[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.



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.



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.



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."



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.



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.



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.



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.



[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.



[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]



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]



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.



[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.



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.



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.



The ministers of Boston viewed bishops almost as emissaries of the devil. Herein in fact lay the primary, some have thought the deepest and most potent cause of the Revolution, since kings and the bishops of London incessantly sought to establish Anglicanism in Massachusetts, and English politicians deemed it outrageous that conformists should be denied any of that colony's privileges. For some time, under William and Mary's charter, in this province where Congregationalism had till now had everything its own way, only Church clergymen could celebrate marriage. In New York and Maryland, too, hostility to the establishment greatly stimulated disloyalty. This was true even in Anglican Virginia, where the Church found it no easier to keep power than it was in Massachusetts to get power, and where the clergy were unpopular, concerned more for tithes than for souls.



Colleges were founded early in several colonies. Harvard dates from 1638; William and Mary, in Virginia, from 1693; Yale, from 1701; the College of New Jersey, from 1746, its old Nassau Hall, built in 1756 and named in honor of William III. of the House of Nassau, being then the largest structure in British America. The University of Pennsylvania dates from 1753; King's College, now Columbia, from 1754; Rhode Island College, now Brown University, from 1764. Educational facilities in general varied greatly with sections, being miserable in the southern colonies, fair in the central, excellent in the northern. In Virginia, during the period now under our survey, schools were almost unknown. In Maryland, from 1728, a free school was established by law in each county. These were the only such schools in the South before 1770. Philadelphia and New York had good schools by 1700; rural Pennsylvania none of any sort till 1750, then only the poorest. A few New York and New Jersey towns of New England origin had free schools before the Revolution. Many Southern planters sent their sons to school in England. In popular education New England led not only the continent but the world, there being a school-house, often several, in each town. Every native adult in Massachusetts and Connecticut was able to read and write. In this matter Rhode Island was far behind its next neighbors.

Newspapers were distributed much as schools were. The first printing-press was set up at Cambridge in 1639. The first newspaper, Publick Occurrences Foreign and Domestic, was started in Boston in 1690. The first permanent newspaper, the Boston News Letter, began in 1704, and it had a Boston and a Philadelphia rival in 1719. The Maryland Gazette was started at Annapolis in 1727, a weekly at Williamsburg, Va., in 1736. In 1740 there were eleven newspapers in all in the colonies; one each in New York, South Carolina, and Virginia (from 1736), three in Pennsylvania, one of them German, and five in Boston. The Connecticut Gazette was started at New Haven in 1755; The Summary, at New London in 1758. The Rhode Island Gazette was begun by James Franklin, September 27, 1732, but was not permanent. The Providence Gazette and Country Journal put forth its first issue October 20, 1762. In 1775, Salem, Newburyport, and Portsmouth had each its newspaper. The first daily in the country, the Pennsylvania Packet, began in 1784.



Other literature of American origin flourished in New England nearly alone. It consisted of sermons, social and political tracts, poetry, history, and memoirs. The clergy were the chief but not the sole authors. Of readers, New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston had many. Much reading matter came from England. Charleston enjoyed a public library from 1700. About 1750 there were several others. That left to Philadelphia in 1751, by James Logan, comprised 4,000 volumes.

William and Mary had established a postal system for America, placing Thomas Neale, Esquire, at its head. The service hardly became a system till 1738. In ordinary weather a post-rider would receive the Philadelphia mail at the Susquehannah River on Saturday evening, be at Annapolis on Monday, reach the Potomac Tuesday night, on Wednesday arrive at New Post, near Fredericksburg, and by Saturday evening at Williamsburg, whence, once a month, the mail went still farther south, to Edenton, N. C. Thus a letter was just a week in transit between Philadelphia and the capital of Virginia. In New England, from here to New York, and between New York and Philadelphia, despatch was much better.



