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THE LAND WE LIVE IN

OR

The Story of Our Country

By

HENRY MANN

Author of "Handbook for American Citizens," etc.

PUBLISHED BY
THE CHRISTIAN HERALD,
Louis Klopsch, Proprietor,
BIBLE HOUSE, NEW YORK.

Copyright, 1896,
By Louis Klopsch.

INTRODUCTION.

"The Story of Our Country" has been often told, but cannot be told too often. I have spared no effort to make the following pages interesting as well as truthful, and to present, in graphic language, a pen-picture of our nation's origin and progress. It is a story of events, and not a dry chronicle of official succession. It is an attempt to give some fresh color to facts that are well known, while depicting also other facts of public interest which have never appeared in any general history. Wherever I have taken the work of another I give credit therefor; otherwise this little book is the fruit of original research and thought. The views expressed will doubtless not please everybody, and some may think that I go too far in pleading the cause of the original natives of the soil. Historic justice demands that some one should tell the truth about the Indians, whose chief and almost only fault has been that they occupied lands which the white man wanted. Even now covetous eyes are cast upon the territory reserved for the use of the remaining tribes.

For such statements in regard to General Jackson at New Orleans as differ from the ordinary narrative I am indebted to a work never published, so far as I am aware, in this country or in the English language—Vincent Nolte's "Fifty Years in Both Hemispheres," issued in Hamburg in 1853. As Nolte owned the cotton which Jackson appropriated, and also served as a volunteer in the battle of New Orleans, he ought to be good authority.

In dealing with the late war I have sought to be just to both the Union and the Confederacy. The lapse of over thirty years has given a more accurate perspective to the events of that mighty struggle, in which, as a soldier-boy of sixteen, I was an obscure participant, and all true Americans, whether they wore the blue or gray, now look back with pride to the splendid valor and heroic endurance displayed by the combatants on both sides. Those who belittle the constancy and courage of the South belittle the sacrifices and successes of the North.

The slavery conflict has long been over, and the scars it left are disappearing. Other and momentous problems have arisen for settlement, but there is every reason for confidence that they will be settled at the ballot-box, and without appeal to rebellion, or thought or threat of secession. In the present generation, more than in any preceding, is the injunction of Washington exemplified, that the name of American should always exalt the just pride of patriotism, more than any appellation derived from local discriminations. This supreme National sentiment overpowering all considerations of local interest and attachment, is the assurance that our country will live forever, that all difficulties, however menacing, will yield to the challenge of popular intelligence and patriotism, and that the glorious record of the past is but the morning ray of our National greatness to come.

Henry Mann.

CONTENTS.

FIRST PERIOD.

The Foothold.

[ CHAPTER I.]

A Land Without a History—Origin of the American Indians—Their Semi-civilization—The Spanish Colonial System—The King Was Absolute Master—The Council of the Indies—The Hierarchy—Servitude of the Natives—Gold and Silver Mines—Spanish Wealth and Degeneracy—Commercial Monopoly—Pernicious Effects of Spain's Colonial Policy—Spaniards Destroy a Huguenot Colony,21

[ CHAPTER II. ]

Queen Elizabeth and Sir Walter Raleigh—English Expedition to North Carolina—Failure of Attempts to Settle There—Virginia Dare—The Lost Colony—The Foundation of Jamestown—Captain John Smith—His Life Saved by Pocahontas—Rolfe Marries the Indian Princess—A Key to Early Colonial History—Women Imported to Virginia,32

[ CHAPTER III. ]

The French in Canada—Champlain Attacks the Iroquois—Quebec a Military Post—Weak Efforts at Colonization—Fur-traders and Missionaries—The Foundation of New France—The French King Claims from the Upper Lakes to the Sea—Slow Growth of the French Colonies—Mixing With the Savages—The "Coureurs de Bois,"41

[ CHAPTER IV. ]

Henry Hudson's Discovery—Block Winters on Manhattan Island—The Dutch Take Possession—The Iroquois Friendly—Immigration of the Walloons—Charter of Privileges and Exemptions—Patroons—Manufactures Forbidden—Slave Labor Introduced—New Sweden—New Netherlanders Want a Voice in the Government,46

[ CHAPTER V. ]

Landing of the Pilgrims—Their Abiding Faith in God's Goodness—The Agreement Signed on the Mayflower—A Winter of Hardship—The Indians Help the Settlers—Improved Conditions—The Colony Buys Its Freedom—Priscilla and John Alden—Their Romantic Courtship and Marriage,52

[ CHAPTER VI. ]

The Puritan Immigration—Wealth and Learning Seek These Shores—Charter Restrictions Dead Letters—A Stubborn Struggle for Self-government— Methods of Election—The Early Government an Oligarchy—The Charter of 1691—New Hampshire and Maine—The New Haven Theocracy—Hartford's Constitution—The United Colonies—The Clergy and Politics—Every Election Sermon a Declaration of Independence,57

[ CHAPTER VII. ]

Where Conscience Was Free—Roger Williams and His Providence Colony— Driven by Persecution from Massachusetts—Savages Receive Him Kindly—Coddington's Settlement in Rhode Island—Oliver Cromwell and Charles II. Grant Charters—Peculiar Referendum in Early Rhode Island,64

[ CHAPTER VIII. ]

Puritans and Education—Provision for Public Schools—Puritan Sincerity—Effect of Intolerance on the Community—Quakers Harshly Persecuted—The Salem Witchcraft Tragedy—History of the Delusion— Rebecca Nourse and Other Victims—The People Come to their Senses— Cotton Mather Obdurate to the Last—Puritan Morals—Comer's Diary— Rhode Island in Colonial Times,68

[ CHAPTER IX. ]

New England Prospering—Outbreak of King Philip's War—Causes of the War—White or Indian Had to Go—Philip on the War-path—Settlements Laid in Ashes—The Attack on Hadley—The Great Swamp Fight—Philip Renews the War More Fiercely Than Before—His Allies Desert Him— Betrayed and Killed—The Indians Crushed in New England,77

[ CHAPTER X. ]

Growth of New Netherland—Governor Stuyvesant's Despotic Rule—His Comments on Popular Election—New Amsterdam Becomes New York—The Planting of Maryland—Partial Freedom of Conscience—Civil War in Maryland—The Carolinas—Settlement of North and South Carolina—The Bacon Rebellion in Virginia—Governor Berkeley's Vengeance,82

[ CHAPTER XI. ]

The Colony of New York—New Jersey Given Away to Favorites—Charter of Liberties and Franchises—The Dongan Charter—Beginnings of New York City Government—King James Driven From Power—Leisler Leads a Popular Movement—The Aristocratic Element Gains the Upper Hand—Jacob Leisler and Milborne Executed—Struggle For Liberty Continues,90

[ CHAPTER XII. ]

William Penn's Model Colony—Sketch of the Founder of Pennsylvania— Comparative Humanity of Quaker Laws—Modified Freedom of Religion— An Early Liquor Law—Offences Against Morality Severely Punished— White Servitude—Debtors Sold Into Bondage—Georgia Founded as an Asylum for Debtors—Oglethorpe Repulses the Spaniards—Georgia a Royal Province,95

SECOND PERIOD.

The Struggle for Empire.

[ CHAPTER XIII. ]

Struggle for Empire in North America—The Vast Region Called Louisiana— War Between England and France—New England Militia Besiege Quebec— Frontenac Strikes the Iroquois—The Capture of Louisburg—The Forks of the Ohio—George Washington's Mission to the French—Braddock's Defeat—Washington Prevents Utter Disaster—Barbarous Treatment of Prisoners,103

[ CHAPTER XIV. ]

Expulsion of the Acadians—A Cruel Deportation—The Marquis De Montcalm—The Fort William Henry Massacre—Defeat of Abercrombie— William Pitt Prosecutes the War Vigorously—Fort Duquesne Reduced— Louisburg Again Captured—Wolfe Attacks Quebec—Battle of the Plains of Abraham—Wolfe and Montcalm Mortally Wounded—Quebec Surrenders—New France a Dream of the Past—Pontiac's War,108

THIRD PERIOD.

The Revolution.

[ CHAPTER XV. ]

Causes of the Revolution—The Act of Navigation—Acts of Trade—Odious Customs Laws—English Jealousy of New England—Effect of Restrictions on Colonial Trade—Du Chatelet Foresees Rebellion and Independence—The Revolution a Struggle for More Than Political Freedom,115

[ CHAPTER XVI. ]

Writs of Assistance Issued—Excitement in Boston—The Stamp Act—Protests against Taxation Without Representation—Massachusetts Appoints a Committee of Correspondence—Samuel Adams and Patrick Henry—Henry's Celebrated Resolutions—His Warning to King George—Growing Agitation in the Colonies—The Stamp Act Repealed—Parliament Levies Duties on Tea and Other Imports to America—Lord North's Choice of Infamy—Measures of Resistance in America—The Massachusetts Circular Letter—British Troops in Boston—The Boston Massacre—Burning of the Gaspee—North Carolina "Regulators"—The Boston Tea Party—The Boston Port Bill—The First Continental Congress—A Declaration of Rights—"Give Me Liberty, or Give Me Death!"122

[ CHAPTER XVII. ]

The Battle of Lexington—The War of the Revolution Begun—Fort Ticonderoga Taken—Second Continental Congress—George Washington Appointed Commander-in-Chief—Battle of Bunker Hill—Last Appeal to King George—The King Hires Hessian Mercenaries—The Americans Invade Canada—General Montgomery Killed—General Howe Evacuates Boston—North Carolina Tories Routed at Moore's Creek Bridge—The Declaration of Independence—The British Move on New York—Battle at Brooklyn—Howe Occupies New York City—General Charles Lee Fails to Support Washington—Lee Captured—Washington's Victory at Trenton—The Marquis De Lafayette Arrives,133

[ CHAPTER XVIII. ]

Sir John Burgoyne's Campaign—His Bombastic Proclamation—The Tragic Story of Jane McCrea—Her Name a Rallying Cry—Washington Prevents Howe From Aiding Burgoyne—The Battle of Brandywine—Burgoyne Routed at Saratoga—He Surrenders, With All His Army—Articles of Confederation Submitted to the Several States—Effect of the Surrender of Burgoyne— Franklin the Washington of Diplomacy—Attitude of France—France Concludes to Assist the United States—Treaties of Commerce and Alliance—King George Prepares for War with France—The Winter at Valley Forge—Conspiracy to Depose Washington Defeated—General Howe Superseded by Sir Henry Clinton—The Battle of Monmouth—General Charles Lee's Treachery—Awful Massacre of Settlers in the Wyoming Valley— General Sullivan Defeats the Six Nations—Brilliant Campaign of George Rogers Clark—Failure of the Attempt to Drive the British from Rhode Island,143

[ CHAPTER XIX. ]

The British Move Upon the South—Spain Accedes to the Alliance Against England—Secret Convention Between France and Spain—Capture of Stony Point—John Paul Jones—The Bon Homme Richard and the Serapis—A Thrilling Naval Combat—Wretched Condition of American Finances— Franklin's Heavy Burden—The Treason of Benedict Arnold—Capture of André—Escape of Arnold—André Executed as a Spy—Sir Henry Clinton Captures Charleston, General Lincoln and His Army—Lord Cornwallis Left in Command in the South—The British Defeat Gates Near Camden, South Carolina—General Nathanael Greene Conducts a Stubborn Campaign Against Cornwallis—The Latter Retreats Into Virginia—Siege of Yorktown—Cornwallis Surrenders—"Oh, God; it is All Over!"155

FOURTH PERIOD.

Union.

[ CHAPTER XX. ]

Condition of the United States at the Close of the Revolution—New England Injured and New York Benefited Commercially by the Struggle— Luxury of City Life—Americans an Agricultural People—The Farmer's Home—Difficulty of Traveling—Contrast Between North and South— Southern Aristocracy—Northern Great Families—White Servitude—The Western Frontier—Early Settlers West of the Mountains—A Hardy Population—Disappearance of the Colonial French—The Ordinance of 1787—Flood of Emigration Beyond the Ohio,167

[ CHAPTER XXI. ]

The Spirit of Disunion—Shays' Rebellion—A National Government Necessary—Adoption of the Constitution—Tariff and Internal Revenue—The Whiskey Insurrection—President Washington Calls Out the Military—Insurgents Surrender—"The Dreadful Night"—Hamilton's Inquisition,174

Independence Vindicated.

[ CHAPTER XXII. ]

Arrogance of France—Americans and Louis XVI.—Genet Defies Washington —The People Support the President—War With the Indians—Defeat of St. Clair—Indians State Their Case—General Wayne Defeats the Savages— Jay's Treaty—Retirement of Washington—His Character—His Military Genius—Washington as a Statesman—His Views on Slavery—His Figure in History,180

[ CHAPTER XXIII. ]

John Adams President—Jefferson and the French Revolution—The French Directory—Money Demanded From America—"Millions for Defence; Not One Penny for Tribute"—Naval Warfare with France—Capture of The Insurgent —Defeat of The Vengeance—Peace With France—Death of Washington— Alien and Sedition Laws—Jefferson President—The Louisiana Purchase— Burr's Alleged Treason—War with the Barbary States—England Behind the Pirates—Heroic Naval Exploits—Carrying War Into Africa—Peace With Honor,191

[ CHAPTER XXIV. ]

French Decrees and British Orders in Council—Damage to American Commerce—The Embargo—Causes of the War of 1812—The Chesapeake and The Leopard—President and Little Belt—War Declared—Mr. Astor's Messenger —The Two Navies Compared—American Frigate Victories—Constitution and Guerriere—United States and Macedonian—Constitution and Java— American Sloop Victories—The Shannon and Chesapeake—"Don't Give Up the Ship!"200

[ CHAPTER XXV. ]

The War on Land—Tecumseh's Indian Confederacy—Harrison at Tippecanoe— General Hull and General Brock—A Fatal Armistice—Surrender of Detroit —English Masters of Michigan—General Harrison Takes Command in the Northwest—Harrison's Answer to Proctor—"He Will Never Have This Post Surrendered"—Croghan's Brave Defence—The British Retreat—War on the Niagara Frontier—Battle of Queenstown—Death of Brock—Colonel Winfield Scott and the English Doctrine of Perpetual Allegiance,209

[ CHAPTER XXVI. ]

Battle of Lake Erie—Master-Commandant Oliver Hazard Perry—Building a Fleet—Perry on the Lake—A Duel of Long Guns—Fearful Slaughter on the Lawrence—"Can Any of the Wounded Pull a Rope?"—At Close Quarters— Victory in Fifteen Minutes—"We Have Met the Enemy and They Are Ours"— The Father of Chicago Sees the End of the Battle—The British Evacuate Detroit—General Harrison's Victory at the Thames—Tecumseh Slain—The Struggle in the Southwest—Andrew Jackson in Command—Battle of Horseshoe Bend—The Essex in the Pacific—Defeat and Victory on the Ocean—Captain Porter's Brave Defence—Burning of Newark—Massacre at Fort Niagara— Chippewa and Lundy's Lane—Devastation by the British Fleet—British Vandalism at Washington—Attempt on Baltimore—"The Star Spangled Banner"216

[ CHAPTER XXVII. ]

British Designs on the Southwest—New Orleans as a City of Refuge—The Baratarians—The Pirates Reject British Advances—General Jackson Storms Pensacola—Captain Reid's Splendid Fight at Fayal—Edward Livingston Advises Jackson—Cotton Bales for Redoubts—The British Invasion—Jackson Attacks the British at Villere's—The Opposing Armies—General Pakenham Attempts to Carry Jackson's Lines by Storm—The British Charge—They are Defeated with Frightful Slaughter—Pakenham Killed—Last Naval Engagement —The President-Endymion Fight—Peace—England Deserts the Indians as She Had Deserted the Tories—Decatur Chastises the Algerians,225

South America Free.

[ CHAPTER XXVIII. ]

England and Spanish America—A Significant Declaration—The Key to England's Policy in South America—Alexander Hamilton and the South Americans—President Adams' Grandson a Filibuster—Origin of the Revolutions in South America—Colonial Zeal for Spain—Colonists Driven to Fight for Independence—A War of Extermination—Patriot Leaders—The British Assist the Revolutionists—American Caution and Reserve—The Monroe Doctrine—Why England Championed the Spanish-American Republics —A Free Field Desired for British Trade—The Holy Alliance—Secretary Canning and President Monroe—The Monroe Declaration Not British, But American,233

Progress.

[ CHAPTER XXIX. ]

The United States Taking the Lead in Civilization—Manhood Suffrage and Freedom of Worship—Humane Criminal Laws—Progress the Genius of the Nation—A Patriotic Report—State Builders in the Northwest—Illinois and the Union—Immigration—British Jealousy—An English Farmer's Opinion of America—Commerce and Manufactures—England Tries to Prevent Skilled Artisans From Emigrating—The Beginning of Protection—The British Turn on their Friends the Algerians—General Jackson Invades Florida—Spain Sells Florida to the United States,246

[ CHAPTER XXX. ]

The Missouri Compromise—Erie Canal Opened—Political Parties and Great National Issues—President Jackson Crushes the United States Bank—South Carolina Pronounces the Tariff Law Void—Jackson's Energetic Action—A Compromise—Territory Reserved for the Indians—The Seminole War— Osceola's Vengeance—His Capture and Death—The Black Hawk War—Abraham Lincoln a Volunteer—Texas War for Independence—Massacre of the Alamo —Mexican Defeat at San Jacinto—The Mexican President a Captive—Texas Admitted to the Union—Oregon—American Statesmen Blinded by the Hudson Bay Company—Marcus Whitman's Ride—Oregon Saved to the Union—The "Dorr War,"253

[ CHAPTER XXXI. ]

War With Mexico—General Zachary Taylor Defeats the Mexicans—Buena Vista—Mexicans Four to One—"A Little More Grape, Captain Bragg!"— Glorious American Victory—General Scott's Splendid Campaign—A Series of Victories—Cerro Gordo—Contreras—Churubusco—Molino del Rey—Chapultepec—Stars and Stripes Float in the City of Mexico— Generous Treatment of the Vanquished—Peace—Cession of Vast Territory to the United States—The Gadsden Purchase,264

[ CHAPTER XXXII. ]

The Union in 1850—Comparative Population of Cities and Rural Districts —Agriculture the General Occupation—Commercial and Industrial Development—Growth of New York and Chicago—The Southern States— Importance of the Cotton Crop—Why the South Was Sensitive to Anti-Slavery Agitation—Manufactures—Religion and Education—The Cloud on the Horizon,272

The Slavery Conflict.

