather than to have it deficient.
 
 Pardon me if I suggest the conviction, that this feeling is not 
 as decided and distinct, in our state, as it may be and ought to 
 be. It is our misfortune that we hold a position midway be- 
 tween two capital cities ; that of New England on one side, 
 and the commercial capital of the nation on the other. To 
 these we go as our market places. From these we get our 
 fashions, our news, and too often our prejudices and opinions ; 
 or, what is worse, just that neutral state of both, which is crea- 
 ted by the very incongruous mixture they produce. Mean- 
 time, it is a great misfortune that we have no capital of our 
 own, or if any, a migratory capital. For public sentiment, in 
 order to get firmness and become distinctly conscious, must 
 have fixed objects about which it may embody itself. A. capi- 
 tal which is here and there is neither here nor there. It is no 
 capita], but a symbol rather of vagrancy, and probably of what 
 is worse, of local jealousies which are too contemptible to be 
 inspiring. Besides we are too little aware of our own noble his- 
 tory as a state. The historical writers of Massachusetts have 
 been more numerous and better qualified than ours, and they 
 have naturally seen the events of New England history, with 
 the eyes of metropolitans. We have, as yet, nothing that can 
 be called a just and spirited history of our state, and the mass 
 of our citizens seem to suppose that we have no history worthy 
 attention. It is only a dry record, they fancy, of puritanical 
 severities, destitute of incident and too unheroic to support any 
 generous emotions. Our sense of it is expressed in th"e single 
 epithet " the blue law state." Never were any people more 
 miserably defrauded. Meantime we are continually sinking in 
 relative power, as a member of the confederacy. Our public 
 men no longer represent the fourth state in the Union, as in 
 the Revolution, but the little, comparatively declining state of 
 Connecticut. And the danger is that, as we sink, in the rela- 
 tive scale of numbers, the little enthusiasm left us will die out, 
 as a spark on our altars, and we shall become as insignificant in 
 the scale of moral, as of territorial consequence. 
 
 Accordingly it becomes a very interesting question to the 
 people of our state, what shall we do to maintain a position of 
 respect and power ? how shall we kindle and feed the true
 
 6 
 
 fire of public feeling necessary to our character and our stand- 
 ing in the republic ? If there be a citizen present, of any sect 
 or party, who can see no interest in such a problem, to him I 
 have nothing to say. The man who does not wish to love and 
 honor the state, in which he and his children are born, has no 
 heart in his bosom, and it is not in any words or arguments of 
 mine, certainly, to give him what the sterility of his nature 
 denies. 
 
 It will occur to you at once, in the problem raised, that what 
 any people can be and ought to be, depends, in a principal de- 
 gree, on what they have been. And so much is there in this 
 principle, that scarcely any thing is necessary, as it seems to 
 me, to exalt our public consciousness and set us forward in the 
 path of honor, but simply to receive the true idea of our history 
 and be kindled with a genuine inspiration derived from a just 
 recollection of the past. 
 
 In this view it is, that I now propose to give you a sketch, or 
 outline of our history ; or perhaps I should rather say, an his- 
 toric estimate of our standing as a member of the republic. In 
 giving this outline, or estimate, I must deal, of course, with facts 
 that are familiar to many ; but we have a history of such 
 transcendent beauty, freshened by so many inspiring and heroic 
 incidents, that we should not easily tire under the recital, 
 however familiar. Nothing should tire us but the mortifying 
 fact, that as a people, we have not yet attained to the sense of 
 our own'public honors. Mr. Bancroft, the historian, thoroughly 
 acquainted with the relative character and merit of the Ameri- 
 can States, not long ago said, "There is no state in the 
 Union, and I know not any in the world, in whose early history, 
 if I were a citizen, I could find more of which to be proud, and 
 less that 1 should wish to blot." My own conviction is that 
 this early history, though not the most prominent, is really the 
 most beautiful that was ever permitted to any state or people 
 in the world. 
 
 In tracing its outline, I shall be obliged to make some reference 
 to that of other states, but I will endeavor not to make the com- 
 parison odious. I must infringe, a little, in particular, on some 
 of the claims of Massachusetts, and therefore I ought to say be- 
 forehand, that no one is more sensible than I to the historic
 
 merit, or rejoices more heartily, in the proud eminence of that 
 state, as one of the members of the republic a member with- 
 out which, indeed, the republic would want a necessary support 
 of its character and felicity. It can the better afford to yield 
 us, therefore, what is our own ; or rather can the less afford to 
 diminish our just honors, by claiming to itself what is quite un- 
 necessary to its true pre-eminence of name and its metropolitan 
 position as a state. 
 
 It may well be a subject of pride to our state that the original 
 settlement of the Connecticut and New Haven colonies, after- 
 wards called Connecticut, comprised an amount of character 
 and talent so very remarkable. 
 
 There was Ludlow, said to have been the first lawyer of the 
 colonies, assisting at the construction of the first written consti- 
 tution originated in the new world ; one that was the type of 
 all that came after, even that of the Republic itself. Whether 
 it was that he was too much of a lawyer to be a hearty Puritan, 
 or had too much of the unhappy and refractory element in his 
 temper to be comfortable any where, it is somewhat difficult to 
 judge. But he became dissatisfied, removed to the Fairfield 
 settlement, and afterwards to Virginia. The casual hints and 
 traditions, left us of his character, impress the feeling that he 
 was a very remarkable man, and excite in us the wish that a 
 more adequate account of his somewhat irregular history had 
 been preserved to us. 
 
 There was Haynes, also, the first Governor, a man of higher 
 moral qualities, and different, though not perhaps inferior ac- 
 complishments. He was a gentleman of fortune, holding an 
 elegant seat in Essex. But the American wilderness, with a 
 right to his own religious convictions, he could easily prefer to 
 the charms of affluence and refinement. Turning his back 
 upon these, he came over to Boston. And it is a sufficient 
 proof of his character and ability that, during his short stay 
 there, he was elected Governor of the Massachusetts colony. 
 In the new colony that came out afterwards to settle on the 
 banks of the Connecticut, he was leader and father from the 
 beginning. He was a man of great practical wisdom and per-
 
 8 
 
 sonal address ; liberal in his opinions, firm in his piety, a man 
 every way fit to lay republican foundations. 
 
 Governor Hopkins, a rich Turkey merchant of London, was 
 another of the founders ; a man of less gravity though not infe- 
 rior in the qualities of fortune, or personal excellence, and supe- 
 rior to all in his great munificence. By his bequest the Gram- 
 mar schools of Hartford and New Haven, and the Professorship 
 of Divinity in Harvard College, were founded. His talents are 
 sufficiently evinced by the fact that, returning on a visit, to his 
 estate and his friends in England, he was detained there by an 
 unexpected promotion from Cromwell to be Commissioner of 
 the Navy and Admiralty. 
 
 Governor Winthrop, or as he is commonly called, the younger 
 Winthrop, was the most accomplished scholar and gentleman 
 of New England. Educated to society, liberalized in his views 
 by foreign travel, which in that day was a more remarkable 
 distinction than it is at present, he was qualified by his manners 
 and address thus cultivated, to shine as a courtier in the high- 
 est circles of influence. A sufficient proof of his power in this 
 way, may be found in the fact that the Connecticut charter 
 was obtained by him ; an instrument so republican, so singu- 
 larly liberal in its terms, that it has greatly puzzled the historians 
 to guess by what means any king could have been induced to 
 give it, and especially to give it to a Puritan. 
 
 John Mason, the soldier, I will speak of in another place, only 
 observing here that he was trained to arms under Lord Fairfax, 
 in Holland, and gave so high a proof of his valor and capacity, 
 both there and here, that he was solicited by Cromwell to return 
 to England, and occupy the high post of Major General in his 
 army. 
 
 Thomas Hooker, another of the founders, and first minister 
 of the Hartford colony, was distinguished as a graduate and 
 fellow of Cambridge University, and more as a minister and 
 preacher of the established church. He was called the Luther 
 of New England, for the reason, I suppose, that the sturdy em- 
 phasis and thunder tone of his style resembled him to the great 
 Reformer. Whenever he visited Boston, after his removal to 
 Connecticut, crowds rushed to hear him as the great preacher 
 of the colonies. As a specimen of physical humanity, if we may
 
 9 
 
 trust the descriptions given of his person, he was one of the 
 most remarkable of men ; uniting the greatest beauty of coun- 
 tenance with a heighth and breadth of frame almost gigantic. 
 The works he has left, more voluminous and various than those 
 of any other of the New England founders, are his monument. 
 
 John Davenport, of the New Haven colony, was a different, 
 though by no means, inferior man. He was a son of the mayor 
 of Coventry, a student and afterwards Bachelor of Divinity at 
 Oxford University. Settled as the incumbent of St. Stephen's 
 Church, in London, he exerted great influence and power 
 among the clergy of the metropolis. His effect lay more ex- 
 clusively than Hooker's, in the rigid, argumentative vigor of his 
 opinions. Probably no other, unless perhaps we except John 
 Cotton, impressed himself more deeply on the churches of New 
 England. 
 
 Governor Eaton, of the New Haven colony, had become rich 
 by his great and judicious operations, as a merchant in the 
 trade of the Baltic. Attracting, in this way, the attention of 
 the court, he was honored as the King's Ambassador at the 
 court of Denmark ; evidence sufficiently clear of the high esti- 
 mation in which he was held, and also of his talents and charac- 
 ter a character not diminished by the noble virtues and the 
 high capacities, revealed in his long and beautifully paternal 
 administration, as a Christian ruler here. 
 
 Desborough, the New Haven colony soldier, afterwards re- 
 turned to England and held the office of Major General in 
 Cromwell's army, a fact which sufficiently exhibits him. 
 
 Such were nine of the original founders of Connecticut. 
 What one of them has left a blot on his character, or that of 
 the state ? What one of them ever failed to fill his place ? 
 And that, if I am right, is the truest evidence of merit ; not the 
 renown which place and circumstance may give to a far infe- 
 rior merit, or which vain ambition, rioting for place, may be able 
 to achieve. Is it not a most singular felicity, that our little 
 state, planted in a remote wilderness, should have had, among 
 its founders, nine master spirits and leaders, so highly accom- 
 plished, so worthy to be reverenced for their talents and their 
 virtues ?
 
 10 
 
 I have spoken of the civil constitution of the Hartford or 
 Connecticut colony. Virginia began her experiment under 
 martial law. The emigrants in the Mayflower are sometimes 
 spoken of as having adopted a civil constitution before the land- 
 ing at Plymouth ; but it will be found that the brief document 
 called by that name, is only a "covenant to be a body politic," 
 not a proper constitution. The Massachusetts or Boston colo- 
 ny had the charter of a trading company, under cover of 
 which, transferred to the emigrants, they maintained a civil 
 organization. It was reserved to the infant colony on the 
 Connecticut, only three years after the settlement, to model the 
 first properly American constitution a work in which the 
 framers were permitted to give body and shape, for the first 
 time, to the genuine republican idea, that dwelt as an actuating 
 force, or inmost sense, in all the New England colonies. The 
 trading-company governor and assistants of the Massachusetts 
 colony, having emigrated bodily, and brought over the com- 
 pany charter with them, had been constrained to allow some 
 modifications, by which their relation as directors of a stock 
 subscription were transformed into a more properly civil and 
 popular relation. In this manner, the government was gradu- 
 ally becoming a genuine elective republic, according to our 
 sense of the term. The progress made was wholly in the direc- 
 tion taken by the framers of the Connecticut constitution ; 
 though, as yet, they had matured no such result. At the very 
 time when our constitution was framed, they were endeavor- 
 ing, in Massachusetts, to comfort the " hereditary gentlemen" 
 by erecting them into a kind of American House of Lords, 
 called the " Standing Council for Life." The deputies might 
 be chosen from the colony at large, and were not required to 
 be inhabitants of the town by which they were chosen. The 
 freemen were required to be members of the church, and all the 
 officers stood on the theocratic, or church basis, in the same 
 way. They were also debating, at this time, the civil admissi- 
 bility or propriety of dropping one governor and choosing 
 another ; Cotton and many of the principal men insisting that 
 the office was a virtual freehold, or vested right. Holding 
 these points in view, how evident is the distinctness and the 
 proper originality of the Connecticut constitution. It organizes
 
 11 
 
 a government elective, annually, in all the departments. It 
 ordains that no person shall be chosen governor for two suc- 
 cessive years. It requires the deputies to be inhabitants and 
 representatives of the towns where they are chosen. The 
 elective franchise is not limited to members of the church, but 
 conditioned simply on admission to the rights of an elector by 
 a major vote of the town. In short, this constitution, the first 
 one written out, as a complete frame of civil order, in the new 
 world, embodies all the essential features of the constitutions of 
 our states, and of the Republic itself, as they exist at the pres- 
 ent day. It is the free representative plan, which now dis- 
 tinguishes our country in the eyes of the world. 
 
 "Nearly two centuries have elapsed," says Mr. Bancroft, 
 "the world has been made wiser by various experience, po- 
 litical institutions have become the theme on which the most 
 powerful and cultivated minds have been employed, dynasties 
 of kings have been dethroned, recalled, dethroned again, and so 
 many constitutions have been framed or reformed, stifled or 
 subverted, that memory may despair of a complete catalogue ; 
 but the people of Connecticut have found no reason to deviate 
 essentially from the government established by their fathers. 
 History has ever celebrated the commanders of armies, on 
 which victory has been entailed, the heroes who have won 
 laurels in scenes of carnage and rapine. Has it no place for 
 the founders of states the wise legislators who struck the rock 
 in the wilderness, and the waters of liberty gushed forth in 
 copious and perennial fountains ? They who judge of men, by 
 their influence on public happiness, and by the services they 
 render to the human race, will never cease to honor the mem- 
 ory of Hooker and Haynes." 
 
 Had Mr. Bancroft included, with the names of Hooker and 
 Haynes, that also of Ludlow, placing it first in the list, I suspect 
 that his very handsome and just tribute of honor would have 
 found its mark more exactly. We know that Mr. Ludlow on 
 two several occasions after this, was appointed by the Legisla- 
 ture to draft a code of laws for the state, and there is much 
 reason, in that fact, to suppose that he drew the Constitution 
 itself. His impracticable, refractory temper set him on, far- 
 ther as many suppose, in the direction of democracy, than any
 
 other of the distinguished men of the emigration ; and they very 
 naturally imagine, for this reason, that they see his hand, in 
 particular, in the new Constitution framed. 
 
 I must not omit to mention, what is specially remarkable in 
 this document, that no mention whatever is made in it, either 
 of king or Parliament, or the least intimation given of allegi- 
 ance to the mother country. On the contrary, an oath of alle- 
 giance is required directly to the state. And it is expressly 
 declared that in the " General Court," as organized, shall exist 
 " the SUPREME POWER of the Commonwealth." 
 
 The precedence we had thus gained, in the matter of consti- 
 tutional history, I am happy, to add, was honorably maintained 
 afterwards, in the formation of the Constitution of the Republic 
 itself; for it is a fact, which those who are wont to sneer at the 
 blueness and legislative incapacity of our state, may be chal- 
 lenged also to remember, that Connecticut took the lead in 
 proposing and, by the high abilities and the strenuous exertions of 
 Ellsworth and Sherman, finally carried that distinction of the 
 Constitution of the United States, which is most fundamental 
 and peculiar to it as a frame of civil government, and which 
 now is just beginning, as never before, to fix the attention and 
 attract the admiration of the world. I speak here of the feder- 
 ative element, by which so many sovereign states are kept in 
 distinct activity, while included under a higher sovereignty. 
 When the Convention were assembled that framed the Consti- 
 tion of the Republic, they were met, at the threshold, by a very 
 important question, viz : Whether the Constitution to be 
 framed should be the Constitution of a ' Nation' or of a ' Con- 
 federacy of states.' Mr. Calhoun gave the true history of the 
 struggle, in his speech before the Senate of the United States, 
 Feb. 12th, 1847. " The three states, Massachusetts, Pennsyl- 
 vania, and Virginia," he said, " were the largest and were ac- 
 tively and strenuously in favor of a ' National' government. 
 The two leading spirits were Mr. Hamilton of New York, 
 probably the author of the resolution, and Mr. Madison of Vir- 
 ginia. In the early stages of the Convention, there was a 
 majority in favor of a ' National' government. But in 
 this stage there were but eleven states in the Conven- 
 tion. In process of time, New Hampshire came in, a very great
 
 13 
 
 addition to the federal side, which now became predominant. 
 It is owing mainly to the states of Connecticut and New Jersey 
 that we have a ' Federal' instead of a ' National' government 
 the best government instead of the worst and most intolerable 
 on earth. Who are the men of these states to whom we are 
 indebted for this admirable government ? I will name them 
 their names ought to be engraven on brass and live forever. 
 They were Chief Justice Ellsworth, Roger Sherman, and Judge 
 Patterson of New Jersey. The other states farther South 
 were blind they did not see the future. But to the coolness 
 and sagacity of these three men, aided by a few others, not so 
 prominent, we owe the present Constitution." 
 
 Such is the tribute paid to Connecticut by one of the greatest 
 of American statesmen. To have claimed this honor to our- 
 selves might have been offensive. To receive it, when it is 
 tendered, is no more than a duty. Here then we are in 1850, 
 thirty-one states, skirting two oceans, still one republic, under 
 one tribunal of justice, under one federal Constitution, which 
 we boast as a frame of order that will some time shelter the 
 rights and accommodate the manifold interests of 200,000,000 
 of people the greatest achievement of legislative wisdom in 
 the modern history of the world and for Connecticut, who 
 came as near being the author of these noble appointments as 
 she could, and do it by the votes of other states for her the 
 principal honor and reward of many is a shrug of derision, and 
 the sneer that calls her the blue law state ! 
 
 Since I am speaking here of our agency in the matter of 
 laws and constitutions, let me go a little farther, and show you 
 with what justice our laws can be made, as they so commonly 
 are, a subject of derision. The derisive epithet, by which we 
 are so often distinguished, was given us by the tory renegade, 
 Peters, who, while better men were fighting the battles of their 
 country, was skulking in London, and getting his bread there, 
 by the lies he could produce against Connecticut. The men- 
 dacity of his character and writings has been a thousand times 
 exposed, and the very laws that he published, as the " blue," 
 shown to be forgeries invented by himself; and yet there are 
 many, I am sorry to say, who do not soberly believe that
 
 14 
 
 wooden nutmegs were ever manufactured in Connecticut, who 
 nevertheless accept the blue law fiction as the real fact of his- 
 tory. They do not understand, as they properly might, that 
 the two greatest dishonors that ever befel Connecticut, are the 
 giving birth to Benedict Arnold and the Reverend Samuel 
 Peters unless it be a third that she has given birth to so 
 many who, denouncing one, are yet ready to believe and fol- 
 low the other. 
 