The learned professions also were best patronized and had the ablest personnel in New England, where all three, but particularly the clergy, were strong and honored. Outside of New England, till 1750, lawyers and physicians, especially in the country parts, were poorly educated and little respected. Each formidable disease had the people at its mercy. Diphtheria, then known as the throat disease, swept through the land once in about thirty years. Smallpox was another frequent scourge. In 1721 it attacked nearly six thousand persons in Boston, about half the population, killing some nine hundred. The clergy, almost to a man, decried vaccination when first vented, proclaiming it an effort to thwart God's will. Clergymen, except perhaps in Carolina and Virginia, were somewhat better educated, yet those in New England led all others in this respect.

Colonial America boasted many great intellectual lights. President Edwards won European reputation as a thinker, and so did Franklin as a statesman and as a scientist. Linnaeus named our Bartram, a Quaker farmer of Pennsylvania, the greatest natural botanist then living. Increase Mather read and wrote both Greek and Hebrew, and spoke Latin. He and his son Cotton were veritable wonders in literary attainment. The one was the author of ninety-two books, the other of three hundred and eighty-three. The younger Winthrop was a member of the Royal Society. Copley, Stuart, and West became distinguished painters.

Except for mails, there were in the colonies no public conveyances by land till just before the Revolution. After stage lines were introduced, to go from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh required seven days; from Philadelphia to New York, at first three, later two. The earliest coach to attain the last-named speed was advertised as "the flying machine," From Boston one would be four days travelling to New York, two to Portsmouth. Packet-boats between the main points on the coast were as regular and speedy as wind allowed. Stage-drivers, inn-keepers, and ship-captains were the honored and accredited purveyors of news.

Everywhere was great prosperity, little luxury. Paucity of money gave rise to that habit of barter and dicker in trade which was a mannerism of our fathers. Agriculture formed the basal industry, especially in the Southern colonies; yet in New England and Pennsylvania both manufactures and commerce thrived. Pennsylvania's yearly foreign commerce exceeded 1,000,000 pounds sterling, requiring 500 vessels and more than 7,000 seamen. From Pennsylvania, in 1750, 3,000 tons of pig-iron were exported. The annual production of iron in Maryland just before the Revolution reached 25,000 tons of pig, 500 of bar. The business of marine insurance began in this country at Philadelphia in 1721, fire insurance at Boston in 1724. New England produced timber, ships, rum, paper, hats, leather, and linen and woollen cloths, the first three for export.

In country places houses were poor save on the great estates, south, but in the cities there were many fine mansions before 1700. From this year stoves began to be used. Glass windows and paper hangings were first seen not far from 1750.

The colonists ate much flesh, and nearly all used tobacco and liquor freely. Finest ladies snuffed, sometimes smoked. Little coffee was drunk, and no tea till about 1700. Urban life was social and gay. In the country the games of fox and geese, three and twelve men morris, husking bees and quilting bees were the chief sports. Tableware was mostly of wood, though many had pewter, and the rich much silver. The people's ordinary dress was of homemade cloth, but not a few country people still wore deerskin. The clothing of the rich was imported, and often gaudy with tasteless ornament. Wigs were common in the eighteenth century, and all head-dress stupidly elaborate.

William Lang, of Boston, advertises in 1767 to provide all who wish with wigs "in the most genteel and polite taste," assuring judges, divines, lawyers, and physicians, "because of the importance of their heads, that he can assort his wigs to suit their respective occupations and inclinations." He tells the ladies that he can furnish anyone of them with "a nice, easy, genteel, and polite construction of rolls, such as may tend to raise their heads to any pitch they desire."

"Everybody wore wigs in 1750, except convicts and slaves. Boys wore them, servants wore them, Quakers wore them, paupers wore them. The making of wigs was an important branch of industry in Great Britain. Wigs were of many styles and prices. Some dangled with curls; and they were designated by a great variety of names, such as tyes, bobs, majors, spencers, foxtails, twists, tetes, scratches, full-bottomed dress bobs, cues, and perukes. The people of Philadelphia dressed as the actors of our theatres now dress in old English comedy. They walked the streets in bright-colored and highly decorated coats, three-cornered hats, ruffled shirts and wristbands, knee-breeches, silk stockings, low shoes, and silver buckles." [footnote: Mrs. M. J. Lamb, in Magazine of Am. History, August. 1888.] Lord Stirling, one of Washington's generals, had a clothing inventory like a king: a "pompidou" cloth coat and vest, breeches with gold lace, a crimson and figured velvet coat, seven scarlet vests, et cetera, et cetera.

