HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES

Old Tituba the Indian.

In February, 1692, three more subjects, children of Rev. Mr. Parris,
minister at Danvers, then called Salem Village, exhibited bad witchcraft
symptoms. The utmost excitement prevailed. Neighboring clergymen joined
the village in fasting and prayer. A general fast for the colony was
ordered. But the "devilism," as Cotton Mather named it, spread instead
of abating, the children having any number of imitators so soon as they
became objects of general notice and sympathy. Old Tituba, an Indian
crone, who had served in Parris's family, was the first to be denounced
as the cause. Two other aged females, one crazy, the other bed-ridden,
were also presently accused, and after a little while several ladies of
Parris's church. Whoso uttered a whisper of incredulity, general or as
to the blameworthiness of any whom Parris called guilty, was instantly
indicted with them.

On April 11th, the Deputy Governor held in the meeting-house in Salem
Village a court for a preliminary examination of the prisoners. A scene
at once ridiculous and tragic followed. When they were brought in, their
alleged victims appeared overcome at their gaze, pretending to be
bitten, pinched, scratched, choked, burned, or pricked by their
invisible agency in revenge for refusing to subscribe to a covenant with
the devil. Some were apparently stricken down by the glance of an eye
from one of the culprits, others fainted, many writhed as in a fit.
Tituba was beaten to make her confess. Others were tortured. Finally all
the accused were thrown into irons. Numbers of accused persons, assured
that it was their only chance for life, owned up to deeds of which they
must have been entirely innocent. They had met the devil in the form of
a small black man, had attended witch sacraments, where they renounced
their Christian vows, and had ridden through the air on broomsticks.
Such were the confessions of poor women who had never in their lives
done any evil except possibly to tattle.

Lieutenant-Governor Stoughton.

On June 2d, a special court was held in Salem for the definite trial.
Stoughton, Lieutenant Governor, a man of small mind and bigoted temper,
was president. The business began by the condemnation and hanging of a
helpless woman. A jury of women had found on her person a wart, which
was pronounced to be unquestionably a "devil's teat," and her neighbors
remembered that many hens had died, animals become lame, and carts upset
by her dreadful "devilism." By September 23d, twenty persons had gone to
the gallows, eight more were under sentence, and fifty-five had
"confessed" and turned informers as their only hope. The "afflicted" had
increased to fifty. Jails were crammed with persons under accusation,
and fresh charges of alliance with devils were brought forward every
day.

Fac-simile of Sheriff's Return of an Execution.

Some of the wretched victims displayed great fortitude. Goodman Procter
lost his life by nobly and persistently--vainly as well,
alas!--maintaining the innocence of his accused wife. George Burroughs,
who had formerly preached in Salem Village, was indicted. His physical
strength, which happened to be phenomenal, was adduced as lent him from
the devil. Stoughton browbeat him through his whole trial. What sealed
his condemnation, however, was his offer to the jury of a paper quoting
an author who denied the possibility of witchcraft. His fervent prayers
when on the scaffold, and especially his correct rendering of the Lord's
Prayer, shook the minds of many. They argued that no witch could have
gotten through those holy words correctly--a test upon which several had
been condemned. Cotton Mather, present at the gallows, restored the
crowd to faith by reminding them that the devil had the power to dress
up like an angel of light. Rebecca Nurse, a woman of unimpeachable
character hitherto, unable from partial deafness to understand, so as to
explain, the allegations made against her, was convicted notwithstanding
every proof in her favor.

Reaction now began. Public opinion commenced to waver. No one knew whose
turn to be hanged would come next. Emboldened by their fatal success,
accusers whispered of people in high places as leagued with the Evil
One. An Andover minister narrowly escaped death. The Beverly minister,
Hale, one of the most active in denouncing witches, was aghast when his
own wife was accused. Two sons of Governor Bradstreet were obliged to
flee for their lives, one for refusing, as a magistrate, to issue any
more warrants, the other charged with bewitching a dog. Several hurried
to New York to escape conviction. The property of such was seized by
their towns. A reign of terror prevailed.

People slowly awoke to the terrible travesty of justice which was going
on. Magistrates were seen to have overlooked the most flagrant instances
of falsehood and contradiction on the part of both accusers and accused,
using the baseless hypothesis that the devil had warped their senses.
The disgusting partiality shown in the accusations was disrelished, as
was the resort that had been had to torture. One poor old man of eighty
they crushed to death because he would plead guilty to nothing. The
authorities quite disregarded the fact that everyone of the
self-accusations had been made in order to escape punishment. These
considerations effected a revolution in the minds of most people.
Remonstrances were presented to the courts, securing reprieve for those
under sentence of death at Salem. This so irritated the despicable
Stoughton that he resigned.