 There is no state in the civilized world whose laws, headed 
 by the noble Constitution of the Hartford Colony, are more 
 simple and righteous ; none where the redress of wrongs is less 
 expensive, or less cumbered by tedious and useless technicali- 
 ties. It is even doubtful whether the new code of practice in 
 New York, which is just now attracting so much attention 
 abroad, requires to be named as an exception. The first law 
 Reports, published in the United States, were Kirby's Connec- 
 ticut Reports. The first law school of the nation was the cele- 
 brated school of Judge Reeve, at Litchfield , a school which 
 gave the first impulse to law as a science in our country. 
 Chief Justice Ellsworth, Judges Smith, Gould. Kent, Walworth, 
 and I know not how many others most distinguished in legal 
 science in our country, were sons of Connecticut. Judge 
 Ellsworth was chairman of the committee of Congress that 
 prepared the Judiciary Act, by which the Supreme Court of the 
 Nation was organized ; and it will be found that some of the 
 provisions of that Act that are most peculiar, are copied verba- 
 tim from the statutes of Connecticut. The practice of the 
 Supreme Court is often said to resemble the practice of Con- 
 necticut more than that of any other state. And, what is more, 
 the form, of the Supreme Court itself, as a tribunal of law, 
 chancery, admiralty and criminal jurisdiction, comprised in 
 one, is copied from the laws of Massachusetts and Connecticut. 
 
 It is true indeed, reverting to the earlier laws of the common- 
 wealth, that we find severities enacted against the Baptists and 
 Quakers, precisely as in Virginia, New York, and Massachu- 
 setts. How far these laws were executed in Connecticut, 
 or under what conditions, I will not undertake to say, but they 
 seem to have been aimed only at a class of fanatics, who made 
 it a point of duty to violate the religious convictions of every
 
 15 
 
 body else ; bringing their logs of wood to chop on the church 
 steps on Sunday, and their spinning wheels to spin by the door ; 
 and walking the streets in the questionable grace of nudity, 
 to testify against the sins of the people. In 1708, the English 
 Quakers petitioned the government against these laws, when 
 Governor Saltonstall wrote over in reply, to Sir Henry Ashurst, 
 as follows , " I may observe, from the matter of their objec- 
 tions, that they have a further reach than to obtain liberty for 
 their own persuasion, as they pretend ; (for many of the laws 
 they object against concern them no more than if they were 
 Turks or Jews,) for as there never was, that I know of, for this 
 twenty years that I have resided in this government, any one 
 Quaker, or other person, that suffered upon the account of his 
 different persuasion, .in religious matters, from the body of this 
 people, so neither is there any of the society of Quakers any 
 where in this government, unless one family or two, on the line 
 between us and New York ; which yet I am not certain of." 
 
 Episcopacy was tolerated here by a public act, when, as yet, 
 there were not seventy families in the state of that denomina- 
 tion at the very time too, when there were two Presbyterian 
 clergymen lying in prison, at New York, for the crime of 
 preaching a sermon and baptising a child. After several months 
 they obtained their release, by paying a fine of 500 sterling. 
 Forty years later, Dr. Rogers, a Presbyterian clergyman, was 
 deterred, by threats of a similar penalty, from preaching in 
 Virginia. The whole system of tithes was there in force, as 
 stiff as in Ireland now. Fees for marrying, churching and 
 burying were established by law. In 1618, a law was passed 
 in Virginia, requiring every person to attend church on Sun- 
 days and church holidays, on penalty of " lying neck and heels," 
 as it was called, for one night, and being held to labor as a 
 slave, by the colony, for the week following. Eleven years 
 after, this penalty was changed, to a fine of one pound of to- 
 bacco, " to be paid to the minister." These facts I cite, not to 
 bring reproach on other states, but simply to show that religious 
 intolerance was the manner of the times. If, in the New 
 Haven colony, it is a reproach that only members of the church 
 were permitted to vote, the same was true, under the English 
 constitution, even down to within our memory. There is no
 
 16 
 
 sufficient evidence that any person was ever executed for 
 witchcraft in this state, though there were several trials, and 
 one or two convictions ; which the Governor and Council con- 
 trived, I believe, in one way or another, to release. Governor 
 Winthrop professed sincere scruples about the crime itself. 
 How it was in Massachusetts is sufficiently known to us all. 
 An execution for this crime took place in Switzerland, in 1760; 
 at Wurtzberg in Germany, in 1749 ; also, in Scotland, in 1722. 
 And, as late as 1716, a poor woman, and her daughter only nine 
 years old, were publicly hanged in England, for selling their 
 souls to the devil, and for raising a storm by the conjuration of 
 pulling off their stockings. The English statute against witch- 
 craft stood unrepealed, even down to 1736. 
 
 I confess I was never able to see why so heavy a share of 
 the odium of this kind of legislation should fall on the state of 
 Connecticut ; whose only reproach, in the matter, is that she 
 was not farther in advance of the civilized world, by another 
 half century. If the citizens of other states are able sometimes 
 to amuse themselves at our expense, we certainly are not re- 
 quired to* add to their amusement by an over sensitive re- 
 sentment. But if any son or citizen of Connecticut is wil- 
 ling to accept and appropriate as characteristic of its his- 
 tory, the slang epithet which perpetuates a tory lie and forgery, 
 then I have only to say that we have just so much reason to be 
 ashamed of the state on his account. He is either raw enough 
 to be taken by a very low imposture, or base enough in feeling 
 to enjoy a sneer at his mother's honor. 
 
 We have some right, I think, to another kind of distinction, 
 which we have never asserted ; that namely of being the colony 
 most distinctively independent in our character and proceed- 
 ings, in the times of the colonial history, previous to the revo- 
 lution. We were able to be so, in part, from our more retired 
 and sheltered position, and partly also because of the very pe- 
 culiar terms of our charter. Massachusetts, Virginia, New 
 York, Pennsylvania, all the other states, with the exception of 
 Rhode Island, were obliged by their charters, or the vacation 
 of their charters, to accept a chief executive, or governor, ap- 
 pointed by the crown. These royal governors had a negative
 
 17 
 
 upon the laws. They personated the king, maintaining a kind 
 of court pomp and majesty, overawi-ng the people, thwarting 
 their legislation, wielding a legal control, in right of the king, 
 over the whole military force, much as at the present day in 
 Canada. But the charter obtained for Connecticut, by the 
 singular address of Winthrop, allowed us to choose our own 
 governor and exercise all the functions of civil order. And so 
 we grew up, as a people, unawed by the trappings of royalty, a 
 race of simple, self-governing republicans. 
 
 For three little towns, on the Connecticut, to declare inde- 
 pendence of the mother country, we can easily see would have 
 been the part of madness probably they had not so much as a 
 thought of it and yet they had a something, a wish, an in- 
 stinct, call it what you will, which could write itself properly 
 out, in their constitution, only in the words, " Supreme Power." 
 And I see not how these words, formally asserting the sovereign- 
 ty of their General Court, escaped chastisement: unless it was 
 that they found a shelter for the crime, in their remoteness, and 
 the obscurity of their position. In this view, there was a kind 
 of sublimity in the sturdy growth of their sheltered and silent 
 state. They had no theories of democracy to assert. They 
 put on no brave airs for liberty. But they loved their con- 
 science and their religion, and in just the same degree, loved 
 not to be meddled with. In this habit their children grew up. 
 Their very intelligence became an eye of jealousy, and they 
 acknowledged the right of the king, much as when we acknowl- 
 edge the lightning by lifting a rod to carry it off! But when 
 the king came down upon them, in some act of authority or 
 royal interference that touched the security of their principles 
 or their position, then it was as if the Great Being, who had 
 " ordained whatsoever comes to pass," had ordained that some 
 things should not come to pass. 
 
 On as many as four several occasions, during the colonial 
 history, they set themselves in open conflict with the king's 
 authority, and triumphed by their determination. First in the 
 case of the regicide Judges, secreted at New Haven ; when 
 Davenport took for his text " Make thy shadow as night in the 
 midst of noon, hide the outcasts, bewray not him that wander- 
 eth." The king's officers were active in the search ; but, for 
 2
 
 18 
 
 some reason, the noon was as the night, and their victims could 
 not be found. Massachusetts expostulated with the refractory 
 people of New Haven, representing how much they would en- 
 danger all the colonies, if they did not hasten to address His 
 Majesty in some proper excuse, to which they replied that they 
 were ignorant of the form ! 
 
 Again, by rallying a force at New London, when Sir Ed- 
 mund Andross landed there, to proclaim the new patent of the 
 Duke of York, and take possession of the town silencing him 
 in the act, and compelling him to return to his ships. 
 
 A third time, when this same officer came on to Hartford, to 
 vacate the charter a passage of history commemorated by the 
 noble oak, whose gnarled trunk and limbs still remain, to rep- 
 resent the crabbed independence of the men, who would not 
 yield their rights to the royal mandate. May the old oak live 
 forever ! 
 
 And yet a fourth time, by asserting and vindicating, what 
 is the essential attribute of political independence, viz. the con- 
 trol and sovereignty of their own military force. Governor 
 Fletcher came on to Hartford, from New York, to demand the 
 control of the militia in the king's name ; and when he insisted 
 on reading the proclamation, he was drummed into silence by 
 command of Wadsworth, the chief officer. When the drum- 
 mer slacked, the word was, " Drum I say ;" and to the Gov- 
 ernor, " Stop, Sir, or I will make the sun shine through you in 
 an instant." He withdrew, the point was carried, and the 
 control of the military was retained. After that, when Pitt, at 
 the height of his power, wanted troops from Connecticut, he 
 sent the request of a levy to the Legislature, not a military 
 order. 
 
 It is not my design, as you have seen, to represent, in these 
 facts of history, that we had consciously and purposely set up 
 for independence ; but only that we had so much of the self- 
 governing spirit in us, nourished by the scope of our charter, 
 and sheltered by our more retired position, that we took our 
 independence before we knew it, and had the reality before we 
 made the claim. 
 
 In Massachusetts, the metropolitan colony, which had a more 
 open relation to the mother country, the spirit of independence
 
 19 
 
 was checked continually by considerations of prudence and, at 
 Boston especially, by the presence of the king and a kind of 
 court influence maintained by the royal governors. Accord- 
 ingly the Rev. Daniel Barber, who went on with the Connecti- 
 cut troops to Boston, at the first outbreak of the Revolution, 
 says, "In our march through Connecticut, the inhabitants 
 seemed to view us with joy and gladness, but when we came 
 into Massachusetts and advanced nearer to Boston, the inhab- 
 itants, where we stopped, seemed to have no better opinion of 
 us than if we had been a banditti of rogues and thieves; which 
 mortified our feelings, and drew from us expressions of angry 
 resentment" a fact in which we see, what could not be other- 
 wise, that the people 'nearest to the court influence in the me- 
 tropolis, were many of them infected with a spirit opposite to 
 the cause of the colonies. But here in the rear ground, and a 
 little removed from observation, it was far otherwise. Here 
 the sturdy spirit found room to grow and embody itself, unre- 
 strained by authority, uncorrupted by mixtures of opposing 
 influence. How necessary this sound rear-work of independ- 
 ence and homogenous feeling, in Connecticut, may have been 
 to the confidence and the finally decisive action of the men, who 
 immediately confronted the royal supremacy in Massachusetts, 
 we may never know. Suffice it to say that the causes of pub- 
 lic events most prominent, are not always the most real and 
 effective. 
 
 It is noticeable, also, that we went into the revolution under 
 peculiar advantages. We were not obliged to fall into civil 
 disorganization by ejecting a royal governor, in the manner of 
 other colonies. Our state was full organized, under a chief 
 magistracy of her own, having command of her own military 
 force, ready to move, without loosing a pin in her political fab- 
 ric. One of the royal governors ejected was even sent to Con- 
 necticut for safe keeping. We had kept up our fire in the rear, 
 making every hamlet and village ring with defiance, and erect- 
 ing our poles of liberty on every hill, during the very important 
 interval between the passage of the Boston port bill and the 
 stamp act. And so fierce and universal was the spirit of resist- 
 ance here, that, while the stamps were carried into all the other
 
 20 
 
 states, no officer of the crown dared undertake the sale of them 
 in Connecticut. 
 
 The forwardness of our state in the matter of independence, 
 is sufficiently evinced by the fact that our Legislature passed a 
 bill, on the 14th of June previous to the memorable 4th of July, 
 instructing her delegates to urge an immediate declaration of 
 independence. Nor did she sign that declaration by the hands 
 only of her own delegates. Two of her descendents in New 
 Jersey and one in Georgia, are among the names enrolled in 
 that honored instrument. Georgia withheld herself, at first, 
 from the Revolution. But there was a little Puritan settlement 
 at Midway, in that state, in which, as a physician and a man 
 of public influence, resided Doctor Hall, a native of Walling- 
 ford, and a graduate of Yale College. These Midway Puritans 
 were resolved to have their part in the Revolution, at all haz- 
 ards. . They made choice of Doctor Hall and sent him on to 
 the Congress as their delegate. He signed the declaration and, 
 the next year, Georgia came forward and took her place, led 
 into the Revolution by the hand of Connecticut. Is it then too 
 much to affirm, in view of all these facts, that if any state in 
 the union deserves to be called the Independent State, Connect- 
 icut may safely challenge that honor. 
 
 I must also speak of the military honors of our history. Mar- 
 tial distinctions are not the highest, and yet there is a kind of 
 military glory that can never fade ; that, I mean, which is 
 .gained in the defence of justice and liberty, as distinguished 
 .from the idle bravery of chivalry, and the rapacious violence of 
 conquest. 
 
 It is abundantly clear, as a fact of history, that our two colo- 
 nies meant, in their public relations with the Indian tribes, to 
 fulfil the exactest terms of justice and good neighborhood. Still 
 it happened, doubtless, as it always will in such cases, that indi- 
 viduals, instigated by a spirit of mischief or insolence, or by the 
 cupidity of gain, trepassed on their rights, not seldom, in acts 
 of bitter outrage. Such wrongs could not be absolutely pre- 
 vented, and, by reason of a diversity of language and the sepa- 
 rate, wild habit of the Indians, could not be effectually investi- 
 gated or redressed. Exasperated, in this manner, they of
 
 course would take their revenge in acts of violence and blood ; 
 and then it would be necessary to arm the public force against 
 them, for the public protection. It is very easy to theorize in 
 this matter, and say how it should be, but this issue, much as 
 we deplore it, could not well be avoided. 
 
 It is affirmed and, by many, believed that the Pequods had 
 been instigated in this manner, to the thirty murders perpetra- 
 ted in their incursions on the river settlements, during the win- 
 ter and spring of 1637. Be it so, the colony must still be de- 
 fended. Every settlement is filled with consternation. They 
 set their watch by night, and tend their signal flag by day to 
 give notice of enemies. The Pequods have been described to 
 them as one of the most numerous and powerful of the Indian 
 tribes. They imagine them dwelling in the deep woods, guessing 
 how powerful they may be, and at what hour the foe may burst 
 upon their settlement, here or there, in the fury of savage war. 
 What they dread, in the power of their enemy, so long and 
 wearily, they, of course, magnify. It is no time now for such 
 points of casuistry as entertain us. The hour has come, a de- 
 cisive blow must be struck; for the danger and the dread are 
 no longer supportable. 
 
 It had also been ascertained that the Pequods were endeav- 
 oring to enlist all the other tribes, in a common cause against 
 the colonies. Massachusetts, accordingly, had agreed to join 
 the expedition against them, but at what point the junction 
 would be made could not be settled beforehand. With his 
 ninety men, a full half the able bodied men of the colony, Capt. 
 Mason descended the river to Saybrook, passed round to the 
 Narragansett Bay, and, falling in there with a small party of 
 Massachusetts men returning from Block Island, made his land- 
 ing. His inferior officers, when he opened his plan, proposing 
 to march directly into the Pequod country, waiting for no junc- 
 tion with the Massachusetts troops, strenuously opposed him. 
 They were to pierce an unknown country and meet an un- 
 known enemy. What could assure this little band of men against 
 extermination, fighting in the woods with a fierce nation of sav- 
 ages ? But the chaplain led them to God for direction, and 
 they yielded their dissent. And here, in the stand of Mason, 
 is, in fact, the battle and the victory ; for they came upon the
 
 22 
 
 great fort of the enemy, after a rapid march, and took it so com- 
 pletely by surprise, that what was to be a battle became only a 
 conflagration and a massacre. The glory is not here, but in 
 the celerity of movement and the peremptory military decision 
 that brought them here. They are too few in number to make 
 prisoners of their enemy, and another body of the tribe, whose 
 number is unknown, are near at hand. Accordingly their 
 work must be short and decisive a work they make it of ex- 
 termination. We look on the scene with sadness and with 
 mixtures of revolted feeling ; but we are none the less able 
 to see, in this exploit of Mason, with his ninety men, why Crom- 
 well wanted him for a Major General in his army. He under- 
 stands, we perceive, as thoroughly as Napoleon, that celerity 
 and decision are sometimes necessary elements of success, and 
 even of safety. This kind of generalship too requires a great 
 deal more of nerve and military courage often, than the fighting 
 of a hard contested battle. 
 
 This reduction of the Pequods is remarkable as being the 
 first proper military expedition, or trial of arms in New Eng- 
 land. If they had been wronged, we pity them. If not, stiU 
 we pity them. In any view, the colony has done what it could 
 not avoid, and the long agony of their fear is over. Their wives 
 and children can sleep in peace. 
 
 Mason returned with his little Puritan legion to Hartford, 
 having lost in the encounter but a single man, the guns of the 
 fort at Saybrook booming out through the forests, in a salute of 
 victory, as he passed, and was immediately complimented, by 
 the Legislature, in the appointment of general-in-chief to the 
 colony. Hooker was designated to deliver him his commis- 
 sion, in presence of the assembled people. 
 
 Here is a scene for the painter of some future day I see it 
 even now before me. In the distance and behind the huts of 
 Hartford, waves the signal flag by which the town watch is to 
 give notice of enemies. In the foreground, stands the tall, 
 swart form of the soldier in his armor ; and before him, in 
 sacred apostolic beauty, the majestic Hooker. Haynes and 
 Hopkins, with the Legislature and the hardy, toil-worn settlers 
 and their wives and daughters, are gathered round them in 
 close order, gazing, with moistened eyes, at the hand which lifts
 
 23 
 
 the open commission to God, and listening to the fervent prayer 
 that the God of Israel will endue his servant, as heretofore, with 
 courage and counsel to lead them in the days of their future 
 peril. True there is nothing classic in this scene. This is no 
 crown bestowed at the Olympic games, or at a Roman triumph, 
 and yet there is a severe, primitive sublimity in the picture, 
 that will sometime be invested with feelings of the deepest 
 reverence. Has not the time already come, when the people 
 of Connecticut will gladly testify that reverence, by a monu- 
 ment that sKall make the beautiful valley of the Yantic, where 
 Mason sleeps, as beautifully historic, and be a mark to the eye 
 from one of the most ancient and loveliest, as well as most 
 populous, towns of our ancient commonwealth ? 
 
 The conduct of our state, in two other chapters of history of a 
 later date, displays a moral dignity, as well as military firmness, 
 of which we have the highest reason to be proud. The Dutch 
 governor of New York, it was ascertained, had entered into 
 an alliance w T ith the savages, to make war upon the English 
 colonies. J?he commissioners of these colonies, already united 
 in a federal compact with each other, had voted a levy of troops 
 for the defence, and assessed the number to be raised by each. 
 The Hartford and New Haven colonies were prompt and inde- 
 fatigable in their exertions, as their own more immediate expo- 
 sure required. Plymouth was ready and kept her faith, but 
 Massachusetts tempted, for once, to an act of perfidy, most 
 sadly contrasted with her noble history, refused ; leaving the 
 Connecticut colonies cruelly exposed to the whole force of the 
 enemy. The condition of our people was one of distressing 
 excitement. Every hour, for a whole half year, it was expected 
 that the invasion would begin. Forts were erected, a frigate 
 was manned, night and day were spent in watching ; till, 
 at length, the victory of the English over the Dutch fleet at 
 sea put an end to the danger ; only leaving the two colonies of 
 Connecticut overwhelmed by enormous expenses incurred for 
 their defence. The indignation was universal. And when the 
 commissioners were assembled again, at their annual meeting, 
 our commissioners magnanimously refused to sit with those from 
 Massachusetts, without some atonement for their ignominious 
 breach of faith and duty.
 
