[Transcriber's Notes]
The HTML and TXT formats discard page boundaries but retain the year
references in square brackets. Thus [1492-1495] indicate the following
text covers this period, until the next such appearance.
Several books on Columbus are available at Gutenberg.org, including "The
Life of Columbus" by Arthur Helps.
A pound sterling in 1600 is worth about 135 pounds or 235 Dollars US in
2006.
Here are some unfamiliar (to me) terms.
camlets
Rich cloth of Asian origin, made of camel's hair and silk and later
made of goat's hair and silk or other combinations. A garment made
from this cloth.
contumacy
Stubborn perverseness or rebelliousness; obstinate resistance to
authority.
druggets
Heavy felted fabric of wool or wool and cotton, used as a floor
covering.
escheated
Reversion of property to the state in the absence of legal heirs or
claimants.
fee simple
An estate of inheritance in land, either absolute and without
limitation to any particular class of heirs (fee simple) or limited to
a particular class of heirs (fee tail).
glebe
Plot of land yielding profit to an English parish church or an
ecclesiastical office.
Pascua Florida
Feast of flowers; Easter.
quit rent
A land tax imposed on freehold or leased land by a landowning
authority, freeing the tenant of a holding from other obligations.
New Style (dates)
Describing dates after the adoption of the Gregorian calendar. Various
nations adopted the Gregorian calendar between 1582 and 1752.
Old Style (dates)
Describing dates before the adoption of the Gregorian calendar.
pompion
Pumpkin.
sedulous
Diligent in application or attention; persevering.
settle
Long wooden bench with a high back, often including storage space
beneath the seat.
[End Transcriber's Notes.]
HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES
Columbus
After a Portrait by Herrer.
HISTORY OF
THE UNITED STATES
FROM THE EARLIEST DISCOVERY OF
AMERICA TO THE PRESENT TIME
BY
E. BENJAMIN ANDREWS
CHANCELLOR OF THE UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA
FORMERLY PRESIDENT OF BROWN UNIVERSITY
With 650 Illustrations and Maps
VOLUME I.
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1912
COPYRIGHT, 1894, BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
TO MY WIFE
PREFACE
Notwithstanding the number of United States histories already in
existence, and the excellence of many of them, I venture to think that
no apology is needed for bringing forward another.
1. The work now presented to the public is believed to utilize, more
than any of its predecessors, the many valuable researches of recent
years into the rich archives of this and other nations.
2. Most of the briefer treatments of the subject are manuals, intended
for pupils in schools, the conspicuous articulation so necessary for
this purpose greatly lessening their interest for the general reader.
The following narrative will be found continuous as well as of moderate
compass.
3. I have sought to make more prominent than popular histories have
usually done, at the same time the political evolution of our country on
the one hand, and the social culture, habits, and life of the people on
the other.
4. The work strives to observe scrupulous proportion in treating the
different parts and phases of our national career, neglecting none and
over-emphasizing none. Also, while pronouncedly national and patriotic,
it is careful to be perfectly fair and kind to the people of all
sections.
5. Effort has been made to present the matter in the most natural
periods and divisions, and to give such a title to each of these as to
render the table of contents a truthful and instructive epitome of our
national past.
6. With the same aim the Fore-history is exhibited in sharp separation
from the United States history proper, calling due attention to what is
too commonly missed, the truly epochal character of the adoption of our
present Constitution, in 1789.
7. Copious illustration has been employed, with diligent study to make
it for every reader in the highest degree an instrument of instruction,
delight, and cultivation in art.
8. No pains has been spared to secure perfect accuracy in all references
to dates, persons, and places, so that the volumes may be used with
confidence as a work of reference. I am persuaded that much success in
this has been attained, despite the uncertainty still attaching to many
matters of this sort in United States history, especially to dates.
BROWN UNIVERSITY, September 15. 1894.
PUBLISHERS' NOTE
The last edition of President Andrews's History was issued in 1905, in
five volumes, and brought the narrative down to the inauguration of
President Roosevelt in March of that year. In preparing the extension of
the work by the addition of a sixth volume, entrusted to the competent
hands of Professor James Alton James of Northwestern University, it has
been thought desirable to begin this final volume with the chapters
entitled "The Rise of Roosevelt" and "Mr. Roosevelt's Presidency." This
has involved some expansion and revision of these chapters as well as
the continuance of the History from 1905 to the present time. The
Appendices, which include public documents of fundamental importance and
the significant results in various fields of the Census of 1910, are an
additional feature of the new edition.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
AMERICA BEFORE COLUMBUS
Age and Origin of Man in America.
Primordial Americans unlike Present Asiatics.
Resemblances between their Various Branches.
Two Great Types.
The Mound-builders' Age.
Design of the Mounds.
Different
Forms.
Towns and Cities.
Proofs of Culture.
Arts.
Fate of the
Mound-builders.
The Indians.
Their Number.
Degree of
Civilization.
Power of Endurance.
Religion.
The Various
Nations.
Original Brute Inhabitants of North America.
Plants, Fruits, and Trees.
Indian Agriculture.
Part First
THE FORE-HISTORY
PERIOD I
DISCOVERY AND SETTLEMENT
1492-1660
CHAPTER 1. COLUMBUS.
Bretons and Normans in the New World.
The Northmen Question.
Marco
Polo's Travels.
His Pictures of Eastern Asia.
Influence on
Columbus.
Early Life of Columbus.
His Cruises and Studies.
Asia to be Reached by Sailing West.
Appeals for Aid.
Rebuffs.
Success.
Sails from Palos.
The Voyage.
America Discovered.
Columbus's Later Voyages and Discoveries.
Illusion Respecting the New Land.
Amerigo Vespucci.
Rise of the Name "America."
CHAPTER II. EARLY SPANISH AMERICA.
Portugal and Spain Divide the Newly Discovered World.
Spain gets most of America.
Voyage of de Solis.
Balboa Discovers the Pacific.
Ponce de Leon on the Florida Coast.
Explorations by Grijalva.
Cortez Invades Mexico.
Subjugates the Country.
De Ayllon's Cruise.
Magellan Circumnavigates the Globe.
Narvaez's Expedition into Florida.
Its Sad Fate.
De Soto.
His March.
Hardships.
Discovers the Mississippi.
His Death.
End of his Expedition.
French Settlement in Florida.
St. Augustine.
French-Spanish Hostilities.
Reasons for Spain's Failure to Colonize far North.
Her Treatment of the Natives.
Tyranny over her own
Colonies.
CHAPTER III. EXPLORATION AND COLONIZATION BY THE FRENCH AND THE ENGLISH
Verrazano.
"New France."
Cartier Discovers St. Lawrence Gulf and River.
Second Voyage.-Montreal.-Third.-De Monts.
Champlain.
Founds Quebec.
Westward Explorations.
John Cabot, Discoverer of the North American Main.
Frobisher.
Tries for a Northwest Passage.
Second Expedition for Gold.
Third.
Eskimo Tradition of Frobisher's Visits.
Drake Sails round the World.
Cavendish Follows.
Raleigh's Scheme.
Colony at Roanoke Island.
"Virginia."
Second Colony.
Its Fate.
CHAPTER IV. THE PLANTING OF VIRGINIA
The Old Virginia Charter.
Jamestown Settled.
Company and Colony.
Character of Early Virginia Population.
Progress.
Products.
Slavery.
Agriculture the Dominant Industry.
No Town Life.
Hardships and Dissensions.
John Smith.
New Charter.
Delaware Governor.
The "Starving Time."
Severe Rule of Dale and Argall.
The Change of 1612.
Pocahontas.
Indian Hostilities.
First American Legislature.
Sir Thomas Wyatt.
Self Government.
Virginia Reflects English Political Progress.
Dissolution of the Company.
Charles I. and Virginia.
Harvey, Wyatt. Berkeley.
Virginia under Cromwell.
CHAPTER V. PILGRIM AND PURITAN AT THE NORTH
The first "Independents."
John Smyth's Church at Gainsborough.
The Scrooby Church.
Plymouth Colony.
Settles Plymouth.
Hardships.
Growth.
Cape Ann Settlement.
Massachusetts Bay.
Size.
Polity.
Roger Williams.
His Views.
His Exile.
Anne Hutchinson.
Rhode Island
Founded.
Settlement of Hartford, Windsor, Wethersfield.
Saybrook.
New Haven.
New Hampshire.
Maine.
New England Confederation.
Its Function.
Its Failure.
CHAPTER VI. BALTIMORE AND HIS MARYLAND
Sir George Calvert Plants at Newfoundland.
Is Ennobled.
Sails for Virginia.
Grant of Maryland.
Lord Baltimore Dies.
Succeeded by Cecil.
Government of Maryland.
Conflict with Virginia.
Baltimore comes to Maryland.
Religious Freedom in the Colony.
Clayborne's Rebellion.
First Maryland Assembly.
Anarchy.
Romanism Established.
Baltimore and Roger Williams.
Maryland during the Civil War in England.
Death of Baltimore.
Character.
Maryland under the Long Parliament.
Puritan Immigration.
Founds Annapolis.
Rebellion.
Clayborne again.
Maryland and the Commonwealth.
Deposition of Governor Stone.
Anti-Catholic Laws.
Baltimore Defied.
Sustained by Cromwell.
Fendall's Rebellion.
Fails.
Maryland at the Restoration.
CHAPTER VII. NEW NETHERLAND
Henry Hudson and his Explorations.
Enters Hudson River.
His Subsequent Career.
And his Fate.
Dutch Trade on the Hudson.
"New Netherland."
Dutch West India Company.
Albany Begun.
New Amsterdam.
Relations with Plymouth.
De Vries on the Delaware.
Dutch Fort at Hartford.
Conflict of Dutch with English.
Gustavus Adolphus.
Swedish Beginnings at Wilmington, Delaware.
Advent of Kieft.
Maltreats Indians.
New Netherland in 1647.
Stuyvesant's Excellent Rule.
Conquers New Sweden.
And the Indians.