The wigs encountered the zealous hostility of many, among these Judge Samuel Sewall. His highest eulogy on a departed worthy was: "The welfare of the poor was much upon his spirit, and he abominated periwigs." A member of the church at Newbury, Mass., refused to attend communion because the pastor wore a wig, believing that all who were guilty of this practice would be damned if they did not repent. A meeting of Massachusetts Quakers solemnly expressed the conviction that the wearing of extravagant and superfluous wigs was wholly contrary to the truth.



There was an aristocracy, of its kind, in all the colonies, but it was far the strongest in the South. Social lines were sharply drawn, an "Esquire" not liking to be accosted as "Mr.," and each looking down somewhat upon a simple "Goodman." These gradations stood forth in college catalogues and in the location of pews in churches. The Yale triennial catalogue until 1767 and the Harvard triennial till 1772 arrange students' names not alphabetically or according to attainments, but so as to indicate the social rank of their families. Memoranda of President Clap, of Yale, against the names of youth when admitted to college, such as "Justice of the Peace," "Deacon," "of middling estate much impoverished," reveal how hard it sometimes was properly to grade students socially. At the South, regular mechanics, like all free laborers, were few and despised. The indentured servants, very numerous in several colonies, differed little from slaves. David Jamieson, attorney-general of New York in 1710, had been banished from Scotland as a Covenanter and sold in New Jersey as a four years' redemptioner to pay transportation expanses. Such servants were continually running away, which may have aided in abolishing the system. Paupers and criminals were fewest in New England. All the colonies imprisoned insolvent criminals, though dirt and damp made each prison a hell. All felonies were awarded capital punishment, and many minor crimes incurred barbarous penalties. Whipping-post, pillory, and stocks were in frequent use. So late as 1760 women were publicly whipped. At Hartford, in 1761, David Campbell and Alexander Pettigrew, for the burglary of two watches, received each fifteen stripes, the loss of the right ear, and the brand-mark "B" on the forehead. Pettigrew came near losing his life from the profuse bleeding which ensued. A husband killing his wife was hanged. A wife killing her husband was burned, as were slaves who slew their masters.



In care for the unfortunate and in the study and in all applications of social science, Philadelphia led. The Pennsylvania Hospital, the first institution of the kind in America, was founded in 1751. The Philadelphia streets were the first to be lighted; those of New York next; those of Boston not till 1773. Before the end of the period now before us Philadelphia and New York also had night patrols.



CHAPTER VIII.

ENGLAND AND FRANCE IN AMERICA



[1659-1672]

Working upward from the mouth of the St. Lawrence to the source of this and of the Mississippi, and then down the latter river, Franciscans and Jesuits their pioneers, braving dreadful hardships and dangers in efforts, more courageous than successful, to convert the Indians, the French had come to control that great continental highway and boldly to claim for France the entire heart of North America.



In 1659, Groseilliers and Radisson penetrated beyond Lake Superior, and dwelt for a time among the Sioux, who knew of the Mississippi River. Next year Groseilliers went thither again, accompanied by the Jesuit Menard and his servant, Guerin. In 1661 Menard and Guerin pushed into what is now Wisconsin, and may have seen the Mississippi. These explorations made the French familiar with the copper mines of Lake Superior, and awakened the utmost zeal to see the Great River of which the Indians spoke. La Salle probably discovered the Ohio in 1670, and traced it down to the falls at Louisville. His main eulogist holds that he even reached the Mississippi at that time, some three years earlier than Joliet, but this is not substantiated. We also reject the belief that he reached the stream by way of the Chicago portage in 1671.



[1676]

In 1672 Count Frontenac, Governor of New France, despatched Louis Joliet to discover the Great River. He reached the Strait of Mackinaw in December, and there Pere Marquette joined him. In May, next year, they paddled their canoes up the Fox River and tugged them across the portage into the Wisconsin, which they descended, entering the Father of Waters June 17, 1673. They floated down to the mouth of the Arkansas and then returned, their journey back being up the Illinois and Desplaines Rivers. Joliet gave his name to the peak on the latter stream which the city of Joliet, Ill., near by, still retains. Joliet arrived at Quebec in August, 1674, having in four months journeyed over twenty-five hundred miles.