 Then came the turn of Massachusetts. King Philip, as he 
 was called, had rallied all the savage tribes of New England, for 
 a last, desperate effort to expel and exterminate the colonies, 
 The havoc was dreadful whole towns swept away by the 
 nightly incursions of the savages, wives and children massacred* 
 companies of troops surprised and butchered, all the frontier 
 settlements of Massachusetts smoking in blood and conflagra- 
 tion. It was the dark day of the colonies, and, for a time, it 
 really seemed that they must be exterminated. Then it was 
 that Connecticut proved her fidelity, sending out five compa- 
 nies of troops to the aid of Massachusetts. And the combined 
 troops marched together, in a cold snowy day, fifteen miles 
 through the forests, fought in the deep snow one of the blood- 
 iest battles on record, and then marched back, carrying their 
 wounded with them, to encamp in the open air. The attack 
 was upon the great fort of the Narragarisets, and was led by 
 the Massachusetts troops, in a spirit of valor worthy of success. 
 Unable, however, to force the entrance, they were obliged, 
 after suffering greatly from the enemy, to fall back. The Con- 
 necticut troops were then brought up, and we ma} judge of 
 their determination by the fact, that nearly one-third of their 
 number fell in the assault, and that, out of their five captains, 
 three were killed on the spot, and a fourth died of his wounds 
 afterwards. The assault was carried. The second winter, 
 four companies of rangers, raised in New London county, were 
 sent out, by turns, to scour the Narragansett country, and har- 
 rass the enemy by a continual desultory warfare. Finally, the 
 tide was turned, and the capture of Philip ended the struggle. 
 Thus nobly did Connecticut repay the injustice and wrong of her 
 sister colony. 
 
 We can hardly imagine it, but there was seldom a year 
 in the early history of our state, now so quiet and remote from 
 the turmoils of war, when she was not marching her troops, one 
 way or another, to defend her own, or more commonly some 
 neighboring settlement to Albany, to Brookfield, to Spring- 
 field, to the Narragansett country, to Schenectady, to Crown 
 Point, to Louisburg, to Canada issuing bills of credit, levying, 
 all the while, enormous taxes, and maintaining a warlike activity 
 scarcely surpassed by Lacedemon itself. There was never a
 
 25 
 
 spark of chivalry in her leaders, and yet there was never a 
 coward among them. Their courage had the Christian stamp, 
 it was practical and related to duty ; always exerted for some 
 object of defence and safety. They knew nothing of fighting 
 without an object, and when they had one, they went to the 
 work bravely, simply because it was sound economy to fight 
 well ! We are accustomed to speak of the wars of the revolu- 
 tion, but these earlier wars, so little remembered, were far more 
 adventurous and required a much stouter endurance. 
 
 When combined with the British forces, our troops were, of 
 course, commanded in chief by British leaders, and these were 
 generally incompetent to the kind of warfare necessary in this 
 country. Scarcely ever did they lose a battle or suffer a de- 
 feat in these wars, in which our provincial captains did not first 
 protest against their plan. Sometimes the Parliament were 
 constrained to compliment our troops, but more generally, if 
 some exploit was carried by the prowess of a colonial captain, 
 as in the case of Lyman, the hero of Crown Point, his superior 
 was knighted and he forgotten. In the last French war, under Pitt, 
 when a larg% part of her little territory was yet a wilderness, 
 Connecticut raised and kept in the field, at her own expense, 
 for three successive years, 5,000 men ; so great was her endur- 
 ance and her zeal against the common enemy. It was here 
 that Putnam and Worcester took their lessons of exercise in 
 the military art, and practiced their courage for a more serious 
 and eventful struggle. 
 
 This eventful struggle came ; finding no state readier to act 
 a worthy and heroic part in it. As early as September, 1774, 
 the false rumor of an outbreak in Boston had set the whole mil- 
 itary force of the colony in motion a sign, before the time, of 
 what was to be done when the time arrived. In April of 
 1775, before the battle of Lexington and before the Revolution 
 could be generally regarded as an ascertained fact, a circle o f 
 sagacious, patriotic men, assembled in Hartford, perceiving the 
 immense advantage that would accrue to the cause, from the 
 capture and possession of the Northern fortresses that com- 
 manded Lake Champlain, Ticonderoga and Crown Point em- 
 barked in a scheme, to seize them, by a surprise of the British 
 garrisons. They had a secret understanding with Governor
 
 26 
 
 Trumbull, and drew their funds from the public treasury, by a 
 note under the joint signature of their names, eleven in num- 
 ber. The enterprise was committed to Ethan Allen and Seth 
 Warner, both natives of Roxbury, now residing in Vermont. 
 A few men were sent on from Connecticut, forty or fifty more 
 were collected in Berkshire county, in Massachusetts, and the 
 remainder were enlisted in Vermont. The enterprise was suc- 
 cessful. More than two hundred cannon were captured the 
 same that were afterwards dragged across the mountains to 
 Boston, and employed by Washington in the seige and final 
 expulsion of Lord Howe. When the commander, of Ticonde- 
 roga, inquired by what authority the surrender was demanded, 
 Allen's reply was " In the name of the Great Jehovah and the 
 Continental Congress." That he had no authority from the 
 Continental Congress, save what had come to him through the 
 Great Jehovah, is certainly very clear ; hence, I suppose, the 
 form of his answer. 
 
 It appears that Benedict Arnold, who was in Boston about 
 this time, obtained a commission from the committee of safety 
 there, authorising him to conduct, in their behalf, a similar un- 
 dertaking. But finding himself anticipated, when he reached 
 Vermont, he was obliged to waive his right of command and 
 took his place, as a volunteer, under Allen. Some of the Mas- 
 sachusetts historians, who have claimed the credit of this ex- 
 ploit, in behalf of their state, are clearly seen, therefore, to have 
 trespassed on the honors of Connecticut. Connecticut projected 
 and executed the movement. The treasury of Connecticut 
 footed the bills. The prisoners were brought to Connecticut and 
 quartered at West Hartford. 
 
 The surrender of these fortresses took place on the 10th of 
 May. Meantime, on the 18th of April, and before the capture 
 was consummated, the news of the battles of Concord and 
 Lexington had arrived, and resistance to the mother country 
 was seen to be openly begun. Putnam left his plow in the fur- 
 row, not remaining, it is even said, to unyoke his oxen, and 
 flew to the field of action. The troops of the state poured after 
 him, to be gathered under his command. The battle of Bunker 
 Hill soon followed. 
 
 It is remarkable that the question, who commanded in this
 
 27 
 
 very celebrated battle, has never yet been settled. The Massa- 
 chusetts historians have generally maintained that ftescott was 
 the commander ; and some of them have even gone so far as 
 not to recognise the presence of Putnam in it. The more can- 
 did and moderate have generally admitted his presence in the 
 field and the valuable service rendered, by his inspiriting and 
 heroic conduct. Prescott, they say, commanded in the trenches, 
 and Putnam was engaged outside of the trenches, in the open 
 field and about the other hill by which the redoubt was over- 
 looked or commanded ; doing what he could for the success of 
 the day, but only in virtue of the commission he had from his 
 own personal enthusiasm. As regards any chief command 
 over the whole field of operations, they suppose there probably 
 was none, alleging that the army was really not organized, and 
 no scale of proper military precedence established. 
 
 As respects this latter point, which at first view might seem 
 to be true, they are certainly in a mistake. For Putnam had 
 been expressly ordered, by our Legislature, to put himself under 
 the chief command of Massachusetts ; as the conditions of the 
 case evidently required. He was serving, therefore, as an in- 
 tegral part of the military force of Massachusetts. Neither was 
 he or Prescott, or Warren, the general-in-chiefpf the army, so 
 raw in the practice of arms as not to know that, being on the 
 ground as a general of brigade, the scale of military precedence 
 made him, ipso facto, principal in command over the colonel of 
 a regiment. 
 
 To the same conclusion we are brought, by a careful review 
 of all the facts pertaining to the battle itself. There appears 
 to be sufficient evidence that General Putnam, after his suc- 
 cessful encounter sometimes called the battle of Chelsea, 
 which took place on the 27th of May previous, and by which 
 he had produced some stir of sensation in the army, became 
 more impatient of a state of inaction than ever, and proposed 
 himself, in the council of war, that they should take up this ad- 
 vanced position on Bunker Hill. Prescott was in favor of the 
 movement, but, Gen. Ward and others, including even Gen. War- 
 ren a member of the Council of Safety, were opposed; regarding 
 the attempt as being too hazardous in itself, and one that would 
 endanger the main position at Cambridge. Besides, what proba-
 
 28 
 
 bly had quite as much influence, they distrusted the spirit of the 
 troops, stilj raw in discipline ; doubling whether they would 
 come to the point of an open, pitched battle with the king and 
 stand their ground. They had the same feeling that Washing- 
 ton had, when he enquired, after the battle " Could they stand 
 fire ?" and when the answer was given, replied " the cause is 
 safe !" Putnam believed they would stand fire before hand* 
 urging the necessity of action to bring out the spirit that was in 
 them and confirm it. Give them a good breast- work on the 
 hill, he said, laughingly, and they will hold it. " They are not 
 afraid of their heads, though very much afraid of their legs ; if 
 you cover these they will fight forever." Warren, who was 
 pacing the room, paused over a chair, and said, " Almost thou 
 persuadest me, Putnam. Still, I think the project rash ; but if 
 you undertake it, [' you,' observe] you will not be surprised to 
 find me at your side." Finally, ascertaining that Gen. Gage 
 was about to do the very thing proposed, their hesitation was 
 brought to an end. 
 
 It was supposed, in the council, that " two thousand men" 
 would be required to effect and maintain the proposed occupa- 
 tion. Accordingly we are to understand that, when only a 
 thousand were detailed, under Col. Prescott, to occupy the hill 
 and open the entrenchments on the night of the 16th, it was ex- 
 pected that other troops were to be sent forward under a more 
 general command, when they were wanted. And beyond a 
 question this command was to be in Putnam, the chief mover 
 of the enterprise. Accordingly we see that Putnam went over 
 with the detachment, under Prescott, and assisted in directing 
 where the entrenchment should be opened, viz : on the lower 
 summit, or part of Bunker Hill, nearest to the city, afterwards 
 called Breed's Hill ; in the understanding that the higher emi- 
 nence should be taken afterward, when required, and entrench- 
 ments opened there. Putnam returned that night to Cam- 
 bridge, and was back in the early dawn of the morning, as a 
 responsible officer should be, to see the condition of the works. 
 At ten o'clock, he was in the field again. And as soon as it be- 
 came evident that there was to be an assault upon the works, 
 he ordered on the Connecticut troops, by the consent of General 
 Ward, and was there, on the field, at the beginning of the en-
 
 29 
 
 gagement. Leaving Prescott, of course, to his position, which 
 he had simply to maintain, \ve see him directing the detach- 
 ments to their places ; beginning entrenchments on the other 
 summit ; rebuking and rallying the timid ; seizing on a cannon ? 
 which it was said, could not be loaded, and loading and firing it 
 himself; maintaining the left wing which Lord Howe was con- 
 stantly endeavoring to carry, and the yielding of which would, 
 at any moment, have ended the struggle of Prescott on the hill ; 
 saving also, by his firmness here, the retreat of Prescott from be- 
 ing only a slaughter or a capture ; last in the retreat himself, 
 trying to rally for a stand upon the other hill, and only not en- 
 deavoring to maintain the post alone ; then withdrawing and, of 
 his own counsel, mounting Prospect Hill with the Connecticut 
 forces, opening his entrenchments there in the night, and hold- 
 ing it as a position between the enemy and Cambridge ; a 
 movement by which he probably saved the town and the public 
 stores of the army ; for when the enemy saw his works there 
 the next morning, they had no courage left to try a second day, 
 against a position so admirably chosen a position in which he 
 was afterwards installed, by Washington, to maintain the honors 
 of the centre of the army. 
 
 There was little reason, as we have seen, for Putnam to be 
 multiplying orders to Prescott ; the only thing to be done was 
 to enable Prescott, if possible, to hold his position. But it is in 
 evidence that he did order away the entrenching tools, against 
 the judgment of Prescott ; also that, when Warren came upon 
 the ground, he went to Putnam, as the officer of direction, to ask 
 where he should go to serve as a volunteer, and that Putnam 
 sent him to the redoubt, to the aid of Prescott ; al^> that the 
 same order, in regard to firing, occasioned by the shortness of 
 their ammunition, was given every where on the field, as well 
 out of the redoubt as in it, and that Putnam said himself that he 
 gave the order. 
 
 It is very easy to see, regarding this statement of facts, how 
 Prescott should often have been spoken of as being the chief in 
 command in this battle, and even how he should have thought 
 himself to be ; for he had the redoubt in charge at the begin- 
 ning, and maintained the internal command of it. He came 
 under a higher command, only by silent rules of military prece-
 
 30 
 
 dence, when other forces were upon the ground ; of which he 
 would hardly take note himself, so little was he interfered with. 
 Putnam had work enough without, in the open field, and was 
 very sure that Prescott would do his part within. It is only a 
 little remarkable that Col. Prescott, when questioned by Mr. 
 Adams, at Philadelphia, in regard to the battle, does not even 
 name Gen. Putnam, as having been upon the ground at all ; 
 and apparently had not ascertained, two months after the bat- 
 tle, whether the Connecticut militia, sent out by himself, under 
 Knowlton, to hold a position against the enemy's right, had 
 obeyed his orders or had run away. And it is even the more 
 remarkable, that this body of men, assisted by the brave Capt. 
 Chester of Wethersfield, and others whom Putnam was rallying 
 to their support during the whole engagement, had been able, 
 by raising an extempore breast work of fence and new-mown 
 grass, and defending it with Spartan fidelity, to save him all 
 the while from being flanked and cut to pieces. For upon 
 just this point Lord Howe was rolling his columns, with the 
 greatest emphasis of assault, resting his main hope of success 
 on turning the position so gallantly defended, and gaining, in 
 this manner, the other summit of the hill, which, if he had been 
 able to do, Prescott and his regiment would have been, from 
 that moment, prisoners of war. In this view, it is a total mis- 
 take to look upon the defence of the redoubt, brilliant as it was 
 and prominent to the eye, as the battle of Bunker Hill. The 
 place of extempore counsel and varying fortune, the hinge of 
 the day, was really, not there, but in the open field ; and espe- 
 cially in moving, there, raw bodies of troops, with any such 
 effect as to maintain the critical point of the engagement. 
 
 The tesflmony of authorities, in respect to the question of 
 the chief command, you will understand is various and contra- 
 dictory, as it naturally would be. And yet the contradiction 
 is rather verbal than real ; for as Prescott held the redoubt, in 
 the manner described, it would be very natural, taking a more 
 restricted view of the field, to speak of him as chief in com- 
 mand ; though the facts already recited, show most clearly, 
 that Col. Sweet gave the true testimony, when he said that Col. 
 Prescott " was ordered to proceed to Charlestown, Gen. Putnam 
 having the principal direction and superintendence of the expe-
 
 31 
 
 dition concerning it." This too was the testimony of Putnam 
 himself, as Rev. Josiah Whitney testifies, in a note to the fu- 
 neral sermon preached at Putnam's death. He says, " The 
 detachment was first put under the command of Gen. Putnam. 
 With it he took possession of the hill, and ordered the battle 
 from the beginning to the end." Does any one imagine that 
 Gen. Putnam was a man to assert claims of honor that belonged 
 to others ? Far more likely was he, in the generosity of his 
 nature, to give up such as were properly his own. 
 
 The testimony of the old Courant, commenting on the battle, 
 shortly after, corresponds. " In the list of heroes it is need- 
 less to expatiate on the character and bravery of Major Gen. 
 Putnam, whose capacity to form and execute great designs, is 
 known through Europe, and whose undaunted courage and 
 martial abilities have raised him to an incredible height, in the 
 esteem and friendship of his American brethren ; it is sufficient 
 to say, that he seems to be inspired by God Almighty with a 
 military genius." Col. Humphrey, writing his Life of Putnam 
 at Mount Vernon, under the eye of Washington, and Botta, 
 who derives his facts from original sources, agree in represent- 
 ing Putnam as the chief in command. 
 
 Moreover, Washington, when he came upon the field only a 
 few days after the battle, with commissions from the Congress 
 appointing four Major Generals, immediately delivered Putnam 
 his commission, placing him second in command to himself, and 
 reserved the three others for the further consideration of Con- 
 gress ; though Putnam's commission, placing him above two 
 very talented officers of the state, superior in rank to himself, 
 had created more complaint than either of the others. Why 
 this remarkable deference to Putnam, unless he has been the 
 chief actuating spirit in some great success ? Why this signal 
 honor on Gen. Putnam, when the eyes of the army and of the 
 public at large, in the flush of enthusiasm that follows the late 
 battle, are centered on another who, I believe, was never 
 afterwards promoted ? 
 
 I have seen too, within a very few days, an original engra- 
 ving of Gen. Putnam, published in England three months after 
 the battle, which has at the foot these words, " Major Gen. 
 Putnam, of the Connecticut forces, and Commander in Chief of
 
 32 
 
 the engagement on Buncker's Hill, near Boston. Published, 
 as the Act directs, by C. Shepherd, 9th Sept. 1775." That he 
 had the chief command here assigned him T firmly believe ; 
 which if he has lost, it has been at least three months subse- 
 quent to the battle ; and by means that often discolor the 
 truth of history. The occupation of the hill, I believe, was 
 emphatically Putnam's measure ; and one that truly represents 
 the man. How can we think otherwise ? See him in the 
 council, the march, the beginning of the entrenchment, the 
 fight itself; present every where, directing, cheering on the men, 
 rallying all the force he can to keep the difficult point of the 
 field ; last in the retreat, issuing grimmed with srnoke and gun- 
 powder, and seizing, with his force, another hill, there to en- 
 trench again and wait the fortune of another day. Do this, I 
 say, and there is but one conclusion for us to receive. Our con- 
 viction will be clear that, if the monument on Bunker Hill is a 
 worthy testimony for Massachusetts, it testifies as much also 
 for Connecticut ; and I hope our Connecticut eyes will be par- 
 doned, if we see it tapering off into a top-stone, that represents 
 the little town of Pomfret ! 
 
 1 have dwelt the more at length on this question, because we 
 seem to have lost our rights here, in a transaction that in one 
 view stands at the head of our American history ; and yet more 
 because of the good it will do us to reclaim our rights. I sup- 
 pose it may well enough be doubted whether Putnam was the 
 ablest of all great commanders ; whether, in fact, he was the 
 general to head what would be called, in history, a great mili- 
 tary campaign. He was a man of action, inspiration, adven- 
 ture, and l^p made men feel as he felt. " You seem to have the 
 faculty, Sir," said Washington, "of infusing your own spirit." 
 Nothing was more truly distinctive of the man. His value lay 
 in the immense volume of impulse or martial enthusiasm there 
 was in him, and in the fact that his time was always now. And 
 the country wanted impulse to break silence, and make its first 
 trial with the British arms. He was the man, above all others 
 in the colonies, to give that impulse. A more cautious man, 
 probably would not have advised to such an attempt ; possibly 
 a wise man would not ; but Putnam, whose impetuous soul had 
 only a feeble connection with prudence, or with mere science,
 
 33 
 
 was the man to say, " let us have the fight first, and settle the 
 wisdom of it afterwards." Possibly there is a higher kind of 
 generalship ; but, I know not how it is, when I see how much 
 depended for our country, at that time, on a real beginning of 
 action, I am ready for once, to accept impulse as the truest coun- 
 sel, and the fire of martial passion as being only the inspired 
 form of prudence. 
 