Conquest of Dutch America by England.
"New York."
Persistence of Dutch Influence and Traits.
CHAPTER VIII. THE FIRST INDIAN WARS
Beginning of Indian Hostility.
Of Pequot War.
Mason's Strategy.
And Tactics.
Capture of Pequot Fort.
Back to Saybrook.
Extermination of Pequot Tribe.
Peace.
Miantonomoh and Uncas.
Dutch War with Indians.
Caused by Kieft's Impolicy.
Liquor.
Underhill Comes.
Mrs. Hutchinson's Fate.
Deborah Moody.
New Haven Refuses Aid.
Appeal to Holland.
Underhill's Exploits.
Kieft Removed.
Sad Plight of New Netherland.
Subsequent Hostilities and Final Peace.
PERIOD II
ENGLISH AMERICA TILL THE END OF THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR
1660--1763
CHAPTER I. NEW ENGLAND UNDER THE LAST STUARTS.
Charles II. and Massachusetts.
Massachusetts about 1660.
Its View of its Political Rights.
The King's View.
And Commands.
Commission of 1664.
Why Vengeance was Delayed.
Boldness of the Colony.
It Buys Maine.
Fails to get New Hampshire.
The King's Rage.
The Charter Vacated.
Charles II. and Connecticut.
Prosperity of this Colony.
Rhode Island.
Boundary Disputes of Connecticut.
Of Rhode Island.
George Fox and Roger Williams.
James II. King.
Andros Governor.
Andros and Southern New England.
In Massachusetts.
Revolution of 1688.
New Charter for Massachusetts.
Defects and Merits.
CHAPTER II. KING PHILIP'S WAR.
Whites' Treatment of Red Men.
Indian Hatred.
Causes.
Alexander's Death.
Philip
King.
Scope of his Conspiracy.
Murders Sausaman.
War Begun.
Nipmucks take Part.
War in Connecticut Valley.
Bloody Brook.
The Swamp Fight at South Kingston, R. I.
Central Massachusetts Aflame.
The Rowlandson History.
Southeastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island again.
Connecticut Valley once more Invaded.
Turner's Falls.
Philip's Death.
Horrors of the War.
Philip's Character.
Fate of his Family.
CHAPTER III. THE SALEM WITCHCRAFT
New England Home Life.
Religion its Centre.
The Farmhouse.
Morning Devotions.
Farm Work.
Tools.
Diet.
Neighborliness.
New England Superstitions.
Not Peculiar to New England.
Sunday Laws.
Public Worship.
First Case of Sorcery.
The Witch Executed.
Cotton Mather.
His Experiments.
His Book.
The Parris Children Bewitched.
The Manifestations.
The Trial.
Executions.
George Burroughs.
Rebecca Nurse.
Reaction.
Forwardness of Clergy.
"Devil's Authority."
The End.
CHAPTER IV. THE MIDDLE COLONIES
English Conquest of New Netherland.
Duke of York's Government.
Andros.
Revolution of 1688.
Leisler.
Problems which Teased Royal Governors.
New Jersey.
Its Political Vicissitudes.
William Penn.
Character.
Liberality of Pennsylvania
Charter.
Penn and James II.
Penn's Services for his Colony.
Prosperity of the Latter.
Fletcher's Rule.
Gabriel Thomas's History of Pennsylvania.
Penn's Trials.
And Victory.
Delaware.
CHAPTER V. MARYLAND, VIRGINIA, CAROLINA
Maryland after the Stuart Restoration.
Navigation Act.
Boundary Disputes.
Liberality of Religion.
Agitation to Establish Anglicanism.
Maryland under William and Mary.
English Church Established.
Not Oppressive.
Fate of Virginia after the Restoration.
Virginia's Spirit, Numbers, Resources.
Causes of Bacon's Rebellion.
Evil of the Navigation Acts.
Worthless Officials.
Course of the Rebellion.
Result.
Dulness of the Subsequent History.
William and Mary College.
Governor Spotswood.
Blackbeard.
Carolina.
Its Constitution.
Conflict of Parties.
Georgia.
CHAPTER VI. GOVERNMENTAL INSTITUTIONS IN THE COLONIES.
Origin of American Political Institutions.
Local Self-Government.
Representation.
Relation of Colonies to England.
Classification of Colonies.
Changes.
Conflict of Legal Views.
Colonists' Contentions.
Taxation.
CHAPTER VII. SOCIAL CULTURE IN COLONIAL TIMES.
Population of the Colonies at Different Dates.
Differences according to Sections.
Intellectual Ability.
Free Thought.
Political Bent.
English Church in the Colonies.
Its Clergy.
In New York.
The New England Establishment.
Hatred to Episcopacy.
Counter-hatred.
Colleges and Schools.
Newspapers.
Libraries.
Postal System.
Learned Professions.
Epidemics.
Scholars and Artists.
Travelling.
Manufactures and
Commerce.
Houses.
Food and Dress.
Wigs.
Opposition to Them.
Social Cleavage.
Redemptioners.
Penal Legislation.
Philadelphia Leads in Social Science.
CHAPTER VIII. ENGLAND AND FRANCE IN AMERICA
The French in the Heart of the Continent.
Groseilliers, Radisson, La Salle.
Joliet and Marquette Reach the Mississippi.
Baudin and Du Lhut.
La Salle Descends to the Gulf.
"Chicago."
The Portages.
La Salle's Expedition from France to the Mississippi.
Its Fate.
French, Indians, and English.
France's Advantage.
Numbers of each Race in America.
Causes of England's Colonial Strength.
King William's War.
The Schenectady Massacre.
Other Atrocities.
Anne's War.
Deerfield.
Plans for Striking Back.
Second Capture of Port Royal.
Rasle's Settlement Raided.
George's War.
Capture of Louisburg.
Saratoga Destroyed.
Scheme to Retaliate.
Failure.
French Vigilance and Aggression.
CHAPTER IX. THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR
Struggle Inevitable.
George Washington.
Fights at Great Meadows.
War Begun.
English Plans of Campaign.
Braddock's March.
Defeat and Death.
Prophecy Regarding Washington.
The "Evangeline" History.
Loudon's Incompetence.
Pitt at the Head of Affairs.
Will Take Canada.
Louisburg Recaptured.
"Pittsburgh."
Triple Movement upon Canada.
The Plains of Abraham.
Quebec Capitulates.
Peace of Paris.
Conspiracy of Pontiac.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
COLUMBUS. (After a portrait by Herrera) Frontispiece
TEMPLE MOUND IN MEXICO
BIG ELEPHANT MOUND, WISCONSIN
DIGHTON ROCK
THE OLD STONE MILL AT NEWPORT, R. I.
PRINCE HENRY OF PORTUGAL--"THE NAVIGATOR." (From an old print)
QUEEN ISABELLA OF SPAIN.
COLUMBUS BEGGING AT THE FRANCISCAN CONVENT
EMBARKATION OF CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS AT PALOS. (From an old print)
AMERIGO VESPUCCI. (Fac-simile of an old print)
VASCO DA GAMA. (From an old print)
BALBOA DISCOVERING THE PACIFIC OCEAN
PONCE DE LEON
HERNANDO CORTES, (From an old print)
MONTEZUMA MORTALLY WOUNDED BY HIS OWN SUBJECTS
DEATH OF MAGELLAN
FERDINAND DE SOTO
A PALISADED INDIAN TOWN IN ALABAMA
BURIAL OF DE SOTO IN THE MISSISSIPPI AT NIGHT
FORT CAROLINA ON THE RIVER OF MAY
PEDRO MELENDEZ
INDIANS DEVOURED BY DOGS. (From an old print)
VERRAZANO, THE FLORENTINE NAVIGATOR
JACQUES CARTIER, (From an old print)
SEBASTIAN CABOT, (From an old print)
AN INDIAN VILLAGE AT THE ROANOKE SETTLEMENT
SIR HUMPHREY GILBERT
SIR WALTER RALEIGH
QUEEN ELIZABETH
KING JAMES I. (From Mr. Henry Irving's Collection)
TOBACCO PLANT.
CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH.
POCAHONTAS SAVING CAPTAIN SMITH'S LIFE. (From Smith's "General History ")
THE COUNCIL OF POWHATAN. (From Smith's "General History ")
POCAHONTAS.
SIGNATURE OF BERKELEY.
PLYMOUTH HARBOR, ENGLAND.
HARBOR OF PROVINCETOWN, CAPE COD, WHERE THE PILGRIMS LANDED.
THE LIFE OF THE COLONY AT CAPE COD.
SIGNATURES TO PLYMOUTH PATENT.
SITE OF FIRST CHURCH AND GOVERNOR BRADFORD'S HOUSE AT PLYMOUTH.
GOVERNOR WINTHROP.
FIRST CHURCH IN SALEM.
SEAL OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY COMPANY.
ROGER WILLIAMS' HOUSE AT SALEM.
EDWARD WINSLOW.
MARYLAND SHILLING.
HENRIETTA MARIA.
SUPPOSED PORTRAIT OF WILLIAM CLAYBORNE.
CLAYBORNE'S TRADING POST ON KENT ISLAND.
FIGHT BETWEEN CLAYBORNE AND THE ST. MARY'S SHIP.
OLIVER CROMWELL.
SEAL OF NEW AMSTERDAM.
PETER STUYVESANT.
SEAL OF NEW NETHERLAND.
EARLIEST PICTURE OF NEW AMSTERDAM.
DE VRIES.
COSTUMES OF SWEDES.
THE OLD STADT HUYS AT NEW AMSTERDAM.
NEW AMSTERDAM IN THE MIDDLE OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.
THE DUKE OF YORK, AFTERWARDS JAMES II.
THE TOMB OF STUYVESANT.
ATTACK ON THE FORT OF THE PEQUOTS ON THE MYSTIC RIVER.
ATTACK ON THE PEQUOT FORT.
SIGNATURE OF MIANTONOMOH.
THE GRAVE OF MIANTONOMOH.