It thus became known how close the upper waters of the great rivers, St. Lawrence and Mississippi, were to each other, and that the latter emptied into the Gulf of Mexico instead of the South Sea (Pacific); yet, as the Rocky Mountains had not then been discovered, it was for long believed that some of the western tributaries of the Great River led to that western ocean.



[1682]

In 1676 Raudin, and three years later, Du Lhut, visited the Ojibwas and Sioux west of Lake Superior. Du Lhut reached the upper waters of the Mississippi at Sandy Lake. He went there again in 1680. In 1682 La Salle crossed the Chicago portage and explored the lower Mississippi all the way to the Gulf, taking possession of the entire valley in the name of France and naming it Louisiana. Nicholas Perrot travelled by way of the Fox and Wisconsin Rivers to the upper Mississippi in 1685, and again in 1688. It is in his writings that the word "Chicago" first appears in literature.

There were thus between the two great valleys, 1, the Superior route; 2, the Wisconsin and Fox route; 3, the Illinois River route, whether by the Kankakee, La Salle's way, or by the south branch of the Chicago River, Joliet's way; and 4, the route by the Wabash and Ohio. The Wabash, too, could be approached either from Lake Erie or from Lake Michigan, through St. Joseph's River. At high water, canoes often passed from Lake Michigan into the Mississippi without portage.



[1685-1690]



La Salle had the ambition to get to the South Sea from the Mississippi. Governor De la Barre, who followed Frontenac, opposing him, he repaired to France, where he succeeded in winning Louis XIV. to his plan. At the head of a well-equipped fleet he sailed for the mouth of the Mississippi, reaching land near Matagorda Bay on the first day of the year 1685. Not finding the Mississippi, La Salle's officers mutinied. The expedition broke up into parties, wandering here and there, distressed by Indian attacks and by treachery among themselves. La Salle was shot by his own men. Nearly all his followers perished, but a small party at last discovered the river and ascended it to Fort St. Louis on the Illinois, reaching France via Quebec. In this expedition France took possession of Texas, nor did she ever relinquish the claim till, in 1763, the whole of Louisiana west of the Mississippi was ceded to Spain, La Salle's ill-starred attempt led later to the planting of French colonies by D'Iberville at Biloxi Island, in Mobile Bay, soon abandoned, and at Poverty Point, on the Mississippi; and still later to the settlement of New Orleans and vicinity. Growth in these parts was slow, however. So late as 1713 there were not over three hundred whites in the entire Mississippi Valley.



By this time French traders had set foot on every shore of the great lakes and explored nearly every stream tributary thereto. The English, pushing westward more and more, were trying to divide with them the lucrative business of fur-trading, and each nation sought to win to itself all the Indians it could. The Mohawks and their confederates of the Five Nations, now equipped and acquainted with fire-arms, spite of alternate overtures and threats from the French, remained firm friends to the English, who more and more invaded those vast and fertile western ranges. It grew to be the great question of the age this side the Atlantic, whether England or France should control the continent. King William's war, declared in 1689, was therefore certain to rage in America as well as in Europe.



One sees by a glance at the map what advantage France had in this struggle. It possessed the best fishing grounds and fur-producing districts, and fish and furs were at first the only exports of value from the north of America. The French, too, held all the water-ways to the heart of the continent. Coming up Lake Champlain they could threaten New York and New England from the rear. The colonies farther south they shut in almost as straitly, French bullets whistling about any Englishman's ears the instant he appeared beyond the mountains.

In other respects England had the advantage. In population English America had become as superior as French America was territorially, having 1,116,000 white inhabitants in 1750, to about 80,000 French. The English colonies were also more convenient to the mother-country, and the better situated for commerce both coastwise and across the ocean. Among the English, temper for mere speculation and adventure decayed very early, giving way to the conviction that successful planting depended wholly upon persistent, energetic toil.