 I cannot give you the details of our military transactions in 
 the Revolution. I can only name a few facts, that will suffice 
 to indicate the spirit and devotion of our people. Connecticut 
 was the second state in the Union as regards the amount of 
 military force contributed to the common cause. She had 
 twenty-five regiments of militia and of these, it is said, that 
 twenty-two full regiments were in actual service, out of the 
 state, at one and the same time, and that the most busy and 
 pressing season of the year ; leaving the women at home to 
 hoe their fields and assist the boys and old men in gathering 
 the harvests. And such a class of material has seldom been 
 gathered into an army. When Trumbull sent on fourteen 
 regiments to Washington, at New York, he described them as 
 " regiments of substantial farmers." And General Root, as a 
 friend of mine remembers, declared that, in his brigade alone, 
 there came out seven ministers, as captains of their own con- 
 gregations. Among their leaders was Colonel Knowlton, than 
 whom there was not a more gallant officer, or one more re- 
 spected by the commander-in-chief in the army of the Revolu- 
 tion. And when he fell, in the disastrous day at Harlaem, with 
 so many hundreds of the sons of Connecticut, Washington 
 evinced his affliction for the loss of this favorite officer, as being; 
 the loss most deplorable of all that befell the cause, on that 
 losing day. Among the leaders, too, were Parsons, and Spen- 
 cer, and Wooster, and Wolcott, and Ledyard, and, last of all, 
 but not least worthy to be named, though to name him should 
 never be necessary before a Connecticut audience, that mournful 
 flower of patriotism, the young scholar of Coventry ; he whom 
 no service could daunt that Washington desired, and who, when 
 he was called to die an ignominious death, nobly said to his en- 
 emies and executioners, that " his only regret was that he had 
 but one life to give for his country." 
 3
 
 34 
 
 But I must not omit to speak of our venerable Governor, the 
 patriotic Trumbull, under whom we acted our part in this 
 eventful struggle. He was one of those patient, true-minded 
 men, that hold an even hand of authority in stormy times, and 
 suffer nothing to fall out of place either by excess or defect of 
 service to whom Washington could say, " I cannot sufficiently 
 express my thanks, not only for your constant and ready com- 
 pliance with every request of mine, but for your prudent fore- 
 cast, in ordering matters, so that your force has been collected 
 and put in motion as soon as it has been demanded." And yet 
 there like to have been a fatal breach between them, at the be- 
 ginning of the war. The British ships in the sound were threat- 
 ening to land on our coast, and Trumbull requested that a part 
 of the troops he was raising might remain to guard our own 
 soil. No request, apparently, could be more reasonable. 
 Washington refused and ordered them all to Boston. Trum- 
 bull wrote him a most pungent letter ; adding, however, like a 
 true patriot, who sees the necessity of subordination to all 
 power and effect, that he will comply ; " for it is plain that such 
 jealousies indulged, however just, will destroy the cause." 
 Noble answer ! worthy to be recorded, as a rebuke to faction, 
 while the republic lasts ! Washington immediately explained, 
 the misunderstanding was healed, and from that time forth he 
 leaned upon Trumbull as one of his chief supports ; confident 
 always of this, that he could calculate on marching the whole 
 state bodily just where he pleased. 
 
 Neither let us forget, in this connection, what appears to be 
 sufficiently authenticated, that our Trumbull is no other than 
 the world-renowned Brother Jonathan, accepted as the soubri- 
 quet of the United States of America. Our Connecticut 
 Jonathan was to Washington what the scripture Jonathan was 
 to David, a true friend, a counsellor and stay of confidence 
 Washington's brother. When he wanted honest counsel and 
 wise, he would say, " let us consult brother Jonathan ;" and 
 then afterwards, partly from habit and partly in playfulness of 
 phrase, he would say the same when referring any matter to the 
 Congress, "let us consult Brother Jonathan." And so it fell 
 out rightly, that as Washington was called the Father of his 
 Country, so he named the fine boy, the nation, after his brother
 
 35 
 
 Jonathan a good, solid, scripture name, which as our sons 
 and daughters of the coming time may speak it, any where 
 between the two oceans, let them remember honest, old Con- 
 necticut and the faithful and true brother she gave to Wash- 
 ington ! 
 
 Considering the very intimate historic connection of our 
 Revolution with the influence of the clergy, their active in- 
 stigation to it and their constant, powerful co-operation in 
 it, the transition we make in passing from our military history 
 to that of the pulpit, is by no means violent. Only in speaking 
 of oiir great men here and our theologic standing generally, I 
 must speak in the briefest manner. No mean distinction is it to 
 say that the renowned theologian, preacher and philosopher, 
 Jonathan Edwards, was a native of Connecticut, and a gradu- 
 ate of Yale College. And though the more active part of his 
 life was spent in Massachusetts, he retained his affinities, more 
 especially, with the churches and ministers of Connecticut. I 
 need not say that there is no American name of higher repute, 
 not only among the divines, but also among the metaphysicians 
 both of this country and of Europe. Dr. Dwight was born in 
 Massachusetts but educated here, and here was the scene of 
 his life. Besides these, having our Hooker, and Davenport, 
 and Bellamy, and Smalley, and by a less exclusive property, 
 our Hopkins and Emmons, and Griffin, all sons of Connecticut, 
 we have abundant reason, I think, to be satisfied with our high 
 eminence in the department of theological literature and pulpit 
 effect. 
 
 As regards our poets I will only detain you to say that, while 
 I am far from thinking that every thing which beats time in 
 verse is poetry, it is yet something that \ve have our Trumbull, 
 and Hillhouse, and Brainard, and Percival, and Pierpont, and 
 Halleck, who, not to speak of others closer to our acquaintance, 
 have written what can never perish, while wit may enliven 
 men's hearts, or music and the sense of beauty remain. 
 
 Including,* next, in our inventory, mechanical inventions, I 
 may say that the great improvements in cotton machinery,
 
 36 
 
 by Gilbert Brewster, justify the title sometimes given him of the 
 Arkwright of our country. 
 
 The cotton gin of Whitney, is a machine that, by itself, has 
 doubled the productive power, and so the value of the Southern 
 half of our country. If the inventor had been paid for his 
 invention, and not defrauded of his rights by a conspiracy too 
 strong for the laws, the interest of his money would redeem all 
 the fugitives that cross the line of free labor, as long as there is 
 such a line to cross. 
 
 The first two printing presses patented in the United States, 
 were from Hartford. 
 
 Joshua Fitch of Connecticut, has the distinguished honor of 
 producing the first steam boat that ever moved upon the waters 
 of the world. He was unfortunate in his character, though a 
 man of genius and high enthusiasm. Failing of the means ne- 
 cessary to complete his experiments, and universally derided by 
 the public, he persisted in the confidence that steam was to be 
 the great agent of river navigation in the world, and gave it, 
 as a last request, that " his body might be buried on the banks 
 of the Ohio, where his rest would be soothed by the blowing of 
 the steam and the splash of the waters." 
 
 It is not as generally known, I believe, that the first steam 
 locomotive, ever constructed, was run in the streets of Hartford. 
 The inventor was Doctor Kinsley, a man whose history was 
 strikingly similar to that of Fitch. The late Theodore Dwight, 
 known to many in this audience, lent him the money with 
 which he made his experiments. He succeeded in part, but 
 fell through into bankruptcy, at the end, still persisting that 
 steam was to be the agent of the land travel of the world. 
 His experiments were made between the years '97 and '9, pre- 
 vious to the introduction of rails as the guides and supports of 
 motion. 
 
 It now remains to speak of the rank we have held, in the 
 matter of education, and the power we have exerted by that 
 means, in the republic. It is remarkable that a very large 
 share of the colleges in our nation draw their lineage, not from 
 Harvard, most distinguished in the fruits of elegant literature, 
 but from Yale. This is true of Dartmouth, Princeton, Wil-
 
 37 
 
 liams, Middlebury, Hamilton, Western Reserve, Jacksonville, 
 and Athens University in Georgia. These institutions were 
 some of them planned in Connecticut, others of them moved, or 
 in some principal degree manned, by the graduates of Yale 
 College and sons of Connecticut. Dr. Johnson of Stratford, a 
 graduate of Yale and afterwards of Oxford, was the principal 
 originator and first President also of Columbia College, New 
 York. I find in the office of our Secretary of State, a petition to 
 our Legislature from the Trustees of Princeton College, asking 
 leave to draw a lottery here for the benefit of their institution, 
 such leave being denied them by their own state. They aver 
 in their petition, that " it would be a happy means of establish- 
 ing and perpetuating a desirable harmony between the two 
 institutions, Yale and Princeton, which it will be the care of 
 your petitioners to promote and preserve." Leave was 
 granted ; for it was the manner of our state to seize every op- 
 portunity in every place, for the assistance of learning. I may 
 also add that Mr. Crary, to whose active exertions in behalf of 
 education the school system and the State University of Mich- 
 igan are mainly due, is a son of Connecticut and a graduate of 
 Trinity College. 
 
 Our system of common schools, originated by a public statute, 
 which is one of the very first statutes passed by the colonial 
 Legislature and faithfully maintained, down to within the past 
 twenty years, was till then acknowledged to be far in advance of 
 that of any other state. The founding of our school fund, too, 
 was an act generally regarded and spoken of with admiration 
 every where, as characteristic of the state. 
 
 And now, if you will see what force there is in education, 
 what precedence it gives and preponderance of weight, even to 
 a small and otherwise insignificant state, you have only to see 
 what Connecticut has effected through the medium of her 
 older college and her once comparatively vigorous system of 
 common schools. 
 
 I have spoken of the numerous colleges dotting the map of 
 the republic, which are seen to be more or less directly off- 
 shoots of Yale. If you ask what parts of the republic were set- 
 tled principally by emigrations from Connecticut, they are the 
 Eastern part of Long Island, the Northern half of New Jersey,
 
 38 
 
 the Western sections of Massachusetts and Vermont, Middle 
 and Western New York, the Susquehanna valley in Pennsyl- 
 vania, and the Western Reserve territory in Ohio just those 
 portions of our country, more recently settled, as you will per- 
 ceive, that are most distinguished for industry, thrift, intelli- 
 gence, good morals and character. 
 
 Again, if you enter into the legislative bodies of other states 
 west of us, and ask who are the members, you will find the 
 sons of Connecticut among them in a large proportion of numbers 
 compared with those of any other state. In the convention, for 
 example, that revised the Constitution of New York in 1821, it 
 was found that, out of one hundred and twenty-six members, 
 thirty-two were natives of Connecticut, not including those who 
 were born of a Connecticut parentage in that state. Of the 
 sons of Massachusetts, which according to the ratio of popula- 
 tion, ought to had about seventy, there were only nine. If you 
 add to the thirty-two natives of Connecticut, in that body, her 
 descendants born in New York, and those who came in 
 through Vermont, New Jersey, and other states, it is altogether 
 probable that they would be found to compose a majority of the 
 body ; presenting the very interesting fact that Connecticut is 
 found sitting there, to make a Constitution for the great state of 
 New York. I found on inquiry, four or five winters ago, that 
 the New York Legislature contained fifteen natives of Connec- 
 ticut, while of Massachusetts there were only nine ; though, 
 according to her ratio of numbers, there should have been 
 about forty. So also in the Ohio Legislature of 1838-9, there 
 were found in the lower house of seventy-four members, twelve 
 from Connecticut, two from Massachusetts, two from Vermont. 
 
 If we repair to the Halls of the American Congress, we shall 
 there discover what Connecticut is doing on a still larger scale 
 of comparison. The late Hon. James Hillhouse, when he was 
 in Congress, ascertained that forty-seven of the members, or 
 about one-fifth of the whole number in both Houses, were 
 native born sons of Connecticut. Mr. Calhoun assured one 
 of our Representatives, when upon the floor of the House with 
 him, that he had seen the time, when the natives of Connecticut, 
 together with all the graduates of Yale College there collected, 
 wanted only five of being a majority of that body. I took some
 
 39 
 
 pains in the winter, I think, of '43, to ascertain how the compo- 
 sition of the Congress stood at that time. There could not, of 
 course be as many native citizens of Connecticut among the 
 members, as in the days of Mr. Hillhouse ; but including native 
 citizens and descendants born out of the state, I found exactly 
 his number, forty-seven. Of the New York representation, six- 
 teen or two-fifths were sons or descendants, in the male line, of 
 Connecticut. 
 
 Saying nothing of descendants born out of the state, there 
 were at that time, eighteen native born sons of Connecticut in 
 the Congress. According to the Blue Book, Massachusetts had 
 seventeen ; when taken in the proportion of numbers she should 
 have had forty-two. New Hampshire should have had eighteen 
 also, but had only seven ; Vermont eighteen, but had only four ; 
 Louisiana eighteen, but had only two ; New Jersey twenty-one, 
 but had only nine. I see no way to account for these facts, 
 especially when the comparison is taken between Connecticut 
 and Massachusetts, unless it be that, prior to a time quite recent, 
 our school system was farther advanced and the education im- 
 parted to our youth more universal and more perfect. 
 
 How beautiful is the attitude of our little state, when seen 
 through the medium of facts like these. Unable to carry weight 
 by numbers, she is seen marching out her sons to conquer other 
 posts of influence and represent her honor in other fields of 
 action. Which, if she continues to do, if she takes the past 
 simply as a beginning and returns to that beginning with a 
 fixed determination to make it simply the germ of a higher and 
 more perfect culture, there need scarcely be a limit to the 
 power she may exert, as a member of the republic. The small- 
 ness of our territory is an advantage even, as regards the high- 
 est form of social development and the most abundant fruits of 
 genius. Our state under a skillful and sufficient agriculture 
 with a proper improvement of our water falls, is capable of sus- 
 taining a million of people, in a condition of competence and 
 social ornament ; and that is a number as large as any state 
 government can manage with the highest effect. No part of 
 our country between the two oceans is susceptible of greater 
 external beauty. What now looks rough and forbidding in our 
 jagged hill-sides and our raw beginnings of culture, will be soft-
 
 ened, in the future landscape, to an ornamental rock-work, 
 skirted by fertility ; pressing out in the cheeks of the green dells, 
 where the farm-houses are nested ; bursting up through the wav- 
 ing slopes of the meadows, and walling the horizon about with 
 wooded hills of rock and pastured summits. We have pure 
 transparent waters, a clear bell-toned atmosphere and, with all, 
 a robust, healthy minded stock of people ; uncorrupted by lux- 
 ury, unhumiliated by superstition, sharpened by good necessi- 
 ties, industrious in their habits, simple in their manners and 
 tastes, rigid in their morals and principles; combining, in short, 
 all the higher possibilities of character and genius, in a degree 
 that will seldom be exceeded in any people of the world. These 
 are the mines, the golden placers of Connecticut. Turning 
 now to these as our principal hope for the future, let us en- 
 deavor, with a fixed and resolute concentration of our public 
 aim, to keep the creative school-house in action, and raise our 
 institutions of learning to the highest pitch of excellence. 
 
 I am far from thinking that our schools have ever been as 
 low, or inefficient as many have supposed ; the facts I have 
 recited clearly show the contrary. And yet they certainly are 
 not worthy of our high advantages, or the age of improvement 
 in which we live. Therefore I rejoice that our lethargy is now 
 finally broken, and that we are fairly embarked in an organized 
 plan for the raising of our schools to a pitch of culture and per- 
 fection, worthy of our former precedence. 
 
 I remember with fresh interest, to-day, how my talented 
 friend, who has most reason of all to rejoice in the festivities of 
 this occasion, consulted with me", as many as thirteen years ago, 
 in regard to his plans of life ; raising, in particular, the question 
 whether he should give himself wholly and finally up to the 
 cause of public schools. I knew his motives, the growing dis- 
 taste he had for political life, in which he was already embarked 
 with prospects of success, and the desire he felt to occupy some 
 field more immediately and simply beneficent. He made his 
 choice ; and now, after encountering years of untoward hin- 
 drance here, winning golden opinions meantime from every 
 other state in the republic, and from ministers of education in 
 almost every nation of the old world, by his thoroughly prac- 
 tical understanding of all that pertains to the subject ; after
 
 41 
 
 raising also into vigorous action the school system of another 
 state, and setting it forward in a tide of progress, he returns 
 to the scene of his beginnings and permits us here to con- 
 gratulate both him and ourselves, in the prospect that his ori- 
 ginal choice and purpose are finally to be fulfilled. He has our 
 confidence ; we are to have his ripe experience ; and the work 
 now fairly begun is to go on, I trust, by the common consent of 
 us all, till the schools of our state are placed on a footing of the 
 highest possible energy and perfection. 
 
 To exhibit the kind of expectation we are to set before Con- 
 necticut as a state, let me give you the picture of a little obscure 
 parish in Litchfield county ; and I hope you will pardon me if I do 
 it, as I must, with a degree of personal satisfaction ; for it is not 
 any very bad vice in a son to be satisfied with his parentage. 
 This little parish is made up of the corners of three towns, and 
 the ragged ends and corners of twice as many mountains and 
 stony sided hills. But this rough, wild region, bears a race of 
 healthy minded, healthy bodied, industrious and religious people, 
 They love to educate their sons and God gives them their re- 
 ward. Out of this little, obscure nook among the mountains 
 have come forth two presidents of colleges, the two that a few 
 years ago presided, at the same time, over the two institutions, 
 Yale and Washington, or Trinity. Besides these they have 
 furnished a secretary of state for the commonwealth, during a 
 quarter of a century or more. Also a member of congress. 
 Also a distinguished professor. And besides these a greater 
 number of lawyers, physicians, preachers and teachers, both 
 male and female, than I am now able to enumerate. Probably 
 some of you have never so much as heard the name of this little 
 bye-place on the map of Connecticut, generally it is not on the 
 maps at all, but how many cities are there of 20,000 inhabit- 
 ants in our country, that have not exerted one-half the influ- 
 ence on mankind. The power of this little parish, it is not 
 too much to say, is felt in every part of our great nation. 
 Recognised, of course, it is not ; but still it is felt. 
 
 This, now, is the kind of power in which Connecticut is to 
 have her name and greatness. This, in small, is what Connec- 
 ticut should be. She is to find her first and noblest interest, 
 apart from religion, in the full and perfect education of her sons
 
 42 
 
 and daughters. And so she is to be sending out her youth, 
 empowered in capacity and fortified by virtue, to take their posts 
 of honor and influence in the other states ; in her behalf to be 
 their physicians and ministers of religion, their professors and 
 lawyers, their wise senators, their great orators and incorrupti- 
 ble judges, bulwarks of virtue, truth and order to the republic, 
 in all coming time. And then, when the vast area of our coun- 
 try between the two oceans is filled with a teeming population, 
 when the delegates of sixty or a hundred states, from the granite 
 shores of the East, and the alluvial plains of the South, and the 
 golden mountains of the West, are assembled in the Halls of 
 our Congress, and little Connecticut is there represented in her 
 own behalf, by her one delegate, it will still and always be 
 found that she is numerously represented also by her sons from 
 other states, and her one delegate shall be himself regarded in 
 his person, as the symbol of that true Brother Jonathan, whose 
 name still designates the great republic of the world. 
 
