History of the United States | Page 5

did but incorporate a group drawn together by religious ties. "We
must be knit together as one man," wrote John Winthrop, the first
Puritan governor in America. Far to the south, on the banks of the
Delaware River, a Swedish commercial company in 1638 made the
beginnings of a settlement, christened New Sweden; it was destined to
pass under the rule of the Dutch, and finally under the rule of William
Penn as the proprietary colony of Delaware.
In a certain sense, Georgia may be included among the "company
colonies." It was, however, originally conceived by the moving spirit,
James Oglethorpe, as an asylum for poor men, especially those
imprisoned for debt. To realize this humane purpose, he secured from
King George II, in 1732, a royal charter uniting several gentlemen,
including himself, into "one body politic and corporate," known as the
"Trustees for establishing the colony of Georgia in America." In the
structure of their organization and their methods of government, the
trustees did not differ materially from the regular companies created for
trade and colonization. Though their purposes were benevolent, their
transactions had to be under the forms of law and according to the rules
of business.
=The Religious Congregation.=--A second agency which figured
largely in the settlement of America was the religious brotherhood, or
congregation, of men and women brought together in the bonds of a
common religious faith. By one of the strange fortunes of history, this
institution, founded in the early days of Christianity, proved to be a
potent force in the origin and growth of self-government in a land far
away from Galilee. "And the multitude of them that believed were of
one heart and of one soul," we are told in the Acts describing the
Church at Jerusalem. "We are knit together as a body in a most sacred
covenant of the Lord ... by virtue of which we hold ourselves strictly
tied to all care of each other's good and of the whole," wrote John
Robinson, a leader among the Pilgrims who founded their tiny colony
of Plymouth in 1620. The Mayflower Compact, so famous in American
history, was but a written and signed agreement, incorporating the spirit
of obedience to the common good, which served as a guide to
self-government until Plymouth was annexed to Massachusetts in 1691.

[Illustration: THE ORIGINAL GRANTS]
Three other colonies, all of which retained their identity until the eve of
the American Revolution, likewise sprang directly from the
congregations of the faithful: Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New
Hampshire, mainly offshoots from Massachusetts. They were founded
by small bodies of men and women, "united in solemn covenants with
the Lord," who planted their settlements in the wilderness. Not until
many a year after Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson conducted
their followers to the Narragansett country was Rhode Island granted a
charter of incorporation (1663) by the crown. Not until long after the
congregation of Thomas Hooker from Newtown blazed the way into
the Connecticut River Valley did the king of England give Connecticut
a charter of its own (1662) and a place among the colonies. Half a
century elapsed before the towns laid out beyond the Merrimac River
by emigrants from Massachusetts were formed into the royal province
of New Hampshire in 1679.
Even when Connecticut was chartered, the parchment and sealing wax
of the royal lawyers did but confirm rights and habits of
self-government and obedience to law previously established by the
congregations. The towns of Hartford, Windsor, and Wethersfield had
long lived happily under their "Fundamental Orders" drawn up by
themselves in 1639; so had the settlers dwelt peacefully at New Haven
under their "Fundamental Articles" drafted in the same year. The
pioneers on the Connecticut shore had no difficulty in agreeing that
"the Scriptures do hold forth a perfect rule for the direction and
government of all men."
=The Proprietor.=--A third and very important colonial agency was the
proprietor, or proprietary. As the name, associated with the word
"property," implies, the proprietor was a person to whom the king
granted property in lands in North America to have, hold, use, and
enjoy for his own benefit and profit, with the right to hand the estate
down to his heirs in perpetual succession. The proprietor was a rich and
powerful person, prepared to furnish or secure the capital, collect the
ships, supply the stores, and assemble the settlers necessary to found

and sustain a plantation beyond the seas. Sometimes the proprietor
worked alone. Sometimes two or more were associated like partners in
the common undertaking.
Five colonies, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and the Carolinas,
owe their formal origins, though not always their first settlements, nor
in most cases their prosperity, to the proprietary system. Maryland,
established in 1634 under a Catholic nobleman, Lord Baltimore, and
blessed with