A piece of fortune more important yet was their relatively free religious and political system. Toleration in religion was large. Self-government was nearly complete internally, and indeed externally, till the navigation acts. Canada, on the other hand, was oppressed by a feudal constitution in the state, settlers being denied the fee simple of their lands, and by Jesuits in Church. "New France could not grow," says Parkman, "with a priest on guard at the gate to let in none but such as pleased him. In making Canada a citadel of the state religion, the clerical monitors of the Crown robbed their country of a transatlantic empire." Thus the Huguenots, France's best emigrants to America, did not come to New France, but to New England and the other Protestant colonies.



The Indian hostilities which heralded King William's War began August 13, 1688. Frontenac prepared to capture Albany and even Manhattan. He did not accomplish so much; but on the night of February 8, 1689-90, his force of ninety Iroquois and over a hundred Frenchmen fell upon Schenectady, killed sixty, and captured eighty or ninety more. Only a corporal's guard escaped to Albany with the sad news. This attack had weighty influence, as occasioning the first American congress. Seven delegates from various colonies assembled at New York on May 1, 1690, to devise defence against the northern invaders.

The eastern Indians were hardly at rest from Philip's War when roused by the French to engage in this. An attack was made upon Haverhill, Mass., and Hannah Dustin, with a child only a few days old, another woman, and a boy, was led captive to an Indian camp up the Merrimac. The savages killed the infant, but thereby steeled the mother's heart for revenge. One night the three prisoners slew their sleeping guards and, seizing a canoe, floated down to their home. Dover was attacked June 27, 1689, twenty-three persons killed, and twenty-nine sold to the French in Canada. Indescribable horrors occurred at Oyster River, at Salmon Falls, at Casco, at Exeter, and elsewhere.



[1702]

In 1702 Queen Anne's War began, and in this again New England was the chief sufferer. The barbarities which marked it were worse than those of Philip's War. De Rouville, with a party of French and savages, proceeded from Canada to Deerfield, Mass. Fearing an attack, the villagers meant to be vigilant, but early on a February morning, 1704, the wily enemy, skulking till the sentinels retired at daylight, managed to effect a surprise. Fifty were killed and one hundred hurried off to Canada. Among these were the minister, Mr. Williams, and his family. Twenty years later a white woman in Indian dress entered Deerfield. It was one of the Williams daughters. She had married an Indian in Canada, and now refused to desert him. Cases like this, of which there were many in the course of these frightful wars, seemed to the settlers harder to bear than death. Massachusetts came so to dread the atrocious foe, that fifteen pounds were offered by public authority for an Indian man's scalp, eight for a child's or a woman's.

[1705]



Governor Spotswood urged aggression on the French to the west; Governor Hunter of New York had equal zeal for a movement northward. New York raised 600 men and the same number of Iroquois, voting 10,000 pounds of paper money for their sustenance. Connecticut and New Jersey sent 1,600 men. A force of 4,000 in all mustered at Albany under Nicholson of New York. They were to co-operate against Montreal with the naval expedition of 1711, commanded by Sir Hoveden Walker. Walker failed ignominiously, and Nicholson, hearing of this betimes, saved himself by retreating.

Sir William Phips had captured Port Royal in 1690, and Acadia was annexed to Massachusetts in 1692. In 1691 the French again took formal possession of Port Royal and the neighboring country. In 1692 an ineffectual attempt was made to recover it, but by the Treaty of Ryswick, 1697, it was explicitly given back to France.

[1710]

At the inception of Queen Anne's War, in 1702, there were several expeditions from New England to Nova Scotia; in 1704 and 1707 without result. That of 1710 was more successful. It consisted of four regiments and thirty-six vessels, besides troop and store ships and some marines. Port Royal capitulated, and its name was changed to Annapolis, in honor of Queen Anne. Acadia never again came under French control, and was regularly ceded to England by the Treaty of Utrecht, 1713. Notwithstanding this, however, French America still remained substantially intact.