 Meantime, if any son of Connecticut will indulge in the de- 
 graded sneer, by which ignorant and malicious custom, has 
 learned to insult her name, let him be looked upon as the man 
 who is able to please himself in defiling the ashes of his mother. 
 Let me testify my hearty joy too, in the presence of this assem- 
 bly, that a citizen of Connecticut has at last been heard in the 
 Senate of this great nation, doing honor to its noble history, by 
 a fit chastisement of the insult, which a volunteer malice, em- 
 boldened by former impunity, was tempted again to offer to our 
 commonwealth. 
 
 Fellow citizens, I have endeavored, this evening, to show you 
 Connecticut, what she has been, and so what she is and ought 
 to be. I undertook this subject, simply because of the chilling 
 and depressing influence I have so often experienced from the 
 want of any sufficient public feeling in our state. I am not a 
 historian, and I may have fallen into some mistakes, which a 
 critic in American history will detect. I knew but imperfectly 
 when I began, how great a wealth of character and incident 
 our history contains. I supposed it might be more defective 
 than I could wish, as regards the kind of material most fitted 
 to inspire a public enthusiasm. But, as I proceeded patiently 
 in my questions, gathering, stage by stage, this inventory, which
 
 43 
 
 I have condensed even to dryness, I began to be mortified by 
 the discovery that the age of Connecticut history most defec- 
 tive and least worthy of respect is the present that we are 
 most to be honored in that which we have forgot, and least be- 
 cause we have forgotten it. 
 
 Such, I say, is Connecticut! There is no outburst of 
 splendor in her history, no glaring or obtrusive prominence 
 to attract the applause of the multitude. Her true merit and 
 position are discovered only by search, she is seen only through 
 the sacred veil of modesty great only, in the silent energy of 
 worth and beneficence. But when she is brought forth out of 
 her retirement, instead of the little, declining, undistinguished, 
 scarcely distinguishable state of Connecticut, you behold, rising 
 to view, a history of practical greatness and true honor ; illus- 
 trious in its beginning ; serious and faithful in its progress ; dis- 
 pensing intelligence, without the rewards of fame ; .heroic for 
 the right, instigated by no hope of applause ; independent, as 
 not knowing how to be otherwise ; adorned with names of wis- 
 dom and greatness fit to be revered, as long as true excellence 
 may have a place in the reverence of mankind.
 
 WHO 
 
 
 FIRST GO YE UN OR 
 
 MASSACHUSETTS?
 
 WHO 
 
 FIRST GOVERNOR 
 
 MASSACHUSETTS? 
 
 BY JOSEPH B. FELT. 
 
 / - 
 
 Veritatis simplex oratio est. SENECA. 
 
 Shall truth fail to keep her word, 
 Justice divine not hasten to be just ? 
 
 MILTON. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 PRESS OF T. R. MARVIN, 42 CONGRESS STREET. 
 1853.
 
 WHO WAS THE FIRST GOVERNOR 
 
 OF 
 
 MASSACHUSETTS? 
 
 To differ in opinion, on this or other topics of inquiry, 
 especially with those noted for their talents and acquirements, 
 is always attended with unpleasant associations and feelings. 
 Still it is the lot of human imperfection, and unavoidable 
 in the discussion of sentiments and opinions honestly enter- 
 tained. 
 
 The occasion of the question just submitted is a note re- 
 cently published by the Hon. James Savage, in his second 
 edition of Winthrop's Journal. This note is printed on pages 
 200 to 203 inclusive, of the second volume. It contains an 
 argument against some remarks in the first volume of the 
 Annals of Salem, which advocate the position that Endicott 
 preceded Winthrop as the proper Governor of this Com- 
 monwealth. It advances and debates two prominent ideas, 
 which, as the writer thinks, call for examination. One is, that 
 the comparison between the source of Carver's trust as chief 
 magistrate of Plymouth* Colony, and that of Endicott's, is 
 incorrect. Another, that because the latter person held office 
 under those of the Company of Massachusetts, who resided in 
 England, he was, therefore, no Governor, in 1629, in the right 
 acceptation of the word. 
 
 We will endeavor to take a fair view of these two subjects, 
 in the order already presented. 
 
 With regard to the comparison, the malfer of it intended by 
 it neither more nor less, than relative authority for offices, 
 designated by the like names. His language was: "The rule,
 
 which required John Carver to be accounted Governor of 
 Plymouth, gives Mr. Endicott similar precedency to Mr. 
 Winthrop." That we may perceive more fully the force of 
 this remark, we will glance at the newly arrived Pilgrims on 
 the coast, which they concluded to adopt as their refuge from 
 the trials of the Old World. They had no more authority for 
 their plantation, government and protection, than the Patent, 
 received from the Company of North and South Virginia, by 
 John Wincob in his own name, who, to their deep regret, was 
 unable to take passage with them. The main cause of their 
 having no better warrant to occupy territory on our shores, 
 was the opposition of the King and his prominent supporters, 
 to the encouragement of dissenters in any part of his dominions. 
 Such a document was no more available for their purposes, 
 than the subsequent one, taken out by John Pierce, and termed 
 a "Deed Pole," from the Company of New England, and sold 
 by him, at an exorbitant advance, to the adventurers for the 
 Colony, in 1623, after he had unsuccessfully striven to hold 
 the settlers here as tenants at his will. It was of less force and 
 worth than the Patent, obtained from the same authorities, in 
 1630, which the rulers of Plymouth Plantation considered as 
 is plain from their several earnest petitions to the throne, until 
 the Usurpation as not near so valuable for securing their 
 privileges, as the Charter of our Commonwealth, under the 
 directions of which Endicott was elected Governor in 1629. 
 
 The intimation, that the contract, signed by Carver and his 
 associates, was sufficient to endow him with the full honor and 
 responsibilities of a chief magistrate, while the instrument, 
 which authorized Endicott to sustain a similar relation to the 
 people with him, could not place him upon an equal footing 
 with the former, may be judged of by the conduct of the 
 Pilgrims themselves. The anxious and protracted efforts, 
 which they made before their embarkation from Leyden, to 
 obtain even their first Patent, materially defective as it was, 
 shows how very reluctant they were to be compelled, when 
 arrived at their new abode in America, to adopt the last resort 
 of self-constituted government. It is evident to me, that they 
 would have much preferred, that Carver should be placed over 
 them by authority of their own Company, like that which 
 promoted Endicott, than by that which they were forced to
 
 create through absolute, unsought and unwelcome necessity. 
 Besides, Carver was no less dependent on the will of the 
 immigrants, who placed him at the head of their affairs, than 
 Endicott was on that of his fellow members of the Corporation, 
 who voted that the supreme care of their colony should be 
 committed to him. 
 
 In view of these considerations, is there any inaccuracy in 
 the foregoing quotation ? The meaning of it is plainly, that if 
 Carver's forty associates chose him for their head, without con- 
 stitutional power from any charter from the Crown, or without 
 any Patent, in the general name of their Company, from the 
 Corporation of North and South Virginia, and he might, under 
 such circumstances be rightfully entitled Governor in advance 
 of Bradford, there is full as much propriety, to say the least, 
 that Endicott, chosen by freemen or members of the Massa- 
 chusetts Company, among whom he held a prominent stand, 
 assembled in General Court, in London, and under royal sanc- 
 tion, to be their Governor of this Commonwealth, should be 
 alike entitled precedently to Winthrop. It seems to me in- 
 capable of candid and true contradiction, that the comparison 
 was and is pertinent and correct in its application, and that 
 both cases, considered as to the sources whence the power of 
 governing was derived, are the same in a corporate kind, though 
 diverse in degree, and that it is much more in favor of 
 Endicott than of Carver, though I believe that the latter 
 may justly hold his rank as the first and chief ruler of the 
 Pilgrims. 
 
 We will next consider the position, that because Endicott 
 was appointed chief magistrate for our colony, by members of 
 the Company, convened in London, in 1629, still this consti- 
 tuted him no Governor in the true acceptation of the term. 
 
 For an intelligent settlement of this point, much depends 
 on the right interpretation of the word denoting such an officer 
 of stale. A few late writers have had printed in their works 
 the very expressions of the General Court in England, which 
 inform us in the most direct and plainest style, that they 
 elected Endicott as their colonial Governor ; and at the same 
 time these authors, while denying that hfe fully sustained such 
 a relation, have utterly omitted to tell their readers what mean- 
 ing they attach to their negation. They cannot justly complain
 
 6 
 
 if those who trace their course suppose that the paramount 
 reason why they have gone thus far, and then failed to guide 
 inquirers further, as they were bound to do, is that they could 
 not proceed with satisfaction to themselves, and much less to 
 those who are convinced that their whole direction s so far as 
 away from the plain landmark set up by the phraseology of the 
 court, just referred to, is totally unauthorized. The general 
 drift of their remarks that Governor, in reference to Endicott, 
 means something lower than the standing of such an officer, 
 who is allowed his full rank, and there leaving the mind which 
 desires to ascertain the proportion and particulars of such de- 
 duction in utter darkness, may lead to bewilder, but is far from 
 being acceptable to every person who would know the whole 
 truth. 
 
 It would afford much pleasure to the writer, could he per- 
 ceive that the position of Mr. Savage, under this head, was 
 entirely free from the deficiency just mentioned. After adduc- 
 ing several passages from the charter, to show that Endicott 
 held his trust from the Company at home, he quotes as follows, 
 from the same document : " The authority, office and power, 
 before given to the former governor, deputy, etc., in whose 
 stead or place new shall be so chosen, shall, as to him and 
 them, and every of them, cease and determine." These words, 
 as they evidently appear to me, have an immediate appli- 
 cation to the succession of the Company's officers in England, 
 and the consequent surrender of their respective trusts. I do 
 not understand that they have any direct bearing upon colonial 
 officers. Mr. Savage places the subsequent phrase, directly 
 after the close of them, " These last words settle the business." 
 If such a settlement mean, which is what I comprehend by it, 
 that Endicott was Governor here in 1629, by election of the 
 company in London, and thus subordinate to them, it entirely 
 harmonizes with my own views, and I do not recollect ever 
 having heard it denied. 
 
 It is true of him, and of all regular Governors. None of 
 them can or ever could assert, that they do not or did not 
 possess their power subordinately, in a greater or less degree, 
 according to its origin. Were it a fact, that on account of such 
 subordinacy no man chosen under it ever was or ever could be 
 a proper Governor, the issue of the present instance would be
 
 closed ; the matter would be settled, and to raise any query 
 about it, would be indeed " an idle question." But the truth 
 in the premises assumes, to my apprehension, a very different 
 aspect. 
 
 The subordinacy under consideration may be corporate, regal 
 or popular. Of course there is no need for us to observe, ex- 
 cept to meet objections occasionally thrown, as dust, into our 
 eyes, so that we may not see our way clearly, that the term 
 denoting such chief magistrate, does not signify a tutor, as 
 Locke used it in his treatise on education, nor pilot of a ship, 
 as the Apostle James applied it, nor president of a bank, nor 
 superintendent of a hospital, etc., as not unfrequently used in 
 the parlance of England. The definition of Governor, as 
 exemplified and verified in the history of our country, may 
 be learned from its several administrations of government. 
 While different sections of it were owned and controlled by 
 companies in Europe, and afterwards to some extent in this 
 land, they exercised a corporate power in the choice of their 
 Governors for their respective colonies. When these came 
 under provincial rule, the Kings of England appointed such 
 officers at their own pleasure. When they were made inde- 
 pendent of the crown, the people elected these magistrates. 
 All these elections were made on principles, as laid down in 
 patents, charters and constitutions. Here we have a practical 
 idea of what Governors have been in different periods of our 
 country ; an explanation which shows that they were delegated 
 1.0 rule over their respective States, according to established 
 principles, by the companies, sovereigns and people who ap- 
 pointed them. No well informed historian undertakes to assert 
 that the primitive Governors of New Netherland, subsequently 
 New York, were not properly so because they were strictly 
 subordinate to the States General, and then to the West India 
 Company in Holland ; or that the like Governors or Presidents 
 of Virginia were not really and completely such" officers, because 
 they derived their station from the company who owned their 
 portion of English America. We might select no small num- 
 ber of other parallel instances to confirm our position. The 
 two especially cited are well known ; to the point, and suffi- 
 cient for our purpose. 
 
 But here we ask, is it true that Endicott was not fully Oov-
 
 8 
 
 ernor in 1629, because so entitled and empowered by members 
 of the Company in London ? If so, we are reduced to the 
 necessity of disallowing the representations of our hitherto 
 credible historians, who describe the administrations of the 
 Dutch and Virginia Governors just referred to, as rightfully so 
 denominated ; we must change our impressions, and while we 
 speak of them as Governors, we must entertain a mental reser- 
 vation which degrades them below the level indicated by their 
 title, and assigns to them an uncertain grade which no language 
 has yet, to the knowledge of the writer, intelligently, satisfac- 
 torily and truly defined. We are, therefore, constrained to 
 grant, that the doctrine of subordinacy, as here set forth, tends 
 to an absurdity ; proves far too much, and consequently should 
 be rejected as unsound, unsafe, and introducing confusion into 
 the records of our history. Of course, a doctrine of such a cast 
 and character should never be applied to Endicott, and thus 
 strip him of the honor of being the first Governor of the ter- 
 ritory and population of our Commonwealth. 
 
 There are several particulars which bear on this subject and 
 call for our attention at the present stage. 
 
 To sink Endicott from the head of the list of our chief mag- 
 istrates, because of subordinacy, seems to imply that there was 
 some essential difference, with reference to him and Winthrop, 
 in the mode of their election arid in the principles of their 
 administration. But was there in reality ? No ; Endicott was 
 chosen by freemen of the Company in London. So was 
 Winthrop ; and after the latter came hither, he was rechosen 
 by freemen of the same corporation, who dwelt here, and was, 
 in every respect, as much subordinate to them, separately 
 viewed on both sides of the Atlantic, as ever Endicott was. 
 
 How was it as to principles of administration ? Endicott, 
 for 1629, had in his hands, as the basis of his action, the 
 charter, designated in its words, " Letters patent, or the dupli- 
 cate or exemplification thereof," with the royal seal. It is true 
 that Mr. Savage remarks concerning him, on the 30th page 
 of his late first volume "He had a commission from the 
 Company to act as Governor, which was, of course superseded 
 by the arrival of Winthrop with the charter." Some readers 
 may construe this to intimate that Endicott did not have the 
 charter for his direction. As a caveat against such a mistake,
 
 they will bear in mind that he did have it, not varying one jot 
 or tittle from the one brought over by his successor, as to all 
 its requisites for the colonial legislation, which shows, without 
 any just contradiction, that the principles of government were 
 the same for both of them. Hence, as the cause instanced in 
 the outset of this paragraph has no foundation, its effect cannot 
 be equitably allowed. 
 
 The statement made by Mr. Savage, that he never saw any 
 sufficient evidence of Endicott's exercising the duties of Gov- 
 ernor in a regular Court is, as it seems to me, no conclusive 
 argument that he did thus come short of his assigned service. 
 It would indeed have been a phenomenon in political economy, 
 had not various cases come before him, which in a colony of 
 three years' continuance, demanded the collective deliberation, 
 decision and execution of himself and associates in government. 
 The letters of Cradock to him show that he had no lack of 
 such business to perform, and his woll known reputation for 
 promptness, activity and faithfulness, are a guarantee that he 
 did not suffer it to be neglected. The natural inference which 
 most minds would make relative to absence of positive proof, 
 if there were none, that Endicott and his Court did not omit 
 legislation altogether, would be, that the records of it were 
 lost, as those of Salem, then the capital, were for several years, 
 relative to its primitive municipal transactions. 
 
 That Endicott did hold a General Court there, is indicated, 
 to my apprehension, by Morton of Mount Wollaston, who de- 
 scribes, in his new English Canaan, being present in such an 
 assembly. The account which this narrator gives, how a force 
 was sent to seize him and his effects, because he, in the exhi- 
 bition of his staunch attachment to the national church, refused 
 obedience to the charter authorities, is competent evidence that 
 they were no drones ; that they were vigilant watchmen of the 
 Commonwealth, and adopted all needed measures in their ses- 
 sions for the regular management of colonial affairs. 
 
 Further, the serious occurrence which involved the banish- 
 ment of the Brownes, would naturally summon the majority 
 of the rulers together, demand and receive their anxious con- 
 sideration and final decision. Had they failed so to do, there 
 is a moral certainty that the correspondence of the London 
 2
 
 10 
 
 Court, which ensued, would have charged them with a gross 
 violation of their important trusts, which it did not. 
 
 Here we meet the assertion of Mr. Savage, previously inti- 
 mated. It follows : " Nor is there a scrap of any record of 
 proceedings ever had under his authority." As a necessary 
 indication that there was such a record, we have the subsequent 
 information. It is found in the Massachusetts Historical Soci- 
 ety's Collections, 3 s., 9 v., 257 p. It is an extract from a letter 
 of John Howes, in London, 1633, bearing on the devices and 
 exertions already commenced at St. James' for the overthrow 
 of our civil and religious institutions. It is, that about twenty- 
 two of Endicott's laws were recently laid before the Lords. 
 These acts, as we have reason to conclude, were selected by 
 foes to our Plantation from a code which contained not a few 
 more applicable to the wants and relations of the inhabitants, 
 and not construed as opposed to the laws of the mother coun- 
 try. They are the strongest proof that Endicott and others, 
 of a regularly constituted legislature, however small, did come 
 up to the requisitions for which they were appointed by the 
 Company in London. They thus exemplified the power be- 
 stowed upon them expressly by the charter, " to correct, punish, 
 govern and rule all the king's subjects" within the compass of 
 their jurisdiction. Of course the mistake, which represents 
 them in a very different attitude, so that they should be looked 
 on as a body of little or no consequence, and thus their Gov- 
 ernor be degraded like themselves, rests on mere fiction and 
 not fact. It ought not, and wherever truth is allowed its legit- 
 mate sway, will not press him down from his right position. 
 
 Should the administration of Endicott be disparaged, and 
 consequently his standing, as its chief magistrate, meet with 
 similar fare, because the number of his assistants was not large? 
 To answer this question as it should be, we must not look at 
 it singly and separately from all others. It is true that the 
 Browne's were sent home. But there remained for Endicott's 
 assistants, Higginson, Skelton, Bright, Graves, Sharp, and most 
 probably the three more whom they were authorized to choose, 
 if not the two additional ones whom the old planters, as Conant 
 arid his associates, were privileged to elect. In such an emer- 
 gency, it is not at all likely that men like the three first, just
 
 11 
 
 named, would despond and neglect to avail themselves of their 
 right to supply deficient members, strengthen their hands, and 
 thus support their cause. 
 
 From these points we look to Plymouth Colony. We hear, 
 we perceive not even the whisper of a suspicion, but that the 
 rule of Carver was such as to secure his appropriate rank, 
 though he had no assistant; but that Bradford, his immediate 
 successor was alike entitled, though he had only one assistant 
 to 1624, and then only five, and was himself an assistant 
 to Robert Gorges, the Governor-General of New England. 
 From this view, we turn to Massachusetts. Who doubts that 
 the administration of Winthrop was sufficient to afford a similar 
 distinction to him, though he had only seven assistants, besides 
 himself and deputy, in August, 1630, and in the same year an 
 order was made, that a major part of less than nine assistants 
 might, hold a court and perform its appropriate business'? It 
 must be confessed that then, of necessity, was a day of small 
 things. But the diminutiveness of the age should not be laid 
 to the account of one so as to strip him of his merited honor, 
 while it is not so much as named of others, to whom, in all 
 equity, it should be alike applied. Let not prejudice hold us 
 back from dealing with an even hand. 
 
