PREFACE.
Fiction, though much abused by those who write it, and persistently
traduced by those who do not comprehend its true mission, has always
been a favorite mode of communicating truth, and has, for its support,
the highest sanctions of Christianity. The Author of the Christian system
spake evermore in parables in the illustration of important practical truth.
In fact (let it be reverently uttered), the great principle in human nature
which called Him into the world, is identical with that on which the
claims and power of legitimate fiction rest. He came to embody abstract
truth in human relations, and the naked, incomprehensible idea of God,
in the human form. He came to exhibit in human development the true
nature of the divine life, and to demonstrate, in human experience, under
the influence of legitimate human motives, the beauty of holiness. It
was upon this principle that his wonderful parables were based. The
necessity was to exhibit truth in its relations to the feeling, thinking, acting
soul; and, in order to meet that necessity at that day, it was requisite
that the case should be imagined and the relations created. In the birth
of new questions, in the revolution of opinions, and in the shifting aspect
of affairs, this great necessity becomes perpetual, and the requisites for its
satisfaction remain the same.
With this view of the legitimate aim and high office of fiction, the following
pages were written. They were written for New England people
at home and abroad, and with the conviction that the basis of New
England character is essentially religious. They were written, also, with
the belief that the early colonial life of New England, though cramped in
its creeds, rigid in its governmental policy, formal in its society, and
homely in its details, was neither without its romantic aspects nor its
heroes, in high and humble position, with whose full hearts, independent
wills, and manly struggles, the largest spirit of this age may fully sympathize.
The colonial age of New England was its true age of romance.
It was in that age that its institutions were born, its habits established,
and its principles planted; and it is to that age that we must look for
those exaggerated forms of social, religious, and political life, whose
remote or direct relations with the present illuminate them with an
interest which everywhere and in all ages informs the childhood of a
nation.
For whatever of plot there may be in the following tale, history must,
in a general way, be held responsible. The names, localities, characters,
and leading incidents are historical. The tale is, in reality, a section or
segment of history, withdrawn from its location and relations, and endowed
with a life and spirit which aim to be consistent and harmonious
with the body of facts with which they are brought into association.
Had the writer felt at liberty to develop his plot entirely at his will, or,
rather, had he not felt that history was a more reliable guide to the ends
sought to be attained than imagination, some portions of the work, which
may not be deemed artistic, would have been differently constructed.
In the title of the book, the reader is at liberty to see more than the
simple designation of the channel of travel and transportation between
the colonial centre and the distant settlement; for, along its pages, the
writer has endeavored to trace, through dim forests of superstition, by
the side of life-giving streams of thought, over barren hills of bigotry,
among rocks of passion, and across mountain-tops of high resolution
and noble action, the path over which those influences passed which
shaped the policy of the governing power and moulded the destiny of
the governed.
It is not necessary, perhaps, to say that, in the execution of this
work, the writer is conscious of having fallen not only below his own
ideal, but below the high claims of his subject; yet the extremely kind
and cordial treatment which the public have already extended to it, in
another and less permanent form, emboldens him to hope for many
readers, and for their considerate indulgence.
Republican Office, Springfield,
January, 1857.
