averhill
about the same time regarding his ill success in recruiting: "I will
never plead for an Haverhill man more," and he begs that some meet
person be sent "to tell us what we should, may or must do. I have
laboured in vain: some go this, and that, and the other way at pleasure,
and do what they list."[51:3] This has a familiar ring to the student of
the frontier.

As in the case of the later frontier also, the existence of a common
danger on the borders of settlement tended to consolidate not only the
towns of Massachusetts into united action for defense, but also the
various colonies. The frontier was an incentive to sectional combination
then as it was to nationalism afterward. When in 1692 Connecticut sent
soldiers from her own colony to aid the Massachusetts towns on the
Connecticut River,[52:1] she showed a realization that the Deerfield
people, who were "in a sense in the enemy's Mouth almost," as Pynchon
wrote, constituted her own frontier[52:2] and that the facts of
geography were more compelling than arbitrary colonial boundaries.
Thereby she also took a step that helped to break down provincial
antagonisms. When in 1689 Massachusetts and Connecticut sent agents to
Albany to join with New York in making presents to the Indians of that
colony in order to engage their aid against the French,[52:3] they
recognized (as their leaders put it) that Albany was "the hinge" of the
frontier in this exposed quarter. In thanking Connecticut for the
assistance furnished in 1690 Livingston said: "I hope your honors do not
look upon Albany as Albany, but as the frontier of your honor's Colony
and of all their Majesties countries."[52:4]

The very essence of the American frontier is that it is the graphic line
which records the expansive energies of the people behind it, and which
by the law of its own being continually draws that advance after it to
new conquests. This is one of the most significant things about New
England's frontier in these years. That long blood-stained line of the
eastern frontier which skirted the Maine coast was of great importance,
for it imparted a western tone to the life and characteristics of the
Maine people which endures to this day, and it was one line of advance
for New England toward the mouth of the St. Lawrence, leading again and
again to diplomatic negotiations with the powers that held that river.
The line of the towns that occupied the waters of the Merrimac, tempted
the province c