The forwardness of the ministers therein turned many against the
persecution, After the first victims had fallen at Salem, Governor Phips
took their advice whether or not to proceed. Cotton Mather indited the
reply. It thankfully acknowledges "the success which the merciful God
has given to the sedulous and assiduous endeavors of our honorable
rulers to defeat the abominable witch crafts which have been committed
in the country, humbly praying that the discovery of those mysterious
and mischievous wickednesses may be perfected. It is pleasant to note,
after all, the ministers' advice to the civil rulers not to rely too
much on "the devil's authority"--on the evidence, that is, of those
possessed. The court heeded this injunction all too little, but by and
by it had weight with the public, who judged that, as the trials
appeared to be proceeding on devil's evidence alone, the farce ought to
cease. The Superior Court met in Boston, April 25, 1693, and the grand
Jury declined to find any more bills against persons accused of sorcery.
King William vetoed the Witchcraft Act, and by the middle of 1693 all
the prisoners were discharged.

CHAPTER IV.

THE MIDDLE COLONIES

[1686]

The English conquest of New Netherland from the Dutch speedily followed
the Stuarts' return to the throne. Cromwell had mooted an attack on
Dutch America, and, as noticed in Chapter I., Connecticut's charter of
1662 extended that colony to include the Dutch lands. England based her
claim to the territory on alleged priority of discovery, but the real
motives were the value of the Hudson as an avenue for trade, and the
desire to range her colonies along the Atlantic coast in one unbroken
line. The victory was not bloody, nor was it offensive to the Dutch
themselves, who in the matter of liberties could not lose. King Charles
had granted the conquered tract to his brother, the Duke of York,
subsequently James II., and it was in his honor christened with its
present name of New York.

The Duke's government was not popular, especially as it ordered the
Dutch land-patents to be renewed--for money, of course; and in 1673,
war again existing between England and Holland, the Dutch recovered
their old possession. They held it however for only fifteen months,
since at the Peace of 1674 the two belligerent nations mutually restored
all the posts which they had won.

The reader already has some idea of Sir Edmond Andros's rule in America.
New York was the first to feel this, coming under the gentleman's
governorship immediately on being the second time surrendered to
England. Such had been the political disorder in the province, that
Andros's headship, stern as it was, proved beneficial. He even, for a
time, 1683-86, reluctantly permitted an elective legislature, though
discontinuing it when the legislatures of New England were suppressed.
This taste of freedom had its effect afterward.

[1690]

When news of the Revolution of 1688 in England reached New York, Andros
was in Boston. Nicholson, Lieutenant-Governor, being a Catholic and an
absolutist, and the colony now in horror of all Catholics through fear
of French invasion from Canada, Jacob Leisler, a German adventurer,
partly anticipating, partly obeying the popular wish, assumed to
function in Nicholson's stead. All the aristocracy, English or Dutch,
and nearly all the English of the lower rank were against him. Leisler
was passionate and needlessly bitter toward Catholics, yet he meant
well. He viewed his office as only transitory, and stood ready to
surrender it so soon as the new king's will could be learned; but when
Slaughter arrived with commission as governor, Leisler's foes succeeded
in compassing his execution for treason. This unjust and cruel deed
began a long feud between the popular and the aristocratic party in the
colony.

Sloughter signing Leisler's Death Warrant.

[1700]

From this time till the American Revolution New York continued a
province of the Crown. Royal governor succeeded royal governor, some of
them better, some worse. Of the entire line Bellomont was the most
worthy official, Cornbury the least so. One of the problems which
chiefly worried all of them was how to execute the navigation acts,
which, evaded everywhere, were here unscrupulously defied. Another care
of the governors, in which they succeeded but very imperfectly, was to
establish the English Church in the colony. A third was the
disfranchisement of Catholics. This they accomplished, the legislature
concurring, and the disability continued during the entire colonial
period.

Hottest struggle of all occurred over the question of the colony's right
of self-taxation. The democracy stood for this with the utmost
firmness, and even the higher classes favored rather than opposed. The
governors, Cornbury and Lovelace, most frantically, but in vain,
expostulated, scolded, threatened, till at last it became admitted by
law in the colony that no tax whatever could, on any pretext, be levied
save by act of the people's representatives.

