Jonathan Carver had been chosen the first governor and guided the colony through the horrors of that first winter; the story of Jamestown was repeated, and by the coming of spring, more than half the colonists were dead.  Among them was Carver himself, and William Bradford was at once chosen to succeed him.  There can be no doubt that it was to Bradford’s wise head and strong hand the colony owed its quick rally, and its escape from the prolonged misery which makes horrible the early history of Virginia.  He seems to have possessed a temper resolute, but magnanimous and patient to an unusual degree, together with a religion sincere and devoted, yet neither intolerant nor austere.  What results can be accomplished by a combination of qualities at once so rare and so admirable is shown by the work which William Bradford did at Plymouth, over which he ruled almost continuously until his death, thirty-seven years later.

Bradford’s success lay first in his courage in doing away with the pernicious system by which all the property was held in common.  In doing this, he violated the rules of his company, but he saw that utter failure lay the other way.  He divided the colony’s land among the several families, in proportion to their number, and compelled each family to shift for itself.  The communal system had nearly wrecked Jamestown and would have wrecked Plymouth had not Bradford had the courage to disregard all precedent and make each family its own provider.  Years afterwards, in commenting on the results of this revolutionary change, he wrote, “Any general want or suffering hath not been among them since to this day.”

And, indeed, this was true.  Under Bradford’s guidance, the little colony increased steadily in wealth and numbers, and became the sure forerunner of the great Puritan migration of 1630, which founded the colony of Massachusetts, into which the older colony of Plymouth was finally absorbed.  Of Bradford himself, little more remains to be told.  The establishment of Plymouth Plantation was his life work.  He was a far bigger man than most of his contemporaries, with a broader outlook upon life and deeper resources within himself.  One of these was a literary culture which fairly sets him apart as the first American man of letters.  He wrote an entertaining history of his colony, as well as a number of philosophical and theological works, all marked with a style and finish noteworthy for their day.

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The government of the colony of Massachusetts presented, for over half a century, the most perfect union of church and state ever witnessed in America.  The secular arm was ever ready to support the religious, and to compel every resident of the colony to walk in the strait and narrow way of Puritanism.  This was a task easy enough at first, but growing more and more difficult as the character of the settlers became more diverse, until, finally, it had to be abandoned altogether.