TOTEM OR TRIBE MARK OF THE FIVE NATIONS.
KING CHARLES II.
JOHN WINTHROP THE YOUNGER.
SIR EDMOND ANDROS.
THE CHARTER OAK AT HARTFORD.
BOX IN WHICH THE CONNECTICUT CHARTER WAS KEPT.
THE MONUMENT AT BLOODY BROOK.
GOFFE AT HADLEY.
INCREASE MATHER.
COTTON MATHER.
OLD TITUBA THE INDIAN.
LIEUTENANT-GOVERNOR STOUGHTON.
FAC-SIMILE OF SHERIFF'S RETURN OF AN EXECUTION.
SLOUGHTER SIGNING LEISLER'S DEATH WARRANT.
SEAL OF THE CARTERETS.
SEAL OF EAST JERSEY.
WAMPUM RECEIVED BY PENN IN COMMEMORATION OF THE INDIAN TREATY.
WILLIAM PENN.
THE TREATY MONUMENT, KENSINGTON.
THE PENN MANSION IN PHILADELPHIA.
CHARLES, SECOND LORD BALTIMORE.
REV, DR. BLAIR, FIRST PRESIDENT OF WILLIAM AND MARY COLLEGE.
GEORGE MONK, DUKE OF ALBEMARLE.
LORD SHAFTESBURY.
SEAL OF THE PROPRIETORS OF CAROLINA.
JOHN LOCKE.
SAVANNAH. (From a print of 1741)
JAMES OGLETHORPE.
COSTUMES ABOUT THE MIDDLE OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.
JAMES LOGAN.
KING WILLIAM.
QUEEN MARY
CHIEF JUSTICE SEWALL.
THE PILLORY.
SIGNATURE OF JOLLIET. (old spelling)
TOTEM OF THE SIOUX.
A SIOUX CHIEF.
TOTEM OF THE ILLINOIS.
THE RECEPTION OF JOLIET AND MARQUETTE BY THE ILLINOIS.
LOUIS XIV.
COINS STRUCK IN FRANCE FOR THE COLONIES.
ASSASSINATION OF LA SALLE.
NEW ORLEANS IN 1719.
SIGNATURE OF D'IBERVILLE.
THE ATTACK ON SCHENECTADY.
HANNAH DUSTIN'S ESCAPE.
QUEEN ANNE.
GOVERNOR SHIRLEY.
SIR WILLIAM PEPPERRELL
THE AMBUSCADE
THE DEATH OF BRADDOCK.
MONTCALM.
WILLIAM PITT.
GENERAL WOLFE.
LANDING OF WOLFE.
QUEBEC IN 1730. (From an old print)
BOUQUET'S REDOUBT AT PITTSBURGH.
LIST OF MAPS
GLOBUS MARTINI BEHAIM NARINBERGENSIS, 1492
EUROPEAN PROVINCES IN 1655.
MARQUETTE'S MAP.
PLAN OF PORT ROYAL, NOVA SCOTIA.
MAP SHOWING POSITION OF FRENCH AND ENGLISH FORTS AND SETTLEMENTS.
BRADDOCK'S ROUTE.
MAP OF BRADDOCK'S FIELD.
INTRODUCTION
AMERICA BEFORE COLUMBUS
Man made his appearance on the western continent unnumbered ages ago,
not unlikely before the close of the glacial period. It is possible that
human life began in Asia and western North America sooner than on either
shore of the Atlantic. Nothing wholly forbids the belief that America
was even the cradle of the race, or one of several cradles, though most
scientific writers prefer the view that our species came hither from
Asia. De Nadaillac judges it probable that the ocean was thus crossed
not at Behring Strait alone, but along a belt of equatorial islands as
well. We may think of successive waves of such immigration--perhaps the
easiest way to account for certain differences among American races.
It is, at any rate, an error to speak of the primordial Americans as
derived from any Asiatic stock at present existing or known to history.
The old Americans had scarcely an Asiatic feature. Their habits and
customs were emphatically peculiar to themselves. Those in which they
agreed with the trans-Pacific populations, such as fashion of weapons
and of fortifications, elements of folk-lore, religious ideas,
traditions of a flood, belief in the destruction of the world by fire,
and so on, are nearly all found the world over, the spontaneous
creations of our common human intelligence.
The original American peoples, various and unlike as they were, agreed
in four traits, three of them physical, one mental, which mark them off
as in all likelihood primarily of one stock after all, and as different
from any Old World men: (1) They had low, retreating foreheads. (2)
Their hair was black. (3) It was also of a peculiar texture, lank, and
cylindrical in section, never wavy. And (4) their languages were
polysynthetic, forming a class apart from all others in the world. The
peoples of America, if from Asia, must date back to a time when speech
itself was in its infancy.
Temple Mound In Mexico.
The numerous varieties of ancient Americans reduce to two distinct types
--the Dolicocephalous or long-skulled, and the Brachycephalous or
short-skulled. Morton names these types respectively the Toltecan and
the American proper. The Toltecan type was represented by the primitive
inhabitants of Mexico and by the Mound-builders of our Mississippi
Valley; the American proper, by the Indians. The Toltecans made far the
closer approach to civilization, though the others possessed a much
greater susceptibility therefor than the modern Indians of our prairies
would indicate.
Of the Mound-builders painfully little is known. Many of their mounds
still remain, not less mysterious or interesting than the pyramids of
Egypt, perhaps almost equally ancient. The skeletons exhumed from them
often fly into dust as soon as exposed to air, a rare occurrence with
the oldest bones found in Europe. On the parapet-crest of the Old Fort
at Newark, 0., trees certainly five hundred years old have been cut, and
they could not have begun their growth till long after the earth-works
had been deserted. In some mounds, equally aged trees root in the
decayed trunks of a still anterior growth.
Much uncertainty continues to shroud the design of these mounds. Some
were for military defence, others for burial places, others for lookout
stations, others apparently for religious uses. Still others, it is
supposed, formed parts of human dwellings. That they proceeded from
intelligence and reflection is clear. Usually, whether they are squares
or circles, their construction betrays nice, mathematical exactness,
unattainable save by the use of instruments. Many constitute
effigies--of birds, fishes, quadrupeds, men. In Wisconsin is a mound 135
feet long and well proportioned, much resembling an elephant; in Adams
County, 0., a gracefully curved serpent, 1,000 feet long, with jaws
agape as if to swallow an egg-shaped figure in front; in Granville, in
the same State, one in the form of a huge crocodile; in Greenup County,
Ky., an image of a bear, which seems leaning forward in an attitude of
observation, measuring 53 feet from the top of the back to the end of
the foreleg, and 105-1/2 feet from the tip of the nose to the rear of
the hind foot.
Big Elephant Mound, Wisconsin.
The sites of towns and cities were artfully selected, near navigable
rivers and their confluences, as at Marietta, Cincinnati, and in
Kentucky opposite the old mouth of the Scioto. Points for defence were
chosen and fortified with scientific precision. The labor expended upon
these multitudinous structures must have been enormous, implying a vast
population and extensive social, economic, and civil organization. The
Cahokia mound, opposite St. Louis, is 90 feet high and 900 feet long.
The Mound-builders made elegant pottery, of various design and accurate
shapes, worked bone and all sorts of stones, and even forged copper.
There are signs that they understood smelting this metal. They certainly
mined it in large quantities, and carried it down the Mississippi
hundreds of miles from its source on Lake Superior. They must have been
masters of river navigation, but their mode of conveying vast burdens
overland, destitute of efficient draft animals as they apparently were,
we can hardly even conjecture.
The Mound-builders, as we have said, were related to the antique
populations of Mexico and Central America, and the most probable
explanation of their departure from their Northern seats is that in face
of pestilence, or of some overpowering human foe, they retreated to the
Southwest, there to lay, under better auspices, the foundations of new
states, and to develop that higher civilization whose relics, too little
known, astound the student of the past, as greatly as do the stupendous
pillars of Carnac or the grotesque animal figures of Khorsabad and
Nimrud.
So much has been written about the American Indians that we need not
discuss them at length. They were misnamed Indians by Columbus, who
supposed the land he had discovered to be India. At the time of his
arrival not more than two hundred thousand of them lived east of the
Mississippi, though they were doubtless far more numerous West and
South. Whence they came, or whether, if this was a human deed at all,
they or another race now extinct drove out the Mound-builders, none can
tell.
Of arts the red man had but the rudest. He made wigwams, canoes, bone
fish-hooks with lines of hide or twisted bark, stone tomahawks,
arrow-heads and spears, clothing of skins, wooden bows, arrows, and
clubs. He loved fighting, finery, gambling, and the chase. He
domesticated no animals but the dog and possibly the hog. Sometimes
brave, he was oftener treacherous, cruel, revengeful. His power of
endurance on the trail or the warpath was incredible, and if captured,
he let himself be tortured to death without a quiver or a cry. Though
superstitious, he believed in a Great Spirit to be worshipped without
idols, and in a future life of happy hunting and feasting.
Whether, at the time of which we now speak, the Indians were an old
race, already beginning to decline, or a fresh race, which contact with
the whites balked of its development, it is difficult to say. Their
career since best accords with the former supposition. In either case we
may assume that their national groupings and habitats were nearly the
same in 1500 as later, when these became accurately known. In the
eighteenth century the Algonquins occupied all the East from Nova Scotia
to North Carolina, and stretched west to the Mississippi. At one time
they numbered ninety thousand. The Iroquois or Five Nations had their
seat in Central and Western New York. North and west of them lived the
Hurons or Wyandots. The Appalachians, embracing Cherokees, Creeks,
Choctaws, Chickasaws, Seminoles and a number of lesser tribes, occupied
all the southeastern portion of what is now the United States. West of
the Mississippi were the Dakotas or Sioux.