[1714]

If the great struggle for the Ohio Valley now became a silent one, it was none the less earnest. Spotswood had opened a road across the Blue Ridge in 1716. In 1721 New Yorkers began settling on Oswego River, and they finished a fort there by 1726. Closer alliance was formed with the Five Nations. The French governor of Quebec in 1725 pleaded that Niagara must be fortified, and on his successor was urged the necessity of reducing the Oswego garrison. It was partly to flank Oswego that the French pushed up Lake Champlain to Crown Point and built Fort St. Frederick.

The Treaty of Utrecht had left Cape Breton Island to France. The French at once strongly fortified Louisburg and invited thither the French inhabitants of Acadia and Newfoundland, which had also been ceded to Great Britain. Many went, though the British governors did much to hinder removal. This irritated the French authorities, and the Indian atrocities of 1723-24 at Dover and in Maine are known to have been stimulated from Montreal. Father Rasle, an astute and benevolent French Jesuit who had settled among the Indians at Norridgewock, became an agent of this hostile influence. In an English attack, August 12, 1724, Rasle's settlement was broken up and himself killed. The Indians next year made a treaty, and peace prevailed till King George's War.



[1745]



This opened in 1744, England against France once more, and in 1745 came the capture of Louisburg, then the Gibraltar of America. This was brought about through the energy of Governor Shirley, of Massachusetts, the most efficient English commander this side the Atlantic. That commonwealth voted to send 3,250 men, Connecticut 500, New Hampshire and Rhode Island each 300. Sir William Pepperrell, of Kittery, Me., commanded, Richard Gridley, of Bunker Hill fame, being his chief of artillery. The expedition consisted of thirteen armed vessels, commanded by Captain Edward Tyng, with over 200 guns, and about ninety transports. The Massachusetts troops sailed from Nantasket March 24th, and reached Canso, April 4th. "Rhode Island," says Hutchinson, "waited until a better judgment could be made of the event, their three hundred not arriving until after the place had surrendered." The expedition was very costly to the colonies participating, and four years later England reimbursed them in the sum of 200,000 pounds. Yet at the disgraceful peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, in 1748, she surrendered Louisburg and all Cape Breton to France again.

[1746-1748]

In 1746 French and Indians from Crown Point destroyed the fort and twenty houses at Saratoga, killing thirty persons, and capturing sixty. Orders came this year from England to advance on Crown Point and Montreal, upon Shirley's plan, all the colonies as far south as Virginia being commanded to aid. Quite an army mustered at Albany. Sir William Johnson succeeded in rousing the Iroquois, whom the French had been courting with unprecedented assiduity. But D'Anville's fleet threatened. The colonies wanted their troops at home. Inactivity discouraged the soldiers, alienated the Indians. At last news came that the Canada project was abandoned, and in 1748 the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle was declared.

This very year France began new efforts to fill the Ohio Valley with emigrants. Virginia did the same. To anticipate the English, the French sent Bienville to bury engraved leaden plates at the mouths of streams. They also fortified the present sites of Ogdensburg and Toronto. Even now, therefore, France's power this side the Atlantic was not visibly shaken. The continental problem remained unsolved.



CHAPTER IX.

THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR

[1748]

The Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle had been made only because the contestants were tired of fighting. In America, at least, each at once began taking breath and preparing to renew the struggle. Not a year passed that did not witness border quarrels more or less bloody. The French authorities filled the Ohio and Mississippi valleys with military posts; English settlers pressed persistently into the same to find homes. In this movement Virginia led, having in 1748 formed, especially to aid western settlement, the Ohio Company, which received from the king a grant of five hundred thousand acres beyond the Alleghanies. A road was laid out between the upper Potomac and the present Pittsburgh, settlements were begun along it, and efforts made to conciliate the savages.



[1754]

One of the frontier villages was at what is now Franklin, Penn., and the location involved Virginia with the colony of Pennsylvania. As commissioner to settle the dispute George Washington was sent out.

The future Father of his Country was of humble origin. Born in Westmoreland County, Va., "about ten in ye morning of ye 11th day of February, 1731-32," as recorded in his mother's Bible, he had been an orphan from his earliest youth. His education was of the slenderest. At sixteen he became a land surveyor, leading a life of the roughest sort, beasts, savages, and hardy frontiersmen his constant companions, sleeping under the sky and cooking his own coarse food. No better man could have been chosen to thread now the Alleghany trail.