[ CHAPTER XXXIII. ]

Aggressiveness of Slavery—The Cotton States and Border States—The Fugitive Slave Law—Nullified in the North—Negroes Imported from Africa—The Struggle in Kansas—John Brown—Abraham Lincoln Pleads for Human Rights—Treason in Buchanan's Cabinet—Citizens Stop Guns at Pittsburg—Conditions at the Beginning of the Struggle—Southern Advantages—The Soldiers of Both Armies Compared—Conscription in the Confederacy—Southern Resources Limited—The North at a Disadvantage at First, but Its Resources Inexhaustible—Conscription in the North— Popular Support of the War—Unfriendliness of Great Britain and France—Why They Did Not Interfere,277

[ CHAPTER XXXIV. ]

The Confederate Government Organized—Fort Sumter—President Lincoln Calls for 75,000 Men—Command of the Union Forces Offered to Robert E. Lee—Lee Joins the Confederacy—Missouri Saved to the Union—Battle of Bull Run—Union Successes in the West—General Grant Captures Fort Donelson—"I Have No Terms But Unconditional Surrender"—The Monitor and Merrimac Fight—Its World-wide Effect—Grant Victorious at Shiloh —Union Naval Victory Near Memphis—That City Captured—General McClellan's Tactics—He Retreats from Victory at Malvern Hill—Second Bull Run Defeat—Great Battle of Antietam—Lee Repulsed, but Not Pursued—McClellan Superseded by Burnside—Union Defeat at Fredericksburg —Union Victories in the West—Bragg Defeated by Rosecrans at Stone River—The Emancipation Proclamation,287

[ CHAPTER XXXV. ]

General Grant Invests Vicksburg—The Confederate Garrison—Scenes in the Beleaguered City—The Surrender—Hooker Defeated at Chancellorsville— Death of "Stonewall" Jackson—General Meade Takes Command of the Army of the Potomac—Lee Crosses the Potomac—The Battle of Gettysburg—The First Two Days—The Third Day—Pickett's Charge—A Thrilling Spectacle —The Harvest of Death—Lee Defeated—General Thomas, "The Rock of Chickamauga"—"This Position Must Be Held Till Night"—General Grant Defeats Bragg at Chattanooga—The Decisive Battle of the West,295

[ CHAPTER XXXVI. ]

Grant Appointed Lieutenant-General—Takes Command in Virginia—Battles of the Wilderness—The Two Armies—Battle of Cedar Creek—Sheridan's Ride—He Turns Defeat Into Victory—Confederate Disasters on Land and Sea—Farragut at Mobile—Last Naval Battle of the War—Sherman Enters Atlanta—Lincoln's Re-election—Sherman's March to the Sea—Sherman Captures Savannah—Thomas Defeats Hood at Nashville—Fort Fisher Taken—Lee Appointed General-in-Chief—Confederate Defeat at Five Forks—Lee's Surrender—Johnston's Surrender—End of the War—The South Prostrate—A Resistance Unparalleled in History—The Blots on the Confederacy—Cruel Treatment of Union Men and Prisoners—Murder of Abraham Lincoln—The South Since the War,301

Thirty Years of Peace.

[ CHAPTER XXXVII. ]

Reconstruction in the South—The Congress and the President—Liberal Republican Movement—Nomination, Defeat and Death of Greeley—Troops Withdrawn by President Hayes—Foreign Policy of the Past Thirty Years—French Ordered from Mexico—Last Days of Maximilian—Russian America Bought—The Geneva Arbitration—Alabama Claims Paid—The Northwest Boundary—The Fisheries—Spain and The Virginius—The Custer Massacre—United States of Brazil Established—President Harrison and Chile—Venezuela—American Prestige in South America—Hawaii—Behring Sea—Garfield, the Martyr of Civil Service Reform—Labor Troubles— Railway Riots of 1877 and 1894—Great Calamities—The Chicago Fire, Boston Fire, Charleston Earthquake, Johnstown Flood,308

[ CHAPTER XXXVIII. ]

The American Republic the Most Powerful of Nations—Military and Naval Strength—Railways and Waterways—Industry and Art—Manufactures—The New South—Foreign and Domestic Commerce—An Age of Invention—Americans a Nation of Readers—The Clergy—Pulpit and Press—Religion and Higher Education—The Currency Question—Leading Candidates for the Presidency —A Sectional Contest Deplorable—What Shall the Harvest Be?322

The American People.

[ CHAPTER XXXIX. ]

No Classes Here—All Are Workers—Enormous Growth of Cities—Immigration —Civic Misgovernment—The Farming Population—Individuality and Self-reliance—Isolation Even in the Grave—The West—The South—The Negro—Little Reason to Fear for Our Country—American Reverence for Established Institutions,327

The Land We Live In.

FIRST PERIOD.

The Foothold.

[ CHAPTER I. ]

A Land Without a History—Origin of the American Indians—Their Semi-civilization—The Spanish Colonial System—The King Was Absolute Master—The Council of the Indies—The Hierarchy—Servitude of the Natives—Gold and Silver Mines—Spanish Wealth and Degeneracy— Commercial Monopoly—Pernicious Effects of Spain's Colonial Policy— Spaniards Destroy a Huguenot Colony.

America presented itself as a virgin land to the original settlers from Europe. It had no history, no memories, no civilization that appealed to European traditions or associations. Its inhabitants belonged evidently to the human brotherhood, and their appearance and language, as well as some of their customs, indicated Mongolian kinship and Asiatic origin, but in the eyes of their conquerors they were as strange as if they had sprung from another planet, and the invaders were equally strange and marvelous to the natives. To the Spanish adventurer the wondrous temples of the Aztecs and the Peruvians bore no significance, except as they indicated wealth to be won, and rich empires waiting to be prey to the superior prowess and arms of the Christian aggressor; while the Englishman, the Frenchman, Hollander and Swede, who planted their colors on more northern soil, saw only a region of primeval forests inhabited by tribes almost as savage as the wild beasts upon whom they existed. It is needless, therefore, in this pen picture of our country, to go into any extended notice of its ancient inhabitants, although the writer has devoted not a little independent study to their origin and history. That study has confirmed him in the opinion that the American Indians came from Asia, with such slight admixture as the winds and waves may have brought from Europe, Africa and Polynesia. The resemblance of the American Indians to the Tartar tribes in language is striking, and in physical appearance still more so, while the difference in manners and customs is no greater than that between the Englishman of the seventeenth century and his descendant in the mountains of West Virginia or Kentucky. It is probable—indeed what is known of the aborigines indicates, that the immigrations were successive, and their succession would be fully accounted for by the mighty convulsions among Asiatic nations, of which history gives us a very dim idea. It is easy to suppose that more than one dusky Æneas led his fugitive followers across the narrow strait which divides Asia from America, and pushed on to the warmer regions of the South, driving in turn before him less vigorous and warlike tribes, seizing the lands which they had made fruitful, and adopting in part the civilization which they had built up. Many of the conquered would prefer emigration to submission, and in their turn push farther south, even to the uttermost bound of the continent.

The writer is not of those who believe that the remote inhabitants of America are unrepresented among the red men of the present age. In European and American history the myths about exterminated races are disappearing in the light of investigation. Our ancestors were not so cruel as they have been painted. It is not likely that any nation was ever cut off to a man. Men were too valuable to be destroyed beyond the requirements of warfare or the demands of sanguinary religious customs. Conquered nations, it is now agreed, were usually absorbed by their conquerors, either as equals or serfs. In either event unity was the result, as in the case of the Romans and Latins, the Scots and the Picts, the Normans and the Saxons. The mound builders, in all probability, survive in the Indian tribes of to-day, some of whom in the Southwest were mound builders within the historic period, while the ruined cities of Arizona and New Mexico were the product of a rude civilization, admittedly inherited by the pueblos of the present generation.

There was nothing in the civilization of the most advanced American races worth preserving, except their monuments. The destruction of the Aztec and Peruvian empires was, on the whole, an advantage to humanity. The darkest period of religious persecution in Europe saw nothing to compare with the sanguinary rites of Aztec worship, and bigoted, intolerant and oppressive as the Spaniards were they did a service to mankind in putting an end to those barbarities. The colonial system established by Spain in America was founded on the principle that dominion over the American provinces was vested in the crown, not in the kingdom. The Spanish possessions on this continent were regarded as the personal property of the sovereign.

The viceroys were appointed by the king and removable by him at pleasure. All grants of lands were made by the sovereign, and if they failed from any cause they reverted to the crown. All political and civil power centred in the king, and was executed by such persons and in such manner as the will of the sovereign might suggest, wholly independent not only of the colonies but of the Spanish nation. The only civil privileges allowed to the colonists were strictly municipal, and confined to the regulation of their interior police and commerce in cities and towns, for which purpose they made their own local regulations or laws, and appointed town and city magistrates. The Spanish-American governments were not merely despotic like those of Russia and Turkey, but they were a more dangerous kind of despotism, as the absolute power of the sovereign was not exercised by himself, but by deputy.

At first the dominions of Spain in the new world were divided, for purposes of administration, into two great divisions or vice-royalties: New Spain and Peru. Afterward, as the country became more settled, the vice-royalty of Santa Fe de Bogota was created. A deputy or vice-king was appointed to preside over each of these governments, who was the representative of the sovereign, and possessed all his prerogatives within his jurisdiction. His power was as supreme as that of the king over every department, civil and military. He appointed most of the important officers of the vice-royalty. His court was formed on the model of Madrid, and displayed an equal and often superior degree of magnificence and state. He had horse and foot guards, a regular household establishment and all the ensigns and trappings of royalty. The tribunals which assisted in the administration were similar to those of the parent country. The Spanish-American colonies, in brief, possessed no political privileges; the authority of the crown was absolute, but not more so than in the parent State, and it could hardly have been expected that liberties denied to the people at home would have been granted to subjects in distant America.

Over the viceroys, and acting for the sovereign, was the tribunal called the Council of the Indies, established by King Ferdinand in 1511, and remodeled by Charles V. in 1524. This Council possessed general jurisdiction over Spanish-America; framed laws and regulations respecting the colonies, and made all the appointments for America reserved to the crown. All officers, from the viceroy to the lowest in rank, could be called to account by the Council of the Indies. The king was supposed to be always present in the Council, and the meetings were held wherever the monarch was residing. All appeals from the decisions of the Courts of Audience, the highest tribunals in America, were made to the Council of the Indies.

The absolute power of the sovereign did not stop short at the Church. Pope Julian II. conferred on King Ferdinand and his successors the patronage and disposal of all ecclesiastical benefices in America, and the administration of ecclesiastical revenues—a privilege which the crown did not possess in Spain. The bulls of the Roman pontiff could not be admitted into Spanish America until they had been examined and approved by the king and Council of the Indies. The hierarchy was as imposing as in Spain, and its dominion and influence greater. The archbishops, bishops and other dignitaries enjoyed large revenues, and the ecclesiastical establishment was splendid and magnificent. The Inquisition was introduced in America in 1570 by Philip II., the oppressor of Protestant England and of the Netherlands, and patron of the monster Alva. The native Indians, on the ground of incapacity, were exempted from the jurisdiction of that tribunal. No scruple was shown, however, in converting the natives to Christianity, and multitudes were baptized who were entirely ignorant of the doctrine they professed to embrace. In the course of a few years after the reduction of the Mexican empire, more than four millions of the Mexicans were nominally converted, one missionary baptizing five thousand in one day, and stopping only when he had become so exhausted as to be unable to lift his hands.

Conversion to Christianity did not save the Indians from being reduced to slavery. Columbus himself, in the year 1499, to avoid the consequences of a disaffection among his followers, granted lands and distributed a certain number of Indians among them to cultivate the soil. This system was afterward introduced in all the Spanish settlements, the Indians being everywhere seized upon and compelled to work in the mines, to till the plantations, to carry burdens and to perform all menial and laborious services. The stated tasks of the unhappy natives were often much beyond their abilities, and multitudes sank under the hardships to which they were subjected. Their spirit was broken, they became humble and degraded, and the race was rapidly wasting away. The oppressions and sufferings of the natives at length excited the sympathies of many humane persons, particularly among the clergy, who exerted themselves with much zeal and perseverance to ameliorate their condition. In 1542 Charles V. abolished the enslavement of the Indians, and restored them to the position of freemen. This caused great indignation in the colonies and in Peru forcible resistance was offered to the royal decree. But although relieved in some degree from the burdens of personal slavery, the natives were required, as vassals of the crown, to pay a personal tax or tribute in the form of personal service. They were also put under the protection of great landholders, who treated them as serfs, although not exacting continuous labor, so that during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the condition of the Indians did not greatly improve.

Notwithstanding the avidity of the first Spanish adventurers for the precious metals, and the ardor with which they pursued their researches, their exertions were attended for a number of years with but little success. It was not until 1545 that the rich mines of Potosi, in Peru, were accidentally discovered by an Indian in clambering up the mountain. This was soon followed by the discovery of other highly productive mines of gold and silver in the various provinces, and Spanish America began to pour a flood of wealth into the coffers of Spain. The mines were not operated by the crown, but by individual enterprise, the crown receiving a share of the proceeds, and alloting a certain number of Indians to the mine-owners as laborers. These Indians did all the work of the mine without the aid of machinery, and with very little assistance from horse-power. Their industry enriched Spain and her colonies to a degree unexampled in the previous experience of mankind.

Silver and gold, however, did not bring lasting prosperity. Already in the early part of the seventeenth century Spain showed signs of decay. Her manufactures and commerce began to decline; men could not be recruited to keep up her fleets and armies, and even agriculture felt the blight of national degeneracy. The great emigration to the colonies drained off the energetic element of the population and the immense riches which the colonies showered upon Spain intoxicated the people and led them to desert the accustomed paths of industry. Nineteen-twentieths of the commodities exported to the Spanish colonies were foreign fabrics, paid for by the products of the mines, so that the gold and silver no sooner entered Spain than they passed away into the hands of foreigners, and the country was left without sufficient of the precious metals for a circulating medium.

Although wholly unable to supply the wants of her colonies Spain did not relax in the smallest degree the rigor of her colonial system, the controlling principle of which was that the whole commerce of the colonies should be a monopoly in the hands of the crown. The regulation of this commerce was entrusted to the Board of Trade, established at Seville.

This board granted a license to any vessel bound to America, and inspected its cargo. The entire commerce with the colonies centred in Seville, and continued there until 1720. It was carried on in a uniform manner for more than two centuries. A fleet with a strong convoy sailed annually for America. The fleet consisted of two divisions, one destined for Carthagena and Porto Bello, the other for Vera Cruz. At those points all the trade and treasure of Spanish America from California to the Straits of Magellan, was concentrated, the products of Peru and Chili being conveyed annually by sea to Panama, and from thence across the isthmus to Porto Bello, part of the way on mules, and part of the way down the Chagres river. The storehouses of Porto Bello, now a decayed and miserable town, retaining no shadow of former greatness, were filled with merchandise, and its streets thronged with opulent merchants drawn from distant provinces. Upon the arrival of the fleet a fair was opened, continuing for forty days, during which the most extensive commercial transactions took place, and the rich cargoes of the galleons were all marketed, and the specie and staples of the colonies received in payment to be conveyed to Spain. The same exchange occurred at Vera Cruz, and both squadrons having taken in their return cargoes, rendezvoused at Havana, and sailed from thence to Europe. Such was the stinted, fettered and restricted commerce which subsisted between Spain and her possessions in America for more than two centuries and a half, and such were the swaddling clothes which bound the youthful limbs of the Spanish colonies, retarding their growth and keeping them in a condition of abject dependence. The effect was most injurious to Spain as well as to the colonies. The naval superiority of the English and Dutch enabled them in time of war to cut off intercourse between Spain and America, and thereby deprive Spanish-Americans of the necessaries as well as the luxuries for which they depended upon Spain, and an extensive smuggling trade grew up which no efforts on the part of the authorities could repress. Monopoly was starved out through the very rigor exerted to make it exclusive, and the markets were so glutted with contraband goods that the galleons could scarcely dispose of their cargoes.

The restrictions upon the domestic intercourse and commerce of the Spanish colonies were, if possible, more grievous and pernicious in their consequences than those upon traffic with Europe. Inter-colonial commerce was prohibited under the severest penalties, the crown insisting that all trade should be carried on through Spain and made tributary to the oppressive duties exacted by the government. While Spain received a considerable revenue from her colonies, notwithstanding the contraband trade, the expenses of the system were very great, and absorbed much of the revenue. Corruption was widespread, and colonial officers looked upon their positions chiefly with a view to their own enrichment. They had no patriotic interest in the welfare of the colonies, and conducted themselves like a garrison quartered upon the inhabitants. Although salaries were high the expenses of living were great, and the salaries were usually but a small part of the income. Viceroys who had been in office a few years, went back to Spain with princely fortunes.

Such was the condition of affairs in Spain's vast American empire when England, France and the United Provinces started on a career of colonization in North America. It seems to have been providential that the same generation which witnessed the discovery of America witnessed the birth of Luther. In the century which followed the Theses of Wittenberg the eyes of sufferers for conscience' sake turned eagerly and hopefully toward the New World as a refuge from the oppression, the scandal and the persecution of the old. The first to seek what is now the Atlantic region of the United States with the object of making their home here were French Huguenots, sent out by the great Admiral Coligny, who afterward fell a victim in the massacre of Bartholomew's Day. The Frenchmen planted a settlement first at Port Royal, which was abandoned, and afterward built a fort about eighteen miles up the St. John's River, Florida, and named it Fort Caroline. This was in the year 1564. In the following year a Spanish fleet, commanded by Don Pedro Menendez de Aviles, appeared at the mouth of the St. John's. In answer to the French challenge as to his purpose the Spanish commander replied that he came with orders from his king to gibbet and behead all the Protestants in those regions. "The Frenchman, who is a Catholic," he added, "I will spare. Every heretic shall die." The Huguenots, had they held together, might have been able to offer a successful resistance to the Spaniards, but Jean Ribault, the French commander, unfortunately decided to sail out from the shelter of Fort Caroline and seek a conflict at sea with the enemy. A storm destroyed the French fleet, but the crews succeeded in escaping to land. Menendez marched overland with his troops to the unprotected fort and easily captured it with its handful of defenders. The Spaniards cruelly murdered almost the entire colony of two hundred men, women and children, some of them being hung to trees with the inscription: "Not as Frenchmen, but as Lutherans."

