To these exiles the New World became a hope. Though homeless, they were loyal to James. While petitioning the London Company for lands, they begged of him the freedom to there worship God according to their own consciences. Though this was not actually granted it was permitted. An unkindly fate seemed to preside over their voyage--buffeting storms drove them farther north than their proposed destination; some historians state they were purposely steered out of their course by their Dutch pilot, and were forced to land on Plymouth Rock. By a solemn covenant entered into aboard ship, they agreed that while they would be faithful to the English Crown, the polity they would establish among themselves would be an ideal state--a community of interests--fascinating as expounded by Plato, More, and Rousseau, but unfeasible for human nature as yet evolved since complete barbarism. United by a common faith--gloomy, austere--putting aside as mortal sin all the joys of life--forced to endure together in a wild, bleak, strange land, starvation, disease, frightful cold, and the terror of hostile Indians, by whom they would have probably been exterminated had not a deadly pestilence broken out among these savages--possibly no better opportunity for such an experiment has ever been offered civilized man. But among them too was the natural inequality of individuals which will probably always render futile and unenduring similar sociological experiments. The Puritan settlements were gradually augmented by the persecuted from their native land, and it would seem that they could at last possess the religious security and contentment for which they had so long clamored, but dissent had become second nature; combativeness seemed essential to zeal, and as there was no Established or Roman Church at which to hurl themselves, their own tenets became mooted points; bitter differences arose. They showed themselves as intolerant in the New World as they had been intolerable in the Old, and those without the might to prove their right were driven forth. In this manner Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New Hampshire were settled. Much of their later history has to do with religious bickerings, mutilations, and witch-burnings. It was an outgrowth of this same spirit which confronted the South for thirty years before the final rupture which resulted in the War of Secession.