Washington reported the French strongly posted in western Pennsylvania on lands claimed by the Ohio Company. Virginia fitted out an expedition to dislodge them. Of this Washington commanded the advance. Meeting at Great Meadows the French under Contrecoeur, commander of Fort Du Quesne (Pittsburgh); he was at first victorious, but the French were re-enforced before he was, and Washington, after a gallant struggle, had to capitulate. This was on July 3, 1754. The French and Indian War had begun.



[1755]

The English Government bade the colonies defend their frontier, and in this interest twenty-five delegates from the seven northern colonies met at Albany on June 19, 1754. Benjamin Franklin represented Pennsylvania, and it was at this conference that he presented his well-considered plan, to be described in our chapter on Independence, for a general government over English America. The Albany Convention amounted to little, but did somewhat to renew alliance with the Six Nations. [footnote: Increased from five to six by the accession of the Tuscaroras.]

In this decisive war England had in view four great objects of conquest in America: 1. Fort Du Quesne; 2. The Ontario basin with Oswego and Fort Niagara; 3. The Champlain Valley; 4. Louisburg. The British ministry seemed in earnest. It sent Sir Edward Braddock to this side with six thousand splendidly equipped veterans, and offered large sums for fitting out regiments of provincials. Braddock arrived in February, 1755, but moved very languidly. This was not altogether his fault, for he had difficulties with the governors and they with their legislatures.



At last off for Fort Du Quesne, he took a needlessly long route, through Virginia instead of Pennsylvania. He scorned advice, marching and fighting stiffly according to the rules of the Old World military art, heeding none of Franklin's and Washington's sage hints touching savage modes of warfare. The consequence was this brave Briton's defeat and death. As he drew near to Fort Du Quesne, he fell into a carefully prepared ambuscade. Four horses were shot under him. Mounting a fifth he spurred to the front to inspire his men, forbidding them seek the slightest cover, as Washington urged and as the provincials successfully did. The regulars, obeying, were half of them killed in their tracks, the remainder retreating, in panic at first, to Philadelphia. Braddock died, and was buried at Great Meadows, where his grave is still to be seen.



Washington was the only mounted officer in this action who was not killed or fatally wounded, a fact at the time regarded specially providential. On his return, aged twenty-three, the Rev. Samuel Davies, afterward President of the College of New Jersey, referred to him in his sermon as "that heroic youth, Colonel Washington, whom I cannot but hope Providence has preserved in so signal a manner for some important service to his country."

[1757]

The early part of this war witnessed the tragic occurrence immortalized by Longfellow's "Evangeline," the expulsion of the French from Acadia. The poem is too favorable to these people. They had never become reconciled to English rule, and were believed on strong evidence to be active in promoting French schemes against the English. It was resolved to scatter them among the Atlantic settlements. The act was savage, and became doubly so through the unmeant cruelties attending its execution. The poor wretches were huddled on the shore weeks too soon for their transports. Families were broken up, children forcibly separated from parents. The largest company was carried to Massachusetts, many to Pennsylvania, some to the extreme South. Not a few, crushed in spirit, became paupers. A number found their way to France, a number to Louisiana, a handful back to Nova Scotia.

Braddock was succeeded by the fussy and incompetent Earl of Loudon, 1756-57, whom Franklin likened to Saint George on the sign-posts, "always galloping but never advancing." He gathered twelve thousand men for the recapture of Louisburg, but exaggerated reports of the French strength frightened him from the attempt. Similar inaction lost him Fort William Henry on Lake George. The end of the year 1757 saw the English cause on this side at low ebb, Montcalm, the tried and brilliant French commander, having outwitted or frightened the English officers at every point.



From this moment all changes. William Pitt, subsequently Lord Chatham, now became the soul of the British ministry. George III. had dismissed him therefrom in 1757, but Newcastle found it impossible to get on without him. The great commoner had to be recalled, this time to take entire direction of the war.



