These Dutch settlements brought about a political union of the New England colonies, although the first cause of the New England confederation was the Indian tribes who lay between the Dutch and the English.  In August, 1637, during the war with the Pequots, some of the Connecticut magistrates and ministers suggested to the authorities at Boston the expediency of such a measure.  The next year Massachusetts submitted a plan of union, but Connecticut demurred because it permitted a mere majority of the federal commissioners to decide questions.  Thereupon Massachusetts injected the boundary question into the discussions, and proposed an article not relished by Connecticut, that the Pequot River should be the line between the two jurisdictions.[1] Thus the matter lay in an unsettled state till the next year, when jealousy of the Dutch stimulated renewed action.

In 1639 John Haynes, of Connecticut, and Rev. Thomas Hooker came to Boston, and again the plan of a confederation was discussed, but Plymouth and Massachusetts quarrelled over their boundary-line, and the desirable event was once more postponed.  Nearly three more years passed, and the founding of a confederacy was still delayed.  Then, at a general court held at Boston, September 27, 1642, letters from Connecticut were read “certifying us that the Indians all over the country had combined themselves to cut off all the English.”

At this time the war between De la Tour and D’Aulnay was at its height, and the Dutch complaints added to the general alarm.  Thus the Connecticut proposition for a league received a more favorable consideration and was referred to a committee “to consider” after the court.  At the next general court which met in Boston, May 10, 1643, a compact of confederation in writing was duly signed by commissioners from Plymouth, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Haven.[2] The settlement of Gorges and Mason at Piscataqua and the plantations about Narragansett Bay were denied admission into the confederacy—­the former “because they ran a different course from us both in their ministry and administration,"[3] and the latter because they were regarded as “tumultuous” and “schismatic.”

After a preamble setting forth that “we live encompassed with people of several nations and strange languages,” that “the savages have of late combined themselves against us,” and that “the sad distractions in England prevent the hope of advice and protection,” the document states that the contracting parties’ object was to maintain “a firm and perpetual league of friendship and amity, for offence and defence, mutual advice and succor upon all just occasions both for preserving and propagating the truth and liberties of the gospel, and for their own mutual safety and walfare.”  It then declared the name of the new confederation to be “the United Colonies of New England,” and in ten articles set out the organization and powers of the federal government.  The management was placed in the hands of eight commissioners,