Dutch America, it will be remembered, had reached southward to the
Delaware River, and this lower portion passed with the rest to the Duke
of York in 1664. The territory between the Hudson and the Delaware,
under the name of New Jersey, he made over to Lord Berkeley and Sir
George Carteret, proprietaries, who favored the freest institutions,
civil and religious. The population was for long very sparse and, as it
grew, very miscellaneous. Dutch, Swedes, English, Quakers, and Puritans
from New England were represented.

Seal of the Carterets.

After the English recovery Berkeley disposed of his undivided half of
the province, subsequently set off as West Jersey, to one Bylling, a
Quaker, who in a little time assigned it to Lawrie, Lucas, Penn, and
other Quakers. West Jersey became as much a Quaker paradise as
Pennsylvania. Penn with eleven of his brethren, also bought, of
Carteret's heirs, East Jersey, but here Puritan rather than Quaker
influence prevailed.

Seal of East Jersey.

The Jersey plantations came of course under Andros, and after his fall
its proprietors did not recover their political authority. For twelve
years, while they were endeavoring to do this, partial anarchy cursed
the province, and at length in 1702 they surrendered their rights to the
Crown, the Jerseys, now made one, becoming directly subject to Queen
Anne. The province had its own legislature and, till 1741, the same
governors as New York. It also had mainly the same political
vicissitudes, and with the same result.

William Penn, the famous Quaker, received the proprietorship of
Pennsylvania in payment of a claim for sixteen thousand pounds against
the English Government. This had been left him by his father, Sir
William Penn, a distinguished naval commander in the Dutch war of
1665-67, when he had borne chief part in the conquest of Jamaica.

Wampum received by Penn in Commemoration of the Indian Treaty.

William Penn was among the most cultivated men of his time, polished by
study and travel, deeply read in law and philosophy. He had fortune, and
many friends at court, including Charles II. himself. He needed but to
conform, and great place was his. But conform he would not. True to the
inner light, braving the scoffs of all his friends, expelled from Oxford
University, beaten from his own father's door, imprisoned now nine
months in London Tower, now six in Newgate, this heroic spirit
persistently went the Quaker way. In despair of securing in England
freedom for distressed consciences he turned his thoughts toward
America, there to try his "holy experiment."

William Penn; From the copy by Francis Race in the
National Museum, Philadelphia.

The charter from Charles II. was drawn by Penn's own hand and was nobly
liberal. It ordained perfect religious toleration for all Christians,
and forbade taxation save by the provincial assembly or the English
Parliament. Under William and Mary, greatly to his grief, Penn was
forced to sanction the penal laws against Catholics; but they were most
leniently administered, which brought upon the large-minded proprietary
much trouble with the home government.

As Pennsylvania, owing to the righteous and loving procedure of Penn
toward them, suffered nothing from the red men to the west, so was it
fortunately beyond Andros's jurisdiction on the east. Once, from 1692,
for two years, the land was snatched from Penn and placed under a royal
commission. Returning to England in 1684, after a two years' sojourn in
America to get his colony started, the Quaker chief became intimate and
a favorite with James II., devotedly supporting his Declaration of
Indulgence toward Catholics as well as toward all Protestant dissenters.
He tried hard but vainly to win William and Mary to the same policy.
This attitude of his cost him dear, rendering him an object of suspicion
to the men now in power in England. Twice was he accused of treasonable
correspondence with the exiled James II., though never proved guilty.
From 1699 to 1701 he was in America again, thereafter residing in
England till his death in 1718. He had literally given all for his
colony, his efforts on its behalf having been to him, so he wrote in
1710, a cause of grief, trouble, and poverty.

The Treaty Monument, Kensington.

But the colony itself was amazingly prosperous. There were internal
feuds, mainly petty, some serious. George Keith grievously divided the
Quakers by his teachings against slavery, going to law, or service as
magistrates on the part of Quakers, thus implying that only infidels or
churchmen could be the colony's officials.

Fletcher's governorship in 1693-94, under the royal commission, evoked
continual opposition, colonial privileges remaining intact in spite of
him. The people from time to time subjected their ground-law to changes,
only to render it a fitter instrument of freedom. In everything save the
hereditary function of the proprietary, it was democratic. For many
years even the governor's council was elective. The colony grew,
immigrants crowding in from nearly every European country, and wealth
multiplied to correspond.

The Penn Mansion in Philadelphia.

