- Signing the New England Confederation - An illuminated history of North America, 1856
Blood spilled in the Pequot War convinced the English colonies that they should shelve some of their disagreements and try to establish a military alliance. Military cooperation could provide superior defense against the omnipresent threat of attacks by the Native Americans, by French coming south from Acadia, and by Dutch coming north from the Manhadoes.
The men who penned the articles constituting the New England Confederation refused to overlook fundamental differences in matters of religion, however. The Europeans in New England were most all British subjects, but they were not all Puritan. The Puritan settlements treated with neither Roger William’s more radical and diverse colony, Rhode Island, nor with the Anglicans in Maine.
The 1643 pact among “The United Colonies of New England” represented a breakthrough for the British in North America, but the agreement covered only four English colonies: Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth Colony, New Haven, and Connecticut. The New England Confederation was a means by which the English Puritan colonies united as much for the glory of their God as to save their scalps.
The colonies not only came to their Confederation without the King’s approval, they did not even seek it. The New England Confederation grew organically from American soil, seeded and shaped by forces and needs with which England was out of touch, and for which she could provide scant help. Noting that, John Quincy Adams tacked the New England Confederation on the family tree of colonial agreements extending from the Mayflower Compact to the US Constitution.
England Did Not Protect Her Colonies
England, suffering through civil war, lacking time and money, could not adequately meet the military needs of her colonies. Connecticut, in particular, was roiling; the Pequot were riled, battling for territory against foes including the Wampanoag, Mohegan, and Narragansett. Relationships between the British colonists and the Pequot had decayed. Violent attacks against the colonists grew more frequent as the English spread in all directions through the region, dislocating the Natives with, to say the least, prejudice.
John Oldham was dead, and John Endecott had already sought revenge. Bloodshed was common; in Mystic, there was massacre. John Mason led troops to ravage the Pequot fort and village at Mystic to reduce the threat of the Pequot, but Connecticut remained vulnerable, a dangerous place to live.
Purpose of the New England Confederation
Mindful of the potential for further bloodshed and destruction of property, the Puritan colonies ratified the New England Confederation. They agreed to “jointly and severally enter into a firm and perpetual league of friendship and amity for offense and defense, mutual advice and succor upon all just occasions, both for preserving and propagating the truth and liberties of the gospel, and for their own mutual safety and welfare."
The Confederation articles also provided a mechanism by which fugitive criminals and indentured servants could be returned to their legal owners.
Like the Mayflower Compact, the articles of the New England Confederation targeted the needs of a like-minded group; anticipating the Constitution, the united colonies also established the first formal forum within which to resolve disputes between members.
From the Mayflower Compact to the New England Confederation
On Forefather's Day in 1802, John Quincy Adams discussed the Mayflower Compact. Adams suggests that the “instrument of voluntary association executed on board the Mayflower testifies that the parties to it had anticipated the improvement of their nation. They formed themselves into a body politic.” Adams suggests that the pilgrims banded together freely in, perhaps, the “only instance in human history” that a group unanimously, and by choice, “assented to became a nation.”
During an 1843 address to honor the centennial of the New England Confederation, Adams once again spoke of the Mayflower Compact, calling it the “necessary result of their situation, subject to no law but that which they consented to impose upon themselves.” Adams further notes that, by the physical transport, “by the transfer of the charter to America, the management of the affairs of a joint stock trading company by its members was changed into the government of a people, a pure democracy; [soon] their settlements had so expanded, a representative democracy forced itself upon them.”
The physical transfer of the Massachusetts Charter to America, according to Adams, “left the liberties and the actions of the settlers in the new country entirely under their own control.” The Mayflower Compact was a “social compact or system of government instituted by voluntary agreement, conformable to the laws of nature, by men of equal rights.” The transfer of the Charter and the social compact combined to create a “democratic revolution” in New England. As the population increased, it became necessary, for the sake of expediency, to allow the democracy to become increasingly representative.
According to Adams, in the Articles of the New England Confederation, “following, as by the providential agency of a law of nature, the transfer of the charter of Massachusetts to this country, are to be found the first elements of a great republican, democratic, confederated republic.” The New England Confederation was the first representative democratic agreement in America.
The New England Confederation established formal inter-colonial relations. Separate English colonies assessed their own needs and aligned to solve their common problems at shared expense. Perhaps the colonies’ initial success under the Confederation made the subsequent imposition of the Dominion of New England that much more distasteful.
The New England Confederation took cues from the Mayflower Pact and anticipated aspects of Franklin’s proposed Albany Plan of Union. As John Quincy Adams noted, the New England Confederation even influenced aspects of the Constitution.
Sources:
Adams, John Quincy. "The New England Confederacy of MDCXLIII." Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society Third IX (1846): 189-223. Google Books. Web. 27 May 2010.
Adams, John Quincy. "Oration at Plymouth, December 22, 1802, in Commemoration of the Landing of the Pilgrims."
The Articles of Confederation of the United Colonies of New England; May 19, 1643. The Avalon Project. Yale Law School. Web. 27 May 2010.
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