Page:The Rise of American Civilization (Volume 1).djvu/70

 Out of this movement, away from the Bay, sprang the colony of Rhode Island—a union of many towns which was granted a royal charter by Charles II in 1663. Soon discontented with the restrictions imposed by forests and rocky hills, enterprising pioneers of the new settlement took to the sea in ships built by their own hands, and many of them waxed rich distilling West Indian molasses into rum and exchanging rum for slaves to be carried to the Southern plantations. "Distillery is the main hinge upon which the trade of the colony turns," averred the Governor and Company on the eve of the American Revolution.

In the settlement of Connecticut, the second offshoot of Massachusetts, religious controversy also formed an element, but it was not the chief factor. As soon as the land around Massachusetts Bay was all taken up, adventurers began searching for better soil, and it was not long before they heard of the wonderful Connecticut River country far to the west. So they went forth to see and to possess. In the winter of 1635-36 an advance guard, driving cattle and carrying their household goods, journeyed overland through the forests to the new Canaan, where, in the coveted valley, they planted the three towns of Hartford, Windsor, and Wethersfield. Under the spiritual guidance of "the son of Thunder," Thomas Hooker, they reproduced in the main the religious policy of the mother colony; and under the indomitable John Mason they fell upon the neighboring Pequods, exterminating them by sword and fire. Inspired by their inherited or acquired talent for communal management, they drew up in 1639 their Fundamental Orders, characterized as "the first written constitution known to history that created a government."

About the same time other Puritans under the leadership of a rich London merchant, Theophilus Eaton, and a famous divine, John Davenport, planted tiny settlements at New Haven and other points along the Sound—self- governing towns which in due course were federated under a written constitution, known as the Fundamental Articles