[1758]

Pitt had set his mind on the conquest of Canada. He superseded Loudon early in 1758 by General Amherst, who was seconded by Wolfe and by Admiral Boscawen, both with large re-enforcements. They were to reduce Louisburg. It was an innovation to assign important commands like these to men with so little fame and influence, but Pitt did not care. He believed his appointees to be brave, energetic, skilful, and the event proved his wisdom. Louisburg fell, and with it the whole of Cape Breton Island and also Prince Edward.

Unfortunately General Abercrombie had not been recalled with Loudon. The same year, 1758, he signally failed to capture Ticonderoga, leaving the way to Montreal worse blocked than before. Fort Du Quesne, however, General Forbes took this year at little cost, rechristening it Pittsburgh in honor of the heroic minister who had ordered the enterprise.

[1759]

In the year 1759 occurred a grand triple movement upon Canada. Amherst, now general-in-chief, was to clear the Champlain Valley, and Prideaux with large colonial forces to reduce Fort Niagara. Both had orders, being successful in these initial attacks, to move down the St. Lawrence and unite with Wolfe, who was to sail up that river and beset Quebec. Prideaux was splendidly successful, as indeed was Amherst in time, though longer than he anticipated in securing Ticonderoga and Crown Point.



Meantime Wolfe at Quebec was trying in all ways to manoeuvre the crafty Montcalm out of his impregnable works. Failing, he in his eagerness suffered himself to attempt an assault upon the city, which proved not only vain but terribly costly. A weaker commander would now have given up, but Wolfe had red hair, and the grit usually accompanying. Undaunted, he planned the hazardous enterprise of rowing up the St. Lawrence by night, landing with five thousand picked men at the foot of the precipitous ascent to the Plains of Abraham, and scaling those heights to face Montcalm from the west. The Frenchman, stunned at the sight which day brought him, lost no time in attacking. In the hot battle which ensued, September 13, 1759, both commanders fell, Wolfe cheering his heroes to sure victory, Montcalm urging on his forlorn hope in vain. The English remained masters of the field and in five days Quebec capitulated.



[1760-1763]



Vaudreuil, the French commander at Montreal, sought to dislodge the English ere the ice left the river in the spring of 1760, and succeeded in driving them within their works. Each side then waited and hoped for help from beyond sea so soon as navigation opened. It came the earlier to the English, who were gladdened on May 11th by the approach of a British frigate, the forerunner of a fleet. They now chased Vaudreuil back into Montreal, where they were met by Haviland from Crown Point and by Amherst from Oswego. France's days of power in America were ended. Her fleet of twenty-two sail intended for succor met total destruction in the Bay des Chaleurs and by the Peace of Paris, 1763, she surrendered to her victorious antagonist every foot of her American territory east of the Mississippi, save the city of New Orleans.

The Indians were thus left to finish this war alone. Pontiac, the brave and cunning chief of the Ottawas, aghast at the rising might of the English, and the certain fate of his race without the French for helpers, organized a conspiracy including nearly every tribe this side the Mississippi except the Six Nations, to put to the sword all the English garrisons in the West. Fatal success waited upon the plan. It was in 1763 Forts Sandusky, St. Joseph (southeast of Lake Michigan), Miami (Fort Wayne), Presque Isle (Erie, Pa.), Le Boeuf, Venango, and Pittsburgh were attacked and all but the last destroyed, soldiers and settlers murdered with indescribable barbarities. Pittsburgh held out till re-enforced, at dreadful cost in blood, by Colonel Bouquet and his Highlanders, who marched from Philadelphia.



The hottest and longest conflict was at Detroit, Major Gladwyn commanding, where Pontiac himself led the onset, heading perhaps a thousand men. The siege was maintained with fearful venom from May 11th till into October. The English tried a number of sallies, brave, fatal, vain, and were so hard pressed by their bloodthirsty foe that only timely and repeated re-enforcements saved them. At last the savages, becoming, as always, disunited and straitened for supplies, sullenly made peace; and at the call of the rich and now free Northwest, caravans of English immigrants thronged thither to lay under happiest auspices the foundations of new States.

END OF VOLUME l.