Ribault, ignorant of the tragedy at the fort, sought to return there from the place where he had been shipwrecked. His men were divided in two detachments. Menendez went in search of them, and meeting one party told them that Fort Caroline, with its inmates, had been destroyed. The Frenchmen were helpless, and pleaded for mercy. Menendez asked: "Are you Catholics or Lutherans?" They answered: "We are of the reformed religion." The pitiless Spaniard replied that he was under orders to exterminate all of that faith. They offered him fifty thousand ducats if he would spare their lives. Menendez demanded that the Frenchmen should place themselves at his mercy. They consented to do so. A small stream divided the Huguenots from the Spaniards. Menendez ordered that the French should cross over in companies of ten. As they crossed they were taken out of sight of their companions and bound with their arms behind them. When all of the Frenchmen, about two hundred in number, had been thus secured, Menendez again asked them: "Are you Catholics or Lutherans?" Some twelve professed to be Catholics, and these with four mechanics who could be made useful to the Spaniards, were led away. The remainder of the two hundred were put to death. Menendez next intercepted Ribault and the remnant of his men, and by similar treachery accomplished their destruction, refusing an offer of one hundred thousand ducats to spare their lives. Menendez wrote to King Phillip that the Huguenots "were put to the sword, judging this to be expedient for the service of God our Lord, and of your majesty."

Thus ended the first attempt of members of the reformed religion to settle within the limits of what is now the United States. But the blood of the victims did not cry in vain to Heaven for vengeance. A Frenchman, himself a Roman Catholic, the Chevalier Dominic de Gourges, determined to punish the Spaniards for their cruelty. He sold his property to obtain money to fit out an expedition to Florida. Arriving in Florida in the spring of 1568, he was joined by the natives in an attack on two forts occupied by the Spaniards below Fort Caroline. The forts were captured and their inmates put to the sword, except a few whom de Gourges hung to trees with the inscription: "Not as Spaniards and mariners, but as traitors, robbers and murderers."

[ CHAPTER II. ]

Queen Elizabeth and Sir Walter Raleigh—English Expedition to North Carolina—Failure of Attempts to Settle There—Virginia Dare—The Lost Colony—The Foundation of Jamestown—Captain John Smith—His Life Saved by Pocahontas—Rolfe Marries the Indian Princess—A Key to Early Colonial History—Women Imported to Virginia.

The lives of the hapless Huguenots who perished at the hands of Menendez were, perhaps, not altogether wasted, for it is believed that a refugee from the Port Royal colony, wrecked on the coast of England, gave Queen Elizabeth interesting information about the temperate and fruitful regions north of the Spanish territories and prepared her mind to favor the projects of Sir Walter Raleigh. That bold and talented adventurer, whose name will live forever in American annals, and whose monument is North Carolina's beautiful State capital, is said in the familiar story to have attracted the notice of Queen Elizabeth by spreading his scarlet cloak over a miry place for the queen to walk upon. He made rapid progress in the good graces of his sovereign, who was quick to discern the men who could be useful to her and to her kingdom. Sir Humphrey Gilbert, half brother to Sir Walter, had perished on an expedition to found an English colony in America. A storm engulfed his vessel, the Squirrel, and he went down with all his crew. Queen Elizabeth graciously granted to Sir Walter a patent as lord proprietor of the country from Delaware Bay to the mouth of the Santee River, and substantially including the present States of Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina and a large portion of South Carolina, with an indefinite extension to the west.

Raleigh sent out an expedition of two ships under the command of Philip Amidas and Arthur Barlow. They landed upon the coast of North Carolina at mid-summer, in the year 1584. The scenery and climate were charming, the natives hospitable and everything seemed to promise well for future settlement. The adventurers reported to Raleigh, who decided to plant a colony in the region visited by his vessels. Queen Elizabeth herself is said to have given the name of Virginia to her dominion, to commemorate her unmarried condition. Untaught by the experience of American colonists from the days of Columbus, the English settlers in North Carolina had the usual quarrel with the natives, and were saved from the usual fate only by the timely arrival of Sir Francis Drake on his return to England from a cruise against the Spaniards. The colonists sought refuge on Drake's vessels and were carried back to their native country.

Subsequent attempts of Sir Walter Raleigh to establish colonies in North Carolina also failed, but these efforts were productive of at least one important benefit in introducing to the attention of the English and also of the Irish, the potato, which, although previously brought to Ireland by a slave-trader named Hawkins, and to England by Sir Francis Drake, attracted but little notice before it was imported by John White, Raleigh's Governor of Roanoke. At Roanoke was born, August 18, 1587, the first white child of English parentage on the North American continent, Virginia Dare, the daughter of William and Eleanor Dare, and granddaughter of Governor White.

In the little wooden chapel, two or three weeks after the event, the colonists assembled one bright day to attend the baptism and christening of the little stranger. The font was the family's silver wash ewer, and the sponsor was Governor White himself, the baby's grandfather. Thereafter she was known as Virginia Dare, a sweet and appropriate name for this pretty little wild flower that bloomed all alone on that desolate coast. About the time that Virginia was cutting her first teeth there came very distressing times to the colony. There was great need of supplies, and it was determined to send to England for them. Governor White went himself, and never saw his little granddaughter again.

It was three years before the Governor returned to Roanoke Island. He was kept in England by the Spanish invasion, and after the winds and the waves had shattered the dreaded Armada, it was some time before Raleigh could get together the men and supplies that were needed by the far-off colony. At last the ship was ready and White took his departure, but he had not sailed far when his vessel was overtaken by a Spanish cruiser and captured. White himself escaped in a boat, and after many days reached England again. Then he had to wait for another ship, and the weary old man saw day after day go by before he left the chalk cliffs of England behind him. After long, anxious months he approached the new land. It was near sunset and he expected to see the smoke rising from the chimneys and the settlers hurrying in from the fields to eat their evening meal, or crowding down to greet the long-looked for arrivals. But no such cheering sight met his gaze. There stood the cabins, but they were deserted; not a single human soul was visible. They landed and walked up the grass-grown paths. Vines and climbers festooned the doorways. A dreary stillness reigned everywhere. The colony had disappeared, and tradition has it to this day that the settlers were absorbed in the Indian tribes and that little Virginia Dare may have become a white Pocahontas.

Raleigh lost his best friend when Queen Elizabeth died, and her successor, James, gave into other hands the task of establishing English power in America. The London Company, with a patent from the king, sent a fleet of three vessels to Virginia, which ascended the James River, and fifty miles from its mouth laid the foundation of Jamestown, May 13, 1607.

It was a lovely day in summer, presenting a bright southern contrast to the bitter winter weather which welcomed the Pilgrims thirteen years later to Plymouth Rock, when the Englishmen began the erection of a fort on the peninsula or island in the river, where they proposed to establish the capital of their colony. They chose for their president Edward Maria Wingfield, ignoring Captain John Smith, a gallant and resourceful soldier of fortune who would have been invaluable as a leader against any foe. The fort had not been completed when the Indians gathered in large numbers and made a desperate attack on the colony. Twelve of the colonists were killed and wounded before the savages were driven off by the use of artillery. In the following winter Captain John Smith explored the waters in the vicinity of Jamestown in search of a passage to the Pacific. This may seem ridiculous in the light of present knowledge, but it is to be remembered that two years later, in 1609, the great navigator, Henry Hudson, ascended the river which bears his name, in the expectation of discovering a northwest passage to the Orient. Even the most enlightened nations of Europe were slow to give up the idea that a connection by water existed through the American continent, between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

To return to Captain John Smith. It appears that in the course of his explorations he was captured by Indians, and taken before Chief Powhatan at his forest home. As Smith tells the story, the chief wore a mantle of raccoon skins and a head-dress of eagle's feathers. The warriors, about two hundred in number, were ranged on each side of Powhatan, and the Indian women were assembled behind the warriors to witness the unwonted scene. Two daughters of the chief, or, as the English called him, the "emperor," had seats near his "throne." Smith was well received, one woman bringing him water to wash his hands, and another a bunch of feathers to dry them with. Then he was fed, and the council deliberated as to his fate. They resolved that he should die. Two large stones were placed in front of Powhatan and Smith was pinioned, dragged to the stones, and his head placed upon them, while the warriors who were to carry out the sentence brandished their clubs for the fatal blow. One of the daughters of Powhatan, named Matoa, or Pocahontas, sixteen or eighteen years old, sprang from her father's side, clasped Smith in her arms, and laid her head upon his. Powhatan, savage as he was, and full of anger against the English, melted at the sight. He ordered that the prisoner should be released, and sent him with a message of friendship to Jamestown.

Pocahontas continued to be a friend to the white man. Learning, two years later, of an Indian plot to exterminate the intruders, she sped stealthily from her father's home to the English settlement, warned Captain Smith of the impending peril, and was back in Powhatan's cabin before morning. The English were not ungrateful for her goodness, even although it appears she was unable to prevent her father from giving expression at times to his hatred of the colonists. On one occasion, when the settlers were suffering from scarcity of food, and Powhatan would not permit his people to carry corn to Jamestown, an Englishman named Samuel Argall went on a foraging expedition near the home of Powhatan, and enticed Pocahontas on board his vessel. He held the young woman as a prisoner, and offered to release her for a large ransom in corn. Powhatan refused to have anything to do with Argall, but sent word to Jamestown saying that if his daughter should be returned to him he would treat the English as friends. Pocahontas was detained at Jamestown for several months, being treated with respect, and having the free run of the colony. She appears to have been a romping, good-natured young woman, comely for an Indian, passing her time as happily as possible, without moping for her kinspeople, and not at all the typical heroine of song and story. It was wicked to detain her, but she seemed to enjoy her captivity and frolicked about the place in a way that must have shocked those who regarded her as of royal birth. Evidently Pocahontas liked the English from the first, and preferred their company at Jamestown to her childhood home in the Virginia forests. A young Englishman, named John Rolfe, fell in love with her. Wives from England were scarce, and this fact may have made Pocahontas more attractive in his eyes. When some one objected that she was a pagan—"Is it not my duty," he replied, "to lead the blind to the light?" Pocahontas learned to love Rolfe in return, and love made easy her path to conversion to Christianity. She was baptized by the name of Rebecca, and was the first Christian convert in Virginia. Powhatan consented to his daughter's marriage—he had probably concluded by this that she was bound to be English anyhow—and the ceremony was performed in the chapel at Jamestown, on a delightful spring day in April, 1613. Pocahontas, we are told, was dressed in a simple tunic of white muslin from the looms of Dacca. Her arms were bare even to her shoulders, and hanging loosely to her feet was a robe of rich stuff presented by the Governor, Sir Thomas Dale, and fancifully embroidered by Pocahontas and her maidens. A gaudy fillet encircled her head, and held the plumage of birds and a veil of gauze, while her wrists and ankles were adorned with the simple jewelry of the native workshops. When the ceremony was ended, the eucharist was administered, with bread from the wheat fields around Jamestown, and wine from the grapes of the adjacent woodland. Her brothers and sisters and forest maidens were present; also the Governor and Council, and five English women—all that there were in the colony—who afterward returned to England. Rolfe and his spouse "lived civilly and lovingly together" until Governor Dale went back to England in 1616, when they and the Englishwomen in Virginia accompanied the Governor. The "Lady Rebecca" received great attentions at court and from all below it. She was entertained by the Lord Bishop of London, and at court she was treated with the respect due to the daughter of a monarch. The silly King James was angry because one of his subjects dared marry a lady of royal blood! And Captain Smith, for fear of displeasing the royal bigot, would not allow her to call him "father," as she desired to do, and her loving heart was grieved. The king, in his absurd dreams of the divinity of the royal prerogative, imagined Rolfe or his descendants might claim the crown of Virginia on behalf of his royal wife, and he asked the Privy Council if the husband had not committed treason![1] ] Pocahontas remained in England about a year; and when, with her husband and son she was about to return to Virginia, with her father's chief councillor, she was seized with small-pox at Gravesend, and died in June, 1617. Her remains lie within the parish church-yard at Gravesend. Her son, Thomas Rolfe, afterward became a distinguished man in Virginia, and his descendants are found among the most honorable citizens of that commonwealth.

Between the lines of the story of Pocahontas can be found the key to much of the early history of Virginia and other colonies. Even before regular settlements were attempted on these shores the Indians had learned by bitter experience to dread and hate the strangers in the big canoes. Slave-traders and adventurers made prey of the natives, and many a depredating visit was doubtless paid to America that is not recorded in the annals of those times. Argall's abduction of Pocahontas ended fortunately, but it might have brought on a terrible Indian war and the destruction of the Virginia colony. Had such been the result the civilized world would never have known the red man's side of the story, and Powhatan's just vengeance would have been set down to the barbarous and savage nature of the Indian.

The scarcity of women in the Virginia colony has already been alluded to in connection with the marriage of Rolfe and Pocahontas. Of the early immigrants very few were women, and there could be no permanent colony without the home and family. The London Company, at the instance of their treasurer, Edwin Sandys, proposed, about twelve years after the first settlement, to send one hundred "pure and uncorrupt" young women to Virginia at the expense of the corporation, to be wives to the planters. Ninety were sent over in 1620. The shores were lined with young men waiting to see them land, and in a few days everyone of the fair immigrants had found a husband. Wives had to be paid for in tobacco—the currency of the colony—in order to recompense the company for the expense of importing them. The price of a wife was at first fixed at one hundred and twenty-five pounds of tobacco—equal to about $90—but afterward rose to $150. The women were disposed of on credit, when the suitor had not the cash, and the debt incurred for a wife was considered a debt of honor. Virginia became a colony of homes. The settlement was saved from becoming a refuge of the criminal and the outcast, and in the unions formed at that time many of the families in the country had their origin. That some of the refuse of English society floated into the colony is true, and many of the unruly children of London and other English towns, were sent there as apprentices. But the unruly street boy often has the diamond of energy and genius concealed within the rude exterior, and in the genial clime of Virginia, with an opportunity to be a man among men, the young apprentice from the slums of London or Plymouth proved himself to possess qualities of value to the community.

[ CHAPTER III. ]

The French in Canada—Champlain Attacks the Iroquois—Quebec a Military Post—Weak Efforts at Colonization—Fur-traders and Missionaries—The Foundation of New France—The French King Claims from the Upper Lakes to the Sea—Slow Growth of the French Colonies—Mixing with the Savages—The "Coureurs de Bois."

Although the French navigator, Jacques Cartier, had sailed up the St. Lawrence as early as 1534, it was not until 1608—the year after the foundation of Jamestown—that Samuel de Champlain effected a permanent settlement at Quebec. It happened that the Indians of the St. Lawrence region were at bitter enmity with the Iroquois, or Five Nations, who lived in the present State of New York, and this enmity had no small influence in deciding the subsequent duel between France and England for empire in North America. Champlain accepted the St. Lawrence Indians as allies, and consented to lead a war party against the Iroquois. In 1609, the year after the settlement of Quebec, Champlain entered the lake which bears his name, accompanied by a number of the St. Lawrence Indians, and engaged the Iroquois in battle. The warriors of the Five Nations were brave, but the white man's gun was too much for them, and when two of their chiefs fell dead, pierced by a shot from Champlain's weapon, they turned and fled. The French thus won the friendship of the Canadian Indians and the undying hatred of the Five Nations, and the latter therefore stood faithfully by first the Dutch, and later the English in the establishment of their power at Manhattan.

Quebec continued for many years to be hardly more than a military post. At the time of Champlain's death, in 1635, there was, says Winsor, a fortress with a few small guns on the cliffs of Cape Diamond. Along the foot of the precipice was a row of unsightly and unsubstantial buildings, where the scant population lived, carried on their few handicrafts, and stored their winter provisions. It was a motley crowd which, in the dreary days, sheltered itself here from the cold blasts that blew along the river channel. There was the military officer, who sought to give some color to the scene in showing as much of his brilliant garb as the cloak which shielded him from the wind would permit. The priest went from house to house with his looped hat. The lounging hunter preferred for the most part to tell his story within doors. Occasionally you could mark a stray savage who had come to the settlement for food. Such characters as these, and the lazy laborers taking a season of rest after the summer's traffic, would be grouped in the narrow street beneath the precipice whenever the wintry sun gave more than its usual warmth at mid-day. It was hardly a scene to inspire confidence in the future. It was not the beginning of empire. If one climbed the path leading to the top of the rugged slope he could see a single cottage that looked as if a settler had come to stay. There were cattle-sheds and signs of thrift in its garden plot. If Champlain had had other colonists like the man who built this house and marked out this farmstead, he might have died with the hope that New France had been planted in this great valley on the basis of domestic life. The widow of this genuine settler, Hebert, still occupied the house at the time when Champlain died, and they point out to you now in the upper town the spot where this one early householder of Quebec made his little struggle to instil a proper spirit of colonization into a crowd of barterers and adventurers. From this upper level the visitor at this time might have glanced across the valley of the St. Charles to but a single other sign of permanency in the stone manor house of Robert Gifart, which had, the previous year, been built at Beauport.

The French pushed their explorations toward the west and missionary stations were established in the country of the Hurons. Two French fur-traders reached in 1658 the western extremity of Lake Superior, and heard from the Indians there of the great river—the Mississippi—running toward the south. Upon the return of the traders to Canada an expedition was organized to proceed to the distant region to which the traders had penetrated, exchange trinkets for furs, and convert the natives to the Christian faith. It was now that the French began to reap the fatal fruits of their causeless war on the Iroquois. The latter attacked and dispersed the expedition, killing several Frenchmen. In 1665, western exploration was resumed, Father Allouez reaching the Falls of St. Mary in September of that year, and coasting along the southern shore of Lake Superior to the great village of the Chippewas. Delegations from a number of Indian nations, including the Illinois tribe, met Father Allouez in council at St. Mary's, and complained of the hostile visitations of the Iroquois from the east and the Sioux from the west. Father Allouez promised them protection against the Iroquois. Soon after this the French summoned a great convention of the tribes to St. Mary's, and in presence of the chieftains formally took possession of the country in behalf of the king of France. A large wooden cross was elevated with religious ceremonies. The priests chanted and prayed and the French king was proclaimed sovereign of the country along the upper lakes and southward to the sea. Thus was founded the short-lived empire of France in America.