Since the white man's arrival upon these shores, very few changes have
occurred among the brute inhabitants of North America. A few species, as
the Labrador duck and the great auk, have perished. America then
possessed but four animals which had appreciable economic value; the
dog, the reindeer at the north, which the Mound-builders used as a
draft animal but the Indians did not, and the llama and the paco south
of the equator. Every one of our present domestic animals originated
beyond the Atlantic, being imported hither by our ancestors. The Indians
of the lower Mississippi Valley, when De Soto came, had dogs, and also
what the
Signature of Berkeley.
CHAPTER V.
PILGRIM AND PURITAN AT THE NORTH
[1612]
The Pilgrims who settled New England were Independents, peculiar in
their ecclesiastical tenet that the single congregation of godly
persons, however few or humble, regularly organized for Christ's work,
is of right, by divine appointment, the highest ecclesiastical authority
on earth. A church of this order existed in London by 1568; another,
possibly more than one, the "Brownists," by 1580. Barrowe and Greenwood
began a third in 1588, which, its founders being executed, went exiled
to Amsterdam in 1593, subsequently uniting with the Presbyterians there.
These churches, though independent, were not strictly democratic, like
those next to be named.
Soon after 1600 John Smyth gathered a church at Gainsborough in
Lincolnshire, England, which persecution likewise drove to Amsterdam.
Here Smyth seceded and founded a Baptist church, which, returning to
London in 1611 or 1612, became the first church of its kind known to
have existed in England. From Smyth's church at Gainsborough sprang one
at Scrooby, in Nottinghamshire, and this, too, exiled like its parent,
crossed to Holland, finding home in Leyden in 1607 and 1608. Of this
church John Robinson was pastor, and from its bosom came the Plymouth
Colony to New England.
Plymouth Harbor, England.
Harbor of Provincetown, Cape Cod, where the Pilgrims landed.
[1620]
This little band set out for America with a patent from the Virginia
Company, according to James I.'s charter of 1606, but actually began
here as labor-share holders in a sub-corporation of a new organization,
the Plymouth Company, chartered in 1620. Launching in the Mayflower from
Plymouth, where they had paused in their way hither from Holland, they
arrived off the coast of Cape Cod in 1620, December 11th Old Style,
December 21st New Style, and began a settlement, to which they gave the
name Plymouth. Before landing they had formed themselves into a
political body, a government of the people with "just and equal laws."
The Life of the Colony at Cape Cod.
They based their civil authority upon this Mayflower compact,
practically ignoring England. Carver was the first governor, Bradford
the second. The colony was named Plymouth in memory of hospitalities
which its members had received at Plymouth, England, the name having no
connection with the "Plymouth" of the Plymouth Company. The members of
the Plymouth Company had none but a mercantile interest in the
adventure, merely fitting out the colonists and bearing the expense of
the passage for all but the first. On the other hand, the stock was not
all retained in England. Shares were allotted to the Pilgrims as well,
one to each emigrant with or without means, and one for every 10 pounds
invested.
Plymouth early made a treaty with Massasoit, the chief of the
neighboring Wampanoags, the peace lasting with benign effects to both
parties for fifty years, or till the outbreak of Philip's War, discussed
in a later chapter. The first winter in Plymouth was one of dreadful
hardships, of famine, disease and death, which spring relieved but in
part. Yet Plymouth grew, surely if slowly. It acquired rights on the
Kennebec, on the Connecticut, at Cape Ann. It was at first a pure
democracy, its laws all made in mass-meetings of the entire body of
male inhabitants; nor was it till 1639 that increase of numbers forced
resort to the principle of representation. In 1643 the population was
about three thousand.
Signatures to Plymouth Patent.
/In witnes whereof the said President & Counsell haue to the one pt of
this pute Indenture sett their seales* And to th'other pt hereof the
said John Peirce in the name of himself and his said Associate haue sett
to his seale geven the day and yeeres first aboue written/
[1626-1630]
Between 1620 and 1630 there were isolated settlers along the whole New
England coast. White, a minister from Dorchester, England, founded a
colony near Cape Ann, which removed to Salem in 1626. The Plymouth
Company granted them a patent, which Endicott, in charge of more
emigrants, brought over in 1628. It gave title to all land between the
Merrimac and Charles Rivers, also to all within three miles beyond each.
These men formed the nucleus of the colony to which in 1629 Charles I.
granted a royal charter, styling the proprietors "the Governor and
Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England." Boston was made the
capital. Soon more emigrants came, and Charlestown was settled.
Site of First Church and Governor Bradford's House at Plymouth.
It was a momentous step when the government of this colony was
transferred to New England. Winthrop was chosen Governor, others of the
Company elected to minor offices, and they, with no fewer than one
thousand new colonists, sailed for this side the Atlantic. In
Massachusetts, therefore, a trading company did not beget, as elsewhere,
but literally became a political state. Many of the Massachusetts men,
in contrast with those of Plymouth, had enjoyed high consideration at
home. Yet democracy prevailed here too. The Governor and his eighteen
assistants were chosen by the freemen, and were both legislature and
court. As population increased and scattered in towns, these chose
deputies to represent them, and a lower house element was added to the
General Court, though assistants and deputies did not sit separately
till 1644.
Governor Winthrop.
[1631]
At this time Massachusetts had a population of about 15,000. To all New
England 21,200 emigrants came between 1628 and 1643, the total white
population at the latter date being about 24,000.
First Church in Salem.
So early as 1631 this colony decreed to admit none as freemen who were
not also church members. Thus Church and State were made one, the
government a theocracy. The Massachusetts settlers, though in many
things less extreme than the Pilgrims, were decided Puritans, sincere
but formal, precise, narrow, and very superstitious. They did not,
however, on coming hither, affect or wish to separate from the Church of
England, earnestly as they deprecated retaining the sign of the cross in
baptism, the surplice, marriage with ring, and kneeling at communion.
Yet soon they in effect became Separatists as well as Puritans, building
independent churches, like those at Plymouth, and repudiating episcopacy
utterly.
Seal of Massachusetts Bay Company.
[1635]
Much as these Puritans professed and tried to exalt reason in certain
matters, in civil and religious affairs, where they took the Old
Testament as affording literal and minute directions for all sorts of
human actions for all time, they could allow little liberty of opinion.
This was apparent when into this theocratic state came Roger Williams,
afterward the founder of Rhode Island. Born in London, England, about
1607, of good family, he was placed by his patron, Coke, at the Charter
House School. From there he went to Pembroke College, Cambridge. In 1631
he arrived in Boston. Somewhat finical in his political, moral, and
religious ideas, he found it impossible, having separated from the
Church of England, in which he had been reared, to harmonize here with
those still favoring that communion. At Salem he was invited by a little
company of Separatists to become their teacher. His views soon offended
the authorities. He declared that the king's patent could confer no
title to lands possessed by Indians. He denied the right of magistrates
to punish heresy, or to enforce attendance upon religious services. "The
magistrate's power," he said, "extends only to the bodies, goods, and
outward state of men."
Alarmed at his bold utterances, the General Court of Massachusetts,
September 2, 1635, decreed his banishment for "new and dangerous
opinions, against the authority of magistrates." His fate was not,
therefore, merely because of his religious views. The exile sought
refuge at Seekonk, but this being within the Plymouth jurisdiction, he,
on Governor Winslow's admonition, moved farther into the wilderness,
settling at Providence. He purchased land of the natives, and, joined by
others, set up a pure democracy, instituting as a part thereof the
"lively experiment," for which ages had waited, of perfect liberty in
matters of religious belief. Not for the first time in history, but more
clearly, earnestly, and consistently than it had ever been done before,
he maintained for every man the right of absolute freedom in matters of
conscience, for all forms of faith equal toleration.
Roger Williams' House at Salem.
[1638]
Edward Winslow.
Some friends of Mrs. Anne Hutchinson established a colony on Aquidneck,
the Indian name for Rhode Island. Williams went to England and secured
from Parliament a patent which united that plantation with his in one
government. Charles II.'s charter of 1663 added Warwick to the first two
settlements, renewing and enlarging the patent, and giving freest scope
for government according to Williams' ideas. Mrs. Hutchinson, a woman of
rare intellect and eloquence, who maintained the right of private
judgment and pretended to an infallible inner light of revelation, was,
like Williams, a victim of Puritan intolerance. She and her followers
were banished, and some of them, returning, put to death, 1659-60. She
came to Providence, then went to Aquidneck, where her husband died in
1642. She next settled near Hurl Gate, within the Dutch limits, where
herself and almost her entire family were butchered by the Indians in
1643.
In 1633 the Dutch erected a fort where Hartford now is, but some English
emigrants from Plymouth Colony, in defiance of a threatened cannonade,
sailed past and built a trading-house at Windsor, where, joined by
colonists, from about Boston, they soon effected a settlement.
Wethersfield and Hartford were presently founded. In 1630 the Plymouth
Company had granted Connecticut to the Earl of Warwick, who turned it
over to Lord Brooke, Lord Say-and-Seal, and others. Winthrop the
Younger, son of Governor Winthrop, of Massachusetts, commissioned by
these last, built a fort at Saybrook. Till the expiration of his
commission the towns immediately upon the Connecticut were under the
government of Massachusetts. Their population in 1643 was three
thousand. A convention of these towns met at Hartford, January 14, 1639,
and formed a constitution, like that of Massachusetts Bay, thoroughly
republican in nature. Connecticut breathed a freer spirit than either
Massachusetts or New Haven, being in this respect the peer of Plymouth.
At Hartford Roger Williams was always welcome.
Meantime, in 1638, having touched at Boston the year before, Davenport,
Eaton, and others from London began planting at New Haven. The Bible was
adopted as their guide in both civil and religious affairs, and a
government organized in which only church members could vote or be
elected to the General Court. The colony flourished, branching out into
several towns. In 1643 it numbered twenty five hundred inhabitants.
As early as 1622, Mason and Gorges were granted land partly in what is
now Maine, partly in what is now New Hampshire; and in 1623 Dover and
Portsmouth were settled. Wheelwright, a brother-in-law of Mrs.