We have, dating from 1698, a history of Pennsylvania by one Gabriel
Thomas, full of interesting information. Philadelphia was already a
"noble and beautiful city," containing above 2,000 houses, most of them
"stately," made of brick; three stores, and besides a town house, a
market house, and several schools. Three fairs were held there yearly,
and two weekly markets, which it required twenty fat bullocks, besides
many sheep, calves, and hogs, to supply. The city had large trade to New
York, New England, Virginia, West India, and Old England. Its exports
were horses, pipe-staves, salt meats, bread-stuffs, poultry, and
tobacco; its imports, fir, rum, sugar, molasses, silver, negroes, salt,
linen, household goods, etc. Wages were three times as high as in
England or Wales. All sorts of "very good paper" were made at
Germantown, besides linen, druggets, crapes, camlets, serges, and other
woollen cloths. All religious confessions were represented.

In 1712, such his poverty, the good proprietary was willing to sell to
the Crown, but as he insisted upon maintenance of the colonists' full
rights, no sale occurred. English bigots and revenue officials would
gladly have annulled his charter, but his integrity had gotten him
influence among English statesmen, which shielded the heritage he had
left even when he was gone.

It is particularly to be noticed that till our Independence Delaware was
most intimately related to Pennsylvania. Of Delaware the fee simple
belonged not to Penn, but to the Duke of York, who had conquered it from
the Dutch, as they from the Swedes. Penn therefore governed here, not as
proprietary but as the Duke's tenant. In 1690-92, and from 1702,
Delaware enjoyed a legislature by itself, though its governors were
appointed by Penn or his heirs during the entire colonial period.

CHAPTER V.

MARYLAND, VIRGINIA, CAROLINA

[1675]

The establishment of Charles II. as king fully restored Lord Baltimore
as proprietary in Maryland, and for a long time the colony enjoyed much
peace and prosperity. In 1660 it boasted twelve thousand inhabitants, in
1665 sixteen thousand, in 1676 twenty thousand. Plantation life was
universal, there being no town worthy the name till Baltimore, which,
laid out in 1739, grew very slowly. Tobacco was the main production, too
nearly the only one, the planters sometimes actually suffering for food,
so that the raising of cereals needed to be enforced by law. For long
the weed was also the money of the province, not disused for this even
when paper currency was introduced, being found the less fluctuating in
value of the two. Partly actual over-production and partly the
navigation acts, forcing all sales to be effected through England,
fatally lowered the price, and Maryland with Virginia tried to establish
a "trust" to regulate the output.

Charles, Second Lord Baltimore.

In its incessant and on one occasion bloody boundary disputes with
Pennsylvania and Delaware, Maryland had to give in and suffer its
northern and eastern boundaries to be shortened.

[1689]

One of the most beautiful traits of early Maryland was its perfect
toleration in religion. Practically neither Pennsylvania nor Rhode
Island surpassed it in this. Much hostility to the Quakers existed, yet
they had here exceptional privileges, and great numbers from Virginia
and the North utilized these. All sorts of dissenters indeed flocked
hither out of all European countries, including many Huguenots, and were
made welcome to all the rights and blessings of the land.

But from the accession of Charles Calvert, the third Lord Baltimore, in
1675, the colony witnessed continual agitation in favor of establishing
the English Church. False word reached the Privy Council that immorality
was rife in the colony owing to a lack of religious instruction, and
that Catholics were preferred in its offices. This movement succeeded,
in spite of its intrinsic demerit, by passing itself off as part of the
rising in favor of William and Mary in 1688-89.

[1690]

James II. had shown no favor to Maryland. If its proprietary, as a
Catholic, pleased him, its civil and religious liberty offended him
more. He was hence not popular here, and the Marylanders would readily
have proclaimed the new monarchs but for the accidental failure of the
proprietary's commands to this effect to reach them. This gave occasion
for one Coode, with a few abettors, to form, in April, 1689, an
"Association in Arms for the Defence of the Protestant Religion, and for
Asserting the Right of King William and Queen Mary to the Province of
Maryland." The exaggerated representations of these conspirators
prevailed in England. The proprietary, retaining his quit rents and
export duty, was deprived of his political prerogatives. Maryland became
a Crown province, Sir Lionel Copley being the first royal governor, and
the Church of England received establishment therein.

The new ecclesiastical rule did not oppress Protestant dissenters,
though very severe on Catholics, whom it was supposed necessary, here as
all over America, to keep under, lest they should rise in favor of James
II., or his son the Pretender.