 The proceedings and language of the General Court, or free- 
 men of the Company, convened in London, apply to the ques- 
 tion before us. 
 
 In 1629, about February, they provide for transmitting to 
 Endicott the charter having the royal seal, arid also their own 
 seal. These he received in due time. April 30. The Court 
 vote that the authorities of the Colony shall be styled the "Gov- 
 ernor and Council of London's Plantation in the Massachusetts 
 Bay." They then elect Endicott to be the said Governor, 
 and most of the Council, and give instructions how the other 
 members of it shall be chosen here. In defining his powers, 
 they express themselves as follows, as entered on their own 
 records: "And the said Governor at his discretion, or in his 
 absence the deputy, is hereby authorized to appoint, as oft as 
 there shall be occasion, and shall have full power and authority, 
 and is hereby authorized from his Letters Patent, to make, 
 ordain and establish all manner of wholesome and reasonable 
 orders, laws ; statutes, ordinances and instructions, not contrary
 
 12 
 
 to the laws of the realm of England, for the present government 
 of our Plantation and the inhabitants residing within the limits 
 of this our Plantation." They order a transcript of this to be 
 forwarded to Endicott. On the same day they empower him 
 and his Council to choose a Secretary, and " such other subor- 
 dinate officers to attend them at their Courts." May 7. They 
 agree on the forms of oaths for the Governor, Deputy and 
 Council of the Colony. That for the first of these officers, 
 they denominate " the oath of the Governor in New England." 
 The duties it required of him. it required of all his successors, 
 as upon an equal footing in respect to rank. 29. As the head 
 of the General Court in England, Cradock addresses a letter to 
 him with tli3 superscription, " Captain Jo : Endicott, Esquire, 
 Governor." 
 
 Their subsequent records frequently gave him the last title. 
 In a review of all they said and did, so far as it has come down 
 to us, there is not a shade of thought or expression, as it seems 
 to me, which should lead any mind to infer, but that while 
 they were legislating about him, appointing, addressing and 
 styling him Governor, they seriously and sincerely meant to 
 apply the title to him in the highest colonial and fullest sense. 
 It would be wronging them as conscientious men, who were 
 ready to make great sacrifices for the founding of a religious 
 commonwealth on our soil, to suspect or imply that they pur- 
 posed to use the term in a double or vague sense, or in any 
 form or degree diverse from its proper signification. 
 
 To avoid any imputation of this kind, we must allow that 
 the Company, from the spirit and letter of their charter, records 
 and correspondence, did purpose to have a legitimate Governor, 
 in the person of Endicott, on the premises of their Plantation, 
 even while they exercised authority at home for the regulation 
 of their trade, and the delegation of suitable legislative powers 
 to such an officer and his associates. 
 
 What does the succession of Winthrop to Cradock, imply ? 
 To arrive at a true answer to this question, let us deal with 
 facts. Such an official investment had all its vital properties 
 laid down in the Charter, which made the sphere of its imme- 
 diate operation within the jurisdiction of Old England. There 
 it was allowed to give legal direction to the affairs of the 
 Company. It was endowed with no inward or outward quality
 
 13 
 
 whereby it might leave the place assigned for its exercise, and 
 take up its abode in another land, and still be essentially as it 
 had been at its commencement. The Charter made England 
 as requisite for the continuance of such investment, as it did 
 that a competent number of the Company's officers should 
 reside there while it was in existence. This investment had 
 nought to do with leaving the mother country, crossing the 
 ocean, landing on our soil, entering the Courts of our rulers 
 and causing them to cease as though they had never been. 
 No. In the whole length and breadth of the Charter, we 
 discover no liberties of this sort. That document declares the 
 duties of the Company's officers, who were in England, and, 
 also, those of their officers in America. As to their respective 
 and special services, it set up a wall of separation between 
 them, saying, as it were, to one class of them, here is your 
 allotment, and to the other, there is yours. It holds forth not 
 even the shadow of a license for any of the former, provided 
 they should, by change of abode, become legislatively connected 
 with the latter, to push them aside and assume their civil dis- 
 tinctions to themselves, simply for what they had been in a 
 distant quarter of the world. So it is alike non-committed in 
 the other direction. 
 
 With his authority so bounded, we perceive nothing in the 
 several communications of Cradock, that he was, in the least 
 degree, dissatisfied because he was not styled the first Governor 
 of the Colony as well as first Governor of the Company in 
 England. He evidently would have felt that an attempt to 
 foist on him such a double capacity was not only unjust to 
 Eudicott, but also a palpable violation of the charter, as well 
 as contrary to the common usage of Corporations like the one 
 he served. Winthrop, no less susceptible of generous emotions, 
 must have known that, by a mere succession to Cradock, he 
 could be endowed with no more honor or power than so worthy 
 a predecessor realized. He must have perceived that when the 
 Arbella spread her sails to the breeze, and bore him and his 
 friends towards America, that he had ceased to be the head of 
 the Company in England, and was to be only head of such 
 of them as should have their domicile in the Colony, and thus 
 to be no more nor less than the successor of Endicott, in the 
 full sense of a bona fide, charter Governor, without any let or
 
 14 
 
 hindrance of hypercritical distinctions, never known in their 
 day of peril and toil for the Commonwealth. 
 
 What did the Court in London mean, when, on the 29th 
 of August, 1629, as proposed for deliberation the preceding 
 month, they voted, " that the Government and Patent should 
 be settled in New England," though not finally decided upon 
 till several weeks afterwards, because of serious constitutional 
 objections? By a misconstruction of the' phrase, here quoted, 
 not a few persons, as it seems to me, have been led to adopt 
 erroneous conclusions. They have supposed that it involved 
 the necessity of /making some extraordinary change in the 
 colonial polity, and of conferring on its administrators here a 
 correspondent elevation. But their misapprehension may be 
 corrected by a candid examination of the mode in which the 
 movement was executed. The practical operation of a theory 
 affords far better instruction as to its nature, than many 
 speculations about it, however imaginative and ingenious. 
 
 The settling of the government here was substantially the 
 omission to have its agents chosen by the members of the 
 Company in Old England, and the like act performed by those 
 of the same corporation in New England. It secured to 
 Winthrop no greater power than it had already conferred on 
 Endicott. It raised the former not a single line higher above 
 the colonists, than it had the latter. It dealt with both on the 
 same Charter principles, and imparted to them equal rank and 
 honor. 
 
 Here it may be well to remark, that such an exchange of 
 elective locations involved the nullification of the government 
 as it existed under Cradock, and as required to be continued 
 by the Charter. The following entry on our General Court 
 records, of September 3, 1634, denotes an exception : 
 
 " It is ordered, that there shall be letters written to these 
 gentlemen, here under mentioned and signed by the Court of 
 Assistants, viz : Messrs. George Harwood, John Revell, Thomas 
 Andrews, Richard Andrews, Francis Kirby, Francis Webb, 
 George Foxcroft, and Robert Reave, to entreat them to make 
 choice of a man amongst themselves to be Treasurer for a year 
 for this Plantation, as also to give them power to receive an 
 account of Mr. Harwood, now Treasurer, as also to give the 
 said Mr. Harwood a full discharge." Here is indication, that
 
 15 
 
 members of the Massachusetts Company, who resided in 
 England, were so far a government of trade, remaining there 
 and connected with the Colony, as proposed in 1629, as to 
 have a Treasurer for their funds, who was about to resign and 
 another to take his place. How much this may subtract from 
 the amount of confidence, entertained by some, that the whole 
 administration as in being under Cradock, was moved over 
 with Winthrop, and thereby swept away Endicott's governor- 
 ship, though a strange conclusion to my mind, they can judge 
 for themselves. It may not be amiss to add here, that if such 
 confidence were well founded, and on account of being at the 
 head of the Company in London, any man should be denom- 
 inated the first chief magistrate of Massachusetts, that man is 
 Matthew Cradock, and no other. 
 
 At this point, the query meets us, what is signified by 
 settling the Patent in New England? It is essentially the 
 same as settling- the government here. This was the creature 
 of that, and derived all its civil and religious polity from it, 
 and the very body which it assumed, and the very spirit 
 through which it existed, moved and acted. The establish- 
 ment of the government on our shores necessarily involved the 
 like action with reference to the Charter. This action implies, 
 of course, what really occurred in its premises. One of two 
 transcripts of that document, as well known, was used for the 
 control of the Corporation, while they existed in England; but 
 it ceased to be needed there, when they closed their organiza- 
 tion and was brought to our country. Another transcript of it 
 had, as before noted, been previously sent to Endicott as the 
 guarantee for his colonial administration, and still remains in 
 the place where its privileges were exercised. When he was 
 succeeded by Winthrop, only one of these transcripts was 
 needed, and that has been long deposited among the State 
 archives. In such a manner was the Patent or Charter settled 
 upon our soil, so as to have no further legislative connection 
 with its proprietors, who dwelt in England. 
 
 It is well known, that this transaction, so far as laying aside 
 the government of the Corporation in that Kingdom, has been 
 long represented by some as a fundamental violation of the 
 Charter. Charles the I. and the Council for New England, took 
 this stand. The Royal Council, under the date of June 19,
 
 16 
 
 1679, write to the Rulers of Massachusetts : " Since the Charter 
 by its frame and constitution was originally to be executed in 
 this kingdom, and not in New England, otherwise than by 
 deputation (as is accordingly practiced in all other charters of 
 like nature), 'tis not possible to establish that perfect settlement 
 we so much desire, until these things are better understood." 
 Among the civilians, who have maintained the same ground, 
 was the late Judge, Joseph Story. The history of Hutchinson 
 says : " It is evident from the Charter, that the original design 
 of it was to constitute a corporation in England, like to that of 
 the East India and other great companies, with powers to settle 
 plantations within the limits of the territory, under such forms 
 of government and magistracy, as should be fit and necessary." 
 While such objectors so held their opinion, they uttered no 
 doubt but that the Company did elect, in London, a com- 
 petent and proper Governor for their Colony, in the person of 
 Endicott. 
 
 We may learn from the foregoing observations, that the 
 principal addition to the General Court of the Plantation, by 
 establishing the government and patent here, was the choice of 
 its chief magistrate, instead of having him appointed by similar 
 authority in England. But location, all other things being 
 equal, makes no essential difference in the grade of an officer. 
 Washington would have been as much President of our Re- 
 public had he been chosen in Boston as anywhere else, 
 provided the Constitution allowed the practice. Endicott 
 therefore should, by no mistaken construction, suffer loss in 
 his rank, by being elected by members of the Company in 
 London instead of Massachusetts. We feel assured, that 
 Winthrop saw nothing in the settlement of the government 
 and charter on our soil, which could justify him in attempting 
 to exclude Endicott from being his constitutional predecessor 
 in office. No, the enlightened mind, the truthful conscience, 
 and the noble heart of Winthrop would have shrunk from such 
 a trick of political management. 
 
 How do various historians represent the office of Endicott 
 prior to Winthrop's arrival ? Josselyn, Johnson and Morton 
 speak of the former, as being governor in 1629, without the 
 least qualification, as if he were in any form or degree, of 
 any lower grade than the latter. Prince, in his New England,
 
 17 
 
 relates the proceedings of the Company in London in confer- 
 ring a name upon their Colony. He then says, that they 
 "elect Mr. Endicott Governor," and four times in immediate 
 succession, in the same paragraph, he applies the like title to 
 him in connection with the transactions of such a body. 
 Prince, who was quick to detect small as well as great errors, 
 and particular to state them, evidently had no misgivings as to 
 the common sense meaning of Governor, assigned to Endicott; 
 had no doubt but that he might most accurately and un- 
 reservedly apply to him the title, without being justly charged 
 with the least particle of misrepresentation. Hutchinson, while 
 narrating the Company's course of business, in ihe same year, 
 says : " The names of all the adventurers and the sums sub- 
 scribed, were sent over to Mr. Endicott, who was appointed 
 their Governor in the Plantation." A man, like Hutchinson, 
 would never have made this statement, had he the least 
 suspicion that it contained a contradiction ; that it could be, 
 in some anomalous and strange manner, construed to mean the 
 Governor of a Colony or State, and, at the same instant and 
 in the same relation, mean no such officer, but an uncertain, 
 undefined something, without notifying his readers of such 
 a perplexed and distorted use of the English tongue. It 
 comes to my recollection, distinctly, that a highly distinguished 
 literary gentleman, who had great confidence in Hutchinson's 
 talents, intelligence and correctness, while contending that 
 Winthrop was the first Governor of our Commonwealth, 
 appealed to that author with evident assurance, that he would 
 support his position, but was greatly disappointed when he saw 
 that his words contradicted his theory. And so I believe will 
 many a man, who has not already committed himself in an 
 opposite direction, and who consults their statements, without 
 any previous bias, be conscious, that Hutchinson and Prince 
 meant to be understood, that they had no doubts but that 
 Endicott was in 1629 a true, constitutional and proper Governor 
 of Massachusetts, as much as Winthrop or any of his successors 
 ever were under the colonial charter, and consequently and 
 righteously accounted the first on the list of such magistrates 
 in our Commonwealth. 
 
 "Fiat justitia, ruat coelum."
 
 Q 
 
 /6 
 
 NARRATIVE
 
 DECLARATION 
 
 OF THE 
 
 AFFAIRS OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE THAT 
 FIRST INHABITED NEW ENGLAND. 
 
 BY PHINEHAS PRATT. 
 
 
 Edited, with Notes, 
 
 BY RICHARD FROTHINGHAM, JR. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 PRESS OF T. R. MARVIN & SON, 42 CONGRESS STREET. 
 1858.
 
 THIS Narrative and the accompanying Papers were prepared for publication 
 in the Fourth Volume of the Fourth Series of the Massachusetts Historical 
 Society's Collections. One hundred copies have been printed in this form, 
 for private distribution.
 
 PR A XT' S NARRATIVE. 
 
 I 
 
 PHINEHAS PRATT was one of a company of about sixty, who were sent to Mas- 
 sachusetts to found a Colony by Thomas Weston, a London merchant, who was 
 first a friend, and then a rival, of the Plymouth Colony. His patent is not known 
 to be extant. 
 
 Pratt, with nine others, sailed from England in the Sparrow, which arrived at 
 Damariscove Islands, in May, 1622. Here he, with others, left the vessel, in a 
 shallop, and, after touching at several places on the coast, landed, in the latter 
 part of May, at Plymouth. About the first of July, the Charity and the Swan, 
 two other vessels sent out by Weston, also arrived ; and subsequently a party 
 left Plymouth in the Swan, and commenced the settlement at Wessaguscus, in 
 the present town of Weymouth. Pratt was one of this company. 
 
 The head man of this Colony was Richard Greene, a brother-in-law of Wes- 
 ton ; but he, dying on a subsequent visit to Plymouth, was succeeded by John 
 Sanders. These settlers began " with little provision." " They neither applied 
 themselves to planting of corn, nor taking of fish, more than for their present 
 use ; but went about to build castles in the air, and making of forts, neglecting 
 the plentiful time of fishing. When winter came, their forts would not keep out 
 hunger, and they, having no provision before hand, and wanting both powder and 
 shot, to kill deer and fowl, many were starved to death, and the rest hardly 
 escaped." * 
 
 The survivors of this Colony were then really in the power of the natives ; 
 and they were indebted to the courage, adroitness and endurance of Phinehas 
 Pratt, for their deliverance and their lives. In the winter of 1623, the Indians 
 matured a plan to cut off the English, both at Wessaguscus and Plymouth, in one 
 day. Pratt, then about thirty-two years of age, had seen some of his compan- 
 ions die of starvation ; and learning, in his intercourse with the Indians, of this 
 scheme of massacre for the rest, resolved to send intelligence of it to Plymouth. 
 When all refused to go, he determined to go himself; and by deceiving the sav- 
 ages, effected his escape. Though closely pursued, and suffering much in body 
 and mind, he made good his way to Plymouth, which he reached on the 24th of 
 March, 1623. His story corresponded with intelligence already received from 
 Massasoit ; 2 and hence Standish and his party, on the next day, started on the 
 expedition which resulted in inflicting on Pecksuot and Wittewamut the doom 
 which they had in store for the English, and in saving the remnant of the Col- 
 ony. 
 
 Pratt was too much exhausted to accompany Standish. On regaining strength, 
 he went to Piscataqua, and was in skirmishes with the natives at Agawam and 
 at Dorchester. Hence he sums up his early perils by saying : " Three times we 
 fought with them ; thirty miles I was pursued for my life, in a time of frost and 
 snow, as a deer chased by wolves." 
 
 1 Levett, "Voyage into New-England, begun in 1623, and ended i 1624," printed in 
 London in 1628. Chapt. 5. 2 Deane's Bradford, p. 131.
 
 4 Phinehas Pratfs Narrative. 
 
 Pratt settled at Plymouth, and is termed " a joiner." In 1630, he married a 
 daughter of Cuthbert Cuthberston, 1 or Godbert Godberston; 2 and his name, as 
 inhabitant, occurs in the records as a freeman, rate payer, and grantee of lands, 
 for many years. He is classed with the " Old Corners," and " Purchasers." 
 Among the references to Pratt, is the following singular memorandum : 
 
 "The fift of Novemb r . 1644. Memorand: that Thomas Bunting, dwelling 
 W; Phineas Pratt, hath, w' h and by the consent of the said Phineas, put himself 
 as a servant to d^ell w'. h John Cooke, Juni r from the fifteenth day of this instant 
 Novemb 1 ; for and during the terme of eight yeares now next ensuing, and fully 
 to be compleate and ended, the said John Cooke fynding vnto his said servant 
 meate, drink, and apparell during the said terme, and in thend thereof double to 
 apparell him throughout, and to pay him twelue bushells of Indian corne, the 
 said John Cooke haueing payd the said Phineas for him one melch cowe, valued 
 at V u , and fourty shillings in money, and is to lead the said Phineas two loads 
 of hey yearely during the terme of seauen yeares now next ensuinge." 3 
 
 The same records have the following grant, under the date of June 5, 1658 : 
 " Liberty was granted by the Court, unto Phinehas Pratt, or any for him, to look 
 out a parcel or tract of land to accommodate him and his posterity withal, together 
 with other freemen or alone, as he shall think meet, and to make report of the 
 same unto the Court, that so a considerable proportion thereof may be confirmed 
 unto him." 4 
 
 Before this date, Pratt left Plymouth. In 1648, he purchased the place in 
 Charlestown, on which probably he subsequently lived and died. In 1658, his 
 name appears, with other inhabitants, in a division of lands. Four years later, 
 in 1662, he presented to the General Court of Massachusetts what he terms 
 " An History," called " A Declaration of the Affairs of the English People that 
 first inhabited New England." Under the date of May 7, is the following record : 
 " In answer to the petition of Phinehas Pratt, of Charlestown, who presented this 
 Court with a narrative of the straits and hardships that the first planters of this 
 Colony underwent, in their endeavors to plant themselves at Plymouth and since, 
 whereof he was one, the Court judge it meet to grant him three hundred acres of 
 land, where it is to be had, not hindering a plantation." This land was laid out 
 " in the wilderness, on the East of Merrimack River, near the upper end of 
 Nacooke Brook." 
 