The only French occupation of the St. Lawrence was not of the kind to flourish. Sir William Alexander, in a tract which he published in 1624, to induce a more active immigration on the part of his countrymen to his province of New Scotland (Nova Scotia), accounts for the want of stability in the French colony in that they were "only desirous to know the nature and quality of the soil and did never seek to have (its products) in such quantity as was requisite for their maintenance, affecting more by making a needless ostentation that the world should know they had been there, more in love with glory than with virtue.... Being always subject to divisions among themselves it was impossible that they could subsist, which proceeded sometimes from emulation or envy, and at other times from the laziness of the disposition of some, who, loathing labor, would be commanded by none."[1] ] In 1660, after more than half a century after the first settlement, a census of Canada showed a total of 3418 souls, while the inhabitants of New England numbered at the same time not far from eighty thousand. The establishment of seigneuries was not calculated to invite or promote desirable immigration. A seigneurial title was given to any enterprising person who would undertake to plant settlers on the land, and accept in return a certain proportion of the grist, furs and fish which the occupant could procure by labor. Immigrants of the class which builds up a country want to own the land which they cultivate. The sense of independence inspires them with energy and with a patriotic interest in the commonwealth. Another peculiar feature of French colonization was the tendency to mingle with the natives. As early as 1635, Champlain told the Hurons, at his last Council in Quebec, that they only needed to embrace the white man's faith if they would have the white man take their daughters in marriage. The English principle was to drive out the savage when he could be driven out, or to tolerate him as a ward and an inferior when it would be unjust to expel or destroy him; the Frenchman embraced the Indian as a brother. "The French missionary," says Doyle in his Puritan colonies, "well nigh broke with civilization; he toned down all that was spiritual in his religion, and emphasized all that was sensual, till he had assimilated it to the wants of the savage. The better and worse features of Puritanism forbade a triumph won on such terms." One of the worst products of French colonial life was the class known as the "coureurs de bois," a lawless gang, half trader, half explorer, bent on divertisement, and not discouraged by misery or peril. They lived in a certain fashion to which the missionaries themselves were not averse, as Lemercier shows where he commends the priests of his order as being savages among savages. Charlevoix tells us that while the Indian did not become French, the Frenchman became a savage. Talon speaks of these vagabonds as living as banditti, gathering furs as they could and bringing them to Albany or Montreal to sell, just as it proved the easiest. If the intendant could have controlled them he would have made them marry, give up trade and the wilderness, and settle down to work.

[ CHAPTER IV. ]

Henry Hudson's Discovery—Block Winters on Manhattan Island—The Dutch Take Possession—The Iroquois Friendly—Immigration of the Walloons— Charter of Privileges and Exemptions—Patroons—Manufactures Forbidden —Slave Labor Introduced—New Sweden—New Netherlanders Want a Voice in the Government.

When Henry Hudson managed, notwithstanding his detention in England by King James, to send an account of his discoveries to Holland, the Dutch were swift to avail themselves of the opportunities thus offered to extend their trade to North America. The traders who first sought Manhattan Island and Hudson's River, or the "Mauritius" as the Dutch called the North River, were not settlers. Among them was the daring navigator, Adrian Block, from whom Block Island is named, who gathered a cargo of skins and was about to depart, late in the year 1613, when vessel and cargo were consumed by fire. Block and his crew built log-cabins on the lower part of Manhattan Island, and spent the winter constructing a new ship, which they called the "Onrust" or "unrest"—an incident and a name significant now in view of the commercial pre-eminence and activity of the metropolis founded where those men built the first habitations occupied by Europeans. Block sailed in the spring of 1614 on a voyage of further discovery in his American built ship. He passed through the East River and Long Island Sound and ascertained that the long strip of land on the south was an island. He saw and named Block Island, and entered Narragansett Bay and the harbor of Boston. His report led the States-General to grant a charter for four years from October 11, 1614, to a company formed to trade in the region which Block had explored, the territory "lying between Virginia and New France," being called the New Netherland. When the charter expired, the States-General refused to grant a renewal, it being designed to place New Netherland under the jurisdiction of the Dutch West India Company as soon as that company should have received the charter for which application had been made. This charter, granted June 3, 1620, conferred on the Dutch West India Company almost sovereign powers over the Atlantic coast of America, so far as it was unoccupied by other nations, and the western coast of Africa. The Company was organized in 1622, and its attention was at once called to the necessity of founding a permanent colony in the New Netherland in order to preserve the country from seizure by the English, now established in New Plymouth to the north, as well as Virginia on the south. Dutch traders had not been idle during the period between the lapse of the old charter and organization under the new and the West India Company found its operations greatly facilitated by the labors of the pioneers. The storehouse on Manhattan Island had been enlarged, a fort had been erected on an island near the site of Albany, and the Iroquois had learned that in the Dutch they had an ally who would assist them with arms at least against their enemies on the St. Lawrence. The West India Company began wisely the work of settlement. They invited the Walloons, Protestant refugees from the Belgic provinces of Spain, to emigrate to New Netherland. They were most desirable settlers for a new country, as industrious as they were intelligent and religious, and well versed in agriculture as well as the mechanical and finer arts. Having abandoned their homes for conscience' sake they could be trusted to do their duty loyally to their adopted State, and to advance to the best of their ability the interests of the Company.

Thirty families, including one hundred and ten men, women and children, and most of them Walloons, were in the first emigration. Four of the families, young couples who had been married on shipboard, and who, perhaps, concluded that they would get along better apart from the older households, chose to settle on the Delaware, four miles below the site of Philadelphia, where they built a blockhouse and called it Fort Nassau. Eight seamen went with them and formed a part of their colony, which grew and prospered. Others of the emigrants went to Long Island; some founded Albany; some settled on the Connecticut River, and several families made their homes in what is at present Ulster County. The Company sent over Peter Minuit as Governor in 1626, who bought from the natives their title to Manhattan Island, paying therefor trinkets and liquor to the value of twenty-four dollars. Governor Minuit built a fortification at the southern end of the island, and called it New Amsterdam. The States-General constituted the colony a county of Holland, and bestowed on it a seal, being a shield enclosed in a chain, with an escutcheon on which was the figure of a beaver. The crest was the coronet of a count.

In 1629 the Dutch West India Company gave to the settlers a charter of "privileges and exemptions," and sought to encourage immigration by offering as much land as the immigrants could cultivate, with free liberty of hunting and fowling under the direction of the Governor. They also offered to any person who should "discover any shore, bay or other fit place for erecting fisheries or the making of salt pounds" an absolute property in the same. To further promote the settlement of New Netherland the company proposed to grant lands in any part of the colony outside the island of Manhattan, to the extent of sixteen miles along any navigable stream, or four miles if on each shore, and indefinitely in the interior, to any person who should agree to plant a colony of adults within four years; or if he should bring more, his domain to be enlarged in proportion. He was to be the absolute lord of the manor, with the feudal right to hold manorial courts; and if cities should grow up on his domain he was to have power to appoint the magistrates and other officers of such municipalities, and have a deputy to confer with the Governor. Settlers under these lords, who were known as patroons—a term synonymous with the Scottish "laird" and the Swedish "patroon"—were to be exempt for ten years from the payment of taxes and tribute for the support of the colonial government, and for the same period every man, woman and child was bound not to leave the service of the patroon without his written consent. In order to prevent the colonists from building up local manufactures to the detriment of Holland industries and of the Company's trade, the settlers were forbidden to manufacture cloth of any kind under pain of banishment, and the Company agreed to supply settlers with as many African slaves "as they conveniently could," and to protect them against enemies. Each settlement was required to support a minister of the gospel and a schoolmaster. The system thus established contained the seed of evil as well as of good. African slave labor, already introduced in Virginia, where the climate was some excuse for its adoption, worked injury to the New Netherland, where all the conditions were favorable to white labor, and tended to create a servile class. The negroes, both bond and free, were for many years a most obnoxious element in the colony, viewed with apprehension and suspicion even down to the beginning of the present century by the general body of white citizens, and often subjected to most cruel and unjust persecution and punishment on charges that were either baseless or founded only in malice. The restriction on domestic manufactures was another barb in the side of the colonists, and that policy continued by the English successors of the Dutch, had much to do with exciting the War for Independence. The patroons also were an aristocratic element foreign to the prevalent spirit of North American settlement, and their feudal rule, although liberal and patriarchal in some instances, became less tolerable as years rolled on, and the people comprehended the absurdity and injustice of mediæval institutions on American soil. It is fortunate that the patroon system, unlike slavery, was ultimately uprooted without revolution.

Americans should be proud of the fact that Gustavus Adolphus, the great king of Sweden who died on the field of Lutzen in the cause of religious liberty, gave his approval to the project for planting a Swedish colony in America, and by proclamation, while in the midst of his campaign against the Catholic League, recommended the enterprise to his people. Eighteen days later the champion of Protestantism fell in the hour of victory, and a noble monument erected by the German people marks the spot where he gave up his life that Germany might be free. The scheme was carried out by the regency which took charge of the kingdom, and Governor Minuit, recalled from New Netherland, sailed from Gottenburg in 1637 to plant a new colony on the west side of Delaware Bay. The colonists arrived at their destination in the spring of 1638, and Minuit procured from an Indian sachem a deed for a region which, the Swedes claimed, extended from Cape Henlopen to the Falls of the Delaware, where Trenton is now, and an indefinite distance inland. The Dutch protested and threatened, but Minuit built a fort on the site of Wilmington, and called it Fort Christina, in honor of the young queen of Sweden, daughter of Gustavus Adolphus. The colony prospered, and a number of Hollanders settled there with the Swedes. Minuit died in 1641, and the Swedish government proceeded to place the colony on a permanent footing, and called it "New Sweden." The colony was unable to hold its own against the Dutch, and surrendered in 1655 to an expedition led by Peter Stuyvesant.

While New Netherland remained under Dutch rule the people had no voice in the choice of those officers whose duties were more than local in character. The governor was an appointee of the West India Company, and responsible solely to it; though the latter was subject to a certain amount of control from the States-General. That the people desired the privilege of electing their general officers, is shown by a petition sent in 1649 to the States-General from the Nine Men. A request was made in this document for a suitable system of government, and it was accompanied by a sketch of the methods of written proxies used by the New England colonies in selecting their governors. On the other hand, a letter sent two years later by the magistrates of Gravesend to the directors at Amsterdam, stated that it would involve "ruin and destruction" to frequently change the government by allowing the people to elect the governor, partly on account of the numerous factions, and partly because there were no persons in the province capable of filling the office. Nor did the Dutch colonists possess any voice in the making of laws. There was no regular representative assembly, although we find that there were several emergencies when the advice of the people was asked by the governors.[1] ]

[ CHAPTER V. ]

Landing of the Pilgrims—Their Abiding Faith in God's Goodness—The Agreement Signed on the Mayflower—A Winter of Hardship—The Indians Help the Settlers—Improved Conditions—The Colony Buys Its Freedom—Priscilla and John Alden—Their Romantic Courtship and Marriage.

It is usual to celebrate the landing day of the Pilgrim Fathers on the bleak shore of New Plymouth, December 11 (22) 1620, as the beginning of New England. It was an event which richly deserves all the commemoration in song and story and banquet-hall which it has received or ever will receive, but the real and substantial foundation of New England was laid about ten years later, when a numerous and well-to-do body of Puritans, under a charter granted by the crown, formed the colony of Massachusetts Bay. The Pilgrim Fathers were merely a handful in number, and as poor as they were loyal and conscientious. Exiles to Holland, they declined an offer from the Dutch West India Company to accept lands in New Netherland. They wished to remain English, and with the aid of some London merchants whose Puritan sympathies were mingled with a desire for gain, the little community procured the means to sail for "the northern parts of Virginia." The Pilgrims were just as true to King James as the settlers of Jamestown, but they did not intend to join that colony, whose members were attached to the Established Church, so far as they had any religion, and where dissenters would have been ill at ease. At the same time the immigrants in the Mayflower did not intend to land so far north as they did. The wearisome voyage, however, made them anxious to get on shore, the land could not be more inhospitable than the winter sea, and they had an abiding faith in God's goodness and providence which enabled them to face with resolution the hardships and dangers of the northern wilderness. The act which the men of the party signed on the Mayflower, previous to landing, showed that they were determined to have an orderly government. It was the first American constitution, and as such deserves to be remembered: "In the name of God, Amen. We, whose names are hereunder written, the loyal subjects of our dread sovereign lord, King James, by the grace of God, of Great Britain, France and Ireland, King, Defender of the Faith, etc., having undertaken for the glory of God and the advancement of the Christian Faith, and honor of our King and country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the northern parts of Virginia, do, by these presents, solemnly and mutually, in the presence of God and of one another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil body politic for our better ordering and preservation and furtherance of the ends aforesaid; and by virtue hereof to enact, constitute and frame such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitution and offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general good of the colony, unto which we promise all due submission and obedience. In witness whereof we have hereunto subscribed our names at Cape Cod, the 11th of November (O. S.) in the year of the reign of our sovereign lord, King James of England, France and Ireland, the eighteenth, and of Scotland the fifty-fourth, Anno Domini 1620."

The day of landing was, as already stated, December 11, or according to the new style, December 22. The spot which the Pilgrims selected for settlement was well-watered and promising, and they gave to it the name of the haven where they had taken a final leave of their native land. The winter was fortunately mild, but they had to endure cruel hardships. Their stores were scanty; they had no fishing tackle, and game was not abundant. Fortunately spring came early; but forty-four of the little company succumbed to want and cold, and those who retained their health were hardly equal to the task of nursing the sick and burying the dead. Had the savages been numerous and hostile they could have swept the little settlement out of existence with but small effort; but the country had been wasted not long before by a deadly pestilence and the native tribes were too weak and too much in fear of more powerful enemies of their own race, to make an attack on the strangers. Instead of injuring the newcomers the Indians helped them, brought them game and fish, and taught them how to cultivate corn. In 1623 the colony had, with new arrivals, about one hundred and fifty inhabitants. The first division of land was made this year, and a large crop of corn was harvested. Twelve years after the foundation the people of Plymouth hardly numbered five hundred, and they were soon overshadowed by the large Puritan immigration to Salem and Boston. The poor and struggling settlers of Plymouth did not even have the satisfaction of knowing that the fruits of their toils and sufferings would be their own. They were still bound to the London merchants who had supplied them with the means for emigration, and these partners in the enterprise were impatient of the lack of returns. As the Pilgrims gradually grew better off they were the more anxious to remove the yoke which interfered with their independence, and some members of the community who were richer than the others agreed, in exchange for a monopoly of the Indian trade and the surrender of the accumulated wealth of the colony, to pay its debt to the English shareholders. The colony thus achieved its freedom, and its members were able to proceed in building their settlement according to their own ideas of religion and civil government without restraint from partners who had sought only for worldly profit.

One of the most interesting incidents connected with the early history of the Plymouth Colony was the romantic marriage of Priscilla and John Alden, immortalized in the verse of Longfellow. Captain Miles Standish was a redoubtable soldier, small in person, but of great activity and courage. He came over in the Mayflower, and his wife Rose Standish fell a victim to the privations which attended the first year in America. Another passenger on the Mayflower was Priscilla Mullins, daughter of William Mullins, a maiden of unusual beauty, just blooming into womanhood. The gallant widower fell in love with Priscilla, but for some reason which does not clearly appear, but probably bashfulness, he sent another to do his courting. Standish himself was about thirty-seven years of age, and doubtless showed the effect of his hard service in the wars. Nevertheless, he might have won Priscilla had he gone for her in person, for, as the military leader of the colony, beset as it was by savages who might at any time become hostile, he was a man of importance and desirable for a son-in-law. He made the mistake of choosing as Cupid's messenger a handsome young man named John Alden, a cooper from Southampton, with whom Priscilla was already well acquainted, and with whom she had quite possibly whiled away many hours of the wearisome three months' voyage from old Plymouth. Alden and Priscilla may have been in love with each other already, when Captain Standish sent the youth on his embarrassing mission. Even the rigid rules of Puritanism could not prevent young men and women from falling in love, while their elders were engaged in more sedate occupations. It is to be said for Standish, also, that he evidently did not intend that the young man should state the case to Priscilla, but only to her father. The parent promptly gave his consent, but added that "Priscilla must be consulted." The maiden was called into the room, and a brighter light dawned in her eyes, and a ruddier flush suffused her cheeks, as her gaze met that of the handsome young cooper. John Alden, too, could not remain unaffected, as he repeated his message to the fair young woman, into whose ears he had probably poured sweet nothings many a time while they dreamed, perhaps, of the day when more serious words would be spoken. Priscilla asked why Captain Standish had not come himself. Alden replied that the Captain was too busy. This naturally made the maiden indignant, for she was justified in assuming that no business could be more important than that of asking for her hand. It is also possible that she was glad of an excuse for rejecting the proffered honor. She declared that she would never marry a man who was too busy to court her, adding, in the words of Longfellow:

"Had he waited awhile, had only showed that he loved me,

Even this captain of yours—who knows?—at last might have won me,

Old and rough as he is, but now it never can happen."

John Alden pressed the suit in behalf of his soldier friend, secretly hoping, it is to be feared, that Priscilla would not take him too much in earnest, when, continues Longfellow:

"Archly the maiden smiled, and with eyes over-running with laughter.

Said, in a tremulous voice: 'Why don't you speak for yourself, John?'"

John did not speak for himself—at least not directly, on that occasion, but he did later on, and shortly afterward the marriage of John Alden and Priscilla Mullins was celebrated with all the display that the Plymouth settlers could afford. Captain Standish did not blame Alden, but he did not remain long near the scene of his disappointment, moving, in 1626, to Duxbury, Massachusetts. He lived to a hale old age, respected both for his private virtues and his public services.

[ CHAPTER VI. ]

The Puritan Immigration—Wealth and Learning Seek These Shores—Charter Restrictions Dead Letters—A Stubborn Struggle for Self-government— Methods of Election—The Early Government an Oligarchy—The Charter of 1691—New Hampshire and Maine—The New Haven Theocracy—Hartford's Constitution—The United Colonies—The Clergy and Politics—Every Election Sermon a Declaration of Independence.

John Endicott's settlement at Salem, and the large immigration which followed the granting of a royal patent to the Massachusetts Bay Company, together with the transfer of the charter and corporate powers of the company from England to Massachusetts, led to the growth of a powerful Puritan commonwealth which overshadowed and ultimately absorbed the feeble settlement at Plymouth. The natal day of New England was that on which John Winthrop landed at Salem, with nine hundred immigrants in the summer of 1630, bringing not merely virtue, muscle and brawn, such as carried the Pilgrims through their appalling experience, but wealth and substance, learning and art, men to command as well as men to obey. From that time, except during the season of depression which followed King Philip's war, New England went steadily forward in population, prosperity and political power. Her rulers were well able to meet and defeat their would-be oppressors in the field of diplomacy, and now defying, now ignoring and again pretending to yield to royal dictation, Massachusetts never gave up the principles which animated her founders, or the purpose which prompted them to abandon homes of comfort and even of luxury, and establish new institutions in a new world. The Massachusetts settlers were forbidden by the terms of their charter to enact any laws repugnant to the laws of England. This restriction was a dead letter from the very beginning. Indeed, literally construed, it would have defeated the very object of Puritan emigration—to escape from the rule of a hierarchy established under English laws. As Massachusetts was for many years the leading colony of the north of English origin, and probably made more of an impress than any other colony and State upon our national character, it may be of interest to quote here a sketch of its political institutions and their changes in the colonial period.