[1660]

The third Lord Baltimore died in 1714-15. The proprietaries after this
being Protestants, were intrusted again with their old political
headship. By this time a spirit of independence and self-assertion had
grown up among the citizens, enforcing very liberal laws, and the vices
of the sixth Lord, succeeding in 1751, made his subjects more than
willing that he should, as he did, close the proprietary line.

Virginia, passionately loyal, at first gloried in the Restoration. This
proved premature. It was found that the purely selfish Charles II. cared
no more for Virginia than for Massachusetts. The Commonwealth's men were
displaced from power. Sir William Berkeley again became governor, this
time, however, by the authority of the assembly. A larger feeling of
independence from England had sprung up in the colony in consequence of
recent history at home and in the mother-land. It was developed still
further by the events now to be detailed.

[1676]

The Old Dominion contained at this time 40,000 people, 6,000 being white
servants and 2,000 negro slaves, located mainly upon the lower waters of
the Rappahannock, York, and James Rivers. Between 1650 and 1670, through
large immigration from the old country, the population had increased
from 15,000 to 40,000, some of the first families of the State in
subsequent times arriving at this juncture. About eighty ships of
commerce came each year from Great Britain, besides many from New
England. Virginia herself built no ships and owned few; but she could
muster eight thousand horse, had driven the Indians far into the
interior, possessed the capacity for boundless wealth, and had begun to
experience a decided sense of her own rights and importance. The last
fact showed itself in Bacon's Rebellion, which broke out in 1676, just
one hundred years before the Declaration of Independence. The causes of
the insurrection were not far to seek.

[1673]

The navigation acts were a sore grievance to Virginia as to the other
colonies. Under Cromwell they had not been much enforced, and the
Virginians had traded freely with all who came. Charles enforced them
with all possible rigor, confining Virginia's trade to England and
English ships manned by Englishmen. This gave England a grinding
monopoly of tobacco, Virginia's sole export, making the planters
commercially the slaves of the home government and of English traders.
Duties on the weed were high, and mercilessly collected without regard
to lowness of price. All supplies from abroad also had to be purchased
in England, at prices set by English sellers. Even if from other parts
of Europe, they must come through England, thus securing her a profit at
Virginia's expense.

This was not the worst. The colonial government had always been abused
for the ends of worthless office-holders from England. Now it was farmed
out more offensively than ever. In 1673 Charles II. donated Virginia to
two of his favorites, Lords Arlington and Culpeper, to be its
proprietaries like Penn in Pennsylvania and Baltimore in Maryland. They
were to have all the quit rents and other revenues, the nomination of
ministers for parishes, the right of appointing public officers, the
right to own and sell all public or escheated lands; in a word, they now
owned Virginia. This shabby treatment awoke the most intense rage in so
proud a people. The king relented, revoked his donation, made out and
was about to send a new charter. But it was too late; rebellion had
already broken out.

The Indians having made some attacks on the upper plantations, one
Nathaniel Bacon, a spirited young gentleman of twenty-eight, recently
from England, applied to Sir William Berkeley for a commission against
them. The governor declined to give it, fearing, in the present excited
condition of the colony, to have a body of armed men abroad. Bacon,
enraged, extorts the commission by force. The result is civil war in the
colony. The rebels are for a time completely victorious. Berkeley is
driven to Accomac, on the eastern shore of the Chesapeake, but,
succeeding in capturing a fleet sent to oppose him, he returns with this
and captures Jamestown. Beaten by Bacon in a pitched battle, he again
retires to Accomac, and the colony comes fully under the power of his
antagonist, the colonists agreeing even to fight England should it
interpose on the governor's side, when a decisive change in affairs is
brought about by the rebel leader's death.

Reverend Dr. Blair, First President of William and Mary College.

[1690]

The rebellion was now easily subdued, but it had soured and hardened old
Governor Berkeley's spirit. Twenty-three in all were executed for
participation in the movement. Charles II. remarked: "That old fool has
hanged more men in that naked country than I for the murder of my
father."

After Bacon's Rebellion the colonial annals show but a dull succession
of royal governors, with few events specially interesting. Under the
governorship of Lord Howard of Effingham, which began in 1684, great
excitement prevailed in Virginia lest King James II. should subvert the
English Church there and make Catholicism dominant, which indeed might
possibly have occurred but for James's abdication in 1688.