 In October, 1668, Pratt, then nearly eighty, presented another petition to the 
 General Court, in which he states that he " was the remainder of the forlorn 
 hope of sixty men ;" that he was now lame ; and he requested aid " that might be 
 for his subsistence the remaining time of his life." The Court refused to grant 
 his petition. The Charlestown records, a few months later, show the following 
 charitable record, January 25, 1668/9 : " Ordered constable Jno. Hayman to 
 supply Phineas Pratt with so much as his present low condition may require." 
 
 At this time Pratt was regarded with uncommon interest. Winslow's Relation, 
 which had been in print over forty years, referred to him as one of Weston's 
 men, who came to Plymouth " with his pack on his back," and " made a pitiful 
 narration of their lamentable and weak estate and of the Indian carriages," 5 ; 
 Morton's Memorial, printed in 1669, stated that Pratt had " penned the particu- 
 lars of his perilous journey and some other things relating to this tragedy " of 
 Weston's Colony ; 6 Hubbard, in 1677, states his service, and also that he was 
 then living ; 7 and a comparison of the " Declaration " now first printed, with 
 Increase Mather's " Relation of the Troubles," &c., printed in 1677, shows, that 
 the " Old Planter yet living in this country," who is referred to and whose rela- 
 tion is there given at length, was Phinehas Pratt. 8 
 
 1 Collections, 2d Series, vii., p 122. 2 Plymouth Records, Vol. i., p. 159. 
 
 3 Plymouth Records, Vol. ii., p. 78. 4 Ib., Vol. iii., p. 145. 
 
 6 Young's WinsHfc, p. 332. 6 Morton Memorial, p. 90. 7 Hubbard. History, p. 78. 
 
 8 Mather's Relation, p. 17.
 
 Phinehas Pratfs Narrative. 5 
 
 Pratt's will is dated January 8, 1677, in which he is styled " Joiner." He 
 bequeaths a small estate, invoiced at 40. 16s. Od., to his wife Mary, and son 
 Joseph. He died in Charlestown, April 19, 1680, where he was buried. A 
 pious hand raised an ornamental tomb-stone over his remains, which is still in 
 good preservation, in the Old Burying Ground. On the right hand of a common 
 centre design, is the figure of a spade and pickaxe crossed, and on the left hand 
 a coffin and cross bones. The following is the inscription, which I copied, 
 March 26, 1858. 
 
 F U G I T H O R A . 
 
 HERE LIES Y BODY OF PHINEHAS 
 PRAM AG d A BOOT 90 Y r8 DEC" APRIL 
 19 1 6 80 
 
 ON OF Y FIRS2T ENGLISH 
 
 INHABITANTS OF Y MASSACHUSE2T3 COLONY. 
 
 The manuscript of Pratt's " Declaration," presented in 1662 to the Massachu- 
 setts General Court, and now printed for the first time, consists of three folio 
 sheets, sewn together, one half of which appear to have been torn off after they 
 were thus arranged. Hence a portion is lost. The MS. is torn at the edges, 
 and portions of the writing are obliterated. It is printed as it is written, except 
 as to punctuation, and where this required capital letters. Pratt's Petition of 
 1668, is also printed for the first time. To these papers is added Increase Ma- 
 ther's version of Pratt's " Relation," printed in 1677. R. F., JR. 
 
 A DECLIRATION OF THE AFAIRES OF THE EINGLISH 
 PEOPLE [THAT FIRST] INHABITED NEW EINGLAND. 
 
 In the Time of Sperituall darkness, when y e State Ecle- 
 isasti .... Roome Ruled & ouer Ruled most of the Na- 
 tions of Vrope, it plea to giue wisdom to many, 
 
 kings and people, in breaking y l sperituall yo . . . . ; yet, 
 not wth standing, there Arose great strif Among such peo- 
 ple y* ar knowne by the name of prodastonce, in many 
 Cases Concerning y e worship of God ; but y e greatest & 
 strongest number of men Comonly pvaled Against the 
 smaller and lesor Number. At this time the honored 
 States of Holland gave moore Liberty in Casses of Re- 
 lidgon y n could be injoyed in some other places. Upon 
 wich diuers good Cristians Remoued the .... dwellings 
 into y e Low Cuntrys.
 
 6 Phinehas Pratfs Narrative. 
 
 Y n on Company y 1 Dwelt in the Sitty of Laydon, being 
 not well Able outwardly to subsist, tooke Counsell & 
 Agred to Remoue into Amerika, into some port North- 
 ward of Verginia. Y e Duch people ofored y m diuers Con- 
 dishons to suply y m w th things Nesasary if thay would Line 
 vndor y e Gouerment of thay r State, but thay Refused it. 
 This thay did y* all men might know the Intier Lone thay 
 bore to thay r King & Cuntry ; for in y m ther was never 
 found any lack of Lifill obedience. Thay sent to thay r 
 fFreinds in Eingland to Let them. Vnderstand what thay 
 
 intended to doe. Then diuers ffr Disbursed some 
 
 monys for y e fferthering of soe good a work. 
 
 It is if to be understod y*, in the yeare 1618, 
 
 ther apeared a biasing star ouer Garmany y 1 maed y e wiss 
 men of Vrope astonished thay r 
 
 Spedily after, near about y' time, these people begun to 
 propoes Remouall. Thay Agred y* thay r strongest & 
 
 Ablest men should goe to provid for thay r WifFs & 
 
 children. Y n Coming into Eingland, they sett fforward in 
 to ships, but thay r Leser ship sprung a leak & reterned .... 
 Eingland; y e biger ship Ariued att Cape Codd, 1620 it 
 being winter, then Caled new Eingland but formerly Caled 
 Canidy. Th^y sent forth thay r boat vpon discouery. Thay r 
 boat being Reterned to they r Shipp, thay Remoued into 
 y e bay of Plimoth & begun they r planta ... by the Riuer 
 of Petuxet. Thay r Shipp being reterned & safly Arived 
 in Eingland, those Gentlemen & Marchents, y* had vnder- 
 taken to suply y m w th things nesasary, vnderstanding y* 
 many of y m weare sick & some ded, maed hast to send a 
 ship w th many things nesasery ; but som Indescret men, 
 hoping to incoridg thay r freinds to Come to y m , writ Letters 
 Conserning y e great plenty of ffish fowle and deare, not 
 considering y* y e wild Salvages weare many times hungrye, 
 y 1 have a better scill to catch such things then Einglish 
 men haue. The Adventvrers, willing to saf thay r Monys, 
 sent them weekly provided of vicktualls, as Many moor 
 after y m did the lyke ; & y 4 was y e great Cause of famine. 
 
 At the same time, Mr. Thomas Westorne, a Merchent 
 of good credit in London, y l was y n thay r treshurer, y* had 
 disberst much of his Mony for y e good of New Eingland, 
 sent forth a ship for y e settleing a plantation in the Massa-
 
 Phinehas Pratfs Narrative. 7 
 
 chusetts Bay, but wanting a pilote we Ariued att Damoralls 
 Cove. The men y* belong to y e ship, ther fishing, had 
 newly set up a may pole & weare very mery. We maed 
 hast to prepare a boat fit for costing. Then said Mr. 
 Eodgers, Master of our ship, "heare ar Many ships & 
 at Munhigin, but no man y* does vndertake to be yo r 
 pilate ; for they say y* an Indian Caled Rumhigin vnder- 
 took to pilot a boat to Plimoth, but thay all lost tha r 
 Lives." Then said Mr. Gibbs, Mast rs Mate of our ship, 
 " I will venter my Liue wth y m ." At this Time of our 
 discouery, we first Ariued att Smithe's Hands, first soe 
 Caled by Capt. Smith, att the Time of his discouery of 
 New Eingland, .... fterwards Caled Hands of Sholes ; 
 ffrom thence to Cape Ann .... so Caled by Capt Mason ; 
 from thence to y e Mathechusits Bay. 1 Ther we continued 
 4 or 5 days. 
 
 Then we pseaued, y l on the south part of the Bay, 
 weare fewest of the natives of the Cuntry Dwelling ther. 
 We thought best to begine our plantation, but fearing 
 A great Company of Salvages, we being but 10 men, 
 thought it best to see if our friends weare Living at 
 Plimoth. Then sayling Along the Cost, not knowing 
 the harber, thay shot of a peece of Ardinance, and at 
 our coming Ashore, thay entertaned vs wth 3 vally of 
 shotts. They 1 seckond ship was Reterned for Eingland 
 before we Came to y m . We asked y m wheare the Rest of 
 our freinds weare y* came in the first ship. Thay said 
 y* God had taken y m Away by deth, & y l before thay r 
 seckond ship came, thay weare soe destresed with sick- 
 nes y* thay, feareing the salvages should know it, had 
 sett up thay r sick men with thay r muscits vpon thay r Rests 
 & thay r backs Leaning Aganst trees. At this Time, on 
 or two of them went wth vs in our vesill to y e place of 
 ffishing to bye vicktualls. 8 or 9 weeks after this, to of 
 our ships 2 Arived att Plimoth the leser of our 3 ships 
 
 1 They arrived in May, 1622. Winsloufs Relation in Young, p. 293, gives the 
 name of the ship "a fishing ship called the Sparrow;" Bradford supplies the 
 date "about the latter end of May." Deane's Bradford, p. 114. 
 
 2 These ships were the Charity, of one hundred tons, and the Swan, of thirty 
 tons. " In the end of June, or beginning of July, came into our harbor two ships 
 of master Weston's aforesaid ; the one called the Charity, the other the Swan ; 
 having in them some fifty or sixty men, sent over at his own charge to plant for
 
 8 Phinehas Pratfs Narrative. 
 
 continued in the Cuntry with vs. Then we maed hast to 
 settle our plantation in the Masachusets bay our Number 
 being neare sixty men. Att the same time ther was a 
 great plag Among the salvagis, &, as y m selfs told vs, 
 half thay r people died thereof. The Natius caled the 
 place of our plantation Wesaguscasit. Neare vnto it is a 
 towne of Later Time Caled Weymoth. 
 
 The Salvagis seemed to be good freinds with vs while 
 they feared vs, but when they see famin prevail, they 
 begun to insult, as apeareth by the seaquell ; for on of 
 thay r Pennesses or Chef men, Caled Pexsouth, implyed 
 himself to Learne to speek Einglish, obsarving all things 
 for his blody ends. He told me he Loued Einglish men 
 very well, but he Loued me best of all. Then he said, 
 " you say ffrench men doe not loue you, but I will tell 
 you what wee have don to y m . Ther was a ship broken 
 by a storm. Thay saued most of they 1 goods & hid it in 
 the Ground. We maed y m tell us whear it was. Y n we 
 maed y m our sarvants. Thay weept much. When we 
 parted them, we gaue y m such meat as our dogs eate. 
 On of y m had a Booke he would ofen Reed in. We 
 Asked him " what his Booke said." He answered, " It 
 saith, ther will a people, lick French men, com into this 
 Cuntry and driue you all a way, & now we thincke you 
 ar thay. We took Away thay r Clothes. Thay liued but 
 a little while. On of them Liued Longer than the Rest, 
 for he had a good master & gaue him a wiff. He is 
 now ded, but hath a sonn Alive. An other Ship Came 
 into the bay w th much goods to Trucke, y n I said to 
 the Sacham, I will tell you how you shall haue all for 
 nothing. Bring all our Canows & all our Beauer & a 
 great many men, but no bow nor Arow Clubs, nor Hachits, 
 but knives vnder y e scins y* About our Lines. Throw vp 
 much Beauer vpon thay r Deck ; sell it very Cheep & 
 when I giue the word, thrust yo r knives in the French 
 mens Bellys. Thus we killed y m all. But Mounsear Ffinch, 
 Master of thay r ship, being wounded, Leped into y e hold. 
 
 him." The Charity sailed with passengers for Virginia. Winsloufs Relation in 
 Young, p. 296. Bradford describes the generous manner with which Weston's 
 men were treated at Plymouth. Deane's Bradford, p. 124, where, and in the 
 notes, will be found ample materials relating to Weston's Plantation.
 
 Phinehas Pratfs Narrative. 9 
 
 We bidd him com vp, but he would not. Then we cutt 
 thay r Cable & y e ship went Ashore & lay vpon her sid 
 & slept ther. Ffinch Came vp & we killed him. Then 
 our Sachem devided thay r goods & ffiered they r Ship & it 
 maed a very great fier." l Som of our Company Asked y m 
 " how long it was Agow sine thay first see ships 1 Thay 
 said thay could not tell, but thay had heard men say y e 
 first ship y fc thay see, seemed to be a noting Hand, as thay 
 suposed broken of from the maine Land, wrapt together 
 w th the roats of Trees, with some trees upon it. Thay 
 went to it with thay r Canows, but seeing men hearing 
 guns, thay maed hast to be gon. 
 
 But after this, when thay saw ffamin prevale, Peck- 
 worth said, " why doe yo r men & yo r dogs dyl" I said, 
 " I had Corn for a Time of need. Y n I filed a Chest, 
 
 but not with Corne & spred Corn on him Com 
 
 opened the Couer and when I was shure he see it, I 
 
 put dow as if I would not haue him see it." 
 
 Then he said " No Indian Soe You haue 
 
 much Corne & Einglish men dye for want." Then thay 
 h . . . . intent to make warr thay Remoued some of thay r 
 howses to th .... a great swamp neare to the pale of our 
 plantation. After this yer. ... a morning I see a man 
 goeing into on of thay r howses, weary with trafelling & 
 Galded on his feet. Y n I said to Mr. Salsbery, our Chirur- 
 geon, shurly thay r Sacham hath implyed him for som 
 intent to make war vpon vs. Then I took a Bagg w th 
 gunpowder and putt it in my pockitt, w th the Top of the 
 bagg hanging out, & went to y e house whear the man was 
 laid vpon a matt. The woman of the howse took hold of 
 the bagg, saying, what is this soe bigg "? I said it is good 
 for Salvagis to eat, and strock hur on the Arm as hard as 
 I could. Then she said, Matchet powder Einglish men, 
 much Matchit. By and by Abordicis bring Mouch Mans, 
 Mouch Sannups, & kill you & all Einglish men att Wessa- 
 guscus & Patuckset. The man y* lay upon y e mats, seeing 
 this, was Angry and in a great Rage, and the woman 
 seemed to be sore afraid. Y n I went out of the howse, 
 
 1 " New English Canaan," by Thomas Morton, printed in 1632, states that this 
 ship was " then riding at anchor by an island then called Peddock's Island ;" and 
 that there were five Frenchmen. Chap. iii. 
 
 2
 
 10 Phinehas Pratt' s Narrative. 
 
 and said to a young man y 1 could best vnderstand thay r 
 Langwig, goe Aske y e woman, but not in y e man's hearing, 
 why the man was Agry, & shee Afraid ? Our interpreter, 
 Coming to me, said, " these are the words of the woman 
 y e man will . . . Abordicis what I said & he & all Indians 
 
 will be angry with me This Peexworth said, " I love 
 
 you." I said " I loue you." I said " I loue you as well 
 as you Loue me." Then he said, in broken Einglish, 
 " me heare you can make the Lickness of men & of 
 women, dogs & dears, in wood & stone. Can you make 
 
 " I said, " I can see a kniue in yo r hand, w th an 
 
 111 favored ffase upon the haft." Then he gave it into my 
 hand to see his workmanship, & said, " this kniue cannot 
 see, it Can not heare, it Can not spek, but by & by it can 
 eat. I haue Another knive at home w th a fase upon the 
 haft as lick a man as this is lick a woman. Y l knive 
 Can not see, it Can not heare, it Can not speke, but it 
 can eat. It hath killed much, ffrench men, & by & by 
 this knive & y* knive shall mary 1 & you shall be thear. . . . 
 knive at home he had kep for a moniment, from the tim 
 they had killed Mounsear Ffinch ; " but as the word went 
 out of his mouth, I had a good will to thrust it in his 
 belly. He said, " I see you ar much angry." I said, 
 " Guns ar Longer then knius." 
 
 Som tim after this tha r Sacham Cam sudingly upon us 
 w th a great number of Armed men ; but thay r spys seeing 
 us in a Redines, he & some of his Chif men, terned into 
 on of tha r howses a quartor of An our. Then wee met 
 them wthout the pale of our plantation & brought them 
 in. Then said I to a yong man y 1 could best speke thay r 
 Langwig, " Aske Pexworth whi thay com thus Armed." 
 He Answered, " our Sacham is angry w th you." I said, 
 " Tell him if he be Angry w th us, wee be Angry w th him." 
 Y n said thay r Sachem, " Einglish men, when you Com into 
 y e Cuntry, we gave you gifts and you gaue vs gifts ; we 
 bought and sold w th you and we weare freinds ; and now 
 tell me if I or any of my men have don you Rong." We 
 answered, " First tell us if we have don you Any Rong." 
 
 1 Some of this conversation, in the same words, may be found in Winslow's 
 " Good News from New England," &c., printed in London in 1624. See reprint 
 of this book in Young's Chronicle of the Pilgrims, p. 338.
 
 Phinehas Pratfs Narrative. 11 
 
 He answered, " Some of you steele our Corne & I have 
 sent you word times wthout number & yet our Corne is 
 stole. I come to see what you will doe." We answered, 
 " It is on man wich hath don it Yo r men have seen vs 
 whip him divers times, besids other manor of punishments, 
 & now heare he is Bound. We give him vnto you to doe 
 w th him what you please." He answered, " y 1 is not just 
 dealeing. If my men wrong my nabur sacham, or his 
 men, he sends me word & I beat or kill my men, acording 
 to the ofenc. If his men wrong me or my men, I send 
 him word & he beats or kills his men Acording to the 
 ofence. All Sachams do Justis by thay r own men. If not 
 we say they ar all Agreed & then we ffite, & now I say 
 you all steele my Corne." 
 
 At this Time som of them, seeing som of our men upon 
 our forte, begun to start, saying, " Machit Pesconk," that 
 is nawty Guns. Then Looking Round about them went 
 a way in a great Rage. Att this Time we strenthened our 
 wach untell we had no ffood left. In thes times the Salv- 
 agis ofentime did Crep upon the snow r , starting behind 
 Boushes & trees to see whether we kepe wach or not .... 
 times I haveing Rounded our plantation untell I had no 
 longer .... nth ; y n in the night, goeing into our Corte of 
 Gard, I see on man ded before me & Another at my writ 
 hand & An other att my left for want of food. O all y e 
 people in New Eingland y l shall heare of these times of 
 our week beginning, Consider what was the strenth of the 
 Arm of flesh or the witt of man ; therfor in the times of 
 yo r greatest distres put yo r trust in God. 
 
 The ofendor being bound, we lett him louse, because we 
 had no food to give him, Charging him to gather Ground 
 Nutts, Clams, & Musells, as other men did, & steel no 
 more. On or two days after this, the salvagis brot him, 
 leading him by the armes, saying " Heare is the Corne. 
 Com see the plase wheare he stole it." Then we kep him 
 bound som few days. After this, to of our Company said 
 " we have bin at the Sachem's howse & thay have near 
 finished thay r last Canoe y 1 thay may incounter w th our ship. 
 Thay r greatest Care is how to send thay r Army's to Plimoth 
 because of the snow. Y n we prepared to meet y m there. On 
 of our Company said " thay have killed on of our hogs."
 
