These propositions reached Boston at a time when the colony was closely watching the rage of parties in the mother country, and when it was rumored that a party in Virginia was about to rise for the king. On the advice of the elders, the general court, then in session, had ordered a fast "chiefly on account of the news out of England concerning the breach between the king and parliament." On the twenty-seventh of September, the propositions from Connecticut were read in the general court and referred to a committee, to be considered of after its adjournment.

The result of the deliberations of the several colonies was that, in May, 1643, the general court, which was then in session, chose their governor, two magistrates, and three deputies, "to treat with their friends of New Haven, Connecticut, and Plymouth, who were come about a confederacy between them." At a time so fraught with danger from their wide dispersion on the sea-coasts and rivers, from living encompassed with people of other nations and strange languages, from a combination of the natives against the several English plantations, and from the sad distractions in England, whence they had no right to expect either advice or protection, "they conceived it their bounden duty without delay to enter into a present consociation among themselves for mutual help and strength, that, as in nation and religion, so in other respects they might be and continue one." The meeting was in fact a regular convention for framing a constitution, and its members were selected from the ablest men of New England. Among others there came from Connecticut, Haynes; from New Haven, Eaton; from Saybrook, Fenton, by the consent of New Haven; from, Plymouth, Winslow; from Massachusetts, Winthrop.

The articles of confederation, which were completed before the end of the month, gave to the four Calvinist governments the name of THE UNITED COLONIES OF NEW ENGLAND. For themselves and their posterity, they entered into a firm and perpetual league of offence and defence, mutual advice and succor, both for preserving and propagating the truths and liberties of the gospel, and for their mutual safety and welfare. It was established that each of them should preserve entirely

to itself the "peculiar jurisdiction and government" within its own limits; and with these the confederation was never "to intermeddle." The charge of all just wars, whether offensive or defensive, was to be apportioned upon the several jurisdictions according to the number of their male inhabitants from sixteen years old to threescore, each jurisdiction being left to collect its quota according to its own custom of rating. In like equitable proportion, the advantage derived from war was to be shared. The method of repelling a sudden invasion of one of the colonies by an enemy, whether French, Dutch, or Indian, was minutely laid down. For the concluding of all affairs that concerned the whole confederation, the largest state, superior to all the rest in territory, wealth, and population, had no more delegates than the least; there were to be chosen, by and out of each of the four jurisdictions, two commissioners, of whom every one was required to be “in church fellowship." These were to meet annually on the first Thursday in September, the first and fifth of every five years at Boston, the intervening years at Hartford, New Haven, and Plymouth in rotation; and to vote not by states, but man by

man.

At each meeting, they might choose out of themselves a president, but could endow him with no other power than to direct the comely carrying on of all proceedings. The commissioners were by a vote of three fourths of their number to determine all affairs of war, peace, and alliances; Indian affairs; the admission of new members into the confederacy; the allowing of any one of the present confederates to enlarge its territory by annexing other plantations, or any two of these to join in one jurisdiction; and "all things of like nature, which are the proper concomitants or consequents of such a confederation for amity, offence, and defence." When six of the eight commissioners could agree, their vote was to be final; otherwise, the propositions, with their reasons, were to be referred to the four general courts of Massachusetts, Connecticut, Plymouth, and New Haven.

The commissioners were enjoined to provide for peace among the confederates themselves, and to secure free and speedy justice to all the confederates in each of the other juris

dictions equally as in their own. The runaway servant was to be delivered up to his master, and the fugitive from justice to the officer in pursuit of him. The power of coercing a confederate who should break any of the articles rested with the commissioners for the other jurisdictions, " that both peace and this present confederation might be entirely preserved without violation."

"This perpetual confederation and the several articles and agreements thereof," so runs its record of May, 1643, "being read and seriously considered, were fully allowed and confirmed by the Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Haven." On the seventh of the following June, Plymouth by its general court gave order "to subscribe the same in its name, and to affix thereto its seal."