The charter of the Massachusetts Bay Company authorized the election of a governor, deputy governor and eighteen assistants on the last Wednesday of Easter. Endicott, the first governor, was chosen by the company in London in April, 1629, but in October of the following year it was resolved that the governor and deputy governor should be chosen by the assistants out of their own number. After 1632, however, the governor was chosen by the whole body of the freemen from among the assistants at a general court or assembly held in May of each year. The deputy governor was elected at the same time. The charter, as already mentioned, provided also for the annual election of assistants or magistrates, whose number was fixed at eighteen. Besides the officers mentioned in the charter, an order of 1647 declared that a treasurer, major-general, admiral at sea, commissioners for the United Colonies, secretary of the General Court and "such others as are, or hereafter may be, of like general nature," should be chosen annually "by the freemen of this jurisdiction." The voting took place in Boston in May at a court of election held annually, and freemen could vote at first only in person, but eventually by proxy also, if they desired to do so. In both Massachusetts and New Plymouth all freemen had originally a personal voice in the transaction of public business at the general courts or assemblies which were held at stated intervals. One of these was known as the Court of Election, and at this were chosen the officers of the colony for the ensuing year. As the number of settlements increased, it became inconvenient for freemen to attend the general courts in person and they were allowed to be represented by deputies. As it was impossible for all freemen when the colony became more populated, to attend the courts of election, the deputies were at length permitted to carry the votes of their townsmen to Boston.

The governor, as well as the other officers in Massachusetts, were first chosen by show of hands, but about 1634 it was provided that the names should be written on papers, the papers to be open or only once folded, so that they might be the sooner perused. Afterward the voting was by corn and beans, a grain of Indian corn signifying election, and a black bean the contrary. The offence of ballot-box stuffing seems to have existed, or at least was provided against even among the early Puritans, for it was enacted that any freeman putting more than one grain should be fined ten pounds—a large sum of money in those days.

The Massachusetts colonial government has been called a theocracy. As a matter of fact it was an oligarchy, the political power residing in but a small proportion of even the church-going freemen. This is shown in the remonstrance addressed to the colony by the royal commission appointed under King Charles II. to investigate the governments of the New England colonies. Said the Commissioners to Massachusetts:

"You haue so tentered the king's qualliffications as in making him only who paieth ten shillings to a single rate to be of competent estate, that when the king shall be enformed, as the trueth is, that not one church member in an hundred payes so much & yt in a toune of an hundred inhabitants, scarse three such men are to be found, wee feare that the king will rather finde himself deluded than satisfied by your late act."

During the rule of Dudley and Andros the whole legislative power of Massachusetts was lodged in a council, appointed by the crown through its governor, and popular election in the New England colonies was limited to the choice of selectmen at a single meeting held annually in each town, on the third Monday in May.

The ultimate result of the revolution of 1688 in England was to unite Massachusetts and New Plymouth under the Charter of 1691. By virtue of this instrument, "the Great and General Court of Assembly" was to consist of "the Governor and Council or Assistants for the time being, and such Freeholders of our said Province or Territory as shall be from time to time elected or deputed by the Major parte of the Freeholders and other Inhabitants of the respective Townes and Places." The governor, deputy governor and secretary and the first assistants were appointed. After the first year, the assistants were to be annually elected by the General Assembly. Under this charter, with the exception of the deputies, the only elective officers whose functions were at all general in their nature were the county treasurers, and they were chosen upon the basis of the town rather than upon the basis of the provincial suffrage.

New Hampshire owed its original settlement to John Mason, a London merchant, who was associated with Sir Ferdinand Gorges in obtaining a grant of land in 1622, from the Merrimac to the Kennebec and inland to the St. Lawrence. Gorges and Mason agreed to divide their domain at the Piscataqua. Mason, obtaining a patent for his portion of the territory, called it New Hampshire, in commemoration of the fact that he had been governor of Portsmouth in Hampshire, England. The Rev. Mr. Wheelwright, brother of Anne Hutchinson, founded Exeter. The New Hampshire settlements were annexed by Massachusetts in 1641, and remained dependent on that colony until 1680, when New Hampshire became a royal province, ruled by a governor and council and house of representatives elected by the people. The settlers of New Hampshire were mostly Puritans, and thoroughly in sympathy with the political-religious system of Massachusetts. Massachusetts obtained jurisdiction over Maine through purchase from Gorges, and that territory remained attached to Massachusetts until 1820. Vermont had no separate existence until the Revolution.

The colonies of Connecticut and New Haven were in full sympathy with the religious and political system of Massachusetts. The first meeting of all the "free planters" of New Haven was held on the fourth day of June, 1639, for the purpose "of settling civil government according to God, and about the nomination of persons that might be found by consent of all, fittest in all respects for the foundation work of a church." The meeting was opened with prayer. There was some debate as to whether the planters should give to free burgesses the power of making ordinances, but it was ultimately decided to do so. The minutes of the meeting show that this decision was arrived at on the authority of several passages from the Bible—such as "Take you wise men and understanding, and know among your tribes and I will make them rulers over you," and "Thou shalt in any wise set him king over thee whom the Lord thy God shall choose; one from among thy brethren shalt thou set king over thee; thou mayest not set a stranger over thee, which is not thy brother." The model followed in the governmental organization was the liveries of the city of London which chose the magistrates and were themselves elected by the companies. Accordingly, the planters of New Haven elected a committee of eleven men, and gave them power to choose the seven founders of the theocracy they had decided to establish. The seven founders met as a court of election in October of the same year and admitted upon oath several members of "approved churches." After reading a number of passages from the Bible bearing on the subject of an ideal ruler, they proceeded to the election of a chief magistrate and four deputy magistrates. The franchise in all cases was confined to church members. In the Hartford colony, which was Connecticut proper, the earliest mention of elections is found in the Fundamental Orders of 1638, which have become famous as the first written constitution framed on the American continent. It was enacted that a governor and six magistrates should be chosen annually by the freemen of the jurisdiction. A deputy governor was also chosen. The Charter of Charles II., which placed the New Haven and the Hartford colonies under one government, provided for the same general officers, together with twelve assistants, a secretary and a treasurer being added in 1689.

In 1643, the four colonies of Massachusetts, Plymouth, Connecticut and New Haven formed a confederation for defence against the Indians and also the Dutch, who had claimed that a portion of what is now the State of Connecticut was included within their jurisdiction. The confederation was called the United Colonies of New England, and its affairs were managed by a board of eight commissioners, two from each colony. The commissioners could summon troops in case of necessity and settle disputes between the colonies. This union proved most effective in the subsequent war with King Philip. It was the germ of American confederation.

The election sermon was a prominent feature of election day in the Puritan colonies. The clergyman to deliver the sermon was selected by the freemen, and it was considered a great honor to be chosen for the office. The preacher often dealt with public questions, and especially during the troublous times which preceded the Revolution. Instead of pastors being blamed for interference in politics the General Court sometimes sent a general request to all ministers of the gospel resident in the colony asking them to preach on election day before the freemen of each plantation a sermon "proper for direction in the choice of civil rulers." The pulpit in that age held the place now occupied by the newspaper editorial page, so far as vital questions affecting the body politic were concerned. The clergy were, as a class, learned and eloquent, and the freemen looked to them for guidance in political as well as religious problems, and it cannot be denied that the ministers never shrank from the responsibility put upon them. They stood up for the colonies against king and parliament, against royal menace and muskets, and for years before the Continental Congress pronounced for freedom every election sermon was a declaration of independence.

[ CHAPTER VII. ]

Where Conscience Was Free—Roger Williams and His Providence Colony— Driven by Persecution from Massachusetts—Savages Receive Him Kindly —Coddington's Settlement in Rhode Island—Oliver Cromwell and Charles II. Grant Charters—Peculiar Referendum in Early Rhode Island.

"Take heart with us, O man of old,

Soul-freedom's brave confessor,

So love of God and man wax strong,

Let sect and creed be lesser.

"The jarring discords of thy day

In ours one hymn are swelling;

The wandering feet, the severed paths

All seek our Father's dwelling.

"And slowly learns the world the truth

That makes us all thy debtor.—

That holy life is more than rite,

And spirit more than letter.

"That they who differ pole-wide serve

Perchance one common Master,

And other sheep he hath than they

That graze one common pasture."

Whittier.

One New England community stood apart from all the rest. Roger Williams, a learned and able minister, supposed to have been born in Wales, came to Boston in 1630, accompanied by his wife, Mary, an Englishwoman. Williams denied the right of the magistrates to interfere with the consciences of men, and also held that the Indians should not be deprived of their lands without fair and equitable purchase. His stand in favor of soul-liberty was a novelty in that age when State and Church were regarded as inseparable, the only difference on this question between Massachusetts and England being as to the character of the public worship which the State should enforce upon consciences willing and unwilling. The doctrine of Roger Williams, therefore, seemed to the Boston authorities to strike at the very foundation of all government, and in particular of their government. In the autumn of 1635, when Roger Williams was pastor of the church at Salem, the General Court of Massachusetts ordered him to quit the colony within six months. Afterward suspecting that Williams was preparing to found a new colony, the Boston magistrates resolved to deport him to England, and a vessel was sent to Salem to take him away. Williams received timely warning, and fled from his home in mid-winter, and made his way through the wilderness to the shores of Narragansett Bay. He was joined by five companions, and at a fine spring near the head of Narragansett Bay they planted a colony, and Williams called the place "Providence," in grateful acknowledgment of God's providence to him in his distress. Williams and his companions founded a pure democracy, with no interference with the rights of conscience. Indeed, they carried this principle to an extreme at which even in these days most people would hesitate, for one member of the colony was disciplined because he objected to his wife's frequent attendance on the preaching of Mr. Williams to the neglect of her household duties. Rhode Island became a refuge for the victims of Puritan intolerance, without regard to their belief or unbelief, and was therefore held in hatred and contempt by the Boston people. This very hatred was the salvation of Rhode Island, the government of England being favorably inclined to the colony on account of the stubborn and independent attitude of Massachusetts toward the home authorities.

The name "Rhode Island" requires mention here of the fact that Rhode Island and Providence Plantations were originally separate settlements. In 1638 William Coddington, a native of Lincolnshire, England, and for some time a magistrate of Boston, was driven from Massachusetts along with others who had taken a prominent part on the side of Anne Hutchinson, in the controversy between that brilliant woman and the dominant element of the church. Coddington and his eighteen companions bought from the Indians the island of Aquitneck, or Rhode Island, and made settlements on the sites of Newport and Portsmouth. A third settlement was founded at Warwick, on the mainland, in 1643, by a party of whom John Greene and Samuel Gorton were leaders. Roger Williams went to England in the same year, and in 1644 he brought back a charter which united the settlements at Providence and on Rhode Island in one colony, called the Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. The charter was confirmed by Oliver Cromwell in 1655, and a new charter was granted by Charles II. in 1663. Under the Parliament charter of 1664 Providence, in 1647, sent a "committee" to Portsmouth to join with committees from other towns in order to form a government. The fifth "act and order" established by this convention provided that each town should send a committee to every general court, and these, like the deputies in Massachusetts and Plymouth, could exercise the powers of the freemen in all matters excepting the election of officers. The committee from each town was to consist of six members.

A peculiar feature of early Rhode Island government was the jealousy with which the people retained in their own control the law-making power. Matters of general concern were proposed in some town meeting, and notice of the proposition had to be given to other towns. Towns which approved of the proposition were ordered to declare their opinion at the next general court through their committees. If the court decided in favor of the proposition a law was passed which had authority only until ratified by the next general assembly of all the people. The general court was also allowed to debate matters on its own motion, but its decisions must be reported to each town by the committee representing that town. A meeting of the town was held to debate on the questions so reported and then the votes of the inhabitants were collected by the town clerk and forwarded with all speed to the recorder of the colony. The latter was to open, in the presence of the governor, all votes so received, and if a majority voted affirmatively the resolution of the court was to stand as law until the next general assembly. This complex method was repealed in 1650, and instead, it was ordered that all laws enacted by the assembly should be communicated to the towns within six days after adjournment. Within three days after the laws were received the chief officer of each town was to call a meeting and read them to the freemen. If any freeman disliked a particular law he could, within ten days, send his vote in writing, with his name affixed, to the general recorder. If within ten days the recorder received a majority of votes against any law, he was to notify the president of that fact and the latter in turn was to give notice to each town that such law was null and void. Silence as to the remaining enactments was assumed to mean assent.

After 1658, the recorder was allowed ten days instead of six, as the period within which the laws must be sent to the towns. The towns had another ten days for consideration, and then if the majority of the free inhabitants of any one of them in a lawful assembly voted against a given enactment, they could send their votes sealed up in a package to the recorder. If a majority from every town voted against the law it was thereby nullified; but unless this was done within twenty days after the adjournment of the court the law would continue binding. In 1660, three months were allowed for the return of votes to the recorder. Instead of a majority of each town, a majority of all the free inhabitants of the colony was sufficient to nullify a law. The charter of King Charles II. restricted the privilege of voting to freeholders and the eldest sons of freeholders.

[ CHAPTER VIII. ]

Puritans and Education—Provision for Public Schools—Puritan Sincerity —Effect of Intolerance on the Community—Quakers Harshly Persecuted—The Salem Witchcraft Tragedy—History of the Delusion—Rebecca Nourse and Other Victims—The People Come to Their Senses—Cotton Mather Obdurate to the Last—Puritan Morals—Comer's Diary—Rhode Island in Colonial Times.

It is to the credit of the Puritans that promptly upon their settlement in Massachusetts they made provision for education. Many of the Puritans were learned men, and some of them graduates of Cambridge in England, and when a school was established at Newtown for the education of the ministry, the name of the place was changed to Cambridge. When John Harvard endowed the school in 1638 with his library and the gift of one half his estate—about $4000, but equal to much more than that amount at the present day—the school was erected into a college and named Harvard College after the founder. The central aim and purpose of Puritan education was religious. The schools were maintained so that the children could learn to read the Bible, and also incidentally the printed fulminations of the ministers and magistrates. The Massachusetts school law of 1649 set forth in the preamble that, "it being one chief project of that old deluder, Satan, to keep men from the knowledge of the Scriptures, as in former times keeping them in an unknown tongue, so in these later times persuading men from the use of tongues, so that at the least a true sense and meaning of the original might be clouded with false glossing of saint-seeming deceivers, and that learning may not be buried in the grave of our fathers," therefore, etc. Every township was required to maintain a school for reading and writing, and every town of a hundred householders a grammar-school, with a teacher qualified to fit youths for the university. This school law was enacted likewise in the other Puritan colonies. While its object was to strengthen the hold of religion, as expounded by the Puritan ministry, upon the people, its general effect was to spread intelligence along with learning, and to break down the barriers of intolerance. It is a significant fact, however, and in accordance with the lessons of more recent history, that the seat of the highest education was not always the seat of the highest intelligence. The witchcraft delusion found a haven in Harvard when the common sense of a common-school educated people rejected it by a decisive majority.

The Puritan was stern and cruel because he was thoroughly in earnest. He believed his religion to be true, and that the only path to salvation lay through rigid compliance with Puritan doctrine. Believing as he did he was logical; he was humane. The non-Puritan was, in his view, a pestilence to be got rid of by the most heroic measures if necessary. In acting on this principle he was kind, in his judgment, to the many whom he saved from pollution and damnation by the sacrifice of the few. The devil, to the Puritan, was terribly personal, and Cotton Mather's horror of witchcraft was grounded in a sincere belief in that personality. The forces of evil were always active, and the Puritan believed in combating them in the most vigorous and trenchant fashion. The Scripture enjoined upon him to pluck out his own eye if it offended, and it was natural that he should not hesitate to sacrifice others when they offended. With all his severity he took good care to let transgressors know what they had to expect, and he felt the less compunction, therefore, in inflicting penalties deliberately incurred. Life for the Puritan was a very serious affair, and levity a crime only milder than non-orthodoxy. Gaming even for amusement was rigidly prohibited. It was a criminal act to kiss a woman in the street, even in the way of chaste and honest salute. The heads of households were called to account if the daughters neglected the spinning-wheel. The stocks and the whipping-post were seldom unoccupied by minor offenders, while the hangman was kept busy with criminals of deeper dye. It should be needless to say that there was a good deal of hypocrisy, and that public repentance was often simply a means for escaping from social ostracism and obtaining admission to the pastures of the elect. Hubbard intimates as much in what he says about Captain John Underhill.

The laws enacted were based on the Mosaic code, and of Mosaic severity in dealing with offences against morality and religion. It is to be remembered, however, that down to the second quarter of the present century the code of England itself was Draconic, although immoralities punished by death in Massachusetts were not regarded as crimes in the older country.

The most painful event connected with the harsh religious system of the Puritans was the execution in 1659 of two Quakers, Marmaduke Stephenson and William Robinson, of England, who had come to Massachusetts to preach their doctrines. The first two Quakers to arrive in Boston were Ann Austin and Mary Fisher, who landed here in 1656. They were forthwith arrested, and examined for witch-marks, but none being found and there being no excuse therefore for putting them to death as agents of Satan, they were kept in close imprisonment, and the jailer and citizens were forbidden to give them any food, the object apparently being to starve them to death. The windows of the jail were boarded up to prevent food from being handed into them and also to prevent the prisoners from exhorting passers-by. A citizen named Upshall, who gave money to the jailer to buy nourishment for the captives, was fined $100, and ordered to leave the colony within thirty days, and was sentenced to pay beside $15 for every day he should be absent from public worship before his departure—evidently that he might be compelled to listen to pulpit denunciations of his wickedness in saving from starvation two fellow-human beings who worshipped God in a different fashion from their persecutors. The exile was denied an asylum in Plymouth, and followed the example of Roger Williams by seeking a refuge among the Indians, who treated him kindly. The two Quaker women were transported to Barbadoes, and the captain of the vessel which had brought them to Boston was required to bear the charges of their imprisonment. The religious books which they had in their possession when arrested were burned by the common hangman.

The Quakers continued to come in considerable numbers to America, being welcomed in some of the colonies, and persecuted in others, but nowhere so severely as in Massachusetts. When Stephenson and Robinson were hanged at Boston, Mary Dyer, widow of William Dyer, late recorder of Providence plantations, was taken to the scaffold with them, but reprieved on condition that she should leave the colony in forty-eight hours. In the following year Mary Dyer returned to Boston, and was at once arrested and hanged. These proceedings excited general horror in the mother country, and Charles II. sent a letter stating it to be his pleasure that the Quakers should be sent to England for trial. The General Court of Massachusetts thereupon suspended the laws against Quakers, and those in prison were released and sent out of the jurisdiction of Massachusetts.