Hutchinson, with others, purchased of the natives the southeast part of
New Hampshire, between the Merrimac and the Piscataqua, and in 1638
Exeter was founded. In the same year with Wheelwright's purchase, Mason
obtained from the council of the Plymouth Company a patent to this same
section, and the tract was called New Hampshire. These conflicting
claims paved the way for future controversies and lawsuits. The settlers
here were not Puritans, nor were they obliged to be church members in
order to be deputies or freemen.
The settlement of Maine goes back to 1626, when the Plymouth Company
granted lands there both to Alexander and to Gorges. In 1639 Gorges
secured a royal charter to re-enforce his claim. Large freedom, civil
and religious, was allowed. For many years the Maine settlements were
small and scattered, made up mostly of such as came to hunt and fish for
a season only.
[1650]
From 1643 to 1684 Massachusetts, Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven
formed a confederation under the style of the United Colonies of New
England. Maine, Providence, and Rhode Island sought membership, but were
refused as being civilly and religiously out of harmony with the
colonies named. Connecticut, offensive to the Dutch, and exposed to
hostilities from them, was the most earnest for the union, while at the
same time the most conservative as to its form. It was a loose league,
leaving each colony independent save as to war and peace, Indian
affairs, alliances and boundaries. Questions pertaining to these were to
be settled by a commission of two delegates from each of the four
colonies, meeting yearly, voting man by man, six out of the eight votes
being necessary to bind.
The confederacy settled a boundary dispute between New Haven and New
Netherland in 1650. It received and disbursed moneys, amounting some
years to 600 pounds, for the propagation of the gospel in New England,
sent over by the society which Parliament incorporated for that purpose
in 1649. It was also of more or less service in securing united action
against the savages in Philip's War. The union was, however, of little
immediate service, useful rather as an example for the far future. Its
failure was due partly to the distance of the colonies apart, and to the
strength of the instinct for local self-government, a distinguishing
political trait of New England till our day. Its main weakness, however,
was the overbearing power and manner of Massachusetts, especially after
her assumption of Maine in 1652. In 1653 the Plymouth, New Haven, and
Connecticut commissioners earnestly wished war with New Netherland, but
Massachusetts proudly forbade--a plain violation of the articles. After
this there was not much heart in the alliance. The last meeting of the
commissioners occurred at Hartford, September 5, 1684.
CHAPTER VI.
BALTIMORE AND HIS MARYLAND
[1630]
Maryland Shilling.
The very year that witnessed the landing of the Pilgrims records the
beginning of another attempt to colonize the New World. While Secretary
of State, having been appointed in 1619, Sir George Calvert, a member of
the Virginia Company from 1609 until its dissolution in 1624, determined
to plant a colony for himself. In the memorable year 1620 he bought of
Lord Vaughan the patent to the south-eastern peninsula of Newfoundland,
the next he sent colonists thither with a generous supply of money for
their support. In 1623 King James gave him a patent, making him
proprietary of this region. In 1625 Calvert boldly declared himself a
Catholic, and resigned his office of Secretary. Spite of this he was
soon afterwards ennobled, and his new title of Lord Baltimore is the
name by which he is best known. Visiting his little settlement in 1627
he quickly came to the conclusion that the severity of the climate would
make its failure certain. He therefore gave up this enterprise, but
determined to repeat the attempt on the more favorable soil of Virginia.
Confident of the goodwill of Charles I., to whom he had written for a
grant of land there, he did not await a reply, but sailed for Virginia,
where he arrived in 1629. In 1632 the king issued a patent granting to
Baltimore and his heirs a territory north and east of the Potomac,
comprising what we now call Maryland, all Delaware, and a part of
Pennsylvania. The name Maryland was given it by the king in, honor of
his queen, Henrietta Maria. But before this charter had received royal
signature Lord Baltimore had breathed his last, and his son Cecil
succeeded to his honors and possessions.
Henrietta Maria.
The Maryland charter made the proprietary the absolute lord of the soil.
He was merely to acknowledge fealty by the delivery of two Indian arrows
yearly to the king at Windsor. He could make laws with the consent of
the citizens, declare war or peace, appoint officers of government; in
fact, in most respects he had regal power. The colonists were, however,
to remain English subjects, with all the privileges of such. If they
were not represented in Parliament, neither were they taxed by the
Crown. If the proprietary made laws for them, these must not be contrary
to the laws of England. And they were to enjoy freedom of trade, not
only with England but with foreign countries.
[1634-1635]
This charter, as will be readily seen, could not please the Virginians,
since the entire territory conveyed by it was part of the grant of 1609
to the London Company for Virginia. But as this and subsequent charters
had been annulled in 1624, the new colony was held by the Privy Council
to have the law on its side, and Lord Baltimore was left to make his
preparations undisturbed. He fitted out two vessels, the Ark and the
Dove, and sent them on their voyage of colonization. They went by the
way of the West Indies, arriving off Point Comfort in 1634. Sailing up
the Potomac, they landed on the island of St. Clement's, and took formal
possession of their new home. Calvert explored a river, now called the
St. Mary's, a tributary of the Potomac, and being pleased with the spot
began a settlement. He gained the friendship of the natives by
purchasing the land and by treating them justly and humanely.
Supposed Portrait of William Clayborne.
Clayborne's Trading Post on Kent Island.
The proprietary was a Catholic, yet, whether or not by an agreement
between him and the king, as Gardiner supposes, did not use either his
influence or his authority to distress adherents of the Church of
England. The two creeds stood practically upon an equality. But if
religious troubles were avoided, difficulties of another sort were not
slow in arising. About the year 1631, Clayborne, who had been secretary
of the Virginia colony, had chosen Kent Island in Chesapeake Bay as a
station for trading with the Indians. This post was in the very midst of
Maryland, and Calvert notified Clayborne that he should consider it a
part of that province. Clayborne at once showed himself a bitter enemy.
The Indians became suspicious and unfriendly, Clayborne, so it was
believed, being the instigator of this temper. An armed vessel was sent
out, with orders from Clayborne to seize ships of the St. Mary's
settlement. A fight took place, Clayborne fleeing to Virginia. Calvert
demanded that he should be given up. This was refused, and in 1637 he
went to England. A committee of the Privy Council decided that Kent
Island belonged to Maryland.
[1638]
In 1635 the first Maryland assembly met, consisting of the freemen of
the colony and the governor, Leonard Calvert, the proprietary's brother,
who was presiding officer. Lord Baltimore repudiated its acts, on the
ground that they were not proposed by him, as the charter directed. The
assembly which gathered in 1638 retaliated, rejecting the laws brought
forward by the proprietary.
[1639]
For a time the colony was without laws except the common law of England.
But Baltimore was too wise and conciliatory to allow such a state of
affairs to continue. He gave authority to the governor to assent to the
acts of the assembly, which he himself might or might not confirm.
Fight between Clayborne and the St. Mary's Ship.
Accordingly in 1639 the assembly met and passed various acts, mostly
relating to civil affairs. One, however, was specially noteworthy, as
giving to the "Holy Church" "her rights and liberties," meaning by this
the Church of Rome, for, as Gardiner says, the title was never applied
to the Church of England. It was at the same time expressly enacted that
all the Christian inhabitants should be in the enjoyment of every right
and privilege as free as the natural-born subjects of England. If Roger
Williams was the first to proclaim absolute religious liberty, Lord
Baltimore was hardly behind him in putting this into practice. As has
been neatly said, "The Ark and the Dove were names of happy omen: the
one saved from the general wreck the germs of political liberty, and the
other bore the olive-branch of religious peace."
[1646]
During the civil war in England the affairs of Maryland were in a very
disturbed condition. Clayborne, Maryland's evil genius, seized the
opportunity to foment an insurrection, possessed himself once more of
Kent Island, and compelled the governor to flee to Virginia. Returning
in 1646, Calvert was fortunate enough to recover the reins of
government, but the following year witnessed the close of his
administration and his short though useful and eventful life. Few men
intrusted with almost absolute authority have exercised it with so much
firmness and at the same time with so much ability, discretion, and
uprightness.
[1650]
His successor, Greene, a Catholic, was not likely to find favor with the
Puritan Parliament of England, and Baltimore, in 1648, to conciliate the
ruling powers and to refute the charge that Maryland was only a retreat
for Romanists, removed the governor and appointed instead one who was a
Protestant and a firm supporter of Parliament. The council was also
changed so as to place the Catholics in the minority. The oath of the
new governor restrained him from molesting any person, especially if of
the Roman Catholic persuasion, on account of religious profession. The
way was thus opened for the Act of Toleration passed in 1649. This law,
after specifying certain speeches against the Trinity, the Virgin, or
the saints as punishable offences, declared that equal privileges should
be enjoyed by Christians of all creeds. Whatever the motives of
Baltimore, his policy was certainly wise and commendable.
A new and troublesome element was now introduced into the colony. Some
Puritans who had not been tolerated among the stanch Church-of-England
inhabitants of Virginia were invited by Governor Stone to Maryland.
Their home here, which they named Providence, is now known as Annapolis.
The new-comers objected to the oath of fidelity, refused to send
burgesses to the assembly, and were ready to overthrow the government
whose protection they were enjoying. Opportunity soon offered.
Parliament had already in 1652 brought Virginia to submission. Maryland
was now accused of disloyalty, and when we notice among the
commissioners appointed by the Council of State, the name of Clayborne,
it is not difficult to understand who was the author of this charge. The
governor was removed, but being popular and not averse to compromise,
was quickly restored. Then came the accession of Cromwell to power as
Protector of England. Parliament was dissolved. The authority of its
commissioners of course ceased. Baltimore seized this opportunity to
regain his position as proprietary. He bade Stone to require the oath of
fidelity to the proprietary from those who occupied lands, and to issue
all writs in his name. He maintained that the province now stood in the
same relations to the Protectorate which it had borne to the royalist
government of Charles I.
Oliver Cromwell.