The articles of the New England confederacy not only provided for the return of the fugitive slave; they classed persons among the spoils of war, and the sternest morality of that day doomed captive red men to slavery. As early as 1637, negro slaves were imported into New England from Providence isle. But when, in 1645, a party who sailed from Boston "for Guinea to trade for negroes," joined some Londoners in detaining as prisoners the natives "whom they invited upon the Lord's day aboard one of their ships," and assaulted a town which they burned, killing some of the people, a cry was raised against "such vile and most odious courses, abhorred of all good and just men." The accused escaped punishment only because the court could not take cognizance of crimes committed in foreign lands. In the next year, after advice with the elders, the representatives of the people, bearing "witness against the heinous crime of man-stealing," ordered the negroes to be restored, at the public charge, "to their native country, with a letter expressing the indignation of the general court" at their wrongs.

When George Fox visited Barbados, in 1671, he enjoined it upon the planters that they should "deal mildly and gently with their negroes; and that, after certain years of servitude, they should make them free." His idea had been anticipated by the fellow-citizens of Gorton and Roger Williams. On the eighteenth of May, 1652, the representatives of Provi

dence and Warwick, perceiving the disposition of people in the colony "to buy negroes," and hold them "as slaves forever," enacted that "no black mankind" shall, "by covenant, bond, or otherwise," be held to perpetual service; the master, "at the end of ten years, shall set them free, as the manner is with English servants; and that man that will not let" his slave "go free, or shall sell him away, to the end that he may be enslaved to others for a longer time, shall forfeit to the colony forty pounds." Now forty pounds was nearly twice the value of a negro slave. The law was not enforced; but the principle did not perish.

The confederacy possessed no direct executive power; and it remained for its several members to interpret and to execute the votes of their commissioners. Moreover, Massachusetts too greatly exceeded the others in power. Yet the union lived or lingered through forty years; and, after it was cut down, left the hope that a wider and better one would spring from its root.

The provision for the reception of new members into the confederacy was without results. The people beyond the Piscataqua were not admitted, because "they ran a different course both in their ministry and in their civil administration." The desire of the plantations of Providence was rejected; the request of the islanders of Rhode Island was equally vain, because they would not consent to form a part of the jurisdiction of Plymouth.

On the seventh of September, 1643, the commissioners of the confederacy opened their first meeting by the election of John Winthrop as their president. Against the claim of the Dutch they allowed the right of Connecticut to colonize Long Island, and they assumed the office of protecting the settlements against the natives, whose power was growing formidable in proportion as they became acquainted with the arts of civilized life, but who were, at the same time, weakened by dissensions among themselves. Now that the Pequod nation was extinct, the more quiet Narragansetts could hardly remain at peace with the less numerous Mohegans. Anger and revenge brooded in the mind of Miantonomoh. He hated the Mohegans, for they were the allies of the Eng

He had

lish, by whom he had been arraigned as a criminal. suffered indignities at Boston, alike wounding to his pride as a chieftain and his honor as a man. His savage wrath was kindled against Uncas, his accuser, whom he detested as doubly his enemy-once as the sachem of a hostile tribe, and again as the sycophant of the white men. Gathering his men suddenly together, in defiance of a treaty to which the English were parties, Miantonomoh, accompanied by a thousand warriors, fell upon the Mohegans. But his movements were as rash as his spirit was impetuous: he was defeated and taken prisoner by those whom he had doomed as a certain prey to his vengeance. By the laws of Indian warfare, the fate of the captive was death. Yet Gorton and his friends, who held their lands by a grant from Miantonomoh, interceded for their benefactor. The unhappy chief was conducted to Hartford; and the wavering Uncas, who had the strongest claims to the gratitude and protection of the English, asked the advice of the commissioners of the united colonies. Murder had ever been severely punished by the Puritans: they had at Plymouth, with the advice of Massachusetts, executed three of their own men for taking the life of one Indian; and the elders, to whom the case of Miantonomoh was referred-finding that he had, deliberately and in time of quiet, murdered a servant of the Mohegan chief; that he had fomented discontents against the English; and that, in contempt of a league, he had plunged into a useless and bloody war-could not perceive any reason for interfering to save him. Uncas received his captive, and, conveying the helpless victim beyond the limits of the jurisdiction of Connecticut, put him to death. So perished Miantonomoh, the friend of the exiles from Massachusetts, the benefactor of the fathers of Rhode Island.

The tribe of Miantonomoh burned to avenge the execution of their chief; but they feared a conflict with the English, whose alliance they vainly solicited, and who persevered in protecting the Mohegans. The Narragansetts at last submitted in sullenness to a peace, of which the terms were alike hateful to their independence, their prosperity, and their love of revenge.

While the commissioners, thus unreservedly and without