Next to the persecution of the Quakers no feature of Puritan history is so prominent as the Salem Witchcraft Tragedy, which, although it occurred near the close of the seventeenth century, so strikingly illustrates the intellectual and religious conditions of the Massachusetts colony that it may properly be described here. Belief in witchcraft was not by any means confined to Massachusetts. The statutes of England, as well as of the American colonies, dealt with the imaginary crime. Among the intelligent and educated classes, however, both in Europe and America, the subject was generally considered of too doubtful a nature to be dealt with by the infliction of the penalties which the law prescribed. In Massachusetts, where everybody had some education, the majority of the people, although deeply and almost fanatically religious, had their doubts about the reality of the diabolical art, and the belief, strangely enough, seems to have been most intense and aggressive in the highest intellectual quarters, among ministers and men of superior education and commensurate influence. It was this that gave the witchcraft delusion its awful power for evil, and enabled a few vicious children afflicted with hysteria or epilepsy to bring a score of mostly reputable persons to an ignominious death, to ruin more than that number of homes and to spread consternation throughout the commonwealth.

The Salem delusion began in the house of Mr. Parris, the minister at Danvers. Parris had two slaves, an Indian and his wife, Tituba, the latter half negro and half Indian. Tituba taught the children various tricks. While practicing these tricks, some of them became hysterical and acted in a peculiar manner. It was suggested that they were bewitched, and they were asked who had bewitched them. They indicated a woman named Sarah Goode, who was generally disliked. She was arrested and imprisoned. This seems to have gratified the children, who soon after had convulsions in the presence of another victim, one Giles Corey. Corey stood mute under the accusation, and was tortured to death by pressing. The cases attracted attention, and at the instance of Cotton Mather and others, Governor Phipps designated a special court to try persons accused of witchcraft. Malice, greed and craft promptly supplied more victims for the court and the hangman. Doctors discovered what they called witch-marks, such as moles or callosities of any kind, and after the children or others alleged to have been bewitched had performed the usual contortions, the accused were swiftly convicted. Francis Nourse and his wife, Rebecca, had a controversy about the occupation of a farm with a family named Endicott. The Endicott children went into hysterics and charged that Rebecca Nourse had bewitched them. Although as good and pure a woman as there was in the colour, Rebecca was convicted, hanged on Witches' Hill, and her body cast into a pit designed for those who should meet her fate. Mr. Parris, the minister, thought it necessary to preach a sermon fortifying the belief in witchcraft, and when Sarah Cloyse, a sister of Rebecca, got up and went out of the meeting-house, regarding the sermon as an insult to the memory of her murdered sister, she was also denounced and arrested. The Rev. Dr. Cotton Mather, one of the lights of Puritanism, and son of Dr. Increase Mather, president of Harvard University, was most active and violent in the prosecutions. Among the victims was the Rev. Stephen Burroughs, a learned minister of exemplary life, who was accused of possessing a witch's trumpet. Mather witnessed the hanging of Burroughs, and when the latter on the scaffold offered up a touching prayer, Mather cried out to the people that Satan often transformed himself into an angel of light to deceive men's souls. The Rev. Mr. Noyes, standing by at the execution of eight accused persons, exclaimed: "What a sad thing it is to see eight fire-brands of hell hanging there!" A committee was appointed to ferret out witches, and children were readily found to court the notoriety and interest which a share in the work attracted. When the accusers began to utter charges against the wife of Governor Phipps and relatives of the Mathers, the authorities took a different view of the monster which they had evolved out of their superstitious imaginings. Public opinion, which had been fettered by fear and amazement at the hideous proceedings, began to find expression in protest against any further sacrifice. Many of the accusers recanted their testimony, and said that they had given it in order to save their own lives, dreading to be accused of witchcraft themselves. The General Court of Massachusetts appointed a general fast and supplication "that God would pardon all the errors of His servants and people in a late tragedy raised among them by Satan and his instruments." Judge Sewall, who had presided at a number of the trials, stood up in his place in the church and begged the people to pray that the errors which he had committed "might not be visited by the judgment of an avenging God on his country, his family and himself." The Rev. Mr. Parris was compelled to leave the country. Cotton Mather, however, adhered steadfastly to his belief in witches. He said, among other things equally astounding to the common sense even of that day, that the devil allowed the victims of witchcraft to "read Quaker books, the Common Prayer and popish books," but not the Bible. At the instance of Cotton Mather, and that of his father, Increase Mather, the president of Harvard, a circular was sent out signed by Increase Mather and a number of other ministers in the name of Harvard College, inviting reports of "apparitions, possessions, enchantments and all extraordinary things wherein the existence and agency of the invisible world is more sensibly demonstrated," to be used "as some fit assembly of ministers might direct." But few replies to the circular were received. The people of Massachusetts had muzzled the monster, and did not care to turn it loose again. A monument was recently erected to Rebecca Nourse on the hill where she perished, and her descendants have an organization which holds annual meetings in commemoration of their hapless ancestor.

Notwithstanding harsh laws and their bitter enforcement, the habits of the people were probably not much better than to-day in well-ordered communities, and considerable depravity existed, especially in the remoter settlements. Comer's Diary, which has never been published, but which the writer of this work has examined in manuscript, shows a condition of society far from exemplary, and it also shows that persons whose position ought to have been respectable, sometimes took Indians either as wives or in a less honorable relation. There is, perhaps, more Indian blood in New England than is generally supposed, and the earlier inhabitants of that section were probably less exclusive toward the aborigines than is assumed in conventional history. Comer's Diary deals, it is true, with the early part of the eighteenth century, but the conditions it minutely and no doubt faithfully describes, must have existed substantially in the seventeenth.[1] ]

The laws of Rhode Island were founded on the Mosaic system, like those of Massachusetts, but entirely ignored the question of religion. The penalties for immoral conduct were not so merciless as in the Puritan colonies, and the Rhode Island colonial records indicate that the laws, such as they were, were not rigidly enforced. The remnants of the Indian tribes, having first been demoralized by unprincipled whites, became themselves a demoralizing element, and Indian dances were, the records show, a continual source of scandal and of vice, which the authorities sought vainly to suppress. In connection with the principle of entire separation of Church and State, on which Rhode Island was founded, it may be of interest to mention here that I learned, in my examination of Comer's Diary, that an attempt was made to establish a branch of the Anglican Church in Providence, in the colonial period, and that a minister was sent over under authority of the bishop of London. The minister had to depart, and the church was closed on account of some scandal. I wrote to the present bishop of London inquiring if there was any record of the incident in the Episcopal archives, and he answered me to the effect that nothing could be found relating to it.

[ CHAPTER IX. ]

New England Prospering—Outbreak of King Philip's War—Causes of the War—White or Indian Had to Go—Philip on the War-path—Settlements Laid in Ashes—The Attack on Hadley—The Great Swamp Fight—Philip Renews the War More Fiercely Than Before—His Allies Desert Him—Betrayed and Killed—The Indians Crushed in New England.

The civil war between Charles I. and the Parliament put an end to Puritan immigration to New England, and some of the settlers went back to England, and gave efficient aid to their fellow Puritans in fighting against the king. The people of New England were, on the whole, prosperous about the middle of the seventeenth century. Nearly every head of a family owned his house and the land which he occupied, and in the coast towns many were engaged in profitable trade and the fisheries. Fishing vessels from abroad were customers for the agricultural products of the colony, and gradually the colonists built their own vessels and absorbed the fisheries themselves. The figure of a codfish in the Massachusetts State House was, until recently, a reminder of the beginning of Massachusett's wealth and prosperity.

King Philip's War was a terrible blow to the colonies, and came near to proving their destruction. The immediate provocation of the conflict was slight enough, but the conflict itself was inevitable. There was no longer room in New England for independent Indian tribes side by side with English colonies. One race or the other had to give way and war meant extermination for one or the other. King Philip, Sachem of the Wampanoags, saw that the further progress of the colonies would involve the extinction of his race. He was a brave man, and possessed of uncommon ability. He did not move hastily, although his tribesmen clamored for bloodshed to avenge three of their fellows whom the English had hanged on a doubtful charge of murder, based on the killing of an Indian traitor. When Philip was prepared to strike he sent his women and children to the Narragansetts for protection, and then started on the warpath against the settlers of Plymouth colony. Major Savage, with horse and foot from Boston, joined the Plymouth forces, and they drove Philip back into a swamp at Pocasset. After a siege of many days Philip made his way from the swamp, was welcomed by the Nipmucks, a tribe in interior Massachusetts, and with fifteen hundred warriors he hurried to attack the white settlements in Connecticut. The colonial army meanwhile hastened to the Narragansett country, and compelled Canonchet, chief of the Narragansetts, upon whom King Philip had relied for aid, to make a treaty of friendship. Philip was disappointed by the loss of this expected ally, but disappointment made him only the more resolute and desperate. Everywhere he excited the New England tribes against the English, and carefully avoiding any general encounter, he waylaid the settlers, destroyed their homes and laid ambuscades for them in field and highway, now and then attacking some important town. The colonists suffered fearfully; numbers were slain; whole settlements were devastated, and the gun had to be kept at hand in church, at home and at daily toil. No one knew when the dusky foe would suddenly spring from the forest; no woman left her doorstep without fear that she might never enter it again, and the settler, whom duty summoned from home, looked anxiously on his return to see if his dwelling was there. Even the churches, with congregations armed as they listened to the Word of God, were assailed and the worshipers sometimes massacred. Deerfield was laid in ashes, and Hadley was saved undoubtedly by the sudden appearance of a venerable man, William Goffe, the regicide, who had been a major-general under Cromwell, was one of the judges who signed the death warrant of Charles I., and had fled to New England from the vengeance of Charles II. He was concealed in Hadley when the Indians attacked the place, and unexpectedly appeared among the inhabitants, most of whom took him for a supernatural being, and animated them to repulse the savages. He then as suddenly disappeared, going back to his place of refuge. Philip, encouraged by his successes, made a bold attack upon Springfield, but was repulsed with serious loss. He then retreated to the Narragansett country, and was hospitably received by Canonchet.

Although Canonchet's sympathies were with Philip, it is not certain that the Narragansett chief had hostile designs against the English. The colonists had determined, however, to make a sweep of possible as well as actual enemies, and they marched upon the Narragansetts. Then occurred the Great Swamp fight, one of the most sanguinary of encounters in the history of Indian warfare. The Narragansetts had their winter camp, or fort, in the heart of a swamp, in what is now Charlestown, Rhode Island. Successive rows of palisades protected a position of considerable extent, accessible during the greater part of the year by a single narrow path. This one access was guarded by a blockhouse, but the cold weather gave a footing to the invaders on the usually impassable morasses. An attempt was made to take the Narragansetts by surprise. The warriors, however, detected the stealthy approach, and seizing their weapons, fired from the security of their palisades upon the advancing enemy. A number of the best men on the colonial side were shot down while urging on the attack. The battle on both sides was fierce and stubborn. Assault followed assault, only to be repulsed, and when the English had fought their way into the fortress, they were at first driven out by an irresistible onset of the Indians. At length the colonists made good their entrance, and the battle continued at closer quarters, the Indians nerved to desperation by the presence of their wives and children, whose fate would be their own, and the colonists inspired to prodigies of valor by the thought that their defeat would certainly involve their own destruction, and perhaps that of New England. The invaders at length set fire to the wigwams. As the flames spread the women and children ran out, hampering their defenders with cries of terror and appeals for protection, and at length the Indians were overpowered. Then followed a pitiless massacre of the defeated Indians and their families, hundreds of whom perished in the flames, while many were taken prisoners to be carried off into slavery. Canonchet was slain, and the power of the Narragansetts was broken forever.[1] ]

King Philip escaped from the slaughter, found other Indian allies, and renewed the war more fiercely than before. Many towns were laid in ashes, including Providence and Warwick, in Rhode Island; Weymouth, Groton, Medfield, Lancaster and Marlborough, in Massachusetts. About six hundred of the colonists were killed in battle or waylaid and murdered, and the burden of the struggle bore heavily on the survivors. Fortunately dissensions among the savages diminished their power for harm, and Philip's allies deserted him, or surrendered to avoid starvation. Captain Church of Rhode Island went in pursuit of Philip who had taken refuge in the fastnesses of Mount Hope. The wife and little son of the Indian chief were made prisoners, and this was a final blow to him. "My heart breaks," he said; "I am ready to die." An Indian, who claimed to have a grievance against Philip on account of a brother whom the sachem had killed, betrayed the hiding-place of Philip to the English, and shot the fallen chief. Philip's head was cut off and carried on a pole to Plymouth, and his body was quartered. His wife and son were sold into slavery in Bermuda. The Indians of New England were crushed, and they never again attempted to stand against the whites.

[ CHAPTER X. ]

Growth of New Netherland—Governor Stuyvesant's Despotic Rule—His Comments on Popular Election—New Amsterdam Becomes New York—The Planting of Maryland—Partial Freedom of Conscience—Civil War in Maryland—The Carolinas—Settlement of North and South Carolina—The Bacon Rebellion in Virginia—Governor Berkeley's Vengeance.

New Amsterdam prospered under methods of government which were mild as compared with those of the Puritans, although the annals of the Dutch colony are unhappily not free from the stain of persecution for conscience' sake. Englishmen as well as Hollanders thronged to New Netherland, and the people, as they grew beyond anxiety for enough to eat and drink, became ambitious for a share in the government. In 1653, after much agitation and resistance on the part of Governor Stuyvesant, New Amsterdam was organized as a municipality, the power of the burghers being, however, very limited.

The smaller Dutch towns possessed the privilege of electing their officers, though their choice was subject to the approval of the director-general. New Amsterdam had not been granted this privilege, although it had been demanded in 1642 and again in 1649. At last, in 1652, Governor Stuyvesant was instructed to have a schout, two burgomasters and five schepens "elected according to the custom of the metropolis of Fatherland." He, however, continued for a long time to appoint municipal officers, and when a protest was made he replied that he had done so "for momentous reason." "For if," he said, "this rule was to become a synocure, if the nomination and election of magistrates were to be left to the populace who were the most interested, then each would vote for some one of his own stamp, the thief for a thief, the rogue, the tippler, the smuggler for a brother in iniquity, that he might enjoy greater latitude in his vices and frauds." The magistrates had not been appointed contrary to the will of the people, because they were "proposed to the commonalty in front of the City Hall by their names and surnames, each in his quality, before they were admitted or sworn to office. The question is then put, 'Does any one object?'" At length, in 1658, Stuyvesant allowed the burgomasters and schepens to nominate their successors, but the city did not have a schout of its own until 1660.

Other troubles besides the demands of the people for self-government, were gathering around the sturdy Dutch governor. The English were pressing him from the east, and in New Netherland itself they were aggressive and defiant in their attitude toward Dutch authority. Charles II. granted New Netherland to his brother, the Duke of York, and an English flotilla under Richard Nicholls appeared in front of New Amsterdam and demanded the surrender of the province. Stuyvesant refused to submit, but the people of New Amsterdam were more than willing to come under English rule, and their doughty governor was made to understand that he would be virtually alone in resisting the invaders. After a week of fuming and raging against the inevitable, Stuyvesant yielded, and the English took possession of New Amsterdam. The place was recaptured and held by the Dutch for a few months in 1673, but with the exception of this brief period the English remained thenceforth masters of the Atlantic coast of North America from the St. Lawrence in the north to the Spanish possessions in the south.

The planting of a Roman Catholic colony in Maryland was almost contemporary with the Puritan settlement of New England. The first steps toward the establishment of the colony had been taken under James I., but it was in the reign of Charles I. that Cecil Calvert, the second Lord Baltimore, obtained the charter which made him almost an independent sovereign over one of the fairest regions of North America. The charter granted civil and religious liberty to Christians who believed in the Trinity. The Ark and the Dove, two vessels fitted out by Lord Baltimore, bore about two hundred Roman Catholic immigrants to the banks of the Potomac, where they landed on March 25, 1634. The cross was planted as the emblem of the new colony, and Governor Leonard Calvert opened negotiations with the Indians for the purchase of their lands. The first assembly met in 1635, and another in 1638. Question having arisen as to whether the lord proprietor or the colonists had the right to propose laws, that right was at length conceded to the colonists. Of course the settlers would not have been allowed to persecute non-Catholics, even had they so desired; but they showed no such desire, and laws were enacted securing freedom of worship to all professing to believe in Jesus Christ; with the important limitation, however, of severe penalties for alleged blasphemy. This limitation clearly made it possible for magistrates to construe an honest expression of religious opinion as blasphemy, and to inflict the cruel punishments provided for that offence. It should be noticed that the Toleration Act of Maryland, passed in 1649, was the work of a General Assembly composed of sixteen Protestants and eight Roman Catholics, the governor (William Stone) himself being a Protestant. Some years later the Puritans, being in a majority in the Maryland General Assembly, passed an act disfranchising Roman Catholics and members of the Church of England. Civil war followed, resulting in a defeat for the Roman Catholics near Providence, now called Annapolis, April, 1655. Lord Baltimore, whose authority was overthrown in the course of the conflict, recovered his rights when the monarchy was restored in England. The government of the Baltimores continued, with some interruptions, until the Revolution, and it is but fair to state that the character which they stamped upon the colony was not effaced even by that event.

The Puritans nearly succeeded in adding North Carolina to their chain of colonies. The first settlers, after the ill-fated Raleigh expeditions of the previous century, were Presbyterian refugees from persecution at Jamestown, who, led by Roger Green, settled on the Chowan, near the site of Edenton. These were joined by other dissenters who had found the religious atmosphere of Virginia uncomfortable, and Puritans from New England landed at the Cape Fear River in 1661, and bought lands from the Indians. The soil and climate were admirably suited for successful colonization, and North Carolina might have proved a southern New England but for the hunger for vast American domains which just then possessed the courtiers of Charles II. In view of the notorious depravity of that merry monarch's surroundings it seems ludicrous to read that the grantees obtained Carolina under the pretence of a "pious zeal for the propagation of the gospel among the heathen." The list included the Earl of Clarendon, General George Monk, to whom Charles owed, in a large degree, his restoration to the throne; Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, afterward Earl of Shaftesbury; Sir John Colleton, Lord Craven, Sir George Carteret and Lord John Berkeley and his brother, then Governor of Virginia. It is related that, "when the petitioners presented their memorial, so full of pious pretensions, to King Charles in the garden of Hampton Court, the 'merrie monarch,' after looking each in the face a moment, burst into loud laughter, in which his audience joined heartily. Then taking up a little shaggy spaniel, with large, meek eyes, and holding it at arm's length before them, he said, 'Good friends, here is a model of piety and sincerity, which it might be wholesome for you to copy.' Then tossing it to Clarendon, he said, 'There, Hyde, is a worthy prelate; make him archbishop of the domain which I shall give you.' With grim satire Charles introduced into the preamble of the charter a statement that the petitioners, 'excited with a laudable and pious zeal for the propagation of the gospel, have begged a certain country in the parts of America not yet cultivated and planted, and only inhabited by some barbarous people who have no knowledge of God.'"