 12 Phinehas Pratt 1 s Narrative. 
 
 An other said, " on of y m striked (?) at me w th his knife ; " 
 & others say " they threw dust in our fases." Then said 
 Pexworth to me, " give me powder & Gunns & I will give 
 you much corne." I said, " by & by men bring ships & 
 vittls." But when we understod y 1 their plot was to kill all 
 Einglish people in on day when the snow was gon, I would 
 have sent a man to Plimoth, but non weare willing to goe. 
 Then I said if Plimoth men know not of this Trecherous 
 plot, they & we are all ded men ; Therefore if God willing, 
 to morrow I will goe. Y 1 night a yong man, wanting witt, 
 towld Pexworth yearly in the Morning. Pexworth came 
 to me & said in Einglish, " Me heare you goe to Patuxit ; 
 you will loose yo r self; y e bears and the wolfs will eate 
 you ; but because I Love you I will send my boy Nahamit 
 with you ; & I will give you vicktualls to eat by y e way & 
 to be mery w th yo r freinds when you Com there." I said ; 
 " Who towld you soe great a Lye y* I may kill him." He 
 said, " it is noe lye, you shall not know." Then he went 
 whom to his howse. Then Came 5 men Armed. We said, 
 " Why Com you thus Armed." They said, " we are ffreinds ; 
 you cary Guns wheare we dwell & we cary bowe & Arows 
 wheare you dwell." Thes Atended me 7 or 8 days & nights. 
 Then thay suposeing it was a lye, wheare Carlis of thay r 
 wach near two ours on the morning. Y n said I to our Com- 
 pany, " now is the Time to Run to Plimoth. Is ther any 
 Compas to be found." Thay said, " non but y m y i belong to 
 y e ship." I said " thay are to Bigg. I have born no armes 
 of Defence this 7 or 8 days. Now if I take my armes thay 
 will mistrust me. Then thay said " Y e salvages will pshue 
 after you & kill you & we shall never see you Agayne." 
 Thus w th other words of great Lamentation, we parted. 
 Then I took a how & went to y e Long Swamp neare by 
 thay r howses & diged on the ege thereof as if I had bin 
 looking for ground nutts, but seeing no man I went in & 
 Run through it. Then Looking Round a bout me, I Run 
 Southward tell 3 of y e Clock) but the snow being in many 
 places, I was the more distresed becaus of my ffoot steps. 
 The sonn being beclouded, I wandered, not knowing my 
 way ; but att the Goeing down of the sonn, it apeared Red ; 
 then hearing a great howling of wolfs, I came to a River ; 
 the water being depe & cold & many Rocks, I pased
 
 Phinehas Pratfs Narrative. 13 
 
 through w th much adoe. Then was I in great distres 
 ffant for want of ffood, weary with Running, ffearing to 
 make a ffier because of y m y* pshued me. Then 1 came to 
 a depe dell or hole, ther being much wood falen into it. 
 Then I said in my thoughts, this is God's providence that 
 heare I may make a fier. Then haveing maed a fier, the stars 
 began to a pear and I saw Ursa Magor & the .... pole 
 yet fearing .... beclouded. The day following I began to 
 
 trafell but being unable, I went back to the fier the 
 
 day ifall sonn shined & about three of 
 
 the clock I came to that part . . . Plimoth bay wher ther 
 is a Town of Later Time .... Duxbery. Then passing 
 by the water on my left hand . . . cam to a brock & ther 
 was a path. Haveing but a short Time to Consider .... 
 ffearing to goe beyond the plantation, I kept Running in 
 the path ; then passing through James Ryuer I said in my 
 thoughts, now am I as a deare Chased . . . the wolfs. If I 
 perish, what will be the Condish ... of distresed Einglish 
 men. Then finding a peec of a ... I took it up & Caried 
 it in my hand. Then finding a . . of a Jurkin, I Caried 
 them under my arme. Then said I in my .... God hath 
 giuen me these two tookens for my Comfort ; y 1 now he 
 will giue me my live for a pray. Then Running down a 
 hill J ... an Einglish man Coming in the path before 
 me. Then I sat down on a tree & Rising up to salute him 
 said, " Mr. Hamdin, 1 I am Glad to see you aliue." He said 
 " I am Glad & full of wonder to see you aliue : lett us sitt 
 
 downe, I see you are weary." I said, " Let eate som 
 
 parched corne." Then he said " I know the Cans 
 
 Come . Masasoit hath sent word to the Gouernor to let 
 him ( ) y* Aberdikees & his Confederates have contriued 
 
 a plot hopeing all Einglish people in on day heare 
 
 as men hard by (ma)king Canoe . . . stay & we will goe 
 
 w th you. Y e next day a yong named Hugh Stacye 
 
 went forth to fell a tree & see two rising from 
 
 the Ground. They said Aberdikees had sent y e 
 
 1 Winslow's " Good News " says this was " John Hamden, a gentleman of 
 London who then wintered with us." Young's JVinslow, p. 314. Young con- 
 jectures that he must have come " in the Charity, which brought Weston's col- 
 ony." ./Vote, p. 314. He accompanied Edward Winslow, in 1623, on his visit to 
 Massasoit.
 
 14 Phinehas Pratfs Narrative. 
 
 Gouernor y* he might send men to trucke for much Beauer, 
 but thay would not goe, but said, " Was not ther An Eing- 
 lish .... Come from Wesaguscus." He Answered " he 
 came "... Thay said he was thay r ffhend, and said come 
 
 and see who But they Terned another way. 
 
 He said, " You come to let vs . . . " Providence to vs was 
 
 great in those times as apeareth after the time of 
 
 the Ariuall of the first ship at pi .... fornamed Masasoit 
 Came to Plimoth & thay r maed a co . . . peace, for an 
 Indian Caled Tisquantom Came to y m & spek Einglish . . 
 Thay Asked him, how he learned to speeke Einglish ? He 
 said y l An Einglishman Caled Capt Hunt Came into the 
 Harbor pretending to trade for beaver & stoole 24 men & 
 thay r beaur & Caried & Sould them in Spaine. & from 
 thence w th much adoe he went into Eingland & ffrom 
 Eingland w th much adoe he gott into h(is) owne Cuntry. 
 This man tould Masasoit what wonders he had seen in 
 Eingland & y* if he Could make Einglish his ffreinds then 
 Enemies y* weare to strong for him would be Con- 
 strained to bowe to him ; but being prevented by some y* 
 
 Came in y e first ship y l Recorded y* wich Conserned 
 
 them I leave it. 
 
 Two or 3 days after my Coming to Plimoth, 10 or 11 
 men 1 went in a boat to o r plantation, but I being fanted 
 was not able to goe w th y m . They first gave warning to 
 the master of the ship 2 & then Contrived how to make sure 
 of the Liues of to of thay r Cheef men, Wittiwomitt, of 
 whom they hosted no Gun would kill, and Pexworth, a 
 suttle man. These being slaine they fell opon others 
 wheare thay could find y m . Then Abordikees, hearing 
 y l some of his men weare killed, Came to try his manwhod, 
 but as thay weare starting behind bushes & trees, on of 
 y m was shott in the Arme. At this time An Indian caled 
 Hobermack, y* formerly had fleed for his liue from his 
 Sacham to Plimoth, aproued himself a valient man in 
 fiting & pshuing after them. Two of our men were killed 
 y 1 thay took in thay r howses att An Advantage .... this 
 
 1 This was a party under Captain Standish, who left Plymouth on the 25th of 
 March, 1623. Winslow, in Young, p. 334. Winslow gives a detailed account 
 of the deaths of Wituwamusset and Pecksuot. 
 
 2 The Swan, which remained at Wessaguscus, or Wessagusset.
 
 Phinehas Pratfs Narrative. 15 
 
 Time pi weare instruments in the . . . nds of God 
 
 for thay r own Hues and ours. Thay tooke the 
 
 head of & sett it on thay r ffort att Plimoth att .... 
 
 9 (]) of our men weare ded w th ffamine and on died in the 
 ship before thay Came to the place whear at that Time of 
 yeare ships Came to ffish it being in March. At this 
 Time ships began to ffish at y e Islands of Sholes and I 
 
 haveing Recovered a Little of my th went to my 
 
 Company near about this Time the first plantation 
 
 att Pascataqua the .... thereof was Mr. Dauid Tomson at 
 the time of my arivall (I) att Pascataqua. To of Abordi- 
 kees men Came thither & seeing me said, " when we killed 
 yo r men thay cried and maed II fauored ifases." I said, 
 " when we killed yo r men, we did not Torment them to 
 make ourself (?) mery." Then we went with our ship into 
 the bay & took from them two Shalops Loading of Corne 
 & of thay r men prisoners ther as a Towne of Later Time 
 Caled Dorchester. The third and last time was in the bay 
 of Agawam. At this Time they took for thay 1 casell a 
 thick swamp. At this time on of our ablest men was shot 
 in the sholder. Wether Any of them wear killed or 
 wounded we could not tell. Ther is a Town of Later 
 time, neare vnto y* place Caled Ipswich. Thus .... plan- 
 tation being deserted, Capt. Robert Gore cam .... the 
 Cuntry w th six gentlemen Atending him & diuers men to 
 doe his Labor & other men w th thay r familys. Thay took 
 possession of our plantation, but thay r ship suply from 
 Eingland Came to late. Thus was ifamine thay r final ofor- 
 throw. Most of y m y* lined Reterned for Eingland. The 
 oforseers of the third plantation in the bay was Capt. 
 Wooliston & Mr. Rosdell. Thes seeing the Ruing of the 
 former plantation, said, we will not pich our Tents heare, 
 least we should doe as thay have Done. Notwithstanding 
 these Gentlemen wear wiss men, thay seemed to blame the 
 oforseeors of the formur Companies not Considering y* God 
 plants & pull vp Bilds & pulls down & terns the wisdom 
 of wiss men into foolishness. These Caled y e name of 
 thay r place Mountwooliston. They Continued neare a 
 yeare as others had don before y m ; but famin was thay r 
 finall aforthrow. Neare vnto y l place is a Town of Lator 
 Time Caled Brantry. Not long after the oferthrow of the
 
 16 Phinehas Pratfs Petition. 
 
 first plantation in the bay, Capt. Louit Cam to y er Cuntry. 
 At the Time of his being at Pascataway a Sacham or Saga- 
 mor Gaue two of his men, on to Capt. Louit & An other 
 to Mr. Tomson, but on y fc was ther said, " How can you 
 trust these Salvagis. Cale the nam of on Watt Tylor, & y e 
 other Jack Straw, after y e names of the two greatest Rebills 
 y* ever weare in Eingland." Watt Tylor said " when he 
 was a boy Capt. Dormer found him upon an Island in 
 great distress." 
 
 PHINEHAS PRATT'S PETITION OF 1668. 
 
 THIS Petition is printed from a manuscript of the date of 1668, as is evident 
 from the autograph attestation of Torrey and Pyncheon, though it is so unlike 
 the " Declaration," both in composition and chirography, as to make it certain 
 that it is not in the handwriting of Pratt. R. F., Jr. 
 
 To the Honoured the Generall Court , holden at 
 Boston, this Oct. 1668. 
 
 I acknowledg my self truly thankfull unto the Honoured 
 Court for that they gave me at the time I presented an 
 History called, A declaration of the affaires of the Eng- 
 lish people, that first inhabited New England. Yet my 
 necessity causeth me farther to entreat you to consider 
 what my service hath been unto my dread Soveraign Lord 
 King James of famous memory. I am one of that litle 
 number, ten men that arrived in Massachusets Bay for 
 the setling of a Plantation, & am the remainder of the for- 
 lorn hope sixty men. We bought the south part of the 
 Bay of Aberdecest their Sachem. Ten of our company 
 died of famine. Then said y e Natives of the Countrey, let 
 us kill them, whilst they are weak, or they will possesse our 
 Countrey, & drive us away. Three times we fought with 
 them, thirty miles I was pursued for my life, in time of 
 frost, and snow, as a deer chased with wolves. Two of our 
 men were kill'd in warr, one shot in the shoulder. It 
 was not by the wit of man, nor by y e strength of the arme 
 of flesh, that we prevailed against them. But God, that 
 overrules all power, put fear in their hearts. And now
 
 Pratt 's Relation by Mather. 17 
 
 seeing God hath added a New England to old Engl. and 
 given both to our dread SoverT Lord King Charles the 
 second, many thousand people enjoy the peace thereof ; 
 Now in times of prosperity, I beseech you consider the 
 day of small things ; for I was almost frozen in time of 
 our weak beginnings, and now am lame. My humble 
 request is for that may be for my subsistance, the remaining 
 time of my life. And I shall be obliged. 
 Your thankfull servant, 
 
 PHINEHAS PRATT. 
 
 The Deputyes Doe not Judge meete to graunt this peti- 
 tion, w th refference to the consent of o r Hono ed magis ts 
 hereto. 
 
 WILLIAM TORREY, Cleric. 
 
 The Magistrates consent w th their bretheren the Deputy s. 
 
 Jo : PYNCHON, P r Curiam. 
 
 PHINEHAS PEATT'S RELATION BY INCREASE MATHER. 
 
 THIS Relation is re-printed from pp. 17 20, of "A Relation Of the Troubles 
 which have happened in New-England, By reason of the Indians there. From 
 the year 1614 to the year 1675. By Increase Mather." It is from the Society's 
 copy of this rare work. R. F., JR. 
 
 There is an old Planter yet living in this countrey, being 
 one of those that were employed by Mr. Weston, who 
 also hath given some account of these matters. 
 
 He doth relate, and affirm, that at his first coming into 
 this countrey, the English were in a very distressed condi- 
 tion, by reason of famine, and sickness which was amongst 
 them, whereof many were already dead ; and that they 
 buried them in the night, that the Indians might not per- 
 ceive how low they were brought. 
 
 This Relator doth moreover declare, that an Indian 
 Panies, who secretly purposed bloody destruction against 
 the English, and made it his design to learn the English
 
 18 Pratt 's Relation by Mather. 
 
 tongue, to the end he might more readily accomplish his 
 hellish devices, told him, that there had been a French 
 vessel cast away upon these coasts, only they saved their 
 lives and their goods, and that the Indians took their goods 
 from them, and made the Frenchmen their servants, and 
 that they wept very much, when the Indians parted them 
 from one another, that they made them eat such meat as 
 they gave their dogs. Only one of them having a good 
 Master, he provided a Wife for him, by whom he had a 
 Son, and lived longer than the rest of the French men did ; 
 and that one of them was wont to read much in a Book 
 (some say it was the New-Testament) and that the Indians 
 enquiring of him what his Book said, he told them it did 
 intimate, that there was a people like French men that would 
 come into the Country, and drive out the Indians, and that 
 they were now afraid that the English were the people 
 of whose coming the French man had foretold them. And 
 that another ship from France came into the Massachusets 
 Bay with Goods to Truck, and that Indian Panics pro- 
 pounded to the Sachim, that if he would hearken to him, 
 they would obtain all the French mens Goods for nothing, 
 namely, by coming a multitude of them aboard the vessel, 
 with great store of Beaver, making as if they would 
 Truck, & that they should come without Bows and arrows, 
 only should have knives hid in the flappets which the 
 Indians wear about their loins, and when he should give 
 the watchword, they should run their knives into the 
 French mens bellyes, which was accordingly executed by 
 the Indians, and all the French men killed, only Mounsier 
 Finch the Master of the vessel being wounded, ran down 
 into the Hold, whereupon they promised him that if he 
 would come up, they would not kill him, notwithstanding 
 which, they brake their word, and murdered him also, and 
 at last set the ship on Fire. 
 
 Some enquiring of him how long it was since the Indians 
 first saw a ship, he replyed that he could not tel, but some 
 old Indians reported, that the first ship seemed to them to 
 be a Floating Island, wrapped together with the roots of 
 trees, and broken off from the Land, which with their 
 Canoos they went to see, but when they found men there 
 and heard gunns, they hasted to the shore again not a little
 
 Pratfs Relation by Mather. 19 
 
 amazed. (Some write that they shot arrows at the first 
 ship they saw thinking to kill it.) 
 
 This Relator doth also affirm, that after jealousies began 
 between the English of Mr. Weston's plantation and the 
 Indians, they built diverse of their wigwams at the end of 
 a great Swamp, near to the English, that they might the 
 more suddenly and effectually doe what was secretly con- 
 trived in their hearts : and an Indian Squaw said to them 
 that ere long Aberkiest would bring many Indians that 
 would kill all the English there and at Patuxet. After 
 which the Sachim with a company of his men came armed 
 towards them, and bringing them within the Pale of the 
 English Plantation, he made a speech to the English with 
 great gravity saying, " When you first came into this land, 
 I was your friend, we gave gifts to one another. I let you 
 have land as much as we agreed for, and now I would 
 know of you if I or my men have done you any wrong." 
 Unto whom the English replyed, that they desired, that he 
 would first declare whether they had injured him. 
 
 The Sachim roundly rejoyned, that either some or all of 
 them had been abusive to him ; for they had stolen away 
 his corn, and though he had given them notice of it times 
 without number, yet there was no satisfaction nor reforma- 
 tion attained. 
 
 Hereupon, the English took the principal Thief and 
 bound him and delivered him to the Sachim, withall declar- 
 ing, that he might do with him what he pleased. Nay 
 (said he) Sachims do justice themselves upon their own 
 men, and let their neighbours do justice upon theirs, other- 
 wise we conclude that they are all agreed, and then fight. 
 
 Now the Indians some of them began to tremble, and 
 beholding the Guns which were mounted on the English 
 Fort, they said one to another (in their Language) that 
 little guns would shoot through houses, and great guns 
 would break down trees, and make them fall and kill In- 
 dians round about. So did they depart at that time dissat- 
 isfied and enraged. 
 
 The English now perceiving that the Indians were fully 
 purposed to be revenged on them, they resolved to fight it 
 out to the last man. 
 
 As they were marching out of the Fort, seven or eight
 
 20 Pratfs Relation by Mather. 
 
 men stood stil, saying, this is the second time that the Sal- 
 vages had demanded the life of him that had wronged 
 them, and therefore they would have him first put to death, 
 and if that would not satisfy, then to fight it out to the 
 last, wherefore he was put to death in the sight of the 
 Heathen ; after which the English marched out towards 
 them, but they dispersed themselves into the woods. 
 
 This Relator endeavoured to give notice to them in 
 Plymouth, how that the Indians had contrived their ruin, 
 but he missed his way between Weymouth and Plymouth ; 
 and it was wel he did so ; for by that means, he escaped 
 the savage hands of those Indians, who immediately pur- 
 sued him, with a murderous intention. Ere he could reach 
 Plymouth^ they were informed by Massasoit (as hath been 
 declared) concerning what was plotted amongst the Indians. 
 
 Finally there were (as this Helator testifieth) three sev- 
 eral skirmishes with the Indians. One at Wesegusquaset, 
 before mentioned ; another at a place where the town 
 of Dorchester is since planted ; and lastly at the Bay of 
 Agawam or Ipswich, in all which engagements, the Indians 
 were notably beaten, and the English received no consider- 
 able damage, so that the Sachims entreated for peace, nor 
 were the English, (provided it might be upon terms safe 
 and honourable) averse thereunto, Pacem te poscimus omnes.
 
 %BAINIH$ 
 
 ^lOS-ANGElfj^ 
 
 r*!
 
 UU SOUIHtRN REGIONAL LIBHA