So thought Cromwell, but not so Clayborne or the Maryland Puritans. They
deposed Stone, and put in power Fuller, who was in sympathy with their
designs. There resulted a reversal of the acts of former assemblies, and
legislation hostile to the Catholics. The new assembly, from which
Catholics were carefully excluded by disfranchisement, at once repealed
the Act of Toleration. Protection was withdrawn from those who professed
the popish religion, and they were forbidden the exercise of that faith
in the province. Severe penalties were threatened against "prelacy" and
"licentiousness" thus restricting the benefits of their "Act concerning
Religion" to the Puritan element now in power. The authority of the
proprietary himself was disputed, and colonists were invited to take
lands without his knowledge or consent.
[1656]
Baltimore adopted vigorous measures. By his orders Stone made a forcible
attempt to regain control of the province, but was defeated at
Providence and taken prisoner. His life was spared, but four of his men
were condemned and executed. Baltimore again invoked the powerful
intervention of Cromwell, and again were the enemies of Maryland sternly
rebuked for their interference in the affairs of that province, and told
in plain language to leave matters as they had found them. In 1656,
after an inquiry by the Commissioners of Trade, the claims of Baltimore
were admitted to be just, and he promptly sent his brother Philip to be
a member of the council and secretary of the province. The legislation
of the usurping Puritans was set aside, religious toleration once more
had full sway, and a general pardon was proclaimed to those who had
taken part in the late disturbances.
In the meantime, Fendall, who had been appointed governor by Baltimore,
plotted to make himself independent of his master, and, with the
connivance of the assembly, proceeded to usurp the authority which was
lawfully vested in the proprietary. But the attempt was a miserable
failure. Philip Calvert was immediately made governor by the now
all-powerful proprietary, who had the favor and support of Charles II.,
just coming to the throne. Peace and prosperity came back to the colony
so sorely and frequently vexed by civil dissensions. The laws were just
and liberal, encouraging the advent of settlers of whatever creed, while
the rule of the Calverts was wise and benign, such as to merit the
respect and admiration of posterity. In 1643 Virginia and Maryland
together had less than twenty thousand inhabitants. In 1660 Maryland
alone, according to Fuller, had eight thousand. Chalmers thinks there
were no fewer than twelve thousand at this date.
CHAPTER VII.
NEW NETHERLAND
[1609]
While the French explorer, Champlain, was sailing along the shores of
the lake which bears his name, another equally adventurous spirit, Henry
Hudson, was on his way to the western world. Hoping to open a passage to
India by a voyage to the north, Hudson, an English navigator, offered in
1609 to sail under the authority of the Dutch East India Company. Driven
back by ice and fog from a northeast course, he turned northwest.
Searching up and down near the parallel of 40 degrees, he entered the
mouth of the great river which perpetuates his name. He found the
country inviting to the eye, and occupied by natives friendly in
disposition. The subsequent career of this bold mariner has a mournful
interest. He never returned to Holland, but, touching at Dartmouth, was
restrained by the English authorities, and forbidden longer to employ
his skill and experience for the benefit of the Dutch. Again entering
the English service and sent once more to discover the northwest
passage, he sailed into the waters of the bay which still bears his
name, where cold and hunger transformed the silent discontent of his
crew into open mutiny, and they left the fearless navigator to perish
amid the icebergs of the frozen north.
Seal of New Amsterdam.
Peter Stuyvesant.
[1614-1618]
Hudson had sent to Holland a report of the Great River and the country
bordering it, rich in fur-bearing animals, and it had excited eager
interest. Private individuals sent expeditions thither and carried on a
profitable trade with the natives. A few Dutch were here when, in 1613,
Captain Argall sailed from Virginia against the French at Port Royal,
Acadia, now Annapolis in Nova Scotia, who were encroaching upon the
English possessions on the coast of Maine. He compelled them to
surrender. On his return, he visited the Dutch traders of Manhattan
Island, and forced them also, as it had been discovered by Cabot in
1497, to acknowledge the sovereignty of England over this entire region.
Seal of New Netherland.
It was in 1614 that the Dutch States-General, in the charter given to a
company of merchants, named the Hudson Valley New Netherland. To
facilitate trade this company made a treaty with the Five Nations and
subordinate tribes, memorable as the first compact formed between the
whites and the savages. In it the Indians were regarded as possessing
equal rights and privileges with their white brethren. The treaty was
renewed in 1645, and continued in force till the English occupation,
1664. In 1618, the charter of the New Netherland Company having expired,
the Dutch West India Company was offered a limited incorporation, but it
was not until 1621 that it received its charter, and it was two years
later that it was completely organized and approved by the
States-General. By this company were sent out Mey, as Director, to the
Delaware or South River, and Tienpont to the Hudson or North River. Four
miles below Philadelphia Fort Nassau was erected, and where Albany now
stands was begun the trading-post called Fort Orange.
[1626]
In 1626 Tienpont's successor, Peter Minuit, a German, born at Wesel, was
appointed Director-General of New Netherland. He bought of the Indians,
for the sum of twenty-four dollars, the entire island of Manhattan, and
a fort called New Amsterdam was built. The State of New York dates its
beginning from this transaction.
Earliest Picture of New Amsterdam.
By their usually honest dealing with the natives the Dutch settlers
gained the friendship of the Five Nations, whose good-will was partly on
this account transferred to the English coloni
Cotton Mather.
Young Cotton Mather, grandson of the distinguished Rev. John Cotton, a
man of vast erudition and fervent piety, was at this time colleague to
his father, Increase Mather, as pastor of the Boston North Church. His
imagination had been abnormally developed by fasts and vigils, in which
he believed himself to hold uncommonly close communication with the
Almighty. His desire to provide new arms for faith against the growing
unbelief of his time led him to take one of the "bewitched" children to
his house, that he might note and describe the ways of the devil in her
case. The results he soon after published in his "Memorable Providences
Relating to Witchcrafts and Possessions." This work admitted no doubt as
to the reality of the demoniac possessions, which indeed it affected to
demonstrate forever. All the Boston ministers signed its preface,
certifying to its "clear information" that "both a God and a devil, and
witchcraft" existed. "Nothing too vile," it alleged, "can be said of,
nothing too hard can be done to, such a horrible iniquity as witchcraft
is." The publication excited great attention, and to it in no small
measure the ensuing tragedy may be traced.
Old Tituba the Indian.
In February, 1692, three more subjects, children of Rev. Mr. Parris,
minister at Danvers, then called Salem Village, exhibited bad witchcraft
symptoms. The utmost excitement prevailed. Neighboring clergymen joined
the village in fasting and prayer. A general fast for the colony was
ordered. But the "devilism," as Cotton Mather named it, spread instead
of abating, the children having any number of imitators so soon as they
became objects of general notice and sympathy. Old Tituba, an Indian
crone, who had served in Parris's family, was the first to be denounced
as the cause. Two other aged females, one crazy, the other bed-ridden,
were also presently accused, and after a little while several ladies of
Parris's church. Whoso uttered a whisper of incredulity, general or as
to the blameworthiness of any whom Parris called guilty, was instantly
indicted with them.
On April 11th, the Deputy Governor held in the meeting-house in Salem
Village a court for a preliminary examination of the prisoners. A scene
at once ridiculous and tragic followed. When they were brought in, their
alleged victims appeared overcome at their gaze, pretending to be
bitten, pinched, scratched, choked, burned, or pricked by their
invisible agency in revenge for refusing to subscribe to a covenant with
the devil. Some were apparently stricken down by the glance of an eye
from one of the culprits, others fainted, many writhed as in a fit.
Tituba was beaten to make her confess. Others were tortured. Finally all
the accused were thrown into irons. Numbers of accused persons, assured
that it was their only chance for life, owned up to deeds of which they
must have been entirely innocent. They had met the devil in the form of
a small black man, had attended witch sacraments, where they renounced
their Christian vows, and had ridden through the air on broomsticks.
Such were the confessions of poor women who had never in their lives
done any evil except possibly to tattle.
Lieutenant-Governor Stoughton.
On June 2d, a special court was held in Salem for the definite trial.
Stoughton, Lieutenant Governor, a man of small mind and bigoted temper,
was president. The business began by the condemnation and hanging of a
helpless woman. A jury of women had found on her person a wart, which
was pronounced to be unquestionably a "devil's teat," and her neighbors
remembered that many hens had died, animals become lame, and carts upset
by her dreadful "devilism." By September 23d, twenty persons had gone to
the gallows, eight more were under sentence, and fifty-five had
"confessed" and turned informers as their only hope. The "afflicted" had
increased to fifty. Jails were crammed with persons under accusation,
and fresh charges of alliance with devils were brought forward every
day.
Fac-simile of Sheriff's Return of an Execution.
Some of the wretched victims displayed great fortitude. Goodman Procter
lost his life by nobly and persistently--vainly as well,
alas!--maintaining the innocence of his accused wife. George Burroughs,
who had formerly preached in Salem Village, was indicted. His physical
strength, which happened to be phenomenal, was adduced as lent him from
the devil. Stoughton browbeat him through his whole trial. What sealed
his condemnation, however, was his offer to the jury of a paper quoting
an author who denied the possibility of witchcraft. His fervent prayers
when on the scaffold, and especially his correct rendering of the Lord's
Prayer, shook the minds of many. They argued that no witch could have
gotten through those holy words correctly--a test upon which several had
been condemned. Cotton Mather, present at the gallows, restored the
crowd to faith by reminding them that the devil had the power to dress
up like an angel of light. Rebecca Nurse, a woman of unimpeachable
character hitherto, unable from partial deafness to understand, so as to
explain, the allegations made against her, was convicted notwithstanding
every proof in her favor.
Reaction now began. Public opinion commenced to waver. No one knew whose
turn to be hanged would come next. Emboldened by their fatal success,
accusers whispered of people in high places as leagued with the Evil
One. An Andover minister narrowly escaped death. The Beverly minister,
Hale, one of the most active in denouncing witches, was aghast when his
own wife was accused. Two sons of Governor Bradstreet were obliged to
flee for their lives, one for refusing, as a magistrate, to issue any
more warrants, the other charged with bewitching a dog. Several hurried
to New York to escape conviction. The property of such was seized by
their towns. A reign of terror prevailed.