Under Governor Nicholson, from 1690, the capital was removed from
Jamestown to Williamsburg, and the College of William and Mary founded,
its charter dating from 1693. The Attorney-General, Seymour, opposed
this project on the ground that the money was needed for "better
purposes" than educating clergymen. Rev. Dr. Blair, agent and advocate
of the endowment, pleading: "The people have souls to be saved," Seymour
retorted: "Damn your souls, make tobacco." But Blair persisted and
succeeded, himself becoming first president of the college. The initial
commencement exercises took place in 1700.

George Monk, Duke of Albemarle.

[1710]

Governor Spotswood, who came in 1710, did much for Virginia. He built
the first iron furnaces in America, introduced wine-culture, for which
he imported skilled Germans, and greatly interested himself in the
civilization of the Indians. He was the earliest to explore the
Shenandoah Valley. It was also by his energy that the famous pirate
"Black beard" was captured and executed. Lieutenant Maynard, sent with
two ships to hunt him, attacked and boarded the pirate vessel in Pamlico
Sound, 1718. A tough fight at close quarters ensued. Blackbeard was shot
dead, his crew crying for quarter. Thirteen of the men were hung at
Williamsburg. Blackbeard's skull, made into a drinking-cup, is preserved
to this day. The great corsair's fate, Benjamin Franklin, then a
printer's devil in Boston, celebrated in verse.

Carolina was settled partly from England, France, and the Barbadoes, and
partly from New England; but mainly from Virginia, which colony
furthermore furnished most of its political ideas.

[1663]

Lord Shaftesbury.

In March, 1663, Carolina was constituted a territory, extending from 36
degrees north latitude southward to the river San Matheo, and assigned
to a company of seven distinguished proprietaries, including General
Monk, who had been created Duke of Albemarle, and John Locke's patron,
the famous Lord Ashley Cooper, subsequently Earl of Shaftesbury.
Governor Sir William Berkeley, of Virginia, was also one of the
proprietaries.

[1720]

Seal of the Proprietors of Carolina.

Locke drew up for the province a minute feudal constitution, but it was
too cumbersome to work. Rule by the proprietaries proved radically bad.
They were ignorant, callous to wrongs done by their governors, and
indifferent to everything save their own profits. Many of the settlers
too were turbulent and criminals, fugitives from the justice of other
colonies. The difficulty was aggravated by Indian and Spanish wars, by
negro slavery, so profitable for rice culture, especially in South
Carolina, by strife between dissenters and churchmen, by the question of
revenue, and by that of representation.

John Locke.

[1730-1752]

A proprietary party and a larger popular party were continually at feud,
not seldom with arms, support of the Church allying itself mainly with
the former, dissent with the latter, Zealots for the Church wished to
exclude dissenters from the assembly. Their opponents would keep
Huguenot immigrants, whom the favor of the proprietaries rendered
unwelcome, entirely from the franchise. The popular party passed laws
for electing representatives in every county instead of at Charleston
alone, and for revenue tariffs to pay the debt entailed by war. The
proprietaries vetoed both. They even favored the pirates who harried the
coast. Civil commotions were frequent and growth slow. Interference by
the Crown was therefore most happy. From the time the Carolinas passed
into royal hands, 1729, remarkable prosperity attended them both.

Assuming charge of Carolina, the Crown reserved to itself the Spanish
frontier, and here, in 1732, it settled Oglethorpe, the able and
unselfish founder of Georgia, under the auspices of an organization in
form much like a mercantile company, but benevolent in aim, whose main
purpose was to open a home for the thousands of Englishmen who were in
prison for debt. Many Scotch and many Austrians also came. Full civil
liberty was promised to all, religious liberty to all but papists.
Political strife was warm here, too, particularly respecting the
admission of rum and slaves. Government by the corporators, though
well-meaning, was ill-informed and a failure, and would have been
ruinous to the colony but for Oglethorpe's genius and exertions. To the
advantage of all, therefore, on the lapse of the charter in 1752,
Georgia, like the Carolinas, assumed the status of a royal colony.

Savannah, from a Print of 1741.

James Oglethorpe.

CHAPTER VI.

GOVERNMENTAL INSTITUTIONS IN THE COLONIES

[1750]

The political life, habits, and forms familiar to our fathers were such
as their peculiar surroundings and experience had developed out of
English originals. This process and its results form an interesting
study.

