U.S. History I: United States History 1607-1865 ... - Textbook Equity

cause of his differences with the leadership of the Massachusetts colony in the person of
Governor Winthrop, Hooker decided to take his flock westward, and in 1636 his entire congregation
set out for the Connecticut River Valley, which had been discovered by Dutchman
Adrian Block some years earlier. Two additional congregations soon followed. Hooker quickly
founded the town of Hartford at the confluence of the Connecticut and Park Rivers. Other
groups from Massachusetts later founded the towns of Windsor and Wethersfield. The colony
was granted a royal charter in 1662 as the Connecticut colony.
The Fundamental Orders of Connecticut were written in 1639. (See appendix.) Although the
Mayflower compact had laid down the broad outlines of government, the Fundamental Orders
filled in the details and became the first full-blown constitution written for government
in America. They were adopted by the government of the colony under the 1662 charter.
The orders contained no reference to the British government; thus the document occupies
an important place in American political history. It was a more liberal document than that of
Massachusetts, and is the origin of Connecticut’s motto of “The Constitution State.”
The colony of New Haven, led by the Reverend John Davenport, was founded in 1637, and
Stamford was settled in 1641. Additional towns joined with them to create the New Haven
colony. They were absorbed into the Connecticut colony in 1665. Eventually the settlers on
the north shore of Long Island Sound also merged with the Puritans in the Connecticut River
Valley. Although the Dutch colony at New Amsterdam had claimed parts of Connecticut, the
English settlers eventually controlled the colony. Following a bloody war with the Pequot Indians,
known as the Pequot War, the people of Connecticut obtained a charter from Charles
II. As was the case with most colonial charters, the one restriction was that the laws of the
colony must conform to the laws of England.
Rhode Island
The founder of the Rhode Island colony was Roger Williams,
a dissenter from Massachusetts who had more liberal ideas
than some of the Puritan fathers in the Massachusetts Bay
colony. Williams first established Providence, which eventually
merged with other settlements such as Newport and
became the colony of Rhode Island. Williams obtained a
charter from Parliament in 1643, which gave the colony the
right to govern itself.
Williams believed in the separation of church and state, and
thus is a revered figure in the history of American ideas of
religious freedom. The colony attracted freethinkers of all
kinds, including Anne Hutchinson, who was found guilty of
heresy in her famous trial in Massachusetts. Although the
government of Rhode Island was not fully democratic, the
settlers nevertheless felt free to express themselves in various
ways, with the result that Rhode Island was one of the
more turbulent colonies.
Because of the conflict between King Charles I and Parliament
that led to the English Civil War, Rhode Island’s charter
was declared invalid following the restoration of Charles
II. Rhode Island then got a new charter, which affirmed the rights granted under the first
charter and included a land grant. It also declared that people should be free of any sort of
persecution “for any difference in opinion in matters of religion.” That provision reflected the
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