People slowly awoke to the terrible travesty of justice which was going
on. Magistrates were seen to have overlooked the most flagrant instances
of falsehood and contradiction on the part of both accusers and accused,
using the baseless hypothesis that the devil had warped their senses.
The disgusting partiality shown in the accusations was disrelished, as
was the resort that had been had to torture. One poor old man of eighty
they crushed to death because he would plead guilty to nothing. The
authorities quite disregarded the fact that everyone of the
self-accusations had been made in order to escape punishment. These
considerations effected a revolution in the minds of most people.
Remonstrances were presented to the courts, securing reprieve for those
under sentence of death at Salem. This so irritated the despicable
Stoughton that he resigned.
The forwardness of the ministers therein turned many against the
persecution, After the first victims had fallen at Salem, Governor Phips
took their advice whether or not to proceed. Cotton Mather indited the
reply. It thankfully acknowledges "the success which the merciful God
has given to the sedulous and assiduous endeavors of our honorable
rulers to defeat the abominable witch crafts which have been committed
in the country, humbly praying that the discovery of those mysterious
and mischievous wickednesses may be perfected. It is pleasant to note,
after all, the ministers' advice to the civil rulers not to rely too
much on "the devil's authority"--on the evidence, that is, of those
possessed. The court heeded this injunction all too little, but by and
by it had weight with the public, who judged that, as the trials
appeared to be proceeding on devil's evidence alone, the farce ought to
cease. The Superior Court met in Boston, April 25, 1693, and the grand
Jury declined to find any more bills against persons accused of sorcery.
King William vetoed the Witchcraft Act, and by the middle of 1693 all
the prisoners were discharged.
CHAPTER IV.
THE MIDDLE COLONIES
[1686]
The English conquest of New Netherland from the Dutch speedily followed
the Stuarts' return to the throne. Cromwell had mooted an attack on
Dutch America, and, as noticed in Chapter I., Connecticut's charter of
1662 extended that colony to include the Dutch lands. England based her
claim to the territory on alleged priority of discovery, but the real
motives were the value of the Hudson as an avenue for trade, and the
desire to range her colonies along the Atlantic coast in one unbroken
line. The victory was not bloody, nor was it offensive to the Dutch
themselves, who in the matter of liberties could not lose. King Charles
had granted the conquered tract to his brother, the Duke of York,
subsequently James II., and it was in his honor christened with its
present name of New York.
The Duke's government was not popular, especially as it ordered the
Dutch land-patents to be renewed--for money, of course; and in 1673,
war again existing between England and Holland, the Dutch recovered
their old possession. They held it however for only fifteen months,
since at the Peace of 1674 the two belligerent nations mutually restored
all the posts which they had won.
The reader already has some idea of Sir Edmond Andros's rule in America.
New York was the first to feel this, coming under the gentleman's
governorship immediately on being the second time surrendered to
England. Such had been the political disorder in the province, that
Andros's headship, stern as it was, proved beneficial. He even, for a
time, 1683-86, reluctantly permitted an elective legislature, though
discontinuing it when the legislatures of New England were suppressed.
This taste of freedom had its effect afterward.
[1690]
When news of the Revolution of 1688 in England reached New York, Andros
was in Boston. Nicholson, Lieutenant-Governor, being a Catholic and an
absolutist, and the colony now in horror of all Catholics through fear
of French invasion from Canada, Jacob Leisler, a German adventurer,
partly anticipating, partly obeying the popular wish, assumed to
function in Nicholson's stead. All the aristocracy, English or Dutch,
and nearly all the English of the lower rank were against him. Leisler
was passionate and needlessly bitter toward Catholics, yet he meant
well. He viewed his office as only transitory, and stood ready to
surrender it so soon as the new king's will could be learned; but when
Slaughter arrived with commission as governor, Leisler's foes succeeded
in compassing his execution for treason. This unjust and cruel deed
began a long feud between the popular and the aristocratic party in the
colony.
Sloughter signing Leisler's Death Warrant.
[1700]
From this time till the American Revolution New York continued a
province of the Crown. Royal governor succeeded royal governor, some of
them better, some worse. Of the entire line Bellomont was the most
worthy official, Cornbury the least so. One of the problems which
chiefly worried all of them was how to execute the navigation acts,
which, evaded everywhere, were here unscrupulously defied. Another care
of the governors, in which they succeeded but very imperfectly, was to
establish the English Church in the colony. A third was the
disfranchisement of Catholics. This they accomplished, the legislature
concurring, and the disability continued during the entire colonial
period.
Hottest struggle of all occurred over the question of the colony's right
of self-taxation. The democracy stood for this with the utmost
firmness, and even the higher classes favored rather than opposed. The
governors, Cornbury and Lovelace, most frantically, but in vain,
expostulated, scolded, threatened, till at last it became admitted by
law in the colony that no tax whatever could, on any pretext, be levied
save by act of the people's representatives.
Dutch America, it will be remembered, had reached southward to the
Delaware River, and this lower portion passed with the rest to the Duke
of York in 1664. The territory between the Hudson and the Delaware,
under the name of New Jersey, he made over to Lord Berkeley and Sir
George Carteret, proprietaries, who favored the freest institutions,
civil and religious. The population was for long very sparse and, as it
grew, very miscellaneous. Dutch, Swedes, English, Quakers, and Puritans
from New England were represented.
Seal of the Carterets.
After the English recovery Berkeley disposed of his undivided half of
the province, subsequently set off as West Jersey, to one Bylling, a
Quaker, who in a little time assigned it to Lawrie, Lucas, Penn, and
other Quakers. West Jersey became as much a Quaker paradise as
Pennsylvania. Penn with eleven of his brethren, also bought, of
Carteret's heirs, East Jersey, but here Puritan rather than Quaker
influence prevailed.
Seal of East Jersey.
The Jersey plantations came of course under Andros, and after his fall
its proprietors did not recover their political authority. For twelve
years, while they were endeavoring to do this, partial anarchy cursed
the province, and at length in 1702 they surrendered their rights to the
Crown, the Jerseys, now made one, becoming directly subject to Queen
Anne. The province had its own legislature and, till 1741, the same
governors as New York. It also had mainly the same political
vicissitudes, and with the same result.
William Penn, the famous Quaker, received the proprietorship of
Pennsylvania in payment of a claim for sixteen thousand pounds against
the English Government. This had been left him by his father, Sir
William Penn, a distinguished naval commander in the Dutch war of
1665-67, when he had borne chief part in the conquest of Jamaica.
Wampum received by Penn in Commemoration of the Indian Treaty.
William Penn was among the most cultivated men of his time, polished by
study and travel, deeply read in law and philosophy. He had fortune, and
many friends at court, including Charles II. himself. He needed but to
conform, and great place was his. But conform he would not. True to the
inner light, braving the scoffs of all his friends, expelled from Oxford
University, beaten from his own father's door, imprisoned now nine
months in London Tower, now six in Newgate, this heroic spirit
persistently went the Quaker way. In despair of securing in England
freedom for distressed consciences he turned his thoughts toward
America, there to try his "holy experiment."
William Penn; From the copy by Francis Race in the
National Museum, Philadelphia.
The charter from Charles II. was drawn by Penn's own hand and was nobly
liberal. It ordained perfect religious toleration for all Christians,
and forbade taxation save by the provincial assembly or the English
Parliament. Under William and Mary, greatly to his grief, Penn was
forced to sanction the penal laws against Catholics; but they were most
leniently administered, which brought upon the large-minded proprietary
much trouble with the home government.
As Pennsylvania, owing to the righteous and loving procedure of Penn
toward them, suffered nothing from the red men to the west, so was it
fortunately beyond Andros's jurisdiction on the east. Once, from 1692,
for two years, the land was snatched from Penn and placed under a royal
commission. Returning to England in 1684, after a two years' sojourn in
America to get his colony started, the Quaker chief became intimate and
a favorite with James II., devotedly supporting his Declaration of
Indulgence toward Catholics as well as toward all Protestant dissenters.
He tried hard but vainly to win William and Mary to the same policy.
This attitude of his cost him dear, rendering him an object of suspicion
to the men now in power in England. Twice was he accused of treasonable
correspondence with the exiled James II., though never proved guilty.
From 1699 to 1701 he was in America again, thereafter residing in
England till his death in 1718. He had literally given all for his
colony, his efforts on its behalf having been to him, so he wrote in
1710, a cause of grief, trouble, and poverty.
The Treaty Monument, Kensington.
But the colony itself was amazingly prosperous. There were internal
feuds, mainly petty, some serious. George Keith grievously divided the
Quakers by his teachings against slavery, going to law, or service as
magistrates on the part of Quakers, thus implying that only infidels or
churchmen could be the colony's officials.
Fletcher's governorship in 1693-94, under the royal commission, evoked
continual opposition, colonial privileges remaining intact in spite of
him. The people from time to time subjected their ground-law to changes,
only to render it a fitter instrument of freedom. In everything save the
hereditary function of the proprietary, it was democratic. For many
years even the governor's council was elective. The colony grew,
immigrants crowding in from nearly every European country, and wealth
multiplied to correspond.
The Penn Mansion in Philadelphia.
We have, dating from 1698, a history of Pennsylvania by one Gabriel
Thomas, full of interesting information. Philadelphia was already a
"noble and beautiful city," containing above 2,000 houses, most of them
"stately," made of brick; three stores, and besides a town house, a
market house, and several schools. Three fairs were held there yearly,
and two weekly markets, which it required twenty fat bullocks, besides
many sheep, calves, and hogs, to supply. The city had large trade to New
York, New England, Virginia, West India, and Old England. Its exports
were horses, pipe-staves, salt meats, bread-stuffs, poultry, and
tobacco; its imports, fir, rum, sugar, molasses, silver, negroes, salt,
linen, household goods, etc. Wages were three times as high as in
England or Wales. All sorts of "very good paper" were made at
Germantown, besides linen, druggets, crapes, camlets, serges, and other
woollen cloths. All religious confessions were represented.