The political unit at the South was the parish; in the North it was the
town. Jury trial prevailed in all the colonies. Local self-government
was vigorous everywhere, yet the most so in the North. The town
regulated its affairs, such as the schools, police, roads, the public
lands, the poor, and in Massachusetts and Connecticut also religion, at
first by pure mass meetings where each citizen represented himself and
which were both legislative and judicial in function, then by combining
these meetings in various ways with the agency of selectmen. Where and
so soon as a colony came to embrace several towns, representative
machinery was set in motion and a colonial legislature formed, having
two chambers nearly everywhere, like Parliament. The county, with the
same character as at present, was instituted later than the oldest towns
and parishes, but itself subsequently became, in thinly settled parts,
the unit of governmental organization and political action, being
divided into towns or parishes only gradually. Voting was subject to a
property qualification, in some colonies to a religious one also; but no
nobility of blood or title got foothold.

The relation of the colonial governments to England is a far more
perplexing matter. From the preceding chapters it appears that we may
distinguish the colonies, if we come down to about 1750, as either (1)
self-governing or charter colonies, in which liberty was most complete
and subjection to England little more than nominal; and (2)
non-self-governing, ruled, theoretically at any rate, in considerable
measure from outside themselves. Rhode Island and Connecticut made up
the former class. Of the latter there were two groups, the royal or
provincial, including New Hampshire, Massachusetts; New York, New
Jersey, Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia, and the proprietary, viz.,
Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Delaware.

Yet we are to bear in mind that many important constitutional and
governmental changes had occurred by 1750. Massachusetts, as we have
seen, had ceased to be self-governing as at first, yet it retained a
charter which conferred large liberty. All the provincial colonies began
as proprietary, and all the proprietary were for a time provincial.

Under Andros, New England stretched from the St. Croix to Delaware Bay.
After 1689 the tendency in all parts of the country was strong toward
civil freedom, which, favored by the changes and apathy of proprietaries
and the ignorance and quarrels of the English ministry, gradually
rendered the other colonies in effect about as well off in this respect
as Rhode Island and Connecticut.

But unfortunately the legal limits and meaning of this freedom were
never determined. Had they been, our Revolution need not have come.
Monarchs continually attempted to stretch hither the royal prerogative,
but how far this was legal was not then, and never can be, decided. The
constitutional scope of a monarch's prerogative in England itself was
one of the great questions of the seventeenth century, and remained
serious and unsettled through the eighteenth. Applied to America the
problem became angrier still, partly because giving a charter--and the
colonies were all founded on such gift--was an act of prerogative.

English lawyers never doubted that acts of Parliament were valid in the
colonies. The colonists opposed both the king's and the Parliament's
pretensions, and held their own legislatures to be coordinate with the
Houses at Westminster. They claimed as rights the protection of habeas
corpus, freedom from taxation without their consent, and all the Great
Charter's guarantees. It was the habit of English theorizing on the
subject to allow them these, if at all, as of grace. Repudiating the
pretence that they were represented in Parliament, they likewise denied
all wish to be so, but desired to have colonial legislatures recognized
as concurrent with the English--each colony joined to the mother-country
by a sort of personal union, or through some such tie as exists between
England and her colonies to-day. Massachusetts theorists used as a valid
analogy the relation of ancient Normandy to the French kings. Though no
longer venturing to do so at home, monarchs freely vetoed legislation in
all the colonies except Rhode Island and Connecticut. It was held that
even these colonies were after all somehow subject to England's
oversight.

On the subject of taxation there was continual dispute,
misunderstanding, recrimination. The colonies did not object to
providing for their own defence. They were willing to do this under
English direction if asked, not commanded. Direct taxation for England's
behoof was never once consented to by America, and till late never
thought of by England. The English navigation laws, however, though
amounting to taxation of America in aid of England, and continually
evaded as unjust, were allowed by the colonies' legislative acts, and
never seriously objected to in any formal way.

CHAPTER VII.

SOCIAL CULTURE IN COLONIAL TIMES

[1750]

American society rose out of mere untitled humanity; monarchy, guilds,
priests, and all aristocracy of a feudal nature having been left behind
in Europe. The year 1700 found in all the American colonies together
some 300,000 people. They were distributed about as follows: New England
had 115,000; New York, 30,000; New Jersey, 15,000; Pennsylvania and
Delaware, 20,000; Maryland, 35,000; Virginia, 70,000; the Carolina
country, 15,000. Perhaps 50,000 were negro slaves, of whom, say, 10,000
were held north of Mason and Dixon's line. What is now New York City
had, in 1697, 4,302 inhabitants.

