New England Confederation
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
a colonial union of Massachusetts, Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven . It was formed in 1643 and lasted over forty years. The confederation is in many ways suggestive of our present federal union of states. The precautions, compromises, and outcroppings of human nature show that the root of the matter was in these old colonists. The official name was "The United Colonies of New England ." Articles of confederation were drawn with pious care. The little colonies insisted on the same representation as the large one. The little congress was composed of eight members, two from each colony; for Plymouth did not propose that Massachusetts Bay should spread wide skirts over her at the council chamber. Any six of the eight commissioners could bind the colonies. Once, in 1653, Massachusetts, having a greater population than the other three combined, refused flatly to be bound by an obnoxious act of the commission. Here we have nullification and threatened secession, rebellion and treason, all in the same teapot; but the commissioners, "being all in church fellowship with us," got together somehow. The dignity of Massachusetts was appeased, the union was preserved, and peace and concord were restored. Among other provisions of the articles of confederation was a clause providing for the return of fugitive servants. This appears to be the germ of later fugitive slave laws and the basis of American extradition. The commissioners stood stoutly against the aggression of the Dutch from the direction of the Hudson Valley, and negotiated a boundary which neither might overstep. Correspondence was carried on with the French governor of Acadia and, more than once, a united front was presented to the Narragansett Indians.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
The facts Aiton's set out in 1910 still hold: the four Puritan colonies signed articles in 1643 as "The United Colonies of New England," gave each member two commissioners regardless of size, and quarrelled with Massachusetts over being bound by six votes. What has moved is the emphasis. Where Aiton's read the union chiefly as a rehearsal for the federal Constitution, historians since the mid-twentieth century have stressed that it was above all a military alliance, whose central act was the coordinated prosecution of King Philip's War in 1675-76, and that Rhode Island was kept out on religious grounds rather than accident. The Confederation's end is now firmly tied to the annulling of the Massachusetts charter in 1684 and the imposition of the Dominion of New England in 1686 — and the fugitive-servant clause Aiton's called "the germ of later fugitive slave laws" is now discussed alongside the colonies' own traffic in enslaved Africans and captive Natives.
Written for this edition, 2026.