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 NEW HAMPSHIRE

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NEW HAMPSHIRE

war-path of the Indians from Canada to the New Eng- land settlements. These wars seem to have been oc- casioned by the misdeeds, aggression, or treachery of the whites" (Belknap, "Hist." I, 13.3, 242). There is no doubt that encroachments on their lands and fraud in trade gaye sufficient grounds for a quarrel and kept up jealousy and fear (Belknap, 1, 123). And the same writer gives the eastern settlers of New England but a poor character for religion and deems their con- duct unattractive to the Indians (Hist., II, 47). Such would surely be the drowning by some rascals of the Saco chief Squando's babe; while the treachery of Major Waldron in 1676 in betraying them in time of peace in his own home, and consigning two hundred of them to slavery or death, was never forgotten nor for- given (Belknap, I, 143), and brought untold horrors on the people till it was avenged in hi.s blood on his own hearth-stone in the Indian attack on Dover in 16S9. But through war or peace the population steadily increased. Estimated at between 3000 and 4000 in 1679, it was placed at 52,700 in 1767, and in 177.5 at 83,000. The settlers, of course, were mainly English, but about 1719 a colony of one hundred fami- lies of Ulster Protestants came from Ireland to Massa- chusetts and after many trials a number of them set- tled on a tract in New Hampshire above Haverhill, known as Nuffield, where they established the towns of Londonderry and Derry; the rest settling in differ- ent parts of the country. This hardy and industrious element brought with it to New Hampshire the po- tato. After the capture of Quebec the settlements in- creased more rapidly, soon clashing in the west with New York's claims, till the boundary was settled by royal decree in 1764.

None of the thirteen colonies was better satisfied with British rule than New Hampshire. She had an extremely popular governor and had received fair treatment from the home government. It is true that patriots took alarm at the assumption of power to tax the people without their consent, and at the sever- ity exercised towards the neighbouring sister colony; and took due precautions to consult for the common safety; also, that when the king and council prohibited the exportation of powder and military stores to America, the citizens, in December, 1774, quietly removed one hundred barrels of powder, the light cannon, small arms, and military stores from Fort William and Mary in Portsmouth harbour to more convenient places. The provincial convention, early in 1776, in forming a provisional government, publicly declared they had been happy under British rule and would rejoice if a reconciliation could be effected, but when they saw the home government persevere in its design of oppression, the Assembly at once (15 June, 1776) instructed its delegates at Philadelphia to join in declaring the thirteen colonies independent, and pledged their lives and fortunes thereto. This pledge was well redeemed through the war from Bunker Hill to Bennington and Yorktown, and New Hampshire's soldiers under Stark and Sullivan, Scammell and Cilley, and others, did their full part and more; while the hardy sailors of Portsmouth and its vicinity did gallant service in the navy under Paul Jones, whose Slip, "The Ranger", was built and fitted out at that port. After careful consideration New Hampshire adopted the Constitution, 21 June, 1788, being the ninth state to do so; thus making the number re- quired to give it effect. During the war of the Rebellion, notwithstanding considerable difference of party opinion, the state supported Lincoln and con- tributed its full share of men to the Union army and navy.

Ecclesiastical. — It was not eighty years from Henry VIII to Mason, and so it was that men imbued with the spirit of the English penal laws settled New Hamp- shire, whether of the Cavalier stripe, such as Mason, Gorges, and the Hiltons, or Puritan, such as Higgins,

the Waldrons, and the Moodeys. In the book of the Puritan the word "toleration" was not written, or only mentioned to be denied and scoffed at by the gravest and most venerable of their teachers and upon the most solemn occasions. President Oakes calls toleration "The first born of all abominations" (Elec- tion Sermon, 1673), "Having its origin," says Shep- herd, "with the devil" (Election Sermon, 1672). As Dr. Belknap sums it up, "Liberty of conscience and toleration were offensive terms and they who used them were supposed to be the enemies of religion and government " (Hist., 84). The rigidity with which this idea was carried out towards their brethren who dif- fered with them is shown in the case of Roger Williams, and the people of Salem, who were disfranchised and their property rights withheld for remonstrating in favour of liberty of conscience; Williams escaping only by flight to Narragansett Bay; and in multitudes of other instances, as well as in their merciless persecu- tion of the Quakers, extending to imprisonment, scourging, mutilation, and death; as witness their laws from 1656 to 1661, and the barbarities perpetrated under them. It was during Massachusetts' usurpa- tion in New Hampshire, and ]iriib:il)ly by one of the parties .she colonized on the Hilton I':i1cnt, the noto- rious Richard Waldron, that the three Quakers, Anna Coleman, Mary Tomkins, and Alice Ambrose were ordered to be whipped, like infamous criminals, from Dover through eleven towns, and to the disgrace of the colony, the sentence was executed as far as the Massachusetts line; where the victims were rescued and set free by some ruse of the Cavalier Doctor Barefoot, and some friends, as the story goes, Wal- dron's warrant running in Massachusetts also.

Such being their attitude towards their Protestant brethren, it is easy to imderstand why so few Catho- lics appear among the early settlers ; especially as they were banned by the charter of the Plymouth Council, which excluded from New England all who had not taken the Oath of Supremacy. Catholics were denied the right of freemen under the Royal Commission of 1679, which required the Oath of Supremacy and this was endorsed by the General Assembly held at Ports- mouth the following year; and in 1696 an odious and insulting test-oath was imposed on the people under pain of fine or imprLsonment. The proscription of Catholics continued to disfigure the state constitution even after the adoption of the federal constitution. The State Constitutional Convention of 1791 refused to amend the constitution of 1784, by abolishing the religious test that excluded Catholics from the office of governor, councillor, state senator, and representa- tive, the vote standing thirty yeas to fifty-one nays. It is significant that the names of those voting nay are not entered on the record (Journal, p. 52). The con- vention of 1876 abolished all religious disqualifications, and this was adopted by the people except as to one clause empowering towns, parishes, etc. to provide at their own expense for public, "Protestant' teach- ers of religion and morality. The convention of 1889 voted to abolish this distinction; but this vote also failed of ratification, and the discrimination still re- mains a blot on the fairest and first of all written American state constitutions.

First Catholic Missions. — In 1816 Rev. Virgil Bar- ber, an Episcopal minister and principal of an Acad- emy at Fairfield, N. Y., son of Rev. Daniel Barber of Claremont, N. H., observing a prayer-book in the hands of a Catholic servant, made iii(]iiiiii's which re- sulted in his giving up his scIkioI and p.-istorate and becoming a Catholic. Afterwaids, by agnciiiciit. be- tween himself and his wife, they sepiinitcd. He and his son entered the .Jesuits, .and Mrs. Barber and her four daughters entered cuiiveiits. latlier Barber w.-is ordained in 1S22 and s<'iit to ClarenKiiit, where he built a small brick church and academy, still standing; and according to Bishop Fenwick in 1825 there were