Passing on to 1754, we find the white population of New England
increased to 425,000; that of the middle colonies, including Maryland,
to 457,000; that of Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia, to 283,000.
Massachusetts alone now had 207,000; Rhode Island, 35,000; Connecticut,
133,000; New York State (1756), 83,744. There were now not far from
263,000 negroes, of whom 14,000 lived in New England, 4,500 in Rhode
Island. The total population of the thirteen colonies amounted to nearly
a million and a half. At this time Philadelphia about equalled Boston in
size, each having 25,000 inhabitants. At the Revolution Boston had grown
to be the larger. New York, with from 15,000 to 18,000, constituted the
centre of trade and of politics. The city and county of New York
together numbered 13,046 inhabitants in 1756; 21,862 in 1771; 23,614 in
1786. The whole State, in 1771 had 146,144. Connecticut, in 1774, had
197,856. There are said to have been, so late as 1763, woods where the
New York City Hall now stands.

From North to South the population decreased in density, but it
increased in heterogeneity and non-English elements, and in illiteracy.
The South had also the stronger aristocratic feeling. Slaves, as the
above figures show, were far more numerous in that section. Their
condition was also worse there.

A large proportion of the white population everywhere was of
Saxon-Teutonic blood. The colonial leaders, and many others, at least in
the North, were men who would have been eminent in England itself. Not a
few New England theologians and lawyers were peers to the ablest of
their time. Numbers of the common people read, reflected, debated. While
profoundly religious, the colonists, being nearly all Protestants, were
bold and progressive thinkers in every line, prizing discussion,
preferring to settle questions by rational methods rather than through
authority and tradition. We have observed that there are exceptions to
this rule, like the treatment of Roger Williams, but they were
exceptions. The colonists possessed in eminent degree energy,
determination, power of patient endurance and sacrifice. Their political
genius, too, was striking in itself, and it becomes surprising if one
compares Germany, in the unspeakable distraction of the Thirty Years'
War, with America at the same period, 1618-1648, successfully solving by
patience and debate the very problems which were Germany's despair.

Costume about the Middle of the Seventeenth Century.

Costume about the Middle of the Seventeenth Century.

In all the southern colonies the English Church was established, a
majority of the people its members, its clergy supported by tithes and
glebe. William and Mary secured it a sort of establishment also in New
York and Maryland. Yet at no moment of the colonial period was there a
bishop in America. No church building was consecrated with episcopal
rites, no resident of America taken into orders without going to London.
[footnote: See, for these facts, The Century for May, 1888.] Even in
Virginia, till a very late colonial period, the clergy retained many
Puritan forms. Some would not read the Common Prayer. For more than a
hundred years the surplice was apparently unknown there, sacraments
administered without the proper ornaments and vessels, parts of the
liturgy omitted, marriages, baptisms, churchings, and funerals
solemnized in private houses. In some parishes, so late as 1724, the
communion was partaken sitting. Excellent as were many of the clergymen,
there were some who never preached, and not a few even bore an ill name.
It was worst in Maryland, and "bad as a Maryland parson" became a
proverb. The yearly salary in the best Virginia parishes was tobacco of
about 100 pounds value.

The Carolina clergy at first formed a superior class, as nearly all the
early ministers were men carefully selected and sent out from England by
the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. Here there was special
interest in the religious welfare of the slaves. All Over the South the
Church ministers owed much to competition with those of sects,
especially those of the Presbyterians, to which body belonged many of
the Scotch and Irish immigrants after 1700. Dissent was dominant
everywhere at the North. A vast majority of the people even in New York
were dissenters, though the Episcopal clergy there successfully resisted
all efforts against the Church tax, notwithstanding the fact that the
same injustice in Massachusetts and Connecticut oppressed their brethren
in those colonies. The New York clergy also fought every sort of liberal
law, as to enable dissenting bodies of Christians to hold property. It
was in good degree this attitude of theirs that filled the country,
Virginia too, with such hatred of bishops.

But this spirit was fully matched by that of the Independent ministers
in New England. Their dissent was aggressive, persecuting, puritanical.
Meeting-houses were cold, sermons long and dry, music vocal only.
Religious teaching and the laws it procured, foolishly assumed to
regulate all the acts of life. Extravagance was denounced and fined. In
1750, the Massachusetts Assembly forbade theatres as "likely to
encourage immorality and impiety." Rhode Island took similar action in
1762.