In 1712, such his poverty, the good proprietary was willing to sell to
the Crown, but as he insisted upon maintenance of the colonists' full
rights, no sale occurred. English bigots and revenue officials would
gladly have annulled his charter, but his integrity had gotten him
influence among English statesmen, which shielded the heritage he had
left even when he was gone.
It is particularly to be noticed that till our Independence Delaware was
most intimately related to Pennsylvania. Of Delaware the fee simple
belonged not to Penn, but to the Duke of York, who had conquered it from
the Dutch, as they from the Swedes. Penn therefore governed here, not as
proprietary but as the Duke's tenant. In 1690-92, and from 1702,
Delaware enjoyed a legislature by itself, though its governors were
appointed by Penn or his heirs during the entire colonial period.
CHAPTER V.
MARYLAND, VIRGINIA, CAROLINA
[1675]
The establishment of Charles II. as king fully restored Lord Baltimore
as proprietary in Maryland, and for a long time the colony enjoyed much
peace and prosperity. In 1660 it boasted twelve thousand inhabitants, in
1665 sixteen thousand, in 1676 twenty thousand. Plantation life was
universal, there being no town worthy the name till Baltimore, which,
laid out in 1739, grew very slowly. Tobacco was the main production, too
nearly the only one, the planters sometimes actually suffering for food,
so that the raising of cereals needed to be enforced by law. For long
the weed was also the money of the province, not disused for this even
when paper currency was introduced, being found the less fluctuating in
value of the two. Partly actual over-production and partly the
navigation acts, forcing all sales to be effected through England,
fatally lowered the price, and Maryland with Virginia tried to establish
a "trust" to regulate the output.
Charles, Second Lord Baltimore.
In its incessant and on one occasion bloody boundary disputes with
Pennsylvania and Delaware, Maryland had to give in and suffer its
northern and eastern boundaries to be shortened.
[1689]
One of the most beautiful traits of early Maryland was its perfect
toleration in religion. Practically neither Pennsylvania nor Rhode
Island surpassed it in this. Much hostility to the Quakers existed, yet
they had here exceptional privileges, and great numbers from Virginia
and the North utilized these. All sorts of dissenters indeed flocked
hither out of all European countries, including many Huguenots, and were
made welcome to all the rights and blessings of the land.
But from the accession of Charles Calvert, the third Lord Baltimore, in
1675, the colony witnessed continual agitation in favor of establishing
the English Church. False word reached the Privy Council that immorality
was rife in the colony owing to a lack of religious instruction, and
that Catholics were preferred in its offices. This movement succeeded,
in spite of its intrinsic demerit, by passing itself off as part of the
rising in favor of William and Mary in 1688-89.
[1690]
James II. had shown no favor to Maryland. If its proprietary, as a
Catholic, pleased him, its civil and religious liberty offended him
more. He was hence not popular here, and the Marylanders would readily
have proclaimed the new monarchs but for the accidental failure of the
proprietary's commands to this effect to reach them. This gave occasion
for one Coode, with a few abettors, to form, in April, 1689, an
"Association in Arms for the Defence of the Protestant Religion, and for
Asserting the Right of King William and Queen Mary to the Province of
Maryland." The exaggerated representations of these conspirators
prevailed in England. The proprietary, retaining his quit rents and
export duty, was deprived of his political prerogatives. Maryland became
a Crown province, Sir Lionel Copley being the first royal governor, and
the Church of England received establishment therein.
The new ecclesiastical rule did not oppress Protestant dissenters,
though very severe on Catholics, whom it was supposed necessary, here as
all over America, to keep under, lest they should rise in favor of James
II., or his son the Pretender.
[1660]
The third Lord Baltimore died in 1714-15. The proprietaries after this
being Protestants, were intrusted again with their old political
headship. By this time a spirit of independence and self-assertion had
grown up among the citizens, enforcing very liberal laws, and the vices
of the sixth Lord, succeeding in 1751, made his subjects more than
willing that he should, as he did, close the proprietary line.
Virginia, passionately loyal, at first gloried in the Restoration. This
proved premature. It was found that the purely selfish Charles II. cared
no more for Virginia than for Massachusetts. The Commonwealth's men were
displaced from power. Sir William Berkeley again became governor, this
time, however, by the authority of the assembly. A larger feeling of
independence from England had sprung up in the colony in consequence of
recent history at home and in the mother-land. It was developed still
further by the events now to be detailed.
[1676]
The Old Dominion contained at this time 40,000 people, 6,000 being white
servants and 2,000 negro slaves, located mainly upon the lower waters of
the Rappahannock, York, and James Rivers. Between 1650 and 1670, through
large immigration from the old country, the population had increased
from 15,000 to 40,000, some of the first families of the State in
subsequent times arriving at this juncture. About eighty ships of
commerce came each year from Great Britain, besides many from New
England. Virginia herself built no ships and owned few; but she could
muster eight thousand horse, had driven the Indians far into the
interior, possessed the capacity for boundless wealth, and had begun to
experience a decided sense of her own rights and importance. The last
fact showed itself in Bacon's Rebellion, which broke out in 1676, just
one hundred years before the Declaration of Independence. The causes of
the insurrection were not far to seek.
[1673]
The navigation acts were a sore grievance to Virginia as to the other
colonies. Under Cromwell they had not been much enforced, and the
Virginians had traded freely with all who came. Charles enforced them
with all possible rigor, confining Virginia's trade to England and
English ships manned by Englishmen. This gave England a grinding
monopoly of tobacco, Virginia's sole export, making the planters
commercially the slaves of the home government and of English traders.
Duties on the weed were high, and mercilessly collected without regard
to lowness of price. All supplies from abroad also had to be purchased
in England, at prices set by English sellers. Even if from other parts
of Europe, they must come through England, thus securing her a profit at
Virginia's expense.
This was not the worst. The colonial government had always been abused
for the ends of worthless office-holders from England. Now it was farmed
out more offensively than ever. In 1673 Charles II. donated Virginia to
two of his favorites, Lords Arlington and Culpeper, to be its
proprietaries like Penn in Pennsylvania and Baltimore in Maryland. They
were to have all the quit rents and other revenues, the nomination of
ministers for parishes, the right of appointing public officers, the
right to own and sell all public or escheated lands; in a word, they now
owned Virginia. This shabby treatment awoke the most intense rage in so
proud a people. The king relented, revoked his donation, made out and
was about to send a new charter. But it was too late; rebellion had
already broken out.
The Indians having made some attacks on the upper plantations, one
Nathaniel Bacon, a spirited young gentleman of twenty-eight, recently
from England, applied to Sir William Berkeley for a commission against
them. The governor declined to give it, fearing, in the present excited
condition of the colony, to have a body of armed men abroad. Bacon,
enraged, extorts the commission by force. The result is civil war in the
colony. The rebels are for a time completely victorious. Berkeley is
driven to Accomac, on the eastern shore of the Chesapeake, but,
succeeding in capturing a fleet sent to oppose him, he returns with this
and captures Jamestown. Beaten by Bacon in a pitched battle, he again
retires to Accomac, and the colony comes fully under the power of his
antagonist, the colonists agreeing even to fight England should it
interpose on the governor's side, when a decisive change in affairs is
brought about by the rebel leader's death.
Reverend Dr. Blair, First President of William and Mary College.
[1690]
The rebellion was now easily subdued, but it had soured and hardened old
Governor Berkeley's spirit. Twenty-three in all were executed for
participation in the movement. Charles II. remarked: "That old fool has
hanged more men in that naked country than I for the murder of my
father."
After Bacon's Rebellion the colonial annals show but a dull succession
of royal governors, with few events specially interesting. Under the
governorship of Lord Howard of Effingham, which began in 1684, great
excitement prevailed in Virginia lest King James II. should subvert the
English Church there and make Catholicism dominant, which indeed might
possibly have occurred but for James's abdication in 1688.
Under Governor Nicholson, from 1690, the capital was removed from
Jamestown to Williamsburg, and the College of William and Mary founded,
its charter dating from 1693. The Attorney-General, Seymour, opposed
this project on the ground that the money was needed for "better
purposes" than educating clergymen. Rev. Dr. Blair, agent and advocate
of the endowment, pleading: "The people have souls to be saved," Seymour
retorted: "Damn your souls, make tobacco." But Blair persisted and
succeeded, himself becoming first president of the college. The initial
commencement exercises took place in 1700.
George Monk, Duke of Albemarle.
[1710]
Governor Spotswood, who came in 1710, did much for Virginia. He built
the first iron furnaces in America, introduced wine-culture, for which
he imported skilled Germans, and greatly interested himself in the
civilization of the Indians. He was the earliest to explore the
Shenandoah Valley. It was also by his energy that the famous pirate
"Black beard" was captured and executed. Lieutenant Maynard, sent with
two ships to hunt him, attacked and boarded the pirate vessel in Pamlico
Sound, 1718. A tough fight at close quarters ensued. Blackbeard was shot
dead, his crew crying for quarter. Thirteen of the men were hung at
Williamsburg. Blackbeard's skull, made into a drinking-cup, is preserved
to this day. The great corsair's fate, Benjamin Franklin, then a
printer's devil in Boston, celebrated in verse.
Carolina was settled partly from England, France, and the Barbadoes, and
partly from New England; but mainly from Virginia, which colony
furthermore furnished most of its political ideas.
[1663]
Lord Shaftesbury.
In March, 1663, Carolina was constituted a territory, extending from 36
degrees north latitude southward to the river San Matheo, and assigned
to a company of seven distinguished proprietaries, including General
Monk, who had been created Duke of Albemarle, and John Locke's patron,
the famous Lord Ashley Cooper, subsequently Earl of Shaftesbury.
Governor Sir William Berkeley, of Virginia, was also one of the
proprietaries.
[1720]
Seal of the Proprietors of Carolina.
Locke drew up for the province a minute feudal constitution, but it was
too cumbersome to work. Rule by the proprietaries proved radically bad.
They were ignorant, callous