The Puritans, already settled in North Carolina, had no desire to take part in the propagation of the gospel in the fashion which prevailed among the courtiers of Charles II., and most of those who were from New England abandoned their North Carolina plantations. Governor Berkeley, of Virginia, extended his authority over the remainder, and made William Drummond, a Scotch Presbyterian, who had been settled in Virginia, administrator of the Chowan colony. Emigrants from Barbadoes bought land from the Indians near the site of Wilmington, and founded a prosperous settlement with Sir John Yeamans as governor. Other emigrants from England, led by Sir William Sayle and Joseph West, entered Port Royal Sound, and landed at Beaufort Island in 1671. They soon deserted Beaufort and planted themselves on the Ashley River, a few miles above the site of Charleston. In December, 1671, fifty families and a large number of slaves arrived from the Barbadoes. Carolina, about this time, had a narrow escape from being made the subject of a grotesque feudal constitution conceived by John Locke, the philosopher, and approved by the Earl of Shaftesbury. This constitution proposed to inflict on the infant colony a system of titled aristocracy as elaborate as that of Germany. The good sense of the colonists repelled the absurd scheme, and saved Carolina from being a laughing stock for the nations. In 1680, the settlers on Ashley River moved to Oyster Point, at the junction of the Ashley and Cooper Rivers, and laid the foundation of Charleston.

Meantime Virginia was the scene of a memorable struggle between the aristocrats and the people, the royalists led by the Governor, Sir William Berkeley, and the republicans marshaled by Nathaniel Bacon, a wealthy lawyer, deeply attached to the popular cause. The character of Berkeley can best be judged by a communication which he sent to England in 1665: "I thank God there are no free schools nor printing in Virginia, and I hope we shall not have them these hundred years; for learning has brought heresy and disobedience and sects into the world, and printing hath divulged them and libels against the best government; God keep us from both!" It is not strange that a man who felt like this should have cared but little for the safety and welfare of the common people. He himself reveled in riches, accumulated at the cost of the colony, and he had in sympathy with him the large landholders, who sought to imitate in their Virginia mansions the pomp and circumstance of the English nobility, while they looked down on the mass of poor whites as vassals and inferiors. The immediate provocation for the so-called Bacon Rebellion was the failure of Governor Berkeley to protect the settlers from Indian depredations, the governor having a monopoly of the fur-trade, and being inclined by motives of self-interest to propitiate the savages. An armed force assembled and chose Bacon as their leader. They first repulsed the Indians, and then demanded from the governor a commission for Bacon as commander-in-chief of the Virginia military. Berkeley, although urged by the newly-elected House of Burgesses, which was in sympathy with the people, to grant the commission, for some time hesitated, but at length consented. Bacon marched against the Indians, and Berkeley proclaimed him a traitor. This hostile action of the governor excited Bacon and his followers, in whose numbers were included many of the best men in the colony, to an open and resolute stand for the rights of the people. Berkeley fled to the eastern shore of Chesapeake Bay, and sought to raise an army to maintain his authority. He proclaimed that the slaves of all rebels were to free; he aroused the Indians to join him, and several English ships were placed at his service. With this following the governor went back to Jamestown, and again proclaimed Bacon a traitor.

The popular leader hastened to accept the challenge, and at the head of a considerable force of republicans, he appeared before Jamestown. Berkeley's mercenaries refused to fight, and stole away under cover of night, Berkeley being obliged to accompany them in order to avoid being made a prisoner. Jamestown was burned by the republicans, all the colony, except the eastern shore acknowledged Bacon's authority, and the success of the insurrection seemed assured when the popular leader fell a victim to malignant fever. Without his genius and energy to guide the cause of liberty, it rapidly declined, and Berkeley returned and soon succeeded in re-establishing his authority. He made Williamsburg the capital of the colony, instead of Jamestown, which never rose from its ruins—a fact hardly to be regretted, as the site was decidedly unhealthy. Berkeley had no mercy on the now submissive insurgents. Bacon's chief lieutenant had been the brave Scotch Presbyterian, William Drummond, the first governor of North Carolina. When Drummond was brought before him the governor said: "You are very welcome; I am more glad to see you than any man in Virginia; you shall be hanged in half an hour." Drummond calmly answered: "I expect no mercy from you. I have followed the lead of my conscience, and done what I could to rescue my country from oppression." Drummond was executed about three hours later, and his devoted wife, Sarah, who had taken an active part in urging the people to defend their rights, and who had in her the spirit of the mothers of the Revolution, was banished with her children to the wilderness. A wife who offered herself as a victim in place of her husband, claiming that she had urged him to rebellion, was repulsed with coarse and brutal insult, and the husband was led to the gallows. Twenty-two in all were executed before Berkeley's vengeance was satiated. Charles II. heard with indignation of the sacrifice of life, exclaiming: "The old fool has taken more lives in that naked country than I have taken for the murder of my father." Berkeley was recalled to England in 1677. But for the presence of the fleet and troops of Sir John Berry, sent over by the king to maintain the royal authority, Berkeley might have been subjected to violence by the colonists who fired guns and lighted bonfires to show their joy over his departure. Upon Berkeley's arrival in England he found himself equally an object there of public hatred and contempt on account of his cruelties, and he died in July of the same year of grief and mortification.

[ CHAPTER XI. ]

The Colony of New York—New Jersey Given Away to Favorites—Charter of Liberties and Franchises—The Dongan Charter—Beginnings of New York City Government—King James Driven from Power—Leisler Leads a Popular Movement—The Aristocratic Element Gains the Upper Hand—Jacob Leisler and Milborne Executed—Struggle For Liberty Continues.

The colony of New York, so called after James, the Duke of York and brother of King Charles II., came into English hands at a fortunate time, and after a fortunate experience. Owing to Dutch, occupation during half a century of intense agitation, civil war and revolution, New Netherland had escaped being drawn into the maelstrom of English hates and rivalries. Indeed the Dutch settlements, and New Amsterdam in particular, had derived advantage from the troubles of the English colonies, and among the immigrants who sought an asylum from Puritan intolerance within New Netherland jurisdiction were many who proved valuable additions to the population of the province, and who helped to build up its trade and commerce, and to develop agriculture. The Duke of York, therefore, entered upon possession of a colony with the accumulated prosperity of about fifty years as the substantial foundation for future progress, and with a population which, while composed of diverse nationalities, retained the better features of them all. The settlers of New York, both Dutch and English, were, as a rule, attentive to religious duties; but they did not regard religion as the single aim of existence. They were merchants and traders and farmers, liberal for their age in their views of religious freedom, and devoting their best energies to building up their worldly fortunes. New Amsterdam was in no sense Puritan—it was a respectable, thriving, trading and bartering community, with flourishing farms in the outskirts, and a commerce stunted by jealous restrictions, but which gave promise of future development.[1] ]

The Duke of York at first made poor use of his new possessions. He astonished Colonel Richard Nicolls, who had conquered the territory for him without firing a shot, by giving away to two favorites, Lord Berkeley, brother of the Governor of Virginia, and Sir George Carteret, the rich domain between the Hudson and Delaware, which received the name of New Jersey, and for many years that province was a theatre of dissensions traceable to the autocratic and reckless course of the Duke. The rights of settlers who had preceded the proprietary government were ignored, and an attempt made to reduce freeholders to the position of tenants. A large immigration of Quakers from England a few years after the Dutch surrender added a valuable element to the population, in which the Puritans, apart from the Dutch, had predominated. Puritans and Quakers seemed to get along very well in the Jerseys, and with good government on the part of the proprietors the colony would doubtless have flourished. That for a number of years the Jerseys remained law-abiding and comparatively tranquil without a regular civil government attests the excellent character of the people.

The Duke of York showed more wisdom in the management of his greater province of New York. In 1683 he instructed his governor, Thomas Dongan, to call a representative assembly, which met in the fort at New York. The assembly adopted an act called "The Charter of Liberties and Franchises," which was approved, first by the governor, and afterward by the duke. This charter declared that the power to pass laws should reside in the governor, council and people met in general assembly; that every freeholder and freeman should be allowed to vote for representatives without restraint; that no freeman should suffer but by judgment of his peers; that all trials should be by a jury of twelve men; that no tax should be levied without the consent of the Assembly; that no seaman or soldier should be quartered on the inhabitants against their will; that there should be no martial law, and that no person professing faith in God by Jesus Christ should be disquieted or questioned on account of religion. Two years later James, now become king, virtually abrogated this charter by levying direct taxes on New York without the consent of the people, by prohibiting the introduction of printing, and otherwise assuming arbitrary power. He did not, however, suppress the General Assembly, which became, as years advanced and the colony grew in importance, more and more resolute in asserting the people's rights.

Governor Dongan did all in his power to defend the interests of the province against the aggressions of the crown, and to secure some degree of self-government for those who bore the burdens of government. In 1686 the Dongan charter gave to the lieutenant-governor the power of appointing the mayor and sheriff of New York city, but an alderman, an assistant and a constable were to be chosen for each ward by a majority of the inhabitants of that ward. During his short lease of power Leisler issued warrants for the election of the mayor and sheriff by "all Protestant freeholders." The resulting election was a farce, as only seventy of the inhabitants voted. The illegality of this action in defiance of the provisions of the Dongan charter was one of the chief causes of complaint against Leisler. The Montgomery charter, granted to New York in 1730, authorized the election of one alderman, an assistant, two assessors, one collector and two constables in each ward. The charter of Albany was granted by Governor Dougan in 1686, and it resembled in many respects the instrument under which the city of New York was first organized. It provided that six aldermen, six assistant aldermen, constables and other magistrates, should be chosen annually. The mayor, as well as the sheriff, was appointed by the governor. Governor Dongan's reluctance to fall in with the despotic and reactionary policy of King James led to his being dismissed from office in 1688, when Andros took his place.

The tyrannical conduct of James II. and of his representatives in America, alienated the people of New York from that sovereign, and the news of his downfall was received with delight, especially as nearly all the people were Protestants. The aristocratic element was inclined, notwithstanding the news, to uphold the government established by James, but the common or democratic element resolved to drive out the representatives of the late king, and create a temporary government in sympathy with the revolution. Jacob Leisler, a distinguished Huguenot merchant, and senior captain of the military companies, was induced to lead a revolt. A committee of safety, consisting of ten members, Dutch, Huguenots and English, made Leisler commander-in-chief until orders should arrive from William and Mary, the new sovereigns of England. Sir Francis Nicholson, the acting governor under Sir Edmund Andros, departed for England, and the members of his council to Albany, and denounced Leisler as an arch-rebel. Leisler sent an account of his proceedings to King William, and called an assembly to provide means for carrying on war against the French in Canada. King William paid no attention to Leisler's message, and commissioned Colonel Henry Sloughter governor of New York, and sent a company of regular soldiers, under Captain Ingoldsby, to the province. Leisler proclaimed Sloughter's appointment, but refused to surrender the fort to Ingoldsby. A hostile encounter followed, in which some lives were lost. The aristocratic element succeeded, upon Sloughter's arrival, in obtaining an ascendancy over him, and Leisler and his son-in-law, Milborne, were arrested on charges of treason. They were tried and convicted by a packed court, and Sloughter was induced, while drunk at a banquet given by Leisler's enemies, to sign the death warrants. For fear the governor would repent of his act when sober, both men were torn away from their weeping families to the scaffold. A number of Leisler's enemies were assembled to witness his death, while a crowd of the common people, who regarded him as their champion and a martyr for their cause, looked sullenly on. Milborne saw his bitter foe, Robert Livingston, in the throng, and exclaimed: "Robert Livingston, for this I will implead thee at the bar of God!" The execution of Leisler aroused strong indignation both in America and England, and some years later the attainder placed upon them was removed by act of Parliament, and their estates restored to their families. Leisler's soul, like that of John Brown, marched on while his body was moldering in the grave. The spirit which he infused, and the love of liberty to which he gave expression, could not be eradicated by his tragic death. The people continued the struggle in assembly after assembly for the people's rights, and resolutely upheld freedom of speech and of the press in the legislative hall and the jury box.

[ CHAPTER XII. ]

William Penn's Model Colony—Sketch of the Founder of Pennsylvania— Comparative Humanity of Quaker Laws—Modified Freedom of Religion—An Early Liquor Law—Offences Against Morality Severely Punished—White Servitude—Debtors Sold Into Bondage—Georgia Founded as an Asylum for Debtors—Oglethorpe Repulses the Spaniards—Georgia a Royal Province.

Founded on principles of equity by a man who was eminently a lover of his kind, Pennsylvania stood forth as a model colony, an ample and hospitable refuge for the oppressed of every clime. William Penn believed in the Golden Rule, and he sought to establish a state in which that rule would be the fundamental law. Instead of stern justices growing fat on the fees of litigation, he would have peace-makers in every county. He would treat the Indian as of the same flesh and blood as the white, and would live on terms of amity with red men embittered against the invaders of their lands by many years of unjust encroachment and cruel oppression. His object, Penn declared in his advertisement of Pennsylvania, was to establish a just and righteous government in the province that would be an example for others. He proposed that his government should be a government of law, with the people a party to the making of laws. None, he declared, should be molested or prejudiced in matters of faith and worship, and nobody should be compelled at any time to frequent or maintain any religious place of worship or ministry whatsoever. Trial by jury was guaranteed; the person of an Indian was to be as sacred as that of a white man, and in any issue at law in which an Indian should be concerned, one half the jury was to be composed of Indians.

William Penn was well known both in England and on the Continent when he received, in 1681, his grant of Pennsylvania from Charles II. in discharge of a debt of about eighty thousand dollars, due by the crown to Penn's father, Admiral Sir William Penn. The proprietor of Pennsylvania had suffered in the cause of religious liberty and reform. He had been confined in the Tower for writing heretical pamphlets, and been prosecuted for preaching in the streets of London. He had traveled in Holland and Germany as a self-appointed missionary of the Society of Friends, and had not spared his own ease in pleading the cause of persecuted Quakers everywhere. When, therefore, he proposed to found a colony in America, his name alone was enough to attract a host of followers. Many immigrants flocked to Pennsylvania even before Penn himself had arrived there, and the settlers of Delaware, who had been anxious as to their future under the charter of the Duke of York, gladly came under the rule of one whose name was a synonym of equity. Under a spreading elm the Indians met the proprietor of Pennsylvania and made a covenant with him that was equally just to the white man and to the native—a covenant which, it is said, was never forgotten by the aborigines.

Nothing is more significant of the spirit and the motives which guided the early settlers than the humanity of their laws, as compared with the code of England. The humane and enlightened sentiment as expressed in legislation, was not peculiar to Pennsylvania. In Rhode Island, also, that other colony founded on the principle of religious liberty, the first spontaneous code enacted by the exiles was more than a century in advance of European ideas and statutes, and in Rhode Island, as in Pennsylvania, the ideal was compelled to give way to the hard and practical pressure of dominating English influence, and of contact with the rougher sort of mankind, attracted to these shores by the hope of gain or the fear of punishment at home.

The Quakers began by proclaiming a modified freedom of religion. They declared, "That no person now, or at any time hereafter, dwelling or residing within this province, who shall profess faith in God the Father, and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, and in the Holy Spirit, one God blessed for Evermore, and shall acknowledge the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be given by Divine Inspiration, and, when lawfully required, shall profess and declare that they will live peaceably under the civil government, shall in any case be molested or prejudiced for his or her conscientious persuasion, nor shall he or she be at any time compelled to frequent or maintain any religious worship, place or ministry whatsoever, contrary to his or her mind, but shall freely and fully enjoy his or her Christian liberty in all respects, without molestation or interruption." Of course this manifestly excluded unbelievers in the Trinity, and left a door open for controversy as to what books were included in the Sacred Scriptures. Furthermore, the law against blasphemy might easily have been used as a weapon of persecution, providing, as it did, that whoever should "despitefully blaspheme or speak loosely and profanely of Almighty God, Christ Jesus, the Holy Spirit or the Scriptures of Truth, and is legally convicted thereof, shall forfeit and pay the sum of ten pounds for the use of the poor of the county where such offence shall be committed, or suffer three months imprisonment at hard labor."

Practically, however, entire freedom of worship existed in Pennsylvania. The same liberal spirit breathed through the Quaker code, while at the same time due care was taken to protect the morals of the people.

In view of the severe liquor law now in force in Pennsylvania, it may be of interest to recall an early enactment regulating the traffic. It was provided in 1709, that "For preventing of disorders and the mischiefs that may happen by multiplicity of public houses of entertainment, Be it enacted, That no person or persons whatsoever, within this province, shall hereafter have or keep any public inn, tavern, ale-house, tippling-house or dram shop, victualling or public house of entertainment in any county of this province, or in the City of Philadelphia, unless such person or persons shall first be recommended by the justices in the respective County Courts, and the said city, in their Quarter Sessions or Court of Record for the said counties and cities respectively, to the Lieutenant-Governor for the time being, for his license for so doing, under the penalty of five pounds." Tavern keepers permitting disorder in their places of entertainment were subject to revocation of license.

There was a marked disposition in those days to visit with severity offences against morality, especially when the detected culprits were females; though males were not spared when sufficient proof could be brought of their guilt. A woman concealing the birth of a child, found dead, and evidently born alive, was held to be guilty of murder, unless she could prove that the death was not her doing. This unjust presumption remained in force for many years, until, under the influence of kinder and Christian sentiment, the law was changed, the burden of proof placed upon the prosecution and the presumption of innocence extended to the defendant. The penalty for violating the marriage obligation was the lash; the letter "A" being branded on the forehead for the third offence. A singular provision of law was that a married woman having a child when her husband had been one year absent, should be punished as a criminal, but to be exempt from punishment if she should prove that her husband had been within the period stated "in some of the Queen's colonies or plantations on this continent, between the easternmost parts of New England and the southernmost parts of North Carolina."

The penalties inflicted on servants point in a remarkable manner to the wonderful advance in the condition of menial and common laborers within the past hundred years. Pennsylvania, in the treatment of the laborer, was at least as lenient as any other colony, but the laws of the time appear hideously harsh and oppressive to us of to-day. The early colonial statutes provided that, "For the just encouragement of servants in the discharge of their duty, and the prevention of their deserting their master's or owner's service, be it enacted, that no servant bound to serve his or her time in this province, shall be sold or disposed of to any person residing in any other province or government without the consent of said servant, and two justices of the peace of the county wherein such servant lives or is sold, under the penalty of ten pounds to be forfeited by the seller." What a picture this conjures up of some poor, orphaned and half-starved colonial Oliver Twist, dragged by his master into the presence of pompous justices, and frowned into a hesitating consent to exchange the evils with which he was familiar for a fate whose wretchedness he knew not of!

Ten shillings was to be paid for returning a runaway servant, if captured within ten miles of the servant's abode; if over ten miles, then the sum of twenty shillings was to be paid to the captor on delivery of the fugitive to the sheriff, the master to pay, in addition to the reward, five shillings prison fees, and all other disbursements and charges. The penalty for concealing a runaway servant was twenty shillings, and any one purchasing any goods from a servant without the consent of the master or mistress was fined treble the value of the goods, to the use of the owner, "and the servant, if a white, shall make satisfaction to his or her master or owner by servitude after the expiration of his or her time, to double the value of said goods, and if the servant be a black, he or she shall be severely whipped in the most public place in the township in which such offence was committed."

It may be seen from the above that common labor up to the time of the Revolution was virtually that of serfs, without discrimination of color or nativity. The supply of such labor came largely from Great Britain and Ireland, and to some extent from the other colonies and from Africa. Poor debtors also were sold into servitude, a law of 1705 providing that "debtors should make satisfaction by servitude not exceeding seven years, if a single person and under the age of fifty, and three years or five years if a married man, and under the age of forty-six years." What the family of the married debtor were to do for a living while he was in servitude, legislation failed to suggest. Probably, in many instances, they were glad to accompany the husband and father into serfdom. Warrants could not be served on Sunday, one day of the seven being reserved when the wretched debtor might rest in security, and the hunted criminal forget that he was outlawed.

While other colonies were founded as places of refuge for Christians oppressed on account of their religion, Georgia had its origin in the humane desire of General James Edward Oglethorpe to establish an asylum for poor debtors, with whom the prisons of England were over-crowded, the colony also to be a haven for the Protestants of Germany and other continental States. The proprietors of the Carolinas surrendered their charters to the crown in 1729, and King George II was, therefore, free to grant, June 9, 1732, a charter for a corporation for twenty-one years "in trust for the poor," to found a colony in the disputed territory south of the Savannah, to be called Georgia, in honor of the king. The trustees, appointed by the crown, possessed all the power both of making and executing laws. The people of Charleston, South Carolina, gave welcome to Oglethorpe and his immigrants, for South Carolina had been greatly harassed by the Spaniards to the south, and by the powerful tribes of Indians who occupied a large portion of the proposed colony. General Oglethorpe laid the foundation of the future State on the site of Savannah, and notwithstanding grievous restrictions on the ownership of land, the colony attracted many settlers from England, Scotland and Germany. The Spaniards invaded Georgia in 1742 with a fleet of thirty-five vessels from Cuba and a land force three thousand strong. Oglethorpe had but a small body of troops, chiefly Scotch Highlanders, but by courage and strategy he inflicted a sanguinary defeat on the Spaniards at the place called the "Bloody Marsh." Ten years later, in 1742, Georgia became a royal province, and secured the liberties enjoyed by other American provinces under the crown.

SECOND PERIOD.

The Struggle for Empire.

[ CHAPTER XIII. ]

Struggle for Empire in North America—The Vast Region Called Louisiana —War Between England and France—New England Militia Besiege Quebec —Frontenac Strikes the Iroquois—The Capture of Louisburg—The Forks of the Ohio—George Washington's Mission to the French—Braddock's Defeat—Washington Prevents Utter Disaster—Barbarous Treatment of Prisoners.

The closing years of the seventeenth century witnessed the beginning of the struggle between France and England for empire in North America. Marquette, Joliet and La Salle won for France by daring exploration a nominal title to the Mississippi Valley, and La Salle assumed possession of the great river and its country in the name of Louis XIV., after whom he called the region Louisiana. It was a vast dominion indeed that was thus claimed for the House of Bourbon without a settlement and with hardly an outpost to make any real show of sovereignty. Even had the expulsion of James II. from the English throne not hastened an outbreak between England and France, the conflict would have been inevitable. The war began in 1689, and with intervals of peace and sometimes in spite of peace the contest continued, until 1763, with varying fortunes, but ultimately resulting in the complete overthrow of the French. The Iroquois stood firmly by the English, while the French and their Indian allies repeated the scenes of King Philip's War on the frontiers, and often far in the interior of New York and New England. The people of the British colonies did not look only to Great Britain for defence. They defended themselves, and even carried war into the enemy's country. In 1690, two thousand Massachusetts militia, led by Sir William Phipps, sailed up the St. Lawrence and laid siege to Quebec, while another force, composed of New York and Connecticut troops, advanced from Albany upon Montreal. These expeditions were unsuccessful. In 1693, Count Frontenac, Governor of Canada, invaded the country of the Iroquois and inflicted crushing blows upon that once powerful confederacy, whose prowess had been felt before the arrival of the white man, as far as Tennessee in the South and Illinois in the West. Notwithstanding the able generalship of Frontenac the English made steady progress in the annexation of French territory. British and colonial troops conquered Nova Scotia, and the treaty of Utrecht in 1713 recognized England as the owner, not only of Nova Scotia, but also of Newfoundland and the Hudson Bay region. The French, however, strengthened their hold upon the interior of the continent, and established a series of fortified posts connecting the Mississippi Valley with the Great Lakes. Kaskaskia was founded in 1695, Cahokia in 1700, Detroit 1701 and Vincennes 1705. Bienville founded the city of New Orleans in 1718.

The capture of Louisburg, in 1746, was the most important military achievement of the English colonists in America, previous to the Revolution. The French built the fortress soon after the treaty of Utrecht, and spared no expense to make it formidable. The project to drive the French out of the place was entirely of colonial origin. Governor Shirley, of Massachusetts, proposed the expedition to the legislature of the colony, and the members of that body hesitated at first to enter upon an undertaking apparently so hazardous and almost hopeless. After discussion the necessary authority was granted by a majority of one. A circular-letter, asking for assistance, was then sent to all the colonies as far south as Pennsylvania. New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania contributed considerable sums of money, and Governor Clinton, of New York, sent also provisions and cannon. Roger Wolcott led five hundred men from Connecticut and Rhode Island and New Hampshire each sent three hundred men. The remainder of the force of 3250 men was enlisted in Massachusetts, that colony also providing ten armed vessels. William Peperell, of Maine, distinguished alike on the bench and in arms, commanded the expedition, and English vessels of war assisted in the assault. The French surrendered after a siege of forty-eight days, conducted with great vigor by the colonists. The gratification of the British government over the important victory is said to have been mingled with apprehension, due to the signal display of colonial power and energy. Upon peace being made in 1748, after four years' war, Louisburg, much to the indignation of the colonists, was given up to France in exchange for Madras, in India, and had to be reconquered in 1758.

The point of land where the Allegheny and Monongahela meet in turbulent eddies and form the Beautiful River, early engaged the attention of the two nations, rivals for the dominion of the northern continent, while between two of the leading British colonies grave difference existed as to ownership of the coveted territory. Pennsylvania, held in leading-strings by a Quaker policy which endeavored to reconcile the savage realities of an age of iron with theories of a golden millennium, failed to sustain her assertion of right with the energies that her population and resources might well have commanded, and Virginia, more ambitious and militant, boldly pushed an armed expedition into the very heart of the border wilderness, and began with the attack on Jumonville and his party the war that ended on the Plains of Abraham.

In 1750 the Ohio Company, formed for the purpose of colonizing the country on the river of that name, surveyed its banks as far as the site of Louisville. The French, resolved to defend their title to the region west of the mountains, crossed Lake Erie, and established posts at Presque Isle, at Le Boeuf, and at Venango on the Allegheny River. Governor Dinwiddie, of Virginia, sent a messenger to warn the French not to advance. He selected for this task a young man named George Washington, a land surveyor, who, notwithstanding his youth, had made a good impression as a person of capacity and courage, well-fitted for the arduous and delicate undertaking. Washington well performed his task although the French, as might have been expected, paid no heed to his warning. In the spring of 1754, a party of English began to build a fort where Pittsburg now stands. The French drove them off and erected Fort Duquesne. A regiment of Virginia troops was already marching toward the place. Upon the death of its leading officer, George Washington, the lieutenant-colonel, took command. Washington, overwhelmed by the superior numbers of the French, was compelled to surrender, and the French, for the time, were masters of the Ohio.

This reverse did not diminish the esteem in which Washington was held by the Virginians, and by those of the mother country who came in contact with him. When General Edward Braddock, in 1755, started on his ill-fated expedition for the capture of Duquesne with a force of about two thousand men, including the British regulars and the colonial militia, Washington accompanied the British general as one of his staff. Braddock was a gallant soldier, but imperious, and self-willed, and he looked almost with contempt upon the American troops. He made a forced march with twelve hundred men in order to surprise the French at Duquesne before they could receive reinforcements. Colonel Dunbar followed with the remainder of the army and the wagon-train. It was a delightful July morning when the British soldiers and colonists crossed a ford of the Monongahela, and advanced in solid platoons along the southern bank of the stream in the direction of the fort. Washington advised a disposition of the troops more in accordance with forest warfare, but Braddock haughtily rejected the advice of the "provincial colonel," as he called Washington. The army moved on, recrossed the river to the north side, and continued the march to Duquesne. The news of the British advance had been carried to the fort by Indian scouts. The French at first thought of abandoning the post, but they decided to attack the British with the aid of Indian allies. De Beaujeu led the French and Indians. The British were proceeding in fancied security when the forest rang with Indian yells, and a volley of bullets and flying arrows dealt death in their ranks. The regular troops were thrown into confusion, and Braddock tried courageously to rally them. Washington showed the admirable qualities which afterward made him victor in the Revolution. Cool and fearless amid the frantic shouts of the foe and the panic of the British soldiery, he gave Braddock invaluable assistance in endeavoring to retrieve the fortunes of the day. The provincials fought frontier fashion, nearly all losing their lives, but not without picking off many of their enemies. Beaujeu, the French commander, was killed in the opening of the engagement. Of eighty-six English officers sixty-three were killed or wounded; and about one-half the private soldiers fell, while a number were made prisoners. For two hours the battle raged, until Braddock, having had five horses shot under him, went down himself, mortally wounded. Then the regulars that remained took to flight, and Washington, left in command; ordered a retreat, carrying with him his dying general. Braddock died three days after the battle, expressing regret that he had not followed the counsel of Washington. The British prisoners were taken to Duquesne, and that evening the Indians lighted fires on the banks of the Allegheny River, near the fort, and tortured the captives to death. An English boy who was a prisoner at Duquesne, having been previously captured, and who afterward related his experience in a narrative, a copy of which the writer has examined, says that the cries of the victims could be heard in the fort. The boy himself was subjected to closer confinement than usual, apparently for fear that the savages might demand that he be given up to them.

[ CHAPTER XIV. ]

Expulsion of the Acadians—A Cruel Deportation—The Marquis De Montcalm —The Fort William Henry Massacre—Defeat of Abercrombie—William Pitt Prosecutes the War Vigorously—Fort Duquesne Reduced—Louisburg Again Captured—Wolfe Attacks Quebec—Battle of the Plains of Abraham —Wolfe and Montcalm Mortally Wounded—Quebec Surrenders—New France a Dream of the Past—Pontiac's War.

American history contains no sadder story than the expulsion of the Acadians, or French settlers of Nova Scotia. The act may have been justifiable on the ground of military necessity; the Acadians were not loyal subjects, and they would have eagerly welcomed the expulsion of the British from North America. Indeed their conduct might have been construed as treasonable, and the English had ground for regarding them as enemies of the British crown. Their dispersion weakened the French cause at a time when that cause seemed in the ascendant, and when Braddock's unavenged defeat had reanimated the French with the hope of driving the English from America. Yet even if the deportation of the Acadians was required by the supreme law of self-preservation, and justifiable on the ground of their more than merely passive disloyalty, the manner of that deportation could not be justified. The separation of families, many of them never reunited, was a crime against humanity; the conversion of an honest, industrious and thrifty peasantry into a host of penniless vagrants, scattered like Ishmaelites through hostile colonies, was a wrong as cruel as it was unnecessary. Colonized in South Carolina or Georgia, the Acadians could hardly have been a menace to the power of Great Britain, while the Huguenot element in those regions, understanding the Acadian tongue, would have kept watch and ward against possible disloyalty. It is a pathetic feature of this most painful episode that the Huguenots, themselves driven out of France by the merciless tyranny of a Roman Catholic king, gave kindly relief to such Roman Catholic exiles from Acadia as were cast among them. They proved their true Christian spirit by returning good for evil. About six thousand of the Acadians were deported from their native land, and scattered the length and breadth of the English colonies. Many made their way to Louisiana, then a French possession, and their descendants still form a distinct class in that State. Some even sought refuge among the Indians, and found the barbarian kinder than their civilized persecutors. Longfellow's poem, "Evangeline," is based on the touching story of Acadia. The French cause was greatly strengthened by the arrival in 1756 of the Marquis de Montcalm, a distinguished soldier, to take command of the French forces in Canada. Montcalm displayed not only courage and skill, but humanity likewise, in the management of his campaigns, and history relieves him of responsibility for the horrid massacre by Indians of the captured English garrison of Fort William Henry, after a safe escort to Fort Edward had been promised to the captives. The facts are that both British and French used the Indians as allies regardless of their savage practices, but that the French, as at Fort Duquesne, showed less ability to restrain the savages after a victory. In the following summer—1758—Montcalm inflicted a most disastrous defeat at Ticonderoga on fifteen thousand British and colonial troops, led by General Abercrombie. The French force numbered only four thousand French and Indians. The English attempted to carry the works by assault, without the aid of artillery, and were mowed down by the fire of the French posted behind insuperable barriers. The English loss was about two thousand, while that of the French was inconsiderable. This was the last important success of the French in America. A master hand had seized the helm in Great Britain.

William Pitt, the "Great Commoner," determined upon a vigorous prosecution of the war in America. General John Forbes was sent, in 1758, with about nine thousand men to reduce Fort Duquesne. The illness which caused his death in the following year may be fairly accepted in excuse and explanation of the incompetent management of the expedition, and its almost fatal delays. Fortunately the French appeared to have lost the vigor and daring which they had displayed in the defeat of Braddock, and the sullen roar of an explosion, when the British troops were within a few miles of Duquesne, gave notice that it had been abandoned without a blow. General Forbes changed the name of the place to Fort Pitt, in honor of that illustrious minister to whose energetic direction of affairs was largely due the expulsion of the French arms from North America. When Westminster Abbey shall have crumbled over the tombs of Britain's heroes, and the House of Hanover shall have joined the misty dynasties of the past, Pittsburg will remain a monument, growing in grandeur with the progress of ages, to England's great statesman of the eighteenth century.

Louisburg also fell in 1758, and in the following year the English prepared to end the struggle by an attack on Quebec. Pitt placed at the head of the expedition a young general, James Wolfe, who had distinguished himself at the capture of Louisburg. Wolfe had about eight thousand troops under a convoy of twenty-two line-of-battleships, and as many frigates and smaller armed vessels. Montcalm defended the city with about seven thousand Frenchmen and Indians. The heights on which the upper town of Quebec was situated, rising almost perpendicularly at one point of three hundred feet above the river, and extending back in a lofty plateau called the Plains of Abraham, seemed to defy successful attack. Wolfe spent the summer in fruitless efforts to reduce Quebec. At length he learned that the precipice fronting on the river and supposed to be impassable, could be scaled at a point a short distance above the town, where a narrow ravine gave access to the plateau. On the evening of September 12, the British vessels, loaded with troops, floated with the inflowing tide some distance up the river. Then past midnight, while the sky was black with clouds, the ships silently and undetected by the French floated down to the designated landing-place. The troops were taken on shore in flat-bottomed boats, with muffled oars. At dawn Lieutenant-Colonel William Howe led the advance up the ravine, drove back the guard at the summit, and protected the ascent of the army. The garrison and people of Quebec awoke to see the redcoats in battle array on the Plains of Abraham. Montcalm soon confronted the British. Both of the heroic commanders knew and felt all that was at stake on the fate of the day, and they both fought with a courage that gave a splendid example to their men. Wolfe, twice wounded, continued to give orders until mortally wounded he fell. Montcalm fell nearly at the same time, mortally wounded, and his troops, already wavering before the irresistible onset of the British, broke and fled. When told that death was near, "So much the better," said Montcalm, "I will not live to see the surrender of Quebec." "Now, God be praised, I will die in peace," said the English commander, on hearing that victory was assured. Quebec was surrendered a few days later. Forts Niagara and Ticonderoga had already fallen.

Spain, having taken side with France, lost Cuba and the Philippine Islands to the English, but in the treaty of Paris of 1763, England gave those islands to Spain and received Florida in exchange. France ceded to Spain, in order to compensate that power for the loss of Florida, the city of New Orleans, and all the vast and indefinite territory known as Louisiana, stretching from the Gulf of Mexico to the unexplored regions of the northwest. New France was a dream of the past.

The French policy in America had one essential and fatal feature. The French came more as a garrison than as colonists. They came to govern, rather than possess the land, to rule, but not to supplant the natives of the soil. This policy insured some immediate strength, because the Indians were naturally less jealous of Europeans who did not threaten their hunting-grounds. On the other hand the ultimate failure of such a course was inevitable, in dealing as rivals and antagonists with a people who had come to possess the land, to drive out the Indian, to make the New World their home and a heritage for their descendants. The English settlers might be driven back for a time; their cabins might be turned into ashes, and the tomahawk and scalping-knife leave dire evidence of savage vengeance and Gallic inhumanity. But the rally was as certain as the raid was sudden. A garrison might be massacred; a colony could not be exterminated, and the defeats of Braddock and Abercrombie only burned into English breasts the resolution to tear down forever on the American continent the flag which floated over the evidence of England's dishonor.

The Algonquin Indians, who had regarded the French as allies and protectors, were now left to defend themselves against the English. Pontiac, chief of the Ottawas, conceived the idea of inducing all the tribes to unite in a general attack upon the English settlements as a last desperate resort to stay the advance of the whites. Pontiac is supposed to have led the Ottawas who assisted the French in defeating Braddock, and he perhaps underrated the power and prowess of his British antagonists. He was an able chieftain, of the same type as King Philip, Tecumseh and Sitting Bull. He saw that the white man and the red man could not possess the land together, and he determined to make a stand in behalf of his race. The struggle lasted for about two years, attended by the usual barbarities of savage warfare, and ended in the death of Pontiac, who, after suing for peace, was murdered by a drunken Indian, bribed by an English trader with a barrel of rum to commit the deed. Instead of preventing, Pontiac's War only hastened the flight of the Indian and the march of